Is Cavalry Overpowered?

[gnomos]

Movement Penalties

I seem to recall that civ2 units suffered a movement penalty when damaged. I think this should be restored to civ3. It would make it harder for those damaged cavalry to escape to a safe place to heal up.

Also, I'd like to see a change to railroad movement, I think it's too powerful. Why not just make it double or triple road movement? Then it at least costs something to get somewhere.

[Ralf]

I think the Cavalry is tweaked just about right.
If someone here dont like it, he can always change the cavalry-stats in that CivMod-editor.

[gnomos]

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.

Why is the AI letting you run right up to the city walls with cavalry? Why isn't it building fortresses along the way and stocking them with good defensive units? Why isn't it UPGRADING existing defensive units to their best possible incarnation? Every time I see a spearman in a city of a civ that has infantry, I have to scratch my head at the programming. If the AI doesn't want to build barracks everywhere to heal defending units, then it should at least cycle defending units to a city with a barracks to get upgraded. After all, they spend endless moves PATROLLING, why not move for a real PURPOSE?

The AI should build cities on hills as a priority, it should run roads through forests, and stick fortesses on them, to provide better defensive bonuses to defending troops.

Also, walls need to be made more effective. I think they should always provide some defensive bonus, on top of the city size.

Also, the AI should stock cities with more than one artillery piece. I think artillery should require no upkeep costs, as they are basically items, not troops that you have to feed. This would let everyone build more of them, and use them more effectively. As it is right now you run a cheap horsie up to a town to take the first shot and flee, then get serious about what you are doing.

[gnomos]

Re: Tech shifting modification

Originally posted by Bad Ax
If you're concerned about the balancing act between riflemen and cavalry and decide on a tech-tree solution, might it not be best to just swap them out so that Riflemen become available with Military Tradition and Cavalry with Nationalism? This puts Cavalry after Riflemen, and still keeps MT as a relevant tech.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Also, I think the shield cost should be raised on cavalry, to prepresent the additional effort to raise and train the horses (cavalry mounts are not generally captured, despite the horses resource thing) they are bred for speed, strength, and stamina.

BTW, here's an exploit I haven't seen mentioned. You start a longbow, get 1 shield in a turn, then pop rush it (this gives you 40 shields). Then switch to cavalry/rifleman, wait 1 turn for another shield, and pop rush the remaining 39 shields. This is more efficient than pop rushing it all at once.

[roadcage]

David:

Close but it's even better than you think.
Remember, fast units will retreat only when ALL of the following are true
.) The the unit has some remaining movement after the initiation of battle.
.) The unit is not defending a city square.
.) The counter-party unit is not a fast unit.

So all that is necessary for massive cav deaths to ensue from the cav rush is a border far enough away that the cav is attacking on it's last movement point. Lets see know, temple + 5 (turns) leaves just the corners exposed. Temple + 10 (turns) + Library + 16 (turns) does the trick.

Remember, the hypothetical proposed was two large human civs with hostilities beginning somewhere between Nationalism and Replaceable Parts. (Not spelled out in the scenario but implied by the troop dispositions.) I suggest that by this time the border will be more or less +2 tiles for each side. There may be a few deviations due to actual city placement, but these exceptions will be clearly obvious allowing some concentration of force. The cities will probably be maxed out at 12 pop unless Sanitation is available.

Looking at the defender's position in this scenario, 30 riflemen to spread over 5 cities. One 3 rifleman army for each city with per city plus the others in 3 rifleman armies in the cities with the short borders.

To make things simple we will assume 100% vets for both sides.
And give the offense a break only 2 armies to defeat (no short borders).

Offensive bonus- none
Offensive value 6
=6
Defensive bonus
City 50%
Pop 12*4%
Buildings 2*4%
Terrain variant assume 0%
total 106%
Defensive value 6
=12.36

cav hitpoint success fraction 6 / 18.36 = 32.68%
cav hitpoint /rifleman hitpoint ratio 67.32%/32.68% = 2.06
rifleman hitpoints needed for success 6*4 = 24
cav hitpoints expected 24*2.06 = 49.44 say 49

With the cav attacking on last move, no retreats so:

Expected cav deaths 12 * 80 = 960 shields
Riflemen equivalent lost 6 * 80 = 480 shields

And this is just the initial attack. The counter-attack will be even more devestating.


Please promise to use this strategy against me in MP

To quote the great one (el Rushbo)
When in doubt, run the numbers!

roadcage

[gnomos]

Originally posted by pcasey
You're absolutely right, a mobile defense that rushed its own mobile force to the threatened sector is the way to go. Unfortunately, I get to make all my attacks on my turn, so your mobile reserve has to sit there halfway across the map while I destroy your border cities, pillage your railroads, and retreat my strike force back into my territory, leaving you to survey a scorched wasteland of what used to be the breadbasket of your empire.

Sure, if I wasn't thourough enough in my railroad destruction campaign and left a link intact you can do the same thing to me, and that's the problem.

There's no defense at all.

We'll just take turns burning each other cities down until somebody runs out of cities. Its nuclear war with cavalry.

There's no balance in the combat model when defense is impossible.

Do I mean to say that blitzkreig assaults should be disallowed? Of course not, if you have a 4 to 1 numerical advantage with tanks and I'm still using riflemen, then I'd expect to get overwhelmed.

The problem is that if we both have 1000 shields worth of units, I'd resonably expect that I could set up a *defense* that would blunt your attacks. Historically, given force parity, defense is the strongest form of warfare.

In civ III, given force parity, defense doesn't stand a chance.

Hmm, one problem here is the wounded cavalry always gets away. Even if it takes damage from cannon fire as it initially attacks, it's still usually going to survive the attack. How about if the defending unit got a counter attack as the wounded cavalry flees? This would be a "free shot", like an artillery barage, as the unit flees the field of combat, a chance to take off that last HP.

[Sevorak]

Originally posted by roadcage
Pop 12*4%
Buildings 2*4%

roadcage,

The "4" in the editor (actually an 8 with the newest patch) is not a percentage bonus to the defending unit. It is used only to determine the chance of a population point or building to be "hit" in bombardment. Read the Civ3Edit Help entry.

-Sev

[vmxa1]

What is the point of saying we can use the editor? Do you suspect we are not aware of that? This is about tweaks to the game, not the using the editor.
It may be of interest to talk about humans on humans, but so far as I know we do not have MP in Civ3 and no mention of it coming.

[Nic]

Originally posted by pcasey
Combined arms? Please. Give me 30 cavalry. We'll give you 20 cannons and 30 riflemen. Now go set up any defensive system you want for 5 border cities.

Lacking any rapid units that is not a combined arms defense, it is a dumb defence. Generally I would want mounted:foot:artillery in 2:2:1 proportions, less artillery if I'm not planning on conquest any time soon. So that would be 20:20:10 according to your proportions above, 10 per border town split between the fortress and the town itself. Generally I put mostly infantry in the fortress and mostly cavalry and artillery in the town.

Fortresses are very nearly free, trivial against the costs of units in the middle ages. Therefore building lots of fortresses is a low-cost way of ensuring that the initial rush captures targets of trivial strategic value and bogs down. Add in a forest (where nature did not provide) and you get both improved defense and you slow down the cavalry enough to stop them blitzing through to the town on the first turn.

If you have no infantry in the attack my mounted counter-attack should kill almost one unit for every mounted unit I possess within range. Assuming my two neighbouring towns are within 1 turn move on roads (they nearly always will be) you can expect a counter attack of artillery followed by 15 mounted troops plus possibly an infantry rush if I think I am going to recapture the fort. After the first counter-attack our forces fighting for the town should be about equal in numbers but many of yours will be exhausted and unable to heal, you would need a lot of luck to win from this position and would be wiser to retreat.

Cavalry can be a real bane but not when used in a frontal assault on my border towns, this is a good way to lose a lot of cavalry for little gain. Keep them for the purpose they were historically used for: exploiting weaknesses made by the foot-sloggers or pillaging and forcing me to come out of my fortresses to fight. Having broken through my front line by other means[1] your cavalry can indeed rush through my less well defended heartlands[2].

Once the defender has Construction the mongol horde rush begins to lose its impact, once they have Engineering it becomes an even blunter weapon. IMO Cavalry is just powerful enough to postpone the transition into defensive attrition warfare until infantry come along, at which point offensive warfare had better wait for the invention of the tank.

[1] Culture is my favourite, the loss of a border town by defection could break any defence especially as the border garrisons defect. Strangely this seems to force aggressive and militaristic civs to defend in greater depth than cultural builder civs.

[2] I'll only defend my heartlands in this strength if I'm being very paranoid indeed, the cost would be prohibitive.
--
Nic

[Nic]

Originally posted by Arrian
While I don't generally take defending my frontier quite as seriously as Nic does (I build roads/RR everywhere just like the AI), I might if the AI rushed me more often.

I will only defend this vigorously at the highest levels and even then only if I want to play a reasonably peaceful civ without too many annoying attacks causing war-weariness. In MP I suspect I would either attack aggressively or adopt a solid defence and counterattack, a strategy of underplaying the military aspects of the game would be suicidal in MP.

--
Nic

[pcasey]

Some Notes:

1) A well managed cavalry blitz won't leave cavalry exposed for a counterattack. I'll just move them all back into my territory after they've razed a couple of your cities. With a movement factor of 3, this is easy enough to do with railroads and possible but hard with roads. Yes, you'll do the exact same thing to me if you have cavalry. That's not combined arms though, that's us trading unstoppable city assaults until somebody runs out of cities.

2) The counterunit for cavalry is not riflement, its the musketman. You can get Cavalry with this set of Middle Ages Techs:

Feudalism --> Engineering --> Invention --> Gunpowder --> Chemistry --> Metallurgy --> Military tradition.

Riflemen require all of those except military tradition, and also:

Monotheism, Theology, Education, Astronomy, Physics, Theory of Gravity, Mangnatism, Banking, and Nationalism.

You can get cavalry less than half way through the middle ages if you beeline.

[Nic]

Originally posted by pcasey
Some Notes:

1) A well managed cavalry blitz won't leave cavalry exposed for a counterattack. I'll just move them all back into my territory after they've razed a couple of your cities. With a movement factor of 3, this is easy enough to do with railroads and possible but hard with roads.

2) The counterunit for cavalry is not riflement, its the musketman. You can get Cavalry with this set of Middle Ages Techs:

1. Unless you have some way of making your cavalry move rapidly through forest you have no choice but to sit and take the counterattack on the chin, this is why I believe that Engineering seriously blunts mongol-horde type attacks. No sane defender is gong to give you 2 turns to plough through to their border city and then another turn to retreat before launching their counter-attack. I don't care how well you manage your attack, you cannot avoid going through the intervening terrain and I'm not going to be dumb enough to place border cities within move-3 of the border if I can possibly help it. If by misfortune and extreme proximity I cannot achieve enough distance to the border my city will either be a write-off or will be fortified and garrisonned to make any attack a pyrrhic victory.

2. Cavalry is counter-unit for both musket and rifle (and to some extend infantry). In the earlier part of its lifespan it can be an effective assault unit but should not be overwhelmingly so, in the latter part of its period it is primarily useful for counterattack and exploitation as it loses the ability to achieve a breakthrough on its own.

3. We are only going to know how this balances out when we have MP because we all know the AI is not at good at these sorts of tactics as a human opponent. I believe cavalry pose a real threat but not a game breaking one (pop-rushing is another matter however). You believe otherwise, I think we will just have to agree to differ.

--
Nic

[Grim Legacy]

ROFL. I just made some very succesful raids against small enemy cities.

The last town was defended by a regular rifleman (f), a regular spearman (f) and a longbowman. 8 regular horsies did the trick, taking only 1 loss.

Yes regular horsies.

HORSEMEN!

[Whoha]

forest your boarder

Cavalry have 3 movement points, but they can not gain a bonus from roads. Even if the boarder is only 2 squares from a city such a set up would prevent any attack since your own mobile force could then engage and kill all the cavalry. Though since the ai does not use cavalry effectively, and since multiplayer is not out yet, this is all theory craft.

[jan3]

well in my opinion cavalry is suposed to be at least 3 times faster then units at feet its only logic
and cavalry was used as elite troops a very long time as army routers
in fact the mongols used them the first to blitz
when the mongols invaded western country's the western town and country's tought there wher 5 or 6 mongol army's sacking their towns
in fact there was only one or 2 but the mongol little horses could keep up draft(quick pace) a very long time so that one mongol army could move very fast and so make the western towns believe their where more army's :-)
conclusion not the germans invented the blitzkrieg but the mongols

Originally posted by Velociryx
cavalry is supposed to be paired up with riflemen, IMO (6/3/3 cav and 3/6/1 Riflemen). Still, I'm of the opinion that ALL mounted units in the game are overpowered, and should be more expensive to reflect the power they give you to control the tempo, place, and time of any given battle.

For me, the reason that they're overpowered lies not so much with the move of three, but the fact that unless they're facing another fast unit (and let's face it, when you're assaulting cities, you rarely see a fast unit defending the town), the battle is not "resolved" even if the cav is chased off by the defender, meaning the defender gets no chance for a morale upgrade....meaning further that a massed cav strike WILL wear down a city and that the attacker will take zero losses (or sometimes one loss...if the cav "hangs in" the battle trying to nab the last hp from a defender). This gives cav users a higher percentage of elite troops, gives a correspondingly higher percent chance for great leaders (more elites fighting, more chances in general), and, adding the 3 moves and ZOC on top of all that makes them too powerful for their cost, IMO.

-=Vel=-