Severe losses?

[Dark Horizon]

In one game I sent out 15+ horsemen to attack the empire below. They were all destroyed by one chariot. I tried again to see if it was because they weren't in attack mode but there were still severe losses. So I said hey, maybe an advanced unit really does have the advantage. In a later game I built chariots to attack another enemy empire and the chariots were being destroyed by 2 maybe 1 horsemen. So whats the problem here? The horsemen were veteran but in the previous game all my horsemen were veteran.

[Alien Valkyrie]

Defenders usually have huge advantages over attackers. For exmaple, defenders get a bonus from the terrain they're on(for example, mountains give a x3 bonus), rivers, roads, cities or fortresses and so on and so forth, while attackers only get a bonus from their veteran level and certain conditions like a helicopter fighting a fighter airplane.

[cazfi]

Try middle-clicking defending enemy (while your potential attacker active) to see chance of winning. That's not 100% accurate, as it's based on information you (and your client) have, and there might be something in the actual game state on server you don't know.

Are you aware of "tired attack" rules? If you can avoid it, do not attack with less than full movement point, as then your attack power will be similarly reduced (if you have 2/3 movement points, you attack with 2/3 power, 1/3 movement points (one step via road) gives you only 1/3 attack power)

[JTN]

In one game I sent out 15+ horsemen to attack the empire below. They were all destroyed by one chariot.

You know about 'killstack' behaviour, right? Usually, if one unit loses a battle in open country, all units on its tile die, no matter how many there are. (This doesn't happen in cities and fortresses; and rulesets can disable it, but most don't.)

Are you aware of "tired attack" rules? If you can avoid it, do not attack with less than full movement point, as then your attack power will be similarly reduced (if you have 2/3 movement points, you attack with 2/3 power, 1/3 movement points (one step via road) gives you only 1/3 attack power)

...although I don't think the default/classic ruleset enables this -- of the rulesets currently shipped with Freeciv, only the civ1/civ2 compatibility rulesets enable tired_attack.

[Dark Horizon]

In one game I sent out 15+ horsemen to attack the empire below. They were all destroyed by one chariot.

You know about 'killstack' behaviour, right? Usually, if one unit loses a battle in open country, all units on its tile die, no matter how many there are. (This doesn't happen in cities and fortresses; and rulesets can disable it, but most don't.)

Are you aware of "tired attack" rules? If you can avoid it, do not attack with less than full movement point, as then your attack power will be similarly reduced (if you have 2/3 movement points, you attack with 2/3 power, 1/3 movement points (one step via road) gives you only 1/3 attack power)

...although I don't think the default/classic ruleset enables this -- of the rulesets currently shipped with Freeciv, only the civ1/civ2 compatibility rulesets enable tired_attack.

Ya, it was 'killstack'. But, it seemed the only sensible way to coordinate a simultaneous strike on a city by all my units, if I had them all on different squares they would arrive at different times and I assume would be less effective. Is there an assign "squadron" menu? or a way to coordinate a strike for units? Or perhaps this not even how the combat system works because you mentioned the death of one unit kill them all.

[GriffonSpade]

My suggestion is to send some Phalanxes with them, and have them set up and fortify, especially if they have hills or mountains next to their city.