roman cavalry question

[Admetos]

Although I'm no historian, I think all thier cavalry in the Imperial era was auxiliary.

Offtopic: Hippeis

[Zaknafien]

Indeed. Romans were never famed for their cavalry in the first place, and by the Marian reforms the citizen cavalry ceased to exist in all but name.

[NightStar]

That's why we need Kataphract merenaries NOW

[iamroot]

The Roman calvary in the Camilian and Polybian eras are highly unimpressive. During the Marian and Imperial eras, you're better off with regionals. I personally like the Gallic calvary.

[cmacq]

Not sure if the game takes this into account, but this largely has to do with the type and breed of horse the Romans had access to.

[Zaknafien]

Not really, because on the other hand Campanian cavalry were quite well known as excellent horse troopers. The prominence of early Roman cavalry is misleading, because the "cavalry" were actually simply mounted hoplites that dismounted to fight, and use their horses to arrive at battle quickly. This is where the prestige arises around archaic Roman units like the equites celeres.

After this, Roman the Roman cavalry force was never truely intended as a shock arm, as the eques were used primarily for reconnassiance and foraging duties, and when met with combat preformed poorly against more traditional Hellenistic cavalry troopers, leading to the Romans eventual adoption of Hellenic cavalry panoplies by the time of the Punic wars.

[Sakkura]

Not sure if the game takes this into account, but this largely has to do with the type and breed of horse the Romans had access to.

Nah, it's mainly because once they had access to lots of excellent cavalry from provinces, there was no need for the Romans to use their semi-crappy homegrown cavalry; far better to save the manpower and resources for their excellent heavy infantry.

[cmacq]

There are archaeological studies that deal with this problem, if you like? As far as I can tell EB seems to have got the horse thingie very right. But as you'll note the best horses on the map are east and north while as one goes west the horse plays less a role in battle. Until you get to the poor brits who didn't use drawn-carts because they had horses, but only the little Kelt-horse; the (e)pony.