when to use cuirassiers???

[Crighton]

Personally I would think that cuirassiers would be good for pushing the empire out simply because of their movement, half of the trouble in war is getting your forces to the other guy in a timely fashion. If your production is in the center you can use the regular one move troops for the near enemy while the cuirassiers for the relatively "far" enemy.

 

[cracked]

up until the development of rifling, there's really very little an opponent can do against a large stack or cuirassiers. put it this way, 6 cuirassiers against 3 muskets in a city. as they are immune to 1st strikes, those 3 muskets will defend against the 1st three ok but then be so weakend that they won't be able to cope with the next 3, and the city gets taken.

the grenadiers with formation will be on a par with them but the chances are you'll get military tradition long before they'll get military science. and if they don't have formation then the bonus cuirassiers get against gunpowder units + the combat 1 & 2 you'll get with stables will make grenadiers ineffective.

the trick is to use cuirassiers either to support a sod with seige weapons and muskets to take a city quickly, or open up another front to stretch their forces.

as a defensive unit, the two movement range and flank attack against cannons means you can quickly decimate any enemy sod before they have the chance to take your cities.

 

[D_almighty]

up until the development of rifling, there's really very little an opponent can do against a large stack or cuirassiers. put it this way, 6 cuirassiers against 3 muskets in a city. as they are immune to 1st strikes, those 3 muskets will defend against the 1st three ok but then be so weakend that they won't be able to cope with the next 3, and the city gets taken.

the grenadiers with formation will be on a par with them but the chances are you'll get military tradition long before they'll get military science. and if they don't have formation then the bonus cuirassiers get against gunpowder units + the combat 1 & 2 you'll get with stables will make grenadiers ineffective.

the trick is to use cuirassiers either to support a sod with seige weapons and muskets to take a city quickly, or open up another front to stretch their forces.

as a defensive unit, the two movement range and flank attack against cannons means you can quickly decimate any enemy sod before they have the chance to take your cities.

Cuirassiers don't get a bonus against gunpowder units... You could give them pinch I suppose.

 

[UncleJJ]

I see cuirassiers as an alternative to knights. There is little point in having both. Frequently I'll use lightbulbing to win the Liberalism race and then take Nationhood as the free tech. That gives Nationhood for drafting and a chance to build Taj Mahal.

From that position in the tech tree there are several good options; Gunpowder, Military Tradition and Constitution and which you choose depends on the leader, the map and the sort of game you want. Obviously Gunpowder is good for drafting so that gets researched next if I have a good musket UU to draft or if Protective or Aggressive. Drafting then becomes a main part of my drive for expansion in the mid game.

But if I have horses and and have already built stables and developed some HAs then another good option is to research Military Tradition for cuirassiers and to build West Point early. That way you never get to build knights since you might trade for Guilds after researching Military Tradition. Cuirassiers and drafted muskets are able to run over longbows, maces and pikes as long as you can reduce city defences efficiently. You need either a big stack of siege or spies and lots of EPs.

An alternative approach would be with Justinian whose UU is nearly as good as a cuirassier and is available earlier and is cheaper. If you get Guilds early have a powerful force of knights or cataphracts then there is little to be gained by researching Military Tradition quickly unless an enemy has cannons or will have soon. Then I'll often research Rifling before Military Tradition and upgrade my knights to cavalry completely missing the cuirassier stage. The drawback is a late built West Point.

So in most of my games where I have a strong mounted force I'll be running either knights or cuirassiers, but not both, for a long time (say 50 turns) before finally getting cavalry. That's my answer to the original question, "when to use cuirassiers", certainly not always but under the right conditions they can win the game for you or avoid a loss when the AI has a huge stack of cannons.

 

[cracked]

Cuirassiers don't get a bonus against gunpowder units... You could give them pinch I suppose.

I stand corrected. Felt sure they did but checked the civilopedia and they don't. Hmmm!

 

[D_almighty]

I stand corrected. Felt sure they did but checked the civilopedia and they don't. Hmmm!

On the other hand, stables do allow for essentially a free promotion for your mounted units, so pinch, shock, or flanking II is very readily available even without any previous combat experience.

 

[TabascoBob]

A cuirassier/musket/treb stack is very strong and can be obtained very early (one tech from lib really if you take nationalism. Use trebs for bombard, maybe sac one and take the city with cuirassiers. Move the slow units onwards which are undamaged at that point, heal the cuirassiers and catch up for the next city while the trebs move/bombard.

My first Prince game was as Louis, and my Musketeer/Cuirassier combo "death squads" were devastating pillagers. Once I grabbed Steel and mass upgraded my trebs to Cannon, my promoted Musketeer/Cuirassier combos (Drill III Musketeers!) were more than enough to take cities and hold them.

Otherwise, for me, the Cuirassier is really a support unit-- not strong enough to justify a beeline or forego Cavalry, but plenty useful in a SoD for pillaging and knocking off attacking "field siege" so upgrading veteran Knights is worth the coin.