Does anyone miss horse units?

trivus

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 26, 2010
Messages
5
On first release, horse units were sooo powerful, they steamrolled anything on the way.. Now it seams they suck so bad no one cares to build one(unless you are playing mongol maybe?)
Perhaps adding bonus against swordman and longsword man will bring them back up, make war more fun.
I'd like to hear what you guys think, and plz correct me if I got anything wrong.:)
 
There were HUGE threads about what to do about the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse. I think they changed them perfectly because while they are not overpowered anymore, Knights and Cavs (as well as UU) do make great combined arms tactics. They key, from experience, was to reduce their city attack strength, which was sorely needed.
 
I went from only building horsemen to never building them. The problem is they lost their purpose. It would have been fine if they were given the -33% against cities but kept at 12 strength. Currently at 10 strength and -33% against cities they are not only useless against cities they are still weaker than swordsman in the open.
 
Horsemen were strong before, but that was the era of -33% on flat land as well. Before, they could take on anything in flat territory, even their counters were attackable if even on tech.

Now they're weaker than Swordsmen and the flat bonus is low, so they don't do overly well against Sword units. And they don't do well at all against their counter units either, so the only units they're really good at attacking are archer or siege units.

Keshiks and Mandekalu Cavs are the only reason to use Horse units. Oh, and Camel Archers and Siam Elephants. Otherwise, I'll use none or few (it is nice to have one for attacking siege units).
 
IMO, the key to useing horse units nowadays is making use of the "move after attack ability". Use them to weaken units or hell, even a city and then get them back behind your melee units in the same turn. I still use them quite a bit. One major trick that helps is if you use a chariot archer or one of the ranged UU horseman units; get them the seige promotion (+25% vs cities) then when you upgrade them your horse units will have the promotion carry over so instead of -33% vs cities, its only -8% vs cities. That to me makes the penalty almost moot. I ran around taking cities with knights and calvs just fine once i realized that trick. They're still very powerful, just not some unstoppable God unit anymore that you can wipe the map with.
 
I agree, the rock/paper/scissor philosophy is broken. Horsemen/knights are useless: they're super-weak against spearman/pikeman and on an even footing against swordmen/longswordmen. Horse units should steamroll swordmen/longswordmen on flatland, that's exactly what they were created for. Instead, they're barely a replacement/filler unit when you lack iron...
 
I agree, the rock/paper/scissor philosophy is broken. Horsemen/knights are useless: they're super-weak against spearman/pikeman and on an even footing against swordmen/longswordmen. Horse units should steamroll swordmen/longswordmen on flatland, that's exactly what they were created for. Instead, they're barely a replacement/filler unit when you lack iron...

I don't necessarily think they are going for a rock/paper/scissors thing, rather they have the horse units as a hit and run support unit.

That said, I still think they should boost the strength of the horseman slightly so it would be more useful to people.
 
I don't think they're useless, just situational now. Bobafett said it well in the key being to use their move after an attack ability, and also using them like they would be in the real world. The idea is that they are supposed to be fast units protecting your flanks and archers while also racing behind enemy lines to disable their range. My knights and cavalry were invaluable in a war with Wu Zetian in order to take out the oh-so-deadly Chu-ko-nu.

One thing I would suggest for a bit of balance otherwise is to give the horsemen an inherent bonus when attacking on flatlands, something like 10 or 15 percent. In real life mounted troops charging down on a melee troop, spears or not, would always have a significant advantage (less against spears but still...that's what the spearman bonus is for).
 
Knights are still relatively strong but horsemen are nearly pointless. Their primary draw is their move range but even that was nerfed. The only thing I use horses for anymore is to have at the back of the line for that one-last attack you sometimes need to finish off a unit or city. Otherwise they just are fodder for longs.
 
I went from only building horsemen to never building them. The problem is they lost their purpose. It would have been fine if they were given the -33% against cities but kept at 12 strength. Currently at 10 strength and -33% against cities they are not only useless against cities they are still weaker than swordsman in the open

This and....
Horsemen were strong before, but that was the era of -33% on flat land as well. Before, they could take on anything in flat territory, even their counters were attackable if even on tech.

Now they're weaker than Swordsmen and the flat bonus is low, so they don't do overly well against Sword units. And they don't do well at all against their counter units either, so the only units they're really good at attacking are archer or siege units.

... that.
 
Horsemen are used to kill off ranged units and wounded swords. In this role they excel. They are slightly weaker than spears for capturing cities, easily mitigated by the fact they can avoid city bombardment damage. If you have iron options, you'll obviously want swords + catapults. But I can understand a horseman buildup, especially for civs that have unique knights (and many of them do).

I personally never head of mounted armies being used on a large scale for capturing enemy cities (even Mongols used Chinese siege engineers) but that can be from my own lack of historical knowledge.
 
I too agree that their city attacking strength nerf was good..but, given same resource, I don't see much tactical adventage to mix-up horse units(i.e. 3 swordman vs 2 swordman 1 horseman /or/ 3 longswordsman vs 2 longswordsman 1 knight; adding spearman/pikeman will significantly lessen their value).

I don't think they're useless, just situational now. Bobafett said it well in the key being to use their move after an attack ability, and also using them like they would be in the real world. The idea is that they are supposed to be fast units protecting your flanks and archers while also racing behind enemy lines to disable their range. My knights and cavalry were invaluable in a war with Wu Zetian in order to take out the oh-so-deadly Chu-ko-nu.

One thing I would suggest for a bit of balance otherwise is to give the horsemen an inherent bonus when attacking on flatlands, something like 10 or 15 percent. In real life mounted troops charging down on a melee troop, spears or not, would always have a significant advantage (less against spears but still...that's what the spearman bonus is for).

However, I see they are useful against opponent heavily dependent on archery units. Maybe it should be tested in MP-war with huge armies, what combination of units is best.
 
Horsemen are used to kill off ranged units and wounded swords. In this role they excel. They are slightly weaker than spears for capturing cities, easily mitigated by the fact they can avoid city bombardment damage. If you have iron options, you'll obviously want swords + catapults. But I can understand a horseman buildup, especially for civs that have unique knights (and many of them do).

I personally never head of mounted armies being used on a large scale for capturing enemy cities (even Mongols used Chinese siege engineers) but that can be from my own lack of historical knowledge.

We don't remember the Romans for their mounted units either :)

I don't think giving mounted units -33% against cities was the best solution btw, I would have preferred it if they gave cities with walls a bonus against mounted, to make walls more valuable.
 
We don't remember the Romans for their mounted units either :)

I don't think giving mounted units -33% against cities was the best solution btw, I would have preferred it if they gave cities with walls a bonus against mounted, to make walls more valuable.

As for Romans, I believe they first got pummeled by Hannibals's flanking-with-calvary tactics, until Scipio adopted the tactics, and won Numidian calvary to join their side. Indeed last battle of zama was won by calvary, whilst Hannibal's footman held slight upper hand against Roman legions.
Actually, I just looked up wiki for more info, and found this.
------------
Rome
43,000:
34,000 Roman infantry
3,000 Roman cavalry
6,000 Numidian cavalry
Carthage
51,000:
45,000 infantry
6,000 cavalry
80 war elephants
------------
So, "roughly", when converted to Civ5;), Rome had 11 legions and 3 horseman and crushed 15 swordman and 2 horseman, losing only 1 legion and 1 horseman.
Heh, I really think civ5 war has so much more potential to be fun, and would bring more and more MP players if they really bring it.
 
I agree, the rock/paper/scissor philosophy is broken. Horsemen/knights are useless: they're super-weak against spearman/pikeman .

??? I have found the opposite to be true in nearly all of my games (perhaps with a bit of promotions).
 
I mostly use them to pillage and pick off wounded units that would otherwise get to retreat out of harms way and heal.
 
I always used horsemen on the flanks of my army or attacking with them from behind my lines. They took down wounded units and cleared the field marvellously from ever-annoying catapults and archers. I tend to have 2 units of them in every game, just in case.

Plus, I find Knights extremely useful. High strength and good armour. They even eat pikemen at full strength pretty well, although they can't stand in prolonged combat, which is quite historically accurate.
 
As for Romans, I believe they first got pummeled by Hannibals's flanking-with-calvary tactics, until Scipio adopted the tactics, and won Numidian calvary to join their side. Indeed last battle of zama was won by calvary, whilst Hannibal's footman held slight upper hand against Roman legions.

Wrong. Romans lost because Hannibal yelled at them

ROMANES EUNT DOMUS!

and they got all thwown to the floow.
 
They are also very good for picking off enemy siege units, which are such a pain. I normally never build them, but military CS loves to give me cavalry, and I do find them useful in many circumstances, but not useful enough for me to build them directly.

eg. move in for sight, arti bombard, move away. etc
 
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