Is Cavalry Overpowered?

[Bad Ax]

Tech shifting modification

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.

[Arrian]

I gotta agree with Nic. The problem with Cavalry is mostly the AI's inability to use it properly and deal with defending against it. 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've only experienced one AI mobile unit rush attack, and it was initially successful. I lost two cities to Samurai. But then, you see, I counterattacked (admittedly, the initial counterattack, with knights, stopped them cold, but I soon got Cavalry, which took back my two cities and then proceeded to destroy Japan). The thing is, I had units fortified on hills near key cities... hills they had to attack across rivers. That HURT them and slowed them down, even if it didn't stop them. The AI doesn't do that in the reverse. Once the AI attacked me, I switched all but 1 or 2 cities to producing troops. I gathered my forces and attacked in numbers. I protected my units as well as I could. And I was winning, even before Cavalry. Cav just made it easier. And you know what? I researched the tech, I had the resources... I deserve an advantage for that.

I've been thinking more and more about this, and frankly I think most of the problem would be solved by moving Cav and Riflemen together. Cav vs. Musketmen is just too easy, I agree. But Riflemen do rather well. That, combined with convincing the AI to upgrade its units and react better to a rush attack, would do the trick.

-Arrian

[Gen.Dragolen]

AI Tactics

Well you may all think the AI doesn't know how to manage a combined arms battle, but I think it does a respectible job after watching two AI civ's beat on another AI civ. And there are a couple of points to consider when looking at the AI's actions.

The Main Event: Egyptians, Aztecs and Americans vs Romans.

Initially I was sucked in by a MPP with the Aztecs, but made a seperate peace after taking 5 Roman cities. I had a large technological superiority over everyone and they started with cavalry and riflemen. I had Mech Infantry and Bombers.

Romans advanced into three Aztec cities at their south eastern border while I advanced on the Romans down the west side of their lands. The Romans used their cavalry to good effect in cutting apart the Aztec reinforcements before I put up a solid wall of infantry and armour across the entire frontier to keep the romans out of my lands. (No ZOC is hard to work without, but that's why you keep cavalry or tanks around - mobile ZOC's)

It took my pounding the Romans with bombers and fighters to stave off the defeat of the Aztecs. Finally the Americans and Aztecs got their forces in order and started making assaults into the Roman lands. Initally they would only land one unit at a time and that would get killed attacking the cities

The Romans would also counter-attack with cavalry non-stop. When the Aztecs finally managed to get more than a couple of units next to a city, they would attack with massed cavalry and later with massed tanks.

The Romans never did make tanks, but a pair of their cavalry would routinely kill the Aztec tanks - a 1 for 1 trade with the remaining unit retreating to the city. Cavalry is still a lot faster to produce. Don't foget Nathaniel Forest's strategy: Get there firstest with the mostest.

This went on for almost 20 turns before I got bored and took the Roman cities they were fighting for and that ended the war.

The strangest thing was to see the Romans land Cavalry next to an Aztec city that was across a small sea from the main battlefields. Nice diversion.

And I do like the idea that the strategic resources should be "consumed" as units are built: horses only breed so fast and oil deposits can run dry. More micro-management, but the game is still pretty simple.

The AI isn't a decent general yet, but it is still much better than the any other game I've played since SMAC came out.

[pcasey]

The AI is stupid.
The AI is exploitable.

This isn't news. All AI's are exploitable in one way or another.

The concern I have with Cavarly in specific, and the combat system in general, is that even a human cannot defend against certain tactics.

Cavalry rushes are just plain indefensible by anyone. Its not a case where the AI is dumb and so the strategy works, but a smart human would beat it.

There's no way to beat a cavalry rush.

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.

I guarantee I'll take any two of them in the first round of combat, and I'll likely take a third. And I'll do it all without losing more than a half dozen cavalry.

You'll *have* to split up your units to cover 5 possible targets.

I won't. I'll concentrate my attackers and beat your forces in detail. Then, I'll use my extra movement points to retreat my cavalry out of your lands and park them in a city with a barracks.

You'll never get a chance to counterattack.

Border defenses? Please, it just spreads your troops out even further. I'll just crack a whole in them and run my cavalry through, then run them back out after I'm done razing 3 of your cities.

Given anything like force parity, an all fast unit rush will knock the snot out of a combined arms force. Combined arms *sounds* nice, and it is something we all want to make work, but the fact is in this game its a pipe dream.

Defense doesn't work. It'll never work in a turn based game that lets the attacker move every single one of his units anywhere on the map on his turn (railroads). Nomatter what defensive system you set up, I can concentrate a superior force against a *subset* of it and break it with a cavalry rush.

[Arrian]

pcasey,

I totally understand what you are saying, and I agree that the Cavalry rush is powerful. But I disagree when you say it cannot be stopped. Your example gives me 20 cannon and 30 Riflemen. No, no, no. I would never build that type of army. I would have a large reserve of Cavalry myself. Sure, your initial rush might take a city or two. I understand that. But I can counterattack with my reserves of Cavalry. And yes, if we stalemate, with me getting my cities back, you still win b/c you've wrecked my border towns. But the player who takes the initiative should gain something. The best defense is a good offense, no? That being said, I do acknowledge that if you have enough Cav, I'm in serious, serious trouble. But why did I let you get that strong?

I have seen some pretty good suggestions for relatively minor changes that could solve this issue to our mutual satisfaction (I think). The two I like the best are:

disallowing retreat from walled towns and cities (7+ size), and
putting Cavalry and Riflemen together in the tech tree.

-Arrian

[MarshalN]

Pceasy, unforutnately, that's how the game of civilization is always going to work. The best defense is a mobile defense consisting of an army that can move and counterattack at any given moment. Static defense with static riflemen and cannons is never going to beat a concentrated cavalry attack, because as we all know if you concentrate your attack on a certain point, chances are you'll break it.

You don't need cavalry to do that -- you can do that with immortals or swordsmen or whatever. The difference is that cavalry is generally faster and you can retreat so you can lose less. But like Arrian said, if your opponent has an army of cavalry of his own and his road network is anything near good, then you won't be able to hold the city you captured -- and you might even risk getting counterattacked. The price? Your 20-30 cavalry for two towns that were sacked and re-sacked. Quite expensive if you ask me. You need at least 2 turns to get back out of the cities you captured (one to get in, the other to get out), so in the meantime, if there are railroads, then you might as well say bye to your cavalry army.

It's not invincible against humans, and if the enemy can do it to you -- then there's really no problems. The bigger problem is the AI doesn't know how to use the retreat function very well and build stupid attack units like longbowmen, and the AI doesn't know how to coordinate attack/defense very well. Humans are a lot smarter.

[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.

[Luigi]

A solution

After reading a lot of very clever posts I arrive at the conclusion that the best way to balance the power of human vrs AI combat and to make MP fun whenever it comes is to limit the number of units you can make of each type.

You can rush me with XX cavalries but after I hunt them what are you going to bring, you can't poprush more cavalries than "n" so you have to be very very careful about how to attack, when and using with.

I don't agree with the idea to limit the number of units upon resources, I wonder what do you all think about this constrain and if you like it how would you implement it?

[Arrian]

pcasey,

I see your point. And you are right, two smart human opponents, given roughly the same resources, would probably bog down into warfare over a large stretch of wasteland. Actually, no, one or both would probably try and end-around with ships, but you get the gist. It would turn into a slash 'n burn fest. However, there are a lot of other factors that might make things play out differently. That scenario happens when you have parity (in ability and resources).

So, what do you think about putting Cav with riflemen and/or making some changes to the retreat rules? Or do you think making mobile units more expensive is the way to go (what are Cav now, 80 shields?)? And how much, realistically, do you think can be done with the AI?

-Arrian

[pcasey]

I won't speculate on the AI because I've no idea how they programmed it. Writing game AI's is bloody hard though, civ III isn't chess, the search space of possible moves is impossibly large, so saying the AI should be as smart as a chess program is very unfair I think.

I like the idea of pairing cavalry with riflemen. I think you could just make military tradition an industrial age tech with a prereq of nationalism.

I'd put a derivative of the disallow retreats rule.

1) You can always retreat on the defensive.
2) If you attack a stack that contains a fast unit, that fast unit gets an opportunity attack on you if you retreat, even if you were not engaging that specific unit.
3) If you attack a city with a fast unit, no retreat is allowed. Call it street fighting, call it whatever you want, but its necessary for game balance I think.

I'd support making cavalry more expensive, but I don't think it'd fix the problem. If it costs me 4 population instead of 3 to rush one, its really not a big deal. I'll still be able to crank out *enough*.

I'd also support a blanket increase in the defense bonus of cities, and allow city walls to continue to function and stack with the defensive bonus of a city post size 7. Digging infantry out of a city should be hard. As it is, its easier to dig them out of a city than out of a mountain square.

I'd also propose one more completely arbitrary silly rule which I think nonetheless would be a big improvement on gameplay.

If you cross a border with a unit on a specific turn, you cannot attack a city *with that unit* on that same turn.

This would force your attack force to sit there and *take* a counterattack before it could hit a city and would allow a defender to bring up his mobile reserves.

Yes, its silly, yes its utterly arbitarary, but I think it would work.

[Bad Ax]

Re: A solution

Originally posted by Luigi
You can rush me with XX cavalries but after I hunt them what are you going to bring, you can't poprush more cavalries than "n" so you have to be very very careful about how to attack, when and using with.

I don't agree with the idea to limit the number of units upon resources, I wonder what do you all think about this constrain and if you like it how would you implement it?

I think a hard cap of this type would be ridiculous and frustrating, because it has no logical basis in reality or in game mechanics. It's no better a fix for the unit imbalances than the unit imbalances were for the resource imbalances.

A better implementation, if you're dead set against resource production caps, which would be impossible to implement in civ3 without a major revision anyway, would be to have a soft cap of scaled unit costs. After all, it did cost significantly more to equip a cavalry unit than a rifleman unit. A price structure might look like this, where the number represents the gold cost for maintenance or the number of "free unit" slots that the unit takes up:

Musketmen -- 1
Riflemen -- 1
Knight -- 2
Cavalry -- 3
Tank -- 3

and so forth. This gives stronger attack unit higher costs (realistic), thus meaning that if you emphasize such units you have to take money away from either entertainment or tech (which is what gave you this advantage in the first place). Unfortunately, this would require a better AI to handle it.

But I don't think any kind of cap is needed. Pcasey is dead wrong about the effectiveness of the cavalry rush, which is not his fault. He hasn't played against any human opponents, so he's not had to deal with any reasonable fear that the tactic will be used against him. And since cavalry production predates industrialization and the ensuing espionage technology, he'll have no way to be sure in an MP game that his cavalry rush against another player won't leave him exposed to a cavalry rush counterattack on his own cities, which he seems convinced he can't defend against. The bottom line is that, as with any other unit, mutual deterrence will be the name of the game in MP. If your enemy builds cav, then you'll build it too, and then you'll be at an impasse again.

Unless of course, you don't have any horses. But then you're screwed anyway, aren't you?

[pcasey]

Ax,

I agree 100% with you. As soon as I rush you and raze 3 of your cities, you'll rush me and raze 3 of mine on my turn.

That's not defense, that's alternating offense.

As it stands, there's no force allocation you can put in place which will prevent me from razing a subset of your cities every turn.

Yes, you can do the same thing to me, I"m not disputing that.

My problem is that its impossible to *defend* against a pack of fast units.

You can have your own pack of fast units and do the same thing to me, but that's not defense. That's both of us destroying each other in a flurry of unstoppable assaults. Nuclear war with horsemen.

[David Weldon]

pcasey:

I disagree with your asessment of boarder lines. The whole point is to make them far enough from the cities that you _can't_ get to a city on the same turn you breach the line. This works exactly like amphibious landing works. The round you land/breach the boarder, you can't attack any cities. I can then react with my mobil defensive units and engage you or reinforce the city you approached before you can continue with the assault.

Vel's idea here will work. The only queation is whether it's cost effective, and that depends on the specifics of the border, of course.

Cavalry are powerful, maybe too powerful, but not unstoppable.

[Bad Ax]

Originally posted by pcasey
You can have your own pack of fast units and do the same thing to me, but that's not defense. That's both of us destroying each other in a flurry of unstoppable assaults. Nuclear war with horsemen.

Exactly. Deterrence. If you gain nothing from war, and stand to lose something from war, why go to war? This will be the name of the game in MP. Of course, if someone's incapable of strategic thought, deterrence won't do much for him. In that case, though, he's probably already way behind.

As for your border idea, allow me to paraphrase myself:

I think an involuntary stoppage of this type would be ridiculous and frustrating, because it has no logical basis in reality or in game mechanics. It's no better a fix for the unit imbalances than the unit imbalances were for the resource imbalances.

Boring, but I'm low on creativity.

[gnomos]

Originally posted by pcasey
The Franco/Prussian War, Prussian/Austrian war, American Civil War, and Crimean war were all dominated by massed infantry attacks. All these wars were fought between combatants with rifled muskets.

Cavalry was never a war winning battle arm after the late middle ages.

I think the reasons for this are cost and training. Horses cost money and resources to raise and train. Once missile weapons became more prevalent, people just killed the horses from a distance. Infantry on the other hand is comparatively cheap to create, and if you killed the soldier, well, you just gave his weapons to someone else.