Do you use Swordsman now?

[nefloyd]

It's probably too late to implement it meaningfully but it's too bad there isn't a sort of rock paper scissors effect. With pikes getting a bonus against mounted units, mounted units getting a bonus against swordsmen line, and swordsmen smacking around pikes.

 

[Sonereal]

Ideally, only pikes would get a bonus against mounted units. A swordsman should be stronger than a pike, but weaker than mounted units. That way, mounted units become useful for picking off swords, but die against pike walls.

 

[OmniPotent42]

Yeah, Iron units need something to make them as appealing as ranged or pike units. Don't they already have a 50% bonus against pikes? Or am I making that up?

 

[janboruta]

Swords could use a free Cover promotion as someone suggested earlier, OR a +1 or +2 strength buff. Swordsmen were still predominant infantry in early medieval, along with spearmen. Pikes and halberds came into existence in about 14th century, Longswords as we see in Civ - in 15th. Pikes were effective against infantry as well, so being the same strength as swords but having the anti-cavalry promo would make them a bit stronger nonetheless, without swords being obsoleted by them. I guess this will come in a balance patch in the next couple of months.

 

[Lakissov]

I mostly play on Emperor or Immortal, and tend to ignore them. The reason is that you're much better off investing in archery early and then upgrading into Composite Bowmen, to resist the raging barbarians and early AI assaults. Later, if you choose to push into AI territory, you just walk your warriors, horsemen or pikes (if you already have them) into cities reduced to 0 HP by bow fire.

I don't even bother with bronze working early, unless I have many plantation luxuries sitting in Jungle - there are always better techs to prioritize (I typically go: luxury tech => archery => writing or luxury => construction => philosophy => currency => civil service => education)

 

[bonafide11]

Swords should either get a strength buff or iron working should get a decrease in research time. Too expensive of a tech for what it does.

 

[Slvynn]

I do not build em lately unless i play game which involves rushing into metal casting (Iroquois, Egypt) or iron warmonger game (Danes, Japan) (so far my 4 most favorite civs )
Civil Service is prerequisite for Education, and thats important... But pike upgrade path sucks, indeed.... I do build mohawks though

 

[oddtail]

I do use Swordsmen now. The main factor is time - if you want to go for a quick attack, Swordsmen come a LOT earlier than Pikemen. I've seen an argument in the thread that Civil Service is "just a few techs away" from Iron Working. This is clearly not true. To get to Iron Working, you need to research three technologies. To get to Civil Service - as many as eleven. I don't have the game available right at this moment, but going by the online Civilopedia, the cost of researching Iron Working and its prerequisites is a total of 305 (adjusted for game speed, but that's not important right now). Civil Service itself costs only a little less than that, 275. Combined with all its prerequisites, it totals 1105. That's more than THREE times the amount of science needed for IW. Of course, going the Civil Service route you'll gain science significantly faster, but it will still be much longer than it takes you to get to IW without building a single Library. And you can use that time to build Barracks and perhaps Heroic Epic rather than Libraries and/or National College.

To sum up, by the time you reach units that are ONE point stronger than Swordsmen (hardly enough to make them invincible even if they have the same experience level), you have enough time to research Iron Working and then, for example, Construction (so, Longbowmen) and a few more techs. If you need Swordsmen, then you clearly want to play a military early game. I think the extra time needed to get 200% more science than you needed for IW is plenty to build a bunch of Swordsmen, likely gain a few levels with each, and then some. By the time you get your first Pikeman, you will have had time to do a LOT with your Swordsmen. Even if you play very passively (why would you do that if you go for early Iron Working?), they have a Heroic Epic +15% strength bonus and at least two levels. That's much stronger than a "fresh" Pikeman from a city without even a Barracks.

And that doesn't take into account the fact that researching Mining gives you a production boost, that Iron gives you another small, but potentially significant production bonus (and both are important if you want to go to war - and you need only a Worker for that, so you are free to keep building military units and buildings), that even before you get Swordsmen you get access to Spearmen (and what else will you use for your army before Civil Service? Warriors?).

And the argument that the AI can get Pikeman early... yeah, they can. But if you play on high enough level, they can always get a unit more powerful than yours. If you play on roughly equal footing and the AI gets Pikeman roughly when you get your Swordsmen, then they are so ahead of you that you are boned anyhow.

I honestly don't see a problem with Swordsmen's strength vs Pikemen. They are not designed now to be the best unit until Longswords, granted. But just because Civil Service is roughly in the same part of the tech tree as Iron Working doesn't mean you can get them at a comparable time.

I do agree, however, that revealing Iron at Bronze Working would be a tremendous improvement. But Swordsmen are only useless if you don't intend to use them in the next few dozen turns after they are built. Isn't that true for, I don't know, *every* unit in the game, except maybe nukes and GDRs?

EDIT: and there's of course the upgrade path thing that people have mentioned in the thread. I personally actually like Lancers a lot. But they do come later than Longswords. Besides, if you play a civilization that has a unique Swordsman/Musketman/Rifleman unit, you might want to get an early start on their levelling by building Swordsmen. So, even if the reasoning I explained above doesn't work for you, building Swordsmen is much better for you in the long run (assuming you play a military game) if you play as Rome, Iroquois, Japan, Denmark, America, France, Ethiopia or Sweden. Depending on your playstyle and whether you have nearby Horses, it might be beneficial for you to play Russia or Ottomans (Russia for the production bonus from Iron, Ottomans if you don't want Sipahi). And if you play as Greece, Persia or Celts, you'll probably research Bronze Working anyhow, which means Iron Working is just one tech away.

So, for one reason or another, up to 13 civilizations will either significantly benefit from early Swordsmen or need just one extra tech to research Iron Working anyhow (I might have missed one or two, listing civilizations from memory).

EDIT 2: oh, and if that's not enough, if you go to war REALLY early, and you actually level up a Warrior or two, they upgrade to Swordsmen if you want to keep them alive. So I guess Aztecs could be added to the list of civilizations that want to fight their wars with the Iron Working technological path.

 

[Erneiz Hyde]

Huh, I think he's right. I never tried an IW beeline game since I generally like to have more infrastructure in place before going to war. Maybe if you start real close to a neighbor it can be a decent strategy, hopefully catching up after taking a few decent cities. This will make for a very specialized tactics, as you'll probably be in war most of the time.

 

[PreLynMax]

Funny, I always use swordsmen now since the iron requirement for siege has been lifted.

 

[oddtail]

Huh, I think he's right. I never tried an IW beeline game since I generally like to have more infrastructure in place before going to war. Maybe if you start real close to a neighbor it can be a decent strategy, hopefully catching up after taking a few decent cities. This will make for a very specialized tactics, as you'll probably be in war most of the time.

For the record, I prefer peaceful games, and I usually go the religious/scientific route. Sometimes I go for a strong economy. I don't favour military conquest. But when I do play a military game, it is my experience that Swordsmen are a good choice. Pikemen are a much better unit now than in vanilla, but they come much too late compared to their fighting potential to be good for aggressive fighting (if I go the "upper" part of the technological tree and still want to wage war, I'll probably opt for naval supremacy rather than an army of Pikemen...). Which I think is a deliberate decision - Pikemen are given to the less militarily-inclined players to give them a fighting chance against opponents who are probably slowly getting closer to Steel, or have a large horse-based army.

Also - you don't need to beeline IW immediately for Swordsmen to be useful. Researching, say, Philosophy or Mathematics and THEN going for Iron Working is STILL faster than getting to Civil Service. So you don't have to put all your eggs in one basket and still get some mileage out of Swordsmen before a slightly stronger unit comes along.

 

[Peng Qi]

I get extensive use out of them when I'm being someone aggressive and warlike. I get almost no use out of them when I'm playing peacefully. When I'm going to war a lot, I tend to ignore most of the techs on the way to Civil Service for a long time.

 

[LostInTime]

Civil Service is really expensive.. and Bronze working early for spearmen as well? You just gave away a couple of wonders doing that.

Swordsmen are cheaper to research, they unlock heroic epic on the way, and they upgrade to longswords/muskets which is your bread and butter army for a long time. I guess if you are planning on purely defensive games, spears and pikes might work, but I still don't like a start like that

 

[RealHuhn]

I think the balance is completely off, mainly because the archer line is way too strong now and the techs are easily accessible.

Especially the composite bowmen, on both defense and offense. I mean, you can easily rush Immortal AIs with composite bowmen and a warrior which is stupid.
And look at the upgrade path. Crossbowmen are quite balanced (although still too good against cities) but since you can jump from Renaissance to Industrialism with only a few techs, you get gatling guns by the time the AI barely has longswords or musketmen (on Immortal, at least).

And when you rushed an AI with composite bowmen you most likely have the +1 range upgrade already which counters the only weakness of the gatling gun.

Try that strategy with China or England and you know why it's OP. And when an AI is still alive, machine guns simply faceroll everything. ^^

What can be done?
- Make iron visible at bronze working, improvable at iron working (I really like that idea).
- Nerf ranged units against cities. Right now, ranged units reign supreme.
- Maybe iron working a bit less expensive or swordsmen +1 strength (free cover promo could be OP after upgrading to longswordmen)

Melee line against pike line is ok, imo.

 

[Peng Qi]

Maybe Swords/Longswords should get a bonus vs ranged that they lose on upgrade to Muskets? Would give the parallelism of Longswords more use, and would also give aggressive AIs in military parts of the tech tree a bonus against civs who choose the more "turtle"-ish units. I.E. swords would be more useful during an invasion, while pikes and archers would still be more useful on defense.

 

[Babri]

What can be done?
- Make iron visible at bronze working, improvable at iron working (I really like that idea).
- Nerf ranged units against cities. Right now, ranged units reign supreme.
- Maybe iron working a bit less expensive or swordsmen +1 strength (free cover promo could be OP after upgrading to longswordmen)

Melee line against pike line is ok, imo.

IW is too expensive & getting iron visible on IW is too much of a gamble. I think we might give cover promo to legions, that would make more sense.
And yes some of the ranged units especially ones are too powerful against cities. Ever tried camel archers against cities, they are simply a killer.
Also I would suggest to remove cavalry units penalty against cities & give sword units a bonus against cities.

 

[Flaviusx]

It's totally superfluous now, yeah, unless maybe you are playing Rome. (Legions are better than pikemen.) Opportunity cost is much too high for anybody else.

 

[thadian]

last time i had a swordsman is when i was upgrading warriors. Spearman units are too good, and swordsman are not quite good any more.

 

[StrideColossus]

Personally I prefer the way the tech tree is now more 'balanced' such that you have to really weigh up your options, whereas in vanilla is was pretty much a straight choice between bee-lining IW for early rush or (say) Writing/Philosophy for science wonders.

But I think the developers have gone too far in getting rid of the IW bee-line to the point that it's almost always the lowest priority for the reasons that previous posters have pointed out.

Some good suggestions been made for making IW/swords a more viable alternative, hopefully it will get re-balanced at some point. The more choices you have to make the more interesting the game is.

 

[Babri]

last time i had a swordsman is when i was upgrading warriors. Spearman units are too good, and swordsman are not quite good any more.

Right. A sword will badly loose to a fortified spear. This shows how weak sword is considering the investment of breakers, production & a strategic resource.