[NFP] Is Horseman overpowered?

[Lily_Lancer]

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?

 

[japanesesamurai]

You can change this in the game files. I once made scouts with 100+ melee strength. To test AI behavior. It turned out AI doesnt really notice . It continued to treat the scout as a 20.
So thzt probably means if you do lower the horseman strength, AI will over value the unit and possibly seppuku with it

 

[Sostratus]

In my balance mod I set them to 35 strength. There’s a lot of other changes though, including spears at 30 strength.

Horsemen are, just like vanilla civ5, the premier field unit. The only place they fall short is that they can’t benefit from rams or siege towers.
They also don’t upgrade to knights, but at least they get coursers. (Maybe we could have done with just 1 mounted line!)

I think they should at a minimum cost as much as swords, but in general firaxis unit costs don’t price in movement. I think having fast and strong units is okay, but they need to cost more production and maintenance to make up for it.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

You can change this in the game files. I once made scouts with 100+ melee strength. To test AI behavior. It turned out AI doesnt really notice . It continued to treat the scout as a 20.
So thzt probably means if you do lower the horseman strength, AI will over value the unit and possibly seppuku with it

The AI strategy shall be adjusted accordingly.

BTW is there an interface to code AIs for Civ6? I see a lot of mods citing "AI improvement", but none of them really improves the AIs. It's not something only about "building more campuses" etc.

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

They are definitely too strong and have been since the launch of the game. It's more about the movement than just the combat strength to me, but it is weird that Swords and Horses have the same strength. One should be stronger to compensate for lower movement.

 

[monikernemo]

They are definitely too strong and have been since the launch of the game. It's more about the movement than just the combat strength to me, but it is weird that Swords and Horses have the same strength. One should be stronger to compensate for lower movement.

Swordsman gets Oligarchy and Battering Ram bonuses, so I don't think Horseman warrants a nerf. This is why spearman need a buff or at least move Pikeman to somewhere more accessible. On top of that horseman gets 1 movement pillages which is ridiculous.

 

[8housesofelixir]

There is a reason why nomadic people could easily wreak great ancient empires, especially when the majority of those ancient empires hadn't invented stone walls yet.

Powerful Horseman is one of the few realistic parts of the military unit tree in Civ6 (compare to things like fragile Pikeman or Siege Engine upgrade into Medics).

 

[bbbt]

The AI strategy shall be adjusted accordingly.

BTW is there an interface to code AIs for Civ6? I see a lot of mods citing "AI improvement", but none of them really improves the AIs. It's not something only about "building more campuses" etc.

No, that's the entire complaint about them not releasing the AI source code DLLs like they did for Civ 4 and Civ 5. Most of the logic is locked in the code and all that's really accessible is tweaking weights afaik.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Same strength as swordsman but not subject to LOC, while cheaper. You see horses faster than you see iron. AH is a basic tech. Having to research BW messes with district cost.

Only countered by meme(spear)men, and not really.

Upgrades to courser while swords have to wait for niter.

Honestly, what do you think about starting high level AIs with ancient walls, or cities automically getting ancient walls when masonry is researched? AI too sluggish at building them and below Deity they sometimes don't build them at all.

 

[Sostratus]

Honestly, what do you think about starting high level AIs with ancient walls, or cities automically getting ancient walls when masonry is researched? AI too sluggish at building them and below Deity they sometimes don't build them at all

I intend, when I finally finish unit balance 2.0, to bring back the penalty vs cities that mounted units had in civ5. Which, funny enough, was introduced right after launch explicitly because of the horseman rush.
But now Byzantium makes me not want to do that as much...

 

[UWHabs]

Same strength as swordsman but not subject to LOC, while cheaper. You see horses faster than you see iron. AH is a basic tech. Having to research BW messes with district cost.

Only countered by meme(spear)men, and not really.

Upgrades to courser while swords have to wait for niter.

Honestly, what do you think about starting high level AIs with ancient walls, or cities automically getting ancient walls when masonry is researched? AI too sluggish at building them and below Deity they sometimes don't build them at all.

You could even just give them like a -10 penalty when attacking cities (like they nerfed archers), and then suddenly you really can't rush with them anymore.

*another thing I noticed is that they get hurt more when you use the tech shuffle, since it's almost impossible for them to appear earlier in the tree when shuffled than in the base game. If they come late classical rather than early classical, then they become much harder to rush with too.

 

[AriochIV]

Yes it is not effective against walls but by the time of horseman there's not many walled cities.

I find this is a crapshoot -- Masonry is an earlier tech, and it's down t o luck whether the AI has started building walls yet... sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Horsemen don't do well against walls, and they're more vulnerable to ranged fire than infantry. Even if you don't have walls yet, Archers make quick work of Horsemen.

If you reduced the strength of Horsemen, they'd be useless for anything other than an early rush.

 

[bite]

On the whole I would say no, but then I would say yes if we are talking of an early barbarian horsemen surge

 

[DeckerdJames]

A knight is a swordsman on a horse, though the horse is probably armored too. Even so, the horse is mainly for transport. A knight is a fast moving swordsman. A horseman is a warrior on a horse. Therefore a horseman should be a fast moving warrior. The horseman should have around the same strength as a warrior but should cost horses to build. The knight should cost horses and iron. In my opinion, the horses are mainly for mobility but the units that use horses might get extra strength points considering they are more rested since they ride instead of march.

 

[AriochIV]

On the whole I would say no, but then I would say yes if we are talking of an early barbarian horsemen surge

I actually find that kind of fun... it's the only time that barbarians are actually dangerous.

A knight is a swordsman on a horse, though the horse is probably armored too. Even so, the horse is mainly for transport. A knight is a fast moving swordsman. A horseman is a warrior on a horse. Therefore a horseman should be a fast moving warrior. The horseman should have around the same strength as a warrior but should cost horses to build. The knight should cost horses and iron. In my opinion, the horses are mainly for mobility but the units that use horses might get extra strength points considering they are more rested since they ride instead of march.

A horseman is a spearman on a horse, and a knight is a pikeman on a horse. The difference is armor technology.

 

[Sostratus]

The knight should cost horses and iron.

Unfortunately we cannot have units cost more than one resource to build or maintain.
You can, however, have a unit cost iron to build and horses to maintain, etc.

But all of that is undercut by how little strategic resources we get from extraction- when you only get 2 aluminum or 3 oil, you can’t do much compared to civ5 when we could get 6, 8 or sometimes 10 from one deposit.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

I find this is a crapshoot -- Masonry is an earlier tech, and it's down t o luck whether the AI has started building walls yet... sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Horsemen don't do well against walls, and they're more vulnerable to ranged fire than infantry. Even if you don't have walls yet, Archers make quick work of Horsemen.

If you reduced the strength of Horsemen, they'd be useless for anything other than an early rush.

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.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I've always opted for swords in the last year or so.
I can't seem to make the Horseman Rush work like before.
Probably because I am not concentrating on it.
Many games I just play friendly and wait for more advanced units.
This thread has given me some desire to try to go back to using Horseman.
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.
I suppose even if I can't break walls it would be good to kill the AI's army and pillage their lands at the very least.

 

[Chekko]

I would not say overpowered, but I want counter units to have a stronger bonus against whatever they counter.

 

[Pietato]

Yes, they are very strong. Especially when you are Scythia on Pangea (HINT HINT)...