Counter against Briton cavalry?

[Daxter]

Hey guys,

a few days ago I discovered this game and I have to say it's awesome!
But I'm having a problem:

I played against a pal of mine a few times. He always used the Britons and I tried different factions. Even though I'm superior to him in Economy and Military in the end screen I keep losing to him. After 20-30 minutes, after we built up our basic fortress, he runs at me with about 15-20 of his phase 2 cavalry and destroys everything. Mostly I tried to counter him with Roman spearmen, but he was even able to destroy about 30-40 of them with his few cavalry without getting significiant losses.
Are there any good methods to counter this cavalry or are they a bit unbalanced at the moment??

[Peregriino]

Ranged or Melee cav?

[bouke]

Indeed, ranged cav is only countered by other ranged units. Or you should surround with melee units, what is very difficult.

[Sanguivorant]

The only melee unit that can actually harm ranged cavalry is the Spartan Skiritai, but even then you need to force the cavalry to run into some obstruction like trees.

[bouke]

Great to know this!!

[Panando]

One of the challenges is that melee cavalry (especially celtic) are fairly brutal against buildings, a mob of say 40 cavalry will evaporate a civic center in about 10 seconds - weaker buildings, like say towers, fall quickly even to much smaller mobs. This means that even if you can fight them with your army, they can easily deny expansion opportunities and prune away any building which is poorly defended even momentarily. If it comes to a base race, the cavalry mob will definitely win as they raze buildings and hunt down citizens at a much faster pace than foot troops or siege engines.

Furthermore if a mob of sword cavalry catch an army out of position, they will destroy it. IF you could face the cavalry with a wall of spearmen, backed by archers, the cavalry would probably be destroyed, but cavalry have no particular reason to attack head on, they are faster so can just go somewhere else and tear down buildings, and only engage the army when they can get it at a disadvantage. As noted by the OP, cavalry will tear up spearmen, the main reason is that cavalry can bring numerical superiority to bear, due to their superior mobility cavalry can much more easily enclose a enemy army, meaning that each foot soldier has two cavalry attacking it - and even spearmen can't win that way. Although formations may help to hamper a cavalry pincer.

Another reason why the celt cavalry are tough to beat is the celts have a naturally strong economy - perhaps the best? Improved farming, and quick to build houses, means that with fertility festival the celts can really boom their economy fast. Being out-resourced wasn't mentioned as a problem by the OP, but all things being equal the celts should thrash the romans economically. Alternatively they can spend a lot less on their economic development and spend a lot more on cavalry. Technically there's not even really any reason to go to City phase as all they get out of this for their cavalry are some more blacksmith upgrades and an aura hero - they're probably better off spending the metal on more cavalry - and if we skip City there is no need to bother with stone either (all they need to build is a few barracks and maybe a tower, and they get a trickle income from razing buildings ). So celts, if they wish, can really go nuts producing cavalry and omit spending on all higher technology and almost anything other than barracks + basic econ, and they won't suffer for this at all really, since the celtic sword cavalry mob is one of the most flexible fighting forces in the game. You can't really think of anything to add to it which would make it better at smashing armies and razing buildings.

I would say that at the moment there is no real counter to celtic cavalry - perhaps the army can be beaten in theory, but when you consider the map control which comes from having a mob of building-razing cavalry early in the game - the Celt will either win outright with an early mob of cavalry, or will sufficiently hamper the opponents economic development to be able to expand freely and come in a little later with a REALLY big mob of cavalry. In principle any civ with a tier 2 sword cavalry could perform this strategy, but I think no others have the combination of a fast economy and a strong sword cavalry.

If I knew my opponent was going to perform this strategy I would probably try to rush them before they can produce cavalry. It wouldn't be possible to harm their civic center, but it may be possible to contain them. However this relies on them teching quickly to get cavalry ASAP and won't help if they play in a more balanced way.

[Loki1950]

Must give these characteristics to the Steppe nomads of what ever Mod includes them.

Enjoy the Choice :_)

[Peregriino]

@Panando

I like of your coment. But The players use it? I just see Celtic's mass of ranged cav, but I don't see melee cav.

I play with romans and use Sword Cav to take down CC enemy in late game, and others use the same tatical, but this I don't see.

[Lion.Kanzen]

@Panando

I like of your coment. But The players use it? I just see Celtic's mass of ranged cav, but I don't see melee cav.

I play with romans and use Sword Cav to take down CC enemy in late game, and others use the same tatical, but this I don't see.

with the Gauls is possibly down a CC in first minutes after reach the Phase 2.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

One of the challenges is that melee cavalry (especially celtic) are fairly brutal against buildings, a mob of say 40 cavalry will evaporate a civic center in about 10 seconds

40 sword cavalry costs a lot of money. They should be able to take down building pretty fast. If you've let the enemy get to your civ center with 40 sword cavalry unopposed, then you deserve to lose that civ center. The balance is all kind of screwed up right now with units, but 40 melee cavalry quickly destroying a civ center is not imbalanced itself. It should be easier for, say, spear infantry to kill those cavalry though. With hard counters removed this is difficult right now.

[Peregriino]

with the Gauls is possibly down a CC in first minutes after reach the Phase 2.

Can be, but I don't see it in my matchs. Generaly the people just use mass of ranged cav.

@wowgetoff

Other problem is defense of CC. To counter the ranged attack in early game get plus defense for this type of attack. The hack attack is few defense, in CC is 10 hack/25 pircing defense.

@On topic

If your oponent get Phase III? I don't think this estrategy will be effective. What's do you think?

And about the celtic's sword cav and roman's spearmen cav. Do you think are similar against others units?! I try use them, but it's easy counter by enemy.

[Panando]

40 sword cavalry costs a lot of money. They should be able to take down building pretty fast. If you've let the enemy get to your civ center with 40 sword cavalry unopposed, then you deserve to lose that civ center. The balance is all kind of screwed up right now with units, but 40 melee cavalry quickly destroying a civ center is not imbalanced itself. It should be easier for, say, spear infantry to kill those cavalry though. With hard counters removed this is difficult right now.

The sword cavalry don't cost that much actually. They cost 80 food, 35 wood and 20 metal - and a buildtime of 12. They also cost 2 housing, which has a nominal cost of 30 wood and 9.6 buildtime (by a citizen). Compare with a spearman, which costs 50 food, 50 wood, buildtime of 10, and a cost of 1 housing.

The adjusted cost with housing is thus:

Sword cav: 80 food, 35 + 30 (65) wood, 20 metal.

Spearman: 50 food, 50 + 15 (65) wood.

Food is the easiest resource to secure so the extra food doesn't matter much. The wood cost is identical once adjusted for housing (although cav are easier to keep alive, so might be more likely to keep occupying their housing). The metal cost is low, and at that stage of the game metal is easy to secure. Your starting 5000 metal supply will be good for 250(!) cavalry and if maxed out on workers will easily support 3-4 barracks non-stop batching 5 sword cav at a time.

With aggressive harassment the critical resource in the early game is really wood as on most maps the easily protected supplies are quickly exhausted. As calculated above, cavalry actually cost the same amount of wood per unit as spearmen and archers. They also only take slightly longer to produce. Thus I think it's not unreasonable to produce armies of cavalry of comparable numbers to soldiers. If you build 5-6 farms around your CC, and put 10 guys on metal, and harvest enough wood, then you can easily run 2 barracks non-stop producing batches of cav, 40 cav is only 4 batches and would take around 3 minutes to complete. Of course in an ideal game you don't just produce 40 cavalry and have them sit on their arses until you charge them into the enemy lines to die like idiots, you rally every batch to the opponents base and have them run in and generally harass and contain the opponent. Weak cavalry should be hotkeyed out and sent to garrison in the CC allowing them to heal up, saving cav in this way can easily accumulate an extra 10-15 in the CC and they'll usually be veterans too so have better stats than fresh cav.

I also did some experiments with the sword cav to determine their damage rate in practise. It turns out that sword cav kill buildings (houses) about as quickly as battering rams (per unit of housing - a battering ram is 2.5 times more expensive and kills a building a little faster than 2 cavalry). Their rate of damage to buildings is thus equal to a top-tier siege engine. Of course in practise their rate of damage is higher, because they move so much faster. They're either easier or harder to kill depending on whether the enemy is using hack or pierce.

I think that sword cav, used in a dynamic harassing style with the aim of denying woodcutting and ending the game quickly, are clearly a 'killer strat' for Celts. Every civ needs it's killer strategies, and the Celts don't have anything at City level which could qualify as a killer strat. The only really notable City unit is the battering ram, which might be required for cracking open a determined turtle but otherwise won't win any battles.

The question is whether at their current cost, sword cav are overpowered, if the celt's killer strat is better than other civs killer strats. Only testing will show this for sure, but I suspect it is so. I suspect that sword cav are too cheap and quick to train for their effectiveness. They may also be available too easily (many RTS games require a stables building, before the high speed high damage harassing unit can be produced).

@On topic

If your oponent get Phase III? I don't think this estrategy will be effective. What's do you think?

And about the celtic's sword cav and roman's spearmen cav. Do you think are similar against others units?! I try use them, but it's easy counter by enemy.

Celts themselves really have nothing interesting at City level, except battering rams and heroes. Other civs have quite good champions, but as a rule I think that champions are more housing effective, but are less cost effective. In other words, they really only come into their own once players are maxed out. Upgrades can matter, but again only once the game has reached a point where players aren't so much resource limited, as housing limited. A good celt should have won the game long before this happens.

The roman spear cav which is available at Tier I, has a nearly identical cost to the sword cav, it costs 80 food and 55 wood, 1 housing with a build time of 12s. The only way it is cheaper in that it costs only 1 housing, I would say that 20 metal 35 wood is 'cheaper' than 55 wood because you can just put citizens on metal and forget about it, while wood entails more micro.

It deals about half as much damage to units (due to it's very slow attack rate), and much much less damage to buildings. They can certainly be used to harass an opponent's resource gathering activities and are okay in a fight, but are basically worthless for razing buildings. The enemy will have ample time to react and bring in skirmishers/archers. It's basically a far inferior unit and the only thing going for it is you can get it at the start of the game. I think I'd prefer a ranged cav though, especially since it can't realistically kill buildings anyway.

Also later-game spear cav, including champions, don't have much to recommend them over sword cav, they can't kill buildings or siege engines quickly and don't really complement ranged units in any way. So all things being equal, a civ with sword cav is stronger than one with spear cav.

[Peregriino]

After I posted here, I enter in the game and compared both units.

They are similar, but the speed difference is yelling.

I tryed use the spearmen cav. for rush eneymy's economy because generally in early game the players make a lot of ranged infantary, but after this I don't pretender use anymore.