Noble to Prince - unbearable

[Boracks]

Spies can get caught. I tend to prefer open borders and wandering missionaries.

And do try the espionage system. It has its place in the scheme of things, like using a great spy to boost your points with someone who's ahead in tech and stealing 4 or 5 techs from them, or inciting city revolt just as your army rolls up to it so you don't spend time reducing the defenses. Or forcing a civ to change religion so he's no longer the buddy of the guy you just went to war with but likes you instead.

[brandonjm8]

Spies can get caught. I tend to prefer open borders and wandering missionaries.

And do try the espionage system. It has its place in the scheme of things, like using a great spy to boost your points with someone who's ahead in tech and stealing 4 or 5 techs from them, or inciting city revolt just as your army rolls up to it so you don't spend time reducing the defenses. Or forcing a civ to change religion so he's no longer the buddy of the guy you just went to war with but likes you instead.

i will, in due time.

alas, i won that game, only had to take three cities to vassalize him, just barely got enough for the domination win, score of 71,365 , i think thats my highest for bts.

[wodan11]

The Score algorithm is nonsense and misleading. Ignore it.

[brandonjm8]

The Score algorithm is nonsense and misleading. Ignore it.

i hear ya, wouldve been alot higher if i won 100 turns or so ago. im still used to civ2 for ps1, on average id have at least 70-80 cities and hit the unit/city limit every time, lol. ended this game with 53 cities, my most productive game ever as far as hammers almost half of my cities had around or greater than 100 hammers/turn, largest navy so far (didnt get to use it much , it kicked ass when i got to use em). all in all my best game yet as far as domination but ive won like this alot earlier but had an ally, did this game all on my own no allies just vassals.

[Theben]

My opinion on CG is that it's worthless, except at the very beginning. For units like archers you should either take combat or drill... and definitely drill if you are a protective civ. That way you can use these units offensively when the time comes- offensively in this case also includes the ability to strike out from a city under attack.

[Ming]

My opinion on CG is that it's worthless, except at the very beginning. For units like archers you should either take combat or drill... and definitely drill if you are a protective civ. That way you can use these units offensively when the time comes- offensively in this case also includes the ability to strike out from a city under attack.

I have to agree... the only time I have units with the CG promotion is if they get it for free from being protective. It's one of the most worthless promotions there is.

[Garth Vader]

I also agree, I get a unit attacked in a city maybe once every 5 games. The only reason I use it is to essentially mark a unit as destined for a city and eternal garrison duty.

[wodan11]

Well obviously CG is worth while only if you're using a strategy that depends upon or encourages your enemies to attack your cities or forts.

[trev]

My defensive units are primarily CG, generally 1 per city, maybe 2 in a border city prone to attack. Playing at emperor level I have found it impossible to match the AI on power, until maybe late in the game, so I rely on offensive units a lot. If a city gets taken, it gets taken, sometimes I ask for it, when an AI captures a city and moves many units into it, those units are very easily defeated by CR promoted units, so this is often the easily way to deal with enemy SOD's.
The simple fact is on higher levels the enemy is often twice your power, so just defending does not work, let them waste several units including cats etc destroying maybe 2 CG's, then use massed maces with CR3 sitting just outside the city to retake it, often over several turns, just so they can move entire SOD into city and have it destroyed. Once that initial SOD is destroyed, prepare a stack for offensive operations into their teritory, placing sufficient reserves in 1 city only, the one their much smaller replacement SOD's will advance to (AI's are so predictable). That way their offensive operations are taken care of and you can advance and take their cities one by one. Usually they will sit tight in their cities and counterattack minimally once they have suffered some losses and your attacking SOD's has the right mixture of defenders in it, ie 2 pikemen for mounted counterattack, crossbows/muskets etc for other assaults with terrain suitable defence promotions, mounted units to take care of some cats that move up to your stack etc. Offensive units will be mostly CR units, maybe some mounted with flanking for survival. The key always is to minimise losses of attacking units so promotions accumulate. Maces with CR3 and Combat2 are fairly easily achievable and used to break open the cities main defenders on 70% plus odds, waste some cats, flanking horses etc to get those odds if necessary.
Generally all units are committed to a war, if someone attacks on another front, make peace and move units to new war, as long as you have taken at least one city or destroyed their SOD's they will pay for peace, occassionally maybe a tech or undefendable captured city may have to be given to purchase peace. Grovelling is a part of survival at the higher levels. As the empire expands then maybe a few extra units will need to be left on a distant border, but early on, that is not the case.
It is simply not posssible to build an economy and an army that will do everything at emperor level on huge maps, the AI will outtech, will field a much bigger army, but it does not think and can be outplayed despite their higher GDP, and army size.

[Norselord]

Patient: It hurts when I do *this*
Doctor: Well, stop doing *that*
Patient: But i really only want to do *this*

This allegorical play was brought to you by Norselord.

The OP is clearly trolling.
Help can only be given to someone who wants to be helped.
The arc of this thread is ridiculous. I fail to understand the passive/aggresive help-seeking/boasting.

Maybe the whole idea of having a large stack of units that do nothing is like the old quote: "There is no difference between the man who can't read and the man who doesn't read."

[Calvin Vu]

There is no problem with building an army... but your "awesome" defense was massive overkill and still not the right kind of force... so you need to rethink just how much defense and what kind of troops are needed.

Talking about building an awesome defense (or not). I complained about the slow going after 1500AD forcing me to quit all Civ games after that point so someone suggested playing on a small map.

I tried that and I won the game on conquest before 1600BC. I had no defensive unit unless you count quechuas as defensive units. Almost all cities were defended by a single quechua while my SOD consisting of 2 axemen for defense and half a dozen quechuas for offense going around eliminating all the civs.

I lost one city to the barb since that city, just captured from the Viking, did not even have a single defender as I was short of troops for my SOD so I just left it empty and a barb spearman popped up nearby and took it.

Who needs defenders when there are nobody to defend against ? Also, when the AI civs do attack, they almost always bring a fairly big stack of siege weapons with them so if you can't strike out to kill them, or at least killing all the non-siege units to make their siege units pointless, you will be in big trouble so having a lot of defenders won't help.

The only case where a big stack of defensive units are needed is when you have no cultural border to protect the city (as in newly-captured cities). In that case, the city can be attacked pretty much out of nowhere, giving you no chances to strike them before they strike the city. I once lost a city full of riflemen to Alexander's crappy units since it got hit by dozens of siege units out of nowhere before the rest of his crappy units attacked.

[brandonjm8]

Talking about building an awesome defense (or not). I complained about the slow going after 1500AD forcing me to quit all Civ games after that point so someone suggested playing on a small map.

I tried that and I won the game on conquest before 1600BC. I had no defensive unit unless you count quechuas as defensive units. Almost all cities were defended by a single quechua while my SOD consisting of 2 axemen for defense and half a dozen quechuas for offense going around eliminating all the civs.

I lost one city to the barb since that city, just captured from the Viking, did not even have a single defender as I was short of troops for my SOD so I just left it empty and a barb spearman popped up nearby and took it.

Who needs defenders when there are nobody to defend against ? Also, when the AI civs do attack, they almost always bring a fairly big stack of siege weapons with them so if you can't strike out to kill them, or at least killing all the non-siege units to make their siege units pointless, you will be in big trouble so having a lot of defenders won't help.

The only case where a big stack of defensive units are needed is when you have no cultural border to protect the city (as in newly-captured cities). In that case, the city can be attacked pretty much out of nowhere, giving you no chances to strike them before they strike the city. I once lost a city full of riflemen to Alexander's crappy units since it got hit by dozens of siege units out of nowhere before the rest of his crappy units attacked.

play continents, your strategies will change, play with at least 6 continents too, you wont be able to do much til astronomy, so why not then build some D units early game then build your O SoD then get astronomy? D units serve many purposes, you just havent discovered them yet and im getting bored stating them, do what you guys want and i'll do what i want.

[Ming]

For somebody that claims that he hasn't even played many games of BTS, you seem pretty locked into your ways, even when most people who have played far more games think it's a waste

When you play continents, there is even less reason to build any defensive units, since until astronomy (unless your cont shares a cultural border with another cont) all you are defending against is a few barbs. When I play on those kind of worlds, I rarely need to build a defensive unit, since a few offensive units is all that's needed to handle the barbs. So the question is, why even build them if you won't need them. And even if you want them later, you will have to pay to upgrade them. A pretty expensive proposition...

[Calvin Vu]

It's the same thing. If I rule the whole continent then I don't need any defense until the other civs get to Astronomy. And if I spend the hammers on infrastructures rather than on a big defense against nothing , then I will be at least half a dozen techs ahead of them by then. Big defense should only be created out of necessity rather than as a show of force. You can either have a big show of force or a great economy, take your choice but you cannot have both under the same time constraint and same resources.

[brandonjm8]

i tend to build extra D units for future uses once ive built all available infrastructure, note that my "D" units are given promos that can be used for offense too like drill and shock ect, as ive already stated having D units and enough of them (not alot but enough) will become very useful when say conquering lands so you can have a couple for defense while your O SoD continues its advancement, you may say im not open to your ideas but the same holds true of you too, ive listed many uses for "D" units yet you've failed to recognize the uses and possibilities of having an adequate defense while having an offense, oh well, as far as you playing higher levels that means nothing, level of difficulty only effects how quick the AI discover techs and build stuff not actual planning on their part, ive had difficult games on noble for the simple fact they used very good promos and good placement, to be honest my noble games averaged a higher difficulty or took me longer to win then prince so far, yeah ive only played 3 prince games for bts but many many more for vanilla, like ive already said just because maybe some of your "D" units never see combat doesnt mean they were wasted, i quote "WHAT IF", choices and options are very nice to have and like they say "its better to have a gun and not use it then to need it and not have it."