Do you build swordsmen?

[Antilogic]

Usually I have a few around. They tend to be the city-assault specialists while the more numerous axes (or horse archers) deal with enemy troops in the field.

My armies are never majority-swords, though, or even plurality-swords.

[Tlalynet]

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

Yea I meant the barb ones that pop up. :S

Fair enough. Really I was just poking fun at Jags -1 str. I like Jags, but they're easy to make fun of.

They're not even that good at taking barb cities, though they are 10% better than axeman, whoopee

[noto2]

Yes I often build swords. A lot of you said it's rare for the AI to be without copper or iron. Oh yeah? Then take it from them! A common thing for me to do
- open border agreement
- scout their land
- locate metal mines
- see the enemy has built 20 archers, 2 axes, 3 spears, 5 chariots
- declare war and destroy/pillage metals mines within first few turns of war
- march on enemy cities.

Now, sure, I face 2-3 axes and I'll lose 6-7 swords attacking them, but the rest of the AI's units die easily to my swords. When facing an army of 3 axes and 35 archers, it's best to have swords

[King Kalmah]

Originally Posted by noto2

Yes I often build swords. A lot of you said it's rare for the AI to be without copper or iron. Oh yeah? Then take it from them! A common thing for me to do
- open border agreement
- scout their land
- locate metal mines
- see the enemy has built 20 archers, 2 axes, 3 spears, 5 chariots
- declare war and destroy/pillage metals mines within first few turns of war
- march on enemy cities.

Now, sure, I face 2-3 axes and I'll lose 6-7 swords attacking them, but the rest of the AI's units die easily to my swords. When facing an army of 3 axes and 35 archers, it's best to have swords

I love to park my chariots or HA's on an AI's border lands and then move in and pillage it one or maybe two turns into war.If I can't get it in four turns then its pointless,but I can see this being a great idea even later in the game with enemies horse/elephants.

Basically the point is you make the AI produce units that your swords will conquer in a few turns.Then you use those extra strong swords with raider promootions and turn them into maces...then rifles...rule the lands...

[Tlalynet]

I like your idea in concept noto, but in practice the AI usually has at least one axe per city by the time I get iron, or their culture defense is too high for me to want to go in without catapults.

Of course, unless I really need to clear jungle I'd normally be close to or have catapults by the time swords hit the scene, so...

[Rusty Edge]

Usually. Clasical warfare is one of my favorites. I tend to think of them as the counter to archers.
They're just a feature of a mixed forces stack, although they're probably the most numerous infantry unit.

[bhavv]

Originally Posted by noto2

Yes I often build swords. A lot of you said it's rare for the AI to be without copper or iron. Oh yeah? Then take it from them! A common thing for me to do
- open border agreement
- scout their land
- locate metal mines
- see the enemy has built 20 archers, 2 axes, 3 spears, 5 chariots
- declare war and destroy/pillage metals mines within first few turns of war
- march on enemy cities.

Now, sure, I face 2-3 axes and I'll lose 6-7 swords attacking them, but the rest of the AI's units die easily to my swords. When facing an army of 3 axes and 35 archers, it's best to have swords

If an enemy city is stacked with Archers and Axes, and you attack it with a City Raider Axeman, would an archer defend your attack, or an axeman?

If an axeman would defend, maybe mix in a few axes into your sword stack to open the attack with.

[Tlalynet]

Unpromoted?

Axe vs archer 2.5 V 3+FS I think very roughly a 17% chance of winning?
Axe vs Axe 3.75 V 5 I think 25% chance.

The archer defends first. Promotions only make that first. Just a couple axes really messes with a sword stack and nothing but catapults will fix that.

[bhavv]

Yea I thought the axes wouldnt work, just have to wait for catapults.

[noto2]

Why do you need to choose swords or catapults? If I'm going for a classic age sword push as soon as I'm done with iron working I'm researching math, and after that it's construction. By the time my swords are taking the first city I'm almost at catapults anyway. Thus the swords take the outer cities with ease and by the time I get to the inner core cities that have better defenses, I have catapults to back me up.
I never attack with axes, I see them as a defensive unit, not offensive. A true rush, like absolute lightning speed rush needs something faster than an axe, like a chariot, and chariots are usually too weak, so we're talking war chariots or immortals. An actual push requires swords/HA's/catapults/elephants. I find axes just aren't strong enough on their own.

[bhavv]

I meant swords + catapults, I was wondering if axes could be mixed in before reaching construction to soften enemy axes, but it seems that the archers would defend against them first.

Its still a good idea to have a couple of axes and spears in your sword stack though to keep them protected against an attack.

I just tried a sword rush with Tokugawa, and I never would have imagined how much better it works than Axes.

[Htadus]

Axes are the Ancient Era special forces of Vanilla and with just 1 spear to protect them they become special forces again in warlords and BTS. They may be slow but extreamly effective.

Some times you have to ignore winning odds for the first attackers and plan(hope) for the follow up attacks to finish the wounded defenders during that same turn. And guess what, the difference between swords and axes minimize once the suicide units are employed. And it improves if axes are defending.

In a recent xOTM, I attacked a capital city with 2 religions founded, 1 shrine, built the Mids and just completed Parthonon. The city was defended by 3 archers and 1 axe that showed up the turn of attack. My stack of desperado's was all axes with few CR2 promotions(thanks to barbs). I lost 4 units total. But I gained an excellent city and broke the back of an Immortal AI.

There was a very good chance my 10 axes could have died. But I knew from past experience RNG is just that; RNG. It does some insane stuff. So instead of doing the math, just bring about 3:1 ratio of units and go for it. (1 cat with colateral damage would have likely saves most of the units I lost).

As for that xOTM, I had 4 very hurt axemen and 2 healthy ones. I had 3 other axes enroute and was about to learn Construction. Taking 2 more cities from the AI facitated great exchange of knowledge. Actually that can not be called an exchange.

The reason for the risky attack was that AI was approaching the LB defense well before 500BC and I had to slow him down. Otherwide his 6 cities would have outperformed my 7 cities for a long while and he had excellent land and room to grow. Also I had an observers in his two main cities and realized his second expansion just started or still in the initial expasion mode. It means poorly defended old cities.

[Tlalynet]

Htadus,

3:1 isn't that risky, though you would have a real chance of losing. 60% culture defense? Non protective?

Anyway, I think you hit on the heart of the problem. You need good odds on the initial battle to make swords worth the price difference. There's not much 2v1 swords can do that 2v1 axes can't. And there are things 2v1 Axes can do much better than 2v1 swords.

So, swords are great for barb cities where you don't need to lose a unit most of the time, but against an enemy civ they lose their lustre.

Nono,
Axes are not too slow for a true rush, as the limiting factor for rushing is production speed not movement speed. Chariots are also not too weak, as they're going for a sweep and resource denial.

But if you have catapults I don't know why you're building swords. Collateral damage changes the game so you want cheap mop up units rather than bruisers. If you're collateral heavy you almost want archers\LB's over a sword since they are cheap and first strikes give them better chances of taking 0 damage. Plus swords don't add anything to stack defense spears+axes doesn't do better.

Besides that construction before currency (or alphabet or COL) sounds icky on the economy to me.

[Htadus]

Originally Posted by Tlalynet

Htadus,

3:1 isn't that risky, though you would have a real chance of losing. 60% culture defense? Non protective?Absolutely agree that it could have failed but you are right. It was a favorable risk.

snip and concurr with you.

Besides that construction before currency (or alphabet or COL) sounds icky on the economy to me.

Well not if your target will have all those techs and more.

Also he had nearly mature cottages. And lastly, the capture gold will maintain the science sprint to economy techs.

[TheMeInTeam]

To make swords actually worthwhile you must find a way to deny the opponent metal. Sometimes, you just get lucky and they have none. More commonly, it requires commitment to an earlier choke...but you will fight a LOT of archers then. Is it worth it? depends just how bad the situation is.

[Tachywaxon]

Originally Posted by TheMeInTeam

To make swords actually worthwhile you must find a way to deny the opponent metal. Sometimes, you just get lucky and they have none. More commonly, it requires commitment to an earlier choke...but you will fight a LOT of archers then. Is it worth it? depends just how bad the situation is.

In regards choking, after ceasefiring, archers tend to go away somewhere.
Just need to take care of diplo web and where the archers are gone, and then, quite often, the city is not that hard to capture. But it's really dependant.

[Ataxerxes]

Sometimes if I can't build Chariots and I have barb towns that Axes or Chariots can't take earlier I'll build Swords. But usually not. If I have Horses I'll make mounted the mainstay of my forces with some Axes for Spears. This doesn't apply to Sword UU's which I do use.

Actually, this is probably partly because I'm not playing on very high levels and I try to get Alphabet and trade for Iron Working. If I have Horses or Copper Iron isn't a great priority right away.

[bhavv]

Originally Posted by Tlalynet

Besides that construction before currency (or alphabet or COL) sounds icky on the economy to me.

This depends entirely on how quickly you want to rush the enemy. Having catapults will vastly reduce the numer of attackers you need, so if you are planning to attack it helps a lot getting construction asap.

[Tlalynet]

Originally Posted by Htadus

Well not if your target will have all those techs and more.

Also he had nearly mature cottages. And lastly, the capture gold will maintain the science sprint to economy techs.

That last part was to Nono, not you, sorry for the confusion Htadus. Axe pushing is great.


Going IW->Math->Construction while waging an aggressive war like he suggested is questionable to me.

[Tlalynet]

Originally Posted by bhavv

This depends entirely on how quickly you want to rush the enemy. Having catapults will vastly reduce the numer of attackers you need, so if you are planning to attack it helps a lot getting construction asap.

That was more addressed to Nono's plan of going IW->building swords then beelineing construction.


If you're going for fast cats you can go straight to construction, I agree with that. But I probably won't have detoured to IW if I did that. Plus if I was going for catapults I probably wouldn't care about swordsmen, as axes or chariot or even archers would do fine.

Junglejems are the exception to that of course.