How Strong are Cuirassier Attacks?

[Gumbolt]

Sounds good. I think on Monarchy it's more than possible for sub 600ad.

Expanding quickly to 5-6 cities is very common. Some players can do 5 cities by 2000bc.

For fun try this over powered Monarch level start. I would be settling on the plains hill for hammers because of your traits.

Such a fun leader and imp and /phi are good traits if you use them together.

 

[earthy]

I tried to give that save a go, but both times I tried to load it my game crashed. Any idea what might be causing that? Only using BUG mod.

 

[Gumbolt]

Hmmmmm. Loads fine for me. I think i have bug and Bull. Maybe someone else can try it and let me know.

Must of used some form of mod. As when I tried to switch to another save it crashed/ didn't load properly.

It's a strong starting save. Which could allow a nice cuirs rush or use of his UU.

 

[earthy]

are there any commonly agreed upon scenarios where it would be best to not go for cuirassier attack? maybe low commerce starts where cuirs would be too delayed? and in that scenario, what' are the best alternatives for waging war around the 1000-1100AD mark?

 

[Zavior]

The obvious is of course if you have no horse/iron and can't trade for those.

Trebs & maces are effective, but usually the order you tech stuff doesn't really go that way as you could be so close to cuirs you won't bother.
If you happen to go for maces you can upgrade to incredibly effective CR rifles later on, which is quite fun.

If you are really desperate and lack both iron & horses but still need to attack, you can attack with cats/trebs and longbows.

 

[Hamilton321]

Seeing this thread reminded me of something from one of my games from a few months ago when I was able to pull off a very poorly prepared cuirassier rush. It was emperor, large, big and small, Elizabeth. In that game I did not have enough to capture the Indian capital without having to use spies and I forgot to place my espionage points on Asoka so there was a stalemate for awhile. I was, however able to capture the city by accidentally luring all but two of the defenders out of the city with wounded units which the AI hoped to pick off. My game showed that in a rush one can occasionally lure the AI out of their strong defensive position, even without too much planning, allowing one to capture the defensive position without many casualties.

 

[dankok]

I'd go for a stock Cuirassier rush most of the time even as Ottomans. Other than the fact you can draft Janissaries which can be useful to raise an army of them quickly, they are a unit with a short shelf life and I never found them that impressive. They actually get worse odds than Cuirs against LB's in cities and they are 1-movers. Certainly not a bad UU but never found Jans to be OP or anything like that. I recently won Conquest as Suleiman on Emperor didn't have Horses nearby IIRC and my expensive Jans died in huge numbers until I brought Cannon into the fray. And at that point, it was the Cannon doing the heavy lifting anyways.

 

[Gumbolt]

Always fun to set yourself rules when you play. They are good defenders due to their 25% bonus. On Monarch level they should be fun. Sometimes a break from cuirs can be nice. They can be upgraded to rifles. Albeit they won't get CR like mace might.

Even on monarch a jan/pult/treb attack should be viable. Albeit 2mp units are much quicker. HA on monarch level could overrun a pangea map.