A missile cavalry thread, plus melee cav

[Doug-Thompson]

This is just a place to jot down findings as I fight battles.

First finding: Wow. Running around in circles works.

"Cantabrian circle" for missile cav in Medieval Total War wasn't that useful. It reduced accuracy and tired the horses out.

The same trick ("Swooping Crane," I think it's called) works in Shogun 2. In custom battles, a 60-man bow-cavalry unit lost 12 men while routing and a 120-man run-of-the-mill foot archer unit and killed a total of 68 of them.

[Dead Guy]

Have you tried having them Swooping Crane against hostile cavalry in skirmish mode?

I tried that, and they didn't skirmish when the enemy cavalry charged them, in fact, as soon as they made contact they broke the circle and charged in.

I found this a bit sad as skirmishing for foot archers finally works properly again (i.e. the regiment won't freeze for several seconds while someone finishes their attack animation only to turn around just as the charge bears down on them). Maybe it was a one time thing.

[Nelson]

I tried that, and they didn't skirmish when the enemy cavalry charged them, in fact, as soon as they made contact they broke the circle and charged in.

Maybe they are just behaving like samurai. They don't want to skirmish. That running away stuff is for ashigaru!

[Doug-Thompson]

Have you tried having them Swooping Crane against hostile cavalry in skirmish mode?

I tried that, and they didn't skirmish when the enemy cavalry charged them, in fact, as soon as they made contact they broke the circle and charged in.

I found this a bit sad as skirmishing for foot archers finally works properly again (i.e. the regiment won't freeze for several seconds while someone finishes their attack animation only to turn around just as the charge bears down on them). Maybe it was a one time thing.

No, but I did wonder if that's what would happen. Thanks for that. Sorry to hear it, but not surprised.

[Doug-Thompson]

The usefullness of being able to dismount cavalry surprises me. Man per man, that's a very expensive and small infantry unit when they're dismounted. However, cavalry can actually storm small, poorly defended castles now. They can also defend them well against much larger armies.

[Doug-Thompson]

Well, I've learned one very important use of light cavalry: Scouting ahead on the strategy map. I got ambushed last night. Wouldn't have happened if I'd scouted ahead with a single light cav, which might even have gotten away.

[Daevyll]

Well, I've learned one very important use of light cavalry: Scouting ahead on the strategy map. I got ambushed last night. Wouldn't have happened if I'd scouted ahead with a single light cav, which might even have gotten away.

Try embedding a Ninja in your armies. Also makes it move faster on campaign map, my armies never leave home without a man in black ;)

[Doug-Thompson]

Oh, I'm on the attack loooong before I can recruit Ninjas, or Bow Cavalry. ; ). Once a Blitzer you never go back.

[Gregoshi]

I should really consider using the light cav to scout ahead. I've yet to be ambushed, but why wait? I just started getting ninjas so they are a rare commodity at the moment.

[Kagemusha]

I should really consider using the light cav to scout ahead. I've yet to be ambushed, but why wait? I just started getting ninjas so they are a rare commodity at the moment.

I usually always have a monk or Metsuke moving before my main army, doing their nasty stuff also to the enemies encountered.

[Doug-Thompson]

Finally played a missile cavalry battle that gave me some satisfaction. Getting there required as much effort on thinking up a strategy that uses these units as tactics.

Tactically, the fight was against a well-balanced, veteran army that was larger than mine but I had a stack of reinforcements coming. mainly infantry. The reinforcements were purposefully left out of the combat until the missile cavalry was done. Difficulty was only normal, I'm embarrassed to admit. Haven't had as much playtime with Missile Cav as I'd like. (I'll refer to Missile cavalry as HA -- horse archers.)

Melee and Missile cavalry required MUCH closer coordination than in M2TW, for instance. I'd put HA in a line in front of the melee cav in M2. It took some hard knocks in prior battles trying the same style. Now I divide HA into two groups and put the melee cav in the middle.

I've settled on Yari cavalry as my melee cavalry of choice because they are faster. Better to have counterattacking cavalry arrive in time to save the HA than have them massacre the enemy cavalry after your HA are dead.

So far, the tactic that seems to work is "grinding," wrapping around one end of the enemy line and chewing it up. C---.

The AI is MUCH better with coping with this kind of thing than it ever was in M2. The enemy army went to a hill covered in woods, which notably reduced the effectiveness of my attacks. Unfortunately for the opposition, the foot archers were similarly affected.

It used to be an easy thing in M2 to lure units out of formation and overwhelm them with melee cav. It's not so easy now, and this is on normal difficulty. Foot archers are much more effective too. The improvement is significant.

I took losses, but none so serious that a turn in friendly territory after the battle didn't heal them right up.

The jury's still out on "swooping crane," the Shogun equivalent to "Cantabrian circle." You can't keep the HA in loose formation and put them in a circle.

The enemy suffered much more losses, but I couldn't drive what was left from the field. I don't play with a time limit, but if the infantry reinforcements weren't available it would have counted as a defeat.

Strategically, the use for the all-cav army is to rush to and reinforce whichever infantry army is facing the biggest enemy stack. For instance, in this battle my infantry was besieged. The cavalry rushed in on the campaign map and tore the besiegers apart. Then the infantry reinforcements arrived as the missle cavalry used up all its arrows and withdrew. Then the infantry army, with its own melee cavalry component, was greatly reinforced by the melee cavalry of the all-cav army. The infantry then crushed what was left of the enemy with few losses and the massive melee cav component pursued without mercy. Only two weakened enemy units survived, both cavalry. My cavalry army then pursued those on the campaign map and wiped those out.

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When foot archers light fire arrows, run away. Then return. You can do real damage before they can light fire arrows again.

==========

[Zim]

Old hotseat trick.

Well, I've learned one very important use of light cavalry: Scouting ahead on the strategy map. I got ambushed last night. Wouldn't have happened if I'd scouted ahead with a single light cav, which might even have gotten away.

[phonicsmonkey]

In my Shimazu campaign I've been slowly building up an all-cav, mostly HA stack for use against my enemies.

In M2TW and specifically in Broken Crescent I used all-cav armies like this to range ahead of my infantry armies, taking out enemy stacks and clearing the way for the slow grind of siege and capture, siege and capture, as well as in a reinforcing capacity like DT mentions above.

The use of HAs in that game (and mod) was almost trivial - in bang for the buck terms they were incredible units. You could take out whole stacks of infantry-heavy AI armies for the loss of a few men, especially by the guerilla tactic of withdrawing when the arrows were spent 'losing' the battle only to come back again the next turn with replenished ammo and finish them off.

In this game their higher recruitment cost and upkeep demands utility at least as great.

I have only had the opportunity to use them in trivial battles so far (where the enemy was all-infantry and no missile support) but I'm about to send my HAs into the fray against the Chosokabe so I'll report back here on my findings.

So far one glaring thing I've noticed (which I see has already been picked up by the MP guys) is that the firing arc is very flat, meaning a high likelihood of FF casualties if two or more units get in each others' way. More micro is needed. But us HA fanatics love that, right?

[gauch0]

Thinking ahead to the next TW game or expansion that features hordes of Mongol horse archers and cavalry, the ability to dismount cavalry for storming castles will be HUGE.

[phonicsmonkey]

I just used my fledgling Shimazu bow cav force effectively against some Chosokabe.

It was six units of Bow Archers, one general and one light cav versus 2x yari ashigaru, 2x katana samurai, 1x light cav and 4x chosokabe bow samurai

I thought this was a good test because the chosokabe bow samurai are among the best foot archers readily available in the game.

I used fire-at-will and swooping crane whenever I got in range of the bow samurai, using woods to disrupt their firepower and attempting at all times to bag them (ie. encircle them so I could benefit from enfilade fire and ideally at their unprotected rear).

I got pretty good results here. Each time they rushed a unit of yari or katana at my line I just fell back out of range of the bow samurai, turned off swooping crane and peppered the infantry unit with arrows until it was wavering, then I charged my general and light cav and shattered them.

So it seems bow cav are effective in a shoot-out against foot archers if used correctly. Having said that I was 6 vs 4 (although I used a lot of time and arrow on infantry units when I could have been encircling their foot archers, so it may have been balanced in that regard).

I have the replay if anyone wants to see it. It's not perfect (be careful of the dismount button, it's right next to swooping crane!) but not a bad example of HA tactics against a mixed force.

One other observation is that whatever penalty HA used to suffer in auto-resolve in previous games seems to have been reversed: my result for the fought battle was a close victory and I lost 300 men to their 650. In AR I lost only 39 and wiped them out!

[xploring]

This has certainly encouraged me to try using horse archers in future, I always had trouble managing them in the past. Thanks!

I used fire-at-will and swooping crane whenever I got in range of the bow samurai, using woods to disrupt their firepower and attempting at all times to bag them (ie. encircle them so I could benefit from enfilade fire and ideally at their unprotected rear).

Was browsing HedgeKnight's post on game stats and mechanics (lots of useful stats and insights)
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=444087

special_ability_bonus_cantabrian_circle_marksmanship 50
special_ability_bonus_cantabrian_circle_reload_rate 30
Im going to try putting one of these behind a spearwall now i have seen this, 130 accuracy is higher than a bow hero.

Looks like with upgrades bow cavalry can become some super mobile snipers. That Swooping Crane bonus already put the base accuracy and reload rate to 80 and 45 respectively. O_o

[phonicsmonkey]

Further use of HAs in this game has led to some disappointing results. It just seems that foot archers are that much more powerful against HAs than in previous titles, especially when upgraded. What I'm finding is that in Swooping Crane mode my HAs don't kill enough enemy archers quickly enough, whereas in loose squares my rate of fire is of course much higher but I take damage more quickly.

In short I'm winning battles but taking too many losses for my HAs to be truly cost effective.

This is based on a single battle, replayed several times, so is hardly scientific and I will say that I should probably have brought some charge cavalry with me to tidy up depleted enemy units and to counter their own cavalry, but so far HAs don't seem like good value for money to me.

I will try more (as I have three full stacks of them built up in my current Shimazu campaign) and post back here with results.

One thing that is consistently awesome is how well they perform in AR. It's almost worth having a full stack of these bad boys to swoop in and win AR battles for your infantry armies as they advance.

[Vladimir]

Why are you using them like that? That's exactly what you're not supposed to do.

Missile cavalry are far better at targeting other cavalry and reducing the enemy's ability to maneuver.

[Ishmael]

Has anybody been able to confirm my suspicion that HA's are great in auto resolve? Before the patch my all HA stack seemed to be getting obscenely high kills (and low deaths) in all battles, but the patch may have changed something or it may have been a fluke in the first place. Has anybody else experienced something similar?

[phonicsmonkey]

Why are you using them like that? That's exactly what you're not supposed to do.

Missile cavalry are far better at targeting other cavalry and reducing the enemy's ability to maneuver.

Lol - well the reason I'm using them like that is because I had great success in previous titles using all-HA stacks against anything the AI could throw at me. So I'm engaged in an experiment as to whether the same tactics will work in this game. So far they do not, which on balance is a good thing because it means the game is not easy for me. However, I had thought to share with you guys.

You're right that in theory and in a straight shoot-out foot archers should beat HAs. However this wasn't the case in previous titles, especially if you use your greater mobility to surround and destroy the enemy.

Has anybody been able to confirm my suspicion that HA's are great in auto resolve?

Yes I can confirm that.

[Vladimir]

Thanks for letting us know. It is good to see.

Playing Venice I would shed a tear every time I lost a single horse archer. Importing them from Antioch isn't cheap!

[phonicsmonkey]

Thanks for letting us know. It is good to see.

Playing Venice I would shed a tear every time I lost a single horse archer. Importing them from Antioch isn't cheap!

I know I guess I'm just spoiled by Broken Crescent where my Seljuks would tear through multiple stacks of ERE and Georgian infantry/ foot missiles, stopping only to reload.

I'm determined to figure out HAs in this game though: I'm now experimenting with mixed all-cav stacks and mixed HA/infantry stacks.

I don't find them particularly effective against cavalry I have to say, despite what you say: they don't seem to fire backwards, unlike HAs in M2TW and RTW so being chased by yari cav is not the relaxed experience it could be...

[Vladimir]

I know I guess I'm just spoiled by Broken Crescent where my Seljuks would tear through multiple stacks of ERE and Georgian infantry/ foot missiles, stopping only to reload.

I'm determined to figure out HAs in this game though: I'm now experimenting with mixed all-cav stacks and mixed HA/infantry stacks.

I don't find them particularly effective against cavalry I have to say, despite what you say: they don't seem to fire backwards, unlike HAs in M2TW and RTW so being chased by yari cav is not the relaxed experience it could be...

I've always had problems getting BC to work on my computer. Now my M2 disc is broken. My brief Armenia campaign was fun.

I'm still waiting a bit to buy S2. How is the Date clan? It looks like they have good cavalry.

[phonicsmonkey]

How is the Date clan? It looks like they have good cavalry.

Actually I have no idea - I'm only on my first full campaign still (if you don't count the two failed attempts at Takeda on VH/VH and my mod vs mod with Zim).

I don't have enough time to play games these days...

I think Takeda are the faction with the best cavalry but their starting position is tougher than some.

[Oleander Ardens]

Further use of HAs in this game has led to some disappointing results. It just seems that foot archers are that much more powerful against HAs than in previous titles, especially when upgraded. What I'm finding is that in Swooping Crane mode my HAs don't kill enough enemy archers quickly enough, whereas in loose squares my rate of fire is of course much higher but I take damage more quickly.

In short I'm winning battles but taking too many losses for my HAs to be truly cost effective.

This is based on a single battle, replayed several times, so is hardly scientific and I will say that I should probably have brought some charge cavalry with me to tidy up depleted enemy units and to counter their own cavalry, but so far HAs don't seem like good value for money to me.

I will try more (as I have three full stacks of them built up in my current Shimazu campaign) and post back here with results.

One thing that is consistently awesome is how well they perform in AR. It's almost worth having a full stack of these bad boys to swoop in and win AR battles for your infantry armies as they advance.

Horse archery really seems to be not as dominating as before. One needs a large advantage in firepower to overcome the enemy missile units on foot, which is quite expensive to get and to maintain. Enemy cavalry is relative rare and not as much as a thread as other titles. The addition of a couple (Yari) cavalry is quite important to break up isolated units and to counter enemy riders, as the HA in Shogun2 have not the melee quality of some of their brothers in other titles. But every unit without a proper bow weakens the amount of steely pointed sticks with feathers you can send to your foe.

I will experiment with the addition of Ashiguru archers to thicken the number of arrows and to soak up the enemy ones. It could be an odd twist on a tactic I used a lot in MTW/VI.

OA

P.S: It is seems to be much better to recruit HA in your "archery provinces" than in those with warhorses. The big boost to accuracy is far more worthy than the addition of charge. This sadly means that you will built the legendary stables there and lack them in your "horse provinces".