Legion or Cataphract

The Roman legion is often considered the 'supersoldier' of the Classical era but I notice most people tend to disregard the Cataphract - why is this?

Sure the Cataphract has 2 less but it is faster, can use defensive bonuses making it a very solid all-round unit as well as being able to move after attacking (so it can pillage a tile after killing another unit or retreat to safety). Also the Cataphract is better placed on the tech tree (Rush Teching to Horseback riding will have more benefits than Iron Working). Also I'm sure that horses are more common on the map than Iron is.

Am I missing something here or is the Cataphract overlooked as a powerhouse of the early game?

The Legion (unlocked by Iron Working & Iron)
17
2
75

Can build Forts & Roads

The Cataphract (Unlocked by Horseback Riding & Horses)
15
3
75

Only 25% penalty vs cities (down from 33%)
Can Move after attacking
Can use defensive terrain (Normal horsemen can't)

Catraphracts are immune to spearmen. Other than that, it's a fair comparison. I personally prefer the legion.

Montezuma II said:

Catraphracts are immune to spearmen. Other than that, it's a fair comparison. I personally prefer the legion.

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Immune? Do you mean vulnerable?

Cataphracts are good in multiplayer as with all horse units. But in single player not so much. Because ai loves spears and pikes. While legion goes toe to toe with pikes, cataphracts dont

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Vitruvius said:

Cataphracts are good in multiplayer as with all horse units. But in single player not so much. Because ai loves spears and pikes. While legion goes toe to toe with pikes, cataphracts don't.

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Bingo. And Legions aren't even that great to begin with. Military-wise they're a below-median UU imo.

Also, Iron is almost twice as plentiful as horses on the map if you include snow tiles. If you don't, they're still +50% on horses.

Horsemen units were ruined when G&K totally juiced up pikemen (civil service). Even as low as Emperor the AI will all have pikemen by turn 90. You can't get horsemen or poor Carthage's elephants out in time to take more than maybe... one city... before pikemen are everywhere, ripping your horse units to shreds. It was a funny joke like "hey here's two new civs with two new UUs that you will never ever get to use because we were tired of human players hurting the AI haha."

I'm not even sure where you're reading that Legion are a super unit (I mean, they are powerful strong, but you'll get less far with them than standard CBs.)

Horse units are still plenty useful, especially on flat terrain, and when combined with ranged support. Horse units get the charge promotion, making them really strong against those units you just peppered with those archers, nullifying the spear/pike's advantage. Attack, move, pillage to heal is amazing.

The biggest downside is needing horses. I like to use them as gifts to civs for positive diplo modifiers, provided they have value.

Gamewizard said:

Horse units are still plenty useful, especially on flat terrain, and when combined with ranged support. Horse units get the charge promotion, making them really strong against those units you just peppered with those archers, nullifying the spear/pike's advantage. Attack, move, pillage to heal is amazing.

The biggest downside is needing horses. I like to use them as gifts to civs for positive diplo modifiers, provided they have value.

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They are good when you have near parity in troop number as your opponent. If you are understrengthed as with most high level single player games, you will find yourself not having enough time to heal. Besides AI carpet of doom allows little room for manuvre.

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Cavalry is beast. I've come around to using them instead of rifles as artillery support for flat land. Attack anything left standing, then retreat. Extra movement means extra pillaging for turns where they're not needed.

All early units pale to the CB and xbow. So, horses are more balanced than underpowered.

Cataphracts can't get Cover promotion(s), which means they cannot tank damage as effectively as a regular Swordsman, let alone a Legion. Because let's be honest here - ranged damage is what kills stuff in this game.

And having only 3 moves kinda sucks for a mounted unit... if you attack a guy in rough terrain you lose 2 and can only retreat one tile. And if you attack a jungle/forest hill you can't move back at all!

Okay, so a couple things. Before Venice came out, I pretty much only played Rome. I would not say that the legion is the super soldier. I'd call the Chu Ko Nu OP before I'd call the Legionnaire OP. Certainly, of their two UU's, Rome's ballista is better. Rome is probably my favorite multiplayer faction for a lot of reasons, the legionnaire being one of them. Someone mentioned that the legionnaire is a below-median UU. I disagree. You have to place value on the fact that it comes early in the game and you get it at the same time you get another UU. If the legion were stronger, it would be OP because between the ballista and buffed legions, nobody would stand a chance. The fact that it comes so early in the game is awesome because you can just go on Roman conquest sprees. Convince whoever you're playing with to play on Pangea and you've already won

The legion is also really nice because of its road building capabilities (the fort building is, imo, useless). Not only can you have them doing something other than gathering dust while you're at peace, but you don't have to worry about a legionnaire being attacked by a barbarian while it's out in the middle of nowhere building a road, AND it's nice because you can use them to build a road to whoever you're about to attack. I've found this to be an incredibly effective strategy, particularly in a confrontation where you have to grind them down.

EDIT: As for why it's better than the cataphract, the unit used to counter the Cataphract, the spearman, is the cheapest and most plentiful classical unit while the unit used to counter the legionnaire, the horseman, is the most expensive and least plentiful unit (as far as strategic resources are concerned).

How do horses counter swordsmen?

adwcta said:

How do horses counter swordsmen?

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I misspoke. Horsemen are certainly not a direct counter to swordsmen in the way that spearmen are to horsemen, but a horseman is typically more effective against a swordsman than another swordsman and certainly more effective than a spearman because you can hit and then scoot away so they can't hit back.

terminus467 said:

I misspoke. Horsemen are certainly not a direct counter to swordsmen in the way that spearmen are to horsemen, but a horseman is typically more effective against a swordsman than another swordsman and certainly more effective than a spearman because you can hit and then scoot away so they can't hit back.

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Swords are countered by archers as swords can't fight back against well placed archers who will just focus fire & destroy approaching swords.

Horsemen don't really counter swords because not only they lack strength (12 Vs 14) but swords also get defensive bonuses so horsemen are at a significant disadvantage.

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Yeah, I always thought it was horses counter archers/siege, archers (including horse archers) counter swords/pike, pike counter horse/siege, sword counters pike/siege. Siege counters cities. City counters horses/archer.

Unfortunately, the AI gets super confused how to use horses, and they removed the archer penalty on cities, so archer is now amazingly OP.

Weird. The logic is sound, so I think you guys are probably correct. To be completely fair, I'm far more knowledgeable about the science that goes on in the city than the science that goes on in the battlefield. I don't know who told me this, I'd just had it in the back of my head for a really long time and, in practice, I do do what you said is best just out of convenience. Because horsemen are obviously superior for attacking archers and siege. I'd just never really applied that to challenging what was in the back of my head. Odd.

El Caballerion said:

Immune? Do you mean vulnerable?

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Yes my mistake

i had a marathon game as rome recently (its the only way to get any use out of romes unique units) and had a militaristic CS gift me 2 cataphracts. felt thematically very satisfying, if pretty useless.

and i want to like the legion, but in any speed other than marathon, you get no time to use them. couple that with not wanting to early war anymore AND the rarity of iron (at least in my last few rome games, i have had ZERO iron anywhere near my start) and having a fun game with legions is pretty hard to accomplish.

The Legion is kind of dumb because it comes so late that if you're going to use it you're going to use it against Medieval Units.

It has 1 more combat strength than Pikemen so that's totally a viable thing to do if you're into it (better upgrade path too woohoo) but it's very silly from a thematic standpoint.

Thanks for the replies, so to sum it up its a case of every civ being able to access pikemen very early which successfully counter every unit except crossbows?
Makes sense I really hope we see one last balance patch to fix early game war.