Medium Chariot

My husband, grasping his halberd,
Is in the leading chariot of the king's [host]. —The Shijing ("Bo Xi")

In game

Medium Chariot — Vital statistics
Medium Chariot	Bronze Age-era heavy cavalry. Stronger and more powerful than Light Chariot, but is costlier. Strong versus melee infantry Weak versus buildings, cavalry and units armed with pikes, crossbows or javelins.
Prereq:	Build time	HP	LOS	Attack	Attack speed	Movement speed	Upgrades to
File:Rank and File	24.6s (369t)	123	10	30	6.3s (19t)	31
Cost			Created from	Armour	Weapon range	Specialty
Base	Ramp	Pop
: 100; : 80	: 3; : 2	2		4	1–11	Attack debuff versus buildings. Defence debuff versus long spears, pikes. Can attack enemies while moving.

Overall strategy

Unlike light chariots, which are a rudimentary form of ranged cavalry, Medium Chariotry are a completely different class of unit altogether, being capable of attacking not just at range, but in melee as well. Just think of them as being weaker war elephants, being capable of killing infantry at close up as well as at range, thanks to their hard-hitting and highly accurate composite bows.

Thus, Medium Chariotry are highly useful units, especially when used in tandem with infantry — particularly sword units, which are capable of resisting javelin fire. A good mix to use is often a group of Medium Chariotry, accompanied with good melee units, and Skirmisher Levy units. Use the Medium Chariotry to punish enemy units from afar, then move in with Skirmisher Levy to distract the foe while your melee units close in on them. This is especially important since Medium Chariots, despite being armoured, are quite vulnerable, especially if enemy skirmishers or good archers can catch up with them. Even simple Skirmisher Cavalry or Zhou Crossbowmen can be deployed against Medium Chariotry — any chariot units in fact — and they will be able to destroy them outright.

See also

Onager Light Chariot Harmata Drepanephora (Tolun-Chianki) Chariot War Chariot (Intiau-Chianki) Werryt Maryannu

Semitic Battle-Chief Renegade Chinese Warlord Mistophor Archigos Hurrian Warlord Anatolian Warchief

Lancer Steppe Cataphract

Notes

Medium Chariots appear for a fair number of Middle Eastern factions - most notably the Hittites, Indians, Shang and Zhou.

• Hittite and Indian - they wear bronze helmets, and "togas".
• Factions that get Medium Chariots can't get Light Horse upgrades.

History

A chariot is an ancient horse-drawn two-wheeled vehicle used in primarily for war and transport, then later in races and processions. There is much debate on how the chariot first emerged, with people arguing that chariots first emerged along with the wheel in Mesopotamia. Excavation of graves in the ruins of the old Sumerian city of Ur (near Nasiriyah in present-day Iraq) by Leonard Wooley, a British archaeologist in the 1920s revealed that the Sumerians of the early 3rd millenium BCE used large four-wheeled vehicles possibly drawn by donkeys, but these wagons differed greatly from true chariots, which were built for speed, could at best carry only up to three people, and had two wheels instead of four - possibly for reasons of speed and mobility. In contrast, others postulate an origin with Central Asian horse-breeding cultures. Excavations in Russia during the final years of the Cold War revealed that chariots might have been invented at least 2 millenia earlier by the people of the Eurasian steppes, as represented by the Maykop culture in the Caucasus.

A chariot could either function as a transport for dignitaries (the most common use) or in suitable terrain, be used as a platform for using missile weapons in hit-and-run tactics. Regardless of the chariot's origins, what is most certain is that the proliferation of chariotry took place after 2000 BCE in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. One of the culminating battles of chariotry came early in the 13th century B.C., when armies of the Hittites and Egyptians clashed on the plains of northern Syria at Kadesh. Muwatallis II, the Hittite king, deployed a force of 3,500 chariots, and Ramses II is supposed to have countered in kind, but the battle seems to have ended in a stalemate. By the end of that century, as armies learned to blunt the attacks with swarming infantry and later cavalry, the age of the chariot as a weapon drew to a close. The high-speed vehicle was reduced to roles in sport and regal parades.

References

• New York Times, 'Remaking the Wheel - Evolution of the Chariot'