Swordsmen vs Horsemen

I have to say I much prefer swordsmen. Id rather have the added punch then the ability to retreat. I play C3C, so they upgrade all the way to ToW infanty if the game lasts that long.

Someones gonna have a heart attack over this, but the upgrade path for horsemen doesnt interest me. While most people prefer to attack with cavalry, my offensive punch is based around infantry/artillery stacks. The few cavalry i build are usually assigned to harrassment duties/dealing with attackers in my territory.

Replace infantry/artillery with Medieval Infantry/trebuchets/pikemen for the medieval era.

 

i still like swordsmen for 4 bil games, cause they move the same as horsemen in forest hills, etc. Also, it seems that iron is a much more common resource on those maps, and is easier to get.

 

Infantry protects artillary, artillary bombards city, cavalry attack and take the city. Saving a turn of movement immediately. Other savins can be made as on the next turn the artillary and infantry can move on to the next target with any healthy cavalry whilst the rest heal. They can then catch up ready for the next target.

 

Most games should not get to inf/art, if you have been making horses and then upgrade to calvs. Arties will drag the game out way too long, I don't even use them for offense on sid.

 

Correction: games where the player is playing for the earliest finish should not get to inf/art. GOTM and the HoF are not the only reasons for playing the game you know

For those players that perfer peaceful empire building to military conquest, the sword/cat stack is a very valid early strategy, and the inf/arty era is usually the first time that the builder player can think about full scale offense.

 

I have no interest in HoF or Gotm either, but peaceful? Ugh. How peaceful is it to build stacks of bombardment units?

 

When you consider that the only peaceful build at that time is wealth...

We're just trying to establish world peace, aren't we?

 

Hey, we will only knock you over your head with big rocks, but we won't kill ya

Peaceful is only a relative term, methinks. The difference is one strategy uses war as diplomacy by other means, while the other strategy uses war as the only means.

Playing civ without waring is pretty much impossible, even Charis was attacked by Cathy in his no-military game. He prosecuted that war with empty cities and a scout, I'm just say that a normal, sane builder style player would probably perfer sword/cat over horses.

 

Anyway I suspect that we have beat this dead horse long enough, so I will bow out.