I agree that you can't ever have too many siege weapons (okay, you're going to need SOME normal units, but the bulk of the army should be siege weapons); they keep the march going, and the more you have, the less often you'll have to pause to heal the injured ones. I don't care how many swordsmen you have, if you run into a walled/high culture city with only a few healthy cats left, you'll be stopped cold until those walls come down and make their longbows vulnerable, or unless you want to lose a ton of swordsmen.
I like your army Invisible, it sounds a lot like mine, except I don't Drill any siege weapons... that's for tanks imho. I tend to keep cats unpromoted until the last second, which gives me flexibility as to whether I need to barrage a little or go for CR upgrades. I also build a few spearmen early on but that's about it. My anti-mounted unit of choice is the war elephant, since it can do strong city attacks if necessary unlike spearmen. My healer unit is a fast unit (typically a chariot or horse archer) that I plan to promote to Medic III later on with a GG; it's a fast, weak unit so it can keep up with my future tanks if necessary and yet not be chosen the defender of the stack.
When I fight in the middle ages, CR trebuchets, barrage cats, and elephants make up the bulk of my attacking force, along with any veteran swords and axes of course, which I don't bother to upgrade to macemen or whatever because it's usually unnecessary (even CR I axemen straight out of the barracks, let alone veteran axes, can still kill heavily injured longbows with extremely high odds--no need to macemen them), and I don't want the drop in xp.. when the time is right and hopefully when at least some of them have CR III, I will upgrade to something more worthwhile (see below). I might build a pair of healer crossbowman or something to accompany them, but that's about it.
I think the math discussions in this thread are great. I totally agree with the "overwhelm the counter-units and then cut the soft underbelly" mindset. However, I always keep in mind is getting someone to level 6. I also take good care of my veteran CR III axemen, trying to let rookie CR I swordsmen take on the riskier assignments first. Then, when I get chemistry, my most veteran axemen turn into CR III grenadiers = total ownage in that era. Your leftover trebs and cats, a few riflemen as bodyguards and to garrison newly-capture cities, a healer unit, and your CR III grenadiers can take out pretty much any city that is not guarded by machine guns or stronger units.
I think you have confused my arguments on early war with those on later war. Sorry if my post misled.
Early war (during the time of swords/axes), my argument which was also picked up by others was that you should have lots of either swords or axes but not both. And normally axes will be better since you can often get them earlier and they are better if your opponent has metals.
For later war (catapults), I never made any recommendation to use axes and not swords. For a later war I would build:
- Suicide (barrage) catapults - maybe 20%
- City raider catapults (which I would use like axes, not for suiciding although some will sometimes lose battles) - maybe 45%
- Shock Axes - maybe 10%
- Healing spears - maybe 10%
- City raider swords OR elephants if I can - maybe 15% - for suicide attacking longbows on hills or for taking small cities with only 1 or 2 longbows.
I would not build city raider axes - they are obsolete unless you have highly promoted ones from previous wars, or don't have iron or elephants.
As for mopping up with catapults rather than swords, I don't think I lose more units this way. Say I suicide 3 catapults against maybe 4 longbows and a spear and a chariot.
In wiping out the remainder with swords, I will probably still take some losses. If the odds are up to 50-60% on the longbows then I will probably lose two swords.
In wiping out the remainder with catapults, I am more likely to lose the first one. But then I do another round of collateral damage as well. By the time the next catapult attacks, the odds are at least as good as they would be with swords. After that my catapults are attacking with better odds than the swords and will wipe out all the remaining defenders with no further casualties. Usually I go in a sequence of attacking:
- A couple of suicide cats (barrage)
- A sword against the top defender if necessary
- A couple of CR 1 catapults. Probably will lose one and the other might win or withdraw hopefully.
- My highly promoted CR 2-3 catapults that should win and gain further promotions.
- Drill catapults for mopping up without taking further damage. Stack defenders can also help mop up at this point to gain some xp.
Maybe its not perfect, but its pretty effective. Having lots of catapults means the war flows quickly - city defenses are taken down in a single turn and I always seem to have enough catapults on hand - when in previous games with fewer catapults, losing them always seemed to take the steam out of my attack.
Of course if you get to maces or knights it changes again - your city raiders can beat longbows more often and a CR 3 mace is hard to stop. But I don't find swords that much better than catapults to warrant building many of them. Their greater survivability isn't much compared to the versatility of the catapults.
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