29-09-2003 06:33									#1
	Discussion: Build more MIs or more Horsemen? Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

I am starting this thread for an issue hotly debated in the Turn 122 turnthread until now. Please keep discussion in here now, leaving the turnthread for other things.

The issue is on what military units to keep building for the course of the war. Note this is different to the issue of what to do with our GA, but will of course impact upon it when we actually start the GA.

The issue was raised that we may need more Horsemen. Horsemen are useful in that they have a chance of damaging a unit and retreating instead of a straight win/loss as for a 1-move unit like an MI. They can act as scouts to survey terrain ahead of the main army, if necessary. Moreover, they can be upgraded to Knights when we get Chivalry, more easily than building Knights from scratch, since gold is easier to get than shields.

However, the counter-argument is that Horses only have an attack of 2, and we are facing a human opponent that will ensure very few battles are conducted in the open, which is where the Horsemen's movement is there asset. Also, by stationing units on defensive terrain auch as Mountains, Horsemen will have far less luck in battles than MIs, which of course have double the attack strength. Also, the war should be over long before Chivalry, and we would have no immediate need for Knights then.

So - what proportions shall we build new military units in? It is my opinion that MIs will certainly win us the war, but there are some situations that Horses would prove handy. I would go for roughly 30:70 Horses/MIs in new units. Of course, this too depends on what units we lose over this time. If we lose lots of MIs, we should increase the proportion of new MIs we build. Regard this thread as discussion on what we should aim for our army make-up to be, less than how many of anything we build at any time.

	29-09-2003 06:40									#2
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Currently we only have three Horsemen. In such small numbers Horsemen are nearly useless. I had hoped to have at least 6 Horsemen for the start of the invasion but building the Warriors to upgrade after cutting iron took precedence. So now we're stuck with a woefully poor mobile force which is further hindered by the fact that one of our Horsemen is currently healing.

I would suggest a 50:50 building ratio which increases in favor of Horses as the war nears to a conclusion.

	29-09-2003 07:13									#3
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I concur with building a ratio of 1:1 for Medieval Infantry and Horsemen for now. Pending the success the war with GCA, this ratio may need changing. In the next few turns I think it will become clear with type of unit we will most be needing.


Dominae

	29-09-2003 07:20									#4
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1:1 sounds good to me too, once our victory over GCA is locked in, then I would probally switch to all horses, pikes as needed to garrison new holdings, and catapoults.

	29-09-2003 07:29									#5
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Just before attacking, we had

7 NMs
20 MIs
5 Catapults
2 Horsemen and
3 Warriors

at the front, with

4 NMs on the way and
1 Horseman healing.

Now I am a little hazy on the exact happenings then as I was not present, but we lost 2 units (both MIs?) and rushed another Catapult (perhaps Trip can correct me).

So we currently have
11 NMs
18 MIs
6 Catapults
3 Horsemen

for the attacking force.

I would agree with Trip 6 Horsemen would be a fair number to aim for at present, just to give an option of fast attacks on GCA units caught in the open and as scouts for the main forces. We have 3 10-shield cities on units right now and 1 less than 10-shield city, and in 2 turns there should be 3 more cities (not all 10-shields) on units. I'd propose 2 of the current cities build Horses, and the others MIs. When we get the other cities online, we reduce the proportion to 3 less than 10-shield cities on Horses, and at least the 3 10-shield cities on MIs. This way we get MIs in 4 turns from 10 shield cities, and Horses in 3-4 turns from the other cities.

MIs should take 3 turns to get to the current frontline from Nana, Ming, Poly. Horses should take two turns from BFC, Hisp and Incensity.

Sound fair? For the moment we have 4 more vet Warriors awaiting funds for upgrading to replace those lost on turn 1/2 of the war.

However, I think we should always aim for 20-25 MIs, and 6-8 Horsemen, so if we lose many of them in an assault, we should be prepared to change to the unit we need most. This will likely mean a MI-bias after the first 5 or so turns, as we will lose more of them (if anything).

	29-09-2003 07:38									#6
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How about we just agree on a number of Horsemen (say, 6-8), and build that many then stop? Like I've said before, Horsemen will not win this war for us, Medieval Infantry will. Horsemen should definitely be useful, but not in mass numbers.

The only reason I'm arguing against building Horsemen at this point is that I do not want to stockpiling units for upgrade when we've only just begun our attack on GCA. If we end up with 15 Horsemen, 5 Med. Infs. and a well-turtled GCA, I think we'll look pretty dumb. Let's be conservative on Horsemen until we see how the war goes.


Dominae

	29-09-2003 08:18									#7
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I agree with Dominae. I think we should build 6 more horsemen and that should bring us up to nine. That amount isn't crazy and it can still do some damage with it's retreat ability.

	29-09-2003 08:27									#8
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I'd say having 8-10 horsemen is more than enough for our purposes. Se should start building 1:1 until such a figure is reached and only switch back to building should they incurr heavy losses.

	29-09-2003 08:29									#9
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I would definitely concur with Dominae that horses will not win us this war. They are great for the open field, and the tactics MrWIA mentioned, but we need 4-attack MIs to take on the rough stuff we're bound to hit in GCA's cities. Horsemen upgrade to knights, but that's many turns away. Build 5 or 6 horses for the hit and run tactics, but concentrate on MIs for our main attacking force.

	29-09-2003 08:37									#10
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quote: Originally posted by Dominae How about we just agree on a number of Horsemen (say, 6-8), and build that many then stop? Like I've said before, Horsemen will not win this war for us, Medieval Infantry will. Horsemen should definitely be useful, but not in mass numbers.

Sounds resonable, though I'd go to 10 horse, but that is more a reflection of my desire to have nice round #, all who knew me in the SPDG know I like to plan using 10's.

In many ways my view is almost exactly a mirror image of yours, I don't want to end up with lots of extra MI's just sitting around, when after this war they are of limited value. So I really want to keep our force of MI about the same as we now have(first using the upgrade option). My suggestion would be to build a barracks in a captured city(or better yet get a city with one) and then rush all warriors there as needed. Then when you need them you have instant MI reinforcements, without the travel time.

Of course if we are planning to go right after CFC after we win(something I am under the impression we will not do), then by all means aim for 40 MI+15 horse and go from there. For the record, such a kill them all off and have the continent to ourselves strategy is a tempting idea. However, I'd rather have a largely peaceful GA to help us advance faster along the tech tree and have more money to support large armies.

Aggie

	29-09-2003 09:59									#11
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Actually, I would put the max number on MIs and build to maintain that.

24 MIs should do it. 30 max to allow for losses.

Given the fondness of GCA for horses, and the fact we outnumbered them going in, there is no way we should exceed 30 MIs.

Horse, on the other hand, can react to needs from one end of the empire to the other, quickly. They can also upgrade and be useful for a good while longer than MI's. Thus, once we feel we may be nearing overpowering GCA in force, we would be better advised to build all horse as opposed to going to 40 or 50 MI's.

Also, I have not seen much mentioned about mercs. Mercs will last for the entire game. They upg all the way to the modern age. Thus, I would propose building MIs and horse to the limit we feel needed for MI's, then switch to mercs and horse, and then to mercs only once we feel we have enough horse. We will need infantry (mercs-rifle-inf-mech) for the whole game, and we will need more to defend a larger empire.

The question would then be, what are the limits for horse and MI's?

	29-09-2003 10:12									#12
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Let's wait 3-4 turns to begin discussing limits on either Horsemen or Medieval Infantry. I'm convinced we do not need Horsemen for this campaign, just like some of you are convinced that we do. Setting up our build queues is too complicated at this time, considering 1) we do not know when we will be in a GA, and 2) we do not know exactly how strong a resistance GCA will put up.

Can we play it by ear (and chat!) for the next few turns, instead of making concrete plans?


Dominae

	29-09-2003 10:59									#13
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That is a good idea. All we can speak of now is what can be expected. We do not yet know what will happen.

	29-09-2003 11:10									#14
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I tend to support nye's approach of a set number of MIs, then horses and mercs. But I also believe that we should wait a couple of turns before setting the policy, since we have little idea how rough this war is going to be (agreed about horses not winning it for us).

	29-09-2003 11:58									#15
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NYE: NMs are obviously important, but this topic is generally concerned with our offensive units. No one is forgetting about the foot soldiers.

	29-09-2003 12:04									#16
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Alright, so it looks like we are going to aim for 24-30 MIs and 6-8 Horsemen for the time being. After a few turns of losses, we will have some troops to replace, and we should refill those numbers first and foremost. We will also have a better indication of which forces will prove the most useful (which is almost undoubtedly MIs).

As we are advancing, and replacing our lost troops, when the GA starts we will start supplying more than we have lost. At this time I think we should try to settle on a set number of MIs and Horsemen to maintain for the rest of the war, with the rest of the GA going on the Markets and other good stuff.

Perhaps as we find GCA is down to 4 cities or less, we should stop with MIs altogether due to their limited long-term value, and go for NMs and Horsemen where we DO build units, for their upgrade potential. I imagine 24-30 MIs should be enough to finish off 4 GCA cities, as long as we still have NMs, Cats and some Horsemen to back them up. It would not matter if we lost the army of MIs in the assaults - as long as we had enough to finish GCA should we decide to. We would likely only end up disbanding the MIs later on.

Sound reasonable? Set target for the time being perhaps as I have posted before, and when the war is a little easier to read, we reassess the numbers needed. Then, when we are confident enough we need not replace any more troops, we switch to Horses/NMs and infrastructure.

	29-09-2003 12:11									#17
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Once the cream of their army is destroyed and their main production centers are ours we should certainly cut off all MI production.

	29-09-2003 16:41									#18
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Hold your horses!

What exactly is meant by a ratio of 1:1 ? One city building a Horseman, and one an MI? But the horse will be finished sooner - so that city can build more horsemen while the other city is still building its first MI... This will lead to a different ratio of new units.

	29-09-2003 16:57									#19
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Yes it would, but the builds would only be 1:1 for a short time, until such a time as that target number of one or the other was completed. Then we would not build any more of that type of unit until we needed to replace more lost units. It is looking like the best idea to choose a number of each units to have in the field and try to just maintain that number for most of the war by replacing lost units rather than building the army even larger, unless we found some rather unexpectedly difficult outposts.

	29-09-2003 17:40									#20
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Sounds good to me.

	29-09-2003 18:00									#21
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I like that idea... so the debate should progress to how many of each type of units we ideally want.

How many of each type do we currently have? Let's start from there.

	29-09-2003 19:52									#22
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quote: Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt Alright, so it looks like we are going to aim for 24-30 MIs and 6-8 Horsemen for the time being.

No offense, but my problem with a statement like this is that: 1) it's not really what everyone is actually agreeing on, 2) even though we're only "aiming" for this, usually such forecasts end up being transformed into policy. I suspect the GA issue occured this way.

There's no point in "aiming" for anything at this point. I think we all agree on when we will and will not need our each military unit. Let's see how the war goes, then switch production (military and otherwise) appropriately.

Hope this does not ruffle any feathers.

And, by the way, Medieval Infantry would not be "useless" in a war against CFC. The Attack rating of 4 will make it plenty useful. We will still be wanting to use Mercs. to defend Knights, so our armies will still be moving slowly. It all depends on our timeline for destroying CFC.


Dominae

	29-09-2003 20:03									#23
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quote: Originally posted by Dominae No offense, but my problem with a statement like this is that: 1) it's not really what everyone is actually agreeing on, 2) even though we're only "aiming" for this, usually such forecasts end up being transformed into policy. I suspect the GA issue occured this way. There's no point in "aiming" for anything at this point. I think we all agree on when we will and will not need our each military unit. Let's see how the war goes, then switch production (military and otherwise) appropriately. Hope this does not ruffle any feathers. And, by the way, Medieval Infantry would not be "useless" in a war against CFC. The Attack rating of 4 will make it plenty useful. We will still be wanting to use Mercs. to defend Knights, so our armies will still be moving slowly. It all depends on our timeline for destroying CFC. Dominae

We're still going to need Mercs to go with our stack of cats... so we might as well stack our MIs with the same stack. We can then use knights for a higher mobility option on the battlefield.

Personally, I'd really like to have the following for any CFC war:

15+ catapults
8+ Mercs
X number of MIs (whatever we have)

That's just for the stack that marches straight toward their capital, stopping to bombard each city and use the MI's to take it out. Since we'd be using lots of cats to wear down the hitpoints of enemy units, we maximize the chances of our elite units (such as old MIs from the last war) winning battles rather than dying... which preserves more elite units and gives us more chances for GLs. It also saves us resources (we won't have to replace as many losses).

Knights can be used as a higher mobility option to cover our flanks, take down minor threats and poorly defended cities away from the main path toward their capital, etc.

We'd also need to have an additional force of mercs and knights to cover defense at the chokepoints or another set of locations where we can prevent CFC from counter-attacking into our territory while our stack of doom is embedded in their's.

Just what I'm thinking would be prudent...

	29-09-2003 23:18									#24
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If this were my army, I would probably not focus too much on knights for the CFC attack. An MI led army could mountain/hill hop across nearly the entire country. And if we stick to the mountains, the 2 move horse units are nearly nullified. And since we are up against 3 move riders on their home territory, our knights won't likely be able to hit them before they fade to their cities anyway.

For me, I would use three large groups, one from each of the chokepoints (building a road from Equ. during the current war for "trade" purposes) and a larger one landed by galley fleet on the western edge of the inland sea to make an end around against difficult blocking stacks.

	30-09-2003 00:05									#25
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No knights against CFC?!?! Blasphemy!

I think some of you have forgotten the virtues of knights: they move 2, and they retreat. And they have the same defense as mercs. Imagine a merc with a move of two and the attack of a med inf. All for the astonishingly low price of 70 shields...

Now, what would I do against CFC:

CFC's terrain is especially mountaneous and hilly in the south. That is perfect for a slow-moving assault. But also consider that there's a huge batch of grassland just across the southern chokepoint. That is perfect knight territory. Unleash the knights, take those three cities (or whatever CFC decides to build there) and have the big 1-move stack come from behind. After the grassland area is secure, you can load the knights into galleys and sail them towards Yun Qiuling. A surprise landing can be made on the tile 9-9 from this city by "hiding" our galleys 8-8-9 from Lucky Harbor, that tile is out of sight from Yun Qiuling even if its culture expands and is 3 tiles away from the drop-off point. From there the stack can decide over taking YQ (has walls and is on a hill) or the better option of hill-hopping and taking Xiang Zhou and Jiang Mapi.

To complement this a smaller knight stack can come in from the north (Equilibrium) and knock out any crappy new cities there and any scouts. This might also lead CFC to believe the north might the main axis of attack. That is until they see our big 1-move stack come from the south and start slogging through their hill cities.

Two fronts, with sufficient numbers, makes CFC with thier pitifully weaker resources have to compromise on which front to defend adequately. Estimated units required:

Army Group South (the 1-move units): ~10 cats, ~20 med infs, ~10 numidians.

Strike Force South (the knights) ~15 knights ~6 galleys ready in inland sea (to at least drop off 12 in one turn).

Strike Force North (more knights) ~10 knights.


Obviously the more the better

	30-09-2003 00:25									#26
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All three of our plans leave out one crucial problem:

If CFC has anything approaching a halfway decent road network, they can move their 3-move UU's at 9 tiles per turn between different hot spots of the war. If we're marching troops down from the north at the same time as the East, they'll just hit both armies on different turns, even with some time to rest in between as we slowly slosh toward them.

It might be easier to just wall up one of the two chokepoints and then hit them with one enormous stack of doom from the other chokepoint combined with the use of surprise landings of knights with galleys and other tricks behind their lines (though with 9-move defensive units, they'll be able to take care of that more quickly than most).

Ultimately, I believe the strength of our strategy if we attack CFC will lie with our stack o' doom. If it's tall enough, it isn't going to matter if CFC has some riders and runs around with them. We'll just kill cities 1-by-1 until we reach their capital and then kill that, too. Worst case scenario is that we have to raze things rather than conquer them. The solution to that problem is to build tons and tons of Mercs... if we have enough Mercs (at only 30 shields a pop) we can guard better against rider counter-attacks on captured cities and chokepoints behind our stack o' doom while the stack itself can continue marching toward their capital.

We'll need knights most critically to provide a mobile defensive threat guarding our flanks and rear against rider attacks along with use in offense when appropriate.

	30-09-2003 00:31									#27
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Ok, maybe I missed it in all the discussion, but there is one EXTREMELY POWERFUL uses to Horse as opposed to MIs. Their movement makes all the difference. It forces CGA to divide their forces to protect multiple targets. As it was learned during the Vox-GS war, where the primary units were one move units, there was very limited possible places for an attack, counter attack. Now in the current conflict in the PTWDG, the quick movement of the Riders/Ansars/Knights have changed the conflict dramaticly. The defenders are forced to defend multiple targets as opposed to just one each turn.

Now, with this is mind, if we were to attempt to use the horse in a proper fashion, we would need to build up a significant enough force as to make CGA pick where they are going to defend. Defend a city or a road (easy choice). If forced to make a choice like this enough times, they will eventually get to the point where they have several, lightly defened cities (with no roads to move units) which we will be able to remove at our choosing with our main Army.

To sum up (ok, I screwed doing that up), I would say 10 horse is a MINIMUM.

	30-09-2003 00:57									#28
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Actually what our three plans miss is timing and resource denial:

Should the chivalry deal with GWT pass it will be most likely us who will get chivalry first, not CFC. By timing our assualt before they get chivalry we basically screw them up big time. A quick resoure-denial operation shouldn't bee too difficult to implement either hopefully just in case they get the tech after the war starts. The idea is not to wait until they can hoard riders. The faster we cann attack them while they're Rider-less the better.

	30-09-2003 01:08									#29
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Quick question...I thought this thread was what we are building for THIS war against GCA, not a future war against CFC? I agree that by the time we are ready to hit CFC we'll need knights, but that is still a ways away. I recognize the need for future planning, but I think we should make sure this war is in hand before trying to plan for a war with CFC...something that hasn't even been decided if we're going to do it yet.

	30-09-2003 01:12									#30
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I agree with Roth, let's threadjack at another time