Emperor: Win Every Game with Horsemen

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

I haven't had a game last long enough to find out...

Calvary is terminal? I.e. not even something like gunships in Civ4?

 

[Ahriman]

Calvary is terminal? I.e. not even something like gunships in Civ4?

Correct. End of the line. Infantry and siege are the only units with upgrade paths that last all game (through to mech inf and rocket artillery).

 

[Celevin]

Make units get a +15% bonus while defending against cavalry if there's adjacent friendly units. It would make cavalry good at taking out lone units, but not so good if there's other ones around.

Of course they also need a city penalty.

 

[ccubed]

I think the real problem is still that horses are too available. If horse resource were rarer (and only came in 2's) then cav would be Special Elites, not the core of a military.

Strategic resources need to be more strategic....

Maybe it was (un)luck of the draw, or maybe map size (small Earth, and small Continents,) but the two times I tried Greece to check out Companion Cavalry I had no access to horses on my continent other than via a Militaristic city-state on the Earth map, and after conquering England on the Continents map (the 4 horse spot was next to their capital.)

My experiences in other games aren't too different, either. Even when taking over whole continents, I haven't really ended up with a huge overflow of horses, iron, etc. But I do generally play on small sized maps only. It could be radically different on standard +.

 

[Civcannibal]

Hi Civ fans, long time reader first time poster. English is not my first language so bear with me .
Well there are some great ideas already on this thread, some are quoting history and others engaging in coding and certain changes.
I read one thing a few times i.e INSTAHEAL well something came to the slow old mind.
I do NOT like to lose my non mounted units and heavily upgraded units far in enemy territory because they cannot use this great promotion. So here are some options:

1. Make instaheal a rank 3 promotion for mounted but other units get it from beginning.
2. Can save promotions but instaheal promo is only available for the turn your unit gets promoted. So kinda use it or lose it deal. (I mean this is Civ right not Diablo where you carry full rejuv pots in your belt slot after all .
3. Something along the lines of maybe make instaheal more like being bandaging yourself v it done by a medic meaning if you use instaheal yourself without the unit having medic promotion or any adjacent unit being a medic than you heal three times as faster than normal but if there was a medic bonus than you instaheal.(yes I get the fact it is not exactly instaheal anymore but just throwing ideas hehe).

Maybe one or a combination of these or other suggestions on this topic could be a fix without simply killing the poor horsies.

Maybe this will slow the "rush" enough for AI to upgrade etc and give human players more of a challenge.

 

[Slowpoke]

I think the bonus vs horsemen for pikemen/spearmen should be +200%. At least then you will need a combination of swordsmen and horsies. This doesn't affect the A.I. since it practically never builds horsemen.

 

[THE_COW_IS_OK]

I was going to start a thread titled Diety:Win Every game with longswordsman since I have been doing just that and most games doesn't last more then 150 turns (3 hours play). LSM fits my strategy much better since a well promoted LSM is usually the strongest unit in the game from turn 65 to 140. Enough for you to tech astronomy and conquer the second continent. Add in the upgrade path and LSM are a no brainer.....

 

[vendur]

Maybe it was (un)luck of the draw, or maybe map size (small Earth, and small Continents,) but the two times I tried Greece to check out Companion Cavalry I had no access to horses on my continent other than via a Militaristic city-state on the Earth map, and after conquering England on the Continents map (the 4 horse spot was next to their capital.)

My experiences in other games aren't too different, either. Even when taking over whole continents, I haven't really ended up with a huge overflow of horses, iron, etc. But I do generally play on small sized maps only. It could be radically different on standard +.

Are you serious? That's gotta be awfully bad luck. I usually have at least 2 horses within 10 hexes of the starting location, often 6 (usually a 4 one and a 2 one). That's very strange. I always play standard though, so maybe it is the small map thing. You sure you dont have your advanced settings for resources set to "scarce"?

 

[ccubed]

Maybe it's bad luck, but I just had a game where I was Siam and my nearest, run-away neighbor was Greece. I had to, again, pay a City-State for horse access, while he had 2 cities with horse access. Needless to say, I got rolled when he and China both DOW on me at the same time.

Perhaps I'm cursed.

 

[dexters]

You're not going to go very far against Greek hoplites with the horse strategy anyways.

I agree horseman needs a bit of a nerf, but Civ5 games tend to (from experience) be very varied, depending on the luck of the draw with resources, the starting Civs you find yourself next to and the random modifiers to their behavior.

I've started against pacific Civs who expand slow, and in other cases really aggressive ones. The tone and tenor of the game is vastly different.

 

[Buccaneer]

In my latest game in which I won Diplomatically while fighting those that were taking or buying out my city-states, I kept a log (I'm anal retentive that way) of every individual battle. Here were the units I fought with and how many battles:

Warrior - 5
Horseman - 5
Knight - 23
Cavalry - 65

Tell me again why they made other units available to the human player and why the AI does not fight with these units?

Edit: I did not rely on luck of the draw, didn't have horses. But the city-states had enough of them for me.

 

[boehj]

I just completed a Deity via domination with 2 of Alexander's CC. The game was finished before the 3rd CC was built.

Craziness.

 

[Bandobras Took]

And that was an archipelago map, right?

 

[budweiser]

Alexander's army had all of 40,000 combat troops in it, and he would have conquered the world if he hadnt died. CiV gets this right. In game terms that probably represents 1 phalanx and one CC, with maybe an archer thrown in plus a GG unit. I've been meaning to check the troop count numbers but havent had a chance yet. So, its really about the promos on your troops.

You shouldnt see really large, 100,000 man armies until at least the middle ages and or the Napoloeonic era.

 

[avandol]

What I dont get is why you keep playing Civ5 that way?

You all agree it is imbalanced and apparently "lame". Yet you keep doing it. Why?

I don't do that, since its apparently un-fun. And I play to enjoy the game in fullest. Sometimes to have a challenge as well.
Rushing the AI in ancient times with horsemen just leads to an hour of game, is always the same nad, at best, lets you see 10% of the content. I really try to understand why you keep doing it.

I mean, just to get your daily virtual fix of success?

 

[avandol]

Hi Civ fans, long time reader first time poster. English is not my first language so bear with me .
Well there are some great ideas already on this thread, some are quoting history and others engaging in coding and certain changes.
I read one thing a few times i.e INSTAHEAL well something came to the slow old mind.
I do NOT like to lose my non mounted units and heavily upgraded units far in enemy territory because they cannot use this great promotion. So here are some options:

1. Make instaheal a rank 3 promotion for mounted but other units get it from beginning.
2. Can save promotions but instaheal promo is only available for the turn your unit gets promoted. So kinda use it or lose it deal. (I mean this is Civ right not Diablo where you carry full rejuv pots in your belt slot after all .
3. Something along the lines of maybe make instaheal more like being bandaging yourself v it done by a medic meaning if you use instaheal yourself without the unit having medic promotion or any adjacent unit being a medic than you heal three times as faster than normal but if there was a medic bonus than you instaheal.(yes I get the fact it is not exactly instaheal anymore but just throwing ideas hehe).

Maybe one or a combination of these or other suggestions on this topic could be a fix without simply killing the poor horsies.

Maybe this will slow the "rush" enough for AI to upgrade etc and give human players more of a challenge.

/signed

 

[edcrane]

What I dont get is why you keep playing Civ5 that way?

You all agree it is imbalanced and apparently "lame". Yet you keep doing it. Why?

I don't do that, since its apparently un-fun. And I play to enjoy the game in fullest. Sometimes to have a challenge as well.
Rushing the AI in ancient times with horsemen just leads to an hour of game, is always the same nad, at best, lets you see 10% of the content. I really try to understand why you keep doing it.

I mean, just to get your daily virtual fix of success?

I agree that it's not a fun way to play and never do this myself, but it still needs to be fixed. The game should not require the player to consciously handicap himself with respect to strategy. That makes it far less immersive.

 

[Dr Him]

Alexander's army had all of 40,000 combat troops in it, and he would have conquered the world if he hadnt died.
...
You shouldnt see really large, 100,000 man armies until at least the middle ages and or the Napoloeonic era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae - In the second Punic War, the Romans engaged Hannibal's army at Cannae in 216BC with almost 90,000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Philippi - The Battle of Philippi, in 42BC, between Octavian (to be the first emperor) and Mark Antony, is estimated by modern historians to be about 100,000 legionnaires on each side.

 

[stii]

Do most people use heal then? I just upgraded my units and waited a few turns to heal.

 

[budweiser]

Do most people use heal then? I just upgraded my units and waited a few turns to heal.

I only heal when faced with certain death.