Your favourite (ordinary) offensive unit?

[Konquest02]

I'd have to go for archer. An early archer rush can net you immense profits!

[Juha Karlsson]

Cavalry. I usally avoid starting war before I have a bunch of them. Starting with defence unit only (some horsemen for barbarians though) to deterre sneak attacks and I give away maps and small amount of cash on demand from military stronger civs.

With a good (rail)road network and a good numbers of cavalries it is time for war. I pick a civ that obstruct my expansion plans or have lux/resources that I need, fool them to declare war on me and unleach my cavs.

It is important to get my nabors and the enemys nabors on my side. The others will follow soon.

The strength of cavalry is the movement rate, you can directly attack enemy cities two tiles in from their border, you dont have to stack them in enemy land and wait to next turn. A whole layer of enemy cities can be captured in the first turn. At next turn, focus on the enemy core cities and the capital. When the capital and lux/resources is yours try to defend whats taken and let the allies pick the scrap. The enemy is probably history before WW set in.

The cavalry is an important complementary attack unit when tanks is around due its superior movement rate.

Finally, when you got synthetic fibers and built modern armour the cavalry went obsolete. But it is a long way from military tradition to synthetic fibers and the cavalry is useful the whole way. Longer than any other unit. Also, knights are relatively cheap to upgrade to them.

And play the Ottmans with even stronger cavalry, the awesome sipanah. Any more strength to cavalry or an upgrade for them would unbalance the game.

[Kuciwalker]

How is it that only one person has posted that swordsmen is his favorite, yet it is running a close second?

[Kaos XIII]

I'll vote for the Knights. Whenever my Knights start appearing I know it is time for WAR!!! Even if my neighbors have MusketMen.

[statusperfect]

Swordmen. I like the looks and animations more than the horsemen. I use horsemen as a mobile defensive unit BTW .

cheers

[Cruddy]

Tac nukes - it's not easy sneaking them up, and it's very rare that i use them. Hence the fun factor.

Hence the banana vote.

[cumi]

I vote for Swordsmen

After thinking a while, I vote for Swordsmen. Calvary, Knights and of course MA or tanks are also not bad, but when? OK, Knights you can get earlier, but Swordsmen you can get very early, they are cheep.

I didn't vote for Swordsmen, because of they 3 point attack, but because of the 2 point deffense. I think it is also a very important issue, that your offensive army is not butchered after 2 turns.

With Calvary or Horsmen is nice to attack. But if you don't finish your offense in 1-2 turns, you can forget them. This is MY experience. Yes, you can pull them back very fast, but I need units near to enemy cities, not resting in my cities.

When I do early game rush, I usually capture 2-3 cities, but I often get stuck at 4th. Especially, when the 4th is a bigger city deeper in enemy empire. The AI can (and doing so) send there faster and more units. And the AI often starts an kontra-offense, attacking out from that city. If I am sigeing the city with horsmens, I loose them all.....

cumi

[Juha Karlsson]

I forget to mention that there are some more use for cavalry after that modern armor is availible. To avoid cultural flip in a captured city I put in a lot of cavalries in it (of course at least two mech. inf. for defence). Then I disband one cavalry to get shields for temple building, rush temple without penalty price. Next turn I have a temple there and cultural points is counting.

[Arrian]

Ah, my poor Horsemen, running a distant 6th, tied with Tanks.



-Arrian

[lmtoops]

Calvary is useful forever. After modern armor, they also can be used to destroy terrain improvements. They are basically kamakazi units, but they go down in a blaze of glory. Take out a few strategic resources or key railroads.

[Chemical Ollie]

I voted cavallery, for reasons others already posted. But coolest must be medieval infantry. Just listen to the guttural sounds he makes during battle.

[Theseus]

Swordsman, hands down.

Eaaarly availability, and balanced for offense / defense. Only ancient era standard unit suitable to start mixed-unit Armies with.

[Master Zen]

Swordsmen. Sure, you need iron, but it's just so fun to go on a swordsman war. Yes, I know, Archers are more effective, but swordsmen are more fun

BTW, I HATE horsemen. Same cost as a swordsman, but the only advantage I see is in taking out damaged units or units with defense of 1. I build a lot of them of course... but only so I can upgrade them to knights later

on the other hand, Mounted Warriors...

[nbarclay]

Cavalry. (1) I love a 3 movement rate because it makes for quicker wars and often prevents enemy slow-movers from getting a chance to counterattack. (2) With a tech lead, cavalry have a very nice window of opportunity between the time I get Military Tradition and the time my rivals get Nationalism. (3) I generally do way too much building in the early game to have a large horseman force available for upgrade to knights, but by the time cavalry come around, especially if I've avoided getting Chivalry, I can do massive upgrades. Similarly, if I'm playing a civ with a good knight-replacement UU, I generally have plenty of my UU available for upgrade to cavalry.

Put those factors together and cavalry are a real powerhose for me. The games I get the most satisfaction from tend to be ones where I either achieve domination with cavalry or could if I wanted to.

Of course the whole thing hinges on having a tech lead, preferably a significant one, when I get Military Tradition. If I can't achieve that, cavalry don't do me all that much good and I'm stuck waiting for MAs to do large-scale conquering.

[Chemical Ollie]

I normally stop building cavallery and turn to WW1-style (infantry + artillery) once I research replacable parts. That's because the AI normally keep up with me and get infantry as well, which means the end of cavallery blitzing (I once lost my whole stack of 30 cav trying to take one city on a hill).

But in my current game, I'm in a position of Ultimate Power(TM) and found out that my advance was seriously stalled when I got to much infantry. It was time to get back in the saddle...