Why the Jaguar warrior rush works

[vulture]

...or 'why the Jag rush is so much better than the plain warrior rush'.

The structure of your basic war: First, build a large enough fighting force. Second, fight, whilst building more units to replace casualties (if you don't need to do this, then you're probably waiting too long before launching the initial attack). Keep fighting until you take all objectives, or until you don't have a sufficient number of troops to maintain the offensive.

That's the way I play it anyway. So the amount of time you can sustain a war depends primarily on the balance
between the rate at which you suffer casualties, versus the rate at which you replenish them - or more precisely, the rate at which the replacements arrive at the front line.

So the advantages of the Jaguar warrior over the normal warrior:

1) Retreat ability. If you play around with a combat calculator which includes retreat chances, you notice that you need slightly more Jaguar warriors to take kill a given target on average (you lose out on some wins when your Jag retreats), but you take notably fewer casualties. So to swarm a town early in the game may need 7 (or 8) Jags rather than 6 warriors to give you the same chance of taking the town, but at the end, you'll only have 1 dead rather than 2 (on average). So you need fewer replacements.

2) Golden age. Once you start the fighting, you trigger your golden age, which allows you to get a production boost (and a gold boost, but that is not relevant). The Aztec golden age is purely a production boost for churning out Jag warriors more quickly (and you should plan for that - mine unshielded grassland rather than bonus grassland - mining bonus grassland is a waste right now because you don't get any extra benefit from the golden age). Most of your cities will be small, and with not many tiles improved. The golden age will reduce the Jag production time in a 2 shield city from 5 turns to 3 (and from 4 to 2, 3 to 2 in higher production cities). You can produce 50-100% more Jag warriors while the golden age lasts.

3) Fast movement. Since you tend to start off capturing towns close to you, and then move on to further away ones, this makes a difference - you need to overtake the front line as it moves away from you. The result here is that given equal production rates of Jag or normal warriors, the Jags get to the front line at a higher rate than the normal warriors (or, more pertinently, Jag warriors getting to the front in numbers advance the front line more rapidly than normal warriors can).

4) Scouting. As per the 'Triple threat' thread (see the 'must read' library), Jags act more or less as scouts, so you can find out where your victims live earlier, and get your army heading in the right direction earlier. So you can catch them with fewer defensive units.

5) More abstract: playing the Aztecs, and knowing you have to make the most of the window of opportunity you have, you tend to focus more on building Jags than you would with warriors, so you have a sufficiently large force to start a war earlier in the game than you would with normal warriors. At least for some people...

6) Leaders. If you are dedicated to churning out Jag warriors and using them, you probably have even odds (or better) of getting a great leader from your early warmongering, which is probably best spent on the Pyramids (finishing off your fighting with a sudden spurt of rapid city growth can set you up very nicely indeed).

My experience has been that normal warrior rushes tend to peter out quickly. You just can't keep a large enough force in the field to take more than one or two towns before you are forced on the defensive due to lack of healthy troops. The Jags on the other hand tend to increase in numbers as the war goes on, at least during the golden age phase, and it is not too hard to maintain their numbers for a protracted war even outside the golden age (unless you are fighting the Greeks or the Zulus of course, and you ought to stay well away from them unless there is no-one else to kill).

[Minmaster]

well it all depends on what difficulty you play with. on diety, it is just too hard to rush with jags when the AI starts the game with tons of units.

[joncnunn]

I'm actually just started a game and got assigned the Aztecs on the Emperor level. (I play Random civs.)

The Jaquar Warrior Tactic requires suitable map and oppoents.

My current map which happened to be a less water than normal + long windy pangena with all but 1 civ starting on it and the other within easy reach after Map Making turned out to be unsuitable for the Jauquar Rush because my nearest oppoent started too far away, I explored in the "wrong" direction with the first one produced, and the nearest oppoent happened to be the Irqouis.

(I was the western most civ in the Pangena, the eastern end of Pangena was within easy Galleon reach (seperated by a small isaland between the ends. I had initally exporled west. Distance between my capital and the Irqouis capital was 18 turns away from my Jaquar Warriors. In fact, I think this is almost ideal for the Irqouis Mounted Warriior Rush against the Aztecs.)

Those Jaquar Warriors though were handy in keeping the Irqouis from sneaking a civ past the lines I wanted and discovering another oppoent pre mapmaking.

I think there are better odds of having a suitable Jaquar Rush with the following options:

1. Culutre related started positions OFF. With this on, you almost have to pray you don't have a Zulu as a neighbor to use the Jaguar Warrior rush, and if the Irq are your neighbor, you need them closer by the others, becaue going up against Mounted Warriors with Jaquar Warriors is chancy at best.

2. Lots of water. This tightens up the civs.

Adaption to the lay of the land is the key to winning at Emperor & Diety levels against the AI. This is even more critical if you face human oppoents.

It's now the early middle ages in my game, I'm behind in techs and buying them as able to do as in typical in my Emperor level games at this point of the game. I have one more city location that's going to be very margina until the jungle is cleared out, but it's spacing won't infere with my other cities and it's settler is schuelded to be started in a few turns after the harbor in the city that's stuck on size 3 [for now] finishes. I just started building a Court House in the city I intend to be the FP.
(Currently 4 of the 6 shields there are wasted.)

I'm running a Monarchy until the roads to the other 2 luxaries in my territory are built so that a Repubilc will be feasible.

[Chemical Ollie]

I've only played Aztect once, and I thought Jags sucked. I lost perhaps 10 of them for every city I tried to take (guarded by spearmen).

[Brizey]

Olaf:

I agree. Fortified spearman on 10% terrain wins ~46% of the time. The JW retreats ~46% of the time and wins about 8% of the time. (Odds assume both are regular) You need a swarm of them to put a dent in spearman.

My suggestion is to hit a non-Scientific civ first and early. On Monarch, you will probably only face one spearman on a real early rush. Use the golden age to build up to ~40 JWs before hitting a spearman defended civ in two stacks of twenty. You should be able to take 4 to 5 cities. If you took 4 to 5 cities on the first rush, you should be sitting at 15 cities or so when everyone else has 6 or 7. Game over on Monarch or below.

Odds against regular warrior, fortified on 10% terrain:

JW wins: ~25%
Warrior wins: ~38%
JW retreats: ~37%

I find that JWs work great on Arch. maps. The long skinny landmasses enhance the advantage of a fast moving unit and allows you to concentrate on attacking.

One last thing: the inclusion of medinf really enhances the life of JWs.

[joncnunn]

Your Jag Rush started too late if you waitied until you had 10+ before you started to use them in battle on the Emperor level.

Time is against you, since as time passes, the AI starts building Spear Men instead of Warriors to escort the settlers to the new city site.

But see my other post, if it's going to take past a cerain point to even get a handful of Jaq Warriors out there, then your on the wrong map for the Jag Rush to succeed and should instead use REX tactics to quickly take over as much of the land between your two empires as possible. The Jaq Warriors will still have a role to play blocking that empire from sending interloping settlers thru in addition to being much cheaper to produce than other units and therefore making a faster REX.

Originally posted by Olaf Hårfagre
I've only played Aztect once, and I thought Jags sucked. I lost perhaps 10 of them for every city I tried to take (guarded by spearmen).

[Dominae]

The key to successfully using Jags is simply not to attack with them. A JW should not be considered a "retreating Warrior", but more of a "defensible Scout". With hordes of Jags pillaging the countryside, blocking Settlers and denying resources, your closest neighbour shoud be sufficiently weakned by the time your Horsemen arrive to be an easy conquest. From then on you can use them in the same role (as support for your real military) all the way up to Explorers, and often beyond.

Using this strategy, you do not necessarily need to trigger your GA all that early. Often, you actually want your Jag to run away from a battle so to avoid a victory. Once your GA begins, Jags should only be used offensively to ambush Archers and Horsemen in the open, or to take out that last HP on a Spearmen.

UUs that play a "support" role are not very popular, simply because they don't appear to "win you the game" like Immortals or Sipahi do. The Aztecs and the Zulus have very powerful UUs, but it takes experience to use the effectively.


Dominae

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by vulture
...or 'why the Jag rush is so much better than the plain warrior rush'.

6) Leaders. If you are dedicated to churning out Jag warriors and using them, you probably have even odds (or better) of getting a great leader from your early warmongering,

There is only a 1/16 chance for a Great Leader for each victorious, elite combat. Assuming every single elite combat is successful (a big stretch with an attack-one unit), then you should expect about one Great Leader for every 16 elite combats. But most combats are not with elite units, most units will probably start as regulars, promoting 1/12 per victory. There just aren't that many combats in the Ancient Age, and the number of elite units will probably be small.

The chance of a Great Leader during a Jaguar Rush is probably much lower than 50-50. However, you should always play for Great Leaders. They can happen anytime under the right circumstances.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Brizey
I agree. Fortified spearman on 10% terrain wins ~46% of the time. The JW retreats ~46% of the time and wins about 8% of the time. (Odds assume both are regular) You need a swarm of them to put a dent in spearman.

Actually, a regular Jaguar Warrior will put a "dent" in a fortified Spearman about half the time. Three such dents will usually defeat a Spearman.

[vulture]

Zachariel : okay, 50-50 was probably optimistic, but you need 10.7 elite victories to have a 50% chance of at least 1 great leader. That's a bit of a stretch for an early jag warrior war I admit. But when it does happen

As for No. of Jags needed to take a town, if you catch the AI early enough (defended by warriors) it is no problem. A little later you typically get cities defended by 1 spearman. Against a regular spearman fortified in a city on a plain, you have the following chances:

With regular Jag warriors

n prob losses
1: 15.8 % (0.46)
2: 39.8 % (0.84)
3: 61.8 % (1.12)
4: 77.6 % (1.29)
5: 87.7 % (1.40)
6: 93.5 % (1.45)
7: 96.7 % (1.48)

n is no. of Jag warriors, prob is the probability that you manage to kill the spearman, losses is the average number of Jags that get killed.

With veteran Jag warriors you get:

n prob losses
1: 25.6 % (0.38)
2: 57.3 % (0.66)
3: 79.4 % (0.82)
4: 91.1 % (0.90)
5: 96.4 % (0.93)

If you have 5 veteran Jags, you are very likely to take a town with a single defender, and will only have to replace 1 unit on average.

If anyone cares, the odds with a stack of elite Jags is:

n prob losses
1: 35.9 % (0.31)
2: 71.3 % (0.51)
3: 89.7 % (0.60)
4: 96.7 % (0.63)

For the record, normal warriors have slightly higher chances of taking the town, but suffer almost twice as many casualties as veteran Jags (e.g. 4 veteran warrios: 95% chance of winning, 1.7 units lost on average).

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by vulture
Zachariel : okay, 50-50 was probably optimistic, but you need 10.7 elite victories to have a 50% chance of at least 1 great leader. That's a bit of a stretch for an early jag warrior war I admit. But when it does happen

That's right. (I used the somewhat simpler calculation, Expected Value. I still have troubles doing Binomials in my head. )

"But when it happens" . . . it's sweet.

You should always try for Great Leaders, when the opportunity arises. Here is a typcial example from a recent game:


http://www.zachriel.com/gotm13/bc2470-Feathers.htm

[GusSmed]

Originally posted by vulture
If you have 5 veteran Jags, you are very likely to take a town with a single defender, and will only have to replace 1 unit on average.

That's in line with my experience. Folks talking about waiting for 10+ Jags being "too late", quoting stats with Regular Jaguar Warriors, or thinking that the time of the Jaguar Warrior is over when Spearmen show up: you're not using these guys to their full advantage.

Unless you're right next to another civ at start - which happens now and then - it's well worth it to build barracks and use veterans to attack. Typically, they're just too far away to attack when they've only got Warriors. Almost always I end up building a Jaguar rush like it's a Horseman rush, i.e. 4 towns, barracks in all, and 10 Jaguars in my first attack group.

10 Jags, as Vulture points out, are very likely to take out the normal 2 Spearmen in an AI town, and will take 20% losses (2 Jags) doing it. This is acceptable.

In fact, for those who seem to love Swordsmen, that's lower casualties than Swordsmen will take against fortified Spearmen. Veteran swordsman will take roughly 31% losses against fortified Regular Spearman on plains. The Jags will take more hit point losses, but those can be healed, unlike unit losses.

Jags take higher losses than Horsemen, but make up for it by being very cheap, 1/3rd the cost of a Horseman or Swordsman. In my experience, you keep builidng Jags until upkeep becomes a problem, and then you switch to a more expensive to build (but not maintain) unit.

- Gus

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by vulture
Why the Jaguar warrior rush works...or 'why the Jag rush is so much better than the plain warrior rush'.

To answer your specific question: Because of the higher movement rate of the Jaguar Warrior compared to the plain Warrior, you can find the enemy faster, deploy your forces quicker, and (hopefully) catch the enemy unprepared.

[Zero]

I always play as Aztecs but I rarely do a Jaguar Rush in SP. I use them as an armed scout and picking off barbarian camps to grow my treasury. Early GA isn't preferrable if your're playing with many players.

Just thoguht I'd add this since Aztecs are so MUCH more than just early rush civ