Is Melee really as bad as everyone says?

[MrDanielXY]

Lets say we have 2 ppl at war. Everyone gets 6 Units to Choose. Crossbows, Longswords, Pikes or Knights. What Composition would be optimal?

2 Pikes and 4 Crossbows would be the choice of many as I assume.
But wouldnt a Player with 6 Longswords beat that army?

We assume the fight is in open territory
When everyone Unit has 2 Promotions before the fight the longswords should get:
Shock 1 (20% when fighting in open terrain) - this ones works offence and defence
Cover 1 (25% against range attacks)

The Crossbows would take
Accuracy 1 (20% for ranged attackes in open terrain) - only offence
Accuracy 2 (20% for ranged attackes in open terrain) - only offence

Thus Its Crossbow Offence 18*1,4 = 25,2 vs Longsword defence 21*1,45 = 30,45
And Longsword Offence 21*1,2 = 25,2 vs Crossbow defence 13

Vs. the Pikes they would win as well. If he other player takes Swords instead of Pikes its stalemate vs those (but than he crossbows would be even weaker against knights).

Maybe Im missing something. I know against the AI Crossbow wins as his damaged swords would try to heal instead of charging but against a human player it seems the longswords win.

 

[VainoValkea]

Key words are zones of control (preventing the enemy from reaching the crossbowmen), troop rotation (making sure the healthy ones take the hits instead of the wounded ones) and defensive positions that hinder the enemy's movement (rivers, hills etc). In open terrain the longswordsmen would do fine, but even the slightest hindrance to free movement would start tipping the scales in the favor of pikemen and crossbows in a good position.

 

[anthropophage]

Crossbows can make much better use of terrain.
You're right in saying that they lose if they try going muzzle to muzzle with swords across open ground, but they win in just about any other circumstance.

 

[Moriarte]

Maybe in 4 crossbows/2 swords versus 6 words the latter would win. How about 12 swords versus 8 crossbows/4 swords? Clearly the pure swords team doesn't stand a chance.

 

[Fire0rb]

As already said on open plains terrain with no hills the range units loose of course vs melee units because the idea of range units is that the enemy cannot get to your range units while you shoot them.
Just imagine a 2 tiles wide choke point where the two pikeman fortify, your longswordmen are running towards them, attacking two at a time but cannot kill them. and the 2-4 crossbows behind just rape them...

 

[MrDanielXY]

Ok I guess pure open terrain is ofc theoretical.
So.. Optimal choice of 6 units would indeed be 2 pikes 4 crossbows?

 

[Roxlimn]

Depends on terrain and what you want to do with it. Lots of players default to that, because it's flexible on a lot of terrain. Not necessarily optimal. If Attila is rushing you with Rams and Horse Archers, you actually want a bunch of Horsemen.

If I'm dealing with enemy archers and siege weapons, I like getting a horse unit or so to get easy flanking bonuses and "free" kills.

 

[notam]

depends who attacks first. if i can get 3 hits one crossbow with long shords then i would kill right there one crossbow off.

The same things goes otherway if could shoot 4 times with crossbows against longshords, then the 4 crossbows would do so much damage to the longswords, that they do not have chance... 2 pikes.. well they are only there to take hits, but if 3-4 shords could hit it first clearly it would kill a unit... That makes allready not even fight.. my 2 cents.

But basicly 2 pikes to control the swords and keep moving crosses away from longswords...

 

[Ximixanga]

Like most everyone has said, terrain comes into play here significantly. Melee will always beat ranged in a straight fight, but once you add in other bonuses/penalties, the odds start to shift onto whoever has the most pluses. I think this is true of any other kind of unit, even more when certain types of units receive bonuses against another kind.

Despite that, I've never found myself building ranged units over melee. In an ideal attacking group, I'd have far more melee than ranged units, roughly 3:1. I feel like I must use a larger attacking force if I am going to overwhelm the opponent and ranged doesn't give me the punch that I need to do that.

Melee isn't bad, it is that ranged has a bit more versatility to its use. If terrain is an issue, certain promotions like drill and amphibious can make life much easier. I consider Drill a must on most of my melee units, unless the map I'm in is exceptionally flat and free of trees and marshes. Zone of Control is also very important, considering that ranged units can attack before melee can move in if they're impeded by another unit's ZoC.

ZoC + good terrain = melee is at a disadvantage in most any case.

 

[evilcat]

Your math looks solid, but can someone explain me why: most of the time im building composite/xbow army using one horseman to enter ruined city?

Im doing something wrong? The advantage of bow is that you can concentrate fire, and shot without taking hits yourself. Hardly ever AI is able to hit my ranged unit with more than 2 meele, and 2 meele is not enought to take down full health unit. And after that i could take it back, and finish opresors. Ranged just gives more movement options.

 

[Falconiano]

The issue is the promotion tree imho.
I say Melee should have:
Cover 1 => Cover 2 => March => Siege => Mobility
Drill/Shock 1 => Drill/Shock 2 => Drill/Shock 3 => Blitz => Mobility

You go with path 1 if you use them as city attackers and path 2 to use them as unit-killers.

 

[steveg700]

Im doing something wrong? The advantage of bow is that you can concentrate fire, and shot without taking hits yourself. Hardly ever AI is able to hit my ranged unit with more than 2 meele, and 2 meele is not enought to take down full health unit. And after that i could take it back, and finish opresors. Ranged just gives more movement options.

You've hit the nail on the head. Units with a range of 2 are easily able to mass-fire on a target and destroy it rapidly. The analysis or range-versus-melee has to take that into account. Some people do a one-on-one analysis (e.g. a crossbow shoots a pike, and then gets rushed by said pike), which really ignores the issue.

A couple of easy fixes would be to make the cover promo more readilya available to meee. I've often preached that iron working should unlock a phalanx or testudo unit instead of the current swordsman, and that unit would have a defensive bonus against ranged units.

Alternatively, ranged units could have a defensive "overrun" penalty against mounted units, which is the traditional bane of artillery (or, conversely, mounted units could have a "fast-moving target" bonus against ranged units). Right now, the situation is that archery is unchecked, mounted units are overchecked (by spears and pikes), and iron units just of exist as brief blips on the radar.

 

[evilcat]

It would be nice if Horse units have bonus against ranged units when attacking.
Of course that is so rock-paper-scissors, but considering that warfights is just a layer of Civ then R-P-S is good enought.

 

[Bl01_Z]

The current state of melee and mounted units is just sad compared to ranged units. On emperor/large map/continents/standard speed I was able to control my entire continent and wipe all 5 other civs on my continent off the face of the earth by mid renaissance era using an army mostly comprised of composite bowmen/crossbows and a couple of siege towers (which can only attack cities). I only built a melee unit once I upgraded my siege towers to trebuchets bc I needed one to take a city since the upgraded siege towers cannot longer act as melee

 

[Roxlimn]

evilcat, steveg700:

I think that the ability to concentrate fire is greatly exaggerated. In a defensive war, enhanced defender mobility through the road network can easily allow a bunch of horse units to attack the same unit without retaliatory attacks, which is more than can be said for ranged units.

The true strength of ranged units is that they can shoot without being damaged, making them equivalent to melee March units with slightly weaker attacks. Anyone who's used March melee units will know how much of an upgrade that is.

This strength is greatly enhanced at high difficulty settings where you have lots of enemy units and few defenders - the ability to attack without being damaged (and stay in safe positions to boot) is remarkably good then.

On the offense, I would say that siege is a better unit than Ranged, for the +200% City Attack bonus. I would not use crossbows for sieging then. Not strong enough. I'd upgrade what I already had, but I won't build more unless I'm critically low on ranged units. In this case, I would say that it's less optimal to build ranged than more siege and more melee to tank the siege units.

That is, if I had Trebs, I would build those instead of crossbows for siege situations.

 

[CornPlanter]

Is Melee really as bad as everyone says?

Yes.

Your calculations don't take into account focus fire, zones of control, terrain features and so on.

 

[Resipsa]

1 Keshik to kill them all; what's that tell you?

 

[BroOfTheSun]

All this talk about ranged units, makes me want to play a game using only melee units. The melee unit challenge. Should be fun. You have to take cities by just overwhelming them and sending in waves of suicide melee units.

 

[CornPlanter]

All this talk about ranged units, makes me want to play a game using only melee units. The melee unit challenge. Should be fun. You have to take cities by just overwhelming them and sending in waves of suicide melee units.

Do it.

Oh, and the best leader for such a challenge is definitely Elizabeth, purely because trolling people is good

 

[BroOfTheSun]

Do it.

Oh, and the best leader for such a challenge is definitely Elizabeth, purely because trolling people is good

Oh I will, but I have another challenge I need to beat first, which is playing with settings:
Earth Map
Huge
22 Civs
Epic speed
Probably King difficulty

Domination only victory condition. Have to take out all civs, and plant a city in order to take up as much land on the map as possible. Sorta like old domination victory, and the condition is to take up like 95% of land.