So I was reading in the Civ wiki about the differences between cavalry and infantry units. It sounds like apart from the increased cost there is zero reason to build infantry (assuming you have the same tier level of units unlocked)? Am I right? Its pity if true they should differentiate more and give you a reason to build some infantry units (perhaps make it so cavalry units cant take cities).
Are cavalry units just better than infantry in every way?
- Thread starter peter79
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stealth_nsk
Deity
There are various bonuses and penalties applying to either one of them (resources, policy cards, civ/leader abilities, unique units, city-state bonuses, wonders and so on), so in reality the difference could be huge.
And even if you look at the core, in the last patch maintenance cost difference is not something to ignore. For example, Tier 1 Infantry in Exploration requires 2 gold, while Tier 1 Cavalry requires 6. In the current tighter economics, significant cavalry forces will eat your wallet very quickly.
EDIT: Whether that's enough to differentiate them is another question. Maybe some different tactical abilities could be considered later.
Yeah I'm aware that the maintenance cost for cavalry is significantly higher and I'm purposely ignoring leader/civ/policy effects (which is probably makes the straight comparison a bit pointless) but I suppose I'm just looking at it from a core ability point of view. Cavalry is stronger, faster, ignores ZOC everything else being equal (which again may be unfair) I think there should be tactical differences between both unit types.
stealth_nsk
Deity
I don't have that big tactical experience, I usually play peacefully. To me the tactical difference is that for frontline clash where you cycle units, moving wounded ones inside commander, infantry does the job fine and is much better in cost/value. Cavalry is better for flanking and operations outside main clash.
There has been discussion on it. possible solutions
1. Cavalry not benefiting from Terrain bonuses
2. Cavalry not benefiting from Fortifications
3. Cavalry not being able to Fortify
4. Cavalry having a penalty for attacking fortified units/tiles.
All of which would make Infantry at least as good as Cavalry for City attack (slightly better when considering cost) but Cavalry would remain better in the open field.
stealth_nsk
Deity
I think it was mostly discussed before the last patch.
True, but a simple cost/maintenance difference isn't as interesting or impactful as some additional differentiation.
I would add; bring back the old-school Pikeman / Spearman, who had a combat bonus against Cavalry!
This.
Even in games before 1.2.5, I didn't build much Cavalry. The majority of my land units are always Ranged units - especially if I'm playing a Civ whose unique unit lets you move after attacking (such as Dai Viet's Voi Chien).
My last game (and thus far, my only game on 1.2.5) is a good example, near the end of Modern I had 80 land units: 12 Bombard, 57 Ranged, 7 Infantry and only 4 Cavalry (Tanks).
stealth_nsk
Deity
I find pretty tactical differentiation here. I try to keep the core of my army infantry and have only limited set of cavalry (in my playstyle sometime none). I found infantry to be much better now for direct combat just for the reason it's cheaper, but cavalry is still good for flanking if I have it.
If you swim in gold, e.g., exploration and modern age pre-1.2.5., I think there is not much reason for infantry over cavalry. I always buy cavalry/tanks and ranged units, if I can afford them.
The problem is that ranged only doesn‘t always work well, so you need some tanky units or at least units that can stand a melee fight for a turn or two.
Bonuses and long-term strategy make infantry worthwhile. If your commanders are geared towards ranged, you want ranged units. If they are geared towards infantry, you want infantry throughout the game. Some leaders tend to focus on infantry, some civs have amazing cavalry unique units. The mausoleum makes cavalry even better. It‘s difficult to make a general rule here, as so many things can come into play. But I still feel there aren’t that many global reasons to build/buy infantry except if gold/production is very tight. 1-UPT also often means that stronger units in a small area are more effective than more weaker units.
The problem is that ranged only doesn‘t always work well, so you need some tanky units or at least units that can stand a melee fight for a turn or two.
Bonuses and long-term strategy make infantry worthwhile. If your commanders are geared towards ranged, you want ranged units. If they are geared towards infantry, you want infantry throughout the game. Some leaders tend to focus on infantry, some civs have amazing cavalry unique units. The mausoleum makes cavalry even better. It‘s difficult to make a general rule here, as so many things can come into play. But I still feel there aren’t that many global reasons to build/buy infantry except if gold/production is very tight. 1-UPT also often means that stronger units in a small area are more effective than more weaker units.
stealth_nsk
Deity
I found rotating units in and out of commander mostly compensate this.
True, that mitigates the advantage of stronger troops to some extent. But still: if I can attack 3 enemies with 2 cav and 1 ranged this turn instead of with 3 infantry, the first option is probably better.
stealth_nsk
Deity
I usually play on defensive with ranged back rank shooting and infantry frontline eating attacks and rotating to heal (generally the normal modern military doctrine). It just works and that's the tactics where Cavalry additional movement or ignore ZOC have no effect and their difference in strength don't help much. I only advance after breaking enemy forces (again reminds me of some real wars) and where cavalry could help with flanking, but infantry still works fine.
Spot on. I've always got a Commander with infantry (and sometimes Cavalry) along with my Ranged/Bombard Commanders.
Terrain allowing, you can stack these between your target and your Ranged units.
This is crucial. The reason I have so many ranged units is that even early in Antiquity, my first Commander(s) always get the Ranged promotion after Initiative. The reason for this is that the next promotion is Bombard, which is always useful when taking cities. I find Ranged & Bombard way more worthwhile than Infantry and Cavalry in the early wars.
That particular specialisation is another reason why I always end up with way more Ranged units than Infantry/Cavalry.
j51
Blue Star Cadet
Yeah the increase in cost did not make cavalry any less dominant. I can still field tons of them even on immortal (and so can the AI). I barely ever build infantry. There needs to be a readjustment. Cavalry should probably be only as strong as infantry, still retain its movement and zoc bonuses, and be given a flanking bonus. That should be what the extra gold is for. This could make paying less for infantry more attractive.
McSpank01
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2016
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- 383
It’s bizarre to me that the game doesn’t seem to really follow so much of the rock paper scissors method of unit strategy that previous games had. I can’t get my head around why that was removed or simplified.
I wonder if they looked at stats, realised that players rarely built spear units and so decided that meant the game didn’t need them.
As it is right now combat just feels like a meat grinder with little tactical thought coming into it. Mainly it just comes down to who has the most units.
Maybe that suits the dumb AI, but there must be a point where you can’t just build a game around an AI that can’t understand complexity
I wonder if they looked at stats, realised that players rarely built spear units and so decided that meant the game didn’t need them.
As it is right now combat just feels like a meat grinder with little tactical thought coming into it. Mainly it just comes down to who has the most units.
Maybe that suits the dumb AI, but there must be a point where you can’t just build a game around an AI that can’t understand complexity
stealth_nsk
Deity
There are some reasons:
- That rock-paper-scissors never actually worked well
- Civ7 wants commanders to be the centers of battle, which greatly restricts the free roaming cavalry tactics of Civ6, where those differences between units actually worked
- Simplification needed, at least at start, because Civ6 with it's light/heavy cavalry distinction brought the unit diversity to ridiculous level
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
In Civ VII, after playing through it for a few months, I finally realized that the 'rock-paper-scissors' aspect in this game AND the 'simplification' compared to Civ VI in unit types are both products of the wild variety of ways you can modify unit factors.
Between Resource, Memento, Unique, Commander, Policy, IP Bonus and other variations, almost no infantry, ranged or cavalry/mobile unit fights with the same factor it supposedly has. I would also suspect (because I haven't taken the time to go back to earlier games and count up all possible modifiers) that the variations by unit are much larger than in previous games.
Just for an example, the basic 20-strength Warrior, in a Civ with several Iron deposits, bonuses from 1 - 2 IPs, a Tradition or two, under special conditions (defense, attack, versus Districts, etc) can easily have an actual combat strength of 30 - a 50% increase. Add in a few Bastion or Assault promotions from an Army Commander, and even a Tier 2 Spearman holds no terror for that Warrior.
The individual variations, not even counting additional variations from Unique units, means that the war-hungry player can customize and/or dramatically increase the power of his units in numerous ways - many of them not obvious to his opponents until they engage in combat. It also means that providing permanent changes to the attributes or strengths of units is much less important: if you want Anti-Cavalry infantry, infantry with an overall +10 combat increase does the same trick without requiring an entire specialized unit line.
The system, therefore, provides far more variation and customization overall than previous games did - it's just not laid out neatly for us in "this unit fights better against cavalry in Tundra" the way previous games made it explicit. - basically, you build your anti-cavalry, pro-tundra units using the game combat system of bonuses.
Which is not to say it couldn't be made a bit more explicit: familiar old tropes like Anti-Cavalry Infantry could be made a specific bonus from Traditions or Social Policies or some other source, to be adopted specifically when your nearest neighbors are Charlemagne, Genghis and the Mauryans.
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Yeah, you can definitely get a lot of random +2 or +3 bonuses. There's a few spots in the tree where you can get another +3 for some units, and I think the big factor is that everyone has a UU from the era, so we might be playing with different infantry between us. Which is slightly surprising given how many ways the game has gone to simplify a lot of adjacencies and bonuses, yet the combat system is arguably the most complicated of them all.
The one piece I would love if they handled better was an easier way to track commanders. I mean, sure, I kind of remember my top guy, and know which line I went down. But in my latest game I ended up renaming them all to remind myself. Of course then I still had to remember why exactly I called one of my commanders Picard.
The one piece I would love if they handled better was an easier way to track commanders. I mean, sure, I kind of remember my top guy, and know which line I went down. But in my latest game I ended up renaming them all to remind myself. Of course then I still had to remember why exactly I called one of my commanders Picard.
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