Horseman rush !

[loki]

Hey guys,

I have successfully managed to keep the damn persian out of any major ressource (late middle age), basically they are out of iron and saltpeter. So they are left with the best unit they can get : the horseman!
They declared war, as expected, hurling countless hordes of horsemen. I am defending with musketmen, so I am not really scared to lose cities. I am building cavalry for counter attacking and I have kept him near a jungle surrounded buffer city (but with a silk luxury) preventing him to go any further down in my empire.
Now to the point, how do you manage a successfull counter offensive against horsemen? There are just too many of them : and they always retreat when at 1hp attacking my city. I chase them around using cavalry, but i can't produce as many calvalry. Basically, the war lasts for ages washing the jungle soils of this tiny city with horsemen blood. :ak47:

Any thought on what I could/should do? (Regent/huge/5civs)

Thanks
loki

 

[ferenginar]

My suggestion would be,
Don't worry to much about the horseman, if your cities are well defended, just try to fortify units at key points to stop them getting into your territory, then go on the offensive.

Load your cavalry onto ships of whatever kind you have available, probably galleon, sail down/up the coast, land and attack the Persian cities directly, this should keep them busy for a while and encourage them to broker a peace deal.

ferenginar

 

[rdomarat]

When a huge stack of any units comes rolling into my territory, I find that I have to let them get deep into my territory before I do anything with them. Since the stack can't really do any damage to your cities anyway, just let them roam around and destroy a few improvements and throw themselves at well defended cities for a while. Once they're deep in your lands, send your cavalry in. All of them. Make sure you place your cavalry between the stack and your opponent's border. Since you get the benefit of your roads (and more importantly railroads), and the stack doesn't, you should be able to slowly pick away at them until they're dead. Cavalry against 1hp horsemen will be like a hot knife through butter.

If it's a stack of 80 horsemen, it will take a while to clean them out, but since you've cut off their retreat, yor hot knife will eventually run out of butter to cut.

 

[brianboru]

the horesemen rush is part of the standard Civ AI military strategy. Instead of counterattacking your military assault stack the AI sends masses of mounted troops past your forces and into your territory. This can be a terrible nuisance since the combat breaks down in to masses of on-on-one combats. It is also dangerous for players like me that have lots of workers wandering aorund. Here's my solution:

when you attack the enemy civ keep a reserve force as a second line in your cities nearest the attack point. the second line should have good defensive units in each city to ward off the mounted attacks and some mounted units to counterattack. The trick is to destroy their mounted and use your remaining movement points to return to th city tom recover. So, do not attack with the foot. A variation of this is to use your cannon/artillery to pound the enemy raiders before you hit them. Artillery are great for this as they have the range of 2. This way you can wipe out hordes of enemy with no losses.

I fought a short war with the French this way (cavalry, riflemen, artillery) and I wiped out dozens of his expensive cavalry for losses of 1 or two.

 

[Hobbes]

My experience is to position a stack of attackers (archers, swordsmen, etc.) in a square next to where the horsemen will retreat. Horsemen can't run away when they are down to one hit point.

 

[Sodak]

You might just have to counter with a few suicide attacks if cutting off retreat doesn't work. Sacrifice a few units to kill a bunch of theirs.

Off topic, this thread was started by Loki, last answered by Hobbes. My best friend's two cats are named Loki and Hobbes... :crazyeyes

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by Sodak
You might just have to counter with a few suicide attacks if cutting off retreat doesn't work. Sacrifice a few units to kill a bunch of theirs.

Off topic, this thread was started by Loki, last answered by Hobbes. My best friend's two cats are named Loki and Hobbes... :crazyeyes

Are you trying to tell me that cats are posting on this forum?

 

[loki]

meeeeeeeeeow

Anyway, my two recent posts were closely related. I eventually blocked the horseman rush by putting units between the city and the coast. I then counter attacked... Eyrei was right, they were massing another large force of horsemen, that's why they wouldn't aknowkedge my envoy for a peace treaty. I crushed them defending with an army of elite cavalery and lost two riflemen in the process. (side note: two fortified veteran riflemen in a city, loosing to a bunch of horsemen, this is quite unusual when you look at the odds...)
As soon as his army was crushed, he signed a peace treaty, and i got a free tech (printing press) and 40 golds/turn.
Not that bad

Thanks for your replies.

loki