Are swordsmen useless?

[Enigma_Nova]

An axeman in a city means "Throw Chariots at this". If the Axemen die/get wounded before the archers are all dead, then it's Swordsman time.

[Hauptman]

Yeh this one time in multiplayer, some guy came at me with swordsman, I giggled gleefully as i then promoted all my axemen with his dead swordsman corpses.

Swordsman are for archers. again, like everything else in this game, its situational. If your apponent has longbows but no metal, You better be cranking catapults and swords... =)

[ike7]

The bonuses probably should have been flipped.

More primitive bands with crude axes and other tools were mainly interested in pillaging and weak targets like settlements and villages.

Production of the sword represented dedicated military technology that wasn't useful for anything else, a swordsmen is probably best generalized as an anti-personnel weapon.

Hacking city walls w/ a sword? Hmmm.

[Enigma_Nova]

Well, we could always use Workers to construct anti-siege equipment. Perhaps a Worker adds (10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%) to City Attack of units in the same square, increasing over 5 turns?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
An axeman in a city means "Throw Chariots at this". If the Axemen die/get wounded before the archers are all dead, then it's Swordsman time.

Only if you have horses. If you have that, you can be certain that I am going to change that situation in a hurry.

[Shr3dZ]

Originally posted by Possibility In multiplayer, archers arent used much for city defense (unless your city is on a hill), and everyone makes axemen and spears. And attacking a city with swordsmen defended by fortified axemen is stupid suicide.

Dont you think that by saying that, you should now make the logical step of making archers? If your saying that nobody makes swordsmen, then the appropriate response would be to make archers to defend your cities... its seems so obvious to me that if everyone makes axemen, you should build archers - you can almost get 2 archers for every 1 axemen - and archers will have near axemen strength (if not more) once fortified in a city with the city defence promotion, plus the axemen wouldnt be able to utilize his 50% melee attack bonus. In essence you answered your own question.

I dont have the stats in front of me but isnt it:

+50% city defence
+50% wall defence
+25% fortified
+??% for city defence promotion
+ first strike

Im guessing thats gotta add up to more than 5~

[Enigma_Nova]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Only if you have horses. If you have that, you can be certain that I am going to change that situation in a hurry.

Chariots Raze better than Axemen do. =]
Of course, that's why you have your own Spearmen and Axemen patrolling around, especially near your Horse and Iron.
Heck, I might even build on the dang horse. =D

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Shr3dZ
Dont you think that by saying that, you should now make the logical step of making archers? If your saying that nobody makes swordsmen, then the appropriate response would be to make archers to defend your cities...

It's called a Nash equilibrium and my bet is that it will eventually be reached.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Shr3dZ
+??% for city defence promotion

20% for the the first one.

[Blake]

City Defender goes 20%/45%/75%.

Anyway lets actually compare defenders:
The city has one border expansion, +20%.
The unit is fortified, +25%.

Axeman: 5 str, 45% bonus = 7.25
Archer: 3 str, +95% bonus = 5.85

Okay, lets add 1 promotion, Combat1 (10%) for axe, city defender (20%) for archer.
Axeman (+55%): 7.75
Archer (+115%): 6.45

Now, just for fun, a hill:
Axeman (+80%): 9
Archer (+165%): 7.95

Now for a cost comparison... Axes are 35 vs Archer 25, so axes cost 40% more.
But axes also have higher defensive strength, if you know much about Civ4 strength, it's that higher strength has a greater-than-linear combat advantage. In most cases Axemen have about 20% higher defensive-strength, but that's closer to 40% higher effectiveness.

As such, I'm willing to say that Axemen are atleast equal defenders as Archers, except on hills where Archers are a little more cost-effective.

With that said, I usually use a mix of axes and archers, mainly to blunten the value of shock/cover.

[Urban Ranger]

Axemen can get Woodsman but Archer can get Guerilla.

[EscapedGoat]

building axemen is a dominant strategy because axemen have no weaknesses and no counters. If you build an axeman, you really cannot go wrong. What's gonna kill an axeman? yes, that's right, nothing except another axeman.

If you build swordsmen, there is risk involved, because they are killed easily by axemen, which the other guy SHOULD be building. Therefore, swordsmen are good vs the computer AI which sits in his cities with archers, but horrible vs other players who will be massing axemen.

[Enigma_Nova]

The counter to Axemen is Horse Archers, and the counter to Macemen is Crossbows.

[Risa]

Everyone that can train an axeman can train a spearman, so horse archer won't be too much effective.

[MoonWolf]

I find the classical mixture of units nice You need planning and certainly a combined army. I like swordsmen. They normally take over my axemen's role in charging cities, but I'll always keep some axeman with city raider 2/3 around for taking out melee units in the cities I'm attacking. Swordsmen are also good allround units for interrupting invaders