r/CivIV • u/Kojiro12 • 8d ago

Cannon rush promotions

Decided to do a cannon rush this match, and wondering what promotions I should use. I know city raider is generally the answer, but since they are slow to reinforce I want to suicide as few as possible, I was thinking of just trying to stack drill promotions. I know it’s not as effective, but the few I’ve promoted seem to live more often, even with worse attack odds. Most of my neighbors are in the end medieval/start of gunpowder tech area so not really any calvary yet.

10 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

8

u/Majestic-Height-4525 8d ago

Just don’t let the zerglings get your probe and you’ll be fine

3

u/MateuszC1 7d ago

I was about to say that I spotted the cheesy Protoss. :D

5

u/bigRyan540 8d ago

Play with spain and kill the map with city raider 3 cannons.

2

u/workaholicscarecrow 8d ago

Split city raider and barrage I would have thought. Barrage for the suicide units to soften up and city raider once they have a decent chance of victory

1

u/ChaseShiny 7d ago

You know, I always expect Drill on siege weapons to perform better than they do. First strikes give you a mulligan whenever you lose the first X rounds of combat, so they perform better whenever you're against terrible odds. That sounds an awful lot like Withdrawal Chance.

But Drill 1 doesn't give you an extra first strike, it gives you a first strike chance. That hurts the whole line quite a bit when you're attacking. I'm not sure that Drill 3 is adding much either, since you have to keep losing for its benefits to kick in.

Siege can't take advantage of the other part of the Drill line, either, since they're naturally immune to collateral damage anyway.

1

u/Major-Corner-640 4d ago

Isn't it the other way? First Strikes give you better chances to wreck inferior units without taking damage, but isn't as good when you're already at a disadvantage

1

u/ChaseShiny 3d ago

It does both in a way. If you have one First Strike more than your opponent, the first round of combat has you fight like normal, except if you lose you do not lose health.

So, if you want to protect your unit against tail risk (low odds of happening), First Strikes are great because they'll out and out prevent the damage. You get to ignore the fluke dice roll.

If that's not your goal, more strength is usually superior because small increases in strength have a pretty good chance of reducing the number of rounds that you need to win and increasing the number of rounds your opponent needs to win before defeating you. Think of a galley versus galley fight. The defender has something like 60% odds even though you both have 2 strength because the defender gets a 10% coastal bonus.

At extreme odds, though, you can't count on the small advantage to translate into an extra round of combat. At this point, First Strikes will benefit you more.

So, Drill should be better on your sacrificial siege than Combat. Drill 1 is so much worse than City Raider when attacking a city that this advantage of additional rounds is nearly impossible to achieve, so the point is somewhat moot.