Swordsmen vs Skirmishers

[Stalker0]

I'm reaching out to the Warring Players out there to get your thoughts.

I've been trying some more early warring strategies lately. I've always been a melee fan, but more and more I'm switching over to Skirmishers (assuming I have the horses of course). While swordsman serve well in a citadel, I've been finding that the mobility, offense, and even city hitting power of skirmishers is better.

But I also know that Tribute is based on unit power, so I was curious if you found that swords were much better at tributing than skirmishers, and commonly used that as a reason to pursue them.

 

[amateurgamer88]

From my games, I see Skirmishers as the strongest unit in the Classical Era. They are just so versatile in both attacking and defending that it doesn't make sense for me to not build them if I have horses. Their greatest counter is certain terrain like Marsh or Desert Hills but, in terms of other terms, it's seems harder to actively counter them without your own Skirmishers. One other big factor is that Skirmishers can still be somewhat useful if you're behind in tech. It has a better survivability when you're on the defensive than a Swordsmen until I unlock the important techs to fight on par with my enemies. If my aggressive neighbor unlocked Chivalry, the Skirmishers can still contribute while my Swordsmen won't last very long.

As for Swordsmen, they play a weird role in my composition. The only role I find them decent at is being a meatshield. Attacking with them means that you eventually have to heal them and that can take a fair bit of time. Even if you can unlock March on them, they suddenly become weaker meatshields. Overall, I see no hurry to rush Iron Working unless I have UU Swordsmen replacement or I need Forges. Essentially, Swordsmen doesn't compare with Skirmishers and even Horsemen, a unit that come an era before, seems useful in more situations than Swordsmen. Despite lacking defensive bonuses, the mobility of Horsemen can let you kite enemies quite well.

With the changes to Tributes, I haven't been able to figure out it yet. However, I do know that I will in 99% of the time get Skirmishers before Swordsmen so I feel like their impact on Tribute is less noticeable overall.

 

[vyyt]

I personally lower the ranged attack strength of both skirmisher and archer lines slightly in my setup. I believe they should have a support role of softening the defenders, not crushing them - unless highly promoted.

 

[CrazyG]

Skirmishers are, without a doubt, the best unit in forest and jungle. I think the best way to take on enemy swords or horsemen is to conserve your units health and deal damage with ranged units, which skirmishers are the best. Catapults are also really good if your goal is to take cities.

Swords are great for killing archers and generally good long term. Steel requires less science than physics, meaning you can reach longswords faster. Swords can get to march very quickly, and melee promotions are just generally better than ranged promotions. However, swords are expensive in terms of science. Generally I pursue them if have early science from my civ, or if I can get some science from heavy tribute.

If you are really heavy warmonger, pathfinder + 3 spearmen can get tribute early on. Get another spearman with gold and you should be able to heavy tribute any city state. You will likely need to ad a few units to get your second round of tribute, what what kind of unit isn't that important. If choosing between these two, I wouldn't consider tribute, I would focus on my other science goals.

 

[Bhawb]

IMO, it has to do with what your immediate goal is and what your neighbors have. A big part of both units is the tech that comes along with them. Skirmishers come alongside Catapults and Hanging Gardens, while Swordsmen have Heroic Epic and Forge, and I almost always pick the tech that gives the most overall benefit unless I'm warmongering and cities near me already have/will have walls. The early tree has so much power invested in worker techs and other conditional things that you have to consider the tech as a whole and not just the military unit, and that makes balance discussions a bit difficult.

 

[Favorius]

Skirmishers are always my main force. I do not find any use for swords. I do not care for tributes either.

 

[andersw]

Swordsmen are great anchor to front a siege and in doing so protect the ranged units.
They arent bad if there is a lot of forest where the fragile units struggle to run away.
But as other mentioned you dont need that many of them.

 

[crdvis16]

Don't forget that ranged units defend against other ranged units using their higher RCS, so skirmishers have an inherent disadvantage there. Swordsmen can typically cut down opposing range/siege quicker than skirmishers. In practice, though, skirmishers largely avoiding taking damage probably outweighs that.

I think rivers are the skirmisher line's biggest weakness.

 

[DeAnno]

I think Swordsmen also suffer to a degree from the Spearmen line existing. It's a similar if worse unit that requires less tech and no special resource (and also promotes from warriors if you had them already), and it tends to be fairly reasonable in the useful role Swordsmen usually have, which is standing there and being meat. The problem is exacerbated by the bonus Spearmen get against Horsemen and Skirmishers, which are often the most relevant enemy units on the field.

Maybe I should try to rush more quickly and use Swordsmen in a city-attacking role more often, but they seem like they're often late enough to need to deal with Walls, which often are going to need either overwhelming numbers or ranged support anyway.