Ok, we are talking about hvy cavalry on the human side vs. enemy AI. I guarantee you 4 units of my hvy cav will obliterate 4 units of AI pikemen. Why? Because the pikemen are so slow and inflexible that a simple flank from behind will obliterate 90% of them on the charge.Originally Posted by Steph
The reason hvy cav is so dominant on the field is because on the initial charge, each and every unit (with the exception of pikemen, but they can easily be flanked) will disintegrate upon impact. Every man will rout and the battle is over in literally 10 seconds. Keep in mind im talking about 10 units of hvy cav vs. 10 units of anything. Of course 2 units of hvy cav won't beat 10 units of anything.
Yes hvy cavalry is expensive, but in late game cost is irrelevant. O and unit size is irrelevant too. A 40 cav unit of chivalric knights will annihilate a 75 man unit of spearmen.
I replied to example one in my previous post, sorry for double posting. If the battle AI were smart enough to actually use stakes then I might agree with you, but since they never do use them that way, thats irrelevant.Example 2 was a german cav-heavy army attacking my army of all musketeers, 2 heavy cav, and 2 cannon units. The volume of fire was so high that none of the enemy cav made it within 100 yards of my line; the negative morale effect of the massed gunfire probably had alot to do with that.
As a couple people mentioned already, the use of heavy and light non-missile cavalry cannot defeat a horse archer based army in a full charge, as the skirmishing missile cav will simply sweep around your flank as you charge the center, all the while pouring ranged firepower into your massed cavalry. The use of light cavalry against such a force to "chase down their horse archers" would be disastrous; not only would the horse archers be shooting down your lightly armored light cav while it is chasing them but by the time your light cav makes contact they're usually surrounded and flanked in melee by the more offensively flexible horse archers.
As far as example two and your last paragraph (second one in the quote), yes you are correct. However, as far as both of your examples go (all HA vs. light and hvy cav and all gunpowder vs. hvy cav), those aren't realistic comparisons. Online that is true, but as I said in my last post, this is singleplayer we are talking about.
The truth is, I have YET to see an all missle AI gunpowder army like the one you described. If the Campaign AI actually built such armies and used them like effectively you used yours vs. the AI, I might give you some credit. However since they do not use armies like that, hvy cavalry remains the ultimate tactic.
And I still have yet to see an AI HA army approach anywhere above 60%. Even mongols have about half HA, 25% foot archers and 25% hvy cav...
The bottom line I am trying to make is this. Of course if the AI made perfect armies to counter my all hvy cav army...they would win. But the AI in this game is SOOO bad that all cav armies are destined to rule.
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