Horse archers don't seem to be anybody's favorite unit, but I've found them to be really great at taking down strong, archer-defended cities.

Having my flanking-2 promoted horse archers attack a city-garrison archer in a city on a hill, I had (roughly) 33% chance to win, 33% to withdraw. I'm not exactly sure how the percentages work, but if those are added, that's 66% chance to survive - and if they're just multiplied, it still adds up to about 45% chance to survive.

Having a unit that will almost half the time survive assaulting the city is really powerful. The defending archer is sure to emerge mildly to severely damaged from the combat at least, which means with a second unit attacking, you're almost certain to win. You can take cities with the bare minimum of units - twice the number of defenders, and if you add in a horse archer's speed, the picture is quite good. Smaller capital investment, greater chance of survival..
so why are they so maligned?

I think one reason they are not that popular is that the tech is expensive to research. In my games is almost always one of those I trade for later in the game. But the withdrawal thing is effective.

Horse archers don't seem to be anybody's favorite unit, but I've found them to be really great at taking down strong, archer-defended cities.

Having my flanking-2 promoted horse archers attack a city-garrison archer in a city on a hill, I had (roughly) 33% chance to win, 33% to withdraw. I'm not exactly sure how the percentages work, but if those are added, that's 66% chance to survive - and if they're just multiplied, it still adds up to about 45% chance to survive.

Having a unit that will almost half the time survive assaulting the city is really powerful. The defending archer is sure to emerge mildly to severely damaged from the combat at least, which means with a second unit attacking, you're almost certain to win. You can take cities with the bare minimum of units - twice the number of defenders, and if you add in a horse archer's speed, the picture is quite good. Smaller capital investment, greater chance of survival..
so why are they so maligned?

Because the tech needed is expensive and doesnt lead anywhere. I only research it when I have elephants, and too late for the horse archers to be useful

Yup, I'd say that's pretty much the reason. Horseback Riding is an expensive dead-end tech at a location and era in the tech tree where there are far more important things to be spending research on.

I like playing the Carthaginians so I often go for HBR pretty early.
As mentioned horse archers are ok for city attacking when the enemy is defending with archers and they make excellent scouts/skirmishers/pillagers with the right promotions well into the medeval era.
Nothing wrong with them IMO, just depends on your situation whether they are worth the research diversion.

Horse archers don't seem to be anybody's favorite unit, but I've found them to be really great at taking down strong, archer-defended cities.

Having my flanking-2 promoted horse archers attack a city-garrison archer in a city on a hill, I had (roughly) 33% chance to win, 33% to withdraw. I'm not exactly sure how the percentages work, but if those are added, that's 66% chance to survive - and if they're just multiplied, it still adds up to about 45% chance to survive.

Having a unit that will almost half the time survive assaulting the city is really powerful. The defending archer is sure to emerge mildly to severely damaged from the combat at least, which means with a second unit attacking, you're almost certain to win. You can take cities with the bare minimum of units - twice the number of defenders, and if you add in a horse archer's speed, the picture is quite good. Smaller capital investment, greater chance of survival..
so why are they so maligned?

There are lots of problems with this.

The most obvious being, only 1/3 times are you going to win, and when you do win, that unit will be so terribly crippled in health it will be useless for many rounds. This causes you to have need for extra troops to follow up (which may also lose without eliminating the unit).

Troops cost maintenance, so there are big drains on building extra Flank units which will just sit out many turns eating supply the rare time they surive. If you focus on attacking promotions instead of retreating ones, you will have both higher success in eliminating units and also have more health on those attackers that win. And again, less maintenance fees.

Not many bother using this Flank, but there are some changes now in BtS (regarding seige weapens) that add a little twist to the equation. I can only guess that Firaxis did this in order to try to get more use out of the promotion since it is so rarely used.

In addition to all that, there's the fact that some people are still somewhat used to warlords, where horse archers had -10% city attack and couldn't flank catapults.

I had (roughly) 33% chance to win, 33% to withdraw. I'm not exactly sure how the percentages work, but if those are added, that's 66% chance to survive - and if they're just multiplied, it still adds up to about 45% chance to survive.

My understanding of withdrawal (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) is that the withdraw chance is only applied if the unit has already "lost" the battle. So your overall chance to survive is: Chance to win + (Chance to lose * Chance to withdraw)

In the case you mention above that is 0.33 + (0.67 * 0.33) = 0.55 or 55% chance to survive.

Another way to look at things...

You have a horse we'll call STRENGTH, and one we'll call FLANK for obvious reasons.

When both win, Strength is in better health.
When both lose, Strength will have done MORE DAMAGE to the offending unit.

And what happens in-between? Strength will simply WIN more times than flank.

Even if getting that extra survival chance seems profitable to you after the trade-offs, keep in mind during wars you need FRESH troops to handle counter-attacks, etc. What I'm saying is, units with sufficient hit points still remaining. Your surviving Flanks will be so badly mauled up you will question their use. But even worse, is when those Flanks get attacked, they have absolutely nothing going for them (no modified strengths).

And in case you missed one point, a follow up to a damaged unit from Flank is harder to dislodge than one who was hit by Strength, so you're causing your follow-up dudes some more HP losses.

On the other hand, if STRENGTH loses, he's dead. FLANK can lose and survive; he'll be very weak, but that's what Medic units are for, and meanwhile he picks up an xp.

If you calculate purely in terms of hammers, FLANK comes out ahead. (This is a simple calculation -- stack of Flanking II horses vs. Combat II.)

Of course, as noted, FLANK advances more slowly (because you'll have some badly injured units) and so costs more (unit maintenance in hostile turf) and is more vulnerable to counterattack. But it's not obviously inferior.

My experience is that a couple of Flank II horses / knights / cavalry are good as shock units -- they can attack a city or a stack at mediocre odds, injure the strongest defender, and still have a good chance of surviving. It's not as useful as CR, but it's not a useless promotion at all.

Waldo

Problems with HA
1) It is expensive and is dead end.
2) There is a melee unit just as stronge (Swordsmen) and are much better at city attack (+10%).
3) Construction is a little more beakers but cats are more vital militarily.
4) HA allow pillaging but more often you do not want to pillage AI lands if your going to capture the city. Iron/Copper/Horse can be pillaged better with chariots as they are stronger against axes.

Benefits

1) Opens up access to srable.
2) Needed for war elephants (BTS).
3) Important for UU of Mongols and Carthaginians.
4) AIs may give you more in beakers than it is worth in a trade.

I have some hard numbers that quantify the worth of withdraw. (Assuming I coded combat correctly; I have done a few simple tests to validate it, though)

I focused on the hammer cost -- if a swordsman loses a fight, you are out 40 hammers. If a flanking II horse archer loses a fight, you are out 25 hammers on average, because half of those will end in withdraw.

My defenders were city guardian II archers in cities without hill bonus. In every case, using nothing but flanking II horse archers was significantly cheaper than using nothing but city raider II swordsmen.

To kill an archer in a city with 40% cultural defense:
It costs 28.41 hammers with CR2 swordsmen.
It costs 24.13 hammers with a mix of CR2 swords and FL2 chariots.
It costs 21.56 hammers with FL2 horse archers.
It costs 20.15 hammers with a mix of FL2 and C2 horse archers.

(e.g., you will lose 0.71 swordsmen on average per archer you attack)
(It doesn't help to mix swordsmen with horse archers)

City raider III swordsmen, of course, are really really strong, with the cost being only 13.92 hammers to kill the archer. I haven't yet tried to quantify the value of fighting hard battles with CR2 swordsmen to get more CR3 swordsmen.

Even if you are going up against 100% cultural defense, and for some reason don't have catapults or spies to even things out...

It costs 33.17 hammers with CR3 swordsmen
It costs 28.96 hammers with a mix of CR3 swordsmen, FL2 horse archers, and FL2 chariots.

(Optimal strategy is to use FL2 chariots until the archers are hurt, FL2 horse archers on anything with 86 or more HP, then CR3 swordsmen... assuming you value CR3 swordsmen at only 40 hammers)


My analysis is trying to minimize losses. Horse archers are fast, and you'll have that third promotion to cut the healing time in half, so they will be ready to help in later fights if your war is not lightning-quick. And while exploiting flanking means you need a larger army to make the initial blow... it also means that you'll have a much larger army remaining when the war is over, which is important if you have another neighbor with his eye on you... or you simply want to go conquer the next guy!

But if you only care about your initial burst of strength and not much concern for what you have left after that, then of course flanking isn't worth your while.

Flanking horse archers have higher chances to survive combats.

Surviving a combat = damage seeps through to catapults in the enemy stack.

Flanking > combat on mounted units. Except Chariots.

The hate is largely from when they had the -10% City Attack trait, greatly limiting their usefulness on the whole. BTS has changed that. Not only are they better in attacking in general now, but they also slaughter enemy siege weapons, whether or not they're protected by a stack. Those are big changes.

I would use a Flank promotion to promote HAs I would use for, well, flanking purposes, but rarely for attacking a city head on. My instinct tells me that a bunch of Combat cavalry (not the unit) is more useful for taking enemy cities than a bunch of Flanking cavalry, unless you have massive numerical advantage.

I have tried the flanking attack promotions but find they tend to be a "do not lose" promotion rather than a "win" promotion (exception cathaginian and arabs where the promotion adds to the UU) . The HAs still do flanking damage even without the promotion.

A mix of flanking 2 and combat 2 horse archers is a very powerful army. Same for any mounted unit besides the war elephant. Flanking ones attack first to soften up defenders. Combat ones attack second to take the city. The 2-move instead of 1-move means you're going through an enemy empire much faster. The downside is you don't lug along the slow-moving siege meaning you don't want to be up against a civ with huge cultural defense. For this reason it's better to zerg civs that aren't creative and preferably don't have a religion (especially a religious holy city capital). However, sometimes even with high cultural defense the losses are tolerable because while you're 1-moving through their empire the AI is much better at whipping/building troops now. While horses are 2-moving through the empire they are cutting the turns available to the AI to whip in half.

Civilization uses it's calvary all wrong. The purpose of the calvary in most armies was to add a fast moving, flanking capable unit to a standing army. Ideally, the general would first engage their their foot soldiers then the calvary would charge into one of the unprotected flanks. This had a devastating effect on enemies that were not prepared to deal with it. The way Civilization does it's battles in no way reflects what really happened on the battlefield.

Well it's a bit better now that the collateral dmg thing is in effect and flanking promotions encouraging withdrawal sort of reflects the unit going in and out on the flank without taking much damage. They don't do more damage to the opponent though which is one thing that is missing admittedly. Part of the problem (if you want to call it that) is that most of the battles are centered on cities and much less on the open field.

I wonder how difficult it would be to add a Rome:Total War type of real-time battle to Civilization.

The way Civilization does it's battles in no way reflects what really happened on the battlefield.

Civilization not accurately reflecting real history? Noooooo, never! :p

I remember a time when we needed to find the saltpeter resource to even be allowed to build the cavalry... but that's for a nostalgia thread.

One thing that isn't being noted here, is if you have the extra gold to support extra flank units, then surely you could also support more STRENGTH units!

Also, in BtS the AI loves to over-defend and whip-rush like mad in a war. As mentioned, you don't want a bunch of .01 health horses sitting around waiting to heal while sucking out supply costs. The AI will replace units like mad. You NEED TO PUSH. Not heal and wait forever. Hit them hard and fast with Strength and keep moving before they whip-draft the next city to the sky in defenders.

BTW, when I'm attacking with cavalry vs riflemen, I ALWAYS use my two promotions for Combat I & Pinch. That Pinch is 25% additive to the 10%. That's 35%.

I'll take my 35% boost vs flank any time. It just seems so dominant.

Hell, I then ram that Pinch into Infantry too, and even marines in the later years. You will lose some units, that's ok because you are going to get your economy drained during war anyway. Just make sure you get the job done and as quickly as possible.

About the new flank bonus to seige weapons, this still seems weak. Cavalry already have a built in bonus vs seige, or at least cannons even don't they? When you get the AI to the point it's defending with seige, you're laughing anyhow. Oh yes, and STRENGTH also applies in that case too.

Also, in BtS the AI loves to over-defend and whip-rush like mad in a war. As mentioned, you don't want a bunch of .01 health horses sitting around waiting to heal while sucking out supply costs.
Fine. Since your 9 EXP horse archers just got their 10th experience point, you can give them combat 1 to refill half their life bar. Have them spend 2 turns with your great medic while garrisoning the city you just conquered. Voila -- three turns later you have fully healed (and stronger!) mounted units ready to race back to the front lines with their two movement points.

Incidentally, do you find no benefit whatsoever in having units survive a war?


BTW, when I'm attacking with cavalry vs riflemen, I ALWAYS use my two promotions for Combat I & Pinch. That Pinch is 25% additive to the 10%. That's 35%.

I'll take my 35% boost vs flank any time. It just seems so dominant.
It's certainly stronger... but you are going to suffer 23% more casualties than someone who also uses flanking. (against CG2 rifles with 25% fortify bonus in a city that's in disorder)




About the new flank bonus to seige weapons, this still seems weak. Cavalry already have a built in bonus vs seige, or at least cannons even don't they? When you get the AI to the point it's defending with seige, you're laughing anyhow. Oh yes, and STRENGTH also applies in that case too.
The new flanking attack deals (possibly fatal!) collateral damage against most (all?) siege units in the stack, but only if your unit survives the fight. I don't know how the amount of collateral damage is determined.

(But it only works against siege units of certain eras; e.g. horse archers can only kill catapults and trebuchet, and cavalry can only kill cannons)

If your HA is facing high-strength defenders guarding stacks of siege, then "suicide" Flanking horses are better than "suicide" Combat horses. Why? Because a horse needs to survive combat in order to do Flank Attack damage, and if the defender already has a dominant strength advantage (fortified Longbow, for example), then Flanking gives a much better survival rate than Combat.

However, if the Strength values are comparable (fortified Archer on hill, for example), or if the HA already has superior Strength, then Combat is much better than Flanking.

If you're attacking with a large stack of Horse Archers, you might do better to give the first few units Flanking instead of Combat, but only if there are lots of siege that you expect to hit with Flank Attack damage during those initial attacks. Otherwise, I think Combat is better, since it will do more damage to the top defender.

you're gonna be attacking with a stack anyway so having a stack of units that have a better chance of survival seems smarter. if they survive with .01 health is that not better than dying? If you survive you don't give the enemy experience I don't think. I may be wrong. I think you get GG points too. I love all horse units. Numidain's are my favorite though.

you're gonna be attacking with a stack anyway so having a stack of units that have a better chance of survival seems smarter. if they survive with .01 health is that not better than dying? If you survive you don't give the enemy experience I don't think. I may be wrong. I think you get GG points too. I love all horse units. Numidain's are my favorite though.

I think the point Obsolete is making is that the times that you wind up with -.01 health on your flanker you would have survived with your Combat.

And had a better chance of killing the defender.

The other thing is that if I'm attacking a city, I don't expect the cats to be a factor, because hopefully I'm taking the city in one turn, or I've at least brought enough cats of my own to make the defender's cats worthless.

Reif

Otherwise, I think Combat is better, since it will do more damage to the top defender.
If you completely ignore the drawbacks of choosing the combat promotions, then of course you'll think it's better. :p

No sense using combat promotions if your unit is just going to die. Much better to have a chance of surviving.

you're gonna be attacking with a stack anyway so having a stack of units that have a better chance of survival seems smarter. if they survive with .01 health is that not better than dying? If you survive you don't give the enemy experience I don't think. I may be wrong. I think you get GG points too. I love all horse units. Numidain's are my favorite though.

This makes no sense. If you are using flank to attack a defender, then aren't you PLANNING to follow up anyway? That was the whole point in attacking with weak flank units in the first place. You use a second unit to follow up and nail him before he has a chance to do anything on his turn. Hence, no way to use any earned promos or even heal because he will be gone.

If your Strength also fails, that's fine because another Strength is going to follow up as well, but he'll be in much better health when all is said and done. But often the first strength will win anyhow where the flank just fails miserably.

No sense using combat promotions if your unit is just going to die. Much better to have a chance of surviving.

It's not just going to die. To assume you are going to die 100% is rediculous. And to further make a point, my Cavalry attacking even an anti-cavalry unit such as the rifleman, still have a 30% BUILT-IN withdraw chance.

Yes, thats' right. No flank upgrades, but 30% withdraw chance.

Ouch.... to the flank guy.

Since I believe in never saying never, I have been thinking up of a case where making a bunch of flank units in your core would be +ev.

I can think of one...

When your AI or Human opponent is so stupid as to build only stacks of seige units. Then I suppose attacking primarily with Flank Horses couldn't be in much error.

When is that going to happen?

In my experience, horse archers with Flanking I+II have better overall chances of survival against full-health city defenders than Combat I+II horse archers. First wave flanking horse archers survive more battles than first wave combat horse archers, period. If I have units to mop with up, which have good chances of defeating weakened units, whether damaged by flanking or combat horse archers, why not have some flanking promoted horse archers?

On the one hand, a stack of combat horse archers has a better chance of taking the city because the combat horse archers will on average deal more damage, but if you're assuming you've brought enough troops to take the city, using flanking horse archers increases the chance of you emerging victorious with less dead units.

EDIT:

This whole post was kind of a jumbled mess. The main point I'm trying to make is if you've brought enough troops to "guarentee" capturing a city, using horse archers with flanking will, on average, result in less casualities than using horse archers with combat. And a living horse archer is better than a dead horse archer any way you cut it.

Don't forget that flanking 2 makes horse-based units ignore first strikes. This is an important bonus. And I don't understand how you can say the combat unit is not going to die in many cases. If I see that my unit has only 10% win chance then chances are it is going to die. Combat promotions are not going to help that. However, if I take flanking 2 this will seriously increase the chance that my unit will withdraw and live. In this case I don't understand how you can justify the combat promotions over the flanking ones. If you bring along siege to soften up the defenders then yes combat is the proper choice, but then you sacrifice the mobility of the horse-based units imo. If you want to take advantage of the mobility then a mix of flanking and combat units is the way to go with flanking units going first, usually losing, but hopefully withdrawing, and then the combat ones to mop up.

Since I believe in never saying never, I have been thinking up of a case where making a bunch of flank units in your core would be +ev.

I can think of one...

When your AI or Human opponent is so stupid as to build only stacks of seige units. Then I suppose attacking primarily with Flank Horses couldn't be in much error.

When is that going to happen?

I think you are mistaken about how flanking damages seige units. The flanking collateral damage occurs against EVERY seige unit in a stack, regardless of what unit actually defends. I did a test in world builder where I had flanking2 HA's attack stacks of combat2 spearmen guarding an immense pile of catapults. At no time did the catapults defend. After 7HA's EVERY catapult in the stack was dead. Flanking attacks vs seige weapons can kill via collateral damage.
So consider this scenario...you keep a stack of 8-10flanking2 mounted units as a mobile defense force. When someone attacks you wait unit they are two squares from the city they are going to attack. with roads you can attack from the city,withdrawal and still move back into the city in one turn. Poof no seige units, and now those walls and castles everyone makes fun of me for building are oh so effective. Yes a spy has a CHANCE of lowering those defenses, but i really don't recall the AI ever using one that way. Personally, if I have a city about to come under attack, I want to eliminate the seige units as soon as possible.
Also, when using the flanking promotion you get more surviing units, hence after a while you will have combat2 flanking2 units. As for the initial units being so severely damaged that your invasion falters. I rarely bring so few troops that I need to stop and heal them between cities. With fast moving HAs I leap frog. Attacking one city and while half the troops heal move on to the next with the remainder. when group A is healed I move onto city#3 with them. The Ai and many human players(though my MP knowledge is very limited) tend to move the majority of there defensive troops toward the target city. With HAs you can feint at one city to draw the defenders then race to another using a few to pilliage the roads. Keeping the Ai reinforcements from arriving in time.

If your HA is facing high-strength defenders guarding stacks of siege, then "suicide" Flanking horses are better than "suicide" Combat horses. Why? Because a horse needs to survive combat in order to do Flank Attack damage, and if the defender already has a dominant strength advantage (fortified Longbow, for example), then Flanking gives a much better survival rate than Combat.city

Mounted units do not do flanking damage to seige units inside a city

BTW, when I'm attacking with cavalry vs riflemen, I ALWAYS use my two promotions for Combat I & Pinch. That Pinch is 25% additive to the 10%. That's 35%.
llowed to build the cavalry... but that's for a nostalgia thread.

I'll take my 35% boost vs flank any time. It just seems so dominant.


Not quite, 25% subtracts from the enemy bonus. Thus the higher the enemy defensive bonus, the more the returns diminish.

Winning > withdrawal > losing. However, most battles won't be so lopsided that you will do no damage. I'm guessing that there's a fair chance you'll do half damage, even with the strength promotions.

If you have enough units in the short run, having flanking 2 might be better than strength promotions. Basically, (win rate of flanker + (1-win rate) *withdrawal rate)*chance of doing winnable damage) -(win rate of combat specialist).

If combat tips you to winning, then you should probably do it because the win rate increase is so huge.

Don't forget that flanking 2 makes horse-based units ignore first strikes.

That's a small plus, though my Knights ignore first strike anyhow.

After some more thinking I can finally invision acase where flank makes sense (besides having your kingdom over-run and forced to hole-up in your castle while your enemy attacks with a stack of seige). This would be where one had enough promotions available, that they could make a FLANK-MEDIC unit. Since you need a medic, a flank COULD be useful, but then you'd have to make more than one since you still risk losing your medic. This way, your FLANK isn't sitting useless while self-healing. Now you're serving DOUBLE-DUTY.

What is the cost of HA's against spears? axes? what is the cost of swordsmen against the same? If you know this you can calculate the optimum mix of troops. It is not fair to compare 2 promotion swordsmen against HA's unless it is some aggressive leader though cause of stables(and then you should use cr1 c1 not cr2). If you could put together all of this against various units it would be very nice(though it is probably quite far offtopic and might deserve an article of it's own...).

A combat 1 sword attacks an archer on a hill. The archer is fortified in a city and has a city garrison promotion. Odds of winning are below 50%. You attack. You lose. The unit is dead. The hammers are lost. The defender is damaged.

A combat 2 horse archer (stable-promoted) attacks the same archer. Odds of winning are still below 50%. You attack. You lose. The unit is dead. The hammers are lost. The defender is damaged.

A flanking 2 horse archer attacks the same archer. Odds of withdrawing are around 50%. You attack. You withdraw. The unit is badly damaged, but alive. The hammers are saved. The defender is damaged.

I know which scenario I prefer.

A combat 1 sword attacks an archer on a hill. The archer is fortified in a city and has a city garrison promotion. Odds of winning are below 50%. You attack. You lose. The unit is dead. The hammers are lost. The defender is damaged.

A combat 2 horse archer (stable-promoted) attacks the same archer. Odds of winning are still below 50%. You attack. You lose. The unit is dead. The hammers are lost. The defender is damaged.

A flanking 2 horse archer attacks the same archer. Odds of withdrawing are around 50%. You attack. You withdraw. The unit is badly damaged, but alive. The hammers are saved. The defender is damaged.

I know which scenario I prefer.

When using calvary do you promote them all to flanking or only some of them? It seems like it might better to promote 1/4 to 1/2 as flanking and the rest as combat I. You could then have your flankers attack first, with the survivors withdrawing then use the combat promoted units to take and hold.

~1/2 get flanking 2 1/2 get combat 2. I never promote until it is time for them to attack though. When I attack with a horse archer I look to see how close it is to >50% win. If it doesn't have a chance to win even with combat promos then it gets flanking 2. If it has a chance to win it gets combat promos. The breakdown depends on the situation in terms of defenders.

20+ horse archers (mostly flanking, some combat) early will dismantle any AI and most human players. A couple of spears won't stop that. In fact, its one of my favorite tactics in multiplayer because rarely do people build more than a few spears for protection. Horse Archers move fast and can elimiate metal sources before they have time to whip spears. Then its on to the capital pillaging cottages as you go to pay for it.

After some more thinking I can finally invision acase where flank makes sense (besides having your kingdom over-run and forced to hole-up in your castle while your enemy attacks with a stack of seige)..
There is a much easier case to envision: the one where you want to have a big army when the war is over.

Expensive to research, expensive to build, mediocre strength, cheap to counter.

Give them the well justified withdrawal chance when being attacked then I'll reconsider. For now, only Keshiks and num cavs have a place in my book.

Maybe if HAs were allowed to promote down the Drill line they may be considered more useful (although I still doubt it) All archery unit get promote down the Drill line but the Horse Archer cannot promote down that line... which seems a little strange.

But considering it's unit type being a mounted unit and not an Archery unit it makes sense I guess...

If HBR was a cheaper tech or led to some useful tech it might be more useful, but I can't think of any the that would require HBR.

Maybe if HAs were allowed to promote down the Drill line they may be considered more useful (although I still doubt it) All archery unit get promote down the Drill line but the Horse Archer cannot promote down that line... which seems a little strange.

But considering it's unit type being a mounted unit and not an Archery unit it makes sense I guess...

If HBR was a cheaper tech or led to some useful tech it might be more useful, but I can't think of any the that would require HBR.

I believe you need HBR for knights and cavs.

Markwell, Kniteowl i see some MP players here :). HBR is awesome in MP because catapults are nerfed to death and redundant (due to spies). In SP things are different there is still lots of land to take peacefully, better units (swords) and lots of worker techs (in MP teamers typically give you most of the first line of techs).

I believe you need HBR for knights and cavs.
And war elephants

Well, I see I stirred up some discussion. For the record, I do use a mix of flanking-2 horses and combat ones to finish up the weakened defenders.

If it's so effective in MP, the AI shouldn't stand a chance.

I like to keep 2-3 Flanking II mounted units in my border cities just in case I get surprised by an AI SoD with no stack of my own nearby to counter it. I don't upgrade my Knights to Cavalry until the AI upgrades from Cats/Trebs to Cannon. It's not ideal, and I'm probably still gonna get hammered, but if I damage a few of their seige units I might not lose the city.

That said, I really like to include a few mounted units in all my SoDs, using them to fight up 97%+ battles wherever I can to take them up to C3, and send them back into my territory when they get enough XP for one more promotion with plans to upgrade to Blitz Gunships later.

swordsmen are easy to counter, axemen are easy to counter, any unit that you can use to take a city is easy to counter, so that's not really a good argument against them. In my expereice at least the ai defends mostly with axemen and archers. They do obviously use spearmen at times. Early in the game they also use slavery a lot more to whip units out to counter your attack, so if you have horse archers you are going to get there faster, be immune to first strikes, and be bale to withdraw so that your next attacker has a weaker enemy to fight. If you've got horse archers you can get stables which give you two levels of promotions as opposed to one, so with their two bonus as opposed to one for swordsmen they get a 30% bonus versus everyone, and it counts when attacking anywhere ( in case you meet a counter stack in the field). As opposed to the swordsmen's bonus of 20% that only is useful against city defenders. So if you see a stack to attack in the field your bonuses are useless. Not to mention the extra bouns the horse archers get against archers fromt he immune to first strikes that comes from withdraw. So until the swordsman gets to the second level the HA have an advantage in a lot of ways it seems.

Inspired by this thread I used horse archers extensively in a game I started last night. Here's how it went: (monarch/hemispheres/normal speed)

I was playing as Freddy and Joao was my closest neighbour. He was REXing like crazy and starting to box me in. I had marble in my capital and horses nearby. I was able to build 4 cities incl. capital before feeling the need to war vs. him. I did something a bit unorthodox and took HBR off the oracle. I cranked out 20 horses archers (about 5/city with stables) and declared war. I took his capital first and one other city. I got a GG and took a ceasefire because my stack was very injured (but many lived!). Once they healed up quickly thanks to my MASH unit and I had built some reinforcements I attacked again. Joao had built an amazing 10 cities in the BC era so I had to take a ceasefire 2 more times over the course of the centuries-long battle, but I took him out ca. 1000AD giving me a total of 14 cities.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r107/futurehermit/Post-HorseArcherEmpire0000.jpg

I was a bit worried about feudalism and engineering coming on scene soon (they hadn't yet, but it wouldn't be long) so I decided I needed to tech a bit. I was close to liberalism and had lucked out getting the Mausoleum late. With a great artist and the taj mahal I was able to get 20+ turns of golden age after cottage-spamming my empire (11 of the cities became commerce cities, 1 production, 1 gpfarm, and my capital was mix comm/prod).

I was teching like a madman and was first in score by a large margin. I teched to cavalry got the GM from economics, sent him overseas, upgraded about 10-15 horse archers to cav, had built some cav, declared on Rameses and took him out except for a couple cities. Took peace to heal. He vassaled to Hamurabi.

That was ok because I had been beelining to combustion-industrialism. Now I am in the process of finishing out a domination win with panzers. The factories-coal plants are helping a lot and to deal with unhealthy after industrialism I beelined medicine-refrigeration-superconductors (labs)-genetics.

I feel like I am going to shave some decades off my usual finish time (space or domination) of around 1930AD (I'm pretty consistent at that mark).

Anyways, here are my conclusions:

1) Horse archers work very nice for taking cities prior to longbows/pikes. Joao had quite a few swords and spears, but a mix of flanking 2/combat 2 took them out even with high cultural defenses.

2) Some ceasefires are indeed necessary to heal up as obsolete mentioned. I don't know how this compares against lugging around 1-move units and siege and sacrificing a bunch of siege to wear down the defenders. It's hard to make this comparison I think.

3) I felt like I had my target of ~15 cities a couple of centuries earlier than normal. I normally shoot for 1500AD and usually get it lately around 1300AD. In this case I had it around 1000AD.

4) Having veteran horse archers makes for nice upgrading to cuirassiers/cavalry. But generating a GM is important because it's not cheap.

5) I probably could've pushed again with knights. That was my plan: to spam knights against pikes/longbows is on par with h.archers against spears/archers. But since I lucked out and got the Mausoleum I couldn't resist the 20+ turns of golden age when I had very nice cottageable land empire-wide. If I hadn't got the Mausoleum I would've gone for knights which would've meant I took out Rameses sooner. Then I probably would've used either knights or cuirassiers against Hammurabi.

I think that mobile units are ideal for domination wins and starting with horse archers is something I would highly recommend if the situation permits it.

EDIT: Something to keep in mind that I didn't prepare for enough in this game is that when you are sacking cities quickly with mobile units it becomes important to have an "army" of workers prepared to come in behind when it is safe and develop the land.

Not sure if many others play AW but horse archers are very strong and needed there .
You will get plenty of GG's and if u stack them all in your prod city you can often get ha's out with 10-17 xp's really fast .
Since you have all the AI's fighting you wou will get large stacks with plenty of cats attacking you and this is where the ha's come in , about 5 of them with flanking 2 can kill lots of cats , all they have to do is stay alive for a fight and they wound/kill all the cats .

futurehermit:

That squares with my experiences using the new HAs. The main disadvantage, really, is that you have to wait for CoL to get your empire large. If you ran with Gilgamesh, I imagine you could've expanded faster initially and would have more time to consolidate with your army of workers.

I've tweaked my program to also compute the size of the army you need to achieve victory. (And I corrected a bug that was lowballing the hammer cost of your casualties)

Again, the scenario is to compute the cost of killing a CG 2 archer in a flatland city with a 25% fortify bonus.

Swordsmen are all CR2, and valued at 40 hammers.
Horse archers are an appropriate mix of FL2 and C2, and valued at 50 hammers.
C2 Horse Archers are purely combat 2 horse archers.
"need" is the expected hammer cost of the units you need to kill the archer.
"lose" is the expected hammer cost of your casualties.

40% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 70.57 hammers, lose 30.57 hammers.
Horse archers: need 92.52 hammers, lose 21.76 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 86.00 hammers, lose 28.80 hammers.

60% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 74.37 hammers, lose 31.63 hammers.
Horse archers: need 102.31 hammers, lose 27.05 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 89.85 hammers, lose 31.88 hammers.

100% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 83.22 hammers, lose 43.22 hammers.
Horse archers: need 119.05 hammers, lose 35.69 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 97.82 hammers, lose 38.26 hammers.


So I've quantified obsolete's objection: we can see exactly how much strength we sacrifice by using flanking to minimize casualties. For example, if we need to use 20 combat horse archers to conquer a bunch of 60% cultural defense cities, then we expect 7 of them will die. If we try the same thing with flanking, we need 23 horse archers, but only 6 of them to die.

(And, we need just over 20 and a half CR2 swordsmen if we tried it that way, and we expect nearly 9 of them to die)

Specifically, if you use 20 Combat 2 Horse Archers to take a 60% defense city, you'll end up with only 13 afterwards.

If you use 23 Combat/Flank HAs to take a 60% defense city, you'll have 17 of them afterwards, potentially with all 12 C2 HAs surviving.

Ergo, if you have a bigger force, it makes sense to pad the fat with Flanking rather than Combat cavalry.

That analysis makes sense to me. However, I want to point out something that was not included: Mobility. It is hard to quantify. But if I get to the 2nd city 2x as fast they will have 1/2 the time to whip/build defenders. Less defenders can translate into less lost horse archers as well.

The difficult thing to quantify imo is the healing time (i.e., ceasefires) needed for horse archer rushing vs. the mobility cost time needed to drag siege across an enemy empire (i.e., more time for defenders to be produced empire-wide). Attacking high-cultural defense cities will translate into more losses, but more defenders also translates into more losses.

That is difficult to determine, and depends a lot on skill level. Obsolete plays at immortal/deity which will be different from monarch/emperor where I play. I usually play on monarch because I enjoy a more relaxed pace (I play a lot later in the evening after a long day at work). At this level if you take the capital first then most of the other cities will be fairly-easy pickings (especially if not protective, creative, etc.). The extra mobility can be very nice there to minimize defenders and finish things very quickly (less turns of war weariness which is also hard to quantify).

swordsmen are easy to counter, axemen are easy to counter, any unit that you can use to take a city is easy to counter, so that's not really a good argument against them.

That's not entirely true. Axemen, for an instance, are actually not as easy to counter. It's true that chariots have bonus on axemen, but that is only an attack bonus, not strength bonus. So as long as you throw one or two spears into a stack of axes, the chariots can't do much, while axes can attack chariots, their supposedly counter, and win most of the times. You may argue that by putting an axe into a stack of HAs, the spears can't do much as well, but it means the key strength of HAs, ie. the 2-movement, will be handicapped.

And there're elephants as well. So there are three resources (bronze, iron, ivory) to allow building of the counter vs HAs, but only one resource (horse) to build the counter vs axes (I don't count maces and crossbows as they are of different era).

An update on my German Horse Archer game:

I won domination in 1890, which is about 4 decades or around 20+ turns faster than my average. My final score was over 100,000 for the first time in BTS. It was by far my best game I've played in BtS yet.

I'm not saying the horse archers were 100% responsible (Panzers rule!), but they were quite effective and getting the land base pictured above went a long way to securing the victory :D

I guess I will sum up what futurehermit just posted... Horse Archers are quite powerful if you get them early enough, use them early enough, and kill early enough. =)

I've tweaked my program to also compute the size of the army you need to achieve victory. (And I corrected a bug that was lowballing the hammer cost of your casualties)

Again, the scenario is to compute the cost of killing a CG 2 archer in a flatland city with a 25% fortify bonus.

Swordsmen are all CR2, and valued at 40 hammers.
Horse archers are an appropriate mix of FL2 and C2, and valued at 50 hammers.
C2 Horse Archers are purely combat 2 horse archers.
"need" is the expected hammer cost of the units you need to kill the archer.
"lose" is the expected hammer cost of your casualties.

40% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 70.57 hammers, lose 30.57 hammers.
Horse archers: need 92.52 hammers, lose 21.76 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 86.00 hammers, lose 28.80 hammers.

60% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 74.37 hammers, lose 31.63 hammers.
Horse archers: need 102.31 hammers, lose 27.05 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 89.85 hammers, lose 31.88 hammers.

100% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 83.22 hammers, lose 43.22 hammers.
Horse archers: need 119.05 hammers, lose 35.69 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 97.82 hammers, lose 38.26 hammers.


So I've quantified obsolete's objection: we can see exactly how much strength we sacrifice by using flanking to minimize casualties. For example, if we need to use 20 combat horse archers to conquer a bunch of 60% cultural defense cities, then we expect 7 of them will die. If we try the same thing with flanking, we need 23 horse archers, but only 6 of them to die.

(And, we need just over 20 and a half CR2 swordsmen if we tried it that way, and we expect nearly 9 of them to die)


Thanks for the digits, but the most important factor I see is not included in the above numbers and that is the movement factor. With 2 movement, you can reach a city twice as fast, and half as many whipped units occur. Not to mention getting the metal out of the way so no spears can be whipped to repel.

There's also the enemy's UU to consider. I'm currently playing a game as Kublai Khan and two of my neighbours are Hammurabi and Shaka (why do I always get Shaka as the mongols? :( ). Well, I know which one I'll prefer to use Keshiks on at least. ;)
I also read the power rating thread on this forum and saw that HBR are worth around 10k soldiers, the same as the great wall or iron working, or 5 archers. Always useful if you can afford the dead-end. Of course as the mongols you have more incentive..

I've tweaked my program to also compute the size of the army you need to achieve victory. (And I corrected a bug that was lowballing the hammer cost of your casualties)

Again, the scenario is to compute the cost of killing a CG 2 archer in a flatland city with a 25% fortify bonus.

Swordsmen are all CR2, and valued at 40 hammers.
Horse archers are an appropriate mix of FL2 and C2, and valued at 50 hammers.
C2 Horse Archers are purely combat 2 horse archers.
"need" is the expected hammer cost of the units you need to kill the archer.
"lose" is the expected hammer cost of your casualties.

40% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 70.57 hammers, lose 30.57 hammers.
Horse archers: need 92.52 hammers, lose 21.76 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 86.00 hammers, lose 28.80 hammers.



This calculation is right on the mark.;)
Stronger units rather than flanking mean less hammers and thus time to prepare for an attack to be succesful.

This to me is by far more important to actually reducing your loses or getting a high number of promoted units in most situations.
I find that unless i try to mess with an opponent that has a huge land mass under his control reinforcing isnt really that tough.
Plus promoting above level 4 usually has redudant payoff.

Ofcourse your limited calculations include fully promoted defenders (unlikely) and much more importantly fail to consider that CR3 swords widen the gap further than the 20% yuo calculate.
Not to mention that in BTS one is very likely to have counters to deal in the 2nd target city. The AI doesnt seem to take UU well into acount though, i.e. i have seen it whip holkans to deal with my axes consistently.:mischief:
Add to this that IW is a bit cheaper and has necessary production boosting techs (BW,mine) as prequisites, and you easily conclude that a succesful early offensive based on swords can come faster.


100% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 83.22 hammers, lose 43.22 hammers.
Horse archers: need 119.05 hammers, lose 35.69 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 97.82 hammers, lose 38.26 hammers.



Now if we are talking well into the middle ages, one cant ignore the devastating effects of cats. Which makes decisions easy really.



That is not ot say HA are without uses.
A flank mounted unit is the best approach when a secondary city is defended by a couple really strong defenders acompanied by more lesser (somewhat osbolet or green) ones.
However the question in every game is will they see enough use to make getting HR worth it.

@kcmarkwell:
Offcourse they are great because of their speed when everything is early, but then you are not attacking you are just trying to mop things up quicker.

PS: Oppsitely from HA i find chariots lovely rushers excactly beacause you can have enough for an attack early cause they cost less than axes and move 2, even if they are weaker.:D

The calculation also fails to account for speed in movement and the presence of counter-units. A Swordsman-only assault is more likely to take cities nearby but is less likely to proceed quickly and decisively because the enemy has more time to make Axemen. An HA force can quickly take out an enemy's Copper and Iron (where feasible) and almost completely block the presence of any counter-unit - a major advantage against the use of Swordsmen.

Having used large amounts of both, I can say with some experience that HAs pack a smaller punch individually, but are more resilient as a force and sustain less casualties, largely because you "pad the fat" with Flanking HAs, allowing the Combat HAs to mop up relatively easy battles and win a lot (and thus get a lot of promotions).

The Combat HAs tend to be more useful because you can use them to support a bunch of Catas and regular units as well as a bunch of Flanking HAs. If you have extra HAs, it makes sense to give them Flanking to lessen casualties and create more promotions, as well as for attacking enemy stacks with siege in them.

I'd say that the HAs are definitely worth getting early if some conditions are true, and absolutely worth building in the late Classical and Medieval eras for the extra flexibility and power they provide.

^^^Well said

For those that haven't i would advise to play gotm 25 and read the first spoiler as bables have some very good things to say there :).

I think I haven't researched HBR since I played Hannibal in Warlords... Someone ends throwing it in a late trade. I usually don't build many cavalry units at all, but I guess I should; my reasoning is that less cavalry = more siege/infantry = easier city taking. And I don't particularly like the Horse Archers, I think they're kinda sucky, but I guess I'll force myself to build them next random I play and see for myself.

less cavalry = more siege/infantry = easier city taking

the tradeoff is:

more cavalry = less siege/infantry = faster city taking

I dunno, the scary units are still there. And those beakers on HBR seem kinda better placed towards Construction... HAs seem more like a gamble. I rather trade and go for the "better" cavalry.

If you take a 50/50 gamble 100 times, you can be virtually certain that you will win nearly half the time.

An update on my German Horse Archer game:

I won domination in 1890, which is about 4 decades or around 20+ turns faster than my average. My final score was over 100,000 for the first time in BTS. It was by far my best game I've played in BtS yet.

I'm not saying the horse archers were 100% responsible (Panzers rule!), but they were quite effective and getting the land base pictured above went a long way to securing the victory :D

My best game was with keshiks (98000+ in warlord/monarch), second best game with Cirrus (win before 1500), and it boiled down to 2 things imho :

- reinforcements are fast on the front line
- the surviving FlankII ones get quickly insane promotions (Non warlord unit level 10 anyone ?, GG cav lvl 15), and so steamroll anything in sight. You need 2 MASH units to be really effective (one with the stack, the other in last city conquered with healing units).

I builded during this game almost only mounted units (at one time i think i had around 100 and was able to have 3 attack stack) with only a few cats for the strongest cities on hill, and often they did not have time to reach the spot. the trickest part of that game was that i needed the money from cities taken to keep my economy afloat, so needed to stay at war.

However i found in the Cirrus game that the best first prom is C1/Fl1 and only if the unit survive FlankII. This way, the first attackers do more damage on a strong defender.

When you have a mounted attack force, I think that using spies to take down city defenses is vastly superior to using siege units.

The whole advantage of HAs is speed. Having to make your HAs wait while your cats dink along makes their biggest advantage useless. Plus, you have to wait 2-4 turns while the cats knock down the defenses. Even worse.

Much better: plan ahead, build up espionage points against your opponent, and/or get and use a great spy as needed. Spies have move 2, and you can pre-position them so that they wait the 5 turns to make it cheap. (I'd send 2 spies to each city so that if they discover one of them, the other is your backup.)

For sheer blinding speed, nothing like it. I did this trick with HAs one game and rufkm the war was over before I even had any weariness at all.

Wodan

The thing that sucks is that when you declare war spies are spit out of the enemy empire now. By the time the slow-moving spies get to the cities your horses have been waiting impatiently for awhile. It's kind of annoying.

However, yes, having spies tear down defenses with a mobile force is devastating. Better than any other approach imo. It's just difficult to pull off effectively now. You kinda have to have your spies on the other side of your enemy's empire so they can get to the back cities and preferably have a couple turns to fortify in time for when your horses get there.

The thing that sucks is that when you declare war spies are spit out of the enemy empire now. By the time the slow-moving spies get to the cities your horses have been waiting impatiently for awhile. It's kind of annoying.
I thought Bhruic fixed that?

Wodan

:ninja: edit: Yes, he did. I just checked the changelog. You need Bhruic's patch (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=246057) Futurehermit.

I'll look into it. Thanks.

After being harrassed by Alexander and his Phalynx units, I can say HAs are one of the best counters to them!!! Pre-BTS HAs were dead against the Greek UU, now they save you!!

Good call!

I thought Bhruic fixed that?

Wodan

:ninja: edit: Yes, he did. I just checked the changelog. You need Bhruic's patch (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=246057) Futurehermit.

Thanks, I installed it and it works great. :ninja: the horse archers now mwhuhahahahahaha

:lol: futurehermit. Enjoy! Bhruic fixed some other messiness as well.

Wodan

After being harrassed by Alexander and his Phalynx units, I can say HAs are one of the best counters to them!!! Pre-BTS HAs were dead against the Greek UU, now they save you!!

Playing KK, I just had Alex DoW (TWICE!) on me suddenly, I mean, I was miles from his cities and still. Anyway, Keshiks saved the day. They destroyed his stack of 4-5 units, Phalanx and Spears, then proceeded to destroy the closest civ, De Gaulle, netting me a capital and a bunch of gold, and now I'm pillaging Alex back to stone age, razing 2 cities along the way (Sparta and Corith?). Soon the entire continent (Continents) will me mine and the clock is still in the BCs.

Ok, those were Keshiks, not HAs, but still. :goodjob:

Play a game where you want/need to do an early rush but you have no metal. Then you'll learn the power of 15+ stack of HAs. Plus its nice to have one leveled up to give your first gg for that medic III.

Swordsmen are all CR2, and valued at 40 hammers.
Horse archers are an appropriate mix of FL2 and C2, and valued at 50 hammers.
C2 Horse Archers are purely combat 2 horse archers.

One more consideration: in a Classical-Era war, you are unlikely to be able to build twice-promoted Swordsmen. More likely, they will be CR1 only.

"One more consideration: in a Classical-Era war, you are unlikely to be able to build twice-promoted Swordsmen. More likely, they will be CR1 only."

Cant expect CRII swords out of barracks no, but you 'll get get them after the first enemy city falls and CRIII will follow promptly.;)

Besides defining classical era is kina hard considering the more efficient way to wage war is beelines towards a relative potents war tech. I.E. if you plan on a mass war beelining construction for cats and fielding a few isnt necessarily taking longer than amassing the proper amount of HA. Depends.



Reading the worst UU thread it dawned on me Boudica's GallicW promoted to GIII are kind of swords/HA hybrids.
More mobile than swords on hilly terain and with a very large withdraw chance that puts flankers to shame.:eek:
I have certainly enjoyed a game using them as such, too bad most folks around here think so lowly of them.

Well, my opinions on horse archers...

A. You can have a barracks AND a stable, which can give more experience
B. They aren't mellee, so Axeman don't get a bonus against them
C. You can always trade techs with another Civ

They are especially deadly when you have other civics/traits that give experience and free promotions. You can easily end up with a very elite horse archer force, that can last you awhile.

"One more consideration: in a Classical-Era war, you are unlikely to be able to build twice-promoted Swordsmen. More likely, they will be CR1 only."

Cant expect CRII swords out of barracks no, but you 'll get get them after the first enemy city falls and CRIII will follow promptly.;)
I think the point was for the mathematical comparison. If you grant 2 promotions to the Swords, then you should grant 3 to the HAs. If you want to keep the HAs at 2, then the Swords would only get 1. For the maths.

OTOH there's a cost for that, you get 1 less HA per city making them, because you have to spend those hammers on the Stable. So if you have 3 production cities that's 3 less HAs than Swords.

Wodan

In the long run having a stable is a must - knights can be game breakers, if you get them fast enough. Getting a stable + barracks + aggressive = ownage.

"One more consideration: in a Classical-Era war, you are unlikely to be able to build twice-promoted Swordsmen. More likely, they will be CR1 only."

Cant expect CRII swords out of barracks no, but you 'll get get them after the first enemy city falls and CRIII will follow promptly.;)

Besides defining classical era is kina hard considering the more efficient way to wage war is beelines towards a relative potents war tech. I.E. if you plan on a mass war beelining construction for cats and fielding a few isnt necessarily taking longer than amassing the proper amount of HA. Depends.
I mentioned "Classical Era War" mainly to underline the point that we're not talking about a beeline to Vassalage or Theocracy, which means that the Swordsmen in the comparison could not have been built with 5 XP, and therefore could not have had CR2 in the first wave of attack.

And if you want to talk about cities beyond the first one, note that a Stable can build a medic HA right out the gate, and that Horse Archers can rush to the 2nd city twice as fast as foot units (after having the assisted heal from the medic, which can also keep up with the double-speed attack force). This means less time to whip defense, and fewer defenders to defeat. This speed also compounds itself when the main force gains enough experience for March promotions.

I confess I've never tried a massed force of HA. Mostly I find the timing of the unit a bit off.
I've been playing immortal, and it seems like the time the HA are useful is not the time I can war. Unless I have a UU, early war tends to be an axe rush or most likely I'll get enough land in the rex. I generally try to rex aggressively which leaves me way weaker than the AI. By time I could build any kind of a HA force we are talking about LB defenders. So it's usually a globe/draft thing. But people make some good points about their usefulness.
As for trading, it seems the AI prioritizes it less than at earlier versions but as for trading it's again kind of the wrong price. You either need to sink a lot of hammers into a tech or do a 2/1 since it's cheaper than the techs you want to trade for.

Try going for an early war without copper or iron and you'll see that a theocracy/stable-promoted army of HAs can make things happen. Then you can get that Medic III gg and promote him as your first knight eventually. By the time you get through cavalry you should have multiple four-promoted units.

I'm trying out jaguars and horse archers and whatnot, and my biggest gripe is that you're choosing between a military tech and monarchy.

Other than city attacking for which they can be used, HA's have a great use as pillaging units .. declare war on the strongest AI and pillage his countryside dry especially resources, farms and then roads + other things; he likely wont have many spearmen to oppose you and he'll lose quite a few axeman/swords if he uses those to take you out.

Advantages of Using Horse Archers:
1) speed --> surprise --> more damage done to unsuspecting opponent + can retreat more easily
2) flanking --> your units will survive some battles they don't win
3) bonus against siege

Disadvantages:
1) cost 50 hammers
2) easily countered with spearmen/pikemen once the enemy knows you're using them
3) do not attack Greece, Zululand, or Mayas (I may have missed someone) cuz their UU's will rip you apart