Melee units less used the more I play

Ninakoru

A deity on Emperor
Joined
Nov 14, 2002
Messages
658
Location
Madrid, Spain, Europe
Well, in G&K I finding myself using melee units less and less. They only serve as meat shields, but the more I play the more I end using ranged + calvary. Assault units (horsemen path) outclasses melee in so much ways. You can hit-run, take cities without taking damage the previous turn and serve better as medics for out of friendly territory healing with their improved mobility. Lately I end up not doing melee units at all until artillery/flight when meat shields are more needed. Is not hard to get at least 2 horses in every single game, even from CSs if no one is available on near lands.

Anyone is facing the same situation?
 
Yep, the standard military tactics tend to revolve around ranged/mounted up to the industrial era and siege/armored thereafter. Obviously it's more efficient to take cities by softening them up safely (ie: from a distance) than be constantly burning piles of melee and spend half the war trying to keep them healed, so that tends to be what everyone gravitates to.
 
Agree, except for maybe a few UU like Carolean and Janissary. When they get lots of XP you need to mess up badly to even lose a single one. You do need ranged units to back them up though.

I haven't seen them mentioned much but Korea's Hwacha(sp?) lacks the 200% bonus vs cities, but if you build catapults and upgrade them they retain that bonus. I've seen them one shot 8-9 pop cities. Makes for crazy powerful artillery if you get like 6 catapults early on and use them plenty. So with them, like with Arabia, Mongols and China, you can get away with having only ranged units + a couple of horsemen.
 
I had the same revelation a few months back as well. There's been a good deal of discussion about this lately since the announcement of BNW and the possibility of tweaks to warfare. (Much of the discussion actually centers on the OPness of ranged units though the problems they hope to address (e.g. melee units being only good for meat shields) is pretty much the same.)
 
Unless you have a big tech advantage or much larger troop numbers than the AI (neither of which is common on higher difficulties), it's very rare to fight a battle (either offensive or defensive) where you don't get a crucial advantage by locking down a few key tiles with highly-promoted and fortified melee units: hold a line, repel a wave enemy units, advance, repeat.

Mounted units are great attackers, but with no defensive terrain bonuses they aren't going to stay the course in a longer engagement.
 
Unless you have a big tech advantage or much larger troop numbers than the AI (neither of which is common on higher difficulties), it's very rare to fight a battle (either offensive or defensive) where you don't get a crucial advantage by locking down a few key tiles with highly-promoted and fortified melee units: hold a line, repel a wave enemy units, advance, repeat.

Mounted units are great attackers, but with no defensive terrain bonuses they aren't going to stay the course in a longer engagement.

Interesting. The only reason I don't play Prince more is the AI doesn't build enough units early. King is hit or miss.

Emperor they'll consistently have a larger force with multiple waves. And yes...on Emperor I have more melee. On Prince/King, I may build a couple if I have UU.
 
Unless you have a big tech advantage or much larger troop numbers than the AI (neither of which is common on higher difficulties), it's very rare to fight a battle (either offensive or defensive) where you don't get a crucial advantage by locking down a few key tiles with highly-promoted and fortified melee units: hold a line, repel a wave enemy units, advance, repeat.

Mounted units are great attackers, but with no defensive terrain bonuses they aren't going to stay the course in a longer engagement.

Well, I still use one melee from time to time with cover promotions, but that's it, is their only use. Can't be used as main attack force, only to block with zone of control while attacking with ranged. I miss that from vanilla where melee were much more useful, now ranged completely own. Many times a melee support is not needed to repel armies, you can use calvary and ranged, even only ranged. If you are talking about defense, there it is your city to wall attacks :)
 
Essentially, yes.

I think the problem is that melee take too much damage when attacking ranged while ranged take no damage when attacking melee. So why use melee? I use them to guard flanks and setup zones, bout it.

The fix is for melee to take half the damage they do now when say, a pikeman or swordsman attacks a crossbowman/cb/treb.
 
Really, no fix is needed. The units simply serve different purposes.

If you want a unit that can have (especially with the right promotions) a massively high combat strength for attack, mounted units are available. If you want a unit that can have (especially with the right promotions, terrain choice and fortification) a massively high combat strength for defense, melee units can do that.

Melee units can hold their own when attacking units from the same era, but you're right that it hurts if you try to attack with them repeatedly instead of using them to hold defensive positions. Similarly, mounted units can take the odd punch or two, but they hurt badly if they get pummeled by several attacks one after the other.

It's actually a good thing that tactical combat is possible, with the different types of units having different strengths and weaknesses.
 
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