What's the worst basic land unit?

[Arrian]

No, unless I get a leader at the right time... then I will rush it. Any wonders (besides the colossus) are rushed with leaders or captured until the middle ages.

I gain tech parity by beating it out of the AI's. I sacrifice everything else in order to build a nealry unstoppable army. That army then knocks opponent #1 down to 1 city, at which point I make peace and take as much tech as I can. Repeat, repeat... and then wipe them all out. This works best on 3-5 civ continents (2-4 AI enemies). I bogged down a bit last night on a 7-civ continent, though I'm doing quite well.

-Arrian

[King of Rasslin]

The AIs have a tendency to join together when you are the aggressor. So, you have to take on 2-4 civs at once? I wouldn't try that. What difficulty do you play? I think the AIs work together too well to defeat unless you are with 1 or 2 on an island. 3+ AIs is too much for any army unless you are much, much bigger than all of the others.

[Harovan]

I almost never build the Great Library. And I set my science to 20% at the start, and 10% (or 0%+scientist) later. Nevertheless, I keep up in tech in the ancient age. 4 ways to achieve this:

- Beat techs out of the AI with wars. Best method.
- Buy techs, or better: be a tech broker. Explore, make contact, buy techs and sell it to civs that haven't made contect yet, or exchange it for a tech this civ has already.
- Be expansionist and get techs from huts.
- Research the "southern line", meaning the techs "below" in the tech tree. The AI usually starts to research from the upper half of the tech tree. One "southern" tech you discover is usually worth 2 or 3 other techs, or make them at least cheaper.

Mostly, I use a combined approach.

[Arrian]

Rass,

I play on Monarch. In my experience, the AI's usually do not band together. Sometimes they do, but mostly I pick them off one at a time. Having a large army makes the AI scared of you, remember.

I prefer 3-4 AIs to kill, because that means 3-4 of my own luxuries, a bunch of land, and lots of opportunities to generate great leaders.

Let me put it this way: Great Library = 400 shields. 400 shields = 20 chariots (well, not exactly, since there is some shield wasteage if you have a city which produces > 5 and < 10 shields) 20 chariots + 400 gold = 20 horsemen. 20 horsemen + a few swords as backup = several dead AIs and a couple of leaders (each worth 400 shields), if playing a militaristic civ. Sometimes you get really bad luck, but normally you can count on 2 leaders. That will at least get you a forbidden palace and the Sistine.

-Arrian

[alexman]

Another way to get tech, while you're building your chariots, is to renegotiate peace. Each AI will gladly pay a tech for your patience, provided your power graph is higher than theirs. And with all that military you are building, it will be (or might be, on Deity).

[King of Rasslin]

I play as the Japanese, which you said get the ability to see horses from the start. I might try this strat sometime, but I don't really see it working. I think the warrior -> swordsman path is much, much better. Because the warrior doesn't require horses, it allows you to stock up on a cheap unit early before you get the resource. The only advantage to chariot -> horseman is that horses are usually not on hills tiles, and iron is. The advantage to upgrading to horsemen is that you can make them knights later, but I think most of that invasion is going to be killed anyway by the time you are finished.

[Arrian]

Rass,

Horsemen are better than swordsmen. I repeat: horsemen are better than swordsmen. For a number of reasons:

1) speed. You can move your attack force swiftly
2) retreat. You can often run away from a losing battle
3) upgrade cost. $20 each as opposed to $40
4) upgrade path. Samurai & Cavalry as opposed to nothing.

Yes, swords have a 3 attack/2 defense. But if you have a good number of horsemen, trust me, the AI spears will die. Hill cities can be tough, but you can leave them for later if you like.

The key to continental domination is hitting the AI so hard and so fast that it cannot recover. This is what horsemen do well. Imagine for a moment unleashing 20-25 horsemen in 350bc on your nearest opponent. Often, their border city will have a 1-square border, allowing an immediate attack/capture of their city. Their counterattack will be either archers or swords, maybe a horse or two, which will be slaughtered as it attempts to retake my gains. Then it's clear sailing.

Yes, you will take casualties, but I think horsemen are actually more survivable than swords, due to retreat (I only use vets, btw). That's why my core cities continue to pump out horsemen for quite a while. This helps replace losses.

The attack will run out of steam after 3 civs have bitten the dust. By this time, you need to build other things in your good cities, and attrition will have taken its toll. A good time for Samurai.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by alexman
Another way to get tech, while you're building your chariots, is to renegotiate peace. Each AI will gladly pay a tech for your patience, provided your power graph is higher than theirs. And with all that military you are building, it will be (or might be, on Deity).

Good point there, though it has been nerfed with the 1.21 patch (which is good, it was too easy before). First off, I don't think the top 2 AI civs will ever give in. The bottom feeders may, though, and that can be useful. I actually forgot about that, after trying it once or twice since 1.21 and getting into wars I wasn't ready to fight yet.

-Arrian

[King of Rasslin]

I'm just a little paranoid since horsemen don't always retreat now. Swordsmen are tough, but horsemen get the upgrade path. I guess they are a long term investment, but they don't have much power. I like them, but I don't want to make chariots just to get them a little earlier. I usually have plenty of warriors laying around, but not many chariots. After all, warriors don't require resources. It is more of a convenience thing than a power thing.

[Harovan]

The AI doesn't part with cities anymore since 1.21f, but you still can extort money or money's worth. So, for instance, if a Civ is ready to give you 100 gold for peace, and considers Writing to be worth 90 gold, it will give you Writing and 10 gold. This behavior has not changed in the patch.

But, since cities were the most attractive object (talk about taking cities and crippling the AI without war), I seldom use peace renegotiations now, I simply forget about it.

[DrFell]

Not only do they not give you cities, but they pay much less than if you've just conquered them.

I'm just a little paranoid since horsemen don't always retreat now.

True, but vets retreat quite often, and remember swords never retreat and they only have 3 attack vs 2 for a horse, so you still lose a couple attacking spearman defended cities. In my current deity small map tournament game with the Romans, I upgraded about 15 warriors to legions, then switched to building chariots in my core cities. When I got chivalry I upgraded the chariots all to knights, and I'm upgrading the knights to cavalry right now. The legions are virtually useless now, whilst those chariots and horsemen I built are still playing their part in ensuring my world domination (conquest is the goal of the tourney game). If you get most of your techs from conquering the AIs and set taxes to 100%, you can easily afford to upgrade them when the time comes. The hard upgrade is the chariot/horseman to knight upgrade (100 or 80 gold). The other upgrades are pretty inexpensive.

[King of Rasslin]

What happened to your 15 legions? If I had an early, freshly upgraded army like that, I would use it! I would prefer the chariot -> horseman path if I started right next to a horse tile, but that is very unlikely. In a few special cases, it might be useful. Upgrading to swordsmen is ok, but if you are Roman or Persian it would really work. You should have used those legions, they are great for their time!

[DrFell]

Used them to kill off France... they also played their part against England, but by that point I was facing pikemen so knights were doing most of the actual killing. Point was though that if they were on the horse upgrade path they'd still be useful rather than being effective only as 'ai luring' units.

[King of Rasslin]

I think they are very useful because they are so much more powerful than horsemen. It's more important to wipe out other civs before you hit the middle ages.

[Grey Fox]

This is what I came up with as formula (without knowing about this thread):

- The first 1:1:1 of a unit is worth 10 Shields.
- Every addition to Attack/Defense is worth an additional 10 Shields.
- Every addition to Movement is worth 20 Shields.
- Every resource needed lowers the cost of the unit with 10 Shields.

This works for every ground unit in the ancient era, and somewhat in the Middle Ages.

EDIT: the chariot-->horsemen-->knights-->cavalry path almost makes it unecessary to build tanks, the world is already yours