Cavalry upgrade

[GoRy]

I really REALLY want an upgrade to cavalry tbh :s early.

Like IRL, you now have rapid reaction forces, Pretty much as what i classify cavalry as for the first couple dozen turns after a few civs get tanks. Pretty good for picking off lone units and en masse decent against unprotected stacks of units.

but when the modern ages comes, and mech inf become widespread, You have 2 choices. Keep the cavalry in reserve for hitting a weak target or just disband them for shields.

IMO they need a moderately powerful upgrade - Not something that will do a tank out of business but something that hits at say 10-12 with moderate def of about 6-7, but has the advantage of speed over a tank. Say maybe like a Commando or such.

Im sure you've seen post like this before but I haven't so I apologise if im covering old ground

 

[RufRydyr]

I agree. In RL cav units become mechanized units.

 

[LouLong]

I would not request something like that as one can very easily mod that.

I would focus on asking stuff I cannot do by myself.

 

[GenMarshall]

IMO, I think the Cavalry unit should upgrade to a tank.

 

[Civanator]

Lou, even though it is trivial, just that little tweak can change th whole game, and it also recognizes your Civ3mod.bix as a modded bix file. If Firaxis makes the change,, then everyone will have the change, so it won't be such a bother.

 

[dexters]

GoRy, I was intially very hesitant of a cavalry upgrade as I felt that chain of upgrades was a bit too powerful.

You could basically upgrade from horseman and get the best offensive units in two eras... the knights and cavalry.

I wouldn't something like a light cavalry (light armor) that comes with Motorized Transport

You basically gety 8 attack and 6 defense (weaker than a tank on both Attack and Defense) but retains the Cavalry's 3 movement points.

 

[cookie_monster]

Maybe the reasoning is because the Cavalry became obsolite around the time infantry (machine guns) and artillery came about. The Charge of the light Brigade for example. Also in WW2 landed on Pacific islands only to become a nice meal. Yes it would be nice to upgrade from a gameplay issue, Ive had approx 40 cavs when tanks are around. But this wouldnt really be good for Civs semi approximation of history. Anyway I use them with arty for leader fishing, pumps them out real fast. Maybe exploitive though!!

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

I'd guess the reason cavalry doesn't upgrade to tank is that a RL equivalent would be selling a bunch of horses and saddles, retraining your men, and for a small amount of money getting much more powerful units that cost millions in development, raw materials, etc. Maybe they could find a way to make certain upgrades much more expensive - if you had to pay 150 gold to upgrade each cavalry that might make sense. I often find myself delaying wars until I can build tanks, as I don't care to build that many cavalry unless I have to.

 

[dexters]

I still think that it is ok to upgrade Cavalry to light armor. I think the unit is fine as it is but if they must throw in another late game armored unit, why not.

Light armor will be something like a lighter and faster version of tanks. 8 attack 6 Defense and they keep Cav's 3 movement points and can attack 3 times.

Edit: I'm tempted to also suggest that you should be able to build these without oil. These will be the poor man's tank.

Whereas the Guerilla unit (poor man's infantry) was hampered by being an all around weaker version of the Infantry, the 3 movement points light amror gets (as opposed to the 2 movement points tank gets) should allow for some interesting combined arms strategy and give the AI armies the ability to threaten human positions with these tanks. They won't be as vulnrerable as a stack of Cavalry (AI cavalry stacks really get slaughtered when tanks show up) and they can attack 3 times.
AI superpowers with large Cavalry armies should naturally be upgrading them to these light armor units. Again, helping to keep them more competitive. It's basically like the boost Medieval infantry gave to the AI in the medieval era. The instances of large warrior stacks showing up in the medieval age has been greatly reduced.

 

[WillJ]

Like others have said, from what I understand the reason cavalry don't upgrade to anything is because they didn't in real life. Once modern infantry and tanks rolled around, there wasn't much of a use for horses. The age of horses had ended.

IMO, upgrades have to be somewhat realistic. I can picture a rifleman upgrading to infantry (giving the guy a new gun), an infantry upgrading to mech infantry (getting that guy into a motorized vehicle), a horseman upgrading to cavalry, but not a cavalry unit upgrading into a tank unit. What do you do with the horses? Do you have any use for them whatsoever in a tank? No, you don't. So there is no reason why a tank would be any easier to build ("easier to build"=upgrade) when you have some cavalry laying around.

I also fail to see how galleons can upgrade to transports, but my current game now rests on the ability to mass upgrade all my sail ships to modern transports (and cannons into artillery, BTW), so I can't complain.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Allowing Cav to upgrade to Tanks would make it too easy for the human to immediately acquire a huge Tank force upon hitting Motorized Transportation, while the AI, I dare predict, will continue to be slow to upgrade. And it's not like Cav need any boost either.

 

[Speaker]

Cavalry to tanks would definitely be way too powerful. Imagine if you skipped the optional Chivalry and Military Tradition. You could have 500 or 1000 horsemen by the time you upgraded to Tanks. Yeah it would be extremely expensive to upgrade them all, but if you had Leo's and just used the ToE slingshot to make a few huge gpt deals, you could conquer the entire world in a few turns.

 

[slothman]

I am going to mod it to have heavy cavalry. Horses were being used in WWI for countries without tanks. Plus it seems strange to have wars in 1900 that use 1700 age horses against 1900 age infantry.

 

[John Falkner]

In my mod you can upgrade cavalry to helicopters. Its very expensive and the helicopter gunships are coming very late in the modern age.

 

[Pembroke]

As other have mentioned cavalry to tanks means unlimited conquest. I wouldn't add that...

However, cavalry doesn't have to upgrade to cavalry-like units. Cavalry is 6.3.3 so simply make them upgrade to infantry (6.10.1) which has an equal attack and a better defense. This kind of upgrade wouldn't be overpowering and would even make sense in real world terms: your men simply gave up their horses.

Ok, so you lose the speed of 3 moves but no-one is _forcing_ you to take the upgrade if you want to keep your mounted squads...

 

[Padma]

If you notice, you will see that while the defensive tropops upgrade the whole game, offensive units do not. The Archer line stops, and you have to build something else. The "horse" line stops, and you have to build something else. IIRC (man, I wish search was enabled), this was intentional so as to improve gameplay. It also reflects realism to a degree. Take a bunch of horsemen, give them some armor, and you have knights. Take off the iron, and give them rifles, and you have cavalry. But the leap to mechanized is much larger.

 

[PurplePacifier]

Historically, when guns became more accurate and had longer range, there was no need to mount riflemen to quickly approach an enemy, shoot, and ride on. So if you take out the horse from under the cavalry and give him a better gun, you have an infantryman.

In my mod, I have cavalry upgrade to infantry. It just makes sense to me. And realistically, infantrymen with their accurate, long-ranged guns can easily pick off riflemen on horses (cavalry), as they do in the game.

I used to have cavalry upgrade to tanks, but cavalry are useless against infantry because infantry have a much greater defense over cavalry. And waiting for Motorized Transporation to come around so that I can upgrade my obsolete cavalary into tanks is too long a wait and a waist of my unit support cost per turn.

 

[Chieftess]

Originally posted by PurplePacifier
I used to have cavalry upgrade to tanks, but cavalry are useless against infantry because infantry have a much greater defense over cavalry. And waiting for Motorized Transporation to come around so that I can upgrade my obsolete cavalary into tanks is too long a wait and a waist of my unit support cost per turn.

Oh, but they are! Ever used artillery? Inf have 4hp, and a 6 attack to 10 defense is pretty close to a 25% success rate (25-30%). So, pick off 3 hp, and you're bound to get one. This strategy does take some timing, though, and patience.

 

[PurplePacifier]

Point taken, Chieftess. You can defeat almost any unit with enough artillery, and a weaker unit could fair against a stronger if it had back up. But I was thinking in terms of military prowess instead of guerilla tactics.

In the game, an offensive, mounted unit would have an equal match against a defensive unit of the time; horesmen to spearmen, knights to musketmen, cavalry to riflemen. But this relationship breaks down in that brief period when Replaceable Parts is learned and Motorized Transportation is not. The offensive unit is still the cavalry while the new defensive unit is the stronger infantry. This truly renders the cavalry obsolite, redering it to match up, as you said, with the aid of artillery.

Even before this period, the defensive units had no strong offensive advantage in attacking the corresponding mounted units. But infantry can surely win from attacking the cavalry. So in both cases, whether the infantry attacks or defends from the cavalry, the infantry has the advantage. Unless of course the weaker unit is compensated with artillery assistance.

This reasoning allows me to stick to my suggestion in upgrading cavalry to infantry instead of waiting for tanks to show up. Infantry are better offensive units and defensive units against cavalry.

This to me is also a much more natural progression of upgrades; removing the horse from under a mounted rifleman (cavalry) and giving him a better gun. Instead of, as someone above pointed out, upgrading from cavalry to tank because it's a much more radical upgrade.

 

[dexters]

I sitll like my original idea of turning Cavalry into light armor.

6/6/3

It would add some variety.