best way to use cav

[Mr White]

By now I've fought quite some battles, with succes ( I'm playing on normal).
I read about how decisive cavalry can be on the forum and in the unit guide but I never really witnessed this. Sure I've routed some units allmost instantly but those were peasant type units, against all the other units a charge results in a prolongued melee.

Am I using my cav wrong, or is an instant rout more rare than I thought?

[Ludens]

By now I've fought quite some battles, with succes ( I'm playing on normal).
I read about how decisive cavalry can be on the forum and in the unit guide but I never really witnessed this. Sure I've routed some units allmost instantly but those were peasant type units, against all the other units a charge results in a prolongued melee.

Am I using my cav wrong, or is an instant rout more rare than I thought?

Head-on charges are best reserved for the heaviest cavalry only, and even then there are better ways to use them. Against decent spearmen or good-quality infantry standing in formation, a frontal charge (or even a flank attack) will not do much. The charge will be absorbed and then the infantry will overwhelm the cavalry by sheer numbers. Since cavalry are expensive, you are wasting both potential and money.

Cavalry are fast: you don't need to attack from the front; you can hit them in the flank or rear. Pin them with a decent defensive unit (basic spearmen can do this, but against more dangerous enemies you should use Sergeants or Saracens) and hit them in the rear. This will cause a massive morale penalty.

Even then the enemy might not rout immediately (unless they have bad morale), so for best results it is often wise to wait a little before trying this. This will thin and tire the enemy units, reducing their morale, so that when the horsemen charge in, they will rout. Remember: you can better afford to use a unit of spearmen than a unit of knights.

For advanced tactics, you can use horse archers to thin and tire the enemy, but this requires patience and a lot of micro-management.

[Budwise]

Have you seen the movie Braveheart? If so you remember the first battle scene where they did the heavy calv charge and all the horsemen on the British side died off.

Well, now think if William Wallaces group of Highland Clansmen were engaging the British and that same squad of Heavy Calv hit them from behind - think of how much Chaos and raw death that would cause.

Same thing here, sure you can use Calv for attacking the front line - I often do with Chiv Kn. but they are best used to cause the enemy to snap and run from hitting from behind.

[ichi]

Nice answer Ludens

Cav are best used as anticav, to harass missile troops, to flank, and to chase routers. As a last resort, I also use cav to plug holes in the line. But its never a good idea to charge cav headon into a unit of spears and leave them there to get poked.

One thing you can also do with cav is the cav tap. Charge a unit of cav into an enemy unit, and just at the point of contact pull the cav back quickly. This will kill a few men, but may also get the enemy unit to chase your cav, disrupting the enemy formation and perhaps getting the enemy unit where you can flank with other units.

ichi

[EatYerGreens]

What I'm about to suggest will not work against another human player.

Cav units of yours which have been allowed to come to a standstill somehow act like magnets for AI spears units, since they seem to fancy their chances with closing range and charging at your horses.

The likely scenario is that you've sent your Horse Archers to the end of their main line and are shooting up an Inf unit of theirs. Either the unit under fire or some nearby spears will head for your HA's to try and drive them off. Now, if you've positioned your HA's so their firing angle is 45deg towards the facing of the enemy lines, the spear unit will turn so that it will hit your horses square on. By turning like this, their unit is exposing a flank and if your Inf line is close enough to get to them quickly, your men will hit their flank and cause great damage.

Make sure your HA's switch targets to the unit which is closing on them, or they may fail to automatically skirmish away to safety, thanks to their current target being static and apparent blindness to a separate advancing unit which they've not been explicitly instructed to fire at. Missile units have good enough AI to self-select their targets and act autonomously but HA's are notorious for requiring a lot of micro-management precisely because they tend to attract several units but can only fire at one at a time. Skirmish seems to bo coded to mean 'retreat from targeted unit if it counter-attacks' but this leads it to ignore other units, so they can get surrounded and mobbed, if left unattended for too long.


As for Cavalry in general, if you regard them as no better at fighting than any other foot unit but lesser in number and thus more likely to lose in prolonged meleé where attrition rates are near identical, then you can see why it's a good idea to keep them out of fights unless and until the target unit is being kept busy in a meleé with another of your (foot) units. Hence only using them to attack exposed flanks or rear.

The only real advantage they have is speed of movement. They can traverse longer distances in time-critical situations, for example to rescue a unit of yours which is in trouble, or they can move into position to flank/rear an enemy quicker than the target foot unit can escape to safety, they can pursue a unit which has already routed and hit them from behind, they can quickly plug gaps in the line, as mentioned by ichi, in situations where a foot unit would take too long.

Pursuing routers is where cav can turn a marginal victory into a decisive one. Given enough room on the map, routed units may get a chance to rally and come back to cause more damage to you, even swing the battle back the other way where reinforcements get a chance to establish themselves in position. Pursuit keeps the routers running until they're either caught, killed or driven off the edge of the map.

Incidentally, when doing this, the animation shows them cutting routers down and killing them. If you take the trouble to review the kill/capture results for each unit and zoom to their final battlefield position to remind yourself who did what, you may find that the cav unit that you witnessed slaughtering loads of routers is, in fact, credited with few kills but a large number of captured prisoners.

So, if you send your cav into intense meleé situations, expect them to lose half of their unit strength in under 30 seconds, then rout away and play little part in the rest of the battle or even exit the map. Keep them in reserve and use them only to chase units routed by your infantry and expect to see them lose very few men but capture many prisoners.

An enemy archer unit left exposed because the AI has thrown every available foot unit into the main meleé action is just begging to be hit with your cav. Given the choice between flanking/rearing engaged inf and mowing down the archers, I'll go for the archers every time. My own archer units frequently finish battles with 60+ kills each, so I'm not going to give the AI that luxury. I usually see AI archer units cease firing and start running within seconds of me double-clicking on them to order a charge.

A head-on charge into archers is feasible because their speed gets them from the edge of archer range to contact so quickly that they can only get a few shots off plus fast-moving targets are that much harder to properly get the range and score a hit. Horses make big targets, so leaving them at a standstill within archer range will lose you many men/horses. Note that having mopped up an enemy unit in its entirety, your cav will come to a halt and await further orders. Keep an eye on them if more archers are nearby.

[Del Arroyo]

Heavy cav is GOOD at fighting, and will kick the ass of any sword-wielding infantry, especially if they get a nice charge... but they are expensive and few in number and vulnerable to missle fire so I like to keep them out of the way until they're really needed.

Sometimes I charge them a bit ahead of my main force if the enemy is routing, or running because they are all skirmishers, and this can lead to some high losses for my horses-- but the huge number of enemy killed and captured usually makes this a worthwhile sacrifice.

DA

[littlebktruck]

I'm truly terrible at army management, and my cavalry usually suffer most from it. I fought a battle tonight that was an extreme example. I couldn't find a good defensive position, so I took the best I could get, and, when I clicked the begin battle button, I moved my army to better (but previously out of range) ground. However, the enemy started quite close to me and I had to break some units off to dispose of the units attacking my front. In the meantime, the rest of the enemy army went around the bottom of a hill and went up to my right flank. They were attacking before my army was set, and I had to send in my knights to fend their entire army off. I got other units (FMAA, Feudal Sergeants) over as quickly as I could, and I did manage to send them fleeing eventually, but all of one of my knights units was killed, another went down to 4, and the third probably had no more than 15. While that was an extreme example, I usually have a problem keeping the enemy in front of me, and it falls to my cavalry, with their speed, to correct my mistakes.