Should I Stay or Should I Go? Knight/Tank Single/Corps Wait or Go...

[BarbarianHunter]

Seems my early game standard operating procedure for Summeria of attacking with a War Cart swarm until I start taking casualties then waiting for ziggurat expedited knight upgrades repeats in the later game. I most always end up with this turn choice:

1. Keep going with the knights and risk taking casualties (but this time with promoted knights instead of green War Carts).
   
2. Wait for Corps and/or tanks or both.

Tanks are around 30 turns away and Corps are around 20. Realistically speaking I think you can reduce these times by 1/3 as I will gain more science and culture during the wait.

As I don’t much care for casualties with promoted units, I have found it’s usually best to wait the 30 turns, upgrade the knights you see here to tank corps, then go again. If history is indeed repeatable, it should be like a hot knife through butter.

I wonder if anyone with a differing opinion might care to share their views?

Spoiler :

 

[slowcar]

Main issue with your plan is that tanks will probably fight against urban defences, no more battering ram goodness.
And while i understand that a knight push is tempting as sumeria: Why not build horsemen on the cheap now and push further with cavalry?

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Main issue with your plan is that tanks will probably fight against urban defences, no more battering ram goodness.
And while i understand that a knight push is tempting as sumeria: Why not build horsemen on the cheap now and push further with cavalry?

I ran it through with the tank corps (as usual).

I suppose I could have summoned up a couple of cavalry corps with faith to heavy hit some Roman cities. There were two on the front line without walls that would have surely fallen before a cav/knight rush (see image).

I think there are a few of reasons for not going forward immediately:

1. The single cav or knight units would be more easily eliminated (certainly cav less so).
   
2. I was saving faith to buy knights and make corps before the upgrade to tanks.
   
3. The Cavalry would be unpromoted green units.

As an addendum to item 3, I declared war circa T154 and have presently finished all but 1 city 17 turns later on T171. Several of my tank corps got pretty deep into the red (almost eliminated) during the campaign. I think non-corp/non-tanks would have found themselves in a bit of a spot. I also had to push due to loyalty constraints, requiring me to go ever deeper to take more Roman cities quickly to add their loyalty bonuses to the previous Roman cities I just conquered (as it turned out, loyalty would also have been a problem for a non-tank corps offensive as time would have caused numerous rebellions in captured Roman cities).

There is also a few good reason for pushing on with cav:
1) A 4-promotion “escort” cav unit sure would have been nice against Roman walls deeper in his area.
2) Early start to the war and conquests.

PS, tactically speaking, the whole question turned out being mute, as there were 2 barbarian hordes I needed to dispatch. But strategically speaking, I think the barbarians can be excluded from the argument and the question remains valid.

In closing, allow me to applaud your idea for cav as it is meritorious and could have been successful ! I wonder, however, if anyone has had even semi-regular success pushing on with knights @ this point in the game. If so, how?

Spoiler :

 

[eleven11]

Cavalry are just awesome. I see them remaining effective for the rest of the game because armies and corps Cav can do decently against infantry and I rarely see the AI with tanks. I would have pushed Cav just from personal preference. But I guess if you are going for a dom win then Steel and tanks will be a priority target anyway. Knights tend to take a lot of damage facing muskets and field cannons. I'm sure it can be done but your speed will be greatly reduced.