80% Infantry and 20% Cavalry

I am reading currently a book about the american Civil War.

In the discription of the armies is written, that 80% of them are infantry, while only 20% are cavalry.

In books about the warfare in Europe between the 30-Years-War and WWI are similar numbers.

But then I play Civ3 most (if not all) of my offensive forces are cavalry in the same tech era. Infantry is mostly used for defence (either covering the cavalry or guarding my cities). If armies are available, they are used to cover my offensive forces instead of infantry to speed my advance up.

This especialy happens, then I have no need for slow artillery either because my fleet is able to give fire support or I have Horse Artillery (2 MP) as support units (as they did also in both the Civil War and in Europe).

The KI usually have a lower percentage of cavalry, but they rush also normaly without any formation as fast as the individual unit can move to the front, often exposing their cavalry to counter attacks.

I am playing mostly on regent level.

How is your preference? Are you using more infantry?

EDIT: Just to avoid misunderstandings: I meant not the specific units, but the unit groups. So infantry are Warriors/Archers to TOW/Infantry and cavalry are Chariot/Horseman to Cavalry.

I'm the same in every regard. Even the Crusaders, who are a rare infantry unit with a strong attack strength for their era, tend to get stuck providing city maintenance while various mobile units zoom off here and there.

The only times Infantry comes into play is if I don't have a Horse Resource or if it's part of a large landing fleet where everyone has to start on the same square anyway. I've had some good Archer swarms, Swordsman swarms and Medieval Infantry swarms, but I've never used a Rifleman swarm or Infantry swarm or Spearman swarm which is, as you say, rather against the truth of history.

I play monarch or one higher mostly.
Cavalry or anything that attacks high (Berserk, medieval infantry) comes to mind) is my favorite. Mostly because of the speed though I like the horses a lot.
Movement of troops is important in civilization, and cavalry has 6 attack (the knight also has a high attack rating). So horses are just very important.

In my mod (remember to post it!) I added a 3/1/1 crossbowman with stealth attack available with republic to make the slower guys a bit more interesting. You can also make crusaders yourself (the wonder gives a mounted crusader).
With little things like that, and a granadier that has better defense, and a string of elephant units, I wanted to balance the cavalry/infantry thing a bit.

Specifically talking about cavalry, yeah. In that period of time cavalry is the best. Infantry is good when moving slowly into the enemy territory with some artillery.
There is a reason why cavalry is so good. Notice that military tradition research is not needed to advance in era. So you can choose either be good in military or go straight ahead in research.

Monarch(80%)-Emperor(20%).

Infantry has no advantage in attack, but is 12.5% more expensive than cavalry. There simply is no point to favour it over cavalry. I assume that IRL there were strong economic reasons to limit cavalry. Those horses are not cheap in upkeep. C3C does not simulate that.

In most armies around the world at the times described you had to own your horse, there was no great nationalistic provision (such as an all-seeing player) for supplying all the men with horses. If a wealthy general wanted to fund more horses then he could, but, as you say, that's an awful lot of money to spend on your arrow fodder. There have been cases in history where battles have been almost entirely fought by cavalry, such as with the Mongols or American Indians or Orders of Knights, but in the main a pitched battle or advancing army would consist of mainly numbers on the ground with cavalry support by those who could afford to give themselves that extra advantage.

I think the TS also means other horses vs footmen and not only the units 'cavalry' and 'infantry'.

I play modded, so my AIs and myself use infantry as our primary force, then cavalry, then artillery. This is due to the way I set up my unit upgrades in intervals. Sometimes cavalry is the strongest, and others infantry is depending on where I am in my research path.

Being a military historian, I have modded the game to more closely approximate history, so cavalry units are stronger during the Medieval Period, but once you get to Rifleman, the infantry units are stronger. I do give the Swiss Pikeman a higher value for both attack and defense at 4 for each, along with a boost in hitpoints, as the Swiss Pikemen historically clobbered the Knight. For a good brief discussion on Medieval Warfare, C.W.C. Oman's 1885 short version of The Art of War in the Middle Ages 378-1515 is available for download on Project Gutenberg. Some longer versions from the early 1900s can be found at archive.org.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44308

I have the final 2 volume edition from 1926 in my library, and refer to it quite a bit when modding the game. In reality, a blend of Swiss Pikeman and Longbowman should just about always defeat an equal size force of cavalry. Cavalry should also always be considerably more expensive than infantry, as you have the cost of the man, generally more expensive than infantry, along with the expense of acquiring and maintaining the horse. The standard ration for a military horse used by cavalry is about 9 pounds of oat feed and 12-14 pounds of hay per day. For the heavy war horses used by Knights, that would go up to 14 pounds per day of feed and about 16 pounds a day for hay. If maintained on grass, light horse would require an acre of good pasture per month per horse under typical European conditions, while a heavy horse would require about 2 acres per month.

timerover51 said:

For a good brief discussion on Medieval Warfare, C.W.C. Oman's 1885 short version of The Art of War in the Middle Ages 378-1515 is available for download on Project Gutenberg.

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Looks interesting. Could be my book for this year's Christmas vacation...

timerover51 said:

In reality, a blend of Swiss Pikeman and Longbowman should just about always defeat an equal size force of cavalry.

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I suppose, this refers to the late middle ages, when the Longbow reigned? How about the time frame 1750 - 1870? Weren't "dashing cavalry attacks" still believed to be the key to success during that time? So did the cavalry re-gain it's superiority over infantry during that period, and if not, why did all sides still use cavalry right up to WW I, when trench warfare finally proved it to be ineffective?

Lanzelot said:

Looks interesting. Could be my book for this year's Christmas vacation...

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It is quite good reading as well.

I suppose, this refers to the late middle ages, when the Longbow reigned? How about the time frame 1750 - 1870? Weren't "dashing cavalry attacks" still believed to be the key to success during that time? So did the cavalry re-gain it's superiority over infantry during that period, and if not, why did all sides still use cavalry right up to WW I, when trench warfare finally proved it to be ineffective?

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I was referring to the late Middles Ages, as for the 16th and 17th centuries, it was the combination of pike and musket. Horse cavalry remained a vital military force for striking at a retreating enemy, and also could be devastating against shaken or unreliable infantry. Until the socket bayonet was developed, a force of infantry armed with only muskets was highly vulnerable to cavalry, and following the development of the bayonet, infantry squares, the only way to beat off cavalry, were vary vulnerable to artillery fire, so that the lesson of the Battle of Marignano, that infantry could be beaten by a combination of cavalry and artillery, still held true.

Cavalry also could move much faster than infantry, especially if you were operating on the steppes of Russia, the veldt of South Africa, or the Great Plains of the United States. It was also needed for reconnaissance, both strategic and tactical, and during the US Civil War was quite effective at raiding the opposing railroads. Benjamin Grierson's Raid during the Vicksburg Campaign was probably the single most effective cavalry raid in the US Civil War. The Boer use of mounted infantry commandos during the Second Boer War also showed that properly used mounted troops still were quite effective. Cavalry was stilled used effectively in the Middle East theater during World War 1 where maneuvering room was still present. What killed the cavalry use on the Western front was the complete lines of trenches from the coast to the Swiss border. The Russians used cavalry quite effectively against the Japanese in the Nomonhan or Khalkin-Gol Incident in 1939.

An army needed cavalry to make up a balanced force, while during the height of the Middle Ages, cavalry was the decisive arm and could do so without infantry support.

timerover51 said:

An army needed cavalry to make up a balanced force, while during the height of the Middle Ages, cavalry was the decisive arm and could do so without infantry support.

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That makes sense. And this is one part of the game mechanics I'm not quite satisfied with in Civ3: in most periods of history (with exceptions as you mentioned, e.g. the Knight-dominated warfare of the early middle ages) a force of "combined arms" was usually the best approach, but in Civ3 (up to let's say Deity) it is not necessary to use combined arms. The best and most efficient approach is just to build a big stack of horsemen, knights, cavalry or tanks (depending on the era) and then roll over your enemy... (This becomes different only at Sid level or at Deity with bad start location for the human player: here you need defenders for your vulnerable attack forces, because the AI has a sufficient number of units for counter attacks that really hurt, and you need artillery, because the AI is usually more advanced than you and consequently their defenders outclass your attackers. But playing on Sid is such a tedious time-consuming chore, that it is not really enjoyable...)

Short digression into other branches of Civ: I think that in Civ4 they tried to remedy this shortcoming of Civ3 by introducing "units and counter-units" and "individualized upgrades", but they overdid it a bit and committed other mistakes (like the boneheaded way they implemented artillery as a "suicide kamikaze weapon"... ) and made it over-complicated. But in Civ5 they actually did a good job with the combat system. It really encourages the use of combined arms, and the rule "only one unit per tile" also makes logistics and the detailed planning of your campaign more important. Civ5 has other shortcomings, but its combat system I like the most out of all editions of the Civilization series. It feels quite "realistic". So it should lend itself to "historic scenarios" better than Civ3 does?! (But I'm not sure about whether the modding capabilities of Civ5 are as good as the ones of Civ3? I never did any modding.)