horse archers vs axmen

[bfordyce]

Hi, first post so be easy on me. I've read a lot of the articles here. I don't claim to be a guru at this game, but I noticed a lot of people value axmen a lot more than mounted archers. I even noticed some people even skip researching archery and horseback riding. Now, I am going to say that the hardest level I've played is Noble, I'm going to move up, as it's way too easy.

However, at the settings I play, roads only let an axman move two squares. The horse archers can move 4 squares on roads, which to me is a huge advantage. If I know I'm going to war, I move a stack or two of axmen next to the border. Once the war starts, I build all mounted horsemen, because I need to get troops there quickly. I just don't want to wait 10-15 turns for the reinforcements to get there. War is tedious enough in this game. Now, I lose some mounted archers in battles. Sometimes I attack a large city with only about 10% odds.. But if the horse archers typically kill at least one guy in the group of defenders, which makes the next attacker have much greater odds.

I guess to me it breaks down like this .. axmen are power 5, with a 50% bonus vs melee.. So that's a 7.5... Mounted archers are a 6.. I'll gladly sacrifice 1.5 in power to get the units over to battle in a timely matter.
The sooner the war is over with, the sooner I can build courthouses (and enjoy the spoils of war), and stop the unhappy penalties.

Now, I agree that with barracks, you can give the ax men "city raider" which is another 25%. I think the best horse archers can do is 10% more strength, which tips it a bit more to the axmen. I also realize you can do a "bucket brigade" sometimes.. (Move the new ax man to city A, while the one in city A moves to battle, thus cutting down movement time)

I'm a big fan of horse archers, and I'm surprised that some people actually skip researching them. Another advantage of the fast movement is that you can respond a lot faster to barbarians coming in and pillaging.

 

[Zherak_Khan]

While I do in part agree with you, there are a few factors you have left out:

Axes come with Bronze, which means Slavery, Iron Working and Metal Casting, plus Spearmen.
Horse Archers dont fare well against Spearmen.
Horse Archers can't get City Raider.
The hammer cost is also different, if my memory serves me right.

 

[Elrohir]

Axemen don't have an easy counter for a long time. You can use Horse Archers against them, but even they aren't always effective, especially if they stay in the forests, or bring along a spear or two. Axemen are good for many things: Killing invading Swordsmen, raiding cities, fighting back any sort of barbarian - (Until they get Longbowmen, anyway) Axemen are the jack of all trades, all purpose early unit. They can do almost anything at least passably, and they are excellant when it comes to fighting melee units.

Horse Archers have a clear counter: Spearmen. Unless your Horse Archer has Combat 1 and 2, and Shock, it's probably going to be slaughtered pretty badly by the Spearmen. If you're fighting Spearmen with Horse Archers, you need at least a 2-1 ratio to have any realistic chance of victory.

Horse Archers can be very good, properly used. But I consider Axemen to be the superior unit.

 

[Nares]

Horse Archers dont fare well against Spearmen.

This about sums up why Horse Archers are fairly limited. Spearmen fare much better against Horse Archers than, say, Axemen against Swordsmen, assuming no promotions.

Horse Archers are poor city attackers (due to a lack of City Raider). They are poor defenders because they do not receive defensive boni.

Horse Archers serve the following purposes:

The best unit against a Axemen, handsdown.
The increased movement makes pillaging or responding to Barbarian/other invading forces easier.
They have access to the Sentry promotion (making them good scouting or fogbusting units).

In a more specific analysis, you can find that much of what makes them appealing is easily replicated.

Yes, they are the best unit against Axemen. However, if attacking a mixed stack of city defenders, the Horse Archer will fight against units in this order: Spearmen -> Swordsman -> Archer (even CG1 should be enough) -> Axemen.

Against mixed stack in the open field: Spearmen -> Swordsman -> Axemen.

As you can see, there's a lot to kill through just to get to the unit they best counter.

In terms of a mobile defense force, little beats the Horse Archer. They're strong enough to ably defeat a Axeman and on par with a Swordsman. Generally, the most typical invasion force you'll face is Barbarians, and Barbarians do not spawn Spearmen.

In terms of scouting or fogbusting capabilities, they are more suited to select forms of fogbusting than a Chariot. However, the Chariot is cheaper to produce, and is accessable via an otherwise worthwhile tech. If, by fogbusting, you're eliminating Barbarian spawning, then the Chariot is better. If you expect the fogbusting unit to be under frequent attack, then a Horse Archer is better. However, neither receives defensive boni; Axemen are, in many ways, better suited to defending than either Mounted unit because they can defend in Forest or on a Forested Hill.

Basically, Horse Archers are best used as a mobile defense force (which still should be augmented by more localized forces), and as pillagers. The big problem with them as pillagers is that, if granted the opportunity, the AI will a unescorted Horse Archer (or Chariot) with a Spearman, if the Spearman can be brought back inside a city on the same turn (or if the Spearman is safe from retaliation), which means free XP for the Spearman. Again, no defensive boni means the Horse Archer is only "safe" when far enough away from a city to avoid such guerilla attacks.

Probably the biggest problem facing the unit is that it is restricted by a "dead-end" tech, which is to say, the tech does not lead to anything useful (techs which you've researched the prerequisites for receive a research bonus; basically, Horseback Riding does not give a research bonus to any tech). Further, it comes at a time when there are other, generally more important, techs to research, such as Code of Laws.

If you do like the unit, there's plenty that can be done with Keshiks (Mongol UU). I'm sure with enough exposure, you'll see the multiple weaknesses of the unit (or, rather, its lack of strengths), and see that it is really a niche unit within the larger whole of your military.

 

[ownedbyakorat]

As soon as you run into a pair of spearmen, all those pretty horse archers will be impotent. Horse Archers can only be effective as an add-on to a main battle stack, unless you have stupidly backwards opponents - a fortified CG1 archer in a city with 20% culture (your typical early game situation) will eat your Combat2 Horse Archer alive, for a fraction of the cost. A fortified level 1 spearman fortified in that same city will kill off 4 of your horse archers before it dies - assuming that it gets no chance to heal or promote in between combats. You would have to build 8 horse archers to take that city reliably.

If you built axemen instead, you could take that same city with the same defenders (1 level 1 spear, 1 CG1 archer) - a very likely scenario - with four axes straight from the barracks.

When you figure in the production time as well as the movement time, horse archers are only cost-effective if the opponent is way on the other end of the map... but you probably have better units than HA by the time you're in that war, anyway.

 

[jimbob27]

They're just not efficient. Its inefficent to research them, because both archery and horseback riding are dead-end(ish) techs. HBR is very expensive for it's time as well.

They're not efficient to use. You'll loose tons of them rushing at cities with 40or 50% defence... so you've still got to use them in conjunction with catapults... which means you're still going to have to move your stack 1 move at a time.

Their only real use in my games, is for border defence. I never research for them, but sometimes I get the techs trading, and then I'll build a few to cover my borders. They can get to the problems quicky, and they're great for holding off barbs.

 

[Naismith]

I usually don't research Horseback Riding in the early game. It is an expensive tech (more than IW, I believe), and doesn't lead to any other early techs. Almost all the early techs have a higher priority for me. The game I'm currently playing is the first time I've ever prioritized HR, since I'm playing as Khan and get Keshiks.

One thing you are missing from your comparison of horse archers and axemen is additional promotions. Compare a city raider III axeman with a combat III horse archer when attacking cities.

In the game I'm currently playing, I built a pretty fair number of Keshiks, and they do get around much faster than my axemen. So fast I might end up with a stack of 4 Keshiks and 1 axeman attacking a city with say, 3 defenders (while my other axemen are still healing from the last city I took). If one defender is a spearmen and two are archers, I will have the choice of sacrificing at lest two (maybe three!) keshiks to bring down the spearman, because an archer will be chosen as the defender when you attack with the axeman. Fortified spears own horse archers, so if they have spearmen, it's tough. If the city is on a hill, you better be ready to kiss your horse archers goodbye.

The extra movement is very handy for pillaging and pillage prevention. Also useful to keep around poorly defended interior cities, to deal with the occasional barb or unexpected visitor.

 

[Dagoril]

I like horse archers against catapults, that's about it. If you are attacking a city with your stack, and put a few horse archers in the stack as well, and the city has cats in it which are weakening your stack, the horse archers are nice to kill the cats. Problem is the ai rarely uses this tactic in my experience.

The best early counter to Axemen are other Axemen. Give them Combat promotions, or some combination of Combat, Shock and Cover. Shock will help against other melee units, Cover helps against Archers, and Combat helps against everything.

Some people love the mounted units for quick pillaging, but I find that the horse units don't live long enough in enemy territory to make this particularly viable. I'd rather build more city attack units, take the city down faster, and just leave the improvements in place for my new city. (For a quick pillage run deep into enemy territory to pillage specifically their iron or copper improvements, it might be worthwhile, but otherwise I wouldn't bother).

 

[gunkulator]

Axes come with Bronze, which means Slavery, Iron Working and Metal Casting, plus Spearmen.
Horse Archers dont fare well against Spearmen.
Horse Archers can't get City Raider.
The hammer cost is also different, if my memory serves me right.

You missed the biggest one: Bronze Working allows you to chop forests for hammers. That reason alone is enough to make BW my first tech goal (unless I'm going for a religion).

Also: Horse archer is 50 hammers while axemen are only 35. So you can roughly build 3 axemen for the cost of 2 horse archers. 3 axes with city raider are always going to do better against a city than 2 horse archers with combat.

 

[theimmortal1]

Mobile units are the best units in the game when you have a tech advantage. You are able to conquer more territory much more quickly. But you need a tech advantage.

You can't be throwing HA against spears, knights against pikes, or cavalry against rifles. You just can't, its slaughter. But if you tech properly, and you have your knights fighting spears, and your calvary fighting pikemen, its absolute slaughter. You are so mobile its easy victory. Take one city, leave the wounded behind, move on to next city. The key is to have that military advantage.

But you can never have that advantage with HA. Chariots perhaps, but not HA. Everyone will have bronze by the time you get HA. Therefore its no good to have 20 HA out. But they could be used in a stack perhaps.

 

[kxcman]

In the last GOTM I used a single axeman and a single horse archer to raid the copper and iron mines of Rome. Pillaging in this tactic is pretty good. You move both units one space and then the horse archer has an extra move to pillage.

 

[Zombie69]

You can do this with a charriot for much cheaper. That's one of the reasons why horseback riding shouldn't be researched, period.

 

[bfordyce]

Thanks for all the feedback guys. As I said, I've only played two games (only at Noble), and they were both extremely easy. In both games, I had a huge lead by the time I started my first war, so spending time with horse archers was no big deal. In Civ III, (again IMO) horsemen were clearly the best unit early on, so I started with that line of thinking in this game. Should've realized that game designers usually weaken the best unit from the previous game. Thanks for explaining the downside of horse archers.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Actually, your use of HA seems to be pretty good (using them as reinforcements for a stack of Axemen) as long as you aren't waiting on getting Horseback riding to start invading, it plays well to their strengths, and can allow the stack of Axemen to move faster (by not slowing them down with useless attacks v. Archers.)

 

[cabert]

even with the good use, it remains a costly strat (because of the tech!)

 

[nealhunt]

I think they are a decent unit. It's not so much that I go out of my way to get them but useful on occasion.

If you find yourself without metal and have to take Archery to defend your cities (quick military tech is extremely important on higher levels), picking up horseback riding might be worth it.

A fortified, city guard archer in a city with 20% culture bonus is at +115%. If you assume one promotion for the attacking unit it looks like:

Combat I Horse Archer v Archer = 6 v 6.15
Raider I Axemen v Archer = 5 v 5.85

with 2 promotions:
Combat II horse Archer = 6 v 5.85
Raider II axeman = 5 v 5.25

Clearly, Horse Archers are stronger on the offense until you get to the third promotion. Even then, the Horse Archer will have Combat III and be able to use its bonus in all situations where a Raider III axemen is only good when attacking cities.

Against Axemen defenders the numbers come out to them being about equal. Obviously, against Spearmen the Horse Archers are worse. However, the primary defense used by the AIs is Archers. Even if a Spearmen or two puts a crimp in your plans, Horse Archers are likely to come out just about as good as a stack of axemen.

As far as strategy, if I'm going to use Horse Archers I will build a stack and simply avoid any concentration of Spearmen. Frequently you can hit a civilization before they have any significant number of spearmen. You can send your horse archers past well-defended cities to attack deeper in enemy territory while a slower follow-on stack of melee units hits the cities that the Horse Archers bypassed.

Typically my promotion pattern for mounted units is Combat I then Shock, then Combat II. The AI will sometimes send spearmen out of cities to attack horse archers if you get too close, but a Combat I/shock horse archer in the open stands a good chance against a spearman. It also means that the Spearman, who will retreat back into the city, is 1) wounded and 2) no longer getting a fortification bonus. At that point, you should just attack the city. Finish off the spearman and take your prize.

===

Obviously, all that is assuming that you gave the AIs a bit of time to build. It is possible to beeline to Horse Archers, especially if you start with Hunting. Research Archery>Animal husbandry>Wheel (if needed)> Horseback Riding

For the Mongolians who start with Wheel and Hunting, you can have Horse Archers at ~500 beakers. That's certainly not blazing fast but you can be confident that your opponents haven't had a lot of time to build up Spearmen as a counter. Just as important, there wont' be appreciable culture defense at that point and very little chance of city guard promotions on archers. Even if you have to sacrifice a horse archer or two to take out some spears, the rest of your force will cut through defending archers in short order.

 

[gunkulator]

Clearly, Horse Archers are stronger on the offense until you get to the third promotion. Even then, the Horse Archer will have Combat III and be able to use its bonus in all situations where a Raider III axemen is only good when attacking cities.

Against Axemen defenders the numbers come out to them being about equal. Obviously, against Spearmen the Horse Archers are worse. However, the primary defense used by the AIs is Archers. Even if a Spearmen or two puts a crimp in your plans, Horse Archers are likely to come out just about as good as a stack of axemen.

Except that you can build almost 3 axemen for every 2 horse archers. Even given all the rest that you say, that fact alone tips the balance towards axemen. Also, while horse archers are easily defeated by spearmen, axemen really have no counter for quite some time.

 

[Naismith]

For the Mongolians who start with Wheel and Hunting, you can have Horse Archers at ~500 beakers. That's certainly not blazing fast but you can be confident that your opponents haven't had a lot of time to build up Spearmen as a counter. Just as important, there wont' be appreciable culture defense at that point and very little chance of city guard promotions on archers. Even if you have to sacrifice a horse archer or two to take out some spears, the rest of your force will cut through defending archers in short order.

I'm currently playing a game as Khan, and I took out 2 Civs in the early game, mostly with Keshiks, before I ever saw a spearman. Then I felt some regret I didn't have more axemen. You just need to be aware that at some point, the horse archer or Keshik will not be as wonderful any more, and plan accordingly.

 

[nealhunt]

Except that you can build almost 3 axemen for every 2 horse archers. Even given all the rest that you say, that fact alone tips the balance towards axemen.

You'll notice the very first sentence of my post stated "useful on occasion." Generally speaking, axemen are better general purpose units and I usually go for them first. However, it doesn't always work out that producing them is easy or even possible.

As far as cost, there are lots of factors to take into account. It's not a straight hammer comparison because production is compartmentalized into discreet production units. Survivability makes a difference because (just from teh example) if you lose 1 axe to take a city and lose no horse archers the horse archer option ends up stronger for the following fight. And so on.

They cost more than axes because there are a lot of little things they can do better (plus the big thing of killing archers much better). Obviously, you have to capitalize on those things or it's not worth it.

It's all very situation dependent, which is why I started out with the caveat.


Incidentally, that strength comparison above v archers does not include the "immue to first strike" for the Horse Archers. Their disproportionate advantage against defending archers is greater than just the numbers would indicate. When looking at actual combat odds they're significantly better than axes in that respect.

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Having mounted units has another advantage. It allows you to penetrate deep into enemy territories, damage enemy improvements, and block strategic resources from reaching the enemy cities. These two actions will substantially disrupt the enemy economy. And because mounted units have more movement points, they can escape attack right after they first destroy the land improvements.