Knights

[Norvin_Green]

In my current game as Hatty, with Wang Kon and Pacal as immediate neighbors, and stone in my capital I built the Great Wall and started directing all my ep points towards WK. I used spies and knights to quickly plow through all of Korea. It was fun!!

 

[Artichoker]

Knights dominate the open field due to their high base strength.

I use them most as open field stack defenders - specifically to counter crossbowmen. Due to weak promotions, knights cannot compete with CRIII macemen versus cities, but CRIII macemen get creamed by crossbows. Knights are also good for mobile defense. Each city has its main defenders but if your opponent is purposely or accidentally making it ambiguous which city he is going for, knights help secure multiple cities.

That's a pretty good summary of the positives of the unit. I hadn't thought about Crossbowmen, but you're right, Knights are a direct counter to Crossbowmen.

And their movement helps a lot too. One thing I like to do with 2-move units is to station several in different cities. When I want to move them around, I move the first one to the second city, the second one to the third city, and so on, making it possible to mimic the traveling of one unit over a very long distance.

They're pretty devastating if you follow the bottom path on slow speeds and war a lot. They frequently have the best odds, even attacking cities over CR maces!

But, I seldom use them. The problem is that getting them faster than cuirassers is a bit iffy if you shoot the lib path, and it's extremely unlikely you'll be attacking someone at anything but parity.

It's possible with extremely favorable things like a feudalism slingshot and bulbing machinery and guilds to get them in the early 100's AD, but then cuirassers from lib are only a couple 100 years later, and the requirements for getting the wonders and GPs are far less demanding.

So my feeling is that they're good units but their location on their tech tree limits their use vs alternates.

Yes, I sort of had the feeling people weren't using them often, just like me.

It seems like Knights would come at about the same time as Trebuchets, but since Trebuchets come with Pikemen together, Engineering seems more useful than Guilds for military...and with offense and defensive potential available with Engineering, one has to ask the purpose of taking Guilds for military.

 

[Roxlimn]

Knights can be worthwhile to get in Monarch (and possibly Emperor - needs more testing).

In many cases, the optimum path for expansion goes to a tech lead towards Cuirassers and Rifling, but that is not always the case. Sometimes, it beneficial to attack a Civ now rather than later, even at tech parity. This is true of teching Civs with low unitbuild prob - particularly Mansa. If you can attack him at tech parity, you get good odds for a nice return on the hammers.

I do not wait for Guilds to attack a late medieval war. As I mention in other threads, my personal defining units for a late medieval war are Trebuchets and Pikemen - both available at Engineering, which is THE military tech to get for that kind of a war.

However, I do stake a look out for the possibility of teching or trading for Guilds and Feudalism easily, though neither are strictly necessary for teching upwards to Cuirassers (IIRC - could be mistaken).

Guilds provides your Workshops with +1 hammer output. With Caste in play, that makes Workshop grasslands and plains better hammer output than the equivalent hills - and that time frame is usually just at the time when Slavery output is thinning due to larger city sizes - just the right time to want Workshops. Feudalism, of course, is desirable for the Longbows - essential for defending your positions in a war or a backstab.

Going forward, teching Guilds during wartime encourages you to tech up Gunpowder, Chemistry (for even more Workshop hammers) and Steel after that (for Cannon). Compared to peacetime teching to MT for the Cuirassers, it's significantly slower, but what it does allow you to do is to acquire land through war while having a significant and powerful army - with upgrades to your military arsenal imminently forthcoming. Knights and better Workshops are a great boon for any military endeavor at the time (provided you already have Engineering).

Each of those techs - Guilds, Gunpowder, Chemistry, and Steel provides you with some sort of useful military unit, an economic advantage for production, or both. Given that the Lib path is techable through bulbing, you can tech through Paper and Education largely through bulbing while teching the lower path techs at the same time.

Obviously, putting forth all effort to path up MT gets you there faster, but you have to weigh the speed of that teching against the benefits of having Knights now rather than Cuirassers later. Sometimes, it's good, and sometimes, it's not so good.

 

[bestbrian]

I like them, but I don't beeline them, or build my military around them. If I can trade for Guilds early, great, if I can't, meh, I'll get it later. The only time I would want them is a situation like my current game on a Great Plains map where the teching has been slow and everyone is at military tech parity; they would really help to counter Crossbows. However, I have no horses mad, and I'm waiting for Steel to make with the boom-boom and get me some.

 

[Iranon]

@ Roxlimn: It's definitely viable; before trying things I read here I used to war mostly during the medieval age and focus on economy rather than military in the Renaissance (well, I kept pushing... but at the same leisurely place). I'd say it works equally well up to Immortal.
On Deity I feel more secure in going for a monopoly on Renaissance units though.

 

[Killroyan]

I always use knights in medieval wars. As Bestbrian said, I use them but do not beeline them. I use them as defensive units the most. Now with the new flanking I usually keep some highly promoted flanking II knight even in my modern era stack (riflemen/canon) since the AI will often attack you with a lot of trebuchets/catapults and the knights will still eat them up with a succesfull flanking attack. 3 or 4 succeeding knights will not only damage some attackers but also chew up 6-10 trebuchets in the proces.

 

[JTMacc99]

I like them, but I don't beeline them, or build my military around them.

This is the way I feel as well. I've tried a game where I was able to use knights as the main city raiders well ahead of the AI getting Pikes. The problem was, they simply just aren't good enough against CG lonbows behind even moderate cultural defenses. If I need to wait around for the catapults to roll up to the cities before I can attack them, I might as well build the cheaper CR maces to bring to the party as opposed to knights.

I do find that Knights are very useful as part of the combined arms tactics often required by this game. A couple of them running around just inside my own borders usually make quick work of any attempts to pillage by the AI, and they also do bang up work in compination with a pike, a cross-bow and an mace as a pillaging stack. The others defend and the knights destroy.

 

[timmy827]

What's wrong about attacking with Musketmen? Against castle-bosted cities, I'd do exactly that... against others, they are ideal cleanup troops with a few Drill promotions (after a few Trebuchet suicides) that also make adequate defenders.

Never build trebs for suiciding. Catapults give twice as much splash damage per hammer.

 

[Levgre]

Never build trebs for suiciding. Catapults give twice as much splash damage per hammer.

But more catapults mean more casualties, more upgrades (healing) for the enemy. Plus the catapults hurt the top defenders less, meaning 10 catapults will all go against those same city garrison longbowmen, while after 2 trebs the longbowmen will be out of commission and the other 8 trebs have a higher survival rate.

Trebs are more efficient for city attacking. Catapults are more efficient for out of city attacking.

 

[hal08]

Well the only unit that does during the knights' time is the musketman, and I hope you're not attacking with those, lol.

The point is that several other gunpowder units arrive shortly after knights--rifles, cuirassers, grens.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Never build trebs for suiciding. Catapults give twice as much splash damage per hammer.

I'm curious as to how you arrived at this conclusion. My intuition would have told me trebs are better.

 

[oyzar]

I don't think casualties matter much, losing 1 treb is almost the same as losing 2 catapults. Given that most of the fighting is not against cities anyways(or at least the problem is not taking out well fortified cities, that you can do just as well with cats as with trebs), and cats are strictly better than trebs in the field, i hardly see a reason to build trebs(especially since cats both cost less and give more colleteral damage).

 

[vicawoo]

I'm curious as to how you arrived at this conclusion. My intuition would have told me trebs are better.

Collateral is based off of base strength, not modifiers. So 1 catapult does slightly more damage than a trebuchet. One catapult costs half as much as a trebuchet.

 

[Tephros]

Why not? When attacking longbows, they are superior to maces with the same number of promos.

Mace with 3 promos city raider: (.2+.25+.3)8 + 8 = 14ish
Musketman with 3 promos combat and cover: (.1+.1+.25)9 + 9 = 13ish.

They would be close to equal if the longbowmen are garrison III, as they get an extra bonus versus melee. But yeah gunpowder units have craptacular promos for attacking cities... kind of like knights but not quite as bad.

The immune to walls/castles is pretty worthless unless you're talking about siege units (cannons). Should knock down the defenses either way.

I guess I shouldn't suggest it's totally ridiculous to attack cities with muskets, but it's definitely not their niche. They make better stack defenders, especially if you have hills or forests for cover, and city defenders. Their promotions suggest that. Later I upgrade my CRIII maces to riflemen and destroy everybody.

Never build trebs for suiciding. Catapults give twice as much splash damage per hammer.

With catapults versus strong longbows, there is a large risk that you will do no damage to that unit. While collateral damage is important, damaging the strongest defender is usually even more important. Trebuchets are substantially more likely to survive than catapults, so they end up being cheaper even though each unit costs more.

 

[Levgre]

I don't think casualties matter much, losing 1 treb is almost the same as losing 2 catapults. Given that most of the fighting is not against cities anyways(or at least the problem is not taking out well fortified cities, that you can do just as well with cats as with trebs), and cats are strictly better than trebs in the field, i hardly see a reason to build trebs(especially since cats both cost less and give more colleteral damage).

The thing is, when the defender kills your units it gets more exp. Meaning, it will heal next turn and be a strong defender again, assuming you don't wipe it out. Also means more great generals, although the AI doesn't use them well anyways.

Much higher survival rate, and damaging those top defenders, are what makes the trebs better at city attack. Also, they do reduce city defenses a bit more, which can be useful at times...

 

[Indiansmoke]

Mace with 3 promos city raider: (.2+.25+.3)8 + 8 = 14ish
Musketman with 3 promos combat and cover: (.1+.1+.25)9 + 9 = 13ish.

They would be close to equal if the longbowmen are garrison III, as they get an extra bonus versus melee. But yeah gunpowder units have craptacular promos for attacking cities... kind of like knights but not quite as bad.

Promos (exept combat) are calculated on the defender...not the attacker.

so a CR3 mace attacking a city garrison 3 longbow assuming no culture no fortify would have 8 vs 9 (6 base + 20,25,30 (city defend) + 10 (from cG3 against mele) + 50 (longbow ability) - 20,25,30 -10

a combat 2 cover musket attacking same longbow will have 10.8 vs 12

So about same odds

 

[dankok8]

@Oyzar

I thought the same about cats being as good, but cats won't survive nearly as well as trebs when attacking cities. This allows a sustained offensive with trebs instead of losing 3-5 cats per well defended cities and waiting for reinforcements. Also, what Levgre added are also reasons in favor of using trebs.

Regarding Knights, they are great units... but hard to get early although I've had a few games where I've used them to the max. Except pikemen, nothing can stop them. I do usually go after MT for cuirassiers which is not much further up the tree. Most of the time, you fight longbows either way and +2 strength helps unless you need to wipe out your enemy now.

 

[Death2thepelicn]

Oh yah, it was much easier in civ 2, when you could build up knights, upgrade to dragoons, upgrade to cavalry. Upgrading used to be cheap, and cavalry used to be unstoppable. But these days...I dunno, I often skip 'em. There's just not enough time where they are useful. Pretty soon riflemen are coming out. But this one time I attacked a tank with about ten leftover knights and killed it! I put em to use, lol. But is it true that the more units die, the more unhappy citizens there are?

 

[Artichoker]

Coupled with the Vassalage Metastrategy, gaining access to Knights is only a matter of making a trade of Engineering for Guilds.

 

[AJSmooth]

I agree with the thought that they are misplaced in the tech tree... they should be slightly easier to research. If they were, they would be a valuable asset.

Overall however, I think the Knights greatest strength is its speed. You can stack a bunch in strategic cities to quickly repel invaders or to mount quick offensives. Using them as a bulk army unit isn`t my preference because of pikemen, although if you can do it, it can be devastating with the right unit combo. Using them to pillage towns and other tiles can be very profitable as well.

Ultimately, their fighting strength can become obsolete quickly, while their speed retains its usefulness.