Bang per buck: Melee cavalry

[Doug-Thompson]

How much does mass matter? Are speed and mass truly offsetting, as has been suggested?

There are serveral units with a powerful charge and normal speed, but they all have a mass of 1.75 rather than the "heavy horse" mass of 2.

In this "fast for a knight" category, we have:

Moorish Christian Guard, mercenary Serbian Knights and English Demi-Lancers. All have the most powerful attack-with-charge available, but have less mass than the other "13 attack plus 8 charge bonus" cavalry.

Spanish and Portugese Conquistadores, Sicilian Norman Knights, Hungarian and Polish Hussars, mercenary Serbian Hussars along with Crusader Knights have very respectable "13+6" charge attacks and normal speed and, again, 1.75 mass.

Next come the "10+8" bunch: Polish Retainers, Latinkon and Broken Lances. Huscarls get mentioned here too because their 11+4 charge gets an anti-armor bonus. (That unit gets mentioned a lot. It's starting to intrigue me.)

Then there are three truly fast units: Albanian Cavalry, Stradiots and Alan Light Cavalry. They have even less mass — 1.25 — but greater speed and a primary attack + charge score of 16.

It's all downhill from there.

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I realize that this thread appears far afield from the original question of "combat value per florin," but a vital part of calculating price is knowing what you're paying for. For example, if a charge is faster, then there is less chance to avoid or disrupt it. That makes this particular question relevant. Also, assuming that basic physics are applied in this game, you get far more force out of increased velocity.