Why is anti-cavalry so bad?

[Lily_Lancer]

Try AT-Crews. I do think they're very good units, a perfect midlate-game unit to bee-line.(In case that you consider T110~120 in Standard Speed as mid-game)

The main problem for early-game anti-cavalries is that there's no policy to speed up their productions.

Add a policy that ancient and classic Siege and AT units +75% production (Early Empire Unlock)is good enough.

 

[gettingfat]

Spearmen are seriously weak against ranged as they have no upgrade path to help defend against them. When you consider support bonuses it just goes bad

I played them a fair amount and no matter how hard I triedm they just died. Gorgos are the only decent ones.

The reality is, significant number of soldiers are supposed to die in wars and wars should be costly in every aspect, much more costly than what the game portrays now. Only a few units died throughout the whole game is honestly unreal. (If I make the game I'd even increase the maintainence cost to 150% or even 200% at war time, to reflect the cost of wars and give people more incentive to play peaceful game. This maintainence thing can be lowered via policy cards or techs, but that's a totally different issue that should be discussed in a separate thread).

That's why I proposed to make spears cheap. Spears were used to be the expendables in the ancient armies because they were easy to train. They SHOULD get killed easily but just like playing chess trading two pawns for a knight is still a great move. Maybe i'd add that their death should cost only half as much to the war weariness, so some players can try this quantity beats quality approach.

 

[JustifierNA]

Gorgos are the only decent ones.

Pericles' as well

Try AT-Crews. I do think they're very good units, a perfect midlate-game unit to bee-line.(In case that you consider T110~120 in Standard Speed as mid-game)

The main problem for early-game anti-cavalries is that there's no policy to speed up their productions.

Add a policy that ancient and classic Siege and AT units +75% production (Early Empire Unlock)is good enough.

that's a HUGE production bonus! I'd say more like +50% Anti Cav production, +25% Support Siege (era determined of course)

 

[Babarigo]

The reality is, significant number of soldiers are supposed to die in wars and wars should be costly in every aspect, much more costly than what the game portrays now. Only a few units died throughout the whole game is honestly unreal. (If I make the game I'd even increase the maintainence cost to 150% or even 200% at war time, to reflect the cost of wars and give people more incentive to play peaceful game. This maintainence thing can be lowered via policy cards or techs, but that's a totally different issue that should be discussed in a separate thread).

That's why I proposed to make spears cheap. Spears were used to be the expendables in the ancient armies because they were easy to train. They SHOULD get killed easily but just like playing chess trading two pawns for a knight is still a great move. Maybe i'd add that their death should cost only half as much to the war weariness, so some players can try this quantity beats quality approach.

What you are proposing could work for Civ 4 but I don't think it would be good for Civ 6.

Firstly war weariness can become a real problem if you lose units. Having to lose one pikemen to kill one knight will increase way to much the war weariness. Instead I can just keep using knights and crossbowmen to lose almost no unit.

Secondly, more units means more carpet of doom issues. Because of the 1UPT having more weak units is usually worse than having fewer but stronger units since few units can fight at the same time. It's not like with Civ 4 stacks where you could just overhelm your opponent with superior numbers.
Having to send more expendable units instead of better units is IMHO tedious because of all the micromanagement and not very effective because the enemy better units will gain xp by killing the weaker pikemen and then retreat their knigtsto send full health knights that will cause the same problems to the pikemen.

Also, about the fact that one knight is stronger than a pikmen, we can always imangine that there are much more soldiers in a unit of pikemen than in a unit of knights and thus explaining the superior strenght of the pikemen against the knights. Considering that in the game the pikemen are more expensive than the knights and that the equipment and the training of a knight is much more expensive than the one of a pikemen it is most likely the case that the number of pikemen in a unit is considerably higher than the one of the knights.

 

[Vahnstad]

They can be useful when focusing on defence and especially against scythia (with her infinite horsemen), or when you have a lot of horse resources next to you in barren land often in the borders of your early empire. They're good when you fortify on the hills / woods on your frontline while you let knights and horsemen attack you while you have a bunch of range units to finish them off. But they're indeed situational, and I do believe only one or two anti-cavalry units are sufficient and you shouldn't rush them either.