Armenian Campaign: Cataphracts or Cataphract Archers?

[Zakor]

I'm playing a campaign as the Armenians....Tough campaign. Bad starting cities (and just two) with a (s)low growth rate.

My question, however, deals with recruiting. Should I recruit Cataphract Archers, or wait for Cataphracts themselves. The stats are as follows:

Cataphract Archers:
9 Attack, 22 Defense, 3 Charge, 10 Missile
(Cantabrian Circle, Good Morale)

Cataphracts:
7 Attack, 23 Defense, 15 Charge, 9 Sword
(Wedge, Good Morale, Strong Charge)

Now, the initial answer seems to be, "It depends what you want them for."

However, given the threads that I am reading, ((about charge being "Bugged," and my uncertainty as to whether the whole "Charge" attack bonus is or is not applied, and my uncertainty as to whether weight is or is not applied to charge)) I am tending towards thinking that Cataphract Archers are the way to go, and that Cataphracts will be an intrinsic waste of time/resources, as...given the bugs, Cataphract Archers are equal or superior in nearly every relevant and applicable manner.

Is my analysis correct?

[Craterus]

Go for both, that's what I'd do plus Cat Archers can fire missiles which adds to their usefullness..

[Zakor]

Go for both, that's what I'd do plus Cat Archers can fire missiles which adds to their usefullness..
Given that charge is broken, it seems that Cataphract Archers are superior to Cataphracts in nearly every way, including the fact that they have missiles, which was...my point.

[Craterus]

Could also depend on your strategy, I'm a mounted missiles and cavalry commanders so I'd go for both..

[Zakor]

Could also depend on your strategy, I'm a mounted missiles and cavalry commanders so I'd go for both..

Which is better in a charge?

Which is better in Hand-To-Hand?

[Craterus]

Charge, cataphracts
Melee - I don't know..

You say you don't have the buildings to recruit cataphracts so just make cataphract archer for now and when you get further up the tech tree, you could go for a bit of variation..

[tibilicus]

Both. once you can feild bot you are unstopable.

[Zakor]

Charge, cataphracts
Melee - I don't know..

You say you don't have the buildings to recruit cataphracts so just make cataphract archer for now and when you get further up the tech tree, you could go for a bit of variation..

So, the charge bonus is no longer broken in 1.2? Charge bonus is fixed?

[Craterus]

I don't think it was ever broken, to be honest, I wouldn't worry with Cataphracts, they are an immense unit and capable of routing/killing a lot of different units.
Just don't match them up against spearmen..

[Old Celt]

Cat Archers are pretty much Cataphracts with a tad less defense and melee capability. They are still tanks. You should field both because the charge capability is much stronger for straight Cats, and this makes them better anti cavalry units. However, the defense is so high on both of these that you can very easily survive anything short of elephant attacks with Cat Archers. You can use them as heavy cavalry, just avoid frontally charging legionaries of any kind, and of course, spearmen.

Cat Archers are unbelievable units if you use them in groups of 3 or more. You need not run away from enemy cavalry with groups like that. Just turn off missile attack and ALT double click to countercharge and you will destroy any enemy cav units. I've often won battles with only 2 groups of 3 or 4 Cat Archers, exhausting their missiles and then running down whatever is left. The rest of my army sometimes didn't even engage as my Cat Archers were way out front, "taking it to them". Focus on enemy missiles first, then cav, then infantry units. If the enemy is full of heavy spearmen, use your missiles in skirmish mode and retreat behind your own infantry and foot missile units. When Cataphracts are available, 1 unit for escort of each of your Cat Archer packs is all you need, and maybe 1 in reserve with your general behind your center.

[Romeus Petrus]

I am currently in my first armenian campaign and let me just say this has been the strongest faction yet. All my armies are composed exclusively of CA. They are amazing, one of the best units in the game. 10 units of CA defeat 3-4 full roman stacks of Urban cohorts/cav and aux archers. I see no need for regular cats as armenia as your CA can more than do the job. The only real threat is the enemy's heavy cavalry and even that can be easily destroyed with some micro management with just one unit of CA vs the enemy's heavy cav, just have your CA on skirmish till they get to the edge of the map, by then the enemy has suffered some significant losses from your arrows and is tired, then just turn the skirmish mode off and charge... the enemy will rout on impact 99% of the times. I am now used to battles where the enemy loses 2-3k while my losses are in the single digits. I thought the Seleucids were strong, but.. wow armenia rocks.

[Craterus]

Parthia has CA too, right?

[Dutch_guy]

Parthia has CA too, right?

no parthia has PC, persian cavalry,
also good though

[Kraxis]

Actually the CA has a charge that is nearly as powerful as the normal cataphracts. That is the odd part of the chargebonus, it doesn't add half of what the armour does.
Test it yourself, try charging a unit of Cappadocians at a unit of Hastati for instance (make certain it is a unit that doesn't break too soon) and take note of the losses the Hastati suffer until your Cappas stand still (more or less). Then do the same with Cataphracts (make sure not to use Alt as you attack as you don't want either unit to use their secondary weapon).
The results are stunning. The Cappas are the same as the Cats, but they have a shield instead of 4 points of armour (since a shield adds the same effect to the front and left it shouldn't have had an impact). Cats inflict a lot more losses, almost 25% more. Check it out in Ludus Magna.

So keep with the CA as they will deal a serious charge to anyone. Their only problem is their cost (only initially as they are cheap otherwise) and their lack of the mace (it has a marked impact). But that should easily be dwarfed by the skirmish ability and the bows.

[Craterus]

not as good as Cataphract archers..

[cunobelinus]

weakin enemy with catprhact archers then hit them hard with cathrpacts thats bassically a hard army to beat
elephants and that would be a nearly unbeatable army other than i dont like commanding cavalry i love infratrny

[Magraev]

Well this thread made me laugh several times - sometimes people just don't have a clue ~D

My take is to go with only CA's. The savings on building the last level of stables can be spent on a couple more.

[player1]

Don't forget that Cataphracts have secondary mace attack with attack rating of 9 and armor piercering abilitiy. That's much better then Cataphract Archer melee.

[avesta]

Don't forget that Cataphracts have secondary mace attack with attack rating of 9 and armor piercering abilitiy. That's much better then Cataphract Archer melee.

exactly.
this is why I think cataphracts are the most lethal force in the game.
In a custom battle on very hard difficulty I charged them straight on into an urban cohort with 60 more men and the cataphracts destroyed them.
Make sure you use the secondary mace attack, it makes the difference between a loss and a win.

[Magraev]

I heard there was a bug where they didn't switch to maces as they should?

[player1]

As long as you hold alt when ordering attack they will switch.

Althouhg it's a bit tiresome to do it every time.

[Conqueror]

Sometimes my cats don't switch to their maces even when I use alt. I think that mostly happens when the targetted unit routs and the cats are "pursuing" them instead of "fighting" or "charging".

[Paul Peru]

I miss cat archers when I'm not playing Armenia.
They are almost too good, IMO, and work on all kinds of enemies.
Phalanxes are a favourite, of course, and there are a lot of those in the neighbourhood. ~;)

As mentioned, take out enemy archers/artillery in melee first, and break any pachyderms with arrows. After that, you have no worries.

Also you have to micromanage each cat unit all the time, to make sure you're "always" charging. The cat archers do all right by themselves while you're busy with one critical part of the battlefield.

[Camp Freddie]

The question is:

Do you want arrows or an armour piercing (secondary) attack?

It's a tough call.

[Kraxis]

The question is:

Do you want arrows or an armour piercing (secondary) attack?

It's a tough call.
Ahhh... But you forget the Skirmish ability. Of course this is not important with a few units, but when you enter battles where you have many units it can become a real pain to move the normal Cataphracts around, the CA will do it by themselves, easily isolating enemy units while you deal with other aspects of the battle.
Also most people are more willing to let even very heavy horse archers skirmish away while not pulling back melee cavalry in a similar fashion. So it also impacts the battle in a psycological way.

[Craterus]

The question is:

Do you want arrows or an armour piercing (secondary) attack?

It's a tough call.

I want both, oh wait, I can have both.. ~D Just get both, it's a lot easier and you can have some fun, experiment around and decide which you think is better.

[Red Harvest]

The charge bonus is worth at best 1/5th and more likely about 1/10th as much as a regular point of attack. Unfortunately, there is very little difference between a charge bonus of 5 and one of 15.

Kraxis has already pointed out that armour is the key determinant in charge bonus.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Buy cath archers all the time until you get caths. Then if you want, you can replace some cath archers with caths, but it isn't even necessary in a long time. In fact you can do well with a combo army of 5 cath archers and 5-10 horse archers for a very long time if you just use clever tactics. You can even skip those footmen completely if you like to have more money for the cath archers. Armenia isn't a hard faction, they're as a matter of fact one of the easier once you find their strenghts. One VERY important strength is that a well-composed Armenian army only needs around 10 units to beat any other army in the game, whereas for example romans, barbarians, macs etc. need 20 units in order to have a strong army. If you bring 20 units to battle it's really overkill and the battles should be really easy to win.