Late Medieval Troop Use

[AThousandYoung]

I'm on a large continent (Continents/Noble/Marathon/Huge) with America (Washington), France (Louis), Japan, China (Mao) and Spain. Monty and Victoria were on the continent too but I took them out. Now I have by far the strongest civilization I know of.

I am skipping Guilds and heading straight for Cavalry. Therefore I have no Knights. What I do have are Horse Archers, Spears, Muskets, Maces, Elephants, Longbows and Crossbows. I'm currently at war with China with the support of Spain and Japan (Toku's being a scavenger). How would you use those troops in an offensive war? Mao's already in bad shape. I've taken three of his largest cities, cutting his territory in half in the process. I plan to take the entire continent over when I can, aiming for a Domination or Conquest victory.

Oh, yeah - I got Mansa Musa by the random selector, and I am playing Vanilla with BetterAI.

 

[johncross21]

build catapults to destroy city defences and inflict damage

pillaging units
horse archer (pillage)
spear/musket (defend stack)

city raider
catapults
maces/muskets
elephant (don't use against spearmen or pikemen)

defender for new cities
long bow

 

[AThousandYoung]

I guess my biggest question is which troops to use for assault: elephants (cheap), Maces (CR promotion) or Muskets (strongest, ignores walls).

 

[12thScout]

I guess my biggest question is which troops to use for assault: elephants (cheap), Maces (CR promotion) or Muskets (strongest, ignores walls).

Muskets - Most expensive, but draftable...not that you have nationlism yet.
Ignores walls : Which shouldn't be there in the first place. Bring cats.
NOT ADVISED. Best as defender
Maces (CR promo) - Middling expensive. CR is helpful in all cases. Has a fairly useful 50% melee bonus. I belive maces have a base attack of 8. A + of 20% of the attack power makes it roughly 9.8. An additional bonus of +50% against any enemy macemen makes it around 14 attack for melee heavy cities. Pretty good, but next to useless against those stupid longbows.
Elephants (Cheap) - Cheap. Suicidal on pikes. No CR promos. Cheap...umm...strength is = to maces. Not stronger than any other unit favored by AI (Longbows get a city defender bonus). Can dislodge knights.

Imo, maces seem best indivdually...

But mixed arms trumps...alot...

Bring a mix of them and LOTS of cats. Infact, theres no problem in CIV (except unhealthiness) that can't be solved with catapults. Muskets = defenders of stack. Eles = Knight killing ppl. Maces = Main city assaulters, Cats = Cakewalk city maker.

 

[Spammurabi]

Mass Catapults

Mass Catapults

Mass Catapults

 

[tycoonist]

lots of catapults and macemen is nearly always the way to go...

 

[SnowlyWhite]

attack order

catas, give them drill(to get a chance to chop abit on the top defender)

maces when they have decent chances

keep ~4 ele, 2 crossbows in the stack, which you should evenly divide when you got the city - half go in the city to defend, half stay with the units that already attacked to defend them...

 

[frob2900]

Are pikemen showing up? If the enemy has engineering/iron and is in a pike kind of mood I definately wouldnt use elephants. Then again if they don't have engineering Elephants are preferable to maces since you can fight off knights and crossbows better.

Muskets are, of course, very powerful and cheaply draftable (like some other posters have noted). If you have nationalism I'd beef up any attack force with drafted muskets. They work wonderfully as attackers (combined with a trebuchets/catas) and as garrison/stack defence units.

EDIT: even if you don't have nationalism yet, a musket or two per stack, "hand-built", can still come in handy as an all-rounder.

I guess my biggest question is which troops to use for assault: elephants (cheap), Maces (CR promotion) or Muskets (strongest, ignores walls).