So Numidian cavalry start with flanking 1 and keep it when upgraded...

[futurehermit]

I always though numidian cav were poor and didn't bother to build them. I generally don't build horse archers period.

Then, last night I was playing as Hannibal and was cranking out about a dozen of them in preparation for upgrading to cavalry. To my pleasant surprise, they had--and kept--a flanking 1 promotion.

I can't express how powerful I think this is and how disappointed I am that I have missed this during the whole of warlords and now in bts cav are getting pushed back

When I upgraded them to cav (after having built them out of stables), I was having flanking 2/combat 1 cav. You could easily have flanking 2/combat 2 cav with civics/military instructors.

This is extremely powerful and can't believe I missed it. Has anyone else abused this???

 

[a0161613]

Had no idea.

Even the Hannibal ALC missed this.

Might try this in BTS, esp as HA's are being unnerfed.

 

[Joxer]

Even the Hannibal ALC missed this.

He missed it because there was no Hannibal ALC, yet. Maybe thinking of the Cyrus one with the Immortals?

 

[madscientist]

yes, I have done this but never really utilized the cav. I was very far ahead tech wise on an Archeolpolego map and was looking at a fast diplomatic victory which I got.

 

[Say_my_name]

He missed it because there was no Hannibal ALC, yet.

Are you sure that there wasn't a Hannibal ALC yet?

 

[frob2900]

This is extremely powerful and can't believe I missed it. Has anyone else abused this???

Yes. Hannibal is a very good option for (pre BtS ) cavalry spam. Take a neighbor or two with axes. Beeline democracy while cottaging madly.
Any military unit you build in this (preferably time of peace) should be a numidian cavalry. These will be used as cavs later, but right now they are pushing up the power graph and giving Hed Rule happiness.

When democracy hits get Universal suffrage and start buying only gold generating buildings such as grocers/markets/banks.. no libraries/universities etc. while your beelining military tradition at 20-40% research or so (so that you are getting lots of per turn). Research should be fast enough due to printing press+free speech towns (getting Democracy from liberalism is good here)

As soon as a city has its fill of gold boosters, get stables/barracks and start buying knights. Then as military tradition hits you should have a bunch of Numidians (that have been accumulating since the end of your axerush) and newly purchased knights. You should also have lots and lots of gold (I had 8000 or so in the best Monarch game I did this in). Now mass upgrade and keep mass buying new cavalry. Set the gold slider to 100%. Keep buying, keep kicking backsides and taking names

The abovementioned Monarch game was a standard pangea. I had axerushed Shaka and Mansa and there were 4 enemies left as I started my cavrush. I have never took so much land in such a short timeframe. None of my opponents had rifling by this time, so there was simply no resistance.

[EDIT]
(If you have lots of coastal cities cothons will also be very useful, since the cavrush should start just about the time the AI gets mercantilism.)

 

[Gwil]

Ever since the discussion of flanking from Sisiutils Cyrus game i've taken the promotion much more seriously - I was able to subjugate a 5 city Rome with Prets, Axes and Archers with a force of just 10 Immortals - 3 units went on to become GG post 4 promotions attached - making super units (just an experiment, worked well).

Having heard this about Hannibal I would be very interested in trying another game with him before BtS (which i probably wont afford immediately anyway!)

 

[Mesousa]

Numidian Cavalry are also prime candidates for a fighting (i.e. (initially) non-medic) warlord thanks to a more easily attainable high withdrawal chance.

Actually, I think they're pretty powerful by themselves, even if it weren't a free promotion but just an ability that you lost when you upgraded them. I certainly like them a lot more than normal Horse Archers, but they suffer from the same problem, it's often difficult to bother with Archery and Horseback Riding so early in the game, especially with the latter being so expensive.

Carthage will be interesting with BTS, Hannibal keeps his very powerful trait combination, and the normally rather weak UB got a boost from the increased trade route revenues.

 

[Jet]

And Numidians flank attack Cats (I assume), and Monuments don't obsolete until Astronomy!

 

[futurehermit]

Monuments don't obsolete until Astronomy

THAT IS GREAT!!!

 

[gettingfat]

In fact, if you get a decent start and have one or two financial powered-cottage-spammed cities to support your research and unit costs, you can beeline to horse-riding (make sure you get archery, I once beelined to HR and never understood why I couldn't build the num. cav. ). And you can directly use them to start a decent war and no need to wait for cavalry.

Build stables in production cities, don't bother with the research ones (if there are barracks you will use them for flank 2 cavs). Spam the num cavs like crazy. With half of them giving flank I/II/combat 1, half of them flank I/combat 1/shock or combat 2, add a few pillaging units (flank I/II/mobility) and a couple of medic units. Declare war, hit the metal/horse tiles first. Then you can choose either just to pillage for money or take cities. Don't worry about the low strength. The beauty of num cavs are their 50% withdrawal rate. As long as you concentrate your force on no more than 2 cities, the flank 2 units will soften the defenders for the strength units to finish them.

If you beeline well you'll see mostly 20% defence cities, and with average luck usually 5 units will kill two archer defenders with probably 3 num. cavs. left. And even there are a few spears, 3 cavs will finish 1 spear with typically 2 of them survived because of the melee bonus and the high withdrawal rate. Once I mass a stack of 15 num cavs and take a capital city defended by 4 longbows. Half of my units survived. The key is to mass and attack, as the withdrawal bonus does not apply when you defend.

Then use the pillage money to fund research of construction if you want longer war, or to fund the liberalism race (of course for nationalism and military tradition for the real cavs!!). With charismatic trait you will have a bunch of level 4 units by that time. It's a lot of fun playing Hannibal.

 

[futurehermit]

That's pretty freakin' sweet and they upgrade to uber, uber cavalry.

WHY OH WHY DID I MISS THIS FOR SO LONG

 

[gettingfat]

In BtS, flank I also gives you "flank damage" attacking stacks with seige weapons. This further spices up the num cav.

 

[Yeekim]

I have promoted Numidians in several threads
You forgot to mention that Hannibal is Charismatic, which further adds to the sweetness of free promotion.

@frob:
Why build knights? Knights do not get free flanking. No knights!

 

[frob2900]

@frob:
Why build knights? Knights do not get free flanking. No knights!

Yeah, well, while it's preferable to build Numidians, for sure, the grocers from guilds and banks from banking are simply too good gold boosters to pass up, so at some point you have to get guilds if you wan't to afford mass uppgrades But, yes, in the turns before guilds a few extra empire-wide buying sprees are well recommended.

In the game I played, my first Cavalry waves were roughly 50/30/20 upgraded numidians/upgraded knights/purchased cavalry. The key is to get as much cavalry as you can, so you can take as many cities as possible per turn

 

[Joxer]

Are you sure that there wasn't a Hannibal ALC yet?

Umm. . . .

Ooops. Got me there.

 

[Welnic]

It wasn't like the Numidian cavalry was really used in that ALC, though, I can see forgetting about it.

 

[futurehermit]

I played around with this a bit today. Numidians are nice for taking cities, even if there is a spear or two. Plus they are 2-move, which means fast-attacking.

They suck against longbows though, so watch out

I tried attacking, then promoting to knights, then attacking, then promoting to cav. But normal is just too fast! I think on epic or especially marathon, that could work.

In the current game I'm playing, I've started with a numcav rush and then I'm going to beeline cav instead.

I've now placed Hannibal in the top 3 leaders imo. I always thought his straits were great and his UB was respectable. But I always thought his UU was subpar...because I didn't realize it got the free promotion, I just thought it had a bonus vs. melee and -1 strength.

 

[frob2900]

I played around with this a bit today. Numidians are nice for taking cities, even if there is a spear or two. Plus they are 2-move, which means fast-attacking.

But you always say you hate Keshiks, which are also a horse archer unit. Are you contradicting yourself or is the Flanking really that good early on in the game?

I used axemen in the ancient age with Hannibal because of the Horseback Riding bottleneck and the fact that the withdrawal chance only becomes important when you have large enough stacks for the statistical averaging to kick in.

Imho, if you are ever to use horseback riding units in the classical age, it's with Mongolia.

[EDIT]
Very relevant for this thread; Watiggi has just posted screenshots of the new BtS Flank attack system in action:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=231793&page=24
(towards the bottom of the page)

@Futurehermit: I think I'll now have to retract my above doubts about Flanking being useful early on

 

[futurehermit]

Flanking is very useful early on. What I don't like about Keshiks is that they are in direct contradiction to the aggressive trait. Although they ARE nice with the mongolian UU. Spears are a bit more problematic for them, but perhaps I will have to revisit Keshiks a bit more.

The problem for me, say when playing with Kublai, is that if I have copper or iron I'd much rather be building axes/swords than keshiks...no need to research archery/hbriding then and can but the beakers into something else.