Protecting cannons from cavalry

[z0wb13]

How are you supposed to carry a war forwards in this kind of situation, short of beelining Flight or Artillery? It seems to me there's basically no way to protect your siege without leaving it at home; even if you build anti-cavalry units that won't stop them from damaging your cannons into uselessness.

that's the thing is that cavalry beat cannons. cavalry beats lots of things, and also work especially well for defense (field defense, like what you are encountering against the ai).

you can use spies to lower city defenses, and use something with withdrawal as suicide units (either guerilla units or your own cavalry) if you absolutely cannot get your cannons through. but as for stack defense, formation rifles are easy if you have the aggressive trait. use draftees for attackers.

another thought is that, depending on the territory, you can use airships pretty effectively for nerfing the top defender, as long as your rival doesn't have fighters. unless they have some freakish amount of machine guns.

 

[Earthling]

Destroy any large stacks they have at the start of the war if you can. In your own territory, you should be able to keep units entirely out of harm by being back along roads so they can't get to flank/collateral a large stack. You are right that looking for more advanced tech is always a good idea to be progressing on.

Spreading out is really the answer otherwise. There's no excuse for having 30 cannons and 20 infantry in a stack, for instance, so that collateral damage can hit any of those 30. Split the cannons up and leave a few defenders with each group, and the AI will lose a ton of units if they want to do serious damage.

 

[thecowwarrior]

I just had this happen to me recently too. It is infuriating, as there is NOTHING you can do about it. I think Cavalry is by FAR the cheapest unit in the game, I regularly see the AI's Cavalry take out my Infantry and Machine Gun units, but if I build them they are WORTHLESS..

 

[hal08]

Cavalry are the best units of their time, and in fact have uses beyond. While I have not gone the cav/bomber route yet I hear that it is viable, but I have used cav/airship (spies as necessary) and found it to be very effective against rifle garrisons.