A missile cavalry thread, plus melee cav

**Doug-Thompson** · 03-22-2011, 03:14

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** · 03-22-2011, 08:42

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** · 03-22-2011, 16:23

Originally Posted by Dead Guy

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** · 03-22-2011, 17:40

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** · 03-22-2011, 17:48

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** · 03-22-2011, 17:50

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** · 03-23-2011, 10:43

Originally Posted by 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.

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 ;)

**Zim** · 04-14-2011, 03:48

Old hotseat trick.

Originally Posted by 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.

**gauch0** · 04-21-2011, 14:48

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** · 04-22-2011, 00:10

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!