War Chariot Question

[Dragonbarf]

Ok, I've been reading posts aound here for a while, and as I've said before, te Egyptians are my best/favorite civilization since religious/industrious is just too cool.

Anyways, lately I've seen some respected board members (like Sirp and a fw others) stating that the UU for them(war chariots) are indeed awesome and rival the powers of Jags and the IroquisHorsemen? I'd really like a serious answer here because the only bonus I can think of is a 20 shield horseman compared to a 30 shield one... And those ten shields are nice but definately not enough to compinsate for being wheeled (no swamps, mountains) and only having an attack power of 2 at the same time of more powerful units. Can anyone give me a response? Thanks in advance!

Matt

 

[DaveMcW]

The attack-power-per-shields ratio for War Chariots is up there with MWs and Jags. But as you pointed out, shield cost is not the only issue.

Wheeled can be a huge penalty or barely noticable, depending on your location. You can avoid mountains by generating an old world, and jungles by making it dry. In multiplayer you have the additional problem of defenders hiding on lone mountains, but the AI is not smart enough for that.

The shield calculation also ignores the power of upgrading. A warrior/swordman upgrade costs only 10 shields and swordmen are approximately equal to horsemen. And by delaying the purchase of horseback riding, you can upgrade as many 20-shield chariots as you like. If you plan on extorting techs from your enemy you can easily afford the upgrades. But some players feel that mass upgrading is an exploit because the AI would never do it.

I love war chariots because the golden age is so flexible. It is available from the start of the game, but you aren't forced into while using standard units. Avoiding the GA from the Pyramids is annoying, but on higher difficulties I capture them anyway.

 

[gozpel]

I like the warchariot. They are very cheap and the 2 movement points are valuable in the early game. True, they don't travel on mountains and such but on higher levels (monarch and up) they are indeed a good unit. When the AI is bullying you, the warchariot makes a very good "offensive" defence...it takes out warriors and archers quite easily and are not too bad against spearmen. The only really negative thing I can think of is I don't like too early golden ages, but otherwise it is a good unit...cheap and upgradable thro knights and cavalry.

 

[Sirp]

In most situations, being wheeled is just a small penalty. There are a few situations in which it is a large disadvantage, but these are not often.

Getting it 10 shields cheaper is a big difference. It means you can produce 3 war chariots for every 2 horsemen you'd be able to build.

Additionally, it is possible to get an ancient age city to produce 20 shields every turn, in some circumstances. That's a war chariot every turn. There's no way you could produce a horseman, swordsman, mounted warrior, etc every turn.

On the subject of upgrading, I largely neglect this in my analysis, since I really think it's a somewhat 'cheap' move, and I don't like how upgrades are treated in the game.

You can't upgrade to war chariots, as you can upgrade warriors -> swordsmen, however note that as of a recent PTW patch (1.14 or 1.21 maybe), war chariots upgrade straight to knights. This means you can still build war chariots even once you've discovered horseback riding and have triggered your golden age, and you can keep stockpiling them up until when you discover chivalry and then upgrade all your war chariots to knights.

When I'm Egypt, I rarely build many spearmen. I build war chariots instead. Having 5 cities defended by 5 spearmen isn't nearly as good defense as 5 cities defended by 5 war chariots. The WCs can move to where the threat is quickly and destroy it, and they provide very mobile military police.

-Sirp.

 

[theGhost]

Isnt there a little issue that once you research horseback riding, you lose the war chariot? Then that would mean youd be stuck without the next levels of tech if you dont want to give up your chariots.

 

[Sirp]

theGhost: That was so in older versions of the game, but with the latest version of PTW, the war chariot upgrades straight to knights, so you don't lose access to them once you discover horseback riding.

-Sirp.

 

[The Last Conformist]

theGhost: When you've got War Chariots, there's not a terrible lot of reason you'd need to research Horseback Riding at all (unless you're all surrounded by mountains and jungles), allowing you you spend all those beakers at something else. Picking it up in the late Ancient Age (for Era advancement) should be pretty cheap.

(Edit: typo correction)

 

[Belisar]

Originally posted by Dragonbarf
...the only bonus I can think of is a 20 shield horseman compared to a 30 shield one... Matt

The idea of UUs is to give the player a small, temporarily advantage to enable interesting, new startegies, not to decide the game in 2000 BC. The WC is cheaper and available earlier compared to horses. Every further advantage would make the game unbalanced.
(I remember Civ 1, where a few 4/1/2 chariots took out empires....)

 

[Dragonbarf]

Well, thanks for the posts. And while I agree that the 20 shields are better than 30 and have the potential to make a great difference, I totally forgot that meant that you can pump them out at 1 a turn, instead of waiting for those extra 10 sheilds. Awesome analysis guys!
Matt

 

[theGhost]

The problem is if you happen to find a barbarian camp.....THAT GIVES YOU HORSEBACK RIDING!!! you wouldnt be able to prevent this since you wouldnt know until youre too late.

 

[Renata]

No, as others have pointed out, in PTW war chariots are buildable until you have chivalry. Horseback-riding is irrelevent. And even in previous versions, you'd be able to build war chariots up until your golden age was triggered, regardless of the tech situation, since that's just the way UUs work. Once the golden age triggered, you'd have to build horsemen if you had HBR, though.

Renata

 

[Sirp]

Furthermore, you can control when you get horseback riding from a village: you will get the cheapest available ancient age mandatory technology that you are not already researching from a village. If there are no ancient mandator technologies available, you will get the cheapest non-mandatory one.

Knowing that, you can really minimize your chances of getting it.

But...it's fixed in PTW anyway.

-Sirp.

 

[Isaac_Newton]

The chariots still bug me, as I've had a couple of games where my war chariots were bloacked off by a swath of jungle. I had to go clear the jungle before my chariots could unleash havoc upon the other civs. I prefer a more mobile UU (in terms of terrain) like the Aztecs.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Couldn't you build a road?

I didn't think you had to clear it

 

[joycem10]

yeah, a road will get your wheeled units thorugh a jungle and over a mountain.

 

[Isaac_Newton]

Usually when I'm playing, there's a massive swath of jungle that takes quite a while to build a road through. Also, I'm usually connecting my cities and such in the beginning of the game when the War Chariot is most useful. By the time I go out of my way to build a road through the uninhabited jungle, the WC doesn't have as much of a punch..

 

[Mercenary Gen.]

The WCs can move to where the threat is quickly and destroy it, and they provide very mobile military police.

-Sirp. [/B]

Having mobile military police is a good advantage. Barbs could land right next to your city and pillage the improvments. Then come in for the kill.(If the city is guarded by spearmen) WCs could pick 'em off right when they landed.
So I think WCs are pretty good.

 

[RegentMan]

Originally posted by Dragonbarf
te Egyptians are my best/favorite civilization since religious/industrious is just too cool.

Ahh....another Egypt lover!
I never use War Chariots. But that's because I'm a builder !