[NFP] Is Horseman overpowered?

[AriochIV]

Yes walls unlock at ancient.

But the real problem is, when will the wall start to be effective?

City defense is based on the most powerful melee unit you have built, and wall ranged attack is based on the most powerful ranged unit you've built.

A vanilla wall at masonry, with only warriors and slingers, is not useful at all. 13 melee strength and 15 ranged strength, still extremely easy to be taken down by horsemen.

You need at least a horseman/swordsman(for melee strength), and an archer(for ranged strength) in order to make a really useful wall that can counter a horseman rush. You also shall distribute that wall to ALL of your cities. And that's much later than the enemy horseman becomes online.

And the above is still vulnerable if your enemy has GG or other bonuses like crusade or twilight valor or Mongol Horde etc.

On any difficulty higher than Prince, the AI will be ahead of you in tech in the early game. I don't think I have ever seen the AI with a Slinger; they nearly always have Archers and Walls tech by the time a rush can reach them; the only question is whether they have built them yet. If they haven't you're good. If they have, walls + archers will destroy almost any normal warrior or horseman rush.

I can't seem to make the Horseman Rush work like before.
I have a difficult time breaking the walls if my neighbor gets them up early.
However, if they don't have walls it is easy to run them over but I always seem to stall out.

Case in point.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

On any difficulty higher than Prince, the AI will be ahead of you in tech in the early game. I don't think I have ever seen the AI with a Slinger; they nearly always have Archers and Walls tech by the time a rush can reach them; the only question is whether they have built them yet. If they haven't you're good. If they have, walls + archers will destroy almost any normal warrior or horseman rush.

Well. I'm doing horseman rush on Deity all day. And the fact is:

1: Human player can easily get an army of 5~7 horseman around T60 with Magnus black marketeer, also combined with GG using blank Civ. If the Civ has some useful abilities the time will be earlier.

2: On Deity AIs start to wall themselves around T80. Sometimes they don't have walls even on T100. Even on T100 there still exist a lot of cities without walls.

This means you can have at least 40 turns for horsemen to rush. You can eliminate quite a few Civs during that time window.

For example, in this game, you can see that AIs are not walled up until T110. So there's plenty of time for horsemen. Although I limit myself by banning chopping and leaning towards the economic side(promote Pingala instead of Magnus as the game was for SV) in early game, I still manage to horseman rush 3 civs and captured some cities of the 4th civ using horsemen.
Also keep in mind that the starting city does NOT have horses in this map, and this doesn't make any difference in the horseman strategy.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/how-powerful-are-the-exploits.659608/

 

[AriochIV]

And if you don't happen to have Horses in your starting city?

Regardless, as I said, nerfing Horsemen so that they can't rush will make them useless for anything else.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

One thing is for darn sure...
I tend to do it wrong and too slow.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

And if you don't happen to have Horses in your starting city?

Well, if you look into that game, you may discover that the starting city does NOT have horses, and this doesn't make a lot of difference as you can always choose to settle your 2nd city beside horses. Horses are quite widespread.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I know I don't make the correct moves or play good enough to make this work but I keep trying.
I played four games up to turn 80 to 100.

All 4 games were Standard Settings, Low Sea, Pangaea Map.
No Game Modes or Mods selected except for the Civ V Skin Mod.

1 Game I had massive land as Rough Rider Teddy and everything.
(Luxuries, Horses, Iron, Good City States, Room for 10 + cities, Great Land... etc etc.)
I only played up to turn 45 because the start was too perfect and seemed simple enough.

1 Game I played as Lautaro.
Horses in the third ring but ugly land with lots of plains, desert and tundra.
The nearby CS did have 2 Iron.
I was able to take 2 cities with warriors and archers before the AI got out more units.
I had to make peace and that AI is crippled now.
Getting out 5 or 6 horses by turn 60, on that map, seemed difficult.


1 Game playing as Malian was a very difficult start for me.
2 nearby Barb Camps all over me by turn 5 and Robert the Bruce Dowed me extremely early as well.
Although he only brought 1 warrior and 1 slinger.
He probably lost units to the horse barbs which were all over us.
I managed to get through that whole thing only losing 1 warrior and even got out a second city.
But the damage was done by turn 80 and Bruce had up Xbows by that time as I was boxed in pretty good.
Not that I wouldn't take over his lands but I don't see how a horse rush was possible.

This current game I am playing as Spain.
As you can see by the screenshot I don't see any horses in the area.
Heck, I don't even have a river lol!
Maybe my build order was wrong here as I went Warrior into a Builder now.
I guess I could switch to a Settler.
I think the problem is more about my poor play compared to what can be accomplished.
Also, I don't really see a lot of players showcasing these kind of maps/starts.
Usually on youtube or whatever they just reroll this type of start.

 

[Galvatron]

It seems to me that horseman is the most imbalanced regular unit in the game.

All Civs can do a horseman rush, and that is surprisingly effective. Horseman cost 53 prods, and have 36 strength and 4 movement, much better than any unit in the ancient or classical era. With the 36-strength, 4 movement and easy to flank, it does not have any real counter. It is even stronger than spears, which shall be a counter of it but failed. Moreover, it has very cheap cost.

It synergizes well with a lot of strength bonuses-- crusade, great general, twilight valor, Commendante General, Mongol Horde, French visibility bonus, Byzantium Bonus, Scythian bonus, Persian bonus, Spain bonus, Ibrahim, etc.

Yes it is not effective against walls but by the time of horseman there's not many walled cities. Also horses are much easier to get than iron, and horseman have very decent advantage against swordsmans.

Is horseman overpowered? Light cavalry of other eras all have similar strength than ranged units of the same era. Courser has 44 while Xbow has 40; Cavalry has 62 while FC has 60. However, horseman have 36 strength, while Archer has only 25.

Shall we reduce the power of horseman? e.g. By reducing its strength to 33, or increase its cost to 110?

I think horsemen should be much weaker bur get a bonus against ranged and bombard units... maybe skirmishers too. They shouldn't be comparable to infantry, that's the knight's job.