AU 206: Gallic Glory - Stories and Strategy Tips

[badams52]

Now where was I? Oh yeah, Persia had just declared war on me so I opened up a can of whoop a$$ and destroyed them as fast as my Jaguar Warr-...uh...Gallic Swordsmen would conquer their cities. Once I got them down to 1 coastal in the midst of jungle city, I called 'em up on the phone, uh, I mean I sent an advisor to their last city and said I'll give you peace for your map and the knowledge of construction, they agreed, and we won't hear much from the Persians for a while.

[badams52]

Then I went into a quick peace mode before Rome dialed us up and said, give us literature or give us death. We said, "death." Since India was between us, we spent a tech and gold to have India enter an alliance with us to destroy...uh...get destroyed by the Romans while we sat on our haunches and watched. We kept a close watch and saw that China was settling the isle to the west and getting close to hooking up their closest iron.

Meanwhile, word got around that America grabbed the GL, France the Great Lighthouse (GL ) and Russia nabbed the Oracle. We ponder for a moment wondering where these societies might be then forget about it and tell China, "okay, you've settled enough cities, time for me to take back the land I loaned ya."

We quickly take China's cities off their hands, veteran GS vs. regular spearmen = no contest and we now own the Pyramids After releiving China from ruling our cities, we sue for peace and just look at the deal they give us leaving China with just one city on the island they settled for us

And finally near the end of the war one of our 10+ elites finally breaks through and creates our first leader. Though feudalism = sun tzu's was just a few turn away from being known, and though our Palace and FP are very, very close together, I don't see a great new spot for the palace so it was GS Army time

Meanwhile, Rome is still fighting India! We had hoped that India would have signed a peace deal with Rome after we nulled our alliance, but Rome just kept coming. I guess it's time to use our newly created Gallic army and take some territory from the Indians before it's all gone.


And if you look closely, you can see how close our suicide galley was to finding another continent!

And it's only 410 AD!

[Catt]

RE:Attitude Hits and Auto-Razing

I'm not convinced that there is any attitude or reputation hit associated with an auto-raze (other than any hit related to warfare in general). I've never seen a Firaxis statement that auto-razing causes a disproportionate hit, and I see nothing in Bamspeedy's tests to indicate that there is a "razing hit" (though I'd love the link to Bamspeedy's view that Firaxis said a hit comes about on an auto-raze). The only Firaxis comment on "razing" ingeneral that I have seen is that using the "abandon city" command is equivalent to razing an enemy city if the abandoned city had more foreign nationals than native citizens. I'd love to be corrected, though!

Catt

[badams52]

Well Catt,

If I had PTW, I'd test it for you. Maybe someone else here who has debug would be willing to give it a test.

[Jawa Jocky]

Critical Errors of the Celtic People

They tried to REX w/o granaries. Growth was too slow and all of the cities where small. The Iron city was going to be a settler pump, but they needed to have one a lot earlier.

They committed the Celts to GS upgrades then built an expensive veteran warrior army. They should have built a bunch of archers instead. When upgrading became available they had little gold saved.

They left the Southern flank exposed. They invited the Persians to come over.

[nbarclay]

My plans for an Arrian Deception proved not to be necessary after all. Just as I was preparing to launch a war on Persia in violation of treaty, Persia decided to move into my lands and declare war rather than leave. Xerxes' brand-new pikemen proved to be insufficient defense against my thirty-eight Gallic swordsmen, and he is now living in exile on an island he shares with some Roman cities and some cities I acquired through peace negotiations with India and Persia. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a leader from that conflict.

By the time that war ended, my peace treaty with India was approaching expiration. India's three cities on the mainland fell in short order, getting me my third leader and my forbidden palace (rushed in an Indian city a little southeast of my capital). Eventually, I'm planning to move my palace to the other continent. Ghandi is now living in exile on another island, with Rome as his neighbor.

In the meantime, the Celtic Galley Corps was hard at work trying to find other lands. I lost about four galleys doing it, but I finally got through to France in 420 AD. The tech levels on the two continents were extremely similar, but with Rome in Monarchy and America and Russia in Republic (and me owning the Great Library), I now have a one-tech lead on Rome without having done any of my own research in centuries. That leaves me with over 1600 gold for future upgrades in spite of having rushed a small number of courthouses.

Here's a current map as of 460 AD. Unfortunately, as often seems to be the case in zoom mode, not all of the city names are showing.

Edit: Rome has one city on my side of the chokepoint connecting Roman lands with the rest of the continent. Everything north of that on the continent is mine.

Nathan

[Catt]

Originally posted by Catt
I'm not convinced that there is any attitude or reputation hit associated with an auto-raze (other than any hit related to warfare in general). I've never seen a Firaxis statement that auto-razing causes a disproportionate hit, and I see nothing in Bamspeedy's tests to indicate that there is a "razing hit" (though I'd love the link to Bamspeedy's view that Firaxis said a hit comes about on an auto-raze).

Originally posted by badams52
If I had PTW, I'd test it for you. Maybe someone else here who has debug would be willing to give it a test.

I tested it myself this morning. One very brief test, so I can't call it conclusive.

Sure looks to me like auto-razing results in an attitude hit just as if you affirmatively decided to raze. I tested this by comparing enemy and netural civ attitudes in three diffeent circumstances: (1) 5-turn war with an autoraze; (2) 5-turn war with a city capture (no raze); and (3) 5-turn war with a deliberate raze (not an auto-raze). The auto-raze and deliberate raze games resulted in more or less identical attitude adjustments. The capture game resulted in significantly less attitude deterioration in the enemy (and the slight [-1] improvement in neutral civ attitude). Absent compelling evidence that reputation is treated differently (i.e., difference in degree of rep hit if deliberate raze or auto-raze), I'd guess auto-razing is treated just like razing for purposes of reputation as well (assuming that there is actually a discrete reputation effect wrt razing).

Firaxis has been pretty good, not great, about how reputation and attitude are handled -- i.e., for the most part, effects on player attitudinal and reputational standing are largely within control of the player. Not in this case and that is At least the attitude hit among all but the "razee" civs is very minor . . . still The player really shouldn't be so disadvantaged by a "feature" that requires an auto-raze without player input.

Catt

[badams52]

Actually, now that I think of it, taking a rep hit for autoraze isn't that bad, though it's not very logical. Let me explain.

Usually you autoraze a city during the early expansion and early war phase of the game. It is quite notable that you will get a huge advantage later in the game if you conquer early. So having less than happy rival civs is fair retribution for your early conquering days. Besides, there's always the Arrian deception

Though my guess is, when the patch came out that made auroraze happen, they didn' t have a way in the code to distinguish between autoraze and raze, thus a rep hit.

[Catt]

Originally posted by badams52
Actually, now that I think of it, taking a rep hit for autoraze isn't that bad, though it's not very logical. Let me explain.

Usually you autoraze a city during the early expansion and early war phase of the game. It is quite notable that you will get a huge advantage later in the game if you conquer early. So having less than happy rival civs is fair retribution for your early conquering days. Besides, there's always the Arrian deception

Except that worrying about attitude (as opposed to rep) should be so very far down one's worry list, that I can't imagine foregoing early conquest where it makes sense out of fear for one's attitude standing. The implementation simply means attitude should be pushed still farther down the list of worries, making it darn near irrelevant (at least to those who haven't already concluded that it is irrelevant ).

Though my guess is, when the patch came out that made auroraze happen, they didn' t have a way in the code to distinguish between autoraze and raze, thus a rep hit.

I'd go with that guess as well. When I wrote my post, I couldn't remember for certain whether or not "auto-raze" had been implemented in a patch -- I thought it had bt wasn't certain. I would have added to my rant against this implementation had I been certain that it only came into play somewhere along the line of patching.

First there was no auto-raze; then there was auto-raze if size 1 and no border expansion; now (PTW - can't remember about v1.29) there is auto-raze if size 1 and no culture at all (regardless of border expansion has occured). Either all these changes regarding auto-razing are coming about by accident ( ), or the Firaxis team mst be convinced that they are addressing game balance issues somehow.

Catt

[Artifex]

I forgot ..does razing a city hurt your reputation in the world? If so do you all raze or not?

[Chemical Ollie]

Gallic Swordsmen frenzy! At the end of the war, I had 3 armies with 4 GS each.

[nbarclay]

I'm not sure I've ever deliberately razed a city. But my reasons are at least as much along the lines of, "I'm conquering these people so I can build up their cities as part of my empire, not so I can destroy their cities," as they are a matter of any cold, cynical calculation of which will serve my purposes better in the game. (Although I do like the idea of taking over cities with population and non-cultural improvements intact so I don't have to worry about building settlers and then building up the cities myself.)

[Chemical Ollie]

Monarch level is more beatable.

Rome declared war. I made an alliance and RoP with India to keep the busy while finishing off the last of Persia. Persepolis held Pyramids and Lighthouse, which proved to be useful later.

I sent a SOD with 2 Gallic Swordsmen armies plus 20 more of them through Indian territory to attack Rome. I came just in time to see the Romans capture an Indian city, which of course became mine in the next turn, and stayed mine for the rest of the game.

After sending replacement troops, I mopped up and blocked Rome behind their chokepoint. Just to make sure, I built a city on each side of the chokepoint to secure my bridghead. They were now willing to make peace.

Time to install republic and start building some peaceful city improvements after ages of war. I also sent a galley over the ocean. With the Lighthouse captured from Persia, it sailed right into Paris. I was about half an age behind the others in tech and had nothing to trade (except contact with Rome, which I wanted to keep for myself). I choosed to set my own research pattern strait to military tradition. Chemistry was the nutcracker that made them want to give me other tech and nice GPT deals.

Instead of researching physics asap, I started to save gold to upgrade all my troops and rush improvents. India made a very ill-timed move and declared war right after my unit upgrades were complete. They were toast in perhaps 10 turns. Gallic Swordsmen were still useful aginst their war elephants, even if cavallery of course were better. Rome joined the Indian side, so now I have a chance to make the whole continent mine.



I hold everything down to the chokepoint connecting Rome, and I just pillaged Rome's only horse tile.

[Arrian]

*yawn* Hey all.

Without doing the testing Catt has done, I'm almost positive that autoraze lowers the AI's attitude toward you. I agree that's a bit off, and would be pleased if it were fixed somehow.

I didn't end up playing any civ this weekend. Lots of skiing and driving. Soooo sleeeepy.

I hope to complete the conquest of mainland Rome tonight, and make the switch to republic.

-Arrian

[Nor Me]

Not much to say really. I decided archer rushing was unnecessarily risky when I could REX . I should probably have archer rushed China but at that stage did not know that there was no land bridge connecting them to Persia. I researched pottery, did a bit of trading and waited for a 40-turn Iron Working. I was a bit worried about the vulnerability of the nearest source of iron.
Once I'd secured that, it was just a question of upgrading some warriors and attacking. Like almost everyone else I did not Ralph. Like badams52, I used a more pragmatic OCP+camp. I don't think I ever had more than half camps so I had the same density as most 3-tilers.

[Nor Me]

From that screenshot, I attacked China razed those cities, got a leader and made peace. That was a 4 turn war. I researched Mathematics, rushed the Pyramids and attacked India. I made peace with India , attacked Persia, made peace with the Persians and asked the Chinese to leave my teritory triggering war. From that war, I got 2 leaders, giving me the FP and a gallic swordsman army. Rome declared war on me and I paid Gandhi to defend me. the Persians also decided to join in. I left the Chinese on 2 cities for the usual tech.
This 150AD minimap hardly looks out of place:

[Nor Me]

Originally posted by alexman
A Veteran Gallic Swordsman attacking a fortified regular spearman wins 66% of the time, and retreats 18% of the time. The expected loss of shields is 0.16*50=8.

A Veteran Swordsman attacking a fortified regular spearman wins 70% of the time. The expected loss of shields is 0.3*30=9

So on average, you lose more shields by attacking with regular swordsmen than you do with Gallic Swordsmen, even if the latter cost 50 shields compared to 30!

But this results in Gallic Swordsmen doing less damage. So you need more of them. You would probably lose at least as many shields worth of Gallic Swordsmen taking the same city because of this.
It certainly means that you need a high shield/gold investment to do anything with the Gallic Swordsmen.

In this game, I was able to use overwhelming force most of the time. But given a worse start, ordinary swordsmen would be much better. This is why I disagree with Arrian and nbarclay about the Celts having good traits for the swordsmen. While the Iroquois might be improved by Militaristic, the celts would definately be better as Industrious or Expansionistic. As it is, they might be in trouble in harder games than this one. Of course, if either had the option of giving up Religious...

[Chemical Ollie]

I am about to destroy all civs in my part of the world even before the Amaricans and French make contact with them! The Russians are gone too, killed by Americans.

This was a close call however. Look at the American galley that almost reached Roman land before I conquered it. I hope they don't find the last Roman city before I take it (on the island to the south west).

Sorry for the messy screenshot. I'm not that used to edit things in MS Paint.

[alexman]

Originally posted by Nor Me
But this results in Gallic Swordsmen doing less damage. So you need more of them. You would probably lose at least as many shields worth of Gallic Swordsmen taking the same city because of this.
It certainly means that you need a high shield/gold investment to do anything with the Gallic Swordsmen.

While it is certainly true that GS do less damage than swordsmen because they retreat before their job is done, I still think they are more cost-efficient than swordsmen.

Look at the ratio of the expected shields lost, to the expected HP damage caused to the defender. This gives you a number for shields lost per damage caused, and should be a better indicator of the cost-efficiency of units:

(All veteran, versus fortified spearman on plains.
Values are expected shields lost / HP damage caused)
Warrior: 6.17
Archer: 4.67
Swordsman: 3.62
Horseman: 4.05
Gallic Sword: 3.42
Immortal: 2.00
Mounted Warrior: 2.05
Jaguar Warrior: 3.35
Gallic Sword (40 cost): 2.73

Obviously, the lower the loss ratio, the more cost-effective the unit. Persia and the Iroquois have the most amazing UUs, but they are not militaristic. Militaristic civs with ancient-age offensive UU like the Aztecs and the Romans hava a loss ratio of around 3.5. Making the GS cheaper would put its loss ratio lower than those militaristic civs, and thus would probably be too good of a unit.

In any case, Nor Me, you are right that GS are best used in overwhelming forces, just as horsemen, or an even Jaguar Warriors. I just still think that the current cost is fine for the GS, given that it belongs to a militaristic civ. Even if it is not fine, it's along the lines of the rest of the ancient units in the game.

[Chemical Ollie]

My plan to kill all neighbours before they made contact with the other continent worked!

Edit: I tried to change the attached picture but it didn't work and eventually disappeared. I have to post it again!

[Chemical Ollie]

[badams52]

Good job Olaf!!! I didn't finish off the Romans, Indians, Chinese and Persians as easily as you did so I ended up selling all contacts to the other civs for profit

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by badams52
Good job Olaf!!! I didn't finish off the Romans, Indians, Chinese and Persians as easily as you did so I ended up selling all contacts to the other civs for profit

I started with 2 lost games on emperor level, so I'm kinda cheating by playing the same map on monarch level now. Doing better than usually however. I think the extremely early single-archer attack on China started the chain of positive events leading to the current position.

I have 2/3 of the land mass, all 8 luxuries (3 by trade), just installed democracy and France just declared war on America, which means they will both stall in the tech race in the early part of the industrial era.

[Chemical Ollie]

See here, the Americans had no contact with the Romans right before I killed them. My slate will be clean (first time ever I accomplished that!)

[Nor Me]

Originally posted by alexman
While it is certainly true that GS do less damage than swordsmen because they retreat before their job is done, I still think they are more cost-efficient than swordsmen.

Look at the ratio of the expected shields lost, to the expected HP damage caused to the defender. This gives you a number for shields lost per damage caused, and should be a better indicator of the cost-efficiency of units:

(All veteran, versus fortified spearman on plains.
Values are expected shields lost / HP damage caused)
Warrior: 6.17
Archer: 4.67
Swordsman: 3.62
Horseman: 4.05
Gallic Sword: 3.42
Immortal: 2.00
Mounted Warrior: 2.05
Jaguar Warrior: 3.35
Gallic Sword (40 cost): 2.73

Obviously, the lower the loss ratio, the more cost-effective the unit. Persia and the Iroquois have the most amazing UUs, but they are not militaristic. Militaristic civs with ancient-age offensive UU like the Aztecs and the Romans hava a loss ratio of around 3.5. Making the GS cheaper would put its loss ratio lower than those militaristic civs, and thus would probably be too good of a unit.

In any case, Nor Me, you are right that GS are best used in overwhelming forces, just as horsemen, or an even Jaguar Warriors. I just still think that the current cost is fine for the GS, given that it belongs to a militaristic civ. Even if it is not fine, it's along the lines of the rest of the ancient units in the game.

I looked at your earlier results again. I love the way a 0.7 shield advantage is rounded to 1.
The trouble is that against a 2hp fortified spearman, the swordsman has an expected loss of 4.7 shields wile the Gallic Swordsman has one of 5.6 shields. That's a marginally bigger difference in the opposite direction. Gallic Swordmen retreating are likely to leave a few 2hp spearmen around.
All this is academic, the big difference in losses in practice is from counterattack by freshly built units on roads.
The Celts being militaristic gives them more leaders but this is normally only relevant if they have that overwhelming force. It doesn't really help them get more GSs out early.
I have never advocated a cost reduction for the GS. I voted for leaving it alone. But it is a bad UU for a bad start.
In this game I had higher losses with the GS than I would with swordsmen. But being able to get the gains from war much faster meant warmongering was a far better option than for most civs. I won't argue with 3 leaders and 3 crippled civs.

[alexman]

Nor Me, there is no rounding in the sword/GS comparison, but there might be some error because I wasn't calculating the odds analytically. I was using Zachriel's calculator, which is really a simulator.

But even if there is some small error, I think we agree with the fact that Gallic Swordsmen are about as cost-effective as regular swordsmen, which is just fine for a militaristic civ.

BTW, Militaristic doesn't give you more leaders, it gives you more promotions, which means less losses from counterattacks because of the increased HP and the increased retreat odds.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Nor Me

[Edit: This crossposted with Nor Me's and Alex's next posts.]

But this results in Gallic Swordsmen doing less damage. So you need more of them. You would probably lose at least as many shields worth of Gallic Swordsmen taking the same city because of this.
It certainly means that you need a high shield/gold investment to do anything with the Gallic Swordsmen.

In a limited campaign, Gallic Swordsmen require a larger investment. To take one city, you need at least as many GS's as you would regular swordsmen, maybe more because of the retreat ability (although the fact that retreat costs the enemy possible promotions at least partially offsets the reduction in damage caused). So if you just want to trim a single enemy back a little, you can definitely do the job a whole lot cheaper with conventional swordsmen.

But in a sustained campaign, either against one opponent or oscillating among multiple opponents, the Gallic Swordsman has several advantages.

1) Lower replacement costs due to higher survivability.

2) A higher percentage of elites and more leaders generated, since elites don't automatically die if they lose.

3) Shorter times to capture the same amount of territory.

4) Quicker transit times to go from one front to another when changing opponents.

5) Less war weariness under Republic to conquer a given amount of territory, due both to shorter wars and to lower casualty rates.

6) [Edit: I forgot this one] Less time for the enemy to build forces, upgrade forces, and gain technology for better forces during a war.

Also, the higher up-front cost of Gallic Swordsmen is made up for in higher back-end value. Left-over swordsmen, even if upgraded to medieval infantry, have a hard time playing a useful role in a knight campaign and an almost impossible time playing a useful role in a cavalry campaign. (At least that's certainly true with the kind of blitzes with overwhelming force that I tend to use.) In contrast, left-over Gallic Swordsmen are just as fast as knights and can play the same "clean-up" and "attack the counterattackers" roles that I often use left-over elite knights for in cavalry operations playing other civs.

I certainly don't regard the Gallic Swordsman at 50 shields as one of the greatest UUs in the game. But why should he be? What inherent right does he have to be better than average, or even to be as good as average, as UUs go? As it is, he's fairly middle-of-the-road, not nearly as good as the Chinese Rider (in my opinion) but still a big step up from the Man-of-War, the F-15, or the standard-rules version of the Musketeer. Which tells me Firaxis did a fairly good job of balancing him.

[/quote]In this game, I was able to use overwhelming force most of the time. But given a worse start, ordinary swordsmen would be much better. This is why I disagree with Arrian and nbarclay about the Celts having good traits for the swordsmen. While the Iroquois might be improved by Militaristic, the celts would definately be better as Industrious or Expansionistic. As it is, they might be in trouble in harder games than this one. Of course, if either had the option of giving up Religious... [/QUOTE]

With the kinds of starts where the Celts have trouble now, barring great luck with an early settler from a hut, they'd do a lot worse with Expansionistic instead of Militaristic. If the Celts have plenty of room to expand early, they'll do fine without the Expansionistic trait (at least as long as Iron is available; otherwise, the whole UU issue is irrelevant). If they don't have plenty of room, cheap barracks and early archers can often let them deal with the problem without waiting for Gallic Swordsmen and without having to blow their GA under Despotism if they don't want to. I'd gladly trade either of the civ's traits for Industrious, but given that Firaxis isn't going to make all the civs in the game Industrious, I think the Celts have a good synergy.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alexman

BTW, Militaristic doesn't give you more leaders, it gives you more promotions, which means less losses from counterattacks because of the increased HP and the increased retreat odds.

More promotions means more battles involving elites instead of veterans, which means (on average) more leaders. The effect is indirect, but that doesn't make it any less real.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
I certainly don't regard the Gallic Swordsman at 50 shields as one of the greatest UUs in the game. But why should he be? What inherent right does he have to be better than average, or even to be as good as average, as UUs go?

This was my point when this whole debate started. I'm just glad to see I'm not the only one on my side...! The Gallic Swordsmen promised to be before PTW came out, and on paper continues to promise to be, a dominant UU. That is no reason to turn it into one.


Dominae

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Arrian
*snip* ...I'm vaguely concerned about America "over there" builing the Sistine - so I want Monotheism quickly too.
*snip*
-Arrian

Ok, I fired my game up (400AD) and continued my methodical destruction of the Romans. I researched Feudalism first, and rush Sun Tzu immediately. I then researched Engineering & Invention and rushed Leo's immediately. I then traded Engineering to Persia for Monotheism and started on Theology.

One turn into that research, I was notified that "The Americans have completed the Sistine Chapel in Washington." Apparently, the Americans have a deathwish.

Anyway, that very turn I generated another leader, and I held him for Bach's. Just before rushing Bach, though, I traded Music Theory to the overseas civs for gunpowder & some cash (suicide galley run #3 was a success).

Rome has 3 cities (all offshore). Persia has 2. India has 1 or 2. Oh, yeah! China! Almost forgot about them. Over the course of several turns, I upgraded my vet horsemen to knights (approx 10-15 of them) and then unleashed them on Mao, along with my 3xGS army and other remnants. Happily, 2 turns prior to my attack, Mao's source of iron culture flipped to me. Not that it would have mattered much, since the iron supply was routed through the remnants of Persia, and I got the Persians to ally with me.

It is 900AD, and I'm still running a Monarchy, but as my southern empire gets built up a little more and my campaign vs. China winds down, I will switch to republic. I'm researching Astonomy (the Americans are the only civ that has it, otherwise I'm even in tech), after which the plan is to beeline for Smith's. I have a city (the one I built up on the river by the iron using the settler I got from the hut) that has been building a Palace for centuries and centuries. That city is now actually nearing completion (20 turns). Switching to a university (160 shields) would waste 495 shields, meaning he has built up 655 I figured I might not get all the leaders necessary to rush every medieval wonder, but have so far been wrong (though had I gotten the Sistine, perhaps that city would have built Bach). Considering the geography, however, I'm considering just allowing the Palace to complete. What do you think? Would that be better Palace/FP positioning?

-Arrian