RedRover57
Emperor
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2010
- Messages
- 1,014
I have to disagree somewhat. Cavalry are useless in combat, they just get killed. I'll never send a cav into harm's way again. You say to use Cav to spot for bombers? I've tried that, every time a cav is far in the advance, by itself, it just gets wiped out. Besides, by the time you have bombers, you will have upgraded Cavs into tanks. Also, upgrading cav to tanks costs you 1 oil and gives you back 1 horse. Interesting how Cav went from one of the most devastating weapons in Civ 3, to a useless weapon in Civ 5. Although building 15 or so for upgrade to tank is a cheap way to get tanks.
Cavs and the earlier horse units are far from useless, and I'm not even talking about the overpowered keshiks and Mandekalu cavs (both of which are extremely OPed if used correctly - domination VC by T150 on a standard pangaea anyone?). Regular horse units are useful in almost every game in one of the following roles: (1) City capper - take over a city of any strength as long as it has been reduced down to one hit point, i.e. by ranged units (horses can stay out of harms way until ready to cap), (2) Pillager - Horse units can get in and out after pillaging important resources like iron, horses, uranium, etc., or farms to starve down a high pop city before conquest to reduce your happiness hit, and (3) Ranged unit destroyer - use horse units to flank and take out enemy siege and archers. The biggest limitation to horses is terrain - they are less effective on maps with a lot of rough terrain.