Quote Originally Posted by athanaric View Post
With the Cantabrians, I guess it is the complete lack of body armour (which most other skirmisher cav possess, to a limited extent). OTOH, I use Dahae skirmishers a lot, who are almost identical, and haven't found them too weak.

For comparison:

Dahae skirmishers/Cantabri skirmishers: armour 0, shield 2; 14 missiles (!) and AP sword/axe though.

Arachosians: armour 1, shield 2; otherwise see Dahae.

Hippakontistai: amour 3, shield 2; same AP sword as Cantabri, but otherwise inferior.

Leuce Epos: armour 5, shield 2; AP spear (good for charge). No Cantabrian Circle.

Bedouin cavalry: armour 4, shield 2; AP spear.

etc.


Dahae, Arachosians, and Cantabrians are fearsome elephant killers, but very vulnerable to missiles.
They are nice for slaughtering certain infantry types or pin cushioning someone's butt. However, from the MP perspective - you can't do anything with them because they aren't good enough to fill their job description for the price in an Iberian army. If you look at them as a horse by itself. Its a okay unit. Its kinda of hard to explain. Iberians as a whole are really good on paper but don't perform as well as you would expect against humans.

Their heavy line infantry are very good but cost too much. Their medium infantry is some of the best in the world but they have to double as line infantry since Iberia doesn't have an affordable heavy infantry. A lot of the value of their medium infantry comes from the fact that they are fast and mobile. So if they are forced to stand and fight outside of the woods they aren't fighting at their max potential. They also tend to get shot to pieces if they have to stand and fight.

Iberian cavalry gets rocked by Greek cavalry but Iberia has FAST medium infantry that along with their cavalry can take Greek cavalry in a stand up fight. However, FAST infantry are still slower than horses and the Greek infantry aren't that slow.

I don't know. Iberia is a good faction but it doesn't work out that well against humans atleast in a 20vs20 unit match up where maneuver is unfavored due to having even unit numbers.