Chariots are weak?

[Krill]

I dont know if you know this, but there is a general rule in this forum. Don't challenge me, or I win.

Built:

1. 11 axemen
2. 25 Horse Archers
3. 13 chariots
4. 14 catapults (lost 8...)
5. 6 warriors (4 attacking Hammy, 1 died, 1 garrisoned the city, 2+1 later choked Hatsheput, 1 garrisoning capital)
6. 3 settlers
7. built 6 workers (captured 10)

Hammy dead t25, Hatsheput dead c. t80, Vicky dead ct100, Gilgamesh dead t108, then I was just going to Hit mansa on both sides at once with 2 stacks, then finish Saladin. Game should be finished by t140, depending on gold.

Biggest problem with this map was that it was circular, so I ended up going one way at first, then having to reverse to get everyone dead before that arbitrary finish date. It would have been easier to just keep on going around anticlockwise after Hatsheput was dead and finishing back at home. tbh I was quite annoyed to have horses, as I wanted to demonstrate an axe rush, but I changed strategy, oracled construction then slaved myself retarded to get out axes and cats and some chariots (the chariots were from teh western half of the empire to catch up with the axes and cats from the homeland to kill Vicky). Used the gold gained from killing hatsheput to finish HBR, then slaved those out as hard as I could. The fact that my empire is crap doesn't really matter because I should have a conquest win before 1000AD easy.

[wodan11]

Well then Krill show us that using the same settings there is a non unique unit that is not a chariot and can exterminate 4 civs by 25 AD.

No offense but that's plain silly. I'll bet Krill could do that with ANY unit, even warriors. He's a master at MP, and MP is all about rushes.

[EDIT: I said that before I saw his reply.]

[Krill]

I'm not a master. I used to be better than most, but I've never been someone who a team could rely upon for a kill (except in future where I could kill an entire team by myself until Blake decided to **** up Modern and future eras). I stopped playing CIV online years ago, there just aren't enough people IMO. I went over to WiC and TF2 for my MP goodness 18 months ago, but since then I've stopped playing alot of games tbh.

[ben04]

I needed 116 turns to kill 4 civs, you needed 108. That's better but not by far. With war chariots it should be doable even earlier.

You have quiet a number of horse archers there. Each of them costs 50 hammers. That makes a total of 25 * 50 = 1250 hammers. Chariots are at 30 hammers so for the same amount of hammers you would have gotten 41 chariots. I'm not sure which is better 25 horse archers or 41 chariots. I suppose the number of enemy spearmen would make the difference and favor the horse archers.

I rarely play MP games.

[ben04]

As the war is over (at least for now) my people are happy again and all angry faces are gone. For the next war though I'll need to prepare for that. This means either get Calendar for the additional happy resources or crank out archers and get Monarchy.

As I'm going to produce war elephants and catapults. This means I have no time for archers so I choose to get Calendar right after Constructions.

I send my great general to sleep. I promote 2 scout chariots and send them fog busting. The remaining chariots will take the following city after they have healed.



With Calendar and enough workers to clear the jungle that is going to be a neat city. No need to rush though as Calendar is still some time away.

Also an interesting thing to note: I have a total income of 39 gold per turn but produce 42 beakers per turn. This means that I'm teching faster by building beakers than by having the science slider at 100%.

50AD: Currency is mine and I'm already at +5 gold per turn. Just getting my troops back into my territory and that additional purely national trade route produces 19 gold per turn.

Now lets see what I can trade for it. Choosing one of the religious camps would also be a good idea. This way I can open the borders with one. It will give me foering trade routes, allow me to scout him out and maybe he'll join me against the other one.

Ramses is willing to trade Polytheism and 110 gold for it. Now what should I do with Polytheism? The money is nice though. Hannibal is missing both Mathematics and Alphabet so I can't trade Currency as those are the prerequests. I can't trade Alphabet to him because tech brokering is deactivated. He is willing to trade a couple of techs though if he could. I trade Currency for Polytheism just to make sure that I'll be the one to trade Currency to Hannibal later in the game. Ramses can't trade what he hasn't discovered himself.

Noteable techs they have that I don't are: Mathematics (only Ramses), Masonry (I need that for Constructions) and Code of Law.

When it comes to commerce production, a quick look at graphs shows me that I'm second. Ramses is before me and Hannibal is even below me. Ramses has 3 cities and Hannibal 4. This means Ramses has to die first and I make Hannibal my buddy. I convert to Islam. Ramses is Buddhist.

75AD: Those Hannibal trade routes provided me with exactly 1 additional gold per turn. The gem city is founded. It starts building a market. Workers are ready to hook up those gems and to chop finish the market. Because of the increased city maintenance I now get exactly +0 gold per turn.

100AD: I discovered a nice post Calendar city site. I have no dye anywhere else.



150AD: A wedding event makes me and Hannibal even better pals.

He discovered Mathematics so now I can trade Currency. I get Priesthood, Mathematics, Sailing and 60 gold. He now only has 2 techs that I don't have: Masonry and Code of Law. Ramses is willing to trade Monarchy but I have nothing to trade.

So where to go to from now? First Calendar (12 turns) and then Masonry + Constructions (13 turns) or the other way round? I decide to go for Calendar first. Perhaps someone is willing to trade Masonry for it.

I discover silver and fur in the southern wasteland of my empire.



125AD: I put my science slider to 10%. I have now 51 beakers per turn.

275AD: Amsterdam finishes its Market and begins with a settler. I want to found that city near the dye. The barb city I showed earlier is conquered by a single chariot.

375AD: Calendar has been discovered. Ramses doesn't want to trade anything except a bit of gold for it. Hannibal gives me either Monarchy or Code of Law. He considers Masonry to be still too new to be traded. I take Code of Law. That's however no problem as I can research it within one turn.

I start to build a courthouse in the former Indian cities.

425AD: Hannibal converts to Ramses' religion Buddhism. This could become a 2 front war.

I can't swap to Buddhism because I don't have it in my empire. I can't open borders with Ramses and let him spread it because I'm his worst enemy.

I'm more worried about Hannibal than Ramses though as he has the better army. It is nearly completely composed out of axe- and swordmen.

560AD: Constructions has been discovered. Hannibal and Ramses already have this tech.

I'm researching Monarchy now to get Feudalism. The vassalage civic is the only thing on the tech tree that isn't far away and seems remotely useful in my situation.

Rom and Karakorum start building war elephants. Curzo builds catapults.

I produce a war elephants every 2 turn. That could work. Catapults are produced at a rate of 1 per 5 turns. That is not enough! Curzo needs a few additional mines and there is that barb city I recently conquered. It can help building catapults. The Indian cities can also help once they have finished their courthouse.

The question: Where should I settle my remaining general? If I settle in Karakorum I get war elephants with 3 free promotion (barracks:3EXP + ger:4EXP + 2* general:2EXP = 11EXP) or in Curzo and get catapults with 2 free promotions (barracks:3EXP + general:2EXP = 5 EXP)?

I choose better war elephants as they will probably survive longer. Also Flanking I+II + Combat I looks like an ideal combination to take out fortified archers.

I'm also unsure if I should build some Keshiks. My forces are slow without them and can't finish of troops running away. They are however useless when it comes to city taking. I decide that Karakorum will swap between Keshiks and war elephants after each build.

My target army composition:
1 part Keshiks
3 parts war elephants
2 parts catapults

The main thing that bugs me is that most of my troops have only a single movement point. They need about 13 turns to get to the front!

620AD: Ramses changes his religion to Confucianism. I have nearly finished scouting out Hannibal. His army is not big enough to be a real thread to me.

660AD: I'm no longer Hannibal's worst enemy. He is willing to sell Monarchy for 250 gold (half of my treasury). A good offer but I don't need Monarchy right now so I'll accept maybe later.

740AD: Ramses is a mystery to me. He has 2 cows that he doesn't want to trade and I have 2 cows. He is willing to pay me 2 gold per turn for one of my cows. Well I accept but it's a stupid move from him.

760AD: My first troops arrive at the front. I suppose I'm ready to go to war by 900AD or so.

800AD: Darn Ramses discovered Feudalism. Maybe Hannibal will have to leave us first after all.

820AD: Ramses has intruded into my empire with a settler by bypassing Poverty Point by the north. I've just made up my mind on who to attack first!

840AD: I set the science slider to 20%. I'm generating 26 beakers a turn.

860AD: I'm not quiet ready yet to attack but I need to stop that settler invasion. War!



940AD: Monarchy is discovered. I'm scouting out Ramses' land with one of my Keshiks. His troops are only of small number but good quality. I also discover that he has war elephants. This is getting interesting. I send out a chariot to pillage the ivory camp. It's near the border with Hannibal.

960AD: My Keshik scout is murdered by a war elephant. Rest in peace. Your death will be avenged!

around 1000AD: The chariot pillages the camp but is immediately slaughtered by the same war elephant on the next turn. I send some more chariots because Ramses will likely rebuild that camp.

I'm ready to assault the first city.



To my surprise I find 5 EXP catapults in my stack. After further investigating, I discover that they come from Cahokia and that I inhereted a settled great general from the Indians. Thanks Sitting Bull! I promot the catapult with Barrage I + II and send him in. The top stack longbow is not even hurt (collateral damage doesn't apply to him). Every other unit is wounded though.

I decide to try out my thin can opener tactic developped at the siege of Poverty Point. This time only with war elephants. I promote one war elephant with Flanking I+II + Combat I. 25% chance of winning. 25% chance of retreat. He retreats but the longbow is at half of his health points.

The next war elephant is promoted with Combat I + II + III to take out the other longbow.

A previously Combat I + II promoted war elephant finishes of the first longbow.

The spearman (which moved into the city this turn) is now on top. I promote the remaining war elephant with Combat I and Shock. The spearman has no chance.

As all war elephants at the gates have attacked, the 2 war chariots will live another turn.

Should I raze that city? Considering the location I should but it is a Buddhist city. It's Hannibal's religion that I can't convert to at the moment. Keeping the city would allow me to buddy up with Hannibal again. Maybe I could even get him to declare war on his worst enemy! Ramses has many more Buddhist cities.

[Krill]

Using the number of hammers is a bad measurement. The majority of those were slaved out for 2 pop and the overflow applied to the next HA, to reduce the time to get the army together, something that isn't doable with chariots. The extra chariots also cost more money, which isn't affordable if you are going for an early conquest victory (I'm at -70 to -80 at 0% science and living off the pillaged improvments and captured gold).

You lost 11 flanking chariots, 330 hammers, taking 1 city. Can you really afford that when you are trying to wipe out the entire world? Thought not.

A chariot rush in teh ADs will run in to big problems with the last AI, due to more culture (you didn;t even get catapults to bombard with). and excess spears running around, and god forbid one of the AIs reaches fued before you kill them and they upgrade all of the archers for a pittence. At least if you have catapults you can collateral and bombard to take away most of the advantage.

Really, there is more than one way to win a game, and chariot rushing will only, at most, give you the space and time to win a game later on, it isn't a method of winning the game.

Your point was, though, that the chariot isn't underpowered. I never actually disagreed with your point, just with your methodology. The chariot serves it's purpose as a cheap unit in a large stack to serve as mop up, mainly in an early axe/catapult stack, and earlier in the game, as a strong scout, and defense against axes. Your methodology is bad, and the way that you used chariots was worse; killing 4 AI's that early only to expand before you finish off the rest is stupid. You don;t need that amount of space, because you can't settle it all. You would have been better off taking out 1, maybe 2 AIs, then growing carefully and preparing for an early medieaval conquest as shown above, because it would have gotton you the tools you need to finish the game sooner (you think 8 turns is quicker? I'll finish the game sometime this week, shouldn't take long, before t140, whereas you'll be stuck trying to tech with that far flung empire trying to get construction and HBR while the AIs are teching to fued).

[Krill]

T131 conquest victory (killed Saladin on t130).

Pretty easy, tbh. Only used a slow mover stack with cats on a couple of cities, mainly capitals (Mecca, Timbuktu, London, Thebes, Kish, and another small gilgamesh city because it was adjacent to the path for his capital, but chariots and HA's killed most of the units in that one), the rest were pure HA rushes with a few chariots as back up.

Oh, and if you think I was reloading to get better combat results, you should know I live in college, so pranksters are always going into my room and laying traps. This time one of them started deleting my units and workers...bastard.

End of the game unit counts:

• Axes, 11, 7 current,
• Spear, 1, 1
• Chariots, 13, 5
• HA, 64, 40
• Cats, 23, 13

Which is a grand total of 5160 hammers in military units, with 3080 hammers remaining. Could be better.

[ben04]

You lost 11 flanking chariots, 330 hammers, taking 1 city.

I lost 7 flanking and 1 combat chariot. This makes 240 hammers meaning a bit less than 5 catapults. Against 5 highly promoted and fortified archers you'll have to sacrifice at least 2 catapults and loose one soldier to weaken the top of the stack and that's if you are lucky.

Further you need to have enough soldiers at the gates to take the city the same turn you attack. They wont die but they need to be there as archers heal like mad and are a lot harder to kill the next round.

[wodan11]

I'm not sure which is better 25 horse archers or 41 chariots.

Well that's 50% of your unit maintenance costs (25% of your total costs).

[Krill]

I lost 7 flanking and 1 combat chariot. This makes 240 hammers meaning a bit less than 5 catapults. Against 5 highly promoted and fortified archers you'll have to sacrifice at least 2 catapults and loose one soldier to weaken the top of the stack and that's if you are lucky.

Further you need to have enough soldiers at the gates to take the city the same turn you attack. They wont die but they need to be there as archers heal like mad and are a lot harder to kill the next round.

The most units that were in a city, in my game, were 3 archers and 2 warriors, after Hatsheput was choked for 50 turns. You just aptly demonstrated one of the reasons why chariots aren't teh uber unit: you had to waste 240 hammers taking out 5 archers, whereas bombarding them with catapults first would have saved you hammers, and you can still use the catapults afterwards because you didn't suicide them against 50% defense.

The best time to be using chariots is when there are only 2 units in a city, because the collateral damage of the catapults is wasted on just 1 unit, so chariots are a cheaper alternative (flanking 2 HAs are quite good as well). When there are 5 units in the city, bombarding with the cats first and then suiciding 2 cats will mean that a healthy HA, sword or CR axe will have odds on the strongest defender, and other units can mop up the rest (I was routinely using slightly damaged units that I didn't want to heal because they would slow down the completion date of the game).

End of the day, I finished way before you did, and without using chariots exclusively to rush, so that should show you that using chariots exclusively isn't the best strategy you can come up with.

[Krill]

dp...

[Blaupanzer]

Krill felt his message should have twice the force since he is right an ben is not. However, ben was responding to the rather steady noise on this forum that chariots are not worth much. Many commenters said they only build 2 or 3, or only use them if the metals are far away. He demonstrated that chariots could take out civs throughout the BC period. He did not say or even imply that his strategy was a good one. The player needs a pretty solid economic strategy to handle 5 disparate cities and an army full of now obsolete weapons. However, Krill, ben didn't say he recommended this strategy, only that it could be made to work for early conquest.

[Blaupanzer]

[QUOTE=Krill;5547783]I dont know if you know this, but there is a general rule in this forum. Don't challenge me, or I win. QUOTE]

Been around for quite awhile on this forum, even longer if you count lurking, and I confess I have never heard this rule.

Once you calmed down you sort of reported that you won very early. Now one of my questions is did you have a strategy to cover your rear while your army was on the road? What research order did you use and why? Did you keep all the cities you conquered or did you burn a few? How did you determine proper garrisons? Did the barbs become a problem? In a raging barbs scenario, the worst thing that can happen is for every capitol not dead to wall up and not expand. This situation would look very similar, since few second cities would dodge your onslaught.

[rah]

He's not always right, but *sigh* Yes it is a rule. He is a subject expert.

[Krill]

I dont know if you know this, but there is a general rule in this forum. Don't challenge me, or I win.

Been around for quite awhile on this forum, even longer if you count lurking, and I confess I have never heard this rule.

Once you calmed down you sort of reported that you won very early. Now one of my questions is did you have a strategy to cover your rear while your army was on the road? What research order did you use and why? Did you keep all the cities you conquered or did you burn a few? How did you determine proper garrisons? Did the barbs become a problem? In a raging barbs scenario, the worst thing that can happen is for every capitol not dead to wall up and not expand. This situation would look very similar, since few second cities would dodge your onslaught.

Covering my rear: Yeah, I'm slaving uints out everywhere, so if anyone wanted to invade, they'd run into a large stack of HA whenever they did it, because I was slaving so hard. It wouldn't be quite so easy on an Immortal level game, but then again, I doubt you would be going for an early conquest win on those levels anyway.

Research order was (BW) while build warriors (4 until size 2) then (worker techs), then (religion techs) to get oracle in time for (maths+masonary) to grab (construction) then get archery and HBR, fiunded using gold from conquests.

on Prince, proper garrison is 1 archer, or 1 chariot, or 1 warrior in capital, the AI isn't going to hit you before t65, which is when I started to start building my army proper. Use 2 charitos to hunt down barbs. Leave barb cities, they aren;t important, unless they are where you want to settle a city closeby.

cities, I use 1 captured capital, and settled 3 cities, 1 for 2 food resources, 1 for crabs + capitals corn (capital was OK running a food deficit for a bit, then using the corn+cottages for a few turns to regeneragte the food bar, while I slaved the other city 6>4>2 and then regrew with the corn), and 1 other city for furs, gold and corn, copper and on wine (needed hapiness for slaving so hard, and copper for axes). I razed every city I captured apart from Thebes (3 food resources) Babylon (plains cow and corn) London (mistake, should have razed) and Gilga capital (gems, + 7 forests + few slaves = 2 more dead AI cities from HAs or a few more expendable catapults). Everything else was razed.

Babrs, I think I killed 1 barb warrior, 2 barb city sprang up which I ignored (it tied up AI troops, and I don;t need to kill it to win).

Raging barbs, just sentry the map, redirect your HAs to kill them, not a big deal IMO. The AIs will turtle, in which case you really want catapults, and HA's are less important except for killing peripheral cities (kinda like I did here, but even more so).