The deal wirh Num Cavs is the combination of the free flanking 1 promo, base 20% withdrawal chance + the 50% bonus against melee units. That more than makes up for the 5 base strength against melee units (7.5 base) but does leave them a little weaker vs archers and horse units. You need to have a combination of C1/Flank2 and C1/Shock/Flank1 (9.25 vs spearmen does a good job) units. You need to whip/chop stables to give you 2 promotions to new units. F2 units weaken the archer defended cities and the Shock units serve as city-busters and melee stack fighters. Combined with the charismatic trait giving faster promos very soon you have C2F2 or C1/S/F2 or other specialized units that promote to knights, curas and cav. My current game I ran an HA blitz on Genghis, poetic justice there, and then promoted the leftovers to Cav giving me a huge force of 3 and 4 promo Cav that have run roughshod over Sitting Bull and Charlemagne. If I had had Hannibal and NCs it would have just been worse as I would have had more promos.
My obsession with Horse Archers
- Thread starter Gwynnja
- Start date
blitzkrieg1980
Octobrist
Ah. I see. That's why I did better with regular HAs vs. Numidian Cav. I had stacks of only NCs and they died a lot more than my stacks of only HA. More mixed units needed in the NC stack I guess. Or at least mixed promos.
Due to the single-promo F2 you can also go an unusual route and skip the stables so as to hit before they have much more than archers -- the F2 from just a barracks can be enough to get them started when they hit with the early start that skipping stables (and being Financial) gives.
blitzkrieg1980
Octobrist
Good plan. I didn't skip stables in that game.
True you can go for the F2 alone assault as a fast attack. Works great against archers, is quick and you still get the +50% vs melee. I kind of do that as my first wave of NCs/HAs gets built before I build stables so I can use them as mobile barb busting units but as I have said before I am a promotion hog so I proceed to stables fast when it might be better to bulk produce F2 NCs. Of course the charismatic promo bonus will help make up for that 1 less promo. I may try that tonight if I finish my current game quickly enough.
pretty sure the numidian cav get a +50% vs. melee, the counter for HAs
Airefuego
King
You shouldn't need to skip stables to speed your rush up. Check this:
HAs need Archery, but Stables don't. So research horseback riding BEFORE you research Archery. Then you can build / whip your stables while you work on researching archery. As soon as you have archery you are ready to make your Lvl 2 HAs straight out of the gate, with no delay.
In the game I'm playing right now,as Hannibal, I'm not benefiting pretty much from numidians.
I attacked my frist neightbour early, before I had numidians. I killed him about the time I could start training them, and also was attacked by my second neightbour.
So I didn't have an army of numidians yet, but I started producing them. The war went on and I was training mostly numidians, since they are my UU and Ive read good things here about HA.
They helped me to be winning the war, but I wasn't really making any progress. I had to switch my production to axemens, swordsman and later on cats, to be able to take his cities.
So, in my game, a few of them were good to pillage resources and win field battles. But a stack of other units was much better to finally take their cities (even before counting in cats).
I attacked my frist neightbour early, before I had numidians. I killed him about the time I could start training them, and also was attacked by my second neightbour.
So I didn't have an army of numidians yet, but I started producing them. The war went on and I was training mostly numidians, since they are my UU and Ive read good things here about HA.
They helped me to be winning the war, but I wasn't really making any progress. I had to switch my production to axemens, swordsman and later on cats, to be able to take his cities.
So, in my game, a few of them were good to pillage resources and win field battles. But a stack of other units was much better to finally take their cities (even before counting in cats).
but 15 cata 15 swordman do the same job better lolz
but they take twice as long to get there
only like 1.5 times
you cant expect all tiles are flat hahaif only the Dun of the Celtic give G I Promotion for horse archer , that would be truely imba. but they don't although they said that it give it to all unit produce in that city . Maybe it's balance issue because you can upgrade ur horse archer G III right out the gate with give 50% withdrawn chance and 25% hill attack so ur HA have 80% withdrawn chance
only like 1.5 times
if only the Dun of the Celtic give G I Promotion for horse archer , that would be truely imba. but they don't although they said that it give it to all unit produce in that city . Maybe it's balance issue because you can upgrade ur horse archer G III right out the gate with give 50% withdrawn chance and 25% hill attack so ur HA have 80% withdrawn chance
hmmm, well yeah, horse archers can't get guerrilla promotions, i'm pretty sure that's only available to archery, gunpowder, and scouting units (and the gallic warrior, but that's a whole other animal.) you can give it a general and tactics, but i tend not to fight with those guys.
blitzkrieg1980
Octobrist
This always confused me, too. What exactly does the dun do? Is it just that archers/longbow/xbow start with guerrilla 1? Celtic warriors start with guerrilla 1 anyway, don't they? So it's just a free promotion for archery units / musketmen (since rifles obsolete the Dun)? That's cool. Not as cool as the description lets on, though.
All units that are eligible for the promotion gets it. I think the description says so.
If you settle all your border cities on hills, you're cities will pretty much be impregnable.
Get a barracks and build some archers, take Guerilla II, and all you need is 1 more xp to the next lvl. (which can be useful during a siege, promote all your surviving units for round 2) - Get the Great Wall and see those Great Generals roll in. Settle them and get your city to produce lvl 5 or lvl 6 for overkill units
(nowadays I prefer making several lvl 5 factories if I can, hope for AI settling their generals)
If you settle all your border cities on hills, you're cities will pretty much be impregnable.
Get a barracks and build some archers, take Guerilla II, and all you need is 1 more xp to the next lvl. (which can be useful during a siege, promote all your surviving units for round 2) - Get the Great Wall and see those Great Generals roll in. Settle them and get your city to produce lvl 5 or lvl 6 for overkill units
(nowadays I prefer making several lvl 5 factories if I can, hope for AI settling their generals)
TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
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but 15 cata 15 swordman do the same job better lolz
You do tell some pretty good jokes, like the implication that your stack is better, or even comparable
.First of all, 15 cat/sword is CHEAPER hammer-wise than 30 horse archers (HA = catapult in
cost). It also comes significantly later, so you'll be up against more/better units, but with the considerable benefit of siege. We're talking 2 different wars here.You also can't expect that your little stack of foot soldiers can go in a straight line, or that you'll always have enough siege to bombard AND inflict collateral. Though they can do it more efficiently against more than 2-3 defenders, swords + cats will see a LOT more units they'll have to kill than the HAs. The attrition has a material impact on WW.
Pre longbows, unless the AI has some kind of strong SoD or is shaka, HA's take fewer losses than catapults due to the guaranteed minimum 50% survival. The majority of cities a HA attacks will have <4 defenders. A HA attacking such a city will have ~ 60% survival rate often (and on occasion with combat II you'll be >70% to just kill the archer outright instead). Cats don't come out ahead there.
Both are perfectly acceptable, potentially even easy strategies below deity (in a fairly recent game, I wiped out 3 civs with HAs exclusively on immortal). I've yet to have much luck with either attack on the game's highest difficulty.
blitzkrieg1980
Octobrist
You do tell some pretty good jokes, like the implication that your stack is better, or even comparable
First of all, 15 cat/sword is CHEAPER hammer-wise than 30 horse archers (HA = catapult in
You also can't expect that your little stack of foot soldiers can go in a straight line, or that you'll always have enough siege to bombard AND inflict collateral. Though they can do it more efficiently against more than 2-3 defenders, swords + cats will see a LOT more units they'll have to kill than the HAs. The attrition has a material impact on WW.
Pre longbows, unless the AI has some kind of strong SoD or is shaka, HA's take fewer losses than catapults due to the guaranteed minimum 50% survival. The majority of cities a HA attacks will have <4 defenders. A HA attacking such a city will have ~ 60% survival rate often (and on occasion with combat II you'll be >70% to just kill the archer outright instead). Cats don't come out ahead there.
Both are perfectly acceptable, potentially even easy strategies below deity (in a fairly recent game, I wiped out 3 civs with HAs exclusively on immortal). I've yet to have much luck with either attack on the game's highest difficulty.
That's what I'm talking about! Good stuff TMIT and very true. I'm already plotting my next game that has close neighbors. I actually drooled a little bit over the idea of a horse archer rush! Hopefully I have horses...
You can build Guerilla III Crossbowmen and Musketmen with a Barracks and one of a settled Great General/Theocracy/Vassalage. Units with no hard counter and 50% withdrawal are excellent candidates to do the initial attacks on a stack. You can use your least experienced units to take on the most experienced units in an enemy stack and they will still have a 60-70% chance of survival.
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