Is Cavalry Overpowered?

[Thunderfire]

Originally posted by Bad Ax

After all, the AI has a simple expedient to prevent the cavalry rush, which is to build cavalry. It could do what the real life armies did and counter the deep threat of cavalry with cavalry of its own. That the AI fails to do this does not demonstrate that the unit has problems so much as that the AI has them. After all, if you thought that the AI could counterattack with an equal cavalry force, you probably wouldn't be so keen on the force concentration you describe.

Speed 3 is the problem of cavalry. Their defense raiting doesn't matter if
I am the one who is attacking. Speed 3 + railroads = overpowerfull first
strike. The AI will loose 2-3 cities when I attack him and I can fill these
instantly with my own rifleman. The AI has to deal with a dozends defenders
istead of the 2-5. The AI always counter attacks in my games with his own
units. Most of the AIs units will die against a well designed defense.

[Allemand]

It appears that the real problem is railroads, which are grossly overpowered.

I like cavalry the way it is, except the speed is just a little too much. If someone wants to change something, use the editor.

[Nic]

Originally posted by Thunderfire


Speed 3 is the problem of cavalry. Their defense raiting doesn't matter if
I am the one who is attacking. Speed 3 + railroads = overpowerfull first
strike. The AI will loose 2-3 cities when I attack him and I can fill these
instantly with my own rifleman. The AI has to deal with a dozends defenders
istead of the 2-5. The AI always counter attacks in my games with his own
units. Most of the AIs units will die against a well designed defense.

Then the AI is simply being poor at counter-attack. With a city radius reduced to 1 for being captured and no chance to pop-rush until the resistance is quelled you should be outnumbered and outgunned. An equal number of cavalry counter-attacking should massacre the exhausted troops outside the city (before you have a chance to move them again) and cause pretty severe carnage to the ones within the city. With working railroads to within one tile of the city your opponent should be able to do more than just manage equal numbers unless you have such an immense superiority that their defeat is inevitable anyway.

If you have dozens of attackers and dozens of defenders waiting in the wings then either your opponent should have had dozens of defenders or it was a mis-match from the beginning and the precise stats of the units concerned is only a detail. Against a smart player this should only happen against an opponent who is on the verge of defeat or using a builder strategy, in the latter case you should be worried about losing the city and army to culture (if you raze it you probably do not gain the road control to bring your infantry in so you can't afford to raze it unless you want to see your exhausted cavalry massacred).

To be honest I don't think we will see how this pans out in MP until we have MP. Even so I think there are plenty of balancing factors against aggressive attack in the game and so the attacking units have to be pretty decent to avoid a permanent (and very dull) state of trench warfare. I'd still like to see pikemen have a decent bonus against mounted troops so we can get classical musket and pike formations against those pesky cavalry attacks but even without this I think the rules on culture, resistance and control of roads limit the effectiveness of mongol hoard strategies. It is still a worthwhile strategy - as it should be - but I really don't think its a game-killer.


--
Nic

[Pyrodrew]

Whoa

After reading the posts here & considering some recent games... I strongly agree Cavalry is too fast, 2 would be better for game balance. Specifically, because you can attack cities deep in an enemy's culture border. Don't even need railroads! They can travel on 2 roads (yours or neutral) then 2 enemy tiles then attack. Railroads are gravy.

Deadly Combo = Cavalry + Democracy.

Cavalry is so fast you don't need to have any units sitting in enemy territory (war weariness). 10 Cavalry have no problem taking over 2 Infantry... if you send tanks (1 turn longer while sitting in enemy territory) the AI often drafts 4 Infantry units (in Communism) making it harder to take that city. Once you take the city you can send defenders for your wounded valiant cavalry since you now own that territory/roads & end your turn with your cavalry on your new territory... or round up some more cavalry to take the next city.

[David Weldon]

Regarding moving cavalry to Nationalism:

I don't mind increasing Scientific in this way, for two reasons. First, it's a poor attribute to begin with, not the worst, but definitely not in the top 3 either. Second, the advantage that they gain will only be for 1 tech (normally 4 turns by then). That's not a huge time advantage. The way it is now, the uncontested rule of Cavalry can last for 10 or so techs.

The problem I see is that if Nationalism gives Cavalry, and everyone generally agrees that armies are extremely inefficient in a closely contested game, then Mil. Trad. becomes a non-tech, as there's no reason to research it just for the Pentagon.

Then again, maybe that would free up another tech space for something more useful anyway...

Other Thoughts:

All in all I think we should consider nerfing the unit that is currently called Cavalry, and then adding a unit very similar to it that becomes available later (around nationalism or steam power), to be used in the accquisition of strat. resources in the Industrial Age.

I have to admit that I like the idea of making Mil. Trad. way more expensive to encourage players that missing out on all the wonders of that era isn't worth it. Go back and research it _after_ you have steam power and have found that you need to go get some coal...

[Comrade Tribune]

I still insist that the real problem is a combination of three things that, by their cumulative effect, unbalance the game:


1- Retreat ability makes fast units immortal

2- Forced Labour is too powerful

3- Walls/City defense are too weak

[ranald]

Originally posted by Thunderfire


Speed 3 is the problem of cavalry. Their defense raiting doesn't matter if
I am the one who is attacking. Speed 3 + railroads = overpowerfull first
strike. The AI will loose 2-3 cities when I attack him and I can fill these
instantly with my own rifleman. The AI has to deal with a dozends defenders
istead of the 2-5. The AI always counter attacks in my games with his own
units. Most of the AIs units will die against a well designed defense.

If you can successfully defend against cavalry (when the AI
counterattacks), why couldn't the AI defend against your
cavalry in the first place?

The difference is not in the cavalry- both you and the AI are
using cavalry to attack, right, but only one of you is getting
anwhere, why is that?

The basic problem is that the AI doesn't fight well. It's better
than the Civ2 AI, but it still has a way to go.

[ranald]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune
I still insist that the real problem is a combination of three things that, by their cumulative effect, unbalance the game:


1- Retreat ability makes fast units immortal

2- Forced Labour is too powerful

3- Walls/City defense are too weak

I think you're on to something here, though I think the real
problem is 2. Forced Labor is too powerful.

They made it easier to grow your population. As a counter to
that and to the ICS it could easily lead to, they introduced
corruption.

However, there's a backdoor. You can now convert population
into production. And to top it off, that population is immune to
corruption. So now you have a situation where it's easy
(too easy?) to increase your population, and you have an easy
way to bypass the one restriction on "excess" population.

The output from Forced Labor should be subject to corruption.

[jbrians]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune
I still insist that the real problem is a combination of three things that, by their cumulative effect, unbalance the game:


1- Retreat ability makes fast units immortal

2- Forced Labour is too powerful

3- Walls/City defense are too weak

I think it would be a good idea to fix 1 OR 3, not both. Expansionist war is already fairly difficult in this game. If both 1 and 3 were changed it would be impossible.

-Brian

[pcasey]

I have to disagree strongly with the assertion that expansionist war is hard in Civ III. On the contrary, I find it way too easy to rush an AI civ with a swarm of fast units.

Once you discover the awesome and abusable power of pop rushing high speed attackers, defense is impossible for the AI.

If you've turtled and its not the late modern age and you're surrounded by high culture size 25 cities, a pop rush conquest stategy will be tedious because of the propensity of cities to revert. There's an easy solution to this. Scorched earth. Raze everything, conquer nothing, plant one of your settlers where the city used to be next turn after the entire AI civ has been obliterated by your horde of modern armor.

I at least would strongly support massive as in doubling, the defensive impact of walls and size 12+ cities. I'd also support walls being addative with city size. Plenty of modern cities had massive ring of fortifications making them harder to take in practise than there mere size would have offered e.g moscow/leningrad in WW II.

As it is defense is basically impossible in this game. The reason most players don't tend to run into this issue is that we play against the AI which I happily agree is horrible on the offense.

The problem that the AI can't run an offensive merely serves to mask the core gameplay flaw that defense is impossible against a fast unit rush.

Since the AI can't attack, we as players don't find ourselves having to deal with the impossibility of facing a cavalry rush. I guarantee you, not even a human player sitting across from me can defend 10 cities with 50 riflemen if I have 30 cavalry. He'll lose 3 or 4 cities on my first attack round, basically guaranteed.

Of course he'll counterattack and I'll lose 3 or 4 cities, but that's the problem in a nutshell. Neither of us can defend ourselves.

Defense is impossible.

[rid102]

I'm quite surprised no-one has mentioned Dragoons here.

I think Cavalry are actually underpowered because of some short-sightedness in their introduction. Cavalry are available pre-Industrialisation, post-Musketmen when really this kind of role is much better suited to Dragoons (a la Civ2). Hence, Cavalry in Civ3 are expected to last until around Infantry/Tanks (WW1) yet are given to the player post-Industrialisation. So, you have a unit that is relatively powerful when it's introduced but hopelessly outpaced later one (when historically it would be coming into its own).

Cavalry should be slightly more powerful than it is now but importantly shouldn't come until later on (around post-Riflemen). Although I do agree that it should only have 2M, so would be more like 7/4/2 or 8/4/2.

Dragoons should then fill the gap between Knights and Cavalry at something like 5/3/2 and also gives better unit matching through the ages:

i.e.

Spearmen->Pikemen->Musketmen->Riflemen->Infantry

Mounted Warrior->Knight->Dragoons->Cavalry->Tank

So each mounted unit type also has an infantry unit type counterpart.

[Nic]

Originally posted by pcasey
I have to disagree strongly with the assertion that expansionist war is hard in Civ III. On the contrary, I find it way too easy to rush an AI civ with a swarm of fast units.

In my (still rather limited) experience the AI is over-reliant on static defence and a bludgeoning counter-attack. In neither regard is it particularly smart. Swarming a dumb and predictable opponent is more to do with the limitations of the AI than the power of any particular unit in the game.

The most obvious sign of its stupidity is the habit of building roads and even railways right up to the border with another civ, roads that the human player is going to use to get all those supporting infantry into its captured cities. A smart player would build a minimum of border roads/railways and in defensively weak areas would place forts on those that are needed (for trade or resources). A smart player also places cities as much for defence as for growth, a city on a hill or the other side of a river is significantly harder for a cavalry rush to over-run and as we have discussed a failure to win the battle will often result in the loss of the cavalry army. Even if the cavalry win, their footsoldiers will be lagging behind without roads and the counter-attack should hammer the defensively weak cavalry unless they outnumber the defending civ by a wide margin.

If there is a problem here it is in the ability to pop rush large armies in short times. There has been plenty of discussion on that subject and I agree that it does make attack/pillage strategies very powerful. I still think that the defensive advantages of road usage, culture (and forts) should allow less despotic play-styles to hold out against the onslaught but we will only know for sure when we have MP.


--
Nic

[Thunderfire]

Originally posted by ranald


If you can successfully defend against cavalry (when the AI
counterattacks), why couldn't the AI defend against your
cavalry in the first place?

The difference is not in the cavalry- both you and the AI are
using cavalry to attack, right, but only one of you is getting
anwhere, why is that?

I can sucessfully defend because I am prepared for war.
Even the human player will be overwhelmed when the AI
starts a war and attacks with alot of speed 3 units. The
Chinese got 5 of my towns because they attacked me with
several dozend riders. They lost 4 units I lost 30...

[rid102]

Even the human player will be overwhelmed when the AI

Speed is a much bigger deal than before because of restricted movement in enemy territory and only being allowed one attack per turn (most of the time). This makes any M3 unit very dangerous.

I may try reducing Cavalry to M2 and seeing what effect that has.

[Comrade Tribune]

I think there is also a cost/effectiveness mismatch between Cavalry and Infantry. I am just now creating a Mod where Muskets and Rifles are reduced in price, while Cavalry is up to 120 shields!

Supply and Demand should regulate unit prices.