How does one deal with Spearman as a Horse-loving Empire?

I'm a bit new to the game and haven't done any serious multi-player, but Spearman seem rather strong in this game.

Trying to use a civilization with a mounted unique unit seems tough when enemies can easilly use Spearman as their standard infantry, with little penalty for not using Swordsmen.

Is there something I am missing about the advantages of Mounted units or the power of Spearman?

Ranged units to soften them up - then attack with mounted units, or use your own spearmen to take them out

If you have iron then build a swordsman help soften up spearmen, and then use the mounted to flank.

Mounted can move fast around enemy lines, and are great at picking off ranged and siege, and weak melee units. The only melee-cavalry i've had luck with early game as a main line unit would be the Cataphracts, but even they need archers as support to soften up spearmen

You should split it up into 3 groups:
First hammer them with archers/catapults then attack with spearmen/swordsmen
This should either kill or almost kill the enemy spearmen and you can ride in, smash the enemy and ride back out to heal in safety
Watch out for pikemen or the german pikeman (i like playing german)
They are cheap (german ones are really cheap) and if your enemy is smart they will catch your horses after they've attacked and slaughter them

thegingerninja

You usually want about 1 mounted unit per 2-3 other units mix of ranged and swords/pikes. With the new patch you can probably bring the ratio a little higher since extra movement will make it really easy to move in and pillage when injured. If you get the wounded damage promotion and shoot a pike with just about anything, the 50% won't matter since you have the initiative and a 33% bonus to boot.

Also, the new pillaging rules (which will be introduced with the 'fall patch') seem to significantly increase the usefulness of mounted (horse) units, making sustaining a large number of them more viable, and more rewarding.

shoot them.

pikes having a weakness to something would be nice.. maybe vs range? the idea that unlike the swordsman they generally didn't carry shields so would be more vulnerable to ranged fire. since G&K i think the rockpaperscissors has been messed up pretty badly. these days i build armies consisting primarily of pikes (cheap, no resource required, can take on longswords, available early on a nice techline, destroy opposing horses) and siege. The pikes hold the line, the siege shoots everything and when close enough to a city tears it down quickly. I hope they change it back to how it used to be :<

Calvary will kick there ass (maybe) and (maybe) Tanks

Jerman said:

Calvary will kick there ass (maybe) and (maybe) Tanks

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Tanks needed a buff...

woodshadows said:

pikes having a weakness to something would be nice.. maybe vs range? the idea that unlike the swordsman they generally didn't carry shields so would be more vulnerable to ranged fire. since G&K i think the rockpaperscissors has been messed up pretty badly. these days i build armies consisting primarily of pikes (cheap, no resource required, can take on longswords, available early on a nice techline, destroy opposing horses) and siege. The pikes hold the line, the siege shoots everything and when close enough to a city tears it down quickly. I hope they change it back to how it used to be :<

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I don't know . . . people already complain that they upgrade to lancers. You're building a strong unit for a weaker one down the road.

SammyKhalifa said:

I don't know . . . people already complain that they upgrade to lancers. You're building a strong unit for a weaker one down the road.

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I forgot about that, I guess that was intentionally included as a way to balance things a bit. I still liked it in the past, they were weaker with a niche role in defending against mounted units and yet they upgraded into rilfes/infantry etc just like swords.

woodshadows said:

I forgot about that, I guess that was intentionally included as a way to balance things a bit. I still liked it in the past, they were weaker with a niche role in defending against mounted units and yet they upgraded into rilfes/infantry etc just like swords.

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I liked having a bigger role for swordsmen, yeah.

As others have said - Horsemen are flanking units - particularly in multiplayer. Use them to run over archers where your opponent may have thought they were protected and to kill retreating units. Use your ranged units to hit units and watch for mounted units to hit/kill them and retreat

off topic but, quick q, how does one play multiplayer? i mean.. if there's say an average of 4 players to make the game fun, then doesn't that mean waiting through 3 peoples turn just to get to your turn? man.. im impatient just waiting for the ai to process their turns on single player, let alone sitting in front of my computers for hours on end just in order to play a few turns of a game. or is there some way to work around that? anyways, horses as 'flanking' units sounds good in theory, but in the real game it doesn't really work out that way, you'll either have cities pounding you on the flanks, or the weak ranged won't be sitting exposed on the flanks (why would they be?). While it would be awesome if it were the case that you could ride around some 'front' of an 'army group', get behind and attack vulnerable ranged units in the flank, again in the game it rarely works out that way, go around the flank (taking several long turns to get around any form of 'flank' and be exposed to a city pounding you with powerful shots, or find that there is actually no cohesive unit acting as an 'army' as opposed to scattered little groups of units all over the place giving you no real tactical direction beyond killing what's directly in front of you. most of these things would be fixed if the giant-death-robot-aka-cities were turned into the civilian population centers they historically were, rather than standing citadels of doom which they currently are.

@ woodshadows

There are 2 forms of multiplayer play GMDR which is like you are saying each player takes a turn, and then another player can take a turn, and so on. Basically it only does a few turns a day at most.

And then there is the live multiplayer lobby where you play against others in real time. Turns are simultaneous. So as you are moving - others move too. And games use turn timers, which scale up as more actions need to be done by players. Once everyone ends their turn/or the turn timer expires then the next turn starts.

There are various Civ 5 Multiplayer groups and if you do try Civ 5 multi out I suggest you use one of them rather than play a public game (I suggest NQ (No Quitters - Friendly but competitive with thousands of members - started as an offshoot of Civ Players but since then they have declined in numbers - but enough about history of Civ 5 multi groups ) - but you can use any of the ones out there.
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Depending on how many people there are multi games take different times. 1v1 tend to be very short. 4 player games tend to take a couple of hours.
6-8 players (The Max the multiplayer system can handle) tend to take several hours. If you want to play with 6-8 and have intricate diplomacy/play it can very well take up to 7 hours. Obviously it means you can really only play "Live" multi when you have sufficient time.