Well my bias would explain that then. I do vary my games in most ways, but I do play almost exclusivley on huge maps with marathon speed, with a preference for fractal and unrestricted leaders with other options random.
Marathon is a completely different game, although it shouldn't bend these UUs TOO much, the utility of a 2 move unit is far less important on a speed where units are produce the slowest, but at a major discount.
Unlike horse archers, they don't start with first strike immunity, but I'm assuming you're probably promoting them to flanking II anyway. First strikes are inferior to combat promos unless the strength of your unit dwarfs that of your foe, i.e. first strikes are, in part, anti-zerg protection. When talking about archers in a city, your first strike is not going to be better than, say, an extra combat promotion.
Some get flanking II (first ones to hit), the rest usually go down the combat line. The first strike, however, isn't something you're really paying for. It makes a big difference over time because of the increased damage each keshik does. These units rely heavily on withdraws, and it's going to take fewer of them with that first strike.
Any unit wins in numbers. If your opponent has many spears or walls you're going to pay a serious price. You can't bring siege along without negating the mobility benefits. If you have a serious espionage benefit you can use spies to eliminate defenses, but at high cost again.
If we're talking a human vs human match, I can see this being a more legit argument (then again, prats get smacked down by cats/axes too...). The AI doesn't exactly mass spears, even in the face of mounted. You're way overestimating the costs though. Your survival rate will never be worse than 50%. During the early stages of the keshik window, it will frequently be much higher. For troop counts in cities below 4 or so, it's not even clear whether withdraw keshiks are truly inferior to catapults. They damage the target units with a very tolerable survival rate, then heal.
Maybe if they weren't totally destroyed by spears and elephants I'd agree...
Elephants are a bigger problem than spears. Flanking II and then shock guys in succession handle spears with decently minor losses. Elephants are a serious problem. However, that's not unique to keshiks. Shock elephants beat praetorians, too. Elephants are a "second UU" for all civs (except crappy UU for khmer).
But we're, in part, comparing units to the regular version. You and I agree that war elephants are great, but that ballista elephants don't add much to them and so make a crappy UU. In contrast, swordsmen are not so great, but when it comes to attacking cities, jaguars do not add much and actually are worse. Unlike Ballista, they at least fill another niche: faster superhealers. But I find that if I ever need a superhealer, it's not in the early game as overexpansion is a greater threat in the early game. And forests aren't very widespread later in the game.
We're going to have to disagree here. There's no such thing as "overexpansion". If you can get more cities at a decent hammer return and avoid strike, it's a good idea to do it. On marathon games, some combination of cottages, resource trades, tech extortion, and possibly building research or wealth as needed can get you well into the double digits in cities in the BCs or early ADs, even on immortal. This is actually still doable on epic on immortal, but marathon makes it pretty easy.
I normally use horse archers as a hit-and-run unit versus cities when catapults don't make as much sense, but I don't use them for this when spears or elephants are in the city. Example city would be a single city garrison III archer on a hill. No collateral to cause, so catapult doesn't make sense. I want to keep my best city raiders alive, and nobody else has a better than 50% chance of winning. But the horse archer has a 50% chance of withdrawing on top of a small chance of winning.
IMO this is way too narrow a scope for a dominating unit even in its stock, non-UU form.
This was only at emperor, but it's marathon as you prefer:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=301440&page=2
Very little about that map favored a horse archer charge though. First of all, I was holy rome, opting to attack prior to the usage of my UU or UB. Second, the targets were, in order:
1. Shaka with metal.
2. Boudica with metal.
3. Isabella with metal (finally an easy one).
4. Montezuma with metal. And longbows.
Don't forget:
- Horse Archers cost the same hammers as cats. When attacking cities with <5 troops, very frequently you can STILL save hammers outright by slamming flanking guys into it instead of losing cats (damaged, withdrawn mounted heals). Depends on composition of defenders, but spears are less common than archers.
- Horse Archers come earlier than elephants, so you can cut down an elephant civ if need be before they're a problem. I strongly suggest doing so no matter which of these early UUs you want to make use of.
- Horse archers hold a major promotion advantage over all other classical troops except elephants until feudalism or theology. Shock HA's and especially keshiks can easily beat a spear even if it's only been bumped to 3.0 strength, and that's very typical after a withdraw
- The two moves. This is a hidden benefit. Nobody talks about it or even gives it a passing mention typically. If you're going to compare attacking a city with keshiks/HAs to attacking it with any of these other UUs other than war chariots and immortals, you can't give each equal defenders. It isn't realistic. The praetorians will see AT LEAST 2 extra garrison troops per city they attack, frequently more especially on faster speeds. The AI has an extra turn to whip, more turns to shuffle defenders it produces into the city you're attacking, and more turns to just produce units. Even if the raw hammer sacrifice for mounted LOOKS worse, you have to factor in the ability to capture several meaningful methods of AI production numerous turns ahead of time relative to other options. I even cringed a little when you gave your reasoning for musketeers. Granted, marathon nerfs that advantage somewhat, but not entirely! We're talking about the only 2 move unit in the entire game that can be drafted prior to robotics, in a period where spy and/or cuirasser access is reasonable!
A couple key points in that game to note, that show the potential of this unit and let it truly shine:
- My picture of before and after taking the Aztec capitol, with 60% defenses and longbows, in 805-810 AD. I lost 3 horse archers there. That late in the game, deep in enemy territory, in a tech hole. Three. If I'd gotten unlucky, maybe 5-6, if lucky, 1-2. But that's in 800 AD +, using classical troops to extort civil service from an AI! And that's not even the UU version!
- For fun, load up the 650 AD save, declare on monty, and watch how you lose maybe 1-2 HAs (if you attack in the right order) versus his entire 10+ troop stack. That was the beginning of that war, and it was a crippling blow.
- I rushed the worst or 2nd worse (maybe pacal is worse, maybe) civ in the game possible using HA's, first.
- When fighting Boudica, I blew by a somewhat well-defended crap city and took some of her better ones
. Nothing like nerfing AI reinforcements rather than having to kill them...
I'm not saying it's the only way to war early, but if you're using horse archer units strictly as hit and runs, it might be time to re-evaluate their potential.
Note: The hardest part of that game was staying out of strike. Despite - 40 GPT at 0% science at one point, however, there was 0 turns of strike. On low levels, cities cost less maintenance so if you can grow your cities it's almost non-issue. On higher levels, the AIs actually have the techs you need and you can extort them, even if it means using partial research like one might in normal trades
. I THINK that's the game where I extorted alphabet, used it to build research in my cities, which got me to currency, and then code of laws in a short period of time...short enough to keep warring with that same unit successfully. Also note that monty and izzy would have capitulated (had the settings allowed that), but doing that would have royally screwed my diplo so I didn't take them and wouldn't have.
