Taking a look at the balance between Infantry and Cavalry

[duxup]

Did anyone else notice the AI not building much cavalry?

Come to think of it I haven't seen much of it from the AI...

 

[Johan de Witt]

Perhaps it's just the difficulty I play on (King).

Anyone out there having the same thing on higher difficulties?

 

[Guardian_PL]

Originally Posted by Johan de Witt
Did anyone else notice the AI not building much cavalry?

Same here. So far only the civs with the unique unit (Greece, Russia) are building mounted units, all the other, despite having heaps of horses prefer salami to cavalry. Maybe if they'd start building them (or simply have larger armies) the game wouldn't be so ridiculously easy as it is right now...

 

[Conspirator]

I don't know, the thing with mounted units is that they are very easily countered with the Spearman/Pikeman unit which doesn't cost any resources at all so usually make up the core of a defending army. Mounted units are so ineffective against these cheap units to almost make them pointless. One or sometimes two mounted units is more than enough on a single front usually to clean up weaken cities, with the majority of the army, Swordsmen, being the core because they don't have any weaknesses against any type of unit. 2 Catapults as well obviously.

The only time I can see mounted units being really effective is if you're attacking someone who has a lot of Iron resources, so probably built a lot of Swordsmen/Catapults, in which case they are slightly more useful. But the AI seems to build a lot of Spearmen so even then I'm not sure of their usefulness.

 

[Guardian_PL]

@Conspirator
And that's the thing, in my experience on the contrary to Civ4, here basic Spearman in the open terrain is not a problem for a horsemen, especially experienced ones. Adding their mobility for things like scouting and pillaging (not to mention picking out archery/artillery units) are making them indispensable in the army imo.
All the while the AI build even those silly catapults over mounted.

sigh, yet another thing to fix. And in the meantime my sweet leisure time is nearly over, in a month I'll become a father and then my life in its present form will end. Goddamit, how could I be so stupid to expect that I can thoroughly enjoy a fresh game release? Nobody releases finished products nowadays, but still I kept muttering "it's Firaxis, it's Sid Meier, he won't fail, they won't ever fail...". Stupid, stupid, stupid...

 

[Becephalus]

Ummm, everything is overpowered fully upgraded in the hands of a human instead of AI. Duh.

So far this discussion seems kind of silly. Horseman seem just fine IMO.

 

[Brawndo]

IMHO, this could all be fixed by giving mounted units a -33% penalty when attacking cities. It makes sense tactically and realistically: cavalry work well in open terrain, not cities full of buildings. That way, there is more incentive to build Swordsmen in the early game.

Right now, I only build them if I don't have access to horses or the terrain is very rugged, because Horsemen are superior in most ways.

 

[MadRat]

Right here

You say that feeding horses is easy because it doesn't put a huge strain, and even nomadic cultures can do it with JUST grazing. Using "just" there to disparage what these non-agricultural societies could achieve, and stating that the actual cost in owning horses is the social frippery associated with them in Western culture (read: the only culture worth talking about).


There are food constraints on ability to use horses, or land usage constraints at least. Agriculture competes with pastureland (which contrary to your belief, was not more readily available at the quality required). A Mongol horseman with his 3-6 personal horses and family herds was staggeringly rich as viewed by his contemporaries in other cultures. This is not something achieved easily and could not have been done in Europe even if, as you say they did, they chose not to through social conventions regarding horsemanship and military doctrines.

The expense of horses in terms of food and land use and also that Roman era horses were smaller and the invention of the stirrup took a while to disperse were why many BCE militaries had less use of cavalry that we might expect.


It depends what you call contained. They sometimes massacred their neighbours but didn't really displace them. Everywhere the horse nomads go that is not the steppes, they must either overgraze the lands and move quickly on (the Mongols often), stop being nomads and drastically reduce the size of their herds usually resulting in their absorption into the local culture (the Turks and the Mongols in China) or return to the steppes. Thats been the way since before horses were large enough to ride to war and there were only chariots.


TLDR: The environment shapes the society. Every society thinks its own environment is best and what others do on theirs is rubbish.

Good lord you just love putting word into people's mouths don't you. Again, I never said it was easy not that it was without cost or frippery. All I said, simply, was that the creation of a cavalry force in the ancient world was not hugely influenced by food pressures bur rather doctrine.

Your rant is little more than post-modernist reading between the lines.

I never said grazing was the ONLY means of supporting horses, but for suffice to say it provided the preponderance of the ruminant meat. Let me put it this way; the average horse requires about 1-2 acres of grazing land. Most ancient societies produced agricultural yields ranging in the millions of bushels per annum, which included food for likely hundreds of thousands of working and fodder animals, not just cavalry though grazing and livestock crops. Do you think that several thousand horse would somehow put a " huge" dent in comparison to a population of millions (50-60 million for both Han china and Rome ~200 AD). Certainly it would have an impact and a mesurable one. I never said it was trivial.

In the "western" middle ages the sheer volume of livestock and working animals including horses was extensive, but mounted soldiers were few and an elite. Only nobles in many cases were legally allowed to even be men-at-arms or cavaliers. yet thousands were conscripted into peasant armies when required. In contrast in non-western societies the link between soldier/warrior/knight was not as socially stratified as in the west (why is another debate altogether lol).Hence the potential pool of horse riders/owners that could be trained/used for war was larger. Since these pools were larger, these regional armies tended to be more cavalry oriented and thus the primary doctrine was cavalry.

There we not heavily armed knights but usually what we in civ terms would consider horsemen. in contrast, the west focused on more heavily armed troops, these were less suitable (and less cheap) to put on horses, because armed soldiers (nobles) were the norm (hoplites, sipahi, legionnaires). This was true for the Gauls and Germans as well, the cavalry was almost exclusively nobles. Hence the very social forces that shaped the societies shaped the form of the armies and their doctrine)

Altogether, the training of cavalry and supporting it (especially ancient and early-high medieval) periods was largely on the cost of maintaining a professional horseman/kinght and the social limitations of the era NOT simply the cost of what the horse ate!

Owning a horse was symbol of social status because to become a skilled horseman too time and training and upkeeping the horse was NOT cheap. Only nobles and the well to do had the luxury of training in mounted warfare (or even warfare at all). The majority cost was in the upkeep of the mounted trooper. In Rome (until Marius' reforms) the individual soldier had to pay for ALL of their equipment. This included the maintenance of the horse - hence only the middle and upper classes were afforded that luxury.

In the case of nomads, their horses were their lives, they trained, rode and used the equestrian arts childhood. This was comparable to the kind of intensive horse/man interaction that that in the more developed societies Of Rome, Han China, and Mesopotamia, and the Indus valley.

Indeed, in each of the developed areas listed above there were significant agricultural surpluses and ample evidence of extensive agricultural trade. But NOTE!! the more equestrian societies were not as agriculturally intensive. Hence it seems difficult to correlate the idea that the emphasis on cavalry is a factor of food pressure rather than by culture or military doctrine.

Now you point out an orientalist bias in my work. Correct, I was answering a question about Rome and the ancient western world. But I do point out that in India and China and the asian steppes cavalry was more common. This is critical to my point as a contrast; it effectively provides a compelling argument that it is not simply food supply that determines whether or not a nation favoured one type of warfare over another.

Anyways sorry for the wall of text.. Good debate though.

Rat

 

[MadRat]

Come to think of it I haven't seen much of it from the AI...

It builds neither ships nor armor much as well. It seems that the AI seems to be fixated on building just a small subset of specific unit types almost exclusively, during certain periods, rather than on what is best for that situation.

Rat

 

[MadRat]

I applaud a history discussion Most European armies at that time were composed of levied farmers and townsmen, mecenaries and knights. Knights are noblemen, who think highly of themselves and tend to be horrible at following orders. There are many battles known where a charge by knights destroys a commander's plans and sometimes even make them lose a battle.

Egg-zactly!!

The battles of Agincourt and Grunfeld come to mind from your example.

Rat

 

[Dark_MadMax]

I realized quickly that I can't win with only spamming lots of horses against a Deity AI.

For once the game favors defense.
1UPT, City Ranged Attacks and deploying siege all state that.
You really need strong melee units to withstand the onslaught in defensive positions. You also need cavalry right but it seems you can't make it with only Horses.

Also the AI builds Pikemen really fast. This could be also true with human enemies in MP as beelining for Civil Service is a valid strategy for growth. And beware of those 50% cost Landsknechts.

It worked for me on deity. Albeit with companion cav. I built initially 4 of them and rolled china (cause they attacked city state I liked) and dented ghandi. Used one swordsmen to soften up pikes but mostly hit and runs vs favorable terrain ( 5 moves allows you to attack with all 4 often and retreat to safety)

I used them all the way to Renaissance at which point I upgraded them to knights (they have 5-6 promotions at this point and chew and spit out france's musketeers) and I keep using them , planning upgrade to to cavalry and will see how they stack against liz's army

Its funny that AI doesnt build that many pikemen on deity because it teches to gunpowder so fast. And musketeers are not that great vs horses

Siege wise they just own cities. If there is undefended city its down in 1 turn vs 3 of them and in 2 vs 2 .

 

[Tarkeel]

IMHO, this could all be fixed by giving mounted units a -33% penalty when attacking cities. It makes sense tactically and realistically: cavalry work well in open terrain, not cities full of buildings. That way, there is more incentive to build Swordsmen in the early game.

Right now, I only build them if I don't have access to horses or the terrain is very rugged, because Horsemen are superior in most ways.

Currently, it works the other way around in game. Units get the bonus for city on flat land; it doesn't show up in the list of applies bonuses on the combat overview but it is applied. This is easily checked with two unit with different promotions attacking the city.

 

[dorn]

There must be something different about my game. The AI builds spearmen/pikemen constantly and just about any horse unit ends up useless compared to melee.

You can pretty much steam roll an entire civ with melee units + general and never have a single one die. Losing horses to ninja pikes is pretty easy though.

 

[Tarkeel]

There must be something different about my game. The AI builds spearmen/pikemen constantly and just about any horse unit ends up useless compared to melee.

You can pretty much steam roll an entire civ with melee units + general and never have a single one die. Losing horses to ninja pikes is pretty easy though.

Try this: Improve your horses to fight better on open ground, and only attack spears that are on open ground. If they are hiding in rough terrain, use your mobility to walk around them and strike directly at their cities. 3 horsemen can take most early civ-cities in one round of combat, and citystates in 2 rounds. Just take care to not leave your horses in a position where they can be attacked, but since you can move after attacking this should work out.