How do you use cavalry?

[Didz]

First observation I would make is that if the unit was 60 strong it would not have been cavalry but dragoons. I tend to use dragoons instead of cavalry simply because their unit size is larger, but their melee ability is lower than proper cavalry and they don't have the same shock acction.

Second observation is that you don't mention what type of infantry you charged. Some infantry in the game are melee infantry and thus designed for hand to hand combat.

Finally, to get the most out of cavalry you have to micro-manage them. Thats why I don't use them much, because I can't be bothered with all the clicking necessary. I consider myself the general when playing ETW not a sergeant. However, to use cavalry efectively you need to charge them into the enemy infantry and then as soon as the impact bonus wears off withdraw them at full gallop again, reform and charge them in again. If you can spare the time to manage one unit this way whilst the rest your army fights by itself them you will get much better results. Once cavalry have stopped moving and are fighting in a melee they are very vulnerable, a guy on a horse is easy to kill if he stops moving.

Regular cavalry certainly slaughter light infantry if they don't get to fire too much, but sometimes it seems like cavalry is pretty useless against line infantry?

This is mainly because the game has been badly designed.

In practise infantry in line was very vulnerable to cavalry. Not because cavalry charged into them knocking men halfway across a football field as depicted in the game, but because horses don't charge into solid objects and lines have lots of intervals between companies and batalions that allow the cavalry to pass through and cut down the men as they ride through the gaps.

More importantly, the men in the line know this, and so when the cavalry approach if they are unlucky enough to be standing near such a gap, particularly if they happen to have an empty musket, their natural reaction is to want to be somewhere else. Hence, most infantry units charged in line will fall apart even before the cavalry charge home as the men try to find a spot that makes them less likely to be cut down.

There have been exceptions of course (e.g. The Battle of Minden) but these are few and far between and most infantry caught in line by cavalry are running before the cavalry even reach them, because they know whats going to happen.

What should happen in ETW is that any infantry within charge range and line of sight of cavalry should automatically form square, unless ordered not to by the player (like 'Silly Billy' in Sharpes Waterloo). This would give cavalry its true role as an infantry suppressor on an ETW battlefield. Having forced the infantry to halt and form square the player can then bring up his own guns or infantry and blast the squares to pulp, keeping his cavalry handy for when they finally fall apart and can be chased down and killed.

This in turn would force the enemy to bring their own cavalry along to drive off the enemy cavalry and allow their infantry to keep moving. An army without cavalry is therefore very vulnerable to an enemy that does simply because it will get pinned down and defeated in detail.