Horse Archers - why the hate?

[kcmarkwell]

20+ horse archers (mostly flanking, some combat) early will dismantle any AI and most human players. A couple of spears won't stop that. In fact, its one of my favorite tactics in multiplayer because rarely do people build more than a few spears for protection. Horse Archers move fast and can elimiate metal sources before they have time to whip spears. Then its on to the capital pillaging cottages as you go to pay for it.

 

[MyOtherName]

After some more thinking I can finally invision acase where flank makes sense (besides having your kingdom over-run and forced to hole-up in your castle while your enemy attacks with a stack of seige)..

There is a much easier case to envision: the one where you want to have a big army when the war is over.

 

[gettingfat]

Expensive to research, expensive to build, mediocre strength, cheap to counter.

Give them the well justified withdrawal chance when being attacked then I'll reconsider. For now, only Keshiks and num cavs have a place in my book.

 

[kniteowl]

Maybe if HAs were allowed to promote down the Drill line they may be considered more useful (although I still doubt it) All archery unit get promote down the Drill line but the Horse Archer cannot promote down that line... which seems a little strange.

But considering it's unit type being a mounted unit and not an Archery unit it makes sense I guess...

If HBR was a cheaper tech or led to some useful tech it might be more useful, but I can't think of any the that would require HBR.

 

[CivCorpse]

Maybe if HAs were allowed to promote down the Drill line they may be considered more useful (although I still doubt it) All archery unit get promote down the Drill line but the Horse Archer cannot promote down that line... which seems a little strange.

But considering it's unit type being a mounted unit and not an Archery unit it makes sense I guess...

If HBR was a cheaper tech or led to some useful tech it might be more useful, but I can't think of any the that would require HBR.

I believe you need HBR for knights and cavs.

 

[Atlas]

Markwell, Kniteowl i see some MP players here . HBR is awesome in MP because catapults are nerfed to death and redundant (due to spies). In SP things are different there is still lots of land to take peacefully, better units (swords) and lots of worker techs (in MP teamers typically give you most of the first line of techs).

I believe you need HBR for knights and cavs.

And war elephants

 

[Coast]

Well, I see I stirred up some discussion. For the record, I do use a mix of flanking-2 horses and combat ones to finish up the weakened defenders.

If it's so effective in MP, the AI shouldn't stand a chance.

 

[reknaw]

I like to keep 2-3 Flanking II mounted units in my border cities just in case I get surprised by an AI SoD with no stack of my own nearby to counter it. I don't upgrade my Knights to Cavalry until the AI upgrades from Cats/Trebs to Cannon. It's not ideal, and I'm probably still gonna get hammered, but if I damage a few of their seige units I might not lose the city.

That said, I really like to include a few mounted units in all my SoDs, using them to fight up 97%+ battles wherever I can to take them up to C3, and send them back into my territory when they get enough XP for one more promotion with plans to upgrade to Blitz Gunships later.

 

[King of Town]

swordsmen are easy to counter, axemen are easy to counter, any unit that you can use to take a city is easy to counter, so that's not really a good argument against them. In my expereice at least the ai defends mostly with axemen and archers. They do obviously use spearmen at times. Early in the game they also use slavery a lot more to whip units out to counter your attack, so if you have horse archers you are going to get there faster, be immune to first strikes, and be bale to withdraw so that your next attacker has a weaker enemy to fight. If you've got horse archers you can get stables which give you two levels of promotions as opposed to one, so with their two bonus as opposed to one for swordsmen they get a 30% bonus versus everyone, and it counts when attacking anywhere ( in case you meet a counter stack in the field). As opposed to the swordsmen's bonus of 20% that only is useful against city defenders. So if you see a stack to attack in the field your bonuses are useless. Not to mention the extra bouns the horse archers get against archers fromt he immune to first strikes that comes from withdraw. So until the swordsman gets to the second level the HA have an advantage in a lot of ways it seems.

 

[futurehermit]

Inspired by this thread I used horse archers extensively in a game I started last night. Here's how it went: (monarch/hemispheres/normal speed)

I was playing as Freddy and Joao was my closest neighbour. He was REXing like crazy and starting to box me in. I had marble in my capital and horses nearby. I was able to build 4 cities incl. capital before feeling the need to war vs. him. I did something a bit unorthodox and took HBR off the oracle. I cranked out 20 horses archers (about 5/city with stables) and declared war. I took his capital first and one other city. I got a GG and took a ceasefire because my stack was very injured (but many lived!). Once they healed up quickly thanks to my MASH unit and I had built some reinforcements I attacked again. Joao had built an amazing 10 cities in the BC era so I had to take a ceasefire 2 more times over the course of the centuries-long battle, but I took him out ca. 1000AD giving me a total of 14 cities.

I was a bit worried about feudalism and engineering coming on scene soon (they hadn't yet, but it wouldn't be long) so I decided I needed to tech a bit. I was close to liberalism and had lucked out getting the Mausoleum late. With a great artist and the taj mahal I was able to get 20+ turns of golden age after cottage-spamming my empire (11 of the cities became commerce cities, 1 production, 1 gpfarm, and my capital was mix comm/prod).

I was teching like a madman and was first in score by a large margin. I teched to cavalry got the GM from economics, sent him overseas, upgraded about 10-15 horse archers to cav, had built some cav, declared on Rameses and took him out except for a couple cities. Took peace to heal. He vassaled to Hamurabi.

That was ok because I had been beelining to combustion-industrialism. Now I am in the process of finishing out a domination win with panzers. The factories-coal plants are helping a lot and to deal with unhealthy after industrialism I beelined medicine-refrigeration-superconductors (labs)-genetics.

I feel like I am going to shave some decades off my usual finish time (space or domination) of around 1930AD (I'm pretty consistent at that mark).

Anyways, here are my conclusions:

1) Horse archers work very nice for taking cities prior to longbows/pikes. Joao had quite a few swords and spears, but a mix of flanking 2/combat 2 took them out even with high cultural defenses.

2) Some ceasefires are indeed necessary to heal up as obsolete mentioned. I don't know how this compares against lugging around 1-move units and siege and sacrificing a bunch of siege to wear down the defenders. It's hard to make this comparison I think.

3) I felt like I had my target of ~15 cities a couple of centuries earlier than normal. I normally shoot for 1500AD and usually get it lately around 1300AD. In this case I had it around 1000AD.

4) Having veteran horse archers makes for nice upgrading to cuirassiers/cavalry. But generating a GM is important because it's not cheap.

5) I probably could've pushed again with knights. That was my plan: to spam knights against pikes/longbows is on par with h.archers against spears/archers. But since I lucked out and got the Mausoleum I couldn't resist the 20+ turns of golden age when I had very nice cottageable land empire-wide. If I hadn't got the Mausoleum I would've gone for knights which would've meant I took out Rameses sooner. Then I probably would've used either knights or cuirassiers against Hammurabi.

I think that mobile units are ideal for domination wins and starting with horse archers is something I would highly recommend if the situation permits it.

EDIT: Something to keep in mind that I didn't prepare for enough in this game is that when you are sacking cities quickly with mobile units it becomes important to have an "army" of workers prepared to come in behind when it is safe and develop the land.

 

[Shadzy19]

Not sure if many others play AW but horse archers are very strong and needed there .
You will get plenty of GG's and if u stack them all in your prod city you can often get ha's out with 10-17 xp's really fast .
Since you have all the AI's fighting you wou will get large stacks with plenty of cats attacking you and this is where the ha's come in , about 5 of them with flanking 2 can kill lots of cats , all they have to do is stay alive for a fight and they wound/kill all the cats .

 

[Roxlimn]

futurehermit:

That squares with my experiences using the new HAs. The main disadvantage, really, is that you have to wait for CoL to get your empire large. If you ran with Gilgamesh, I imagine you could've expanded faster initially and would have more time to consolidate with your army of workers.

 

[MyOtherName]

I've tweaked my program to also compute the size of the army you need to achieve victory. (And I corrected a bug that was lowballing the hammer cost of your casualties)

Again, the scenario is to compute the cost of killing a CG 2 archer in a flatland city with a 25% fortify bonus.

Swordsmen are all CR2, and valued at 40 hammers.
Horse archers are an appropriate mix of FL2 and C2, and valued at 50 hammers.
C2 Horse Archers are purely combat 2 horse archers.
"need" is the expected hammer cost of the units you need to kill the archer.
"lose" is the expected hammer cost of your casualties.

40% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 70.57 hammers, lose 30.57 hammers.
Horse archers: need 92.52 hammers, lose 21.76 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 86.00 hammers, lose 28.80 hammers.

60% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 74.37 hammers, lose 31.63 hammers.
Horse archers: need 102.31 hammers, lose 27.05 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 89.85 hammers, lose 31.88 hammers.

100% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 83.22 hammers, lose 43.22 hammers.
Horse archers: need 119.05 hammers, lose 35.69 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 97.82 hammers, lose 38.26 hammers.


So I've quantified obsolete's objection: we can see exactly how much strength we sacrifice by using flanking to minimize casualties. For example, if we need to use 20 combat horse archers to conquer a bunch of 60% cultural defense cities, then we expect 7 of them will die. If we try the same thing with flanking, we need 23 horse archers, but only 6 of them to die.

(And, we need just over 20 and a half CR2 swordsmen if we tried it that way, and we expect nearly 9 of them to die)

 

[Roxlimn]

Specifically, if you use 20 Combat 2 Horse Archers to take a 60% defense city, you'll end up with only 13 afterwards.

If you use 23 Combat/Flank HAs to take a 60% defense city, you'll have 17 of them afterwards, potentially with all 12 C2 HAs surviving.

Ergo, if you have a bigger force, it makes sense to pad the fat with Flanking rather than Combat cavalry.

 

[futurehermit]

That analysis makes sense to me. However, I want to point out something that was not included: Mobility. It is hard to quantify. But if I get to the 2nd city 2x as fast they will have 1/2 the time to whip/build defenders. Less defenders can translate into less lost horse archers as well.

The difficult thing to quantify imo is the healing time (i.e., ceasefires) needed for horse archer rushing vs. the mobility cost time needed to drag siege across an enemy empire (i.e., more time for defenders to be produced empire-wide). Attacking high-cultural defense cities will translate into more losses, but more defenders also translates into more losses.

That is difficult to determine, and depends a lot on skill level. Obsolete plays at immortal/deity which will be different from monarch/emperor where I play. I usually play on monarch because I enjoy a more relaxed pace (I play a lot later in the evening after a long day at work). At this level if you take the capital first then most of the other cities will be fairly-easy pickings (especially if not protective, creative, etc.). The extra mobility can be very nice there to minimize defenders and finish things very quickly (less turns of war weariness which is also hard to quantify).

 

[gettingfat]

swordsmen are easy to counter, axemen are easy to counter, any unit that you can use to take a city is easy to counter, so that's not really a good argument against them.

That's not entirely true. Axemen, for an instance, are actually not as easy to counter. It's true that chariots have bonus on axemen, but that is only an attack bonus, not strength bonus. So as long as you throw one or two spears into a stack of axes, the chariots can't do much, while axes can attack chariots, their supposedly counter, and win most of the times. You may argue that by putting an axe into a stack of HAs, the spears can't do much as well, but it means the key strength of HAs, ie. the 2-movement, will be handicapped.

And there're elephants as well. So there are three resources (bronze, iron, ivory) to allow building of the counter vs HAs, but only one resource (horse) to build the counter vs axes (I don't count maces and crossbows as they are of different era).

 

[futurehermit]

An update on my German Horse Archer game:

I won domination in 1890, which is about 4 decades or around 20+ turns faster than my average. My final score was over 100,000 for the first time in BTS. It was by far my best game I've played in BtS yet.

I'm not saying the horse archers were 100% responsible (Panzers rule!), but they were quite effective and getting the land base pictured above went a long way to securing the victory

 

[kcmarkwell]

I guess I will sum up what futurehermit just posted... Horse Archers are quite powerful if you get them early enough, use them early enough, and kill early enough. =)

 

[kcmarkwell]

I've tweaked my program to also compute the size of the army you need to achieve victory. (And I corrected a bug that was lowballing the hammer cost of your casualties)

Again, the scenario is to compute the cost of killing a CG 2 archer in a flatland city with a 25% fortify bonus.

Swordsmen are all CR2, and valued at 40 hammers.
Horse archers are an appropriate mix of FL2 and C2, and valued at 50 hammers.
C2 Horse Archers are purely combat 2 horse archers.
"need" is the expected hammer cost of the units you need to kill the archer.
"lose" is the expected hammer cost of your casualties.

40% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 70.57 hammers, lose 30.57 hammers.
Horse archers: need 92.52 hammers, lose 21.76 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 86.00 hammers, lose 28.80 hammers.

60% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 74.37 hammers, lose 31.63 hammers.
Horse archers: need 102.31 hammers, lose 27.05 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 89.85 hammers, lose 31.88 hammers.

100% cultural defense:
Swordsmen: need 83.22 hammers, lose 43.22 hammers.
Horse archers: need 119.05 hammers, lose 35.69 hammers.
C2 Horse archers: need 97.82 hammers, lose 38.26 hammers.


So I've quantified obsolete's objection: we can see exactly how much strength we sacrifice by using flanking to minimize casualties. For example, if we need to use 20 combat horse archers to conquer a bunch of 60% cultural defense cities, then we expect 7 of them will die. If we try the same thing with flanking, we need 23 horse archers, but only 6 of them to die.

(And, we need just over 20 and a half CR2 swordsmen if we tried it that way, and we expect nearly 9 of them to die)

Thanks for the digits, but the most important factor I see is not included in the above numbers and that is the movement factor. With 2 movement, you can reach a city twice as fast, and half as many whipped units occur. Not to mention getting the metal out of the way so no spears can be whipped to repel.

 

[Gliese 581]

There's also the enemy's UU to consider. I'm currently playing a game as Kublai Khan and two of my neighbours are Hammurabi and Shaka (why do I always get Shaka as the mongols? ). Well, I know which one I'll prefer to use Keshiks on at least.
I also read the power rating thread on this forum and saw that HBR are worth around 10k soldiers, the same as the great wall or iron working, or 5 archers. Always useful if you can afford the dead-end. Of course as the mongols you have more incentive..