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Post by pathdoc on Oct 7, 2016 15:20:29 GMT
Okay, I'm wondering if there's any way to deal with this.
So I'm playing Russia, Europe conquest, 1809, I think. I got a bunch of tavern generals into the fight (Russia seems to be good for that), and I was also lucky enough to score Kutuzov as an infantry commander and Alexander I as a trade general (sent him straight to Minsk, which was my trade city in that game, and kept him there for the rest of the war). I invaded the Ottoman Empire early because their trade city was near the common border, and I figured if I can knock that out fast, I can make things a lot harder for the Ottoman empire insofar as trading food for gold or tech is concerned. Well, wouldn't you know it, an allied general with the yellow and black flag plops himself down at the edge of said enemy city, and manages to enter it in between my turns. I had been ready to finish off the defenders on the next turn, but evidently the Ottoman Empire had its turn before the ally did, and they died fighting him, so he was able to use his movement phase to just walk right in. And then of course he starts spawning troops and making my life difficult.
Man, that nation was a thorn in my side for the rest of the game. Crowding me out, impeding my movements; I had to be very careful about how and when I killed defenders of ports, cities or factories because this general or one of his associated units always seemed ready to drop in and take all the benefits of my hard work. OTOH, when there's plenty of heavy fighting to be done, don't count on those allies to be there; they are seemingly never at the leading edge!
In some ways, Russia is the best nation to play as a beginner - so far, the land border with everything except Ottoman is always friendly for many nations deep, so I can concentrate on the one enemy to start with, but some allies can be a real pain in the backside.
I don't doubt that I made many mistakes here; I'm constantly forgetting to use units and cities/factories, and I could have sent an invasion force to North Africa sooner than I did (and from there perhaps attack the Iberian peninsula). It seems that as Russia, once you have gone so far as to be invading Italy and you have some Italian cities to spawn troops and ships from, you need to start thinking not only about Sardinia and Corsica but North Africa too.
It would be nice to be able to hack the AI and know what is happening with its resource allocation routines once you have knocked out the trading city of an enemy. I suspect life becomes somewhat more difficult for that nation from then on. Likewise, if you do not have one yourself but there is one near the border, that has to be your first target. Happy is the Russia player whose trade city is Moscow or some other place towards the far right hand side of the map!
As regards lightning movements across the map, I am divided - do I go for something like grenadiers, who can attack fortresses, or slow but tough line infantry, or do I put my money/tech into light infantry who do not have bonuses against forts and whose defence is lower, but who can move fast across mountainous terrain to keep up with high-mobility generals and envelop cities?
I have become a HUGE fan of rocket launchers, because whatever their weaknesses (cannot attack adjacent squares, poor defence), they do not attract counter-artillery fire, are outside the range of all infantry/cavalry counterattacks, and they spread their damage around to adjacent enemy units. Of course they spread it to yours as well, and this can be a disadvantage when you are surrounding an enemy town for double morale drop and some of your units are so low in health that you accidentally kill them (reverts to single morale drop). Or worse, you wipe out the defenders AND accidentally kill the only unit of yours that could still move, and thus the enemy gets to respawn (or a nearby allied general steals all the benefits of your labour). But what a benefit when you are attacking Budapest or some other city that is a population centre plus a factory or stable or port!
It would seem to me that if you can manage it easily, the best thing to do vs a neighbouring enemy nation is capture his trade city early (if he has one), spawn the strongest units you possibly can to hold it, and also spawn some fast ones every now and then to spread out and convert all his farms over to your side. If he has large numbers of cities he will be spawning troops to try and stop you, but if he cannot convert his gold and tech to food, his armies will eat the available food quicker and you will starve him out.
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Post by Quintus Fabius on Oct 7, 2016 16:35:36 GMT
Food: I usually use farms and upgrade them. Some enemies, like Spain, have little farms and can be starved to death when you take their farms.
Blitzing: use good gens and units as a spearhead to kill and take everything important, and use extra units to clean up stuff like forts and stray enemies. Guards/Grenadiers, Cav (they will be your friends. Use them) and a fast arty are good in spearhead; Arty(especially siege arty), inf are good for cleaning. A fast arty gen is great, as even the fastest artt is slow (that is why Davout is good). You play Russia a lot, so your cav is the best. Use them.
Allies: That's Austria. Allies are annoying, but that means you have to plan ahead and sometimes not attack with your unit or save/load. E.g. when allies cluster around Vienna and you have a gen and some units that can potentially kill them, s/l and don't kill, so you can waltz in to it next turn. Cav gens help a lot here, as they can move after attack.
My strat:
1. Look at the map and plan Fronts and movements. Make sure each important one has a spearhead of strong units and/or a gen.
2. Blitz and clean, leveling cities and farms when needed. A econ gen/trade city is good, but not needed. Stables and Ports are not worth leveling until you need them, and forts are very situational.
3.profit!
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Post by pathdoc on Oct 7, 2016 19:25:16 GMT
When you say "upgrade farms", you are talking about spending the 40 coins or whatever it is to put the little barn icon on them, yes? AFAIK I have not seen any further upgrade than that first one - am I missing something?
"An econ gen/trade city is good but not needed" - especially not when you already have one, true, but my guess was that it's worth it for the economic dislocation it might cause the enemy.
"Some enemies, like Spain..." I can't remember who it was that said "In Spain, small armies are defeated and large armies starve."
The things to conquer quickly would seem to be towns and artillery factories; from there you get the resources to clean up the forts in a more relaxed fashion. I am always keen to have ships, as I can use them for shore bombardment of enemy units, esp. on narrow peninsular nations like Italy, or against cities like Istanbul or Athens. And as France is always my enemy, it's good to have the ability to keep French warships away from my troop convoys as they move from Italy to Sardinia to North Africa; rocket launchers are OK on the water because nobody can shoot back at them in the turn that they fire, but most enemy ships are as fast or faster and can close the range and do terrible damage unless friendly warships are there to stop them.
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Post by Kaleg Nar on Oct 7, 2016 19:54:49 GMT
In all technicality, there are two farm upgrades. While all farms start a conquest producing 15 food, they can be reduced to producing 5 food by artillery. So while the 40 food upgrade may seem like the only one, it isn't.
I'm not an expert on how the AI uses trade cities, but my guess is that it probably doesn't trade, but overall it's likely to have stored gold anyways from not building units as much so there's likely little effect.
Here's what I do in conquests. My first priority for upgrades are the towns to get gold. Then I upgrade factories. Farms are very situational IMO as I can usually get a large enough army to do stuff without starving myself before I capture more farms, though I sometimes have to upgrade some if I don't have enough food. The AI also seems to upgrade its farms so you can get them for free if you're aggressive enough.
As for Grenadiers or Light Infantry? I'd say guards. Light infantry don't move any quicker (unless Generaled) than Guards Infantry and once your economy is up and running, you should be able to easily afford x2 guards without a problem and as they're stronger and more versatile, I'd go with them. My armies are usually Guards + Light Artillery on the front line.
When it comes to annoying 'allies' I find that if you're quick enough, you can usually push your advance farther than your 'allies' to break out of the wolfpack. This is because the AI is inherently stupid and so you can make true plans (such as wait to capture a city so you can capture it, which in turn shortens your supply line) and because the AI doesn't always use its full movement points. (Saw a case where I figured the AI was sending its ships around Greece to Istanbul to bombard my infantry. After a while I thought "shouldn't they already be there and in range of my new shiny coastal fortresses?" so I didn't fastforward the AI turn and saw they were moving their 3-hex movers (Frigate and a Privateer) 1 hex. If you aren't speedrunning a game though, you may consider waiting a while to let the enemy AI conquer your 'allies' in some cases. As Moldavia 1809 France and co conquered SO much before I got my country up and running. (Prussia was destroyed, Austria lost 3/4 of its territory, Russia lost 1/4 of its territory, and Spain was getting obliterated in conjunction with Britain being overrun. ) Other countries may also be like that.
However when it comes to annoying allies, I'll say you haven't seen anything yet. As Switzerland 1809, by the time my troops were finally ready to invade Britain (I'd focused on Russia first after making a home in fallen Poland) France and co had surrounded London at least 5 units deep, which meant gaining access to the city was near impossible. Now you might think "But that means they could easily attack the defending unit and take it themselves. There's no reason you needed to take it yourself other than pride." Well it did matter because the AI also wasn't attacking because Wellesley had Leadership so he wasn't dropping morale and the AI was thinking "If this x1 Line Infantry attacks, it's a bad battle so I shouldn't do it." which meant nothing was happening. Eventually I was able to, by luck, get some artillery close enough to fire on London to end the madness (open spots from AI random movement) but sheesh. |
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Post by Erich von Manstein on Oct 7, 2016 20:43:15 GMT
In all technicality, there are two farm upgrades. While all farms start a conquest producing 15 food, they can be reduced to producing 5 food by artillery. So while the 40 food upgrade may seem like the only one, it isn't.
I'm not an expert on how the AI uses trade cities, but my guess is that it probably doesn't trade, but overall it's likely to have stored gold anyways from not building units as much so there's likely little effect.
Here's what I do in conquests. My first priority for upgrades are the towns to get gold. Then I upgrade factories. Farms are very situational IMO as I can usually get a large enough army to do stuff without starving myself before I capture more farms, though I sometimes have to upgrade some if I don't have enough food. The AI also seems to upgrade its farms so you can get them for free if you're aggressive enough.
As for Grenadiers or Light Infantry? I'd say guards. Light infantry don't move any quicker (unless Generaled) than Guards Infantry and once your economy is up and running, you should be able to easily afford x2 guards without a problem and as they're stronger and more versatile, I'd go with them. My armies are usually Guards + Light Artillery on the front line.
When it comes to annoying 'allies' I find that if you're quick enough, you can usually push your advance farther than your 'allies' to break out of the wolfpack. This is because the AI is inherently stupid and so you can make true plans (such as wait to capture a city so you can capture it, which in turn shortens your supply line) and because the AI doesn't always use its full movement points. (Saw a case where I figured the AI was sending its ships around Greece to Istanbul to bombard my infantry. After a while I thought "shouldn't they already be there and in range of my new shiny coastal fortresses?" so I didn't fastforward the AI turn and saw they were moving their 3-hex movers (Frigate and a Privateer) 1 hex. If you aren't speedrunning a game though, you may consider waiting a while to let the enemy AI conquer your 'allies' in some cases. As Moldavia 1809 France and co conquered SO much before I got my country up and running. (Prussia was destroyed, Austria lost 3/4 of its territory, Russia lost 1/4 of its territory, and Spain was getting obliterated in conjunction with Britain being overrun. ) Other countries may also be like that.
However when it comes to annoying allies, I'll say you haven't seen anything yet. As Switzerland 1809, by the time my troops were finally ready to invade Britain (I'd focused on Russia first after making a home in fallen Poland) France and co had surrounded London at least 5 units deep, which meant gaining access to the city was near impossible. Now you might think "But that means they could easily attack the defending unit and take it themselves. There's no reason you needed to take it yourself other than pride." Well it did matter because the AI also wasn't attacking because Wellesley had Leadership so he wasn't dropping morale and the AI was thinking "If this x1 Line Infantry attacks, it's a bad battle so I shouldn't do it." which meant nothing was happening. Eventually I was able to, by luck, get some artillery close enough to fire on London to end the madness (open spots from AI random movement) but sheesh. Depends on country for unit spamming. Guards are great for GB, Russia and Ottoman, but for the others, especially Prussia, Grenadiers with one more formation is better than Guards. And yes, city>factory>field, but in endgame, food is the most important part in the three kinds of resources. |
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Post by Kaleg Nar on Oct 7, 2016 20:47:07 GMT
Hmm, I've gone with Guards as default. Guess I'll have to take a look at the Grenadier-Guard attributes next time I start up a conquest.
When you say food is the most important resource, I've generally had zero problem keeping my army from starving so are you speaking in terms of maintaining one's army or in getting further rule?
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Post by Erich von Manstein on Oct 7, 2016 21:05:23 GMT
Hmm, I've gone with Guards as default. Guess I'll have to take a look at the Grenadier-Guard attributes next time I start up a conquest. When you say food is the most important resource, I've generally had zero problem keeping my army from starving so are you speaking in terms of maintaining one's army or in getting further rule? More ruling years, the ratio between gold:steel:food in case of contribution to ruling years is 2:1:4. So I'd suggest at the last turn, make sure you have 9999 food and exchange gold and steel wisely. |
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Post by Kaleg Nar on Oct 9, 2016 5:04:24 GMT
Question, you mentioned Prussia as being a country where grenadiers x3 were better than guards x2. When I look at the stats, Grenadiers are 3-8 damage and 15 food at 220 gold and 50 hammers compared to guards being 4-8 damage and 12 food at 210 gold and 65 hammers with all else equal. Is there something I'm missing since it'd seem like the guards would be better.
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Post by Quintus Fabius on Oct 9, 2016 17:43:35 GMT
Question, you mentioned Prussia as being a country where grenadiers x3 were better than guards x2. When I look at the stats, Grenadiers are 3-8 damage and 15 food at 220 gold and 50 hammers compared to guards being 4-8 damage and 12 food at 210 gold and 65 hammers with all else equal. Is there something I'm missing since it'd seem like the guards would be better. You are. european-war-4.boards.net/thread/2124/ew4-countries-unit-system-analysisGrenadiers of Prussian is better than most.(see spreadsheet in link) And max damage is more important than min damage because you can s/l. |
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Post by Jean-Luc Picard on Oct 9, 2016 18:03:18 GMT
Question, you mentioned Prussia as being a country where grenadiers x3 were better than guards x2. When I look at the stats, Grenadiers are 3-8 damage and 15 food at 220 gold and 50 hammers compared to guards being 4-8 damage and 12 food at 210 gold and 65 hammers with all else equal. Is there something I'm missing since it'd seem like the guards would be better. You are. european-war-4.boards.net/thread/2124/ew4-countries-unit-system-analysisGrenadiers of Prussian is better than most.(see spreadsheet in link) And max damage is more important than min damage because you can s/l. Also: +1 min dmg on panel adds 1 to minimum dmg Max panel dmg is multiplied by 6 (for double) or 7 (for triple) to yield the max damage. Thus, triple grenadiers are 3-56 and double guards are 4-48 |
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Post by Kaleg Nar on Oct 9, 2016 21:57:35 GMT
Ah okay. I hadn't known the formation number actually counted towards damage beyond health.
Though while reading the guide, I noticed that none of the spamming recommended double formation guards, just single formation. Why is that?
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Post by Jean-Luc Picard on Oct 9, 2016 22:07:51 GMT
Ah okay. I hadn't known the formation number actually counted towards damage beyond health. Though while reading the guide, I noticed that none of the spamming recommended double formation guards, just single formation. Why is that? Double/Triple Guards are expensive, so they can only be spammed in endgame |
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Post by Erich von Manstein on Oct 9, 2016 22:15:40 GMT
Ah okay. I hadn't known the formation number actually counted towards damage beyond health. Though while reading the guide, I noticed that none of the spamming recommended double formation guards, just single formation. Why is that? Because they are pretty costly, and my recommedation is sort of for rushing. |
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Post by pathdoc on Oct 11, 2016 15:23:28 GMT
Question, you mentioned Prussia as being a country where grenadiers x3 were better than guards x2. When I look at the stats, Grenadiers are 3-8 damage and 15 food at 220 gold and 50 hammers compared to guards being 4-8 damage and 12 food at 210 gold and 65 hammers with all else equal. Is there something I'm missing since it'd seem like the guards would be better. You are. european-war-4.boards.net/thread/2124/ew4-countries-unit-system-analysisGrenadiers of Prussian is better than most.(see spreadsheet in link) And max damage is more important than min damage because you can s/l. Am I assuming that the idea behind that last paragraph is: Line up your unit to make the attack. Save the game. Make the attack. Assess the damage done. Reload the game from the save point and see if the attack is more effective this time. Keep on trying until you get a huge hit on the enemy/he dies. Y/N?This would imply that minimum and maximum strengths listed for units are lower and upper bounds for a random number generator. This plus the hex-based movement system make me wonder whether EW was at one point derived from a board game. |
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Post by Quintus Fabius on Oct 11, 2016 16:22:53 GMT
Am I assuming that the idea behind that last paragraph is: Line up your unit to make the attack. Save the game. Make the attack. Assess the damage done. Reload the game from the save point and see if the attack is more effective this time. Keep on trying until you get a huge hit on the enemy/he dies. Y/N?This would imply that minimum and maximum strengths listed for units are lower and upper bounds for a random number generator. This plus the hex-based movement system make me wonder whether EW was at one point derived from a board game. Yes and Yes. Look at the earlier European Wars and World Conquerors by Easytech. |
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