The Numidian Cavalry

[Belisar]

Numidians are great units, very flexible (+3 promotions with stable)
On the offense, I usually mix them with CR-swords (with their withdrawl chances they make the first attacks after cats or spies, protect the stack against melee, can pillage and finish off the last defenders. Additional, they take weaker cities on their own fast.)
On defense, I've taken out entire enemy city-attack stacks with them.

 

[noto]

Yeah, it's just that horseback riding takes an eternity to research. It takes even longer than iron working, which is already too slow for a fast rush.

 

[futurehermit]

HBR is an annoying tech to research, but in this case, and with Mongolia, I think it is worth it. Plus HBR opens up war elephants so if you have ivory then it's even more worth it.

 

[MyOtherName]

Even with other civs, HBR does still fulfill a niche role. For example, that powerful neighbor you know is going to attack eventually has started building catapults really early...

And if you don't happen to have metals, then it's an improvement over your archer/chariot force.

And, of course, stables are nifty.


I'm curious if horse archer/swordsmen are more efficient early than chariot/swordsmen. I'll have to test it sometime.

 

[futurehermit]

I think that horse archers in general get a bad rap. They no longer have their -10% city attack penalty that they had in warlords. And fast moving units are for ending wars quickly and decisively. With stables you can have a mix of flanking 2 and combat 1/shock or combat 2 units to take out cities quick. Because they're fast moving you can plan to pillage metals quickly and efficiently thus denying your opponent the ability to whip spears.

Frankly, I think I need to plan to beeline HBR more often if I have horses and a close enough neighbour...

 

[The Rook]

So this means that each battle they would have 80% chance of winning and 4% chance of withdrawing so 16% chance of dying?

Almost getting this.

I suppose that 4% doesn't sound too impressive. But imagine a Numid Cav with flanking II (50% withdrawal chance) in a battle where it has just a 2% chance of winning. There would be a 49% chance it would withdraw, and it would have a 51% chance of surviving!

 

[Guardian_PL]

Finally someone pays respect to (in my opinion) best nation in CIV (after Huayna Capac of course). Numidian Mercenaries are now great with removed weird -10% city attack and with really powerful Flanking promotion. Sacrificing 4-5 units (well, 50% withdrawal makes that it's not a real sacrifice) can easily wipe 10-20 cats in enemy stack. Helps a LOT in multiplayer and to deal with annoying zerg rushers like Montezuma.

Only problem is to get that damned HBR to make use of it. Basically, rush like mad for commerce. Financial cottages next to river (+3 straight away) and coastal seafood are Your best friends, not to mention any gold/silver/gems.
After reaching HBR one needs a proper hammer-heavy city and with a bit of preparations nice rush can be easily pulled. I've wiped Charlemagne in one of my games way before he could get his precious landsknechts

They are fast, great anti-melee, can calmly face spears and with Charismatic they upgrade to really kick-ass Knights/Cavalry/Gunships

 

[MyOtherName]

I think that horse archers in general get a bad rap.

I'm beginning to agree. I recently did a silly experiment (assuming I have my combat simulator working). Against City Guardian II archers, a pure 2 promotion each horse archer army is significantly better than a pure city raider 2 swordsman army in terms of the hammer cost of the units you lose. Even using the optimal mix of swordsmen and horse archers was only a miniscule improvement over pure horse archers!

(At least, when the cities have 40% or 60% cultural defense and aren't on a hill)

 

[futurehermit]

The thing is some flanking 2 harchers will withdraw when they lose. CR1 swords will not. Saves you some significant hammers right there. And if the cultural defenses aren't super high you can take cities without siege meaning you can whip through an enemy empire very fast. If you're worried about the capital, use harchers to take the rest of the cities and one stack of catas + harchers/swords to take the capital. This could be done in two wars. However, I would normally hit the capital first if possible, accept my losses and then take the remaining cities more easily. Hopefully enough would withdraw that the losses would be acceptable.

Flanking 2 iirc also removes vulnerability to first strikes which is big when going up against archers.

 

[absimiliard]

With the loss of the -10% when attacking cities I've been rethinking HAs.

In particular I had one brutally nasty game with one of the Khans, can't recall who. I tightly settled three cities, with horses in one of them, and focussed them on production. After getting Gers in each I proceeded to eat the entire continent with keshiks.

The fact that they were keshiks did make it a bit faster, but since keshiks and HAs did speed them up a bit. But I don't think the additional first strike would have substantially changed what happened if I'd been any other leader spamming stabled HAs.

So while I admit the fact that it was keshiks did influence what happened, all in all that game has made me seriously re-consider the place of horse-archers in my game-plan. Since that game I've used them to nasty effect a few times, though I still think they are a bit too slow on the research side to use for a rush. (chariot rushes I can still get behind though)

-abs

 

[futurehermit]

Well, they don't have to be your rush unit of choice. If you want to rush, you can use chariots. But if you are able to build some cities peacefully first--and more importantly to get your econ ready to absorb the war hit--then sending in 20-30 horse archers to wipe out an opponent can be pretty powerful imo. Just start with the mature cities first and then you can easily take out the weaker cities.

 

[MyOtherName]

The thing is some flanking 2 harchers will withdraw when they lose. CR1 swords will not. Saves you some significant hammers right there.

Right; the question is if the survivability makes up for the lack of strength. I expected HA / swordsmen combo to be better against the archers than pure swordsmen, but I didn't expect pure HA to be nearly as good. (Nor did I expect it to be so much better than chariot/swordsmen)

(And I was testing CR2 swordsmen!)

 

[madscientist]

All great talk about the cathagerian UU. I agree with them all.

One point not mentioned. They are killer city defense unit. AI brings a stack and they are great to attack it as it apporaches, iff you have enough. Combat I, shock willsurvive even against Spears. Flanking II allows the unit to survive a losing attack and stay within the city. If it wins it's within the city with a fast promotion. All wins against axes/swords will result in collateral damage to catapults/trebs.

The downside of Numidan archers as they are more succeptible to archery and mounted units. Crossbow can stop all Cathaginian units short of knights.

 

[Gliese 581]

The stable building really makes a huge difference for the first war if you can get HAs early in the game since usually you're not going to get two promotions that early on unless you're aggressive.
After the first war you usually get a great general or two that will take care of this, but having two promotions right away for the first war can be the difference in succeeding and failing.
The 2 movement points can also be huge since it will bring your army to the enemy much faster unless they're close by and you can always fall back and pillage effectively if the resistance is to fierce. Just don't mess with the Mayans or Zulu!

 

[AmazonQueen]

All great talk about the cathagerian UU. I agree with them all.

One point not mentioned. They are killer city defense unit. AI brings a stack and they are great to attack it as it apporaches, iff you have enough. Combat I, shock willsurvive even against Spears. Flanking II allows the unit to survive a losing attack and stay within the city. If it wins it's within the city with a fast promotion. All wins against axes/swords will result in collateral damage to catapults/trebs.

The downside of Numidan archers as they are more succeptible to archery and mounted units. Crossbow can stop all Cathaginian units short of knights.

Well they're immune to First Strikes so archers aren't that great against them. They're around quite a bit earlier than crossbows too. Against cavalry its great if you can mix some elephants in with them.

 

[madscientist]

Well they're immune to First Strikes so archers aren't that great against them. They're around quite a bit earlier than crossbows too. Against cavalry its great if you can mix some elephants in with them.

I was thinking of crossbows and longbows which has base 6 strength. HA typically match strightup with those units but the carthagineans are the only civilization with a weakness to them.

I agree archers stink against them and machinery is later. Fuedalsim come along faster in BTS than Warlords though.

 

[Verge]

A lot of people have brought up many good points, and I myself have found Numidian cavalry to be extremely useful and quite underrated.

To add to all this, it's always worth remembering that Hannibal is a great leader. Financial and Charismatic is an excellent trait combination, since they synergize so well. I've been earning some very nice domination/conquest wins with Hannibal.

 

[IagoAlberto]

I just thought I'd add my 2cents on the Numidian Cavalry. I'd always underestimated them in my previous games with Hannibal.

Then I started my first monarch game recently as Hannibal on an archipelago map. I Got a nice capital with gems and seafood. Then to my dismay I discovered I shared a small continent with Boudica then to compound my difficulties I had no copper or iron, so I beelined HBR since I did have horses. I managed to completely wipe her out before she was too much of a threat with only numidian cavalry archers and eventually catapults so I could take down her capital which had founded Buddhism.

I used a mix of flanking 2/combat 1 numidians with shock numidians, in about a 60/40 mix. Essentially, they won the game for me, I then teched well, built a large navy, settled the best islands and got a trade economy going to win the space race victory. So now I think they're a great UU, no praetorian or cataphract by any means but good nonetheless, just more situational.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I was thinking of crossbows and longbows which has base 6 strength. HA typically match strightup with those units but the carthagineans are the only civilization with a weakness to them.

I agree archers stink against them and machinery is later. Fuedalsim come along faster in BTS than Warlords though.

Ah, I'm stuck with Warloads unless my kids buy me BtS for Xmas.
I agree that by the medeval period they're less useful but they have a reasonably long period they are useful in. I've had games when War Chariots and Immortals were obselete before I got horses.

 

[Gliese 581]

After reading some more posts here I decided to do a little testing with Keshiks to see how effective/useful flanking 2 would be. So far I'm not overly impressed. First of all, do you get the withdrawal chance even when defending? Do you get it if you're fortified? I suspect not after losing almost a dozen flanking 2 units wo getting a single withdrawal on the defense but maybe I've just been extremely unlucky. Ironically I'm at war with Shaka, and this just after I warned about using HAs against him, but it's just a test game anyhow.