I re-read Rusten's post. After I saw it, I remembered it from last year. He had 2 food and good hammers in the cap. He also had gold in city 2 for more commerce and plus 1 happy. He ran specs early, not sure why. He went AH first, looking for horses.
He noted that he usually trades HBR for alpha after he puts in a few turns research.
Then he pounded the AI that settled his cities on flat land and paused the assault until he could develop IW when he ran into spears.
I've done so more tests, and you probably want HBR around turn 50ish. Unfortunately, you can only get HBR by turn 50 at 10 bpt if you start with hunting and beeline HBR.
SpoilerTech costs :
Tech # turns listed beaker costs
Ag 9 (97)
AH 15 (162)
Wh 9 (97)
Po 12 (130)
BW 15 (195)
HBR 37 (405)
Total: 97 (1100)
Not including Hunting, Archery
Rule of thumb: you need about 10 to 15 extra commerce for a fast horse archer rush
Rationale: Without a strong commerce source (read: you need 10+ extra commerce, so two seafood and domestic trade routes isn't going to cut it), it's almost impossible to pursue a non-beeline (wheel, mining-bronze working) tech route and get HBR in the required time.
Science branches:
- Special commerce source (gold/silver/gems/fur/4+ seafood)
- Pottery
(Agriculture if no fishing and hunting)-AH-TW-Pottery is the strongest low commerce HBR tech route. After your initial special farms/pastures, don't build mines if you have pottery and make riverside cottages. They should just about hit 4 commerce by the time you're finishing up HBR, after which you can switch back to mines at will.
- The Pericles
You have no riversides or special resources. Do the Blah-AH-Mining-Writing. You get 7.5 beakers per turn from 2 scientists, +8 x 0.25 = 2 extra beakers from the palace if you time your binary research well, plus any riverside commerce. Net about 10 bpt. However, the cost is 90 hammers + 17 x 4 = 68 food until you get your great scientist, which works out to be 158 food/hammers - incidentally about as much as a worker or settler. It takes slightly longer to set up, and you basically give up a city. Of course if you're Pericles, you pay only 45 hammers and 34 food, 79 total.
Around when you tech HBR, you can immediately settle 1 to 3 extra settlers (on top of your 2 cities), assuming you can pay for the maintenance (read: no hunting to HBR beeline). Closer is better, as is pre-improving tiles. A grassland farm and 3 grassland mines can produce 10 hammers per turn, and with better tiles you can do better. 2+ settlers requires cutthroat worker micro, and possibly not having to chop forested hills.
As long as you do this around turn 50, they should be able to build level 1 or level 2 horse archers by turn 70 and contribute.
Other factors
-Starting techs/huts. Tied with commerce sources for the most influential factor of horse archervariations. Saving 100 beakers (less with discounts) is enough for 20 turns of 5 extra maintenance, so it might be enough for an extra city.
Spoilerbreakdown :
Mysticism = useless
Hunting - you can skip agriculture, and you don't have to get it later. AH-HBR-Archery is technically all you need, if you get lucky enough to not need wheel.
Agriculture - In addition to an AH prerequisite and special tiles, prereq for a pottery build. AH-Wheel-Pottery is will get you fast cottages.
Fishing-Potentially skip agriculture and go hunting-AH-TW-Pottery, though there's a delay in the cottages. Note it's only as good as agriculture if you start with hunting. If you have 4+ seafood/lake tiles, you can skip pottery and just work those, even without fishing boats. If you have alternative food sources, I recommend building only 1 or 2 workboats.
The wheel - pottery prereq, works great with agriculture (but then why would you go horse archers?). Sometimes you can delay it if rivers/coast conveniently establish a connection, but if you're going 3+ cities, it's highly unlikely.
Mining - If you don't have gold/gems/silver, I think delaying it for faster pottery or writing might be better. The biggest factor is whether you can avoid bronze working (forested hills). Overall I think I'd rather have an extra city or two than the ability to chop.
-Chopping. Costs beakers, needed for forested hills, maintenance-less extra production. I think skipping it and fitting in an extra city might be better, if you can get enough mines. You also need extra workers.
-Traits. Creative/Philosophical help for the Pericles. Early on I thought Expansive might be the best horse archer trait, since building granaries is far too expansive normally. But expansive allows for a granaries at size 1 or 2, and you can whip. And you get slightly cheaper workers.
Imperialistic might be necessary for a fast 5 city horse archer build, as it's really hard to produce enough workers/settlers while teching fast enough to hit size 5. I would recommend building the worker first, though.
-Land: a food source and 2 or 3 mines is a decent extra city. If the locations are close enough to your capital that you can pre-improve tiles, that can save the cost of building another worker. If you're going for anything over 3 cities, worker micro is paramount.
Variants:
(start with hunting, no commerce, no forested hills, convenient river routes for horse) AH-HBR
(no commerce sources) Agriculture-AH-TW-Pottery-(Mining-BW)-HBR standard "HA explosion", starting techs help
(~10 commerce from specials) - Hunting/Agriculture-AH-(TW, Mining)-HBR. 3 (later possibly 4) city Horse Archer attack. If you need BW maybe 3 cities is better, without it you could go 4.
Pericles: Blah-AH-Mining-Writing
I don't think the time pressure is quite that strong, vicawoo. HAs are strong enough that anything but significant quantities of spears really doesn't seem to be a problem until cultural + terrain defenses are at least 60% plus. I had no problem taking Prot Archers with 50% culture in a flatland city in my current game, and overwhelmed the Spears/Swords the AI had in a lesser city as well.
I don't think the time pressure is quite that strong, vicawoo. HAs are strong enough that anything but significant quantities of spears really doesn't seem to be a problem until cultural + terrain defenses are at least 60% plus. I had no problem taking Prot Archers with 50% culture in a flatland city in my current game, and overwhelmed the Spears/Swords the AI had in a lesser city as well.
That's often a huge dilemma for me, opportunism over a super fast blitz. Would you rather take out their only metal before they get multiple spears, at the cost of their ramping up defensive production, or get 15 to 20 horse archers and end the war in <10 turns. The more time you have, the better extra cities become. But in general, I find that if I have the units to capture an important target, I prefer to do it. For now, turn 50 or 60 HBR->settle 2 to 3 cities->Infrastructure/extra HA by turn 80 seems to put you in a very strong position.
I'd also like to note that captured cities are pretty useless for reinforcing horse archer numbers. You capture them at maybe turn 90+, they revolt, you wait to build barracks or even stables and it's already turn 110.
A HA attack can succeed a little later than you might think. In a recent game I eliminated SB with Keshiks in the early ADs. He didn't make it to longbows in time and lacked metals, so no spears either. The Totem-archers just got decimated. He bribed Mansa into the war and the latter did have longbows. I lost most of my Keshiks then, taking a couple of cities from MM so I could sue for peace, but by then SB was long gone.
Of course, the fact that my keshik storm didn't come until 50AD is one of the reasons I need to read this thread...
If you don't start with agriculture or the wheel, then AH-pottery tends to be very slow and you get pushed back to finishing HBR (without bronze working) at around turn 60. Also if you don't have riverside grassland tiles, riverside plains work fine.
If your riverside tiles are forested and you have to go bronze working, then your cottages will start too late. It's better to go writing-bw-wheel for a fast library, and rely on your extra forests for your 2 extra worker/settler production.
Start pre-improving your other two cities as soon as possible. I'll try to get some demos for people to comment and critique.
Something I feel bears mentioning... Horses are hidden at 4000 BC. Unless your capital has livestock or your UU requires horse, animal husbandry might not take take precedence over early worker techs and/or early military techs.
Sometimes you can just feel the horse in your BFC.
I went AH first here on the justification that there were sheep in the BFC and the suspicious looking plains tile that is 2w 1s of the SIP cap.
Before research was done, Sal, showed up about 8 tiles north which only strenghtened my suspicion. Sure enough on turn 12 horses popped right where I thought they would.
Here's another HA practise map. This one shows you what you can do with some gold in the BFC. Before and after saves are attached (you can make your own peace setttlement or exterminate the poor fools as you see fit).
In some game few days ago I had gold in BFC, close neighbor and no strategic resource in reach... i was very...angry!
The calculations are made on Normal speed? How it will look at epic? I can only assume that on that speed HA rush is more viable.
If i understood calculations correctly you suggest on epic it would be T75 to have HBR? will have to eventually try it.
I think turn 60-65 is more reasonable now if you don't start with gold. The big thing (I feel) is to have 2 settlers and workers already improving tiles around then, so you place them, go up to 4 cities, then pump horse archers out of 4 cities.
I think turn 60-65 is more reasonable now if you don't start with gold. The big thing (I feel) is to have 2 settlers and workers already improving tiles around then, so you place them, go up to 4 cities, then pump horse archers out of 4 cities.
well I cant imagine having 2settlers and enough workers (at least 5 at that point) at T65 mark.
The first worker on epic is 23T on most usual starts. Depending on starting techs you also need around 14T aggri, 17 AH (without prereq), mining is usually around 10.
6T for improving first food.
You want to grow to cap a bit then start settlers+workers. I am not good on civ maths but at first sight it looks like helluva task. At 4 pop cap I can usually generate worker 5-6T, 12-16T settlers.
We talk about lot of chopping to speed it up and that would mean BW too.
Well will have to try it with some start , this is just from memory and that can be unprecise.
NihilZero:
Gold is too easy, HBR after bronze working at turn 54ish.
At turn 80 infrastructure for city 3 and 4 is almost complete (built expansive granaries due to lack of hills). I think I have around 5 horse archers. I calculate my entire empire should be bringing in about 45 hpt, including whipping, more when I get that damn wheat back.
Agreed, the gold skews things a lot, but I think it's a good HA scenario because space is very cramped and the land is not great, pretty much necessitating early war.
On the other hand, the terrain and map layout is the sort that cries out for TGL, so I wonder might it have been better to build it and postpone war until elephants and catapults...or even try a somewhat later HA rush and see how that goes (with luck HC might build a wonder or two for us to capture).
Agreed, the gold skews things a lot, but I think it's a good HA scenario because space is very cramped and the land is not great, pretty much necessitating early war.
Gold happens. I think that is the key. IE you wont get a workable HA rush if you dont have a science buff of some kind. A 'normal' start wont cut it, and another approach is needed.
I think that a good test for this would be the Noble Club III map , but with other civ replacing Mongolia . The cap has little commerce potential, but a quite high early prod one, so it is easy to chunk out HA. and there are horses nearby enough...
Haven't read every post so I may be missing something, but I'll disagree on the importance of commerce rich starts. Getting HBR in time has never been a problem for me when trying for HA war.
I think that a good test for this would be the Noble Club III map , but with other civ replacing Mongolia . The cap has little commerce potential, but a quite high early prod one, so it is easy to chunk out HA. and there are horses nearby enough...
Not a good immortal map, the AI start out with warriors and no tech bonuses. I'm not about to worldbuilder every civ on the map.
That horse city would be a lot harder if we weren't creative.
Did a test run (library), and I'll report some variants here. Tried a 4 city, but it was very slow and Frederick stole all the good cities. Specialists + library just crushes your production too much.
Spoiler3 city :
start
Tech path
Horses we want
Capital build order
worker-warrior to 3-settler-library (fast growth to 4 for 2 specialists)
An even worse second city location than in the first game. I had to put horses in the first ring out of fear victoria might found a religion there.
Pottery from a hut, but afterwards I pretended that I didn't receive pottery and switched to a barracks. The options for growing on the second city are a barracks, or in less crowded, more barb friendly conditions, warrior-chariot. Due to jungle, we chop a worker after the barracks; in fact with only 1 resource, 1 worker, and our low production capital, we might want to go worker first.
Library built with unimproved hills. This happens a lot with writing before bronze working builds, since our 1 worker is too busy improving the second city. We could have gone mining first, which slows our tech while increasing production. Considering that after the library is built, we will only work two tiles, and we are tech hungry, skipping mining is the better choice.
Horsebackriding just finishes; it's turn 68. Distance probably ate up 5 turns, but a low production capital and a suboptimal second city, we don't even have our 3rd settler yet! The capital slow built a worker while the 3rd city chopped a worker, so we actually probably could have went straight settler in our capital and chopped it out.
The 3rd city is late by ~5 turns.
An important trade
Turn 100, 12 keshiks, 1 chariot. Pretty bad, due to a terrible capital and poor second city.
TACTICS
Sent 3 to pillage the mine.
Poor screenshot, but the teal city in the bottom right hand corner is on copper, we have 5 HA ready to take 2 archers and an axeman. The other horse archers are going to take out the size 1 city.
1st turn of war, copper cut and city razed. Turn 3, capital and another city taken out. WK down to 2 small cities, and is willing to talk.
Mistakes: not going worker first in second city (no pigs...), not shutting off research after writing finishes to save up gold for the library.
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, this is just from memory and that can be unprecise.
atleast if we are talking of HA.
of having a suitable pro civ close for making the test more believable 
