Pikeman upgrade to Lancers?

[smallfish]

TBH who uses Lancers anyway...

Uh, I do?

They are all kinds of cheap to produce, have one extra movement point than good ole Cavalry, and if you have wide open space to maneuver, you can basically flank your enemy's melee screen to whack out his support units.

 

[patsfan454]

someone at firaxis must have not liked my mongol strat

 

[GenjiKhan]

If Pikeman stills upgrades to Rifleman(or Musketman),they would still carry over that bonus against mounted units . What was the consequence of that in Civ5 Vanilla? Most of the people would try to avoid using Cavalry as much as possible,because they just can't stand against Rifleman with promotion against mounted unit . And such thing is even worse to Lancers,because their role in combat is severely limited by Rifleman with bonus against mounted,they wouldn't fight so many Cavalry(because of the first reason) and because they would still have to be built from scratch . No wonder why so many people said that Lancers were the most useless unit in the game . Making Pikeman upgrades to Lancer is a elegant solution to all these problems . But what about the requirement of horses for Lancers that Pikeman don't have?Well,to upgrade Warriors to Swordsmen,you need Iron and don't see anyone complaining about it .

 

[Barghaest]

If Pikeman stills upgrades to Rifleman(or Musketman),they would still carry over that bonus against mounted units . What was the consequence of that in Civ5 Vanilla? Most of the people would try to avoid using Cavalry as much as possible,because they just can't stand against Rifleman with promotion against mounted unit . And such thing is even worse to Lancers,because their role in combat is severely limited by Rifleman with bonus against mounted,they wouldn't fight so many Cavalry(because of the first reason) and because they would still have to be built from scratch . No wonder why so many people said that Lancers were the most useless unit in the game . Making Pikeman upgrades to Lancer is a elegant solution to all these problems . But what about the requirement of horses for Lancers that Pikeman don't have?Well,to upgrade Warriors to Swordsmen,you need Iron and don't see anyone complaining about it .

Actually, this argument isn't that valid anymore since the Anti-Mounted promos for spears/pikes are lost on upgrade now. So even if they swapped them back to upgrading to Muskets, no anti-mounted muskets apart from Tercio.

The earnable Formation promos DO go with upgrade, but even swords can pick that one anyway...

Despite this, I still like Pikes going to Lancers... I used lancers pre-G&K and now I can start with experienced ones (I was never so pike heavy that they were my frontline units... always a plethora of iron on standard resource settings - it's friggin coal that's scare for me).

 

[Lyoncet]

Lyoncet: The main issue with Knights -> Lancer -> Cavalry is that, IIRC, the Knight -> Lancer isn't much of an upgrade. It also certainly changes the concept of the Knight from heavy cavalry to light cavalry, which I find very jarring.

Aside from UUs (Greece, India, and Carthage), the Horseman unit represents the pre-Hetairoi light cavalry employed in the Classical world before Alexander figured out how to make heavy cavalry practical. (Oversimplified, but that's the gist of it.) And Knights are a world apart from the Cavalry they already upgrade into. Much more whiplash in heavily-armored, slow, sturdy Knights into unarmored, rifle-wielding Cavalry than into lightly armored, lance-and-sword-swinging Lancers. I don't see how the quoted text really represents a problem that doesn't already exist – and so far only one other person (I think) have said they have an issue with. And the suggestion you're refuting would actually help fix the problem, such as it is. If you really don't like the idea of heavy cavalry upgrading into light cavalry or vice-versa, you'll need an entirely new line. So I don't find this argument convincing.

And Barghaest is correct; plenty of units no longer keep their unit-specific attributes when they upgrade, including the unit this thread is about. So also not really a problem.

 

[Fabien]

I like the upgrade path to lances because it makes iron more important in the early game and makes it so you cannot instantly upgrade a front line army out of an anti cavalary unit. Lancers are a good unit on their own and it is a fair upgrade to everyone who has a Lancer UU.

 

[Seek]

The biggest issue with a knight->lancer->cav upgrade path is that Military Science is only one tech after Metallurgy, which would doom the lancer to complete obscurity again.

Also worth mentioning is that Gattling Guns are a more likely front-line unit than rifles for civs going through the upper half of the tech tree - which is probably the majority. In my games I'm always able to secure at least some iron, which means I'll keep Pikes around for garrisons while upgrading LS to Muskets for the front line, eventually transitioning into GGs. If I get Metallurgy in a reasonable timeframe (maybe 50% of the time) Lancers are very useful for their intended purpose (snipers/flankers). So from a gameplay perspective, I think the current upgrade path works well, and is quite elegant as other posters have mentioned. Multiple upgrade paths would of course be ideal.

 

[Necrotaur]

Lancers don't upgrade to cavalry, they upgrade to anti-tank guns with Combined Arms in the Atomic Age. That means you're going to have a Renaissance Era unit sitting through 2 seperate ages until you can transform it into something useful again. They also lose their mobility "advantage" when upgraded.

I think the problem many people including myself have, is that Pikemen, pre-G&K, were used as the main part of some armies due to being a resourceless, dependable unit, not because they had bonuses vs. mounted units. Apparently the devs felt differently, so instead of being a 'line' infantry unit, they are now in the anti-cav/anti-armor chain. They're more powerful and useful than a pikeman, sure, but it seems to go against historical and logical military progression.

 

[Bechhold]

Uh, I do?

They are all kinds of cheap to produce, have one extra movement point than good ole Cavalry, and if you have wide open space to maneuver, you can basically flank your enemy's melee screen to whack out his support units.

Because it's a tech away from the Industrial area and as others have said they are useless for two ages and pretty much a waste of time during the wait.

 

[Gali]

Lyoncet the Persians had heavy cav before the Macedonian era, the greeks didn't Greece proper doesn't support heavy warhorses well as opposed to Persian access to much richer steppe lands. Persian calvary was the force that prevented Greek attack at Marathon for days, and its absence immediately caused the advance. The Greeks did not go north to support Thessaly and Beoetia in Xerxes invasion, even though they would have helped, because the plains there would allow for Persian cav to dominate. Macedonian calvary innovation was tactical. Heavy pinning infantry, which persians didn't have, and sudden decisive calvalry charge. It was Macedonian ability to match Greek style heavy infantry, with true heavy cav and disciplined proffesional troops that led to their dominance. When that pool of troops was weakened by overextension by diadochoi states, it fell to the disciplined, heavy infantry of Rome. That Middle eastern heavy cav tradition is shown with catapracht.

As for the pikeman tolancer that is fine. BY the time it shows up you have access to musketman to replace your frontline and enough exp. buildings to make replacements decent. The fundamental problem is that while Lancer is good vs. muskets and knights and serviceable against rifles and cavs, it ends up facing Infantry landship and is laughable. Either add in another middle unit or fold it into infantry or mounted branch. Having the lancer part makes sense and works. Units with lancer UUs need that buff. No civ has anti-tank UU and by that point its easy to pump out new units as needed.

 

[dragodon64]

I don't really have a problem with pikes -> lances, but if you don't have horses, does that mean that you can never upgrade your pikes to anti-tanks? I'm pretty sure you always have to go through the intermediate units to upgrade, unlike in Civ4.

 

[Seek]

I don't really have a problem with pikes -> lances, but if you don't have horses, does that mean that you can never upgrade your pikes to anti-tanks? I'm pretty sure you always have to go through the intermediate units to upgrade, unlike in Civ4.

Nah, in the Industrial age the AI doesn't value iron or horses so they'll give them to you for free.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I think the main idea now is the following. If you don't have resources for offensive play, you could defend your land with archer units. Spears and pikes are dedicated for anti-cavalry, plus some small usage to fortify between archers and enemy units.

I'm still thinking the upgrade paths are quite lame:
- Many old civs are much weaker now. Especially Germany.
- No real solution for ranged/melee upgrade problem.
- Spear upgrade path varies in resources and abilities too much.

 

[Cajamarca]

To me this is a silly thing to find flaw in. The game is designed now so that all units find uses and have upgrade paths so that they keep their same purpose.

And here is the best part, people find this ridiculous pikeman -> Lancer

But see this as totally logical -calvary -> tank and lancer-> helicopter

Using the same argument that is done in this thread,

"It makes no sense, this guys rides a horse! Now he can automatically drive??"
or
"This is ridiculous! All of my horse units upgrade to something that requires oil! I don't have oil and now I am stuck at calvary!"

Why do neither of these arguments hold with anyone? The reason is because this is new and people fear change. End of topic. The other things make sense to people because thats how they started, and if you think about this change for 10 seconds it follows the exact same logic.

People will stop complaining about this as soon as they have done a few games and adjust to the new path. Wow.

I think the key here was just how many people played the game a certain way: by capitalizing on how overpowered German pikemen were. With beelining and getting dibs on the GL, Civil service made them almost as cheap as warriors, they could totally sweep a continent, then, once you had built up a gigantic tech lead over the other civs on the map, upgrade all the way to mechanized and sweep the board. And because deep down, we all want to play Hitler, but without the anti-Semitism.

The real ball kick is that you MUST build other units to capture cities if you upgrade all the way. Plus, I've never had to use anti-tank guns or helicopters, because I am so terrible at this game that I always play on Prince or sometimes King.

 

[MasterElements]

This is my main point for this issue, having a unit that requires no strategic resource to build suddenly requires a strategic resource to keep up to date. That IS a huge kick in the balls for those who have small armies and cannot afford to replace units every era.
Just a point to historical stuff, it requires more training for a pikemen to learn how to ride a horse effectively and to do so while holding a shorter but thicker pole with ONE hand instead of 2, then to be given a lighter weapon and to do pretty much the same thing; walk up to the enemy and stab them.(seriously muskets were hella inaccurate until rifling)

 

[Fish Man]

Pikeman upgrade to Lancers, are they serious? Someone please tell me this is a bug.
This a complete kick in the balls for my entire infantry line to turn into a garbage unit
no one uses.

And that's why you build swordsmen/LSM instead of pikemen . Don't tell me you don't have any iron since iron is plentiful on the map, and it's especially easy to get since it's revealed at bronze working in BNW.

OT: Pikemen upgrading to lancers make sense since they are both anti-mounted units. It would make as much sense for pikemen to upgrade to riflemen as crossbowmen to upgrade to the latter (don't laugh - this happened in vanilla). Lancers aren't that bad; they have a combat strength of 1 higher than muskets, with anti-mounted capabilities and higher mobility to boot.

 

[Gyra Solune]

Lancers aren't necessarily bad, but utilizing them effectively is inconvenient and they're out of place. If they were the Renaissance upgrade to Knights, I doubt there would be much complaint, since they'd just be the natural progression of mounted units. As it stands, they're a very odd mounted anti-mounted unit that suddenly changes the defensive cheap infantry Pikemen serve well as into an entirely different front-line combat role that Knights are supposed to be.

I think Pikemen should become some kind of Pike and Shot or something in the Renaissance era, and into Grenadiers that serve as an early anti-tank unit. Also AT guns should be made available earlier, since IIRC they're in the same era as the Helicopter which is just silly.

 

[Altisma]

Pikemen are doomed to be apart of a upgrade line nobody wants. You people are too attached to having every unit type carry on to the end game that we get these messed up lines.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I just wish they'd add the option to turn pikes into musketmen OR lancers.
I hate the lancer path with a passion.

edit: God dang it, didn't check the date. Mea culpa. v_v

 

[Loucypher]

Question 1: Why is this year old thread necro'd and nobody seems to notice?
Question 2: Why don't people recognize that while Lancers aren't the best, their upgrades are certainly serviceable in the later eras?