pre-release info New Civ Game Guide: Russia

pre-release info
To trot back to Cossacks for a moment.

By not making them replace other cavalry, that indicates that Russia may be the only Civ that can have both tank units and horse cavalry (Cossack) units together throughout their Age.

That is actually quite a neat bit of game design, because the Soviet Army was the last major military force on the planet to have a large horse cavalry force even after they had formed a large mechanized/armored force.

In April 1943 the Soviet cavalry arm still contained over 230,000 men and horses in 7 Guards Cavalry Corps and 4 regular Cavalry Corps. (at the same time they had some 37 tank and mechanized corps) And the cavalry divisions each had a tank regiment included, so the cavalry could dismount and ride the tanks into battle. More often they rode their horses, though, because that made them a much more dispersed target and still got them to the enemy lines as fast as the tanks did. While the Cossacks and regular cavalry were both frequently photographed waving sabers in a charge, they actually fought far more often with submachine guns, which half of them carried, or on foot with normal infantry weapons - a dismounted horse cavalry regiment was the equivalent of a rifle battalion in strength but with twice the number of heavy machineguns and a third more submachineguns, making them very effective assault troops with or without their horses.

And for reference, the Soviet cavalry arm of April 1943 was probably the second largest cavalry force ever fielded, second only to Chingis' massive mounted Mongolian force that invaded and destroyed the Khwarazmiam Empire in 1219 - 1221 CE.

So much for Cossackish Trivia - back to our regularly scheduled Speculation . . .
 
To trot back to Cossacks for a moment.

By not making them replace other cavalry, that indicates that Russia may be the only Civ that can have both tank units and horse cavalry (Cossack) units together throughout their Age.

That is actually quite a neat bit of game design, because the Soviet Army was the last major military force on the planet to have a large horse cavalry force even after they had formed a large mechanized/armored force.

In April 1943 the Soviet cavalry arm still contained over 230,000 men and horses in 7 Guards Cavalry Corps and 4 regular Cavalry Corps. (at the same time they had some 37 tank and mechanized corps) And the cavalry divisions each had a tank regiment included, so the cavalry could dismount and ride the tanks into battle. More often they rode their horses, though, because that made them a much more dispersed target and still got them to the enemy lines as fast as the tanks did. While the Cossacks and regular cavalry were both frequently photographed waving sabers in a charge, they actually fought far more often with submachine guns, which half of them carried, or on foot with normal infantry weapons - a dismounted horse cavalry regiment was the equivalent of a rifle battalion in strength but with twice the number of heavy machineguns and a third more submachineguns, making them very effective assault troops with or without their horses.

And for reference, the Soviet cavalry arm of April 1943 was probably the second largest cavalry force ever fielded, second only to Chingis' massive mounted Mongolian force that invaded and destroyed the Khwarazmiam Empire in 1219 - 1221 CE.

So much for Cossackish Trivia - back to our regularly scheduled Speculation . . .
And Modern Age Horsemen. everybody else on Earth did not phase out horse cavalry easily until 1944 or even 1950 (I think Chinese PLA has a large number of horsemen and deployed against UN Forces in the late Korean War).
^ Germans did use horse cavalry in Eastern Front.

Also Royal Thai Army even had a considerable number of horsemen cavalry. Armored Fighting Vehicles were organized as separate entity until after WW2 where Cavalry were reorganized into tank units. still 'tank' choices were 'lights' (the first tanks bought ther were light tanks, imported from Great Britain) because.. swampy terrain (including rice paddy fields), and bad roads. MBTs only came by Late 70s (Type 69 made in China but using NATO specifications, including M2 HMG pintle mounts).
 
And Modern Age Horsemen. everybody else on Earth did not phase out horse cavalry easily until 1944 or even 1950 (I think Chinese PLA has a large number of horsemen and deployed against UN Forces in the late Korean War).
^ Germans did use horse cavalry in Eastern Front.

Also Royal Thai Army even had a considerable number of horsemen cavalry. Armored Fighting Vehicles were organized as separate entity until after WW2 where Cavalry were reorganized into tank units. still 'tank' choices were 'lights' (the first tanks bought ther were light tanks, imported from Great Britain) because.. swampy terrain (including rice paddy fields), and bad roads. MBTs only came by Late 70s (Type 69 made in China but using NATO specifications, including M2 HMG pintle mounts).
Chinese PVA in Korean War was mostly comprised of infantry and field artillery. I haven't heard about the evidence of combat cavalry used in Korean War unless some scouts and packhorses. What is your source?
 
And Modern Age Horsemen. everybody else on Earth did not phase out horse cavalry easily until 1944 or even 1950 (I think Chinese PLA has a large number of horsemen and deployed against UN Forces in the late Korean War).
^ Germans did use horse cavalry in Eastern Front.

Also Royal Thai Army even had a considerable number of horsemen cavalry. Armored Fighting Vehicles were organized as separate entity until after WW2 where Cavalry were reorganized into tank units. still 'tank' choices were 'lights' (the first tanks bought ther were light tanks, imported from Great Britain) because.. swampy terrain (including rice paddy fields), and bad roads. MBTs only came by Late 70s (Type 69 made in China but using NATO specifications, including M2 HMG pintle mounts).
I repeat: "last major military force on the planet.". The Red Army kept Cavalry Corps of 2 - 3 divisions each in existence until the early 1950s, and the NKVD/KGB Border Guards had mounted cavalry patrolling some of the really rough border country in central Asia into the early 1960s. No other regular military force in the world had anything larger than a cavalry brigade or single division, as far as I know.

The Germans started the war in Russia with one cavalry division, which was converted into the 24th Panzer Division in early 1942. After that 'German' cavalry was almost entirely anti-partisan rear-area security forces, and a great deal of it was not German, but included anti-Communist Cossacks, Chechens and other non-Russian groups from the Caucasus or the Balkans (they raised two divisions entirely of Balkan Moslems, for example). The Waffen SS had several horse cavalry units, but again, they were not front line combat units except by accident - they spent most of their war slaughtering civilians behind the front in anti-partisan security operations.

The last verified cavalry versus cavalry action in history happened in November 1942, when the 1st Romanian Cavalry Division went head to head with a division of the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps in the Stalingrad operation. The Romanians lost, were driven into the Stalingrad cauldron, and wiped out there. To bring this back to Civ VII, the 3rd Guards was a Cossack unit, formed from the 50th and 53rd Cavalry Divisions of Dovator's Cavalry Group, which was raised from Cossack communities in the North Caucasus in gthr summer of 1941. And for a detail no novelist would dare make up, Lev Dovator was a Jewish commander of a Cossack Cavalry Corps-sized unit . . .

The late Korean War was largely static trench warfare with sometimes major raids back and forth. My father was an intelligence officer in the US Army in that conflict right down to 1953 and he never mentioned any mounted cavalry. One US Marine wrote that he thought mounted troops might be able to ride to a start position, dismount and make a trench raid, and then remount and get away faster than regular infantry, but nobody on either side, as far as I know, ever took him up on it. Any veterans of WWI's Western Front would have probably been able to tell him how incompatible horse cavalry and trenches, barbed wire, and artillery and mortars zeroed in on both sides are . . .
 
^ So Horse Cavalry evolution path. If Light Cavalry ever returns (dragoons and cossacks), at Tier 2 (WW1) should it be carbine cavalry or becomes landships or other AFVs?

(and there's famous Australian Light Horse action in the Levant Campaign.)


And if Australia ever returns. what should their UU be?
1. Light Horse
2. ANZAC Infantry (actual name of the Civ6 'Diggers')
 
^ So Horse Cavalry evolution path. If Light Cavalry ever returns (dragoons and cossacks), at Tier 2 (WW1) should it be carbine cavalry or becomes landships or other AFVs?

(and there's famous Australian Light Horse action in the Levant Campaign.)


And if Australia ever returns. what should their UU be?
1. Light Horse
2. ANZAC Infantry (actual name of the Civ6 'Diggers')
Landships should NOT be in any cavalry - mobile unit line at all.
They had a top speed only slightly faster than a man walking, and a range of less than 100 km before they had to refuel. They were strictly Siege Machines to break through a deep trench line and not capable of anything else.

I don't believe Civ VII makes any distinction between Light or Heavy cavalry or Light and Battle cavalry any more, so all cavalry will probably upgrade to (medium) Tanks. From the few fuzzy illustrations I've seen, it looks like Modern Age cavalry starts as late 18th century or Napoleonic Cuirassiers and ends as medium anks.

There must be something in the middle, and I'm afraid it is the Landship, which is simply a mistake: Cuirassiers should take off their armor, as they did by the middle of the 19th century, and become regular cavalry - very good horses because of the thorough and standard-bred horse lines, carrying carbines and sabers, but increasingly supported by lots of heavier weapons - the heavy machinegun cart or tachanka, for instance, was used from 1918 on by Polish, Russian white and red civil war cavalry, and the Soviet cavalry until the end of WWII.

None of their fine horses or heavy weapons, of course, did them much good if they were caught by enemy aircraft or artillery, neither of which horses could either outrun or hide from very well.
 
Landships should NOT be in any cavalry - mobile unit line at all.
They had a top speed only slightly faster than a man walking, and a range of less than 100 km before they had to refuel. They were strictly Siege Machines to break through a deep trench line and not capable of anything else.

I don't believe Civ VII makes any distinction between Light or Heavy cavalry or Light and Battle cavalry any more, so all cavalry will probably upgrade to (medium) Tanks. From the few fuzzy illustrations I've seen, it looks like Modern Age cavalry starts as late 18th century or Napoleonic Cuirassiers and ends as medium anks.

There must be something in the middle, and I'm afraid it is the Landship, which is simply a mistake: Cuirassiers should take off their armor, as they did by the middle of the 19th century, and become regular cavalry - very good horses because of the thorough and standard-bred horse lines, carrying carbines and sabers, but increasingly supported by lots of heavier weapons - the heavy machinegun cart or tachanka, for instance, was used from 1918 on by Polish, Russian white and red civil war cavalry, and the Soviet cavalry until the end of WWII.

None of their fine horses or heavy weapons, of course, did them much good if they were caught by enemy aircraft or artillery, neither of which horses could either outrun or hide from very well.
1. Then Landships shoudn't even be here AT ALL. Civ6 doesn't have Landships. I don't know what FXis wants to represent? Pre WW2 tanks? or even tankettes?
2. Agree. Cuirassiers is mislabled at best. the name should be the last cavalry unit of Age II, What should be the proper cavalry name of Tier1 Age III ? 'Cavalry'? 'Horse'? or 'Line Cavalry'? in addition to them being increasingly armorless. (and the fact that US Army NEVER USE cuirassiers even once).
3. And should there be Tier II cavalry of Age III? if Landship isn'. if there should be what should it be or looks like?
A. Armored Car
B. 'Modern Cavalry' armed with carbine lenght magazine rifles (and later the same magazine rfiles as original 'infantry' bolt action repeaters that was made with musket lenght barrel discarded their barrel lenghts altogether. and some models (such as Lee Enfield, Mannlicher Carcano, and Springfield M1903) never has full size variants--infantry uses the same magazine carbines as cavalry.
C. Leave blank.
 
There really isn't enough 'room' for two sets of tanks between 1915 and 1940, especially when the first set of 'useful' tanks doesn't appear until the 1920s (Vickers 6-ton, post FT French light tanks). Even with Army Commanders boosting their speed, you'd barely have time to build the units and get them to the front before it was time to upgrade.

On the other hand, 'modern' cavalry from 1850s (first rifled carbines) to 1940 doesn't change much: once they had some kind of rifle, the game doesn't make much distinction between black powder and smokeless powder and other trivia. Of course, once any kind of mechanized armor and airpower was available, horse cavalry became increasingly obsolete except in extreme terrain (like Russian forests, through which mounted men could move where no vehicle could, and the evergreen forest canoply provided perfect cover from air attack)

Since there is no room in Civ VII for two lines of 'mobile unit', I suggest then that the best progression in the Modern Age would be:
Tier One: Napoleonic Cuirassiers (already fuzzily seen) as the 'best' cavalry available at the Start of Age.
Tier Two: Cavalry - unarmored rifled-firearm-equipped. Basically, and like Spain's Tercios in Exploration, Russia's Cossacks are a 'jump-start' for the Age, being about 1 Tier ahead at Start of Age
Tier Three: Medium Tanks - the T-34-85, M4 Sherman and PzKpfw IV already seen.
 
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So, no civilian units can be a thing?
Plus, they do get a Soviet era unique unit. :think:
i guess it confirms we prob won’t get the soviets later on, which kinda sucks, but oh well
 
i guess it confirms we prob won’t get the soviets later on, which kinda sucks, but oh well
I'm not too interested in a 4th contemporary age anyways. Many of them would be too recent to include, and as a result controversial, including the Soviets and the PRC. The Mughals also have the Sepoys as their UU, so a Republic of India would have to find something else too.
 
I'm not too interested in a 4th contemporary age anyways. Many of them would be too recent to include, and as a result controversial, including the Soviets and the PRC. The Mughals also have the Sepoys as their UU, so a Republic of India would have to find something else too.
“later on” meant soviets as an alternate era iii civ in dlc, not “later on” as in a fourth era

to the point of this and the sepoys though, it’s a little bit unfortunate that they’re using these meaningfully themed era iii civ’s as conduits to represent modern nations without calling them by name to avoid controversy—sepoys and soviet missile launchers have nothing to do with imperial russia and the mughals but if they just end up being modern russia and india lite that’s unfortunate. especially since they have their own compelling units. The mughals mounted cannons on elephants and crossbows on camels.
 
“later on” meant soviets as an alternate era iii civ in dlc, not “later on” as in a fourth era
I don't see how Russia and a Soviet Union would exist in the same age, personally.
to the point of this and the sepoys though, it’s a little bit unfortunate that they’re using these meaningfully themed era iii civ’s as conduits to represent modern nations without calling them by name to avoid controversy—sepoys and soviet missile launchers have nothing to do with imperial russia and the mughals but if they just end up being modern russia and india lite that’s unfortunate. especially since they have their own compelling units. The mughals mounted cannons on elephants and crossbows on camels.
Sepoys were used by the Mughals, though I guess they used the name Sipahi, but that's the same name of the more familiar calvary that the Ottomans used.
 
I don't see how Russia and a Soviet Union would exist in the same age, personally.

Sepoys were used by the Mughals, though I guess they used the name Sipahi, but that's the same name of the more familiar calvary that the Ottomans used.
fair enough re: Sepoys, I didn’t know that so fair play. the default re: sepoys for me is usually the british-era troops.

Russia and the Soviets could exist in the same age in the same way that the Nromans and exploration era England can. either way it’s a moot point since the missile launcher is soft confirmation of them not doing the soviets
 
fair enough re: Sepoys, I didn’t know that so fair play. the default re: sepoys for me is usually the british-era troops.
Yeah, officially the name Sepoy wasn't used until the British started using that name. But considering UUs are supposed to last the whole age, that's probably why they are using that unit so they can eventually look like the Sepoys of the British Raj and Republic of India late game.
Russia and the Soviets could exist in the same age in the same way that the Nromans and exploration era England can. either way it’s a moot point since the missile launcher is soft confirmation of them not doing the soviets
Well, I doubt that we'll get a proper England civ either. I'm sure it will just be the Normans into the British, at least for the island of Britain. Though I have a good feeling Exploration Ireland will get in. Scotland could always return, but I wouldn't mind if they sat out this iteration.
 
Russia and the Soviets could exist in the same age in the same way that the Nromans and exploration era England can. either way it’s a moot point since the missile launcher is soft confirmation of them not doing the soviets
The Russians and the Soviets were basically the same people, they are a direct continuation of each other.

Meanwhile, the Normans kept on existing elsewhere even after their dynasty stopped rulling in England. England existed before the Norman conquest and the Normans could have not conquered England and kept on existing. They conquered also the Kingdom of Sicily and lands in the Levant, not just England. Moreover, they never spoke English nor considered themselves English. England was just one of many Norman possessions.
 
I don't see how Russia and a Soviet Union would exist in the same age, personally.
Well, there's the looming idea of civ personas. They would be less demanding to introduce compared to a new set of civs for another age (which would also lower the number of civs per chapter...).
 
The Russians and the Soviets were basically the same people, they are a direct continuation of each other.

Meanwhile, the Normans kept on existing elsewhere even after their dynasty stopped rulling in England. England existed before the Norman conquest and the Normans could have not conquered England and kept on existing. They conquered also the Kingdom of Sicily and lands in the Levant, not just England. Moreover, they never spoke English nor considered themselves English. England was just one of many Norman possessions.
the soviet union may have been largely focused in and led by russians but that’s a function of the pre-soviet imperial russian geography and the outsized population that russia had in comparison to the other SSRs. Relative to its predecessor and the successors, the soviets are definitely not just a continuation of russia—there was more representation for non-russian minorities, etc. regardless of how you feel about the USSR.

Also, the reason I brought up the Normans is, while you’re correct, in civ the Normans are more a function of medieval England than anything else.
 
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