Are swordsmen useless?

[Cort Haus]

Sorry for trolling you like that, OP. Had the thread title been: "Are Swordsmen useless in MP against stacks of Axemen" I'd have been less hasty. Of course you'd RTM.

[EscapedGoat]

The counter to Axemen is Horse Archers

Except horse archers cost like 50 shields and have a 400 beaker-or-so prerequisite. That's a pretty poor counter. A counter is supposed to be cost effective. It's more cost effective to just build axemen of your own.

[Yyrkroon]

re: Axe v Archer

Axes are also much more versatile. If you have axemen in your cities, and an enemy scout or under strength stack shows up, you can go on the offensive and eliminate the threat quite easily.

On the other hand, if you are still churning out archers when a said scout/pillager or under strength stack shows up, you have to either have to be willing to accept a Phyrric victory or watch in horror as your improvements get raped and your workers huddle uselessly in your cities.

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Back to Axe v Sword

I really do think swordsmen should have an additional bonus to city combat.

The goal should be that archers make the most cost effective general defenders, axemen dominate melee, and swordsmen are almost a requirement to take defended cities.

[HavenDuuk]

The *best* fix would be to bring back stack bombardment by catapults and reduce the combat strength of siege equipment.

Perhaps even limiting their possible damage so that you can't reduce a unit more than 50% through bombardment.

Then, all those axemen sitting in a city would have to come out and play or risk being reduced severely.

Personally, I rarely use catapults. I focus on axemen or swordsmen (depending on what is in the cities I'm attacking) and churn out a horde of units. I accept huge casualties to break the enemy's back, and usually this works.

Even in multiplayer. Though in multiplayer it's also fun to sneak units in using ships and hit the cities that the other guy thought were "safe". I burned half of Russia to the ground last night while his machine gunners were on our border freaking out

[Hauptman]

You rarely use catapults?

Can i play ladder games against you please?

Cats become 50% of my military after construction.

A couple really nasty mean looking stacks of swords, axes, archers, spears and horses show up in my borders. I pummel each with a couple of cats thus weakening every single unit in that stack, even if the cats die this is worth every penny. As now my axes and horses can go out and easily win EACH of their fights.

Now you would have to go out, and attack each full strength counter unit with the wrong unit. You will loose 60% of the fights, at least. Or you have to sit in your city and wait for him to attack you.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I usually build lots of swordsmen in MP, but I usually grab Rome. PREYtorians really make up the gap, but still I do 50-50 axes and torians.

I use axes or horse archers to take out axes and the torians clean up the mess (they especially are good against spears or archers).

[Shr3dZ]

Archers are the best, most cost effective defenders against Axemen imo. Theyre cheap and they arent melee units nulifying the axemens ability.

Archers with one promotion and one culture pop, defending a city should be awesome no?

Archer 3

50% city defence - 1.5
20% promotion - .6
20% culture - .6
25% fortified - .75
50% walls - 1.5

Total ~8 (more if on hills) ...and that would be vs. 5.5 (axemen with combat promo) or vs. 7.8 (swordsmen with city attack promo).

But this thread isnt even about that, its why would you build Swordsmen when Axemen are better. Well, Swordsmen are best for attacking a city defended by (in this case) Archers. If everyone if building Axemen only, there probably is no reason to build Swordsmen - unless of course you dont have copper/iron. A good suggestion for MP might be to at least build 1 archer to make it tough for those Axemen, but not so many that you lose your flexiblity to counterattack and such ~

I agree with others that Swordsmen could use a boost of maybe from 10% to 20% city attack from birth ~

[Possibility]

I would think a +20% attack bonus against cities instead of 10% would help the swordsman, that would rase their attack to ~ 7.2 instead of 6.6. And probably make them a little more worthwhile to make.

Possibility

[Dis]

I found I needed swordsmen to defend against barbarian axeman. My own axeman just weren't strong enough for the task.

[Diadem]

Swordsmen loose against axemen, but they have a good chance against any other early unit (archers, horse archer, spearmen). That makes them pretty generic, and that has its uses.

[Dis]

well my axeman also lose against axeman. I still haven't found a good couner to the barb axeman rush. Aside from preventing it in the first place with my units stationed out in the wilderness. But my promoted swordsmen don't fare too badly.

[Enigma_Nova]

If you haven't got Horse Archers by the time the enemy starts Axespamming you, the only counter is to have more Axemen - but you'd prefer it not get to that point.

[Mujadaddy]

Originally posted by Bhruic
For the record, you are applying the bonuses incorrectly. Bonuses vs specific unit types subtract from the enemy's stats, they don't add to their own unit. Not that your conclusion is incorrect because of that, but it changes the numbers a little.

Bh

Quoted for Redundancy

"City Attack" subtracts DIRECTLY from the strength bonus given to the defender... (ie, total of 45% defense bonus vs. +30% City Attack Swordsman (with city raid one) drops down the defenders bonus to 15% ... it is mathematically significant for the comparison to be done this way and not the other. If you have no catapults, maximizing City Attack is your only option..... but if the opponent is defending with axemen, attack with city-attack Axemen )

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dis
well my axeman also lose against axeman. I still haven't found a good couner to the barb axeman rush. Aside from preventing it in the first place with my units stationed out in the wilderness. But my promoted swordsmen don't fare too badly.

Horn your skills with the "raging barbarians" option on

[Bill3000]

I remember quite awhile ago there was a thread saying that axemen were useless... Yeah, 50% VS all melee units is useless...