Inquiry: Mounted units?

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AlyfoxLP

Chieftain
Joined
Sep 22, 2014
Messages
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I'm not a highly experianced Civ 5 player, I'll put that out now... I've got about 150 hours into it.. I don't play Deity.. I play Prince right now.. heck until last week I'd never beat ANY Civ game on a difficulty level higher than Chieftan (which is why I continue to think Civ 5 is the easiest of the civ games, but thats for another thread..)..

Is it just me, or are early to mid mounted units kinda pointless, with spearmen and pikemen everywhere? I've tried playing early and mid-game aggressive strategies using mounted units (knights, UUs, cav) and always find myself being pitted against pikemen or cities, rendering them pretty useless. I ended up switching almost exclusively to ranged units.

Am I right, or am I just doing something wrong? I'm leaning towards the latter, but sometimes I strongly feel the former.


Semi-related... what was Firaxis's reasoning behind War Chariots and HORSE Archers NOT requiring Horses as a resource???
 
Nah you have it about right. Mounted units are countered by a lot of things that the AI likes to build. And the AI has no idea how to properly deal with ranged units. If you end up with a mounted unit (from military CS or something) they are just good for pillaging and swooping to capture 0hp cities.
 
You are right, actually. Ranged units are considered the bread of ancient through renaissance wars, for their ability to strike at the enemy from far away with less backfire. Melee are the butter, absorbing hits for the more fragile archers. Really good players often can conquer a diety civ with 4 Composite bows and 2 warriors.

Mounted units are mainly good for harassment, pillaging and taking cities at 0 health if its difficult to get another melee unit in range -- while those are useful roles in large armies, when you're at the beginning and every hammer counts, you should focus on mainline units.

Most people consider Chariots terrible, I guess it's Firaxis trying to get people to use them.
 
You can use knights against pikes if you are cautious with them, because of the move-after-attack buff. Just make sure you have movement points left over. Of course, it takes multiple knights to kill one pike, so its a battle of attrition. This is really only useful if you have several spare knight for some reason, perhaps gifts from a CS. As you observe, and others have commented, the archer line does the bulk of the work in taking cities.
 
And anyway, if you're going to build melee units, you're probably better off with spears and pikes, since they counter mounted units--which could be a threat to your ranged units if several of them charge in. Also, mounted units get a massive penalty to city attack. So yeah, unless you're Mongolia or the Huns or something similar, mounted units generally don't see that much play.
 
Here I was expecting to be chidded (or derided) for being a bad player.. I spend way too much time on the world of tanks forums I think. -_-

Glad to see I wasn't incorrect in my assessment of the units though. When I do get the odd mounted unit, I do generally use them for late exploring and such.

I've been watching a lot of Marbozir's deity games, and trying to emulate some of his choices, even on earlier settings. I hope I'm learning from the right person :D
 
I like watching MadDjinn's Deity LPs along with his "Beyond the Monument" series, although he doesn't seem to play much Civ anymore.
 
horse archers, keshicks and camel archers are the most broken OP units in the game

Naresuan's elephant are also dominant

Askia/Songhai can do some numbers with Mandekalu (and they are almost regular knights with lower penalty vs cities) .. (should search youtube for an Askia deity domination game - should have some examples)

With most other civs - mounted units start to shine at cavalry (industrial level) - could watch some of my LPs (could start with the Dutch one) for a illustration, but ahve tactical uses at horseman and knight level (good pillage units, good flankers and city capturers) ...
 
Horses chariots and knights are bread and butter for multiplayer. They just don't find too much use in single player because battle against AI is more brute force and tactics.
 
chariots actually pretty good, ranged unit almost as strong as composite, but cheaper and faster.

I found it a good unit to use as fast reinforcement.
 
Horsemen, knights etc in combat are weak but that does change quite a bit if you can get the charge promotion. Arguably charge is the one of the best 60 exp promotions in the game.

If your UU is a cavalry or knight unit it is worth to build some horsemen and get 30 exp from barbs, so that way once you upgrade to your UU you can level the odds against pikemen/Lancers.
But the main problem is this. Pikemen are intended to be the counter to knights, so why are they on the tech tree much earlier than Knights are? Pikemen should be moved to Metal Casting or Chivalry and the existing Civil Service Unit should be a changed to a strength 12 or 13 Militia unit with no bonuses but a reduced production cost.
Point being is that if you are going to beeline the top half of the tech tree you shouldn't be given access to the best military unit in the early medieval period.
 
I find chariot archers far, far easier (and useful) to get 30xp from barbs and then promote. You just have to promotion save until knight. Unlike horsemen, CAs take on spears and cities just fine. Horsemen are better vs. Archers.
 
Are War Chariots (Egyptian UU) any good? I always found them kind of useless.
Also chariots seem good if you're Mongolia or such since the ranged promotions will carry over on upgrade.
 
Is the space pope reptilian?

Egyptian war chariots are one of the best UU in the game. Hands down, dominant on flat land. Fast, effective. Once you get logistics, even better.

Bee line them, build 6, conquer the world by turn 125. You will want a couple of horsemen to keep up with the crusade and capture cities.
 
Your reptilian space pope needs to be a Geico commercial.
 
JeSuisNapoleon said:
Is the space pope reptilian?

Egyptian war chariots are one of the best UU in the game. Hands down, dominant on flat land. Fast, effective. Once you get logistics, even better.

Bee line them, build 6, conquer the world by turn 125. You will want a couple of horsemen to keep up with the crusade and capture cities.
Click to expand...

Well consider the horse archer, which in addition to requiring no horses, loses the rough terrain penalty and gets free Accuracy 1 and gets to range and logistics much faster.
War chariots still are slow in rough terrain and don't get that many bonuses aside from the +1 movement (definitely significant, though less so because of the rough terrain penalty) and the fact that you don't need horses for them.

Plus Egypt's other uniques don't really tailor to a Domination Victory.
 
Yup, horse archers are the best early UU.
I think on flat terrain the chariot wins, but in any kind of random map the horse archer is probably best.

Those are the only two mounted unit in the game I would build before knights. I usualy dont build a lot of knigts either.
 
Redaxe said:
Horsemen, knights etc in combat are weak but that does change quite a bit if you can get the charge promotion. Arguably charge is the one of the best 60 exp promotions in the game.

If your UU is a cavalry or knight unit it is worth to build some horsemen and get 30 exp from barbs, so that way once you upgrade to your UU you can level the odds against pikemen/Lancers.
But the main problem is this. Pikemen are intended to be the counter to knights, so why are they on the tech tree much earlier than Knights are? Pikemen should be moved to Metal Casting or Chivalry and the existing Civil Service Unit should be a changed to a strength 12 or 13 Militia unit with no bonuses but a reduced production cost.
Point being is that if you are going to beeline the top half of the tech tree you shouldn't be given access to the best military unit in the early medieval period.
Click to expand...
Any sort of bottom tech tree beeline will eat pikes alive. They are useless against xbows and they have a poor upgrade path. If you are planning on some domination play, just build swordsman.
 
I like Knights and above but Horsemen are a bit of a wash for me. Horseman vs Spear is worse off than Knight vs. Pike. In order for the pikes to be truly effective, they have to fortify.

Knights are great for looping in to add flanking bonuses. 10% flanking bonus is okay for two units against one, but add a couple more units and you can be looking at 20 to 30 percent higher strengths. Also fun is brutally annihilating ranged units and seige units with your cavalry.
 
I realize that there are theoretical tactical advantages to mounted units, but I've struggled to really use them to my advantage. So far these are the main things that I've been able to use them for.

1: When I'm rushing an early attack, I'll build up by melee/archers/siege, send them out, and then start making mounted because they're faster and I won't have to wait as long for them as reinforcements.
2: They're great at pillaging. I can put them on the front line as a distraction, hope they get hit, but still have life left, and then swoop around and pillage as much as I can.
3: Tanks are great units, and they upgrade to tanks. That might be when the balance of power shifts, as I don't heavily use infantry.


i'd say that Calvary is actually a pretty nice unit, but that's the last that you see horses, and I'm usually only on that side of the tech tree on beelined domination games.
 
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