Egyptian cav, what's better?

[The_678]

When playing as the Egyptians I can never decide what cav to focus on, the Desert cav or nile cav. The Desert cav has almost same stats, more men, armour piercing and fast but crappy charge. The nile cav has slightly better stats, higher on tech tree, less men, slower but has a good charge. I usually end up not even making any Nile cav, because of speed and more men.
Is there any point at all of making Nile cav? I would think the 13 more men, AP capabilities and speed would make up for a bit more charge.

[Husar]

I never played egypt, but I think desert cav have armour piercing weapons, don´t know about nile cav.

[Basileus]

between those 2 i´d pick desert cav

[m4rt14n]

They seriously need to nerf Desert Cav The more men makes it incredibly strong to beat.

[LordKhaine]

I'd rather they nerf the guys with invisible armour plate!

(hey, someone had to say it)

[m4rt14n]

well that too.

and their bowmen number also while we're at it.

[The_678]

ok I guess I'm not the only one to find something weird about the Desert cav.

[m4rt14n]

Try attacking them in castle sieges. Omg, talk about slaughterfest on ur armies. Everytime u rout them, they run like childs with excessive speeds back to their center square, regrouped, and then attack back at ur disorganized armies tryin to reach the square. Considering they have large units to start with (80 on large??), they would still have like around 40-50 for their second engagement compared to ur now depleted cavalries/infantries.

That combined with freakin chariots flippin ur armies around the narrow passages of the city, their 120-size uber-bowmen, pikes, and unholy immortal iron skinned axemen, u stand no chance of beating them in siege. Thank god they have no Oilophuants....

Me, I just wait it out and let them die off starving before exterminating down to the last babies :evilgrin:

[lars573]

When playing as the Egyptians I can never decide what cav to focus on, the Desert cav or nile cav. The Desert cav has almost same stats, more men, armour piercing and fast but crappy charge. The nile cav has slightly better stats, higher on tech tree, less men, slower but has a good charge. I usually end up not even making any Nile cav, because of speed and more men.
Is there any point at all of making Nile cav? I would think the 13 more men, AP capabilities and speed would make up for a bit more charge.

Think of it this way desert cavalry are light cavalry, so is nubian cavalry. Nile cavalry is heavy shock cavalry along the lines of cataphracts or companions. For practical purposes I use a nubian cav, chariot archers, melee chariots combo for most armies. With a desert cav, camel archers, nile cav for guard armies. I also use desert cavalry for city garrisons as their high numbers mean they can sally forth and not get destroyed quickly.

[Maltz]

In huge unit size, castle assault against a full-stack Egyptian army can be a huge chaos. But if you bring enough long archers / slingers, you can probably slaughter a lot of the horde which is ultimately satisfying.

On the battlefield, 3 units of desert cavalry is going to cover the entire line, from the west to east. And hell they charge fast (and flee fast). I hate them so much. Guess I repeatly slaughter Egyptian towns down to 2k-3k for this reason. :furious3:

[Didz]

Did Eygyptians actually have cavalry?

I suspect they must have done but they don't seem to feature very highly in the image of Eygptian armies.

[anti_strunt]

Since Egypt was as Greek as the Selecuid empire (ruled by the Ptolemaics at the time; no silly New Kingdom chariot nonsense) they made fairly extensive use of cavalry, as did all the Successor States.