Attacking in the Classical Era!

[Terakahn]

Swordsmen or Horsemen?

More mobility vs 2 less strength.
Im using them mainly for blocking my ranged from picking their army and cities apart. I know horsemen have a big reduction in strength against cities, but is that defensive too? Or just offensively.

 

[pwoz]

I'd go with tons of CBs and some spears to mop up.

 

[Gort]

Hunnic horse archers and battering rams are basically the kings of the classical era attacking.

You could go with immortals or Iroquois mohawk warriors if you wanted.

 

[Terakahn]

I've been using England most recently. A quick tech to machinery after Iron Working and Philosophy led to a severe advantage. haven't played through the rest of the game yet, but I can't see how I could possibly fall behind. im sitting on 8ish Longbowmen, 2 Catapults and 2 Swords. ive already had 3 people declare on me and give me everything for peace. Sitting on about 3k gold.

Its just emperor, but I'm still learning the ropes =p. This is my first successful attempt on Emperor while not ICSing.

I do love the Persians, but none of the old strategies I used with them work nearly as well anymore. Especially with the tech tree changes for golden ages and whatnot.

Edit: My original question was because I settled 4 cities, tradition opener, and have 2 iron. None anywhere on the map I can see besides that and I dont plan on settling more cities. but I have like 12 horses. it usually ends up with a bad ratio like that. So I want to know if its a good or bad idea to just build horsemen instead of swordsmen since I dont have the iron. Or will the cities just tear through them. I remember reading horses are better against warriors and swordsmen, so there's that too.

 

[Furycrab]

Hunnic horse archers and battering rams are basically the kings of the classical era attacking.

You could go with immortals or Iroquois mohawk warriors if you wanted.

Battering rams are kinda lame IMO if it wasn't for the ridiculous over the top horse archers. To compare...

Chariot Archer
Ranged St: 10
Move: 4
Penalty : Loses all movement if it goes into rough terrain.
Requires Horse.
56 hammers (On standard)

War Chariot
RS: 10
Mv: 5
Still has the penalty.
Doesn't require horses
56 hammers.

Horse Archer
RS:10
Move: 4
No Penalty.
Free Promotion +1 open terrain.
56 hammers
No horses.
Civ with a good hammer production UA...

Spam horse archers. Surround city easily. Get some miserable melee unit to walk in while you have Horse Archers that get +range stupidly quick.

 

[IAmOzymandias]

What do chariots/horse archers upgrade to? Knights or cannons?

Yeah, in GaK, CB are basically a no-brainer. If you get them early they can match warriors and other early game units tit-for-tat, and obviously can attack without taking damage themselves.

I've had great luck finding a ruins upgrade with my Warrior>Battering Ram and taking an undefended city on turn 5-10. 2 turns on an undefended city and a battering ram will take it down.

 

[kamikazees]

...Im using them mainly for blocking my ranged...

No question about it: swordsman do better for that job. The reason is because horseman do not get terrain bonuses, unless it is a Cataphract. Thus, they are better at blocking units that are going after your units. Horseman are good for hit and run attacks, not defense.

 

[Furycrab]

What do chariots/horse archers upgrade to? Knights or cannons?

Yeah, in GaK, CB are basically a no-brainer. If you get them early they can match warriors and other early game units tit-for-tat, and obviously can attack without taking damage themselves.

I've had great luck finding a ruins upgrade with my Warrior>Battering Ram and taking an undefended city on turn 5-10. 2 turns on an undefended city and a battering ram will take it down.

They upgrade into knights, which can put you in a precarious situation in the medieval to renaissance. The promotions still work on the upgraded units so you really only lose Range if you decide to upgrade them. Generally speaking, Bows are probably preferable, however if you have a Chivalry UU they are a great alternative.

The "Ruin ---> Killing a City" works silly well on low difficulties. On higher difficulties however they are barely good enough to grab a CS, and it "can" work on Civs but it's rare. The rams themselves are easy to fend off since they take way more ranged damage then you would want.

They just need to make rams less binary and actually properly resist ranged damage (perhaps remove the insta promotion), and the horse archers... Really really don't need that free open terrain promotion. With a decent start, you can be dancing on a Deity AI capitol with little to no effort because of them... If you want the Deity steam achievement, just run a duel map with Attila and laugh.

 

[IAmOzymandias]

The "Ruin ---> Killing a City" works silly well on low difficulties.

"Low" difficulties is a relative term. I've had it work wonders on King mode, I think. IIRC ended uptaking a CC and 2 or 3 CSes with a single ram. Once you start getting the upgrades you can put them in ranged damage resistance. I think I also got lucky because I was using it so early that I never got attacked by melee units.

Found out later that they're highly succeptible to even a warrior.

Then again, may have been Prince as I was trying a new civ. can't remember. Either way i've only played the huns a couple of times. I tend to random so i'll only play as any given civ once out of every 30 or so games.

 

[Terakahn]

I've been having issues trying to find a decent civ that can warmonger well that early. Everyone I've been using needs to either get Chivalry, Steel or machinery to get anything really useful. Which could make for some great timings should I ever figure them out, but until then.

I was attempting a Mongol game, since I was being told they have an insanely good UU, but its still kind of far into the tech tree. Rome seems nice, but I still haven't really figured them out in G&K.

 

[Tachii]

I think it should work on Immortal as well. They usually don't have any units up around those turns, but I would skip CS on hills though.

 

[Terakahn]

So I know its medieval, but Im using Longbowmen as Artillery and its going extremely well. I feel so vulnerable with so few melee units, but I havent needed them so.