Hybrid army

[sinimusta]

I've read from some threads that you should use either pure mounted or pure one-movers as your offensive stack.

However imo in some situations you end up using both. As an example I've got a viking game on emperor, where I conquered my first target with HAs, second with elepult and third with cuirs+ outdated siege. For the last one I had smallish stack, about 15 cuirs going after Egypts offensive stack which was fighting in Zulu lands. At the same time my siege went after Egypts border cities protected by elephants and some swords. After killing egypts forces my cuirs conquered some cities without siege but to avoid losses I ended up bombarding down defenses for most cities which obviously slowed the conquest. Save is attached.

So what could be the benefits of using both a mounted stack and one-mover stack? Your mounted stack can go after enemy's offensive stack if it's aboard, it can deny strategic resources, snipe weakly defended cities, come to help the siege stack with well-defended cities and it can pillage to fund the war effort (good option if you're going to cap the target just for conquest win). But with your snail stack you can avoid high casualties by bombarding the defenses, use collateral dam, and you can avoid using mounted units against their counters (well not completely but more than with pure mounted). So is it possible to get the best of both worlds? btw snail stack with some knights for stack defense can still be viewed a snail stack imo (referring to another thread about knights).

Major drawbacks that come in mind:
-teches: you can't lib both steel and mil trad
-your now weaker mounted stack can be countered with pikes+collateral initiative

So you generally don't plan to have both mounted and snail stack but things might lead to that, bad diplo can result into war before libbing cuirs for example.

 

[Izuul]

1-move army means siege, and siege usually comes into play where a mounted army cannot take cities efficiently on it's own. There's no reason to mix 1-movers into a mounted army, but a handful of mounted is good in a 1-move stack. They can do things like pillage as the army moves and pick off stray units and return to the stack on the same turn. Knights can even be useful defensive counters in a medieval army.

 

[shakabrade]

I usually take easy cities with mounted and closer hard cities with siege. You can plan it so that happens really quickly.

 

[lymond]

Mounted attacks are about tactics. Once you learn how to use their special tactics you will have more success and fewer losses. The emphasis is with speed, ofc. Things like forking cities confuses the AI and draws their units out into the fields for easy picks. Often you can take 2 or 3 cities on the first turn depending on the layout and cap AIs quickly. Spies are very helpful vs. tougher nuts but not always needed.

As for snail stacks, there's certainly no problem in throwing a few mounted in there for reasons folks above have mention. I nice mix of units is nice for countering as long as you bring a generous helping of siege and your main offense power unit.

 

[Choggy]

Cannon will extend the life of cavalry all the way to infantry after a cuirr/cav stomp.

 

[Seraiel]

No offense, but Cavs are the real Deal (and best supported by Airships imo) , they don't need Siege in any Form, as they seem to survive every fight because of their ridiculous 30% withdrawl chance.

Even against Infantry / MGs, losses are ok if one has Airships.

@ Lymond: Either I have really bad luck, or, something must be totally different about your games. In the last Standard / Normal games I played, AIs had like 8-12 units in every city. Would have liked to see, how someone wants to take those with Horse Archers.

Anyhow, the tactics you describe are good, they're the only thing that let the weak early mounted units win at all. Anyhow, I think that luck is a great factor, often, empires don't allow to be conquered that easily, and attacking with 3 stacks at that time? You have guts sir XD .

 

[Choggy]

Cav + Airships against AI cities with Infantry/MG's and a culture bonus of 60%+? That's still going to hurt, even with that 30% withdrawal chance. A lot of it depends on map size though - on larger maps with lots of cities pumping out lots of cavalry and where unit movement speed is the most important thing then, yeah, the attrition rate is worth it because you're replacing them as fast they die, but on smaller maps with fewer cities building units and where unit movement speed isn't so important because the AI civs aren't 30-40 moves away then using Cannon to take down a city's culture defence first before sending cavalry in against the likes of Infantry/MG's means fewer losses and allows you split your cavalry into smaller multiple stacks.

 

[Seraiel]

You're right with what you say, but I still think you underestimate the power of Cavs + Airships. Against an MG in a 60% City, Cavs got iirc about 50% chances to survive the fight, after Airship bombardement has taken place. Maybe even a little higher. That's not less cost-effective than Horse-Archers against Walls + Hills Archers.

It's not that I advice to build Cavalries + Airships against cities packed fully with MGs, just like Lymond doesn't advice Horse Archers against Walls + Hills cities, it's just that it does work quite well in most situations, and the opportunity cost of siege is having a city later meaning reaching domination later / getting reinforcements later and similar.

Imo a few units stand out, like Quechuas, Immortals, War Chariots to name the unique ones, or War Elephants, Trebs and Cannons to name the non-unique ones, those are the deal when needing maximum -efficency.

Mounted units however are they stronger than they appeal, and due to 1st strike immunity, 2nd promotion and the low strength of their counters.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Agreed with the last super Saiyan.
I've seen Cavs + Spies vs Infantries in the recent Pericles Deity game. With a little cannon support for collateral damage, Combat 2, Pinch Cavs quickly have 60% survival odds. Of course, Airships have much better range/speed than Cannons (and no collateral, and weaker damage, and can be intercepted by Machine-guns).


@sinimusta:
Stack, stack, stack, army, hybrid.
Terms are misleading (no problem). Here's some categorizing:

What it is: Unit composition.
The form it takes: Monostack (= 1 unit type). Powerstack (=SoD; weights in hammers). Squad. Stray unit.
What the units are tasked to do: Capture. Harass. Defend. Counter. Clear units.
The pool units are chosen from: Siege. Support. Counters. Raiders.
Attributes: strength, mobility, specialty.

An important thing to consider @Unit composition is the tech level of your units.
In some instances, varied units are all equally advanced and, thus, player can choose units to meet varying needs.
In other instances (especially after bulbing), a tech treshold has been reached/broken through and a single unit is extremely advanced compared to the others available. This is the case where monostack = powerstack. It can happen with Swordsmen vs archers/chariots but is most typical of the Renaissance mounted warfare.


I do believe the monostack is (or should be) the exception. Only an opinion.
Monostack = Power! However, I do suspect it is wasteful in ressources.
If one has many tasks for his units, then variety is the norm. Unit composition is the norm and the monostack is but one of the forms it can take.

 

[Choggy]

You're right with what you say, but I still think you underestimate the power of Cavs + Airships.

It's not that I advice to build Cavalries + Airships against cities packed fully with MGs, just like Lymond doesn't advice Horse Archers against Walls + Hills cities, it's just that it does work quite well in most situations, and the opportunity cost of siege is having a city later meaning reaching domination later / getting reinforcements later and similar.

Don't get me wrong, I love Airships...they're one of the best and most versatile units in the game, get enough of them built and they're like having siege collateral attacks for free. Even better is that they never become obsolete because of their reconnaisance range. TMIT says he uses them to identify AI civs with nukes (not that I've ever had an issue with AI nukes but it's still good to know).

You're completely right in saying that on paper Cavalry can go up against Infantry and MG's - they don't get a bonus against Cav and Combat 2 Pinch Cavalry will beat them more often than not unless they've got garrison bonuses.

But (and I apologise if I'm sounding like a bit of cav/cannon fanatic ) but using cannon with cavalry can extend their usefulness well into the moden era. Cav stomping will smash AI cities all on their own until the AI gets rifling. After that though even with Airships I reckon I still lose 2 cav for every defender unless I can get rid of those culture defense bonuses. If I've got enough EP for spies then great, but otherwise that's when I use Cannon. Throw in a couple of defending rifles or infantry into that 6 cannon stack whose job is solely to bring down the AI's cultural defense bonus and they can then move on to the next city whilst I'm healing up those cavalry attackers before catching up with the Rifle/Cannon stack that are busy bringing down that next city culture defenses. And since the cannon/rifle stack never loses units, it's only an initial investment in hammers, once they're built then you can carry on building cavalry to replace the ones that die just like you usually would in a cav rush. The 1-move cannons don't really slow down a cav stomp using them like this.

 

[sinimusta]

Choggy, that sounds a lot like the way I used cats and cuirs in the game i mentioned in the opening post.

 

[Choggy]

It's a good tactic! Although it's a bit different with Medieval units because once the AI get Engineering they inevitably build castles and cats have a tough time bombarding those cities.

 

[Seraiel]

Level 3 Catapults are almost as good as Trebuchets if Bombardement is the only thing they shall do!

 

[Si_Lurker]

With fast units (stack of 30) you can take out entire civ within few turns.
- AI is bad at defending against fast stacks
- also reinforcements flow in faster
- you can pillage more effectively while others heal (you can have 30 units in enemy territory paying for themselves)
- you conquer faster thus you need to build less units because opponent is out sooner and doesn't build units and your war is over sooner


You can try a test game: Egypt or Mongolia, noble, 5 civs, small inland sea, always war, no tech trading. Build order: barracks, war chariot ad infinitum. A stack of 40 war chariots will even take out the final few cities defended with longbows.

Now try same game with slow stacks consisting of axes/swords/maces

 

[Seraiel]

A Stack of 30 units imho is no argument, because those are just so many, that the game has been won a lot earlier.

In my current game, I have a Stack of 30 Cavs. You're speaking of ancient units, I attack with those when I have like 5 and conquer someone with them, 30 is a number I reach when it doesn't really matter anymore what I'm doing, or better, when what I'm doing only changes if I win a few turns earlier.

 

[VSarius]

Once Air Units come into play, both Siege and 1-movers are obsolete in my opinion. Cavalry with 8 Airships (4 is simply too few to do enough damage in my opinion, might as well just use Flanking 2s to weaken Top Defenders) and later Tanks with Bombers or Nukes is just great.

Knights are about the only 2-mover I would mix in, due to the unique nature of medieval war.

 

[Seraiel]

I cannot remember whenever a Knight of me faced combat, because of Cuirrassiers being available in the same time (using bulbing techniques or whatever) , and because of not having played a Knight-rush yet.

I've seen Kovacsflo end games with them, so I guess, that they aren't too bad against non-Castle cities.

 

[Choggy]

I cannot remember whenever a Knight of me faced combat, because of Cuirrassiers being available in the same time (using bulbing techniques or whatever) , and because of not having played a Knight-rush yet.

I've seen Kovacsflo end games with them, so I guess, that they aren't too bad against non-Castle cities.

I've never tried a knight-rush either, guilds is an awkward tech to beeline and the AI all seem to go for it so it doesn't have much trade value.

I'd love to see a sucessful knight rush though - does anybody know of a youtube video of one?

 

[Strickl3r]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfsSLjm7J_A

 

[Fippy]

Mounted are not only about unit speed, but also getting there fast.
HAs are usually break out units, you always want to break out of bad positions quick.
Cuirs can win the game already, if you spam them and attack so quick that no AI makes Rifling.
Cavs can usually finish. Deity i mean, on Imm. you can no doubt end games with Cuirs more often than not.

All about doing just 1 thing, that's why AIs usually lose isn't it?
They are not focusing on 1 useful strat, you don't have to make that same mistake..city with 150 turns whip anger? Yep, then you did Cuirs/Cavs right.
If you worry about losing too many units, it's not the strat for you.