DarthGrumpy
Chieftain
Chariot archers would make more sense. Especially for Arabia/Mongolia as they keep promotion after upgrade. But also for Siam/Spain/Songhai. The trick is to pull them back right before they get first promotion or to go straight for HBR and build horsemen. In addition this strategy, afaik, never suggested to ignore luxes techs. This cash is precious. Nothing would have happened had you taken a little detour and delayed Chivalry for few turns. There is no difference whether you get it on turn 80 or on turn 85.
I've been tending to shy away from chariot-archers because apparently when they upgrade, they keep their terrain-disadvantages when upgraded to keshik. And with this tech-line, I always seem to have horsemen for a very short time before I'm building keshiks anyway.
And no, this strategy never suggested ignoring luxes, and I don't, for the most part. In the start position I described, I could go up AH and trapping, and divert to Calendar, sure, but in doing so, how much am I delaying other things that need to happen? Is the gold worth the time lost diverting tech, at this stage of the game? That's what I'm trying to get a handle on.
But, reading through this, and replying, a big "duh!" just occurred to me. As I said, I consider building any more warriors than I have to a waste for Mongolia, because they're going to be stuck in the classic age until I finally go back and tech iron, and they can't keep up with the Horde anyway; I've found archers to be a much better alternative when it comes to shrugging off an early rush, and then I just leave them as a home-guard when I roll off to conquer. But, unless I get Archery from a hut, that means I have to spend turns researching Archery (yet another diversion).
But... chariot archers are basically archers with more mobility, and should work just as well as archers for city defense... and don't require archery. They're added movement is just a plus, since they can shift around faster. Their terrain penalties shouldn't be a factor when defending cities. Once I get keshik production going, archery is a 1 or 2 turn tech, and I can just disband them and rebuild them as keshiks.