Chariot Archer - magic unit

[Magil]

One thing that's kind of annoying about them is that even if you upgrade them, they seem to keep their "lose all movement when entering rough terrain" disadvantage.

 

[The Mongol]

One thing that's kind of annoying about them is that even if you upgrade them, they seem to keep their "lose all movement when entering rough terrain" disadvantage.

Yes they do keep that movement penalty

Chariot archers are, in my experience, only good as the Indian War Elephant. The War Elephant gets one fewer move (3), but gets the archer's strength (which makes it competitive with spears), and doesn't get stuck in rough terrain as badly.

It does take a while to power them up, but if you do an early rush (2 elephants, 2 warriors) and if you invest in the honor tree up to Military Tradition (the GG helps, of course), then they become quite strong. Once you get Blitz, you rake in tons of xp, so having plenty of promotions is no problem. Also, to me it looked like drill helped them survive enemy attacks, but that may just have been my imagination.

Yes the drill and shock help with both range and melee strength.
Do the War elephants get the "lose all movement points when entering rough terrain" disadvantage?

 

[Infiltrator]

Chariots are terrible units that transition badly into knights as they lose their range upgrades and keep getting stuck in rough terrain. The fact that they lose movement in forest/hills in the era where forests are most plentiful doesn't make them appealing at all.

Horsemen are 1 tech away, same resource cost, don't get a full stop on rough terrain and can be used for ANYTHING apart assaulting fortified spears.

 

[_hero_]

OK, so you go for early stonehenge. On higher levels that means going straight for calender regardless of your start, and building it as soon as you can. It'll take about 20 turns to build, and you'll still need a lot of luck to get it first. So your first chariot archer comes out 20 turns later. Then you'll still need about 30-40 turns to level it up (because it still needs to heal and look for enemies, which doesn't go any faster). So that's still 50 turns, minimum, and it's an incredibly risky opening which doesn't give you anything else besides a single chariot archer plus honor.

Or you could get lucky and get 2 culture ruins. That gives you the first honor policy and halfway to the second. Add in a monument early in your build order so maybe something like Scout/Warrior>Monument>Worker. Even if you only get one culture ruin you'll be pretty close to having that 3rd honor SP by the time you have 2 Chariot archers and two melee units ready to fight with.

 

[stii]

I wonder if that is even possible, I've never got two culture or two pop boost ruins, maybe they are just very rare but on the levels where you can't always get stonehenge you won't get lots of ruins either.

 

[Lyoncet]

I seem to get maybe one or two of culture, population, or tech per game. Never seen more than one of any of those, at least in a game that doesn't start with unsettled islands that you can pop once you can embark across oceans.

 

[vendur]

Chariots are terrible units that transition badly into knights as they lose their range upgrades and keep getting stuck in rough terrain. The fact that they lose movement in forest/hills in the era where forests are most plentiful doesn't make them appealing at all.

Horsemen are 1 tech away, same resource cost, don't get a full stop on rough terrain and can be used for ANYTHING apart assaulting fortified spears.

So don't upgrade them? I prefer horse archers to regular ones, but only if I've got access to a decent amount of horses by the time I can produce horsemen.

 

[Lyoncet]

An un-upgraded chariot archer will certainly keep it's 4-5 attacks per turn, each of which will do 0 damage once you get past classical-era units.

OK, maybe it's not quite that bad that early, but those upgrades will only help you so much compared to strength increases.

 

[Infiltrator]

Yep, his attack strenght is so low that he won't be able to cope unless you upgrade him, and if you do you'll end up with a knight who stops in forests/hills and has useless range upgrades.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Can you explain that? I'm sorry I don't understand what you mean.

Units get more damages from ranged attacks while standing on flat land (compared to rough terrain -hill, forest, etc). And apparently the xp a unit can gain is somewhat linked to the damages it gives. So when you have the choice, and there are no tactical drawbacks doing so, fire on units standing on flat land. You will get promotions a bit faster.

 

[Airey]

OK, so you go for early stonehenge. On higher levels that means going straight for calender regardless of your start, and building it as soon as you can. It'll take about 20 turns to build, and you'll still need a lot of luck to get it first. So your first chariot archer comes out 20 turns later. Then you'll still need about 30-40 turns to level it up (because it still needs to heal and look for enemies, which doesn't go any faster). So that's still 50 turns, minimum, and it's an incredibly risky opening which doesn't give you anything else besides a single chariot archer plus honor.

+1
that's right...banking on wonder without backup plans are just poor play...
an alternative to stonehedge is to build monuments early in your first 2 cities...
I've gotten GG around T50ish before

 

[vendur]

The only time you will notice the terrain thing is when you go through two consecutive rough terrains. It becomes rare yo find places where trying to go through two sets of harsh terrain is the optimal pathway not that long after you can turn them into knights, at least on the higher difficulties. Personally, why bother knighting them? If you can get them blitz skill they are still great for elimantining your knights worst problem at those levels: pikemen. egypts chariot can do 6 x 5 damage, which can wipeout a pikeman unit with GG support.

 

[neptune2000]

Units get more damages from ranged attacks while standing on flat land (compared to rough terrain -hill, forest, etc). And apparently the xp a unit can gain is somewhat linked to the damages it gives. So when you have the choice, and there are no tactical drawbacks doing so, fire on units standing on flat land. You will get promotions a bit faster.

Thanks, I didn't know that.

 

[Lyoncet]

The only time you will notice the terrain thing is when you go through two consecutive rough terrains.

The only time you notice that moving one tile takes all your movement points is when you have to do it twice? That doesn't make any sense at all.

 

[vendur]

The only time you notice that moving one tile takes all your movement points is when you have to do it twice? That doesn't make any sense at all.

Yes it does. The only time you will notice the difference is when/if you have to pass through two hexes of rough terrain consecutively. What is so confusing with that statement? I also said it doesn't matter. I wouldn't bother with converting them to knights. They will still mow down enemy crossbow/archers/pike/spearmen with blitz. The only civs I highly recommend staying away from tham are england and china. Stick with pure archers for the upgrde.

They make fantstic front line scouts. Often time you can move two hexes forward and check out what the computer is doing/positioned, and then fire if its a good time or fall back if it isnt and let them move forward. Highly underrated unit.

 

[Nunya]

The only time you will notice the terrain thing is when you go through two consecutive rough terrains.

Actually you notice it every time you make less than two moves in open terrain before entering rough terrain.

Or did you mean this in compare to regular Archers? In that case Chariot Archers are faster as long as their first move is into open terrain.

 

[vendur]

Actually you notice it every time you make less than two moves in open terrain before entering rough terrain.

Or did you mean this in compare to regular Archers? In that case Chariot Archers are faster as long as their first move is into open terrain.

How is that? a knight only has 3 moves. You move 1 on open area and then once into the forest and you are done.

 

[Infiltrator]

.. and he can move twice through rough terrain.

 

[vendur]

.. and he can move twice through rough terrain.

And thats why I said its the only freaking time you will notice it. And it almost never happens son the higher difficulties. The computer does a pretty good job of building roads and clearing stuff out.

Third time I have had to repeat myself. Shall we go for a fourth?

 

[Lyoncet]

Yes it does. The only time you will notice the difference is when/if you have to pass through two hexes of rough terrain consecutively. What is so confusing with that statement?

Rather than getting hostile when people can't tell what you're trying to say, how about you rephrase the original statement instead of repeating it. "The only time you notice the terrain thing" is not exactly crystal-clear. Clarifying it by saying "The only time you will notice the difference" doesn't help. Then saying later that you're actually comparing them to knights (and not simply saying that you'll only notice "the terrain thing when...") just makes this even more of a mess.

Through re-reading all of those, I think what you mean is that a knight will move at the same speed or slower than a chariot because if you move one-two hexes with each and the third hex is a rough, they'll have moved the same amount, unless the next tile is also rough. But that's not even true. If they both start on a hex, even if it's not rough, and the next tile is rough, and the one after that is clear again, knight = 2 moves (2, then 1 movement point), horseman = 3 (2, then 1 then 1), chariot = 1. So no, it's not only noticeable with two consecutive rough tiles. That's even assuming your assertion that you're rarely see two rough tiles in a row is correct, which I doubt anyone here would agree with, and leaving out horsemen.

Also, roads don't make terrain non-rough. Unless you have open borders, you can't use enemy roads, so them roading doesn't have anything to do with this. Unless you're using them defensively, and in most cases, if you're on the defense, you're 1) not moving much anyways and 2) doing it wrong. And in my experience (prince through immortal), by the time forests started getting cleared, chariot archers are nearly useless. And you can't clear a hill. And lot of AI (and players) leave forests in place. And jungles.

God, what a mess.