Roman counter cav in MP

[Leftenant Moley]

What’s the best way for the Romans to counter cav in MP?

Do mp'ers have any respect for Auxillia (because I’ve seen them fight off Praetorian cav a lot of the times)

[Crandaeolon]

Sadly, Auxilia are not a very useful counter, unless you play in _really_ low denarii games. The anti-cav bonus that spears get is simply too small to make a large difference; the effect of the bonus is usually less than 50% of what it was in MTW because of the larger variance in unit statistics.

In standard 10k-12.5k games your best option is to pick lots of cavalry of your own; Praetorian cav are among the very best cav units in the game, and Legionary cav are almost as good.

If game rules, personal honor or something else prevents you from picking a lot of cav, the higher-end legionaries do adequately against cav.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I must also add - light cavalry! Light cavalry such as cav auxilia is splendid for killing enemy cav. I consider an opponent who doesn't bring any light cavs at all with his army a spammer. Light cavs beat heavy cavs, heavy cavs beat non-spear infantry and almost all pinned infantry etc.

[tibilicus]

When playing as the romans I have to be extra carefull of enemy cav. I am really careless with cav (yes the picture of Cav going in to pointy things come into ure head) I find the only way to combat cav is to shoot them down with archers or just try and kill of enemy infantry first then avert all your forces towards the enemy cav. And im sure its medium cav that beat heavy Cav Legio ~;)

[NihilisticCow]

I don't play the Romans online much (I prefer the likes of Carthage), but upgraded triarii can be effective in combination with cavalry, if money is tight; I quite often see Roman armies with 2 units of these. Otherwise combinations of your cavalry with urbans etc. mixed in generally does the job more than adequately. I personally never take on cavalry with mine unless I have infantry nearby to run in and support them.

I have only occasionally used light cavalry in this scenario (I most often play limited cavalry number rules, e.g. max 5 cavalry so this is not always an option) so can't comment too much on that, but I have found infantry to be far more effective and versatile than light cav. Javelin cavalry in particular, just doesn't seem to do enough kills with their limited ammo to be worthwhile, certainly compared with an infantry unit that it would be replacing, but they may have a use for low denarii games, as they are quite cheap.

[Rodion Romanovich]

And im sure its medium cav that beat heavy Cav Legio ~;)

Nope, cavalry auxilia. Javelins harass and force enemy cav to chase, which leads to you surrounding them and killing them, OR them not attacking and you killing many of them. OR, you save javelins until they attack and you militia cavs demoralize and rout enemy cavs, or at least make them waver, then you charge in and you can easily hunt down all routers which means any unit you rout will be completely destroyed. Perhaps use some footmen and archers for more support, but stop archer fire when your cavalry engages, or you'll demoralize them too. Actually I haven't lost a single battle since I started using militia cavs / cavalry auxilia in my armies. 1 or 2 units will usually do. And I've played both skilled players and spammers - all were mercilessly and utterly crushed, thanks to my javelin cavs. "Light cavs" such as macedonian light lancers are NOT counted as light cavalry in this context - I mean units like militia cavs, desert cavs, cavalry auxilia and head hunting maidens. Now if you have to fight an enemy using these special anti-cav cavs, you should try to use your infantry more actively, as they're really weak vs infantry.

[Lord Preston]

I consider an opponent who doesn't bring any light cavs at all with his army a spammer

i consider this a bit narrow minded, your saying that 90% of players are spammers because they dont take a specialist unit.....

i think you need to play lower money games where those units can be more effective and warrent a unit slot... 7k?

cav auxillia vs cats?!? mmmm i think i'd put my money on the cats taking single figure deaths.

low armored cav auxilia.... now where did i put my archers? ahhh dead/routing auxilia nice.

[NihilisticCow]

LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix - Your definition of light cavalry seems to include two completely different types - you list Desert cavalry and Head Hunting Maidens which are armour piercing melee cavalry, which are very effective in killing armoured units, and then you list Militia Cavalry and Cavalry Auxila, which are Javelin Cavalry which just are completely ineffective versus armour (yes in mods like RTR, javelins do do armour piercing damage, but we are talking about vanilla).

I have experimented with Numidian Mercs as Carthage before now (whose stats are similar to Cavalry Auxila I think) and they just are not effective versus heavy armour. As Preston stated, expect around single figure casualties, and that is if you hit them from behind.

I would of course be only too happy if I am wrong, as it makes more options available to deal with cavalry, but I really do not believe this is the case. I would be very happy to play a game with you if you wish to demonstrate the usefulness of javelin cavalry versus heavy cavalry in vanilla to me.

[Mongoose]

IMHO, the best way to counter cavalry in vanilla playing as the romans is to just have more cavalry then your enemy :tongue:

[Rodion Romanovich]

To you who replied to me: I learnt this the hard way after getting my caths slaughtered by those javelin cavs. I couldn't believe it at first, but it actually does make sense. They demoralize AND inflict casualties - if you use them correctly they can inflict casualties even before the cav vs cav meleé starts, and when it DOES start, you can throw a few more volleys of javelins until all enemy cavs are pinned, then charge in. I've noticed that fast units get a tremendously good charge compared to slower units because it's easier for them to gain and maintain the speed needed for the charge bonus. Finally, if cav auxilia routs they're so fast that the enemy won't catch them all - which means you'll have cavs coming back for the last phase of the battle no matter what happens. I'm gladly leaving one or two units of heavy cavalry/infantry at home to bring some of those anti-cav cavarly babies...

[Craterus]

Light cavs don't beat Heavy cavs! They can outrun them but they can't outfight them.

[NihilisticCow]

I agree with Craterus, I have tried many times to use Javelin Cavalry versus Heavy cavalry, even if hit from behind, they do practically no kills. Yes, they hurt morale, but your forces will be weaker overall from fielding such ineffective units, and besides, any competent player will have considerable amounts of infantry to support their cavalry, which will just make it so much harder to maneuver to use jav cav, and is far more effective in killing your cavalry, aswell as actually having a major use in the remainder of the game.

The only times I have found jav cav to be effective is in chasing down archers as they are quick and versus less experienced players who insist on charging their cavalry at them. I would not normally field them in games versus competent players.

Again, this is my opinion based on my experience, and I fully accept that I may be wrong, or not be using jav cav sufficiently well, but I have not been able to find a use for them that would justify their place in my armies over infantry. If you have any replays that demonstrate their effective use, I would be grateful if you posted them.

[Craterus]

Any time I have ever used jav cav on MP, they have got no more than 10 kills.

Thye just don't work for me, I wouldn't use them if I were you, but of course, like Nihilist said, any replays showing their effectivness are welcome.

[katank]

Like everyone else, I find jav cav utterly ineffective against heavy cav. Indeed, precious little beat heavy cav.

Jav cav are devastating against infantry esp. AI controlled as you can jog them around the map to get them exhausted and also attrit with javs so that there is an instarout upon charge.

However, this tactic doesn't work against heavy cav which are really quite fast relative to light cav. This makes for frequent instances of getting pinned upon a map edge or corner and slaughtered. Besides, any smart human opponent would ignore the negligible blows from the javs which don't do much against heavy cav and crush all your melee units.

Then, the archers would open up and strategic pincer moves made to pin and slaughter the light cav.

Your best bet for cost effective anti cav is to have a line of medium heavy infantry. Behind, position medium cav. counter charge the enemy cav in time so that the cav lock into melee right near where your infantry is. Then swarm their cav with infantry. You can use medium cav as youa re relying on your infantry to actually win the melee. This is better than a pure infantry line since cav is better at absorbing cav charges.

[Rodion Romanovich]

If you have any replays that demonstrate their effective use, I would be grateful if you posted them.

How do I post the replays? BTW I don't think I've saved more than one or two replays of it, so I might have to play a new battle with it to prove it's effectiveness. Anyway, there are hundreds of factors that need to be counted in before jav cavs can be used effectively. I learnt to use jav cavs by being defeated in mp by one who used them to kill my cataphracts. Anyway, I've found that they're the little thing that can turn a 5 vs 5 or 6 vs 6 cavalry fight into something more than just a matter of luck and who makes mistakes with timing and keeping of reserves etc. And as I said the light cavs can hunt the routing enemy cavs and make sure they don't come back to the field. If you rout an enemy cav unit when it has say 20 men left of the original 54, then hunting it and killing say 5 of them can be the difference that makes them not coming back again.

[NihilisticCow]

To post a replay, upload the file somewhere say here (http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Uploaders/RTWReplay.php) or here (http://www.thefilebucket.com) and post the link.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Damn, the only replay I had was this one: http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Rtw_Uploads/Replay/SelVsCar.zip

It's not very good, I had some better battles which I however didn't save... Anyway, even though the opponent makes some mistakes I still believe you can get at least some idea of how I use javelin cavs to great effect. My opponent wasn't the only one to make mistakes in that replay though... Don't mention how careless I was about my general or how I nearly got one of my militia cavs killed at the map edge (the trick is to manage them manually with skirmish off because the skirmish mode almost never works for any unit - and I left them on their own for a while - luckily enough only one or two died). The militia cavs were actually among the 10 units that scored most kills in the battle - but that's not the most important thing they did. The most important thing was their impact on morale, as well as luring the enemy to make moves favorable for me. And their speed - they could always quickly get to the site of action and provide that little extra strength that resulted in a quick enemy rout.