Game News Civ V free to play this weekend

[Absinthe]

Absinthe, how come it doesn't seem reasonable to you that a lone infantry troop charging into a group of archers is killed before even reaching them?

Of course. But given equal numbers melee vs archers, the melee will get decimated before they reach the archers, then take damage as they attack the archers 'cause that's how melee combat works, then have the rest of them die to more archer focus fire. Archers easily win. So regular melee has no place. Just because the Battle of Agincourt is realistic doesn't mean it's good game balance.

As Irenaeus says, you pretty much need mounted melees to charge archers, but then you really are looking at something like 4 archers vs 4 mounteds, because once it's 8 archers vs 8 mounted (which is a lot of horse resources) odds are good you won't get to position all 8 mounted units well enough to do damage while all 8 archers will. And once you're 10-12 archers deep (which is not at all unusual) you're probably fucked to get that many horse resources to match them and even if you did, I'd favor the archers.

 

[OSK]

Melee units in Civ V are really only useful as meat shields and laying down zone of control.