Do you use horsemen?

[Lyoncet]

Strength-wise they're fine, as spearmen have an effective strength of 14 against their 12, and can use defensive bonuses to their advantage.

That's not the entire story though. Say you have a Drill II spear on a hill and a Drill II horseman attacks it. With no promotions, the spear is strength 7 + 7 (100% against mounted) + 1.25 (25% for defending in rough terrain) = strength 15.25 vs strength 12 on the horse. However, when you start adding advantages on either side, the horseman actually starts to overtake the spear in modified strength since the spear's bonuses are a % of 7 and the horse's are a % of 12. So with those drill promotions, you have 7 + 7 (vs. mounted) + 1.25 (rough terrain) + 2.8 (drill I and II) for a total of 18.05 strength. The horse has 12 + 4.8 (drill I and II), for 16.8 strength. That's only a difference of 1.25 strength, which is a smaller difference than if you just compare the spear's vs. mounted strength tot he horseman's - even including the hill defense bonus. Plus, since combat damage is determined by strength ratios, that 7% strength advantage is only half of the 15% advantage that you get from just comparing 14 strength to 12 strength. Add in a Great General on both sides and you get 19.80 strength for the spear and 19.80 for the horse. Which in my opinion is a problem.

Even with just non-promoted spear (I'll just assume on rough terrain) vs. non-promoted horse with a great general on each side, you have a strength ratio of 7 + 7 + 1.25 + 1.75 = 17 for the spear and 12 + 3 = 15 for the horseman. That's just a 12% strength difference for the spear (again, compared to the 15% difference you get just from looking at the numbers on paper). And that's assuming the spearman has favorable terrain conditions.

Anyways, point of that is that as you add more and more modifiers, a unit that counters another by having such a large modifier starts to fall behind quickly.

The other problem with just looking at the 14 vs. 12 ratio is that it doesn't take into account the synergy between partial victories (i.e. the units don't usually die in one round of combat) and move-after-attack abilities. Whichever party initiates the combat, both will probably be at about half health, and the horseman will likely just move away, leaving a colleague to mop up the damaged and relatively sluggish spearman while the horse heals. So even though the spearman will almost always will eek out a slight strength advantage assuming favorable terrain and promotion/general parity, spears will almost never actually counter 12-strength horsemen. Reducing the movement to 3 would help that, but I don't think that's quite enough.

Man I hope I did that math right.

[edit]Oh right, no I never use horsemen. I suppose I could move up to deity if I did since I've never lost emperor and do really well on immortal, but I'd rather not.

 

[Merovinge]

That is a great post that people miss. The civ engine really does not favor spear/pikemen.

 

[Mallipeep]

Horseman definately needs strength nerf - to around 9 so it can still mop warriors, and finish halfdead swordsmen ( or survive a battle with them and then get 2 tiles away ).

Horseman = Swordsman build cost-wise, trade 2 strength for 2 movement, and "penalty to spearmen" to "move-after-attack" skill - and they should be about equal.

Or perhaps increase the cost. and keep 10 strength.

 

[Thunderbull]

may be add "Yes, but only on Deity" poll?

 

[Nunya]

Saw people complaining about them all over the place, so I've never used them. How do they feel at 3 movement nunya?

I can't compare them with how they were before, because I only started using them after I've made the change. I've now played two standard size Continents games on King difficulty with them and easily wiped out my 3 neighbour civs (who defended with Archers and Warriors). I am not sure whether that was because of the low difficulty or because the Horsemen are still too powerful. I suspect it's a bit of both. For my next game I'll try Pangea on Emperor.

 

[laithanhha]

Housemen is useless in modern era, they can't be upgrade to some more "modern" unit. So i rarely use them in my game, just for scout maybe.

 

[THE_COW_IS_OK]

I never used horseman in my Deity/immortal games.
I would rather upgrade promoted warriors to longswordsman.Since you can have latter really early in the game as well.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

I don't use them all that much, and I had a hard time comprehending the talk of them being overpowering, but then I realized a quirk in my own gameplay that influenced this.

I tend to use settings for my maps that produce a lot of forests, jungles, and hills, so this might be part of the reason I'm not especially enamored with horsemen.

 

[Nunya]

I'm now playing my Pangea Emperor map and my little army of Horseman with 3 moves overran two opponents easily, but my third one already had Swordsmen and gave me trouble. I took his capital, but had to retreat & heal several times in order to do it. I think I'll need to upgrade to Knights or else I may lose some units when I go after my next target.

It's probably also worth noting that I modified my game in other ways. I got rid of the -33% penalty in open terrain (except in marshes), increased the rough terrain bonus to 50%, and increased city hit points by 25%.

 

[Jellly]

My response is none of the above. I just generally don't tech down that tree early game, usually either through the top or bottom branches and so by the time I finally go back and research horseriding etc it is pointless to make them. (One game I was in the reneissance era I think, and I hadn't research horseriding yet ).

 

[Monsterzuma]

I would rather upgrade promoted warriors to longswordsman.Since you can have latter really early in the game as well.

This is not mutually exclusive with the use of Horsemen.

Swordsmen -> Longswordsmen is on the path to Lancers (STR 22 horseman upgrade), so it makes perfect sense to go down their tech path when the main part of your army consists of Horsemen.

Using swords alongside horsemen is also a way to guarantee that your entire army consists of high quality units. Scarcity of strategical resources limits your ability to do this when a single unit type is used.

 

[glaivemaster]

I don't usually (although I love using Camel Archers, and will use Horsemen to mop up there), or if I do they're mostly defensive, or tagged on to a larger army as flankers. I'm trying out the cheesey Companion Cavalry rush with Alexander in a continents game now though. I feel justified since the other civs were Napoleon, Montezuma and Nebuchadnezzer (and Ramesses, but eh), and it was eventually going to come down to war anyway

 

[H4run]

They not really that powerful, what make them powerful is because the AI dont balance the game by build the same kind of unit, so they easily avoid spearman and get fastly level-up until they reach the point of no one can handle them (level 8-9) but still, they can get trap and kill easily.

I never seen AI build mounted unit, have u ever see one?

me? never.

 

[Nunya]

This is not mutually exclusive with the use of Horsemen.

Swordsmen -> Longswordsmen is on the path to Lancers (STR 22 horseman upgrade), so it makes perfect sense to go down their tech path when the main part of your army consists of Horsemen.

Except Horsemen upgrade to Knights, not Lancers. And Knights upgrade to Cavalry. Lancers are all alone in their evolutionary niche and aren't part of any upgrade chain.

 

[Monsterzuma]

Yeah, my mistake. I had them confused with Cavalry there. They're a pretty good build or buy regardless, though. By the time you reach the tech, spamming more horsemen has typically lost it's appeal, the way 1UPT makes their numbers clog up the battlefield. It's welcome oppurtunity to be able to build something with a more concentrated punch to it.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I use them sometimes. I prefer spears and swords/catapults though, especially on rough terrain. It's slow but sure and it's more fun to handle such a siege. Also, Iron Working almost always helps to plan my 2nd or 3rd city. Got to get that iron quick.

The civ engine really does not favor spear/pikemen.

Probably still atoning for .