How to handle the greek?

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Originally posted by Trip
Catapults are always your friend. Be sure to repay their kindness by giving them some action.

I just put a catapult to use for the first time in my current game. An American swordsman was attacking Washington, which I had just "liberated," over some hills. I had captured an American catapult and used it against the swordsman. It actually came in handy, imagine that.

[bongo]

Catapults are best used against units in the open, they can even be real effective. I'd say they are worth the money. But they are close to useless against cities, unless you bring them in large numbers.

[inca911]

How do I handle the geeks? Well, just take away their calculators. Oh wait, the Greeks!?! The ones with Hoplites? Well, I prefer Horses (and lots of them) followed by Swordsmen. Horses are such a good unit, it's fairly amazing what you can accomplish with them....

[Rhothaerill]

Originally posted by inca911
How do I handle the geeks? Well, just take away their calculators. Oh wait, the Greeks!?! The ones with Hoplites? Well, I prefer Horses (and lots of them) followed by Swordsmen. Horses are such a good unit, it's fairly amazing what you can accomplish with them....

...If you have a lot to throw away. Or maybe that's just me. I have exceptionally bad luck with horseman units in almost all my games. Throw 'em against a spearman...dead horseman. Throw 'em against a warrior...dead horseman. I still build a bunch of them though, because it's great to upgrade them to knights and take over the world.

As for catapults, I find myself not using bombard techniques much until cannons become available. I'm too busy trying to build attack and defense oriented units until that time to worry about too many catapults. They're great for upgrading to cannons if I have a few laying around though.

[nbarclay]

Normally, I much prefer not to fight the Greeks until I have at least knights and preferably cavalry. But in one of the AU games, I was stuck with Greece on an island with nowhere near enough room for two civs. My approach to taking them on was to build a lot of veteran warriors, connect iron and upgrade to swordsmen, and charge. By overwhelming them with numbers quickly (warriors are half as expensive as hoplites in terms of shields) and using vets to help offset their high defense value, I was able to take enough cities quickly enough that their golden age wasn't much of a factor.

From what I can figure, there are two problems with trying to use cats in an early offensive against the Greeks. First, a cat is worth two warriors in terms of production, which, with enough gold, could become two swordsmen. And second, once the Greeks' GA is triggered, the clock is ticking. If you wait for a turn where your cats do relatively well to attack, you may find yourself giving the Greeks some extra GA-powered time to build more hoplites. I'm skeptical about the chances that cats would provide enough advantage to make up for those factors, but I'll admit to not having much experience with cats.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

It's always nice to have Carthage around to kick the Greeks. And vice versa.

[bongo]

nbarclay , make some catapults anyway. Their biggest advantage is that they will lower your losses by taking away some hp from attacking units in the open. Forget using them against cities with hoplites unless you have 3-4 catapults for each defender.

Seems like the best way of taking out the greeks is to ovewhelm them and finish them off so fast that their GA don't matter. Or the slow approach, get an army and use it as a nutcracker vs his cities. Use your other troops vs units in the open and to cut off reinforcements.

[ktaek]

Against a stronger defender i don't see much alternative to just massing much larger #s of your best mobile unit, horsemen im guessing.

Throwing swordsmen into hoplites/NM defending cities never worked for me past Monarch.

My experience with using Hwachas and even those at bomb 12 seemed rather inefficient to me vs cities (although amazing out in the open). I can't imagine Catapults at bomb 6 performing well at all.

[nbarclay]

Ktaek, were you trying to compete with the Greeks/Carthaginians in production, or did you take advantage of the cost differential between 10-shield warriors and 20/30-shield hoplites/numidians to shift the production advantage in your favor (albeit at a price in gold)? Also, were your swords veteran? I've taken on Greece successfully with swords mostly upgraded from warriors on Emperor the one time I tried it, but one isn't exactly a statistically significant sample size.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Re: How to handle the greek?

My bad, when I read the thread title I thought you were asking advice on how to deal with MarkG...............

[bongo]

Better deal with him OUTSIDE this forum I guess. Bring some friends and meet him in a dark alley