Pikeman upgrade to Lancers?

Threepwood: It certainly does change the balance aspect of multiple Civs. Any Civ with a Lancer UU (IIRC, Ottomans and Sweden) got a huge upgrade in power from this.

Any Civ that has a unit that upgrades into a Lancer now (that would be Hoplite, Immortal, Landsknecht, upgraded Maori Warrior / Jaguar Warrior, IIRC) now has to determine what they would prefer.

 

I really miss my Immortal-Mech Infantry. Just saying. Also Pitish Warriors should upgrade into (Long)Swordsmen, since they are clearly not anti-cavalry.

 

Wuddel: Oh, I completely agree that Pictish Warriors should be either Warriors or Swordsmen.

 

Putting Lancers on the upgrade path is good. Putting them where they put them is not good. These can both be true, so this line of thought really talks around the point more than it addresses it.

 

Lyoncet: Well, given the (apparent) restriction of one unit upgrading to only one other unit, where would you place Lancers on the upgrade path?

 

Landsknecht have no special promotions to transfer (they're just an improved/cheaper version of Pikemen that carry nothing over to the next unit no matter if it's Lancer or Musketman) there are several UU that follow this pattern - Roman Legions and Ballistae are another example that springs to mind...

Maori/Jaguar upgrade to the Sword line unless you get an upgrade via Goody Hut.

 

Barghaest: Right. I meant by 'upgrade Maori...' one that got hit by the Goody Hut randomness.

I was just listing all of the Spearmen/Pikemen UUs that I could remember.

 

I've seen one mention of making a "light cavalry" line, which I think isn't the best solution, but it's one way of doing it. Alternately, it could be put between Knights and Cavalry, which currently is a huge gaping hole that Lancers happen to fit right into. If you add a line infantry like the Tercio as the early gunpowder anti-cavalry and for Pikemen to upgrade into (and then later upgrade to anti-tanks), you no longer need the Lancer to fill that role and it can be just the next step along the way, possibly with an extra movement/sight to keep its light cavalry feel. Fixes a slew of problems. Doesn't really break anything or make anything less engaging/fun. Easy. Haven't really seen any objections past "it's fine the way it is" (which obviously plenty of people disagree strongly with). Seems pretty sensible.

Although ideally something like this would also be accompanied by multiple upgrade options for some units, but that's a larger issue than just where Lancers fit on the path.

 

Instead of light cavalry or a specific anti-cavalry unit, why not give all infantry bonuses against cavalry if they are fortified? Then pikemen could upgrade into muskets, and have knights upgrade into lancers?

 

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.

This also does nothing to fix the issue that Horsemen have, in which the ubiquitous nature of the Pikemen make them completely awful.

 

TBH who uses Lancers anyway...

 

Well, I do for one. The high attack + mobility made them a great unit even Pre-G&K. I usually play slow-paced games on large or huge maps so there's time to use each unit type which makes their little niche quite appealing.

If you don't like pikes upgrading to lancers, don't upgrade em... by the time you get Lancers you should be able to churn out fresh units with 45-60xp (and likely Morale, Drill I or both) so it's not like you lost a lot with replacing over upgrading (with the few exceptions of Civs with spear UUs).

 

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.

 

someone at firaxis must have not liked my mongol strat

 

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).

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.