Heavy Cavalry: who takes the gold?
Lately I've been becoming increasingly fond of the age-old tactic of a heavy cavalry charge to the face, there's just something about wiping out an entire unit of whatever kind of elite infantry in one glorious charge through their ranks, that brings a warm fuzzy feeling inside of ya. This brings us to the big question, which elite cavalry unit is the cream of the crop, the heaviest of hitters amongst the heavy artillery?
Something that got me quite confused was the fact that most elite knight units share very similar stats, although on the field some units clearly excel over others. After some tinkering about, I personally narrowed it down to 3 units: the French Lancers (who are supposedly the ultimate evolution of the knight as per their description), the Milanese Famiglia Ducale, and the Holy Roman Empire's Gothic Knights. I very well may have missed out some incredibly good cavalry unit, but from my experience, the above 3 seem to be at the top.
note: the Famiglia Ducale are the only unit out of the 3 that can upgrade armor, so I went with the armor upgrade since you're going to want the finest in armament if you're gunning for top spot.
My first tests of pitting these 3 units against each other proved quite unsuccessful due to battle AI. Everytime I tried a 1v1, I'd get a clean charge off and the enemy cavalry would break off to reform or do some other silly maneuver in the face of my knights. End result was always a win with roughly 1/2 to 1/3 of my unit remaining. The Famiglia Ducale tend to win with the least amount of casualties, although the difference is not much.
Second test was throwing charging knights against scottish noble swordsmen. All tests resulted in the swordsmen getting wiped with little casualties on the knights' side (no more than 5). In one instance, the Lancers completely wiped the entire swordsmen unit on the initial charge, while taking no losses. This was a common occurrence against any kind of non-bracing infantry, including Turk Heavy Janissary Infantry. Moving onwards
Next test was a headlong charge into braced Swiss Guard halberdiers. All tests resulted in a win with about 20-25 men remaining (in about 4 tests for each cavalry unit, it never went outside of 20-25 range). Similar results against braced Portuguese Aventuros and Scottish Noble Pikemen, only with more casualties (about 15 remaining). The Famiglia Ducale seemed to do the best than the rest against the pikemen, although it did slightly worse against the halberdiers - "better" being on the higher end of survivability, and not on a consistent basis. It seems to depend more on when the enemy morale breaks or how your knights position themselves after the initial charge.
note: the knights probably beat the braced pikemen due to being able to get around the front pike wall after the initial charge, since the initial charge was quite deadly to the front line of knights. If the pikemen had their flanks covered, the knights likely wouldn't have won.
Next test was sitting in starting position against 5 volleys of pavise crossbows, followed by a slow (one click) charge towards crossbows while under fire. Famiglia Ducale and Lancers performed almost identical (20 men remaining, give or take 2), while the Gothic Knights tended to take a bit more losses (bout 15 remaining, it went as high as 23 and as low as 3) and the "may charge without orders" might have triggered during some tests since some of the charges were quite sloppy and didn't manage to rout the crossbowmen upon impact like all the others did. Ironically the guys covered in the most armor are the most susceptible to fire
note: I later did some screwing around with famiglia ducale and lancers standing within short range of crossbows, and the milanese seemed to be able to take more crossbow punishment at close range.
All in all, the results seem somewhat inconclusive. I haven't dug into unit animations and such, so I don't know if one particular heavy cav has the upper hand (Gothic Knights' maces didn't seem to do them much more good than the other knights' swords). The gothic knights seem relatively weaker, and the "charge without orders" clause, from my experience, can make things very messy once your knights are committed. The Famiglia Ducale seem to be able to take the most punishment, plus they have "very good stamina", and the fact that they are available in all cities with the top tier governor building (which also happens to be a really good building to have in all cities) puts them ahead of the Lancers in my opinion.
Aside from minor performance differences, though, there really isn't much difference betweem these 3 cavalry units. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the elite cavalry that didn't make this cut also perform very similarly. The beauty about the Milanese big hitters, though, is that their cities provide outstanding (albeit very expensive) heavy cavalry, along with great infantry and crossbows to boot. I'd love to hear others' experience with heavy cav, since I've obviously not tried out all scenarios.
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Originally Posted by katank
and Russia's other cavalry are definitely not of the same caliber as the superheavy cav. The number one strength of the elite cavalry is their ability to demolish any non-pike non-mounted unit on contact, and do so without taking too many losses so as to be able to do it repeatedly. Slogging your way through a melee seems like a waste of good, expensive knights.
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