Horses

[Luven]

Hello everyone !

First I want to say, Civ5 is a great game, and BNW a nice Expantsion. While I think Deity is a bit limiting strategy wise, I love to play on Immortal where you can go for a lot of different styles and be successful but still have a nice challenge.

That being said there is something bugging me. Horses could use some balancing. They dont get higher combat strength than their melee counterpart, they dont get terrain bonuses, are bad vs cities and are weak vs spears an co. On top of that they cost a strategic resource...

Whenever I see horses on the map I think: "Ohh there are 4 gpt". I never think: "Cool now I can build a strong cavalry". Despite horses being the dominating and often deciding force in armies for thousends of years.

The only advantage of horses is their movement which is awesome. BUT you can rarely really use it because there are always hills, jungle, forest, mountains or rivers distrupting the movement anyways...

To fix horses I would do the following.

1. Remove Pike and Spearman combat bonuses. They dont make any sense in this game. We dont have a solid rock paper scissors system anyway. The only thing it does is making horses even more useless.

2. Increase their combat strength slightly. Like +1 for Horsemen, +2 for knights. Just so that they are a bit stronger. Costing a strategic resource and having all the disadvantages listed above, it seems fair to make them a little bit stronger instead of weaker than Swords and Longswords. (currently: knight 20, longsword 21 combat strength)

So what do you think, do you agree ? Or do you guys think horses are fine ?

 

[sukha]

Nobody builds swordsmen as is lulz

 

[kingofsealand]

obviously you have not yet tried the polish UU. Go play a game as poland and buy all the winged hussars you can then come back here and tell me with a straight face that they arent powerful.

 

[pozz]

obviously you have not yet tried the polish UU. Go play a game as poland and buy all the winged hussars you can then come back here and tell me with a straight face that they arent powerful.

While a few select special units might be decent, mounted melee units are rather lackluster, to me they need a bonus against ranged to take use of their mobility, as even against these, whom they ought to stomp, they tend to lose.

 

[fbass]

Nobody builds swordsmen as is lulz

Unless they bear Kris! Gotta love my KS, even if it is always a bit of gambling!

2. Increase their combat strength slightly. Like +1 for Horsemen, +2 for knights. Just so that they are a bit stronger. Costing a strategic resource and having all the disadvantages listed above, it seems fair to make them a little bit stronger instead of weaker than Swords and Longswords. (currently: knight 20, longsword 21 combat strength)

I second this. I used to love my cavalry in Civ IV since I can stack lots of them and use them to weaken the enemy (with a chance of retreating!). But now in Civ V with 1 UPT and battles are not always finished with a dead unit, cavalry is rather underwhelming. Horses are not really a must-have-or-die resource like it used to.

 

[regeneration64]

I seldom use horses (or cavalry if were are being pendantic). When I give them a go they usually end up being destroyed by pikeman or a city. I think the trick to using them is to constantly be on the offensive with the unit and after attacking pull back so you don't get killed (hence the ability to move after attacking). Hit and run.

Cavalry don't defend themselves very well. That's the nature of the beast. Bear that in mind and I suppose they can be used effectively if played well. Until you hit a hill that is.

I'd still rather use almost any other unit during the early and mid game though. Tanks on the other hand, they are nice.

 

[Wuddel]

I build horse units more and more. However it is very annoying that the AI is essentially spamming pikes all the time. Though I only have 2-3 horses around and use them sparingly and safely in the early game so I can make sure they survive and "snowball" into tanks. Once you have March+increased sight and movement you are good.

I would not change much, but I would make the formation promotion flanking dependant. Meaning, a Pike that is on the defence and is flanked by another unit, would not have the full benefit of its formation promotions when being attacked by a horse. This is both realistic and good for gameplay I think.

 

[_invy_]

Civ 5 is just not good for mounted units on standard maps. There's too little space to use their mobility and then archers are too strong generally. Archers shouldn't really be able to kill horses and melee so easily. Archers also burn cities nicely. Why build anything but archers..

Anyway, with some buff to horses as you suggested, and nerf to archers - mounted units would become more useful. Spears and pikes are also problem - its standard melee unit in the game and it has bonus vs mounted. Game needs standard melee units that has no bonuses vs other units. But eh.. maybe in civ 6.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I think the trick to using them is to constantly be on the offensive with the unit and after attacking pull back so you don't get killed (hence the ability to move after attacking). Hit and run.

This guy gets it. They're for destroying enemy units on the field and reconnaissance, not taking cities. Mobile warfare, not a frontline force.

 

[pezit]

I prefer infantry over cavalry as well, but as you can see most of the community disagree with you, actually most people consider the melee units to be the weak one.

So, when I war I use almost only ranged units but always a few melee units as pincushions and for that last attack on cities to capture them. Cavalry doesn't get defensive bonuses and they get countered by pikemen, they do however do better at chasing down stray units and pillaging, but that's not really what I'm looking for most of the time.

 

[Gehennas]

This guy gets it. They're for destroying enemy units on the field and reconnaissance, not taking cities. Mobile warfare, not a frontline force.

Agreed. It should be used to take down the most vulnerable units, flanking and hit&run.

Some theorycrafting on cavalry usage:

1. Cav is more effective on open terrain than in hills.
2. Cavalry is the most effective defensive unit. If were DoWed and got an enemy army on your border, your cavalry hit&run strikes will weaken enemy forces before they reach your cities. Also, keep in mind, that if your empire is wide enough with several neighbours, the cavalry would be the main mobile force.
3. On the enemy territory cavalry usage is more limited: it is not effective to cover siege units with cavalry and it is vulnerable to city fire. However, you still can use mounted units for pillaging and taking down the most vulnerable enemy units. Due to mobility, cavalry should benefit from pillage-healing. The most effective promotion for offensive cavalry is +1 LOS, I think.

 

[Wuddel]

Agreed. It should be used to take down the most vulnerable units, flanking and hit&run.

Some theorycrafting on cavalry usage:

1. Cav is more effective on open terrain than in hills.
2. Cavalry is the most effective defensive unit. If were DoWed and got an enemy army on your border, your cavalry hit&run strikes will weaken enemy forces before they reach your cities. Also, keep in mind, that if your empire is wide enough with several neighbours, the cavalry would be the main mobile force.
3. On the enemy territory cavalry usage is more limited: it is not effective to cover siege units with cavalry and it is vulnerable to city fire. However, you still can use mounted units for pillaging and taking down the most vulnerable enemy units. Due to mobility, cavalry should benefit from pillage-healing. The most effective promotion for offensive cavalry is +1 LOS, I think.

I agree with all the above. Essentially how I use it. The extra +2 sight is actually what makes Spains Conquistador so powerful. Sadly is lost upon promotion.

 

[regeneration64]

Agreed. It should be used to take down the most vulnerable units, flanking and hit&run.

Some theorycrafting on cavalry usage:

1. Cav is more effective on open terrain than in hills.
2. Cavalry is the most effective defensive unit. If were DoWed and got an enemy army on your border, your cavalry hit&run strikes will weaken enemy forces before they reach your cities. Also, keep in mind, that if your empire is wide enough with several neighbours, the cavalry would be the main mobile force.
3. On the enemy territory cavalry usage is more limited: it is not effective to cover siege units with cavalry and it is vulnerable to city fire. However, you still can use mounted units for pillaging and taking down the most vulnerable enemy units. Due to mobility, cavalry should benefit from pillage-healing. The most effective promotion for offensive cavalry is +1 LOS, I think.

I've never thought of cavalry as defensive but that makes perfect sense! I often have tanks and modern armour near my key late-game cities as a sort of "quick response" force. Why don't I have cavalry for early-mid game defense? Primarily because I play as England (cavalry is largely pointless when you have Longbowmen garrisoned) and partly because I would rather sell the horse resourse and use my limited funds to buy other (usually ranged) units for defense. That said, with roads up they can ride to your border quicker than any other unit.

Maybe I'll give them another shot if I have some aggressive neighbours in a game. Or I could just take their capital with ranged/siege units and a couple of swordsmen or longswordsmen to soak up the damage and they'll be out of my hair for the rest of the game anyway!

 

[Wuddel]

I've never thought of cavalry as defensive but that makes perfect sense! I often have tanks and modern armour near my key late-game cities as a sort of "quick response" force.

In a recent game as poland I essentially was at war with everybody. The "western front" was a big field of grasland. Admittedly, the winged hussar is a beast, but I could hold that front against a hiawatha with about 2 mounted units while my main forces was taking on other front.

 

[Falconiano]

You talk about horses considering strength in comparison to infantry. O.o

Horse are used to: kill siege/archers, flank, scout / get LoS, hit and run.
And they are damn good at it, even the standard ones.

 

[Philosophia]

As of now cavalry is weak against a lot of things. The things that it's strong against being weak units like siege units and archers. In addition to this many have said that the strongest promotion for the cavalry was the + sight promotion. So what if we kept the strength against vulnerable units and adding some support promotions. In this case they would act similar to a great general, but of course having different support upgrades like + sight, + defense against ranged to melee, a stronger medic thing maybe, or perhaps giving the enemy a negative bonus? I feel like in history the cavalries job wasn't necessarily to fight, but to make the enemy scared, attack with speed, lead and give confidence to infantry, and give greater information on the battlefield.

If this change were to happen cavalry could still be annoying and catch stray units, attack weakened things, but when they got caught in hills they would have these support bonuses giving them some sort of relevance in a bad situation. I tried skimming the history of cavalry on wikipedia to think of some of these ideas, because I don't know too much about military history, in order to make some of these changes realistic.

 

[regeneration64]

In a recent game as poland I essentially was at war with everybody. The "western front" was a big field of grasland. Admittedly, the winged hussar is a beast, but I could hold that front against a hiawatha with about 2 mounted units while my main forces was taking on other front.

Interesting stuff. Yes, I'll have to give them a second chance and try and use them better. Cavalry is one of those units that I understand how to use effectively in theory but seldom use them in practice.

Philosophia, I used a highly promoted Lancer as a medic to great effect in my last ever G&K game. On the offensive a couple of cavalry can be handy to support your other units.

 

[Philosophia]

Yeah, I think that's really the role of cavalry in my opinion. I only suggested ideas like the to make them more unique and give people more of incentive to build cavalry units because infantry get the medic upgrade as well so why build cavalry when you could just use an infantry unit.

I think it would be a good idea if cavalry could somehow assist infantry units in taking cities or fighting general. It makes me so sad that when I play Greece building an army of your UU's is less effective than composite bows and a a melee unit.

 

[StrideColossus]

...

I used a highly promoted Lancer as a medic to great effect in my last ever G&K game. On the offensive a couple of cavalry can be handy to support your other units.

I've been giving my mounted units medic promotions recently. Ties in nicely with their main purpose IMHO (as a few other posters have noted) which is lurking behind the lines to take out ranged/siege units and to finish off injured melee then retreat.

 

[Wuddel]

I feel like in history the cavalries job wasn't necessarily to fight, but to make the enemy scared, attack with speed, lead and give confidence to infantry, and give greater information on the battlefield.

Sorry, about being a smartass here, but in history cavalry was divided in light (scout, kill fleeing enemies/archer) and heavy (shock troops to ride right into an enemy formation).

And heavy cavalry was very effective. The reason why I am adding this here is that I live in Switzerland, where they actually invented the pikemen (which was later adopted by the German Landsknechts, although the used a lot of two-handed swords thats why their icon is a sworn, rather than a pike) in the early Renaissance. In contrast to Civ this was actually after knights have been dominating battlefields for centuries.