(forget your little game English LBs, this is real Empire history here, the 2 highest-voted civs on the forum civ poll)
‘Horseman’ is currently USELESS in crisis-ridden AoE4. But how important was the horseman in actual history?
In a nutshell:
A battle, one single battle, that spelled the beginning of the end of 1300-year-old Roman Empire, caused all the Crusades and changed the course of history of humankind.
You guessed right, this battle was 100% won by (outnumbered!) horsemen, highly mobile horsemen (with equally mobile ‘akinji’ cavalry archers).
The Seljuks (forerunners to the Ottomans) were besieging major city Aleppo in 1071, Byzantine emperor Romanos IV seized the opportunity to attack the Seljuks in strategic Manzikert. Seljuk sultan and legend Alp Arslan left much of his besieging army in Aleppo and galloped to meet Romanos with faster horseman and cav archers ONLY.
Horsemen changed the world. Just buff horsemen.
Turn up the sound… this is going to be absolutely EPIC.
The Battle of Manzikert is covered in campaign mission in Age of Empires II, pretty sure everyone here already knew about it. And I’m pretty sure humankind was using cavalry looooong before 1071, for example the “companion cavalry” of Alexander, the Roman has the Eque social class.
As soon as I saw the long title combined with the weird style and the subtle hints to persia and turks I knew its him again. At least he skips the (subtle) racism accusations for now.
@FederalBee9 How many accounts have you created in this forums? Serious question!
And for the topic: I agree that horseman feel underwhelming especially in early game. Hopefully the devs really check the balancing of them again like they mentioned. And since its mentioned in the video and by you I think also Mangudai (as a horse archer unit) need some love. Make them cheaper and give them some range so they become at least a viable unit.
So? I never said horsemen are expensive, I said they are useless:
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Okay so we can’t talk about it? It’s timely because community is very unpleased with horseman unit (see large horseman poll), it’s also timely since Kings & Generals has released this absolutely epic video day before yesterday.
Manzikert wasn’t the entire Seljuk army, as much of it stayed in Aleppo. It was only the very fastest units which engaged, basically horsemen only (Byz also kind of rushed an army). Manzikert is the most iconic glory of “horsemen army”.
Alexander’s Companion Cavalry was heavy cavalry, not AoE4’s “horseman”.
Yeah I agree with that, Mongols play like Goths now.
But overall, this civ is already broken, hence one can’t simply “buff Mangudai”… so much needs to change.
Turkish ‘Akinji’ in the video was still similar in function and skill to Mangudai (later in Ottoman period, Turks had heavy cavalry archer plus of tons of unique units), in fact the “Mongol Army” (Genghis’ core army) was actually not “Mongol” but 60% Turkic- 40% Mongol. Genghis was a superlative leader respected by both, but Mongols are much less important in history overall, they quickly disappeared from it.
Your response to late game horseman is fine was … So? they are useless. I’m confused.
Late game and very early, horseman are a good unit they just suck from late feudal until mid imp.
Really, horseman is an ok unit in the first minute of feudal? Oh ok I (and 80% of the forum) didn’t know that. I guess you imply horsemen don’t need a buff then?
I was referring to the fact he mentioned about unit relative cost through the ages.
Excellent OP. Just one addition, it shouldn’t be just HORSEMEN that must be buffed. MEN were actually the most legendary warriors at Manzikert, the most far-reaching battle ever fought.
Hey thanks!
You mean ‘men‘ as opposed to siege weapons? Blatantly incompetent Byzantine female empresses? Or the beardless Greek nobility boys who bailed in face of the Turks and abandoned Romanos?
Turkish and Uzbek, Kazakh are very close languages. But Mongolian is dramatically different. They even look different as ethnicity.
I didn’t say Mongolian people don’t exist. There are more Mongolians trapped in north China than Mongolia itself. Also there are Mongolians in Afghanistan, they are called Hazaras.
I said they disappeared from history, the empire quickly broke down into states taken over by the Turks & Tatars.
Later the (Turkish) Ottoman Empire destroyed overall nomadic war domination with newly invented technology and tactics in gigabattleOtlukbeli 1473 (settled Ottoman Turks vs nomadic Turks+ Tatars), in military terms, the most important battle of all ages covered by AoE4.
The thing is that both the Turks and the Mongols have the same ancestor = Hunnic People.
The Hunnic people lost a battle against Tang Dynasty (simply got outnumbered).
Due to that, half of the tribe decided to travel to Europe, and during their adventure, they met Middle Eastern People and learned about Islam (the religion). Reached Rome, fought many battles, and mixed with locals, etc. After the death of Attila, Hunnic people were adopting into a new lifestyle. From animistic religion (Tengri) to Islam. Some became Christians. Due to mixing with European and Middle Eastern locals, they looked more like Europeans.
On the other hand, the other half who stayed in central Asia kept their bloodline more Asiatic. The most fixation occurred in the Tsardom of Rus.
About the language, the Mongols and Turks have a lot of common words so you cannot deny that completely. I have read books of Turkic historians that said Turks are more influenced by Western culture from early ages.
And you need to understand what makes people Turkic
It is not the gene. It is the culture. - The way people do things.
And the largest and the most powerful culture is religion.
Not language.