So anyone else given up completely on cavalry?

[Jacobin]

As the title says - I love cavalry and my favourite TW armies were all-cavalry Parthians or Byzantines - but so nerfed are cavalry in STW2 that I no longer recruit any at all.

I did experiment with a couple of yari or katana cavalry per stack but found them so fragile as to be next to useless.

I do miss slaughtering routers but I find once you've recruited good quality matchlocks and archers there are generally no enough left for them to need more than your general.

[Maltz]

Cavalry probably requires a completely different play style. It is worth digging into. For example, we have to ditch the concept of "line". We have nothing to hold the line. We have also to ditch the concept of archer duel. Our Bow Cavalry will be shot to pieces. We have to learn to love bad weather, because the opponent gets tired and routs more easily on bad weather.

But early game we probably still have to get through with Ashigaru, and only after getting rich can we start thinking about an all-Cavalry army. All-Cavalry army probably require a lot of micro-management on individual units.

[Jacobin]

My point is that cavalry units are redundant even in a balanced stack.

The bow cavalry are useless in the mid-late game when you can recruit them as their arrows won't penetrate the armour of samurai units and their own crap armour and small unit size makes them incapable of winning a missile duel against foot archers.

If the AI was as dumb as in previous TW games and recruited whole stacks without archers or fast cavalry this wouldn't matter - but on the whole it does field balanced armies.

And the yari cavalry are too fragile to survive a melee with anything other than bow ashigaru.

Historically horse archery was dominant in the Heian and Kamakura period but little used in the Sengoku Jidai - but the Takeda did make good use of yari samurai cavalry.

Someone did say they recruited an entire stack of katana cavalry which routed everything in one great charge - but where's the tactics in that?

[Maltz]

If your "balanced stack" means "Bow infantry + Yari infantry + Shock infantry", and maybe plus camping in a corner, then Cavalry is indeed redundant. You can do better without them. Even in regular infantry-majority battles, Cavalry's roles are largely reduced, because "the line" is where the main action takes place.

So maybe try all-cavalry and see if you can figure out a totally different tactics. It must be fun!

[frogbeastegg]

They're closer to a luxury than a necessity IMO. Most of the tasks I use them for could be performed by other units, albeit at a slower speed, or can be left until a later phase in the battle. Convenience.

I have settled on 2 units of cavalry per army, either yari or katana depending on what infantry types I am focusing on. I don't tend to recruit them until I can get them a bunch of upgrades. They are primarily there for chasing routers, and for exploiting situations with speed. I'll use them to rush out and smash unprotected archers, or to run around the enemy line to hit it in the centre-rear whilst my flanking infantry descend on the outer edges. In defensive castle battles, I like to send them out one gate to hit isolated units outside my walls. That's about it.

I wouldn't use more than 2 plus general as that reduces the effectiveness of my army overall. It's not unusual for me to roll without any cavalry aside from my general for the first half of the game. There are battles where my cavalry is reduced to a spectator role until the enemy breaks. After most battles where they see action, each unit has lost over half its number, if not more. I'm terrible at keeping them alive!

[Jacobin]

Two does indeed seem the max for an effective army which is very different to previous TW games where even in NTW I'd have at least 4 (2 heavy and 2 light).

Plus most of my battles seem to be siege defences - the few field battles are usually so one sided I auto resolve and cav are worse than useless in a siege.

Would love to experiment with an all-cav army but I am slogging my way through each clan at legendary domination level so with time against me I've never had the luxury of experimentation...

Frogbeastegg - thanks again for the superb guide - your chequer board formation is the only way I've ever got matchlocks to work in this game.

[Jarmam]

Cavalry has 1 massive advantage over all other units - mobility. A unit of No-Dachis, apart from the whole getting-shot-to-pieces-before-they-even-connect-with-an-enemy, simply cannot threaten as many points in the enemy formation as a unit of cavalry can as they're much slower and thus much easier to zone. A group of Yari Cavalry can threaten the entire enemy rear from practically any position behind his line. This also means that they naturally get weaker as they get more numerous, since you don't need 4 squads to hit 1 weak point - 1 will easily suffice with perhaps another to threaten a counterattack at a new point if the enemy tries to rearrange his spears in accordance to your first charge. This is also why I always try to rush a stables for Light Cavalry as there is simply nothing in the game that can fill the role that Light/Yari Cav can (Katanas are way different as they're slower but can dominate a tough melee against non-spears). Its actually pretty brilliantly balanced and Cavalry feels very much in place in Shogun 2 compared to something like Rome, where Cataphracts/Praetorian Cavalry could counter absolutely everything in the whole game (except archer chariots but thats a whole other discussion) due to being practically free and virtually uncounterable for non-Egypt/Brittania on top of being lightningly fast for a muscle unit.

I played an all-cavalry army as Takeda on Legendary, relying on primarily Katana and Bow Cavalry with a few Yaris and Fires to rout weakened units and hit enemy generals, but I predict no future for it as its both incredibly tedious to micromanage and simply ineffective if the enemy has more than 1/3 of his melee made up of spears or Naginata (fewer than that and your Bows will pick them apart). More often than not my Katanas ended up jumping off their horses and charging in, so I ditched half of them and replaced them with Katana Samurai and it made things ridiculously easy compared to before. The primary advantage of an all-cavalry army is on the campaign map, as a 40%+ movement speed-general + nothing but cavalry can cover more than twice the ground that an infantry-army can. This is actually pretty huge if your stack can fight a defensive battle against the enemy as you can easily swing into favourable positions or pick off reinforcing stacks completely safely. I highly recommend it (maybe on hard if you're not used to cavalry) just for the experience it gets you in terms of campaign map positioning and stack manipulation.

There is no faction that I'd ever completely ditch Cavalry with. There is nothing that can fill their role. Any morale-reducing action will triple in effectiveness if followed up by a cavalry charge and the threat of this alone is worth at least 1 unit slot.

[Lemur]

I have settled on 2 units of cavalry per army, either yari or katana depending on what infantry types I am focusing on.

I arrived at the same tactic. Two is enough, and I usually wind up using them to counter the other fellow's cavalry.

[Vladimir]

I arrived at the same tactic. Two is enough, and I usually wind up using them to counter the other fellow's cavalry.

Agreed. M2 made great use of mounted units but they don't have much of a place in S2. A couple solid Yari cav focused on anti cav works best for me in S2.

[Nelson]

Cavalry is too useful to eschew altogether although I agree that you don’t need much. Yari armed infantry is so common that any cavalry must be used with caution.

I find that light cav is fine for whatever needs doing by horsemen. They can catch and kill command units and routers alike and are cheap compared to other cavalry. I do raise other mounted unit types but just for variety and fun. Horse archers can be a hoot if you don’t mind micromanaging them.