Addicted to horse archers

[Bluerog]

I'm finding I am building fewer and fewer other units, and more and more horse archers. First, they are great for offense. I've only ran into a city that could handle a stack if 10 horse archers one time. (The city had 4 spearmen). Every other time, the city folds like a lawn chair.

In the case that you do find a city that can handle 10 horse archers, walk past it, go for a city behind the city with 3 spearmen/6 archers. They cannot use the speamen to hit your stack because it will leave their city less defended. And I've yet to meet someone who puts 3-4 spearmen in non-border cities.

And I like horse archers for defense too. That same stack of horse archers can defend both sides of your empire by taking the roads (4-6 squares per turn). I just make sure there are no woods for the bad guy to hide in as he bangs on my city. Then I can use offensive units against his offensive units.

I only play mutli-player. The tatic I use is make 3 cities (chop rush 2nd worker and both settlers). Make 10 horse archers as fast as I can (around 45 turns--chop trees near both new cities for horse archers). Go kill closest neighbor.

Speamen are the only problems I get. And few people make enough of them to defend more than one city.

Bluerog

 

[Solo4114]

I'd still bring along extra unit types. At the very least a scout/explorer medic. It doesn't hurt to have some axemen along there too, even though you'll move slower. Axemen get the +50% melee bonus, and can be city raiders, so they can take down the spearmen. Or bring along swordsmen who get the +10% city attack bonus and make them City Raiders as well. That said, against archers, Horse Archers are pretty good since they're immune to first strikes I think. But also note that they can't fortify and don't get terrain bonuses. Other unit types can and could defend your horse archers if they were attacked.

 

[fuji]

If you like them so much, play Genghis !!

And to Solo, i think it's very unrealistic, in every other strategy game, archers are the solution to nasty horse archer (look RTW) and in this game, it's really weird..

 

[Solo4114]

Traditionally, archers were NOT the solution to mounted units. Pikemen were much more effective.

Even in the napoleonic wars, the standard defense against a cavalry charge was to form square, which basically took the infantry unit and turned it into a square of rifles with bayonets mounted, pointed outwards. No horse will charge that.

Archers are fine for wearing down the horse units at range, but once they start charging, the archer is going to have a tough time firing fast enough to take them out.

That said, with horse archers, the strategy's a little different (since they're not really charging you like standard cavalry units). But the game considers them mounted units and, as a general rule, spears/pikes/something like that is the better defense to mounted units. I've already stated my position on the game not always effectively differentiating units, though.

 

[emills]

This is where the greeks just shine!

Also since I road my empire, I have no problem attacking horses with spearmen/Phalanx/Pikemen.

 

[unhealthyman]

Yeh, in my last game I was on the recieving end of endless horse archers. Wanted to play a relaxed early expansion then space race victory game on a tiny map. Lucky me - I got Alexander and Tokugawa as my 2 rival civs, so it seemed my peaceful space race was gonna be tricky.

Going well with a massive tech lead, but I let my defenses in a couple of cities get too out dated and suddenly Alexander had declared war and charged endless horse archers. First time this happened I was completely off guard with like 2 pikemen in total, so after it all went a bit pear shaped I loaded an old save and changed my strategy a bit.
Once I was ready for them those horse archers just got slaughtered - at first by pikemen, then by infantry

I hate it when they just run around outside my cities plundering my lovely towns, while I wait for them to attack.

 

[Chamaedrys]

Horse Archers are good units to conquer cities from from the Barbarian. They also good to "show" some power to your neighbours. But they are at least not strong enough to fight a real war agaist a rival.

 

[Sisiutil]

Maybe I don't build enough of them, but I've found the Horse Archers to be under-effective for me--they're speedy, but just not strong enough. But then, I usually use them as individual scouts/pillagers rather than as part of a SoD.

If I'm doing a lot of early war-mongering, I'm usually playing as Caesar and spamming Praetorians like there's no tomorrow. I pay little attention to horses until I can create cavalry in that scenario.

 

[naterator]

i was addicted to horse archers in a game called "stronghold: crusader", get your hoarde ready, buddy. by the way, kublai kicks genghis' butt anyday, in my book

 

[Gumbolt]

horse archer vs long bowmen? Be realistic they will be around same time. So are archers the likely defender with horse archers?

Or do i keep getting distracted from the game i have forgotten myself. *shrugs*

Never enough time to play. Grrrrrr.

ttfn gotta try these Greeks