I tend not to use GG for the purposes of war, I find that they either:
A) don't bring much of an added bonus to military units, or are difficult to position to influence enough units
B) spawn so far from the battle, it can take an age for them to reach it, during which time they are vulnerable to the enemy
I tend simply to use them to launch a golden age, nothing more. Has anyone else found a more effective strategy?
Regards
Skybird
Yes, I think their combat bonus should be bigger.Originally Posted by Skybird
They are tricky to manoeuvre but there's gameplay in that so I'm cool about it.
Haven't really found that so I guess I mildly disagree.
Not saying it's right but I always keep 1, maybe 2 and burn any more over that.
And there remains the problem the AI can't handle them effectively. Too difficult I think.
I use a Great General (GG) with my Army wherever possible. I keep one with my warring army and one in reserve for any defensive action. Every little bit helps especially when you are trying to hang on to get that full heal promotion. If you position your Army in a way with using a Great General in mind you should easily be able to provide to bonus to any unit that may be attacked.
Here is a little tip on using GG: The bonus is given to any unit that begins an attack within two hexes of a GG. So you can start two hexes from the GG and attack two hexes away from that and still get the bonus even if the location of the battle is not within two hexes of the GG.
You can also launch some attacks using the GG bonus and then move the GG to cover a nearby unit and have it also attack with the bonus. One you learn some of these nuances to the bizarre mechanics of the GG they are vastly more useful in the field than as a golden age. Depending on empire size chances are you hardly make enough extra gold and production in a golden age to purchase/produce one current combat unit, so if the GG helps two or even one unit survive he was better used in the field.
I've been fond of Darius lately and Darius may be an exception with his Golden Age bonusses. "In the field" Darius' +1 movement gives you a lot of battle buffs. For example you can move cannon/set up/fire in one turn.
That is an awesome bonus, true. One factor that you would have to consider also is if you are going to use other Great People for your golden ages. Sometimes due to Wonders, or City state bonuses or something I can't avoid getting a Great Artist and unless I am going for a cultural victory (tile improvement) or there is a nice piece of land to grab that is an automatic golden age GP for me. If I'm not trying to ally a city state, sometimes this would apply to a GM also. If there is a lot of warring going on and depending on map size and game length I assume I'm going to get at least 3 or 4 GGs, and the later ones will go toward a golden age. So if you look at an average game depending on the number of golden ages you already start with great people using that first GG on a golden age may have only gotten you a few extra turns.
More or less what I said in Post #2And I agree with everything else you said about Great Artists and Great Merchants too.
They sometimes make the difference between two-three damage or one damage with archers attacking cities. Early on that's pretty huge. I always use the honor great general when playing aggressively early on.
The OP post really surprises me. GG are amazing in my opinion. They make such a difference to unit survivability in terms of how much damage they cause a unit to do and how much it takes in return. Add to that actually being a protectable unit so they can share a tile.
Don't they increase your CS by one quarter? That makes all the difference to taking that city. I also can't remember ever having difficulty arranging the GG so that the necessary units were beginning their attack within two tiles.
Sure you normally can't make combat use of more than a couple, but I have also found the citadel a great strategic building, especially for beach-heads. By the time more than a couple have spawned, there is normally a transport network to get them to the front if needed, or like you say, burn them.
I love the beach head strategy, and found the greatest joy in CiV coming from invading a runaway civ's continent with two GG in tow. One gets citadelled, to keep that beach head city and the other does the regular bonus thing.
If you are going for a OCC or other non warmongering victory, the GG fortress ability is pretty effective if you have some good choke points leading to your areas.
I have never used a GG for the fortress ability actually. If you do happen to lose it, can the enemy occupy the hex and use it to their advantage? I guess I also just have not had a good opportunity since my borders are often changing or expanding or there is no good choke point available. There is also the issue that no matter how strong your unit is it will always be damaged for 1/10 total health I believe (1 of 10 HP)
Anyone have some sweet screen shots of the fortress in action? I did see a pretty cool one in official screenshot of a siege weapon on a single hex island with the fortress.
The only thing I know is that enemy units can occupy the citadel. Seeing as I always build it adjacent to the city for beach heads, I really should have found out by now whether it causes your units to -3 per turn instead. But I don't know that answer.
The unit in the citadel is always fortified in my case, and often, by the time I can burn them to make citadels, has cover promotions, so they don't lose too much life per turn. I normally have medic promotions near them, so that, and fortified, and in my territory means they can take quite a few turns of attacks before having to be swapped out.
It's really fun using citadels, I would really recommend trying a game with a map that might make use of one, either as a beach head or at a choke point.
Taking a whopping enemy city in a massive AI civ's territory and trying to hold it using citadels, navies with air support, and whatnot is really cool in my book.
How does that strategy work? I thought you could only build a citadel in friendly territory.
To op: I love the GG unit. I use it in every game either offensive or defensively.
Me calling it a strategy is too grand.
All I mean is that when I invade a continent especially, I take two GG (if possible). First task is to take a chosen city, this is where the friendly territory comes from. Then on the closest available turn after securing this, I plant a GG in the occupied city and one becomes a citadel directly adjacent to the city with a mech inf. or AA gun in it.
I have no care whatsoever about the tile yield for this city, I just need to keep it for the military offensive. So I plant the citadel in the best spot to try and do this. Very effective, at keeping citites, planting a citadel adjacent. Takes up an attack spot and has the -3 effect.
It will damage the enemy unit 3 per turn even if the unit is in the citadel hex or adacent hexes. If the citadel is pillaged, it does no damage. The only way your citadel can be used against you is if it falls under the borders of an enemy civilization.
Nice one, thank you.
Er, Sure they don't stack or anything, thank goodness, but the combat bonus is a-freaking-mazing. Especially when using archers/horsies against cities. If anything I think the flat nature of the bonus is too powerful in such situations.
No, GGs arent useless in any way. +20%CS is very cool in any war.
But there are things I'd rather call game-design flaws:
1) having more than one GG is war-wise pretty useless in 95% of cases
2) extra GGs provide you non-war bonuses (golden age)
I think that militaristic players should be rewarded with little, but directly affecting war-effectiveness bonus. (by having more GGs than others) And warmongerers shouldnt receive such gold bonuses (by GAs), if you want gold you need Great Merchant.
So I think such GG's abilities would've been more war oriented, but still various, depending on your playstyle/situation.
1) *auto* +20% CS to units (as now)
2) intervention (2 square radius culture bomb) (thats very agressive action more suited for warmongers, I have no idea why GAs have it)
3) campaign (+25%CS to all units during 10 turns)
4) add promotion to another GG. List of possible promotions:
- +10% CS to melees
- +10% CS to ranged
- +10% CS to mounts/tanks
- +10% CS to planes/gunships
- +10% CS to ships
- +1 move of GG
- +1 radius of GG's zone of bonuses
- +50% CS in defence to tile with this GG
- medic
Maybe some more or improved versions of listed.
I really liked an ability they had in CiV IV. When they attached to a city giving produced units more xp.
This was a nice long term reward for civs that got into many battles in the early game.
I think the simplest way to solve this would be to give a greater bonus to units on the same tile as the GG. Something like +40% CS for units on the same tile, +20% CS for units within a 2-tile radius. As well as making multiple GGs useful, it would introduce a trade-off between putting your GGs with front-line units to boost their strength, or keeping them protected behind the front line. To make this work, GGs would use up all of their movement points if the unit on the same tile attacks.
I would also like the ability for GGs to board ships, giving combat bonuses to naval units (sort of like a Great Admiral).
A well-placed Citadel (or two!) can turn a freshly-captured city in to a meat grinder. It's one of my favorite tactics.
Thanks for the replies, I will look afresh at my GG's. I have used a citadel once, and it did help in creating a choke point between mountains that I moved fresh units through, and stopped an attacking force from getting to my territory. I only wish that there was an opportunity to 'move' a citadel after it has served it's purpose, but I guess that would defeat the strategic element of placement. I found after I had attained my objective, it just sat there as a war memorial, not doing anything to help, I don't think it gives you any tile bonuses if it's within a city perimeter, I might be wrong.
I will try to resist the urge to click the 'start golden age' button next time I have a GG, and see if I can apply them more usefully in a combat support role. Good thread though, gave me lots of ideas, thanks to the community.
Regards
Skybird
I don't believe that it does provide any tile bonuses but that did give me a neat idea. What if a worker had the ability to transform a citadel into a war memorial that had some tile work bonuses (culture I suppose) so that a citadel that was no longer on the front lines could still be useful.
Like it, nice idea. 2K games should promote recycling! I also think we should have the ability to terraform late game, but that's for another thread...
Regards
Skybird
Well, to the best of my understanding, you can just get a worker to do whatever improvement you would normally do on that citadel tile and it will bring up the warning that the tile is about to be changed, and then, bingo, terraformed tile after a few turns.
Is this not right?
Yes, true. You could make it as if the citadel never existed so it didn't tie up the tile but I'm talking about a special improvement that makes having used up the GG useful in peace time.
How terrifying would that be if you started seeing a runaway warring Civ start levelling mountains, and making a beeline toward you.
So there seems to be disagreement whether they are underpowered (my view) or overpowered in battle. I'm looking at my current game and noting that a GG's bonus normally makes no difference to the battle preview expected damages. It's not much compared with other bonusses.
Perhaps you are agreeing with me since you propose a stack of extra military plusses for GGs.
Meanwhile...
Ah, you warmongers. Culture Bomb can be used for purely economic purposes you know...
Well, I wouldn't necessarily say *purely* economic as you are going to upset someone with your culture bomb that has the potential to cause them to declare war on you. Weather they eventually do or not you have no way of knowing they would or wouldn't when you used the culture bomb.
If you have total +100%CS bonuses, than another +20% bonus will strenghten this unit only by 10% (20/200=10%). That's why they seem to be not changing anything. But at the beginning of game when bonuses are low, that 20% are nice, and this 20% bonus is one of those rare which is added when attacking a city.
But late game GGs become less noticable because of other bonuses, and that's why its ok to have a GG that adds +40% to one type of units.
About culture bomb. 2 aspects of it: realism and gameplay.
Realism. Can you think of any historical fact when one country got other's country's territory due to culture? That is almost impossible. Every time such thing happens there is strong military pressure, even if there is no war. (Germany <- austria in 1938 or USSR <- poland in 1940) Weak countries cease to exist because of weak military, not culture.
Gameplay. Culture bombs have devastating effect in MP when enemy can push border very close to your cities thereby healing faster and preventing you from seeing these tiles. Culture bomb is used not for economic, but for military purposes. Peaceful gold or culture-oriented civs rarely dare to use such thing.
Listen, you bloodthirsty militarists - I was talking about using it to enclose strategic resources in neutral territory.
Great idea. Only a citadel for OCC lasts the whole game useful. Making it a monument (maybe even providing 10% bonus) would be cool.
Haha, yeah I hadn't thought of that because I would almost always pursue other means of getting unclaimed territory, but you can activate CB on a neutral square next to your boarders for a pretty big grab, eh?
What are you doing with those strategic resources tho? I suppose you are going to say building a factory so you can build your culture and economical buildings quicker :P
Er... actually it may be that I need some Aluminium right now to build some military units....
But factories eh? Don't forget the science bonus they now give with the appropriate Social Policy.
No way do any of us believe that there is 'neutral territory' left in your game at this point. You are spoiling for a fight and don't want to admit it.
Actually, yes there is (sometimes) because I play on all sorts of maps including sparsely populated ones.No way do any of us believe that there is 'neutral territory' left in your game at this point. You are spoiling for a fight and don't want to admit it.
But I don't do it very often. There was a lot of discussion once on best use of Great People and some said they frequently did this. However the relative benefits of different uses has been tweaked a lot since then, especially buffing the special buildings that Great People can build, so I think it would be rarer now.
And as I said in Post#4, I've been playing a lot as Darius lately, which obviously slants your choice more towards Golden Age.
i like to keep my GG's by my archers and siege. Their boost is one of the only ones that is applied to attacking cities and it helps negate the -25% archers attacking cities, which is nice.
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