Golden Era Discussion

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
Or I'd like to have them build some sort of special siege unit - give me Trojan horses please!

Wooden Constructs anyone?

It seems they also affect your own dominion. Might be an idea to go full sloth and deploy some Skeptics in your production centers to get an average production scale there, and stick to peltasts in the capital.

That would also take away your order. Hard decision; but I suppose you could. If you did take Sloth 3 (which also impacts your gold flow nationwide, though I suppose you just take Growth to counter it) you also lose your Order 3 and Luck/Misfortune in that production center.

More than likely I imagine I'd prefer getting 21% Gold while still being able to manufacture 10% less (or 30% if you take the big sloth hit).

I just tried making the All Powerful Pretender of Bless Effect Destruction, with all negative scales.

It's not going well, because skeptics don't null your domain fast enough, also makes you produce Skeptics non-stop at your capital as you expand. Though it's an interesting idea. You could be dominioned out fairly quickly using these scales. Might be a better idea to take Luck 3 and Magic 3 and try and keep the Capital to a positive dominion.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Zen:
That would also take away your order. Hard decision; but I suppose you could. If you did take Sloth 3 (which also impacts your gold flow nationwide, though I suppose you just take Growth to counter it) you also lose your Order 3 and Luck/Misfortune in that production center.

More than likely I imagine I'd prefer getting 21% Gold while still being able to manufacture 10% less (or 30% if you take the big sloth hit).

You could still pick Order+3/Sloth+3 and build castles and stack Skeptics in resource-rich mountain provinces. These provinces usually don't provide as much gold as farmlands (which are usually resource poor), so the income hit here would be pretty minimal I think (eg, say a mountain produces ~50 gold or less, you lose just 21% of that, ie at most ~10 gold/turn - not really a big hit).

Basically it's a trade for 80 design points vs a 4% income loss nationwide, the need to put extra Skeptics in your non-capital centers, and maybe a more difficult start due to the inability to raise troops efficiently early when you're limited to your capital - but to make up for that, these 80 design points might allow you to give more muscle to a SC, for example.

[tinkthank]

I love the theme, just yum, but I got turned off by the fact that *all* interesting units are capitol-based. It's worse than Mictlan! Yes, neato, but it is just a chore for me to schlepp them from my capital all over the world. Looks great, but the sole reason I dislike Mictlan is the capitol-dependence (or is it capital?). Well good luck and have fun with the philosophers!

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
You could still pick Order+3/Sloth+3 and build castles and stack Skeptics in resource-rich mountain provinces. These provinces usually don't provide as much gold as farmlands (which are usually resource poor), so the income hit here would be pretty minimal I think (eg, say a mountain produces ~50 gold or less, you lose just 21% of that, ie at most ~10 gold/turn - not really a big hit).

Depends on if you get those types of provinces and you can expand that early to do so. It's an interesting concept, hard to do initially and your start is fairly slow even with a SC pretender taking provinces alone (I used a Red Dragon).

Definitely a strategy that can be used. Though I don't know if it's overall better than base. I tried base scales (0 Order, 0 Luck) and got on the raw end of events. That might be the only consideration.

[ February 17, 2004, 08:12: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Daynarr]

This theme is rather interesting and I had fun testing it.

Moloch with Fire 9 or 10 seems to work great with is as he can be early super combatant too (Moloch casting fire darts can take lots of independent provinces alone early in game), but will make your blessed Pegasus Riders insanely powerful as well (and worth the money). I would usually build a flying carpet, give it to my prophet Priestess and send her to accompany/bless my group of Pegasus Riders led by Pegasus Commander. They would be my deep strike team that could take all but most heavily defended provinces. Pegasus Commander can be given nice items (like ones for luck and etherealness) to make him into a SC too.

Sloth 1 is a penalty to them, but without that they would be too powerful - they have units to take out enemy dominion, trample, flyers which are probably most powerful in game (Pegasus Riders that are sacred), cheap researchers while still keeping Arco priestess and astral 2 mages.
You can, at least partially, overcome sloth penalty by using castles with large administration - Fortified City is almost a must.

Basically, I was worried that they could be too powerful but it seems it is not the case since, while powerful, most of their units cost either lots of gold or resources or both.

You must have had more luck with your Wind Riders than I did. They get chopped up very easily by archers/spells.

Though of course maybe you have to build 10+ in order for them to not have a terrible attrition (making an initial charge rout the enemy)

I agree that the movement factor of the Wind Rider is a significant detail; but they are fragile if you are going up against a human opponent. You almost have to take a 9 Fire/9 Air Blessing to counteract it. As Spring Hawks eat them for dinner as well as any missile fire.

Edit: Also it's very easy to make them waste their lances on Harpies or Black Hawks. And target them with missilefire because they are fliers.

[ February 17, 2004, 08:42: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Daynarr]

Originally posted by Zen:
That is what I spend 90% of my gold on in my tests. They do fairly well against things without tower shields. What kills me is the Chariots (which have good enough morale that you can put 10 of them in a squad and not have them rout, which is very nice) running into the middle of the fight, then getting mowed down by a wave of javalins. Since they don't have any sort of shield (...) they have no defense against them and get torn up.

Well, I've been using Chariots with bows and gave them orders hold and attack (to test recent tweaks on it among other things). They would shoot 2 volleys at enemy and then in and trample away. Javelins and archers would, by that time be targeting other units (most likely HI) and my losses to Chariots were ALWAYS minimal.
Chariots without bows are also useful, and you can use them to charge at melee troops to break down their front lines.

Originally posted by Daynarr:
Well, I've been using Chariots with bows and gave them orders hold and attack (to test recent tweaks on it among other things). They would shoot 2 volleys at enemy and then in and trample away. Javelins and archers would, by that time be targeting other units (most likely HI) and my losses to Chariots were ALWAYS minimal.
Chariots without bows are also useful, and you can use them to charge at melee troops to break down their front lines.

My Chariots behave exactly the opposite. They fire 2 volleys, then they rush in and start crunching on little people, the first charge usually nets no deaths (as the chariots are still near the front of the lines). It's the 2nd and 3rd turn of Trampling that usually gets them in trouble as well as if some portion of the main host routs the Chariots in their eagerness to kill usually spread out further ahead and get a javalin in the back.

I've tried modifying orders and positions in order to try to minimize their combat but got variations of the same results. I think this comes from the way the chariots trample, the first trample they tend to trample out to an edge of enemy troops (north or south), then next turn they trample in and forward and their movement stops them in the middle of the enemy because they run out of movement points.

The Chariots don't get fired on when using masses of Cardeces, but Cardeces have a very high attrition rate.

Edit:
This may be my fault. I might be using too many Peltasts so the ones in the rear of my column always have ammo to fire. I may have better results with having less when utilizing Chariots in order to minimize having a 'backlog' of PetLasts in the back who have ammo.

[ February 17, 2004, 09:03: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Daynarr]

Originally posted by Zen:
You must have had more luck with your Wind Riders than I did. They get chopped up very easily by archers/spells.

Though of course maybe you have to build 10+ in order for them to not have a terrible attrition (making an initial charge rout the enemy)

I agree that the movement factor of the Wind Rider is a significant detail; but they are fragile if you are going up against a human opponent. You almost have to take a 9 Fire/9 Air Blessing to counteract it. As Spring Hawks eat them for dinner as well as any missile fire.

Edit: Also it's very easy to make them waste their lances on Harpies or Black Hawks. And target them with missilefire because they are fliers.

I was usually using stacks of 8-15 riders accompanied by 1 commander (filled with items).
You can target archers with them as well. Basically I would usually give them hold and attack enemy archers or hold and attack rearmost units order. That way most of heavy infantry troops would move forward and away from shooters which would get killed or routed as soon as my riders move in. If you can't kill or rout those archers fast they you are probably attacking too large force.

They aren�t a force to single handedly take out enemy main armies, but to harass enemy territories while your main armies push forward. The thing is that enemy must catch them with significant force if he hopes to take them out which is very difficult in both MP and SP games.

Of course there can be other tactics for them as well. You can use Water 9 pretender and boost their already impressive defense (+ give them 2 strikes every other turn) and use them as support troops for main armies that would fight enemy HI.

Or use Cyclopes with earth 9 to give them +4 protection and make flying tanks out of them.