Cavalry over infantry?

[DragonKnight]

I am playing ragnar, and fighting with the khmer... I have infantry, artillery, and cavalry. He has rifleman, cavalry and cannons.
And I am getting my a$$ handed to me. I took two cities right off, but when his main army showed up, I started losing. He keeps attacking with cavalry, fighting my infantry and winning. And the infantry is fortified in a city. His cavalry mostly have flanking II promotions... A few have combat 1. But all of my infantry have either combat I or city defense I, and sometimes they have defense II. So why is his cavalry so consistently destroying my full healed and fortified infantry? Am I missing something. I thought a couple were just bad luck, but it has simply been too consistent for too long. At this point he is killing units faster then I can turn them out, and I turn 3 out about every 2 turns, and he only has like 9 cities... Am I missing some bonus he gets?

By the way, This is bts, with the BUG Mod on prince.

DK

 

[Ghpstage]

Sheer weight of numbers can barrel through more or less any defenders Also check if airships are being used against you, strikes by those against city defenders make a very significant difference.
What cities are being lost anyway? Are they recently captured enemy ones? If so you won't have any culture defense bonus and your fortify bonus is likely not yet full, plus there could be seige being sent form several tiles away to soften you up some.

 

[DragonKnight]

I understand sheer weight of numbers... but that isn't it... He is attacking 2-3 times per turn with cavalry, and winning greater then 50% of the time. Then he stops. Most of his wins are the first ones through, the last one always loses, and then he stops... It's like he knows he should be losing, so he is conserving his strength, but he is winning... a lot. And while he has airships now, he didn't in the beginning. But I am not seeing his airships attacking now that he has them, and the graphics of the infantry still show 3 guys, plus I had 8 of them in their (plus cavalry and artillery), so if his airships did some damage, it would only be to a portion of the troops, so a fully healed one could step up, and I had a medic 2 in the city which should heal damage done from an airship in like one turn.
And yes they are cities with no defense, but his slow attack rate means that while in the first few turns they weren't fully fortified, but this has gone on for about 50 turns. (Still not sure why he hasn't gotten infantry yet, he went for destroyers instead I think). And he wasted his cannons on a city I hadn't recently taken, and he actually took that one. But that was understandable... And periodically he will use a few cannons, and kill a few after that, but I replace them with new fully healed units, every 8 or so turns... and the cycle starts... I am just trying to build up enough to attack, but he keeps killing them at the rate I am dumping them in... it's a well fortified city, so he isn't going to take it, but he shouldn't even have a chance when he is out tech'ed like this as far as I can tell.

 

[Ghpstage]

I must say that i'm extremely skeptical of him winning even close to 50%, if theres no seige/air being used the odds probably aren't close to that (they can be checked on the combat log). The RNG has been tested a number of times and never found to be dodgy.

I had a medic 2 in the city which should heal damage done from an airship in like one turn.

Medic 2 doesn't add to the healing rate of medic 1, its only real purpose is to give GG super medics access to medic 3.

I am just trying to build up enough to attack, but he keeps killing them at the rate I am dumping them in...

This makes it sound like the problem is being caused by a lack of production. On Prince you should be able to outproduce even an equal size AI by a significant margin, especially as you have Assembly Line for Factories and Coal Plants!
Could you post the save by any chance?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I must say that i'm extremely skeptical of him winning even close to 50%, if theres no seige/air being used the odds probably aren't close to that (they can be checked on the combat log). The RNG has been tested a number of times and never found to be dodgy.

Pinch cavalry is no joke even against infantry and given some AI propensity toward vassalage + stable + troop spam it's not rare to see lots of 10xp cavalry. Unless the player's infantry has some good promotions itself it will struggle. Combat I infantry vs combat II/pinch cavalry:

22 vs 21.75 ----> infantry has only a slight edge. However, when it is the infantry defending you factor in withdraws and cavalry survival is already around 50%, BEFORE collateral or air.

Combat II cavalry is already 50/50 with arty (unless you drill promote it lol), but again has inherent withdraws. One should never get cocky vs masses of cavalry.

Now, OP was in a different situation though. Defending against cavalry with flank II he was indeed running into trouble with #'s. Cavalry with flank II will survive at well over 50% odds vs all of these defenders. Recently ABCF did a summary in one of the deity games where he took cavalry + airships to rifles with *VERY* favorable win rates. It made me re-think the value of the flanking promotion in general, although as he said you really need a GG medic to keep the pace. Even though the AI usage of units is comparably pathetic, large #'s of flank cavalry is still dangerous.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Cavalry is great for quickly overwhelming inferior opponents due to mobility, but he has too much it seems. You can still use any you have lying around for flank attacks on his cannons though. They're not even bad vs riflemen. It looks like you are being hit by collateral really bad and you will fall just because so much damage is being put out.

Anyhow, I've seen this situation before on Prince where he has an inferior army, but just has a crapload of units. I stopped struggling with it when I started bringing machine guns to guard captured cities-- those really mow previous eras down. If you have gold, you can pretty much upgrade any obsolete unit instantly into a MG. The advantage of machine guns is that they are invulnerable to siege collateral.

Edit: I just realized how good Cavalry really is.

 

[DragonKnight]

Actually I tried upgrading a unit or two to MG... they both died in one attack by one cav... And seige isn't what is happening to me...
Basically when I started the attack, I left one city too open (only 2 infantry but one with city defense 2). He threw all most all of his cannons at that city, and lost them, then took it with cavs. When he attacked the city I took from him with my stack, he had like 1 cannon left. But his cav still won. I had like 20 units in the city, a mix of artillery, cavs, and infantry. And he only attacked a few times per turn, usually winning the early 1 or two, and then stopping after the 2nd or 3rd died or withdrew. And I on the other hand was pummeling his units with airships, so most of the time they were injured when attacking my uninjured infantry.
So it sounds like there aren't any bonuses that I am missing, I just got a bunch of bad rolls of the dice in a row. I was only maybe 40 attacks, so it is possible to get that bad a run, it just made me think I was missing some bonus he was getting...
So needless to say, I am toast for this game... it took too long, and I have gained nothing useful. I have tanks coming now, so I should be able to take some of his territory, but I won't be able to clean off the planet like I had planned. I can try for a diplo, as I am on good terms with a far part of the planet... But my starting island had zero happiness resources, and the other civ didn't get a religion (and I didn't try for one) so I was stuck on HR for longer then was desired... Part of attacking this guy was to get some happiness resources, as the stuff I have other people don't seem to want to trade for the stuff I need.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

when you say winning, do you mean actually a flanking II cav actually killing a CG1 infantry 1/2 the time? Or do you mean killing or retreating?

If the first is happening, thats bad luck, cause it should die most of the time (well, really, it should retreat).

Actually, with a Flank II cav, it would probably win 20% of the time, retreat 40% of the time and die 40% of the time, or something like that.

 

[DragonKnight]

I do mean winning, straight up killing my full strength infantry. I have played more then a few games, and it struck me as very odd, everything I knew said it shouldn't be happening so much. But since I am not missing anything, I guess it is just a case of "that's why they play the games". I am known to be incredibly unlucky overall. I may try a reload and redo with a new random seed and try do the exact same things (even the mistake) and see if I get the same result, I bet I won't...

 

[feces42]

If the flanking is what's killing you, it could make sense to attack his cavalry before they can get to attack you. Then they lose the withdraw bonus. If an epic run of bad luck is doing it... at least they lose the withdraw bonus.

 

[DragonKnight]

The flanking isn't helping, but it isn't the part I was concerned about... sure in the long run it helps... But if he wasn't killing my units, when he withdraws to a city to heal, that would make the city that much easier to take. And of course they are cavalry, so they attack from out of range, so I can't attack them except with my airships... which I do constantly, and only makes it odder that they keep winning against full strength infantry.

 

[Ghpstage]

The best way for people to get to the root of this problem is to post a save .

 

[jgroth1978]

Agreed. Something doesn't sound right.

 

[DragonKnight]

I attached a save...
But when I just reloaded and replayed... I got a much different result. This time I kicked his butt all over the place... I must have done something slightly differently to get the random numbers in a different place or something...
That said I did notice that he had some airships... though half of them were in the city I took first, so he didn't have many left for the actual battles, and the others seem to be attacking my ships that are sitting idle off the coast. That and while most of the cavalry that is near by is flanking II, some of the ones that showed up from out of view had combat 1 and a few had combat 2. So it may have been that the ones that were winning were the combat ones, and then the losers were the flankers... So that would still make it bad luck for him to win so often, but not crazy bad luck, just a string of bad luck. My guess is after they won the zoomed out of range to heal so I kept seeing the ones that withdrew or what not..

 

[Ghpstage]

I'd say that save strongly supports the idea that numbers are the problem, you are fifth in production afterall. Worse still the Khmer that you attacked have the largest army of any civ....

If you attacked with the mediocre sized force you have on that continent, then its unsuprising that you couldn't maintain momentum and got stuck in a stalemate as a result.

 

[DragonKnight]

my theory had been to take a city or two, and let him throw his troops against my superior troops and watch them die... When I reloaded this worked list planned for a while... but there was a lot more troops up north then I thought... while it would still work, it will just take too long...
But the first time I did it, the bad luck loses were just a disaster, and I actually lost more ground then I took. The problem is Peter has the best power rating on the planet... so he can't be my target, that leaves khmer, or the spanish/greeks... And the good resources seem to be with the khmer...

DK

 

[Ghpstage]

my theory had been to take a city or two, and let him throw his troops against my superior troops and watch them die...

This is usually a bad call, the advantage in stack combat lies with the attacker, this advantage is greatly multiplied if the attacker is in their own territory, and further still if its on a different continent to your production centre.
The results of long defensive wars in captured cities will often be be either running out of troops and losing the war entirely, or spending huge amounts of and getting little but war wearriness in return.

The problem is Peter has the best power rating on the planet... so he can't be my target,

Actually Khmer has the most power, but if you had properly commited to the invasion then you could have easily produced enough to win without dificulty.
Your spending too much time building structures to convince anyone your intending to kill anyone, and your production capacity is being strangled by your civic choices.

With 40 towns compared to only 24 farms you really should be in Universal Suffrage, not Representation. This will give you an extra 40 across your empire AND allow you to rushbuy, which is extremely powerful.
You would also benefit from changing to Free Speech, the extra 80 would outweigh the :comemrce: lost from the capital by a considerable margin.
Going down this route then attacking the Khmer has another advantage, their capital has the Kremlin built. Capturing that wonder will cause your rushbuy power to skyrocket!

From where you are now I think the best option would be to reorganise yourself, and then head for tactical nukes.
By reorganise I mean deciding if you want rushbuy and if so buy gold multipliers, if not then change your improvements.

 

[DragonKnight]

I was going to ask why my production was so bad...
So in general I am building too many cottages?
I should be doing farming/workshop pairs more?

I have been starting to think I have too much money and too little production in most of my games so this may be the overall cause...

 

[Ghpstage]

So in general I am building too many cottages?
I should be doing farming/workshop pairs more?

If you are always finding yourself building vast numbers of cottages, even with non financial leaders and especially if you end up running Representation while doing so...... then yes you definitely need to try using other improvements!

For a drastic eye opener you could try playing a game or two where you ban yourself form building any cottages. It will be harsh at first but you will quickly learn things about whipping, drafting, specialists, great people, building wealth/research, how, when and where to use farms/workshops/watermills/windmills and how the civic and how your tech priorities and civic choices affect them.

I have been starting to think I have too much money and too little production in most of my games so this may be the overall cause...

In this particular game the cottage spam isn't the sole cause. Mass cottages are a viable means of getting production post Democracy, especially with financial, but you have to make preparations to make use of it.

• First you need Universal Suffrage, without it cottages can give no production
• For rushbuy banks/markets/grocers are your factories and forges, build lots of them soon
• Towns won't be at their strongest till you run Free Speech and have Printing Press
• Attempt to get the Kremlin, its a huge production multiplier for rushbuy

Then you have to be willing to either micro the rushbuying, or trust the govenor to do it for you by having cities focus on production (not recommended).

It may be helpful to thing of gold as liquid hammers for rushbuy. Every city can contribute to a pool which can be spent at any specific cities, even ones that don't pay into the pool. This makes it very handy for getting captured cities working ASAP, in particular a captured city on another continent can rushbuy an airport, allowing you to fly in large numbers of reinforcements.
Its also important to note that like whipping, rushbuying suffers a penalty if no hammers are spent on a build. Avoid this by building it for a turn before buying it.

 

[Archon_Wing]

You need more farms; the mines aren't being worked because the population isn't large enough. (Don't be afraid to build windmills if you can't support those mines.) It would be very advisable to get biology ASAP. It's something I frequently forget too, but power will help a lot.

Also, Oxford!