Raiding

I'm getting pretty good now. Has anyone got any tips? I think it was Jups that said Nuuk can win a game by raiding. P

Any tips appreciated...

Yer being very general.... Are you talkin bout how to set up a good raiding party, or how to micro it? I could write a lengthy book on raiding, but it would just be intuitive knowledge for most competative players....

niDe has forced resignations by cavalry raiding alone. so have I for that matter using cav and commandoes strat (joke strat no infantry in enemy land)

Thanks for input guys...

Diveloperz, could you give me a brief summary of how you set up a good raiding party, and how you micro your raids.

Cheers.

Hmm, I guess I'll try. And I'll try not to write so much it would fill a book.

First it's important to understand that raiding shouldn't be evaluated by how many citizens/caravans/merchants are killed but by a rather complex combination of things...

~The resource value of all enemy units killed. Price actually isn't everything since citizens/caravans/merchants/combat units take time and effort to recreate, but there's no real method of evaluating the damage you did based on IE the effort it takes the other guy to recreate his units, so it's much easier to evaluate the effects of a raid based on resource value.
~The resource value of units lost.
~The plunder gained by the raider.
~The plunder gained by the defender for killing raiders.
~The enemy civilians that are temporarily unable to work because of the raid. This one if typically under-rated by inter players, IE the advantage of using [mainly] HI to surround and take down a city is that while your eco should always be strong, the enemy will have to garrison all citizens in the area to prevent them from getting killed. If the city is upgraded to a large one but the defender still doesn't have sufficient forces to kill the HI, the defender won't be able to pump out as many troops as the other guy.


I think general raiding best fits into two catagories Raiding parties intended to overwhelm enemy forces, and raiders which raid far places (often rares) so that the enemy can't bring his army in time to counter he raid. There is also raiding intended to hit the enemy before he [i988ac35b82]has[/i988ac35b82] the forces to counter (such as ancient raiding or one-city classical raiding), but such raiding is fairly self-explanatory and doesn't leave much room for discussion.

Which type of raiding you do depends on your strategy. Some nations, such as Japanese (great eco for short-term booming, cheap infantry, strong HI), Romans (head start with free mil, constant city gold bonus, cheap and strong HI), Bantu (particularly fast start, infantry speed bonus which makes HI particularly effective), can make a big raiding party quicky and force enemy counter-raiders to retreat or be killed by your superior army. If you have clear military dominance, you can raid wherever you want without losing many raiders. This of course lets you cripple the enemy's economy so that you can get ahead (whether in eco, age, military power for taking a city, etc. depends on your strategy -- you call the game at this point).

The latter type of raiding, that which is not meant to be countered, should be used whenever you need to raid to beat your opponent but you do not have military power. The idea is to use only as many units as you need. Raiding rares with a single HA can be quite effective. Most good boomers will have at least a LC somewhere reasonably close if they suspect a HA raid, but it is usually hard to defend so many rares etc at once. Raiding away from cities with a HA and a general I consider to be bad practice because (1) a forced march will only save you if a friendly city/rax/etc. is reasonably close and (2) you will be at a disadvantage when countering an army raid because your troops won't receive the armor bonus. An effective off-city raid can be done with a HA and two HC, because the two HC can kill a LC before it can kill your HA. It little sence to raid with a HA and a HC because the LC will be able to make its kill and get away. You can also raid with a single HI (or two) since a LC will do almost nothing to it but if a HA catches your HI your HI is gone. Of course you could bring a FA but at the point where you have multle rax troops raiding off-city you might as well just bring your whole army since you won't have enough troops at your home base to counter as it is. I also consider raiding off-city with a whole army bad practice because off-city raiding doesn't do as much damage as eco city raiding does, and with your army busy you wouldn't be able to counter strong raids on your eco cities.



^^There's your book. 8) The next chapter covers sea raiding.... Then ancient raiding.... Of course I will never get around to writing these chapters. ;)

GL HF! P
Diveloperz

no plz write them, that is really good stuff.

Thanks Diveloperz! It's appreciated. D

very nice article.

maybe take also this into account
raiding is also about gaining time.
since you can handle only several places or give a certain amount of orders its slowing down the eapm of the opponent since he has to react to the raiding.
in other words the number of actions you invest for raiding should be worth at least about the same amount of actions that your opponent has to invest to stop it.
this cannot be turned into ressources right away, but on the long run itll change them for sure.

Dont think about raiding, just do it!

pff screw raiding suicide rush and don't worry bout it ever!

Glad ye liked my "book". )

Yeah kn0bi, I kinda agree.... Normally the effort it takes to do a raid is negated by the effort it takes to counter.... Well, sometimes.... If your army is split so that you have a few raiders raiding rares etc. and the rest of your army off-city, it will take quite a bit of work to micro em all. If the other guy has his army all in one group, he will have an easy time moving it back and forth to counter raids one by one, which takes very little effort. But if you have a good complex raid going he will be forced to split defensive forces, which takes a lot more effort, usually even more than it took you to raid cuz you had the raiders pre-grouped.

I don't wanna write another "book" that probably won't be much help to anyone, but I'll point out a few bad things I see players (like high inter type players) doing....

First there's the famous HI spam. A lot of players (some good players included) make [what I think to be] way too many HIs. There are a number of advantages to HI, like (1) they are cheap, not costing any gold, (2) it is more convenient to upgrade HIs in classical than any other unit because HIs are almost always upgraded for Midieval combat so you save some resources, (3) HI are very strong with good attack and armor, and kill cits quickly. The problem is they're almost useless against FAs. HI are only good if the other guy lets them get in melee range. A few HI can kill a FA pretty fast, but they can't catch one. A FA can do massive damage to a group of HI and safely retreat to a city before the HI can hit. Of course you can use ambush to take away the archer's advantage of range and block a retreat, but only if you see an army sitting there doing nothing. So my point is, FAs should be used as the basic military unit in Classical rather than HI. Of course FAs are easily killed by LC and HC, but even an unupgraded HI can take down a HC remarkably fast (considering that the HC only has one body, not three). As long as you keep around one HI for every two enemy HC and a few HC of your own, you should be able to guard your FAs sufficiently.

Then there's the topic of the ancient raid.... A lot of players these days like to raid with one of each unit so that the raid is hard to counter. Other players that don't want to waste ~80 resources on a LI like to use a FA (for doing damage at range) with a HI (mainly to guard, also can kill citizens while blocking their retreat). The thing is, you don't need a HI to guard against citizens. All you need to raid is an archer. Citizens cannot catch an archer. Citizens could chase an archer and force it to retreat, but they would have to have 3-4 citizens constantly chasing the archers away, and if the raiding persists a while without being countered they will eventually have to garrison citizens, so that's 4-5 citizens that are unable to work due to your one FA. Almost as bad as a 1 FA 1 HI raid.



Oops, I wrote another book. shock

FAs should be a support unit for most civs. For one thing, they are damn expensive to amass considering how scarce wealth is for most civs. I would go into more detail but you can just take el_cap's word for it

[quote8bd53bd11b="El_Capitan"]Foot Archers are slightly more expensive due to the lower Despotism bonus. While this also affects Heavy Infantry, HI doesn't cost Wealth. Here's the thing about HI vs. FA. HI can take down buildings, and their only real counter unit is the FA. Each time a sub-unit for a FA is taken down, the longer it takes for the FA to take down the HI. Now, there are 3 units that counter FA... HC, LC, and LI. Since LI are pretty useless before Gunpowder Age unless you're Chinese, let's focus on HC and LC. Cavalry units don't have subunits, so no matter how damaged they are, they'll take down FA at the same rate, plus they're faster units to micro with to retreat from HI. Therefore, a Classical/Medieval assault with a large force of HI, HC will be the predominant first major attack.[/quote8bd53bd11b]

Full post here

http//o4brons.blogspot.com/2005_01_16_o4brons_archive.html

Importantly, the fact that the cavalry has "only one body" is a huge [i8bd53bd11b]advantage[/i8bd53bd11b] of cavalry over infantry in this game--because each time an infantry subunit dies, it loses 1/3 of its full attack. Whereas cavalry always do their full attack. As long as you are in a situation where you can force an open field confrontation, HIs are a very good offensive unit. On more defensive maps, make more archers. Of course, you should mix units, but if you're attacking you should have more HIs, since they can actually raze buildings.

A one FA one HI ancient raid is perfectly legitamite. First, if you have 100 wealth from accidentally getting a wealth ruin, it will help you get to classic 10-20 seconds faster since you can spend the 50 food you woulda spent on the LI faster. Secondly, an archer is a very good scout--better than a normal scout, even. Thirdly, an archer counters the first ancient raiding unit your opponent probably will make--an HI. Fourthly, you don't need the HI to protect the archer--rather, you can raid in two separate places with them. Finally, should your ancient raid units survive to Classical, an archer is infinitely more useful than a slinger.

I'd agree that the wood/wealth required makes massing FAs more difficult than massing HI (although you can get a pretty good metal price after com2 and classical), but you have to consider that an army that lacks FAs is always forced to bring out melee units, thereof naturally giving the player with range power a big advantage. And you don't really even need HC in your main army (probably want a few for countering cavalry-based raids) if you have lots of FAs, since you only need your melee units to guard against enemy melee units, and HI+HI > HI+HC, so you save more gold for archers, and you don't need to sell wood like a lot of players do....

Look at it this way
HI + HC takes F (food) + M + M + G
HI + FA takes F + M + W + G

The difference is two metal against one metal and one wood. It really roxorz when you can get a good army without 6-8-10 miners.

And yeah, HC don't have subunits so they always have full attack, but it's a trade-off, because subunits have the ability to separate themselves. You can't do this manually, but in a battle the subunits of a FA tend to separate naturally for attacking. So while a HC is trying to chase down a big mob of archers, the HI only has one target. Besides, if your opponent doesn't have enough FAs to compete with yours then your HI aren't likely to lose any subunits until attacked by enemy HI. Maybe still an advantage for the HC, but I don't think it's enough to make it effective to toss a small force of HC into a sizable army with a reasonable ammount of HI.



[quote1c22d9df4e]A one FA one HI ancient raid is perfectly legitamite. First, if you have 100 wealth from accidentally getting a wealth ruin, it will help you get to classic 10-20 seconds faster since you can spend the 50 food you woulda spent on the LI faster. Secondly, an archer is a very good scout--better than a normal scout, even. Thirdly, an archer counters the first ancient raiding unit your opponent probably will make--an HI. Fourthly, you don't need the HI to protect the archer--rather, you can raid in two separate places with them. Finally, should your ancient raid units survive to Classical, an archer is infinitely more useful than a slinger.[/quote1c22d9df4e]
The first three reasons you give seem to be defending a 1FA/1HI setup over a 1LI/1HI (or something like that) setup. I also prefer the FA as a raiding unit above the LI, not much room for discussion there. But why make a HI? The HI can raid another place, yes, but you would have to get pretty lucky to find two vulnerable wood camps or something, and I think two archers would be better for raiding two spots anyway; The HI are stronger, but the range of the archer renders a woodcamp as almost unusable (until the raid is countered, at which point it's almost always best to retreat and grab any remaining ruins). Of course the HI has some advantages, mainly better armor so you're less likely to lose subunits or a whole raider, but I still prefer teh pwnage archers. 8)

HI/FA armies get microed to hell in open combat. If you're near a TC, it can work, otherwise you are going to have problems against a fast player. Except maybe if you're British. Cavalry are too fast, and HI are too slow.

Aye. I try to have my FAs spread out and have my HI mixed in everywhere, then just micro them individually against attacking HC. If the other guy messes around too much with coming in then backing out before the HI hit the archer fire will weaken 'em. But ya, I know what you mean. It wouldn't be smart to build a main army without any HC, I just think archers are really under-rated in comparison to HI. With French I sometimes do a FA/HC attack without any HI in midieval, not upgrading HI until gunpowder or enlight. Of course with most nations you need plenty of HI but I don't think an army with 75% HI is real smart.

[quotec120e5b0fd]but I don't think an army with 75% HI is real smart[/quotec120e5b0fd]
I do. An HI army doesn't cost wealth. Mix them w/ a few LC/HC and a couple FA to support and you have a devastating classical army. If someone brings 4-5 FA against them I either rush the FA w/ forced march (if they're unupgraded they go down fast) or I run away. They get hit by FA when they run away but typically make it back to the rax to heal. Early heavy FA armies cause slow medi, GP times which cause you to lose in the mid-run.

Tell ya what tho divs, give us a couple sample games that show your playstyle and we'll discuss them. I'd like to see a few games where you pwn someone good with early FA armies.

[quote157d37f4a7]or I run away.[/quote157d37f4a7] Run away? That's what the French do. Real men stay and fight. 8)

Thanks for all your input guys! P

Nice discussion. I yesterday went with the french hc crossbow medieval assault. Pwned in med but then I'm playing catch up with knowledge which is never good.

LC HI armies have won many games for me. The early spamming of scholars has always paid off unless i'm hit with a fast 100/100 attack in Classical.

I hate those games I wind up with 4000 knowledge and 50 food...

I only go for archers if they are french or nation specific uu's. I prefer horse archers - they're still useful after med.

It's true infantry get pwned on open ground vs fast player, run for a cav one way cav runs off another cav jumps in and flanks breakaway units. Happened to me plenty.

The more your army is mixed, the cheaper it is to spam - a thought.

Allrightie, I don't keep my recs organized but I'll try to get a game that demonstrates a FA-based mil attack. If I'm playing someone that is good and aggressive and has a good and aggressive nation (like Turks) I generally wait for an expected Midieval seige, with my knowledge aroudn 50 so I can do a fast 150/150 and get a big military, with some seige in midieval. Then I do some hit & run with archers on his catapults, force him to either bring his army in or waste resources with more seige. Play defensive, entrenching some archers is good, make him suffer in the retreat, then counter with like 3 catapults so he can't age up and doesn't get much of a defensive advantage.

It's especially good if you position your army strategically for the defence. Like when I played Insider I was Koreans he was Bantu so when I saw the seige coming in Midieval I crammed my infantry (mostly FAs) between a city and a mountain and entrenched them so there was no room for him to flank my army. He brought his army (a pretty good size) in and hit mine but my entrenched & upgraded HI prevented him from getting any advantage in melee combat while my FAs killed most of his army. Of course he retreated but it was too late to save most of his army. I had maybe 4-5 HC but only used them to chase the retreat. HC just blow in places like that when there is an abundance of HI and no way to get around em.

Off topic again.... Oops. shock Oh well.