Wonder Rankings (BTS)

[brandonjm8]

The only difference between Cossacks and cavalry is that Cossacks get a 50% bonus against mounted units. Both have retreat percentages, and both can flank seige units up to cannons.

Cossacks and cavalry are countered by rifleman and other cavalry.

at that stage of the game before infantry, if they send alot or have alot of riflemen just send alot of granadiers(?) to kill the riflemen. i didnt look the actual bonus up for cossacks but i was close , even with them at 15 (cossacks) instead of the ole 18, with proper promotions and before infantry they are very powerful

[trev]

Send a lot of grenadiers is not possible with me, I never learn military science until after Assembly Line, as I want the option of building maces with CR until then and upgrading to rifles, a real killer of city defenders. the 21XP I give them in my capital with Stalin is CR3 C2, so guaranteed to kill anything in cities, and the cossacks do the open ground work. Grenadiers cannot attack stacks effectively anyway, because they will lose to mounted units without attacking the rifles where they have the bonus.

[trev]

I played another session of the game, unfortunately I quit after losing maybe 15 cities. Ragner contrary to normal AI practice beelined Assembly line before techs like Astronomy and Steel, so he was just starting to upgrade to Infantry as I began my assault. I took 4 cities off him as well as 1 from Alexander and razed 1 from darius and 1 from alexander.
Then his units moved from the far side of the continent to face me so after losing 1 city back to him, I gave him 1 more plus Astronomy for peace so i could research Assembly line myself and rebuild my armies.
During this interval i also built Ironworks in my Beauracratic capital, as well as having a 5 turn revolution for some badly needed civic changes, ie Emancipation (getting 4 unhappy faces for that) as well as Free Religion and Free market instead of the starting civics, so I could force my 21xp units out much quicker, quicker than 1 every 2nd turn at marathon speed. I had been waiting for a GP generated goldenage, but another 40 turns were needed for that at least, could not wait that long for emancipation.
But he redeclared war within 2 turns of me teching Assembly Line, before I could get enough infantry to rebuff the assault. A SOD of 90 units headed my way including 50 cavalry and over 20 infantryplus cannons and other units. Knowing AI's usually will not assault cities until the defences are bombarded I took on his stack with all my cannons and then my cossacks, this killed off about 10 infantry plus all siege units through flanking. At this point Ragner surprised me and attacked and took the cities despite a full castle defence (60% culture) and then before units healed moved on to next city and next and next etc. He would leave several weak defenders only in the cities so I could recapture easily, but he just marched on taking cities quicker than my armies could defend or recapture. Eventually his massive SOD was decimated but not before it had conquered about 10 cites. At this point I hoped that maybe I could come back but, now his vassals moved onto me with stacks of about 20 each (3 of them) and Ragner himself kept rocking up with more stacks of 10 - 15 units, so I kept losing more cities than I could recapture or defend. The vassals took cities slowly but surely through bombarding defences, but Ragner just kept marching quickly with his stacks taking cities quickly.
As it became obvious I could not win I quit. But I have never known AI's before just to march through and take cities constantly without bombarding defences first, normally you can have some turns to move counterattacking units in place and slowly whittle his SOD down before too many cities are lost. Not this time.

[brandonjm8]

that sux better luck next time, can i say again "marathon mode is excellent" lol. i also believe no tech trading/brokering makes the game better but just my pov.

[Ming]

As it became obvious I could not win I quit. But I have never known AI's before just to march through and take cities constantly without bombarding defences first, normally you can have some turns to move counterattacking units in place and slowly whittle his SOD down before too many cities are lost. Not this time.

Yeah... that is weird. Even at unstopable odds, the AI is most likely to waste the time to bombard defences, even when the city has crap in it. I wonder what triggered this type of attack from the AI

[brandonjm8]

maybe ragnar figured out he had just gotten infantry and didnt want to give him the time to modernize so used the blitzkrieg technique, that would make sense.

[rah]

It's because you killed all his siege units. At least that's what I can tell reading your post.