I doubt game will be won by the age of lancers and knights so want to have at least close to tech parity if it moves to modern warfare
You would be wrong. People have beaten the game on the hardest difficulty (Deity) with the special Chariot Archers the Huns get (Horse Archers). Think it was somewhere around turn 125-150? Obviously Mongolia/Arabia have a later "big push" with their special units being later but you can conquer either the entire world or at least like 50-75% of it (meaning you're so out of control the AI has no chance) by the Industrial Era.
Robaker sniped most of this, but I'll respond anyway...
The only units that get a movement bonus are Horsemen, Lancers, and Cavalry. You won't want to build Horsemen because their promotions become useless once they are upgraded to Keshiks and their strength compared to their hammer cost is abysmal. Lancers are bad for a multitude of reasons.
Er, no, you actually will want to build a Horseman or two and potentially even a Lancer -- this is solely for the sake of capturing cities. And since they'll never get hit by a city bombard they can keep capturing cities while at 1 HP. And...the 5 movement bonus means they can cross two sets of hills to reach a city in one turn. Or a forested hill and then flat ground. Or two open ground tiles inside of the Great Wall. You'd need several sets of melee units (aka pikemen or the "infantry" line) to do the job of that one mounted unit...both because the melee units are much slower and because they'll need to heal (even with cover 2 they're going to take a lot of damage from attacking a city given the defense they have on higher difficulties).
This is assuming you get Logistics. If you're looking for midgame war with Keshiks, you'll probably have a barracks up at most, and even with the faster promotions, you will only usually get logistics on Keshiks after you've defeated your first or second opponent, depending on how many Keshiks you have compared to how many units they defeated.
Even with no barracks it takes 34 unit shots or 25 city shots (or a mix, obviously) to reach logistics without even assuming +50% XP (in which case it becomes 25 unit shots or 17 city shots). On my very first attempt at Domination with Mongolia (and where I screwed many things up, wasn't nearly as aggressive as I should have been, etc) I managed to get Barrage 3, Accuracy 3, Logistics, Range, and March...and then earned even more promotions on top of that but none were even left to take. Which was kind of funny. And this was simply on Standard, not Epic or Marathon.
I'll take getting to move 1 less for the 15% more dealt damage
Except that extra damage doesn't help if you don't have the move to fire and retreat given the terrain or in a slightly better case scenario not enough move to fire twice and retreat. And, of course, Keshiks are going to *reach* Logistics more quickly which means the snowball starts sooner.
The 1 less movement will usually mean you'll need 1-2 more turns to get to proper positions, which isn't enough to make up for the damage differences.
1-2 more turns? Maybe on pure open terrain, but not in forested/hilly/jungle regions where Keshiks can move 50%+ faster.
I can also bring up another niche scenario in which Camels fare better than Keshiks: simultaneous turns multiplayer. People usually have the chance to fire back at your Keshiks before they can retreat, so the fact that they are more fragile makes them much worse than Camels.
People shouldn't have the chance to do so, not if you move quickly. It is extremely difficult to retaliate without actually moving your force closer to the Keshiks. They might get a few lucky shots if they are very quick but those will be few and far between.
Also, might I point out multiplayer was never mentioned in this thread, let alone simultaneous? I mean, in a multiplayer environment if people see you trying to conquer like this *everyone* is going to DoW you and move to stop you. Unless it's a 1v1 or something, I guess, which in and of itself is a very different scenario (and where you're not trading luxes with your opponent while at war).
I assume, unless stated otherwise, that we're talking something close to Standard size, Standard speed, and Pangaea/Continents/primarily land map in single player.
It'll take 1-3 turns for Great Generals to catch up with Camels, depending on how good your war roads are.
At which point the city should be ready to capture anyway, so the General is useless. And you don't NEED the roads with Khans.
blah blah blah economic stuff
I say "blah blah blah" because this while thing started when you said "For one, Camels are flatout more powerful than Keshiks" and that's what we've been discussing. If we want to turn this into a holistic Civ debate (aka, does the superiority of Keshik/Khan for pure military wind up mattering less than the extra happiness/gold from Arabia) then that's another story, but we've been talking pure military so far.
Also, I realized that we forgot to factor start bias into the Arabia vs. Mongolia debate. Mongolia has no start bias
Mongols have plains which is excellent for horses and salt.
worst scenario, your horseman takes a shot from the city and a shot from a garrisoned crossbowman, which should not be enough to kill a full strength horseman (by my calculations, roughly 85-90 damage for Renaissance).
No, worst case scenario is the Horsemen takes those shots and then gets hit by another unit (melee or ranged) that finished building in that city on that turn and dies. Or it's a coastal city that has both a crossbowman and a galleass/frigate which definitely one turn the horseman.
But assuming neither of those and even if he survives (and if the AI has Tradition with their high city strength and the garrisoned unit I'd suspect the Horseman would die...are you factoring in Tradition bonus or the AI getting two free promotions?), he's still at 1 HP and needs to heal back to full (unless you're sure you have the terrain to pillage at the next city). And then without the movement bonus he'd take longer to catch up to the main army.
It's definitely not irrelevant, but compared to other movement bonus UA's, eg. Persia's, England's, Inca's, or Denmark's, it's just not that ubiquitously useful.
Speed speed speed speed speed.
Speed is the key. You need to be able to conquer as much as possible before you go obsolete. And being able to move 25-50% faster than Arabia is a big deal. Even if you "only" save 2 turns per city due to movement, when you have to conquer 20+ cities that's an extra 40 turns saved, which means either that you can conquer MORE than you otherwise could with those extra 40+ turns or that it's easier since cities will have less defense, there will be less (and/or weaker) defensive units, etc.
And yes, with Keshiks with Logistics are more or less as powerful as Camels with Logistics (again, depends on terrain).
And Keshiks will get those Logistics faster, which then they'll then get the range even faster.
To get three range AND logistics...
Keshiks (units): 34 turns to hit logistics, 9 more turns to hit range, 43 turns total.
Keshiks (units, +50% XP): 25 turns to hit logistics, 7 more turns to hit range, 32 turns total.
Keshiks (cities): 25 turns to hit logistics, 7 more turns to hit range, 32 turns total.
Keshiks (cities, +50% XP): 17 turns to hit logistics, 4 more turns to hit range, 21 turns total.
CAs (units): 50 turns to hit logistics, 13 more turns to hit range, 63 turns total.
CAs (units, +50% XP): 34 turns to hit logistics, 9 more turns to hit range, 43 turns total.
CAs (cities): 34 turns to hit logistics, 9 more turns to hit range, 43 turns total.
CAs (cities, +50% XP): 25 turns to hit logistics, 7 more turns to hit range, 32 turns total.
And that's the best case scenario for CAs, as we've already shown how Keshiks are able to get off more shots in more terrain types than CAs.
Well, given how bad the AI is at killing camels and keshiks, I find that neither Khans nor Great Generals are vital to warfare: they're effectively just one attack promotion's worth of bonus strength. They do speed things up for sure, letting you take cities quite a few turns sooner, but they're definitely not vital.
Even if we ignore the "quite" (which implies it's more than just "a few turns")...even just "a few turns" *IS* vital. Saving even 2-3 turns per city is amazing because that means the other cities are easier too and it just snowballs.
It really sounds like you're looking at this from the perspective of "Oh, I'm Arabia, I'll get some Camel Archers and conquer another nearby Civ or two" and we're talking about this from the perspective of "Oh, I'm Mongolia, I'll get some Keshiks and sweep the whole goddamn *MAP.*"
I argue that if you have a unit that can take Parthian shots like Keshiks or Camels, having Bazaars and regular generals is more useful than having Markets and Khans.
Not when you're trying to clear the map ASAP and razing many/most cities anyway.
Chariots are cheap enough that it's not necessary to heal them all the time.
Except when you lose the chariot you lose the XP, which is one of the whole points to starting early.
Plus, healing with a chariot means you're not taking shots with it. The Khan healing bonus is only really applicable to the few turns of downtime between taking cities
And...those few turns is the difference between the AI having another unit or two at the next city. It's the difference between fighting 1 unit and 2 units at the second city and then the difference between fighting 3 units and 6 units at the third city (because you took longer to heal after the first which meant more at the second, which means taking the second took even longer due to that unit which means, coupled with the longer healing, that you fight even more at the third). Again, speed snowballs.
I tend to play with strategic balance, so horses are guaranteed.
Which is definitely an assumption. Even if guaranteed you're only guaranteed to have 4-6, I think, so you'll really need to seek out more anyway.
Plains salt, plains wheat, and civil service plains farms in general are pretty useful, I'll give you that. Still, if you want to rely on religion (which you pretty much need to as Liberty if you want to have legs), it's much less likely that you'll be eligible for a good faith pantheon as a plains start than as a desert start.
Good luck getting a religion on Deity -- sometimes you fail even WITH desert folklore. And, of course, if you miss Desert Folklore (due to someone else taking it (either in single player OR multiplayer)) then you basically just have a worse start.
However, Liberty's biggest disadvantages come from the fact that its bonuses barely scale at all, so if you go Liberty, the only thing that you will have going for you in the lategame is whatever you can snatch up early on with your hammer and faith advantages. People who fail with Liberty do so because they cannot capitalize well enough on their early advantages to stay in the game.
This is incorrect, at least in single player (multiplayer Tradition vs Liberty is its own whole bag of issues which is another topic). The problem is not that Liberty is bad late game -- in fact, Liberty winds up being BETTER than Tradition late game. The problem is that you usually don't HIT late game.
Going on standard speed (and these numbers aren't exact, just estimates, so don't nit pick too much):
Turns 1 to 100ish: Liberty is better. Can easily fit in a wonder or more military prior to settlers, faster settler building, more hammers.
Turns 100ish to 250-300ish: Tradition is better due to growth bonus, free aqueducts, and Monarchy.
Turns 250-300ish+: Liberty becomes better at some point.
Basically, you get enough growth bonuses, free aqueducts, and amazing capital that Liberty cannot keep up in the mid-game compared to Tradition. But eventually even the Liberty cities are at a good population (since population growth slows down), you have more science (since each city easily outstrips the 5% science penalty), and you have more production (since those cities have their buildings built and you have far more of them).
But if you're winning with Science by turn 250-300...then Liberty never really has a chance to come into its own.
For example, here's an example of an excellent Liberty empire:
The catch is that's way too late to consistently win on Deity, obviously. If you're wondering how my tech level is that bad with science that high it's because it was a team game with a friend new to Civ (who was Arabia) and his science was completely terrible. But show me a 4 city Tradition empire that can compete with a 2700+ Science Liberty Civ (that had 13 cities, I think) -- though obviously BOTH Tradition and Liberty should be finishing the tech tree by that turn anyway, so the science is moot. The production/strategic resources sure are nice, though.
For fillers, it really depends. If you went Liberty and founded a good religion, Piety: Reformation gives you access to Jesuit Education and Glory to God, the two best ways a wide Liberty empire can keep up science-wise to Tradition players (Glory to God is basically a Rationalism finisher and also removes the penalty of not being able to purchase GE's due to not going Tradition).
That would be a *lot* of fillers (4 total, I believe). Unless you're Poland I'd never expect to get more than 1-2 fillers unless your science is bad. Also note that it's a gamble as the AI loves piety and may take those beliefs.
If you have poor culture and therefore can only afford one filler policy before Rationalism unlocks, Patronage opener: the slower decay helps no matter what, and Forbidden Palace is always useful.
Two points in Patronage can be good in general, lot of more efficient for gold to city states. Forbidden Palace is more iffy as either the AI needs to not take Patronage or you need to get Banking first (which usually would mean giving up Sistine Chapel to an AI). Don't get me wrong, Forbidden Palace is wonderful -- 10 happiness on a 100 population empire, for example, but iffy.
If you're Persia, Aesthetics: you'll want to essentially be in a constant GA, and faster Great Artists combined with a free Great Artist goes a long way.
Except the Great Artist isn't actually free, it pushes up your Great Artist counter. Taking that should be the LAST Great Artist you get unless you think you need it for a timing push. 25% more Great Artist generation only works out to maybe 1 extra over the course of the game, too -- you get just them slightly faster.
If you need Generals, Honor: the only policy that matters is Warrior Code, which can thankfully be picked up for 2 policy points.
Er, Warrior Code is not what matters, it's Military Tradition for 50% more XP. You'll get a Great General fairly quickly as is.
Otherwise, especially if you're Liberty and/or Poland, Commerce: Wagon Trains if it looks like you'll only be able to afford 2 policy points, Mercantilism if you can afford 3 policy points.
Most people (basically unless you're going Honor for Domination (which actually often isn't a good idea), Aesthetics for Culture, or Patronage for Diplomatic) go Commerce and pick up Mercenary Army. Not because it's better than Wagon Trains, but because it means as soon as you have a spare Social Policy you can grab Mercantilism. Then you finish the tree if you have spare policies after finishing Rationalism/Ideology.
Ideology-wise, you'll probably want Autocracy.
Autocracy works no matter the size of your empire and focuses on mostly highly trained units. Note that if you want to maintain happiness over a large empire you'll need the Militarism (2 happiness from Barracks/Armories/Military Academies) in your conquered cities...which means you'll need to annex them (puppets won't build those)...which means getting the +3 happiness from Courthouses (Police State) is excellent. You can also focus less on science because you plan to steal your techs anyway.
Order works if you're in the tech lead and wanting to maintain your position as you conquer the world. You get free Courthouses when annexing, get happiness from basic/essential buildings (monuments, workshops/factories/hydroplants/nuclear plants/solar plants, public schools/observatories/research labs), and spies with an 80% chance to catch enemy spies (versus 40% -- so literally 1/3 the techs stolen) to maintain your tech lead.
Freedom, as mentioned, isn't good at just constant domination -- though it can get involved in very late game war (or small conquering earlier on).
), while Arabia is slower but steadier and has stronger economic support and a better long-term backup plan.
