Worst Leader

[couerdelion]

I should perhaps have added Saladin among the toothless wonders. In fact, at least Toku and Monty have some teeth while Saladin just sits there being all spiritual and protective. Quite useless if you ask me.

Certainly take the point about fishing although it is a win-lose lottery on the sea specials. The coastal start with seafood and fishing is stronger than others start because it provides a cheap boost to the worker/settler pool with extra commerce and added resistance to barbs. I notice often that, when I start with Izzy, I tend to get flood plains or coastal starts with which here techs and traits fit nicely

[Theben]

Originally posted by LzPrst
as for crappy leaders, my point has kinda vanished. my point was that cheap settlers and strong archers = great staying power. my little GW stunt kinda took the thrust out of my little experiment...

I thought you were going to do the GW, invite my enemies into my "cultural borders" and use your PRO archers to swat them aside, getting mucho Generals in the process thing.

[DirtyMartini]

IMO Charlemagne is the worst. Bad traits and , as it's been stated elsewhere, he looks like the Burger King, which is just silly. He also suffers from having a civ called the Holy Roman Empire. All of these things make him my least fav. After that I'd go with Mao. Not a huge fan of Izzy either - just never seem to get it going. Unlike many, I like playing Agg leaders, Monty included. Whoever said that they dislike org/creative (snoopy?) must not play like me -- my best game ever was with the Ethiopians. Then again, I just really like being able to put my cities wherever I want without regard for how I'm going to get that first border pop. And I build courthouses, factories and libraries pretty much everywhere (a habit I'm trying to fix).

[Theben]

Originally posted by DirtyMartini
IMO Charlemagne is the worst- he looks like the Burger King...

Oh, crap. I'll never be able to get that image out of head again.

[DirtyMartini]

welcome to my world. I'm on the verge of customizing all my games so that he's not in them.

[Unimatrix11]

Common - its still better than if he looked like Ronald Mc Donald... actually someone should make a mod and introduce "the german dictator" into the game, using that as his leaderhead... I wonder if McD would be willing to sponsor... (sorry being hungover, stupid and silly)

[Yosho]

Originally posted by LzPrst
I'm not saying you should rely 100% on archers. you have to balance your strategy, what I'm saying is that a lot of times, especially against the AI on higher levels, protective is quite useful. a few well upgraded longbowmen can hold out in a walled city for a long time.

Well, again, longbows are moderatly useful for defense, but that's not going to win you the game. Yes, a few upgraded longbowmen in a walled city do good against an enemy without siege weapons. But the point is, is that in a game where you're not despratly trying to defend your capital from invasion the whole game, you're going to make more meele units then archers for most of the game; agg helps your meele units and your archers, while pro only helps your archers. Therefore, agg is much better.

Let me put it this way. If you assume a unit with combat 1 for free is 20% more useful then a unit without combat 1 (which seems fair; it might even be more then that, IMHO), and you assume that about half of your hammers go into building those units, then agg is basically the equivelent something like a +10% bonus to your hammers, making it one of the better abilities. If you assume that a drill 1 and drill 2 archer is, I don't know, +30% better then a regular longbow (and that's being generous, IMHO), and you spend 10% of your pre-gunpoweder hammers making archers, then protective is the equivilent of +3% bonus to your hammers. And it's even worse then that, since most of your defensive units will never actually engage in combat, and therefore will never get the full advanantage from the extra experence.

What you really want isn't a few experenced longbowmen desperatly trying to hold onto a city as he pilllages all the towns around it. It's a bunch of experenced macemen, with a few really experenced macemen capable of taking out those few experenced longbowmen the enemy has defending his city, especally since those macemen also tend to be as useful or more useful even in defense then the longbowmen are in my experence.

4 is enough to kill off a vastly bigger army, even with siege weapons.

If he's throwing a vast army against the 4 fortified longbowmen you've got hiding behind walls, you're probably in trouble anyway. And frankly, even in that situation, I'd rather have 2 longbowmen and 2 macemen defending then 4 longbowmen; the macemen can counterattack much more effectivly.

2 with city def and 2 with first strike focused promotions. the city def guys will take the siege assaults and the drill archers will suffer less collateral damage and then be able to take on those macemen and elephants. the weak spot is against knights that ignore first strikes , but they come fairly late, I had gunpowder in my last game before Justinian could field his Cataphracts. and while he was obviously spending a most of his energy fielding armies that committed suicide against my walls, I coulld rest up easy, build some reinforcements, some improvements, some wonders and an army to counterattack with.

Yeah, but if you're going to build "an army to counterattack with", you'd be better off having, say, 1 or 2 extra defenders in that fowards city, and then having combat 1 in all the units of that army you're going to counterattack with.

and as you say, walls and castles are low priority builds. until you realize how much effort is needed to bring them down.

Well, it might take a few more turns. But again, even in the scenerios where walls are useful, they're only useful in a few cities, so you're really only saving a few hammers total. I can't imagine any situation where I'd build anywhere near as many walls and castles as I build barreks, unless I guess barbs were a huge problem really early in the game. If you're building walls everywhere, you're probably wasting a lot of hammers.

castles also give culture, an extra trade route and the spy bonus is nice as well.

Yeah, but they cost so many hammers and go obsolete so fast, it's rarely worth building them for the economic reasons. A couple of times, I've built one or two for either the culture or trade route, but again, building a castle is a good idea perhaps 1 game in 5, at the most.

not to mention that the city is practically untouchable by siege weapons until Cannons show up.

Nope. It will take a few more turns for the enemy siege to lower your defenses, but you're certanly not "untouchable".

then I started fighting a lot, those castles are so "#¤#'ing annoying.

Yeah, they are, when you're on the offensive, they're annoying and they slow you down a fair amount. I can't remember ever losing a war because the enemy had castles, though.

I guess it's a matter of philosophy. aggressive is clearly better for offensive wars where you are the stronger. but in my experience, that is not always the case. protective is very good for defence and practical in offense. Drill I also gives access to a lot of the same promotions as Combat I, so it is practical in that manner as well.

Eh...even for defensive wars, or mixed wars, so long as you're fighting with a mix of troops and not just pure archers, agg is better then protective, just because it boosts all your units. Even if I were to build half of my units as archers, and I rarely do, agg would still just be better.

Even if he's invading you and you just want to hold onto what you have, you generally win by attacking and destroying his units in the field as the march towards you or as they park outside your city, and longbows just can't do that.

[Seedle]

Originally posted by Yosho


Agg helps your meele units and your archers, while pro only helps your archers. Therefore, agg is much better.

Actually, agg doesn't help your archers, but I'd bet you know that and merely mistyped. And I think you underestimate crossbowmen, they are better than a "half decent" counter to macemen. The way I look at is this. I can build more longbowmen/crossbowman/pikemen/cats or trebs than you can macemen/knights/pikemen/trebs because archery units cost less than macemen/knights. If you attack my city, you are doomed. If you try to pillage as I hole up, you're on flat ground, I send out some cats, and then I massacre with superior numbers once I've done some collateral damage. In fact, if we go to war with each other, and both send a stack at each other, my archer stack most likely has the edge. If you try to use collateral damage to soften my stack up, my drill promotions soak most of it. Your stack takes lots of collateral damage. And as said, my stack has more units for the same amount of hammers, and I can build replacement units more quickly, so I outnumber you. So I have a potential advantage in my territory, and a potential advantage on the march. Your stack does have an advantage in having city raider promotions, so you need less siege units to take a city than I do, but I think a archery stack is better at keeping your units away from my cities and getting to yours than a mirror stack would be.

Looking back, I've probably oversold archery units a little, but I think you under rate them, so take the average. Bottom line is, I used to hate drill promotions and archery units too (especially crossbowman, hated 'em) then I forced myself to try them and learn to use them effectively. Now I build alot of crossbowmen (though as an alternative to longbowmen, which I rarely use now) and use drill almost exclusively on my archery units. It just gives better results for what archery units are meant to do than combat does.

Setting aside the issue of whether archery units are worthwhile or not, there is also the issue of whether agg or pro is better for gunpowder units (abbreviated riflemen from here on out, but I mean all gunpowder units.) In my experience, pro is actually better once you hit gunpowder. While I would agree a combat1 rifleman is better than a drill1 rifleman, a drill4 rifleman is better than a combat4 rifleman. Drill1 unlocks pinch just like combat1. A stack of drill riflemen will be just as effective (if not more so) than combat riflemen in taking cities, and better at holding them, because of the free city defense promotion. And units with high drill promotions tend to have higher health when they win than other promotion lines, making them better at resisting counter attack and they take less time to heal between battles. Once again, I used to ignore drill until I really forced myself to use one game. Then I saw the power that is drill4. And I now hardly ever give gunpowder units combat promotions. So the question is, do I want a free promotion in a chain that I find inferior on gunpowder units, or a free promotion on a chain I find superior? I like protective better than aggressive for the purposes of gunpowder units.

And just to be clear, I'm not saying protective is a top-tier trait, I don't think it is. I just think it is equivalent in power to aggressive, which I don't find that spectacular either.

[Fleme]

No more updates of the HRE? I thought you set out to prove that they're not crap after all.

[Yosho]

Seedle: I guess the biggest difference is that you can base a stratagy around AGG, and then get a lot of milage out of it. It's much harder to base a stratagy around PRO. With AGG, you can do a swords rush, or a all-out maceman assault, or one and then the other, and be in a strong position very early. Pro at it's best is just not nearly as useful as Agg at it's best.

[wodan11]

I'm not sure about that. It's a valid strategy to spam walls and castles and reap the power graph benefits. It's also valid to spam Xbows or Riflemen with FSII and FSIII, which isn't hard at all to get. Either or both of those strategies is very viable.

Wodan

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by Yosho
...
Let me put it this way. If you assume a unit with combat 1 for free is 20% more useful then a unit without combat 1 (which seems fair; it might even be more then that, IMHO), and you assume that about half of your hammers go into building those units, then agg is basically the equivelent something like a +10% bonus to your hammers, making it one of the better abilities. If you assume that a drill 1 and drill 2 archer is, I don't know, +30% better then a regular longbow (and that's being generous, IMHO), and you spend 10% of your pre-gunpoweder hammers making archers, then protective is the equivilent of +3% bonus to your hammers. And it's even worse then that, since most of your defensive units will never actually engage in combat, and therefore will never get the full advanantage from the extra experence.
...

Hmmm, but unlike offensive units, defensive ones can very well fullfill their purpose, even if or espeacially when, they never engage in combat.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11


Hmmm, but unlike offensive units, defensive ones can very well fullfill their purpose, even if or espeacially when, they never engage in combat.

Agreed. But a big part of the advantage from the free combat 1 thing is that it means if you add other experence to the unit, then you can get more levels of abilities. That's why it's better then, say, +2 experence points would be; the extra experence points become less useful as you get higher and higher levels, but the extra ability at no cost of experence points always just adds on another level, even if the next level would really cost you 10 exp or more.

However, to get the full benefit of that, you've got to have the unit engage in combat a LOT, and that's just not going to happen with defensive units for the most part. You can talk about how useful drill 4 is, but you're not that likely to ever GET that high on a longbow. On the other hand, your front line city-smasher combat units are likely to get quite experenced. And it works out, because you really want a few really experenced city-smashing macemen or whatever in your stack, it makes taking cities much cheaper. All in all, I think experence on attacking units is just more useful then experence on defending units.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Yosho
However, to get the full benefit of that, you've got to have the unit engage in combat a LOT, and that's just not going to happen with defensive units for the most part. You can talk about how useful drill 4 is, but you're not that likely to ever GET that high on a longbow. On the other hand, your front line city-smasher combat units are likely to get quite experenced. And it works out, because you really want a few really experenced city-smashing macemen or whatever in your stack, it makes taking cities much cheaper. All in all, I think experence on attacking units is just more useful then experence on defending units.

If you're using siege units, then the siege units are the ones with the CR promotions. The other units could have cake-baking promotions and they would still win. The fact that they have FS promotions allow them to win the combat with little to no health loss. That means they can immediately proceed to the next city to be assaulted.

In other words, I think "city-smashing macemen" are not only overrated, they aren't even needed. You need siege anyway. And, if you're using siege, you don't need city smashing macemen. FS xbows would be much more useful. Plus, the FS xbows are going to do MUCH better in your non-city-assault combats while CR macemen will be weak and ineffective.

Wodan

[snoopy369]

Cake-baking This is generally my strategy also (except in MP, where siege are too vulnerable to flanking). I bring mostly city defenders and FS units that will survive more readily ...

Entirely agree with wodan. Also, a lot of people seem to play on a level where they lose no cities... many people do NOT play this easy of a game. My last game I lost two cities to an AI assault, with an AI 2x my power; I beat it back and am now taking cities back. This is normal for me, and probably for anyone playing at a 'hard' difficulty level (ie, a level they sometimes or often lose at). Having city defenders that will actually beat some of the AI units means the AI spends more units taking those one or two cities, and loses more... very helpful later in the game