Pikeman upgrade to Lancers?

This is kind of an annoying change, but it also has a nice payoff long term: when you finally upgrade these to attack helicopters, the lancer default promotions carry over.

Barghaest said:

Now they just need to progress scouts... really sucks having to say goodbye to level 13 scouts because they can be one-shotted after a time. Still useful outside combat to watch passes/serve as medics for armies for a while but I hate seeing them just disappear into uselessness with no upgrade when ranged/siege units and cities can disintegrate them.

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Imagine, scouts turning into scout planes, than turning into satelites

Lyoncet said:

Yes, but horse-drawn-cart - horse - horse - horse-with-gun - horse-with-gun - helicopter is much more palatable than stick - stick - horse - gun - helicopter. Although you may be right on caravel-submarine; I don't think I did many ship upgrades in Civ IV.

Honestly I think a much smaller-scale solution would have just been to have had the Renaissance anti-cavalry be another infantry unit, although I don't know enough about Renaissance warfare to suggest an alternative.

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The anti-cavalry function of pikes merged into muskets with the invention of the bayonet.

Sharku said:

I literally retired when I saw this. I had at least 6 veteran line infantry that are now pretty much useless and
I'll have to replace from scratch. There was a reason no one used lancers and now
whole civs will be stuck with them because of this stupid upgrade path.

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you could untoggle gods and kings and therefore keep the original upgrade path...

Lyoncet said:

Yes, but horse-drawn-cart - horse - horse - horse-with-gun - horse-with-gun - helicopter is much more palatable than stick - stick - horse - gun - helicopter. Although you may be right on caravel-submarine; I don't think I did many ship upgrades in Civ IV.

Honestly I think a much smaller-scale solution would have just been to have had the Renaissance anti-cavalry be another infantry unit, although I don't know enough about Renaissance warfare to suggest an alternative.

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The problem is that the primary Renaissance responses to cavalry were as follows:
Pike/Gun Formations
Lancer

So basically, if you wanted to go by a realism angle, then congratulations, it's already in the game: don't upgrade some of your pikes to lances. i.e. throw some pikes in between, behind, or in front of your musketmen and you've got the non-lancer anti-cavalry solution of the time. Perhaps lobby to make pikes still buildable once lancers are available?

EDIT: Also, I think that stick/stick/stick on a horse/gun/helicopter is comparable to horse/horse/horse/GIANT MACHINES but nobody's complaining about that.

The problems are twofold.

First, upgrading your pikemen bottlenecks on a resource you were probably already using quite a bit of. It's not like upgrading to Tanks where Oil is pretty much a new resource when you first get them.

Second, it's just plain awkward. Pikes are a slow moving defensive unit. They're front line infantry. Lancers are exceptionally mobile cavalry. They're essentially a support unit. So if you didn't have a solid core group of swordsmen (which bottleneck on a separate resource which you may not have access to), you're going to be left without a front line until you can get muskets built.

Now, of course you can use Lancers for your front line... but it's awkward as hell. This is the kind of issue that we can play around, but shouldn't have to. It was a mistake on the developer's part. The Lancer upgrade to Anti-Tank is even worse in some ways, going from very fast support unit to slow support unit. Honestly, Lancers should just be replaced with another anti-cavalry foot soldier, like all the troops before and after. The numbers can be balanced to make it a suboptimal main line infantry, to promote phasing them out as main line units in favor of muskets/rifles, but you shouldn't just suddenly lack a front line.

Drawmeus said:

The problems are twofold.

First, upgrading your pikemen bottlenecks on a resource you were probably already using quite a bit of. It's not like upgrading to Tanks where Oil is pretty much a new resource when you first get them.

Second, it's just plain awkward. Pikes are a slow moving defensive unit. They're front line infantry. Lancers are exceptionally mobile cavalry. They're essentially a support unit. So if you didn't have a solid core group of swordsmen (which bottleneck on a separate resource which you may not have access to), you're going to be left without a front line until you can get muskets built.

Now, of course you can use Lancers for your front line... but it's awkward as hell. This is the kind of issue that we can play around, but shouldn't have to. It was a mistake on the developer's part. The Lancer upgrade to Anti-Tank is even worse in some ways, going from very fast support unit to slow support unit. Honestly, Lancers should just be replaced with another anti-cavalry foot soldier, like all the troops before and after. The numbers can be balanced to make it a suboptimal main line infantry, to promote phasing them out as main line units in favor of muskets/rifles, but you shouldn't just suddenly lack a front line.

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1. In my games horses are plentiful enough by that point that it's nothing to worry about, and AIs seem more willing to literally give away horses earlier than vanilla (from limited experience, obviously).

2. I won't deny that it's somewhat awkward, but I disagree with the rest of your argument: no-one is forcing you to upgrade. If you need pikes for a front line, leave them as pikes until you get some muskets up.

Drawmeus said:

The problems are twofold.

First, upgrading your pikemen bottlenecks on a resource you were probably already using quite a bit of. It's not like upgrading to Tanks where Oil is pretty much a new resource when you first get them.

Second, it's just plain awkward. Pikes are a slow moving defensive unit. They're front line infantry. Lancers are exceptionally mobile cavalry. They're essentially a support unit. So if you didn't have a solid core group of swordsmen (which bottleneck on a separate resource which you may not have access to), you're going to be left without a front line until you can get muskets built.

Now, of course you can use Lancers for your front line... but it's awkward as hell. This is the kind of issue that we can play around, but shouldn't have to. It was a mistake on the developer's part. The Lancer upgrade to Anti-Tank is even worse in some ways, going from very fast support unit to slow support unit. Honestly, Lancers should just be replaced with another anti-cavalry foot soldier, like all the troops before and after. The numbers can be balanced to make it a suboptimal main line infantry, to promote phasing them out as main line units in favor of muskets/rifles, but you shouldn't just suddenly lack a front line.

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Yes, except that Muskets are on Gunpowder which is a prerequisite for Metallurgy where you find Lancers, and that Gunpowder can be reached in 11 fewer techs than Metallurgy.

Calouste said:

Yes, except that Muskets are on Gunpowder which is a prerequisite for Metallurgy where you find Lancers, and that Gunpowder can be reached in 11 fewer techs than Metallurgy.

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Yeah, I was gonna point out that you should have musketmen before you have lancers, so your front-line units should be musketmen before you worry about upgrading all your old pikemen.

There are a few things I don't quite get about the upgrade paths, which frankly - just confuse me. The paths are:

warrior->swordsman->longswordsman->musketman->rifleman->great war infantry->infantry->mech infantry
Which is fine,

spearman->pikeman->lancer->helicopter
However is odd.
Why doesn't the pikeman upgrade to the musketman or the rifleman? The musket is exactly as good as the pike against cavalry and much better against everything else. Historically too, the pike stopped being used (apart from in Sweden and Russia) as soon as effective muskets+bayonnets came around. When I don't have any iron and use pike for the mainstay of my army (an actual viable option for once!), its odd for all my infantry to disappear.

Haven't checked the cavalry upgrade line as haven't built any in my first two games but they should be:
chariot archer->knight->cavalry->landship->tank->modern armour
and
horseman->lancer->anti tank gun->helicopter

The ship upgrade are mostly fine, its only the caravel that annoys me slightly. I don't want my triremes to upgrade to it as it's mostly a scouting unit. I want my triremes to upgrade to privateers - the main melee naval unit of the age. Also, there's nothing wrong with caravels going to destroyers, but it might be more fun for them to go to submarines (both useful observers/scouts). Would also mean the AI would use them more.

See this thread: Pikeman upgrade to Lancers?

Your pikeman gets on a horse and starts stabbing people with his pike, obviously. The lancer also gets a bonus against cavalry, so it makes sense. Then they get upgraded to a heli, as do all the other horsemen, to keep up with the idea of a fast and powerful unit

It woulda been nice if they just gave us options sometimes.

Spend X and add in resource Y to upgrade to Unit N, or spend Z to upgrade to unit M.

Barghaest said:

Yeah, I was gonna point out that you should have musketmen before you have lancers, so your front-line units should be musketmen before you worry about upgrading all your old pikemen.

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Problem with Civ as I've stated before real life pikes were never a huge force, after a cavalry charge they pretty much became ineffective, your main battline would be the warrior line. Might be they should add a unit between swordsman and swordsman needing iron, but that would just confuse people it would seem

Lord Olleus said:

[...]

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IgnatiusTBarfat said:

See this thread: Pikeman upgrade to Lancers?

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Moderator Action: Threads merged.

The thing that people seem to be missing is that pikes are not only anti-cavalry. They have other uses. Like, for example, being a cheap defensive unit to hold the line while you press the attack somewhere else, or fortifying in forest to provide a zone of control defense for my xbows/trebs behind. Lancers cannot do that job.

And sure, I can start training muskets before i can upgrade to lancers, but it is much much quicker to research metallurgy and save up a little gold to upgrade, say, 5 pikes than it is to build 5 muskets from scratch.


If you are using your pikes solely for anti cavalry duties then, fair enough, let them upgrade to lancers. But is that really what most pikes are used for? In many of my games with little/no iron, or when I'm playing as England/China and use xbow UUs as my main army and I only have a few melee units to capture cities (and want the cheapest ones), or its a watery map and, similarly, I want to spend as little time as possible making melee units, pikes have got a far more general role.

In these circumstances I research musketman and see a unit which does everything a pike does the same or better, is the natural progression, but I can't upgrade to it because the game decided my infantry line should turn into scouting cavalry. That's annoying.

Lord Olleus said:

The ship upgrade are mostly fine, its only the caravel that annoys me slightly. I don't want my triremes to upgrade to it as it's mostly a scouting unit. I want my triremes to upgrade to privateers - the main melee naval unit of the age. Also, there's nothing wrong with caravels going to destroyers, but it might be more fun for them to go to submarines (both useful observers/scouts). Would also mean the AI would use them more.

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ignoring the other parts (they've been argued to death already), I think you're just interested in having a basic unit upgrade to the 'best' unit and skipping the in between ones that still have uses. Not gonna happen.

I haven't check for myself but the word is the lancers in the expansion are better than they were previously. But you can now upgrade your melee units now to musket. I feel your pain on the shortage of iron. My empire gets all discombobulated when its all spread out trying to have a reasonable amount of resources.

Lord Olleus said:

There are a few things I don't quite get about the upgrade paths, which frankly - just confuse me.

The ship upgrade are mostly fine, its only the caravel that annoys me slightly. I don't want my triremes to upgrade to it as it's mostly a scouting unit. I want my triremes to upgrade to privateers - the main melee naval unit of the age. Also, there's nothing wrong with caravels going to destroyers, but it might be more fun for them to go to submarines (both useful observers/scouts).

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I just upgraded all my caravels to ironclads. I was very happy with the trireme>caravel>ironclad>battleship line.

Txurce said:

I just upgraded all my caravels to ironclads. I was very happy with the trireme>caravel>ironclad>destroyer line.

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.... .... fixed