Good defense/attack against horses?

[automator]

So I had this come up in my current game. In fact, this situation is why I saved and stopped playing, since I was just getting angry.

I'm the dominant civ (at warlord, but this is my best game so far). I lead in techs, in land, in wealth ... in short, I should be god. Confusianism is mine (I founded judaism, islam, buddhism and confusianism) and is practiced by nearly half the cities. (This is the first game where I realized how cool a strong religion combined with the holy city shrine really is.) But I've become buddy-buddy with the Russians, who the Aztecs hate. The Aztecs keep attacking in waves, then I buy peace for a couple hundred gold. In the first wave I beat back their attack and took a city. In the second wave, I beat back the attack and took a city.

Now we're on the third wave and things aren't going so well. See, they have horses. I don't. The Russians have horses, but won't trade. None of my other friends have horses. So the Aztecs are swarming in with Knights and I'm stumped. All my border cities are stocked with the follow defenses: 2 Macemen/Axemen, 2 Longbows, 2 spears/pikes. All bows are upgraded on city defense, all axes are upgraded on a combination of shock and cover. But I have no way to beat back these damn knights. If I try to take care of them with macemen, I lose two to every knight I take out. I recently got a border expansion that gave me Ivory, so I'm building War Elephants as much as possible, and those have done well.

Are there any other units to build? (At first, I thought I'd do calvary, but that's when I realized I had no horses).

 

[seasmath]

You need many Pikemen...

 

[BlackMage]

Spearmen and Pikemen get a +100% bonus against cavalry, whether they are attacking or defending. To defend against them attacking your territory, keep your longbows in your city. They have a good defensive bonus, and with City Garrison, they will be fine. Use your spears and pikes to defend the actual land from pillaging.

 

[Zanmato]

In addition to that, city walls will help too. If you have Macemen, you can't be far off Gunpowder, make a beeline for that instead since the gunpowder units require no special resource. Will certainly help boost defences even further. War Elephants are good but too slow against other mounted units.

Make sure you stay buddies with the Russians, are they just might come after you if their Cossacks later which makes dealing with Knights child's play.

 

[DangerousMonkey]

Build War Elephants if you have ivory, but in lieu of that just pump out those pikemen. It's on warlord, so if you don't sacrifice your pikemen needlessly you should be able to stop a horse based attack pretty easily. Just make sure you get horses before cavalry comes along...

 

[Doctor Love]

Build barracks and pikeman. When promoted and fortified they are very capable knight killers.

 

[RX2000]

Yea pikemen do pretty well against horses....

 

[GenericKen]

The moment you saw connected horses you should've started putting out pikes. The 100% bonus is tremendous, especially when the pikes cost like 60% what the knights cost.

If you can, though, you should really make disconnecting their iron a priority.

 

[Renata]

I'm just repeating the general wisdom, but yeah, pikes should own knights. It's strength 6 vs 5 before promotions -- good enough to win more than 2/3 of battles IIRC. Even spearmen will win a few if you have any lying about that you can't afford to upgrade. They're also good for polishing off wounded knights when your pikes don't win.

Also, if they come with nothing but knights, don't wait for them to attack you. Take them out first before they can pillage.

 

[Blazer6]

Play defensive and send fast units to pillage them. Make sure they suffer along with you or you will slowly die.

Knights have 10 strength.

 

[Rameau's Nephew]

Blazer, that's not an option. (S)he has no horses, which means that (s)he won't have any fast units until tanks, unless (s)he gets some trade going.

To second what everyone has said, War Elephants the your ideal choice, but pikemen will do. Also, don't neglect the potential effectiveness of a few catapults deployed defensively. They can thin out invading stacks quite well.

 

[Jantis]

Use nukes.

 

[BlackMage]

Use nukes.

You always have the best plans!

 

[MyOtherName]

Knights have 10 strength.

Not when fighting a pikeman. (The +100% bonus is implemented by reducing the knight's strength to 5)