On Lancers

In my short time here so far on CivFanatics, I seem to have noticed a propensity for people to be a little negative towards the Lancer. After some introspection, I find that I am as well.

However, I was thinking about how most people are crazy about Pikemen. They're convenient to get to in the tech tree (a military unit upgrade while you're focusing on growth), great against mounted units, and otherwise good in general. The downside might be that they upgrade to Lancers.

But I was thinking, aside from the horse requirement, Lancers are really just more powerful Pikemen that can move really fast. That should make them great. But they aren't, so what's the issue? Is Metallurgy such a downer as a tech, and that's why they're looked upon as they are? Is the horse requirement that inconvenient?

The horse requirement isn't really a problem. I find that I usually don't go down to metallurgy as a priority, so there are usually more advanced weapons by the time I get there.

no defensive terrain bonus.

-No terrain defensive bonuses
-No seriously viable upgrade path, meaning that the lancer looses it's advantage very fast, you're stuck with a 25 unit until you discover combined arms, which is a tech no one wants anyway.
-High production cost
-Penalty attacking cities

-Upgrade cost is ridiculously high.
-Changes their "role" in your army. That line of meat shields you once had are now squishy lancers.
-Only two techs later, 34 strength cavalry hit the field. Lancers with their bonus against mounted only deal 33. If you want mounted units, may as well wait two techs to get a unit that does 34 against everything, not just mounted.
-Repeating what Manta said about being stuck with 25 combat strength, since it is one of the huge disappointments of the lancer unit, as it is a very short while before 50 strength GWI and 70 strength Infantry hit the field.

The Lancer itself is quite bad for all the reasons stated so far. However, at least the Sipahi has a specialized use - that is, for scouting and mass pillaging. It is viable to pillage a large swath of enemy territory (including many of the enemy's luxes and strategic resources) with Sipahi, so long as the army is engaged elsewhere (and you're not dealing with Shaka's carpet of doom).

On top of the long list of reasons already mentioned there's also the problem that the rest of the upgrade path is terrible. You have to wait 2 full eras, one of the longest waits for an upgrade, just to wind up with the anti tank gun which is not very effective since the AI rarely bothers putting out tanks in respectable numbers. Afterwards you get the helicopter gunship which has a paltry 60 strength yet still requires precious aluminum and is bad at nearly everything except for pillaging. You can't even take advantage of that extra movement speed to take heavily weakened cities because it's barred from capturing cities.

Pikemen: a decent melee unit that requires no special resources, has a bonus against mounted units and is available even when not focusing on the "bottom" of the tech tree (the military parts). I tend to use them as earlier basic infantry instead of devoted anti-cavalry.

Lancer: outshadowed in most purposes by other units of the same era, only good against cavalry which aren't the most dangerous of enemies anyway.

I nearly always train 2-3 lancers in my best military city -- then I set them to fortify in a safe place without any promotions. Eventually I upgrade them to anti-tank guns (still without promoting them), and then to helicopter gunships. I then give them two mobility promotions (+ the air repair promotion if there is enough experience points left over). So now I have range-8 gunships with the ability to move after attacking and with air repair (or lacking only a few missions to get air repair). It doesn't take that long for them to be promoted again with double attack.

Sometimes I start out with pikemen who have been promoted through double attack, and then upgrade them to HGS when available; but I usually find it preferable to train unpromoted lancers & wait for the HGS upgrade before promoting them.

The trick is to move your "paltry 60 strength" gunships out of harm's way after blasting away with them.

The key to what you describe is to enable Promotion Saving on the advanced setup options screen. Absent that option, you can't bank away promotions.

In BNW, lancers at least have the use of rushing behind enemy lines to cut trade routes, and then pillage everything on their way back.