Should I build Horse Archers?

[ImmortaI Reborn]

Ive had this game for about 3 weeks and started playing online about a week ago. Learned real quick that its all about war. With that being said, I usually use Catherine, and tech AH and then Bronze. The question is if I have horses in my fat cross, should I try and rush horse archers, which is very slow, cause I gotta tech horses and archers. Or should I just rush chariots? Then if I find bronze in my fat cross should I switch over?

 

[ImmortaI Reborn]

Anybody gonna respond?

 

[2metraninja]

These days the games in the lobby are all about chariots rushes, which is a bit lame.

It all depends - if you have copper in the BFC, use it to make spears and prevent being overrun by those pesky chariots.

 

[plasmacannon]

If, you don't have copper, then, build your Holkans, because, you thought ahead and chose Maya.

Chariots rule on epic and marathon games.
HAs do well when faces with opponents like Alexander of Greece.

 

[TeraHammer]

no, build tanks, they are better.

 

[reddishrecue]

You can use both, get like 4 chariots and rest HAs in a nice stack.

 

[Si_Lurker]

There are few reasons for building fast units:
1) It's hard to counter them and you force opponent to build spears which are useless for other roles
2) Scouting/sentinel - it's good to know if some opponent sends 10 axemen towards you
3) Pillaging/stealing workers - if you manage to steal a worker and pillage oponent a bit very early, you will cripple him for the rest of the game
4) Dagger - especially with city elimination if you strike with a stack of 20 chariots/horsearchers/knights where unexpected you will be able to raze a city

The best defence to this is having your own fast stack, since if opponent moves a stack into your territory, you will be able to bring your fast stack into threatened city, whip a few archers/longbows and hit hit stack before he hits you.

Still if you build a stack of fast units, you should have some slow units (axes/swords/spears) around.

 

[plasmacannon]

Si_Lurker, Woods2 warriors and axemen do better at worker stealing. The AI knows a mounted unit can move 2 tiles. It considers the meleee unit a 1 tile movement max, so, we can sneak up on workers and catch them.

 

[Luigiii2]

In my opinion, horse archers are a bit under-powered. Axe armies with a couple chariots for support should do fine in most cases.

 

[Sueff]

Si_Lurker, Woods2 warriors and axemen do better at worker stealing. The AI knows a mounted unit can move 2 tiles. It considers the meleee unit a 1 tile movement max, so, we can sneak up on workers and catch them.

Since we are in the MP forum noone cares what the AI does and does not know.

 

[Carwyn]

We play MP with plenty of AI, go to a high level and we end up just trying to survive massive AI attacks - although we've modded the game to make it HARD to survive. Lots of plumbing language and losing games keeps it from being boring!