Emperor: Win Every Game with Horsemen

[Uncle_Joe]

Also, instant heal should simply be removed as an option. Slow down the blitzkriegs.

I think this is probably closer to being the true culprit to this 'rush'. That and maybe the Medic promotions. It means there is no downtime and you can't wear the Horsemen down.

In hills, let's put a horseman and a spearman one tile apart. The horseman can move (2 moves), attack (1 move) and retreat back with his last move, so the spearman can't counter-attack. If you don't have a bottleneck to defend, I can do this with 2 or 3 horsemen and still kill your spearman without you having a chance to strike back. Being 60% more expensive doesn't matter if I can kill one of your units without running a risk of losing one of mine. Since the ZoCs are semi-useless the horseman can still retreat even if you have a large frontline.

I dunno. A Spear on Hill is painful for a Horse to attack. Sure, if you have 3 Horses to kill 1 Spear, then yeah...you'll win and win big. And you should IMO. If you had 3 Swords, you'd walk through even easier...

To me, the best armies will be balanced. I want to have Horses too so I can ride down your weakened units. And I want to have an Archer to whittle before I attack so I take significantly less damage (barring vs Japanese who HURT ). Currently the AI does none of those things and it gets run over by a fast unit.

I'd like to see how this 'blitz' performs without the auto-healing promotion though. Vs the AI, I would expect it would still work. Vs humans, I can't imagine it working vs someone who is prepared for it. And against unprepared people, Swords would work just as well if not better.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

They need to buff spearmen I think, they aren't an effective counter to mounted units because of the immense difference in base strenght.

That probably wouldnt be a bad idea either.

 

[budweiser]

I just read all the achievements and one of them is win the game as Alex by 350BC, so...

 

[Uncle_Joe]

I just read all the achievements and one of them is win the game as Alex by 350BC, so...

So Compansion Cav rush is Working As Intended?

 

[SerriaFox]

While this does not break the game, I do believe it is an exploit that needs to be corrected.

Just tried the strategy myself on king

I was greatly disappointed with the results. I rush to horseman, build two and sent them off to war, and started building more and easily took over the world. In fact i didn't build anything but horseman. I tried it on standard Pangaea and got a weird u-shaped map which slowed me down considerably getting to the other end of the u side. I steamrolled all they way to 1 AD never losing a horsemen.

I got cocky and then lost my first horseman to: city bombardment, 2 archers and a spear-men to that killed the unit. Might say, I walked into that one.

I lost two more horsemen to swordsmen under similar circumstances on my way to victory in around 145 turns.

 

[Becephalus]

It could just be as simple as not allowing you to stockpile promotions (you must choose one immediately) and having movement end when you enter a zone of control. 4 or 5 moves is still very powerful even without the option to tactically retreat.

I would prefer to just ditch the instant heal promotion all together anyway. Seems like continual trouble.

 

[SerriaFox]

I didn't use the heal promotion at all. the horseman need to be gimp, esp. against cities.

 

[Show]

It could just be as simple as not allowing you to stockpile promotions (you must choose one immediately) and having movement end when you enter a zone of control. 4 or 5 moves is still very powerful even without the option to tactically retreat.

I would prefer to just ditch the instant heal promotion all together anyway. Seems like continual trouble.

Always used my promotions right away, it really doesn't matter.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Probably easiest to do
Make Horsemen more expensive, in both Raw hammers and by make horse tiles rarer.

Maybe Beef up the Stables (50%), and increase the Hammer cost of Mounted units to compensate... so that the Stables becomes necessary.


Then work on improving the AI

 

[alpaca]

I dunno. A Spear on Hill is painful for a Horse to attack. Sure, if you have 3 Horses to kill 1 Spear, then yeah...you'll win and win big. And you should IMO. If you had 3 Swords, you'd walk through even easier...

To me, the best armies will be balanced. I want to have Horses too so I can ride down your weakened units. And I want to have an Archer to whittle before I attack so I take significantly less damage (barring vs Japanese who HURT ). Currently the AI does none of those things and it gets run over by a fast unit.

I'd like to see how this 'blitz' performs without the auto-healing promotion though. Vs the AI, I would expect it would still work. Vs humans, I can't imagine it working vs someone who is prepared for it. And against unprepared people, Swords would work just as well if not better.

It's painful but not lethal. And I think you'll have a harder time with three swordsmen, losing at least one to counter-attack by ranged units. The fact is still that horsemen can kill units without even running a risk of dying themselves, barring a citadel in place, and that's simply bad.

I just read all the achievements and one of them is win the game as Alex by 350BC, so...

The achievement is to defeat every known player, doesn't that mean you only have to kill anyone you met so far (although I admit this would mean you'd get it if you don't meet anyone until then)?

 

[Show]

Probably easiest to do
Make Horsemen more expensive, in both Raw hammers and by make horse tiles rarer.

Maybe Beef up the Stables (50%), and increase the Hammer cost of Mounted units to compensate... so that the Stables becomes necessary.


Then work on improving the AI

Wouldn't matter, with 1upt you need very few horses out(3-5) to dominate, even with double the cost it would probably be more than viable. maybe it could delay your first horse and allow immortal/deity level AI to get to medieval fast enough to stop you after conquering your 2nd-3rd civ assuming you never get involved in any trade to rush-buy but that's pretty much it.

 

[Celevin]

Wouldn't matter, with 1upt you need very few horses out(3-5) to dominate, even with double the cost it would probably be more than viable. maybe it could delay your first horse and allow immortal/deity level AI to get to medieval fast enough to stop you after conquering your 2nd-3rd civ assuming you never get involved in any trade to rush-buy but that's pretty much it.

Regardless I'd love to see this as well. It makes cities with horses have a MUCH cooler feel as they actually become specialized based on their surroundings.

 

[rune42]

I think they should remove the attack/move promotion from all mounted units. People who don't think mounted units were OP probably wouldn't care, as they probably wern't utilizing that promotion correctly anyways. When they add Mongolians, they can give them that as their UA.(the mongolians were, after all, famed for their mobility) It'll be very overpowered, but they can balance it by giving them junk/below average UU/UB.

 

[Buccaneer]

So Compansion Cav rush is Working As Intended?

I can attest to that with my current game, even though I did start out doing wonders and Patronages. Then I rushed and nothing can stop 4 Comp Cav, nor just now upgrading them to Knights.

The key, as been mentioned, is Insta-Heal. That should be a high-level Medic promotion.

 

[nebux]

i'm still thinking that cavalry should be able to retreat, what is broken is the stupid ai.
you don't need more hammers cost for them as i don't want to finish them when i researched rifles. lower the damage instead

 

[anklebiter]

Yes, this works all the way up to Deity. The problem is the horsemen's extreme mobility, combined with the really stupid AI that neither builds enough military nor knows how to use them effectively. You can get in, attack, and back out of bombardment range all in one turn, keep rotating in a fresh unit while that one heals, rinse/repeat till everybody's dead.

 

[Celevin]

Even in a multiplayer game against other people, I don't think I could easily counter a good 2-3 horsemen. They are obscene.

 

[Nunya]

How does 10 Strength and 3 move sound? Would that make them balanced?

 

[troytheface]

this could be said of every civ game

nothing beats horse in civ

the evidence is clear

 

[roofersrule]

Excellent strategy. Dominated the AI in 122 turns on Emperor setting, Pangaea map standard. Question: How do the barbs react to this strategy so quick - by building spearmen and the AI civs don't?