Warlord Game Strategy Discussion

[Ming]

Continued from this thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?t=189437

The topic is certainly worth its own thread, and doesn't really belong in the "other" thread

My second game is moving along well... But I started on the edge of the board, and even being at war with everybody, I didn't get as many great generals early. I guess it's better to be right in the middle for one of these games.

[self biased]

kindly explain the theory; i find it intriguing.

[Garth Vader]

So the idea is to fight defensively for a long time racking up experience and GG's?

I always go for one GG healer and one GG attacker in a game, but have never got them over 100-120 XP's. Is that cause I usually just fight offensive wars?

What map size number of civs are you using?

[Ming]

Much of it was explained (with answers to some of your questions) in the thread I linked to in the OP.
I'm not the expert so I will let the real pros explain and answer. I've just started trying it and it is different and fun.

[rah]

All my early generals were Melee. (which I'll balance better the second time) and I had two neighbors pounding on me and after it started I was always at war with one of them. (I occasionally made peace with one when I was close to being overwhelmed and thought a 10 turn respite would help) I completed a domination win right after I got gunships but before mech infantry so I could have had more experience points (due to blitz)
My top melee GG had 145 experience points and the average was about 135. For my mounted my high was about 100 but the average was much lower.

I went on the offense when Monty started trailing off and not providing me many points. Since I was pinned in and only had 5 cities I used him to expand my base. I repeated as each opponent slacked off attacking me. This offered different neighbors to piss off. I guess I ran out of neighbor too fast.

[wodan11]

I'm too tired to go cut&paste the tips.

But yeah the idea is build the great wall, fight on your terrain, piss off the AIs so they "bring it", never declare peace (well, maybe if they offer 3-4 techs or something), even go so far as to spread your non-state religion to them so they adopt it and are more likely to DOW you.

And I wouldn't say "fight defensively" as fight on your terrain.

There's nothing precluding going on an offensive war, and certainly if you need territory go for it. But that's not the idea.

If going for Domination or conquest I would build up Warlord units and then when I had 15-25 of them go on a rampage.

Otherwise, this strategy really works well with a culture or space victory.

Leaders: Imperialistic, charismatic, industrious (to help get the great wall, no other reason unless you want to do a wonder/culture game or something equally wacky). Otherwise, I'd pick traits for whatever game you want. FIN for CE, PHI for SE, etc.

The main reason to play this strat is because it's damn fun.

But otherwise, I think this strat is very viable and pretty strong.

One thing to keep in mind is that this strat isn't just about making a hugely powerful but very small (no maint) army. Think of the AIs... if they are at war all game, they send you their SOD early, and then they dribble units against you all game. And, an AI at war is disinclined to DOW another AI, which means they won't be vassalizing other AIs and won't get Domination. And, an AI at war spends quite a bit of their GDP on making units. Which means they aren't making Libraries and Universities and such.

We should really write an apolyton university article about this, I suppose.

[wodan11]

One of the last things under discussion was promos. Definitely flanking tactics etc are good ideas. They actually lose effectiveness the higher your win chance, but since the Warlord units are so critical and you want to preserve them alive, flanking and tactics are good no matter how little it helps.

Leadership is good of course but I wouldn't necessarily get it first out of the box. Get your unit up to > 95% win chance, and then get it.

I would get strength multipliers before drill. Drill helps if you get lucky with the first "die roll", and drill helps you survive with less damage so you can fight again faster. But Combat etc are probably better choices to get first.

[Brael]

Well, if you run out of neighbors, why not try a variation on the idea of always running a rotating war against one neighbor when you have say... 3. The normal idea of the strategy is to constantly rotate between your targets so that none have the time to build up and become a threat. If you and three neighbors are "equal" for example, you're all 100%, but if you fight each in turn and take 15% from them, they're 85% while you're 160%, essentially making them an easy target to finish off.

Instead of finishing them off though, beat them down to say 85%, 65%, or whatever else, and then let them live. Killing a tank gives just as much exp as killing a swordsman (outside of low success chances against the tank), but building your GG's against the swordsmen are easier.

The idea being, rather than expanding your territory, let them live as a GG farm. As time goes on it would be easier and easier to get a few promotions off of them as tech gaps become wider.

Oh, on the promotion front, I would make sure any CR3 once you promote to gunpowder has guerilla 3. Unlike forests, hills don't disappear so it's always useful for defensive fighting, on top of that the attack bonus is more than the defense bonus of hills, meaning you can look at any unit on a hill as being weaker than on flat land, and the withdrawl chance is better than tactics. It's not a good promotion for regular units, but I think it's a key one to have on any unit with a significant investment for the defense granted from the first two levels and then offense/survival granted from the third.

[Ming]

Instead of finishing them off though, beat them down to say 85%, 65%, or whatever else, and then let them live. Killing a tank gives just as much exp as killing a swordsman (outside of low success chances against the tank), but building your GG's against the swordsmen are easier.

I like the "blow them back to the stone age and keep them there" strategy. Great thought. I'll have to try that in my next game. I just finished my second off. Since I was slow getting early GG's, I probably let the game go to long before going on the offensive. As it was, I didn't have more than 18 CG's, and I had far more in my first game, and much earlier. But in the second game, I did make it to mech infantry

[rah]

The only problem with 'BLOW THEM BACK TO THE STONEAGE' is I usually cherry pick their best one or two cities to join my empire and I hate that "want to rejoin the motherland" negative happiness modifier. And we all know the only way to eliminate that one.
And if you do blow them back, they're not going to be able to send as many units at you for experience. SO, I figure once they run out of steam, take them out and start working on the fresh neighbors on their other border.

[Brael]

That's why I'm thinking you can rotate between 2-3 civs. When one runs out of units fight another one.

[rah]

If you're in the middle of the board, that could be dangerous. When I rotate between two, it's not always my decision. After 10 turns they want to come back for more while I'm still fighting the other front. 3 civs gets harder to handle at the same time. It's nice to have one border you don't have to worry about. Now if it's the sea, maybe.
But it depends on the map so 3 might work under certain circumstances. Something to consider.

[Norselord]

I have never used a Great General for anything else besides creating an academy or settling as an instructor...

Anyone want to link me some tips on how to use my GGs better? It is an obvious shortcoming in my game.

[rah]

We're actually not making any judgement on which is better in this thread.
We're just fooling around with a strat to generate as many as possible as your main army.
I think in the long run it's a personal opinion or based on the settings. If you have a high production city and lots of great generals as instructors you know the high quality units you can produce. Then may not be quite as good as a gg but you'll have more of them.

I'd create a few GG and play with them like we're doing here and you can form your own opinion after what you think is best. My personal opinion is after a few GG use the rest as instructors but this strat we're playing with has been a lot of fun.

[wodan11]

We're actually not making any judgement on which is better in this thread.

Actually that's pretty amazing when you think about it.