Cavarly rush: Too good?

[player1]

Needs Military Tradition and Gunpowder.

Research "upper part of tech tree": up to Nationalism and then Military Tradition.
Research "lower part of tech tree": up to Gunpowder

Ingore most of "middle parts of tech tree.

If you are "lucky" you'll get Cavalry before others get Muskets, and if you are just playing well, you'll always get them before others get Granadires or Riflemen.

And that means one big advantage.

Unit with Strenght of 15 can easly bite Pikemen and Musketeers.
Not to mention that there is really no good defense against their pillage ability.


And if you in some case play Russians, there are strenght of 18 Cossaks!

Best military rush ever for Russians.

[Yuufo]

You can ignore large parts of the tech tree to achieve this:

assume you have now mastered all classical era techs (even if it is not needed - if you had code of laws, and drama this should be OK)

Take:

Civil Service
Music
Philosophy
Paper
Education
Nationalism
Liberalism -> military tradition
Gunpowder

Eight techs that totally bypass feodal era.
Useless to research Theology, Feodalism, Mechanics and such techs...
Perhaps some more requisites in the tech tree should be added. For example CIvil service could have one more prequisite (only Code of Laws now). Something like feodalism. It would also forbid the CS gambit, which I would appreciate.

[player1]

It intersting to note that first time I got idea for this is when I realized that Cavalry does not require Rifling (just Gunpowder). Kinda silly since they use rifles.

Still, it's good rush strategy.

Surely better they rushing Gunpowder/Chemistry for Granadires.
(exempt if no horses)

[Bobby Chicken]

pikemen in cultured cities still have an advantage; its good, but so is any other blitz to a certain millitary unit.

[player1]

I actually got bitten once by AI when I tried early Granadier gambit.

AI civs got rush Cavalry, and my Granadires could not keep up.

Riflemen are only good was to counter Cavalry units.

[player1]

Well, nobody stops you from completly pillaging the enemy if defenses are big (and while waiting for Catapult support).

Cultures Pikemen won't help there.


EDIT:
Thanks Yuufo for full tech description.

[Footie Mad]

The enemy should have roads so he can move at least as fast as the cavalry plus pikemen are a cheaper unit so you can make a stand until there are better units available.

[player1]

You mean those just pillaged roads? D:

[Drachasor]

The tech tree probably should be modified some (such as Cav requiring Rifling). Part of the problem, however, is there are a number of sudden jumps in unit power. This didn't happen so much in real life. Even tanks started off as slow and awkward machines (in WWI). If there were 50% more units or so then military progression would be much smoother and a small advantage wouldn't be as devastating.

-Drachasor

[johnmcd]

In my very first game I stumbled across this route, I wasn’t doing very well and was under a fairly weak but strengthening attack from a musket toting AI who was starting to come through with occasional riflemen. Desperate for a effective counter measure within tech tree reach I arrived at cavalry. While they are dealt with well enough by riflemen, they eat through any unit older than that, I only research replaceable parts ahead of military tradition nowadays when I need to make lumbermills, not war.

They are ineffective at taking rifle defended cities though (mind you, so are most things).

[player1]

Originally posted by Drachasor
The tech tree probably should be modified some (such as Cav requiring Rifling). Part of the problem, however, is there are a number of sudden jumps in unit power. This didn't happen so much in real life. Even tanks started off as slow and awkward machines (in WWI). If there were 50% more units or so then military progression would be much smoother and a small advantage wouldn't be as devastating.

-Drachasor

In Civ4, in all other cases you gain anti-mount infantry before it's mounted counterpart.
In this case, it's not true since you can get cavalry long before Riflemen if you want to.

That's why this jump in tech, seems even more extreme. Since offense comes before defense, giving big lead.

As I said, this is just awasome when done by Russians.

[Arrian]

[playing dumb]But wait, if spearmen can beat Tanks anyway, what's the problem now?[/playing dumb]

I did some beelining for superior units last night and it did work fairly well - enough that I was hitting enemy cities with a combo of Grenadiers/Cav/Catapults against Longbows/Pikes/Macemen, with muskets showing up about 1/2 way through the war.

I picked a fairly backward target, though. My friend & ally, the #2 civ, was a step behind me to both grenadiers and riflemen (though they ignored MT for a bit, and were still using knights).

-Arrian

[bonscott]

Easy enough to counter with seige units. I've had the AI waltz up to me with a stack of 15 plus cavs and my 8 cannon decimated that stack to no end. My Maceman cleaned up the mess and the AI went home wimpering.

BUT for the human player I can see it possibly being an advantage since the AI does use seige units well but not that well. However, any time I've gone straight to cavs I seem to have other problems (such as not having the economy to support the large army or not enough seige units for an effective offensive) that it doesn't seem to be that big of an advantage. At least what I've seen so far on Noble.

[Arrian]

I used a Great Merchant in conjunction with the quasi-beeline (I did research a bunch of other stuff too, actually... not really a beeline at all, come to think of it), so I had ~1300 gold to use for knight -> Cav upgrades and Maceman -> Grenadier upgrades.

-Arrian

[Yuufo]

If this part of the tech tree is to be reworked, I would also like to do something for the Cannon.

This unit comes with the Steel technology, which belongs to the Industrial Era. That means, the only siege unit for classical medieval Renaissance era is the Catapult... And the next siege weapon comes very soon after.

It seemed logical to me that gunpowder allows to build Cannons... or maybe Chemistry, I don't know. But something has to be done, coz the first Cannons were invented in the 16th century I think... (i m talking about real life) and both Galleons and Frigates were loaded with them.