The race to rifling: Cavalry are still a dominant unit

[0R4NG3]

I've played a number of BTS games on Monarch/Emperor as the Russians, so in every game I used Cavalry, and while I still insist that the Cossack has been overnerfed and is one of the worst UUs I must say that it isn't all bad.
As many people have already mentioned the key is having a tech lead and getting riflery before everyone else. Obviously this is more difficult on Emperor than it is on Monarch.

My usual strategy is to start my first serious war with Cuirassiers, then beeline to riflery and upgrade all the cuirassiers into cossacks, from then on it's pretty easy and even riflemen are not very scary, especially if I go for Physics after Riflery to get airships.

I prefer Cossacks to riflemen for the reason that eventhough I use siege and am forced to move my stack 1 tile/turn Cossacks get to the frontline much quicker than riflemen, so I can get reinforcements quicker.

The problems start when AIs get infantry(on Emperor/normal speed it doesn't take all that long), since it is pretty difficult to win against infantry even with airships. At this point I am essentially left with a bunch of useless Cossacks, which can not be upgraded into anything for a very long time, obviously I wouldn't have this problem if I had used riflemen instead.

So in the end I would say that Cavalry/Cossacks are great if there's a significant tech lead, and are pretty useless if there isn't one, though still better than grenadiers.

 

[futurehermit]

Cav do upgrade to the very nice gunships though!!! So, I would say if you start seeing infantry, that's a good time for a period of peace and beelining to adv flight

 

[Plinko16]

I think it's all well and good that you can win with Cav alone if you have enough of a tech lead that you can have Cavalry and fight a war against a large Civ that has few friends and still hasn't researched gunpowder.

I just don't see it as a strategy you could shoot for knowing it's going to work. Even if the AI does not prioritize Rifling - which totally jives with the BTS games I have played so far, by the time you have researched all the way to Military Tradition and Rifling and then built a sizeable force of Cavalry (possibly upgrading a force of knights), you're still facing the possibility they got to gunpowder - so you're suggesting without seige, to go up against Protective/Agg/Cha defenders who have the full weight of Cultural defenses?

You can't count on them staying with longbowmen that entire time, can you?

Here's my experience:

In my current game as Victoria (Prince/Standard Big-Small/Epic/8 civs), I was way behind in land and tech going into the medieval period due to a poor starting area (room for good two cities on a penninsula that was otherwise 5 deep and 3 wide tiles of desert before getting to the continent) that forced me to devote myself to destroying Justinian and getting a foothold on the main part of the continent. Once my economy was on-line, I pulled started to get even and ahead on tech with everyone but an underpowered Mansa Musa and found myself sharing a lot of borders with points leaders Hatty (friendly) and Sitting Bull (annoyed).

I managed to get Liberalism, took Replaceable Parts and then self-researched gunpowder and rifling. I had a lot of cash on hand due to favorable trading when Rifling came on and upgraded about 10 CRII Macement to Redcoats, built a few more, and DOW on Sitting Bull - sending 2 stacks of 5 RC each with 5 Trebs, healers and 3-4 maces/swords as units for cleanup and future upgrading. Sitting Bull at the time was researching gunpowder but was so far behind me in tech I figured it would be a cakewalk.

The I ran into trouble. Even at CRII Redcoats, attacking upgraded, protective Longbowmen in a City on a hill is not a good prospect unless you seige it. (With promoted Cavalry How would you pull this off) So I had to seige the city, and while I had almost no losses except seige units, I had to slow down because without seige I would have lost at least 2 Redcoats per longbowman.

I took two nearby cities and razed another within about 5 turns (damn the slow takedown of cultural defenses in BTS!), and stooped to heal my wounded. During the 3 turn wait, Sitting Bull completed gunpowder and, get this, managed to trade for/steal: Steel, Chemistry AND Military Science -probably thanks to his brother in religion Mansa who hates me. Suddently, I was getting slowed by Canon and facing Granadiers.

I was strong enough that I powered through 2 more cities, including the capital before needing a cease-fire due to war weariness and knowing Sitting Bull had no cities left worth anything but a raze on the continent.

Now, I thorughly won this exchange, but it would have been utterly IMPOSSIBLE without seige, and probably a lot tougher if I had waited for 2 more techs. While faster, Combat II or Flanking II Cavalry would have been considerably worse off than CRII redcoats unless the target was A: Even farther behind in tech. and B: Not Protective/Cha/Agg. Especially since I would have had to wait another 10-12 turns to research Nationalism and Military Tradition before attacking.

I guess I'll put myself in with the critics. To me, you're looking at balancing

Rush rifling:
2 tech sooner +
Bringing seige +
1 move -
Better defenders left behind +
Ability to have CRII/III promotions +
Units upgradeable at Industrialism (Infantry) +
AI 2 techs from decent counter -Grenadiers +/-

vs.

Rush Cav
2 techs later -
No seige -
moves twice as fast (unless you bring seig, which would negate your move bonus, but would be much better for pillaging) +
Backfilling with muskets/longbows as defenders -
Combat II/Flank II promotions -
Units Upgradeable at Advanced flight (Gunship) -
AI 2 techs from decent counter - Rifles +/-


I guess I just don't see it being at all in favor of Cav except in specific situations. Futurehermits might be one such example, but I think most games would favor Riflemen.

 

[0R4NG3]

I guess I'll put myself in with the critics. To me, you're looking at balancing

Rush rifling:
2 tech sooner +
Bringing seige +
1 move -
Better defenders left behind +
Ability to have CRII/III promotions +
Units upgradeable at Industrialism (Infantry) +
AI 2 techs from decent counter -Grenadiers +/-

vs.

Rush Cav
2 techs later -
No seige -
moves twice as fast (unless you bring seig, which would negate your move bonus, but would be much better for pillaging) +
Backfilling with muskets/longbows as defenders -
Combat II/Flank II promotions -
Units Upgradeable at Rocketry (Gunship) -
AI 2 techs from decent counter - Rifles +/-


I guess I just don't see it being at all in favor of Cav except in specific situations. Futurehermits might be one such example, but I think most games would favor Riflemen.

To upgrade to gunships in BTS you need Advanced Flight, not Rocketry so that's a --
In cavalry's defense though I would say that rifles are not as much of a threat to cavalry as grenadiers are to rifles.

 

[Plinko16]

To upgrade to gunships in BTS you need Advanced Flight, not Rocketry so that's a --
In cavalry's defense though I would say that rifles are not as much of a threat to cavalry as grenadiers are to rifles.

You're right on both counts, I edited my post to correct the upgrade path. I don't think I've gotten a game where gunships were needed, so I hadn't noticed they use the new Advanced Flight Tech.

 

[futurehermit]

I don't mind if my opponents get gunpowder. Cav > muskets, even protective muskets and high cultural defense. You'll lose the odd cav now and then, but for the most part you will win. Just make sure you use flanking 2 cav to crack the tough nuts and then combat 2 for the remainder.

 

[ungy]

In cavalry's defense though I would say that rifles are not as much of a threat to cavalry as grenadiers are to rifles.

I disagree with this. The AI builds lots of city defenders--rifles--and they get the bonus vs. cav always. The AI builds few gren, and they only get the bonus on attack. So if you have made it to cav at this point, and have a few around, that solves the gren issue. Or if you have terrain to advance in.