| Subject: Forward Bases & Balancing Attacking vs. Economy |
Author:
Ldr
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Date Posted: 18:52:15 06/15/02 Sat
Forward Bases & Balancing Attacking vs. Economy
Here are some of my thoughts on forward bases and how to keep your econ going while building a forward base:
Here are my overall thoughts on balancing attack vs. econ - it is all relative to your opponent and you need to get better bang for your buck than your opponent. First, generally your goal is to have a better econ than your opponent and thereby be able to create more/better military units in the end and destroy him. Therefore, with that in mind, resources spent on anything besides economic growth need to have a definite impact on your opponents economy. For example if I create 10 knights and attack my opponent and all those knights run into a castle and get killed then I am in trouble even though my base is still untouched. The reason being is that I took
500 food and 500 gold (approx cost to build 10 knights) away from my econ growth with no impact on my opponent. In the meantime my opponent only spent 650 stone (although this was needed anyway to get to imperial so doesn't really count) and spent the rest on his econ and now at the end of my attack has a stronger economy than me. However, if those 10 knights killed 10 villagers and stopped the majority of my opponent's resource production (because he had to hide
them in his TC) than I may be well ahead in econ, especially if my opponent in a panic builds 20 pikemen to fend off the knights who are still alive. The key is to efficiently hurt your opponents econ, in other words use the minimum amount of military units/buildings to do the most amount of damage to his econ. This can also work even if you don't hurt his econ - if you send in 3 lt cavs to raid and he responds by building 15 pikemen and 5 knights that stay at home for protection you have won that battle because you have spent less resources. The reason more experienced players attack early so often is that they know that versus less experienced players they can do
much more damage then it will cost them in resources (much of this is due to panic, stop building villies, easy villie kills, etc.)
Eagle, to put this in the context of our game, I think you spent resources on 5 lt cavs, 5-10 camels, 4-6 rams (very expensive), some pikemen and multiple forward offensive buildings (from memory) but only ended up killing 4 knights and 4 or 5 villagers of mine (I think). This was mostly caused by my castle protection. In response I built several knights, and put the rest into my econ and heading to imperial. It wasn't that you didn't balance your econ vs. your military, it was that the money spent on your military (and therefore not on your econ) didn't pay dividends in either reducing my econ or forcing me to spend similar resources on counter units/buildings. As a result, my econ was stronger than yours and I was able to go imperial long before you and use 2 trebs under castle cover to destroy your forward base which was very efficient. Since my econ
was stronger at that point I then was able to build a greater imperial force and attack your base.
Farther down, I give some details on how to get greater bang for your buck from military units/forward bases.
Forward Bases Generally:
I generally think there are two types of forward bases, #1 is to put direct pressure on your opponents base, for example building a castle or towers near their stone and gold piles. The other, #2, is to create a base for launching an attack on an opponents base from a little ways away but closer than your own base.
#1 type of forward base should be placed very close to the opponents base where it can put immediate pressure on his base econ. This can be done in feudal or castle. In feudal it can consist of towers, barracks and ranges, in castle it can consist of castle, towers, ranges, barracks, siege buildings, etc. The primary goal here is to move into their base and disrupt their economy, i.e. move the fighting to their base and make him move his villies. An excellent way to do this is to castle drop within range of their resources as soon as they hit castle and then place a siege building within cover of the castle and pump out rams under cover of castles. Note: Rams
are only good under two occasions - 1 if they have cover from castle/towers or significant amount of archers or 2 they are clearing buildings from an already retreating opponent. Otherwise they are easily beaten by infantry or cavalry. You just can't march into a persons base with a couple rams and expect to knock down buildings, similar to onagers they need to be supported heavily.
#2 type of forward base should be placed mid-way between your opponent and you (preferably directly between you and him). The reason for this is that you want your forward base to intercept his forces as they come to your base and thereby keep the pressure/fighting away from your base. The reason for building such a base is to move fighting away from your econ base, have your attack troops closer to his base, strategically control more of the map, and exert control over some of the in-between resources. Consider this base as an aircraft carrier where attack units are launched from to hit your opponents base. I normally start with two or three military buildings the type of which depends on my civ. For example if I am Briton I would build two ranges and a stable. I'm not concerned about siege because by the time I want to knock down buildings I plan on jumping to imperial and bringing trebs. After I have some forces up I put down a castle just for protection of the forward base and any retreating attack forces.
What to do with forward bases:
Goal #1 is disrupt economy - if you are raiding: keep your cavs moving, don't attack buildings that is too slow and ineffective (no bang for your buck), go around to all the gold and stone piles and to
the wood piles and hit any unprotected villagers - don't engage any military units unless it is a clear win (fighting pikemen with lt cavs is very low bang for your buck). Stay away from the TC, if he has pikemen, retreat and immediately start producing some archery units and come back with them. If he brings his villies into his TC then, just place your raiders near his wood pile or gold pile so that he has to move his operations or follow up with towers/castle (any time his villies are hiding in his TC you are getting bang for your buck because your villies are resource gathering and his aren't).
Goal #2 depends, if you are successful in disrupting his econ, which could mean he suddenly stops building villies and builds mass pikemen or you kill 4 to 10 villies or he bottles up and stops growing then I do one of two things - a) stop attacking, continue to grow your econ and head to imperial because your econ is now stronger than his b) drop a castle near his resources and imperial jump --> the aim here is to put trebs down under cover of the castle and hit his base
forcing him to try to attack your trebs while being hit by castle fire. He will lose mass units which he can't replace because his econ is already depleted and then won't have the resources to go
imperial. c) send in occasional harassment forces to keep the pressure and fool him into spending resources on soon to be obsolete castle military units - pikemen etc. in the meantime you grow your econ and go imperial and come back in force with an imperial force. d) If you aren't successful at hurting his econ then you are behind economically and need to make some tough choices - either retreat and concentrate on building your econ or change your attack so it is
effective, don't just send more of the same units because you are just putting yourself farther behind.
Balancing Econ with Attacking: Resources are finite so you have to balance them. set priorities - #1 keep producing villies, I can't stress this enough, especially to myself and I sometime look down during an attack and see my TC idle, if you are concentrating too much on your attack and you forget to continuously pump out villies you will run out of resources, after all the whole idea of attacking is to slow his econ while yours grows untouched until the point in which you are capable of out massing his forces totally, #2 do more with less - for example in Sunday's game prior to going imperial I built 5 knights, 1 TC and a castle. That's all, because the knights were able to hit the rams I saw coming and the castle covered everything else. In the meantime Eagle had built multiple rams (very expensive), 5-10 pikes, 5-10 camels (very expensive) and 5 lt cavs. The answer - - build attack/defensive structures over extra offensive units and offensive unit buildings, what I mean is put down castles and TC when defending and when attacking. One of the best ways to make your resources last longer is to attack and defend with castles/TCs. Very often I see players lose large amounts of castle age units to castle and TC arrow fire. To take this farther if you are attacking an opponent in early castle and you see he has multiple TC or a castle up then you know it will be a treb battle. You can still harass his far out villies but most likely you aren't going to hurt his econ very much so then it is a race to imperial - first one to get trebs will win. What I do when I see my opponent has a castle up or multiple TCs is to throw down a castle nearby - overlapping gold and stone mines are a bonus and rush to imperial. If I get there first, my opponent is in trouble because you just can't stop trebs under cover of a castle (you can but it costs tons of resources which is a win for your opponent). Also, you can use rams but only under cover of a castle which limits their range.
Finally, sorry this is so long: Tips to get the most bang for your buck in attack or defense in the feudal/castle age:
1) Don't fight under fire of your opponents castles/towers - reverse is also true, try to get your opponent to fight under your castle/towers. (there are occasions when you have to do this but
they are rare)
2) Don't attack or defend unless you can win - don't send 5 camels vs. 20 arbalests - most likely you will lose all of your forces without even killing 1 arbalest. Retreat until you can mass force or
find a place where your smaller forces can make an impact.
3) Don't use support/siege units without proper support/protection. Siege units are expensive and fragile a deadly combo - even they can be deadly when supported by the proper units. This is true for all of the siege units - scorps, onagers, rams, trebs and bomb cannons.
4) Don't get caught building the wrong units, pikemen and camels are very weak versus massed archers and archers are weak vs. knights etc. Scout your opponent and know what units he is building, you can guess somewhat by his civ.
Those 4 things are simple but every game I see someone lose because of them
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