Dealing with Immortals

[kmad]

Early game, my neighbors are the Persians, let's assume I have no special unit available. They have Iron, I don't have a source of Iron reasonably close. I've got most of the early techs. Can I possibly defend against handfuls of Immortals better than with Spearmen, Horsemen and Archers? Or is it just a very expensive game of chess on my part?

[Frank Johnson]

Yeah, get them out in the open. Then you have to take the offensive. Get in a spot where your stack in on a hill or mountain, and their stack is in the clear. Attack them like crazy, then fortify the last few units. Enemy stacks are stupid....you can usually see their goal really easily.

Now if you are both out numbered and over powered...well.....sorry. ^_^ You need to at least be able to meet them in the feild. Idealy you assault them when their in the open with your own horses, or swordsmen if you can get them.

[dexters]

After the latest PTW patch, I'm not sure sure enemy stacks are as stupid as yoiu'd think they are.

First of all, at least in a border conflict, they no longer stack, and I've seen them spread out into several two man teamswith the offense even doing solo into several directions where opportunities present themselves.

In a recent game, the Aztecs launched a surprise attack and moved in pikeman into my territory, pillaging their way through, while their mobile knights and horsemen would pop in and out of their cities to pick off my forces. The use of a defensive unit to wreck havoc in the countryside is obvious. Their defensive advantage makes counterattacks much more difficult and dangerous for my forces. And in given my forces were stretched, I could ill afford sending my defenders to take out the pikeman units since they'd surely be picked off by the roaming mobile units.

granted this was a very specific circumstance, people really should give the AI more credit.

[kmad]

Yeah usually I have roads leading to different edges of my border, if for no other reason to be able to pick off invading Immortals before they make it near my cities.

I still attack in stacks.. I guard my offensive units with about half as many defensive units so I have my full attacking force when I make it to their area. Is that a good ratio? Depending on whether or not they expect me to be attacking?

Just to note, I almost only play against other humans.. so instead of a couple Immortals every 4 turns I get like, 12-16 Immortals concentrated in one stack.

[dexters]

The AI can do 12 to 16 immortals and more. Depends on their size, and difficulty setting.

But yeah, against a human player, they are more likely to exploit your weakness. And frankly, I think the best offense in this case is a good defense.

Pile up on Spearman + have a small army of Horseman around. Fortify your Spearman in strategic locations (on hills, key road junctions ( in stacks of 3 or 4 or more) Move your horseman out, to attack, and with their remaining mobility, them move them to your defensive positions in either your cities or your fortified spearman stacks.

This allows you to project your force beyond your cities and still keep them safe. And this will wear down their offense. Remember, while you horseman are in their stacks healing, his immortals aren't. And it may force him to attack your spearman stack, not knowing how large it is. If you can force him to do that, you may loose 1 or 2 spearman to his 3 or 4 immortals possibly more + damaged units. The stragglers are then easy pickings for you.

Just be sure to protect your road system. But frankly, if you are outmatched offensively, don't bother with 1 movement offensive units. Go exclusively chariots or horseman to harass the invaders.

This is not a one size fits all strategy, but you know, it is quite adaptable. The key idea here is to have nodes in strategic locations of your territories where you might not have a city. If you can rush workers to build forts, even better.

He really has only 2 options.

1) Bypass your nodes, in which case he may be forced to attack at a less desirable spot.

2) Go head on into it , in which case his offense will take a loss. The question now is, whether his invasion force and economy is large enough to overwhelm you numerically. If he can overwhelm you, then, it's really a more difficult game for you and you're looking to maybe retreating further inland to set up defensive postions in and around your cities to make it costly and time consuming for them to take it, while you get as many units produced as possible, and stretch their resupply lines.

While this is happening, you may then want to route a small force around the flanks of their attack and see if you can surpirse them.

Taking out fresh troops just as they come in to your territory in a scenario where it may take then 4 + turns to get to your cities will quickly weaken his offensive. He may be forced to withdraw and this gives you breathing room.

[CerberusIV]

Defensively you should use catapults. They miss a lot when bombarding enemy towns but seem to have a higher success rate against units in the open. Your border cities should contain at least two to four catapults and as many spearmen, more if you can support them. Bombard aggressively. You can bombard the Immortals after they move next to your city and then will automatically bombard them again as they attack. That can take 2 HP off an attacker. Walls, vet spearmen and barracks to heal quickly will do the rest, plus some horsemen to mop up damaged enemy units.

You can do something similar with fortifications at key points if you have construction. That forces the enemy to either assault your border fortifications or have his units damages as he marches past.

[Agathon]

The best way to deal with immortals is to play the Persians.

[Arrian]

A lot depends on the terrain. If your border with Persia is flat, then horsemen will do quite well against Immortals (who are, after all, just spearmen when they defend).

If you're looking at mountains & hills on that border, you're in for a nasty fight. Spearmen on the high ground will at the least make it painful for the Immortals to take the high ground, at best force them to march onto the flats where you can hit them with good odds.

-Arrian

[Agathon]

On a more serious note - try to get them to attack you in favourable terrain (like across a river). That's working for me in my current game. Or you could try to vandalise their trade network to stop them getting any iron (also worked for me).

Arrian, do mounted units have an advantage over foot units? I've noticed that my horsemen tend to perform much better than you would think for a unit with an attack of 2.

[Arrian]

Agathon,

Not that I know of, aside from their mobility. The RNG gods are sometimes kind.

I'm a big fan of horsemen. The key to using them is to use a large number of them in concert.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

I prefer to cripple Persia early if they are close and better yet if they are far away. Then I do not have to worry about Immortals as they will be obsolete.
I like horses against them in the open as well. I have had some very good results with Legionaires.

[GarP2]

I've had the most success with hitting the Persians en masse as early as possible, especially if they havent connected to the iron yet. I usually try to make this one of my highest priorities with a minimum of expansion preceding it if I see that I'm located next to them (which seems to happen quite a bit). I've had good luck doing this with the Babs bowmen rush when finding myself on a very small continent with the Persians, but I'll bet that horsemen would work well too.

[Ubergeek]

As per usual, especially when it concerns matters of war, Arrian is right IMO. Lure the Persians into the open and deluge them with horsemen, taking advantage of the retreat ability and wear them down. They're expensive, slow, and are mediocre on defense -- use the enemy's weakness against him. It's also true that hills and mountains make that MUCH harder to do...

[Arrian]

Obviously, it's best to hit the Persians before they connect iron. I was going on the assumption we were talking about Persians who already had Immortals.

They are, I assure you, quite mortal on defense. However, the smart Persian MPer would probably bring along several spearmen to eat up the horsie attacks while he marched towards your cities. Hence the need for lots of horsemen.

Long story short: it ain't fun fighting the Persians in the ancient age. Particularly if you cannot counter their GA with your own.

-Arrian

[Chemical Ollie]

I would use horsemen in numbers. Their speed and retreat ability is an advantage.

[Catt]

Don't forget one of the most valuable weapons against an Immortal invasion -- a robust road network. With immortals limited to one move in enemy territory and your units (even slow-movers) able to move three tiles (provided you've built the roads ), you've got a huge advantage on your side. Attack the Immortal stacks with either horsies or slow-movers, but if with slow-movers, make sure you can destroy / severely damage each individual stack or can defeat the last immortal with a fast-mover who will have moivement points after the attack -- with at most only your final victorious unit advancing - perhaps into a tile bordering additional immortals - you leave very, very few units subject to counterattack the next turn. As Arrian and others point out, fighting a "2" immortal (defense value) is a much better proposition than fighting a "4" immortal (attack value).

Catt

[MrWhereItsAt]

I had this problem recently - facing (as the Vikings from another landmass, sans Berzerker!) a strong Persia with Immortals. The combination of the above worked wonders. My captured cities (Carthaginian_ had good road networks, and I quickly use Horses to pillage the connections on their side of the border. Then I massed all my Swords, Spears, Catapults and Horses into a placewhere they travelled through - with one square between my stack and the border.

The Persians would move a stack of as much as 5 Immortals in to my lands. I would hit 'em with my 10+ Catapults and weaken them considerably, usually to 2Hp or more (especially by the time I had 20 Catapults there!). Then the Swords would attack and take as many out as possible, gaining lotsa promotions and the odd GL as they did so. The last Immortal/unit there I would hit with Horses until it died, then the Horse would move back safe to the stack. Even if I felt that I couldn't risk the attack on one or two (non-Immortals), the damage would be sufficient to cause the remainder to withdraw to heal. All that was left was to establish a small crappy city nearby with barracks where my troops could retreat to heal.

This was glorious. I must have taken down 20 Immortals this way, and all the while my troops kept massing there (almost no losses). When the tide stopped for a turn, I marched forward - I lost a unit or two in the counterattack, but with so many there it was nothing. I kept this up until I reached a city, then with so many Catapults it was easy to take it and hold it. Bang! No more Iron city for Persia and they fell to pieces.

[Jon Shafer]

Mobility, mobility, mobility.

Mounted Warriors or Gallic Swordsmen used effectively are many more times deadly than Immortals. On the same note, you have to use mobility to defeat them. Your road network is pivotal, as are Horsemen and well-placed Spearmen.