Cavalry is King?

[Norkus]

Ok, so I've played MTW a little now, and one thing I've noticed is that manuverability and speed will trump raw power most of the time. Given the bonuses for flanking and readr attacks along with the high imoprtance morale has on battles, the army that can get it's forces into the best position usually wins against a force that should be stronger.

This brings me to the point of the topic. My personal opinion is that good use of Cavalry is the key to success. While only 40 man or less units, cavalry forces often maul and rout much bigger units. When used well, they can turn the tide against better trained and equiped forces.

Likewise, trying to defend against a good cavalry based army seems harder than a missile or ground unit based one. Given their added mobility, cavalry can choose where and when to strike, all the rest of the army has to do is create the opportiunity by engaging the other forces in an effective manner.

This has been my experience so far. Post if you agree or disagree, and if you think that another type of unit plays a more important role in your victories. Perhaps archers are your thing, or spears, or infantry. Keen to hear other peoples feedback from that they have found during their long hours of world domination.

Welcome to medieval warfare.

What this game portraits rather well, I think, is the fact that pre-modern battles were not about slaughtering the most people, the aim was to get the enemy army out of position. Thus speead and manouverability were more important than brute force.

[econ21]

I found my cavalry a little underwhelming in MTW. It took so long to tech up to Feudal knights, but they did not transform my game in the way that swords or arbalesters did.

In AI hands, heavy cavalry was scarey - it was rather good at using it for opportunistically charging a flank I had unwittingly left from a minor gap or kink in my battle line. And sometimes the AI launched an intermingled swords/cavalry charge that I still find hard to counter - meet it with spears and the swords will kill you; meet it with swords and the cavalry will run you down. However, usually AI cavalry could be safely countered by decent spears.

If you want a real demonstration of cavalry as king, play RTW or M2TW. Having played those games for the last few years, I think if I went back to MTW, I would be better placed to capitalise on all the advantages of cavalry which the original poster rightly identifies.

[Heidrek]

I've actually found that the best way to handle enemy heavy cavalry is not so much spears, but your own cavalry.

The trick is to wait until the enemy cavalry has engaged your forces. Normally this means they've charged your infantry or thrown themselves into the melee somewhere. Granted this means that your infantry have to take a chavalry charge, but often a straight frontal charge isn't enough to break a good sword unit. It does a lot of damage, but it normally the swords fight back for a while even against superior heavy cav. This is when you attack with your cavalry.

A charge into the flank or rear of the engaged cavalry will usually result in massive losses to the enemy cavalry. Even weaker cavalry units like Mounted Sergeants and Steppe Cavalry can maul Knights if the knights are already engaged.

I actually had a battle this morning. I'm playing england and just started a High campaign. I attacked an apparently lightly defended Normandy with 2 Hobilars, 1 peasants and 1 ballisata. I didn't know what was in Normandy, but it didn't look like much. It turned out there were actually 2 crossbows and a Halbardiers. Not a good match up for me really, easpecially when the enemy general is 4* and mine in none.

I managed to separate the crossbows from the Halb's and engage them with my Hobilars. After a longer battle than I would have expected, and not a particularly well fought one by me (I should have charged one of the xbows with the pesants while I mobed the other with both Hobs, damn it!) Both xbows fled and I had one Holbilars with 26 men left and another with 30. Unfortunately the Halbardiers didn't take the hint and run as well.

In the end, one of my Hob's got scared and ran away, so I only had one Hob unit of 26 men left, plus my appalingly bad pesants and the balista crew. The balista used all it's ammo on pot shots at the Halbs and didn't kill a single one.

In any case, I managed to get the Halb down to 40 men by repeatedly charging the engaged halbs, before my forces broke and ran. I plan on refighting that battle again tonight and seeing if I can win it.

[seireikhaan]

Something to bear in mind regarding cavalry: its all well and good to have your cavalry crashing into the flanks of your enemy for significant casualties. But without a proper unit to pin the enemy with, there is not even a flank with which to attack. Don't forget, a hammer and anvil approach is rather useless if one doesn't have a proper anvil. So don't forget to give props to the grunt units(spears and halberdiers) that tie everyone up so your hammer can shatter them.

Oh, and if one wants to try an all cavalry army, I suggest they try either the medmod, or XL mod, and play as the Mongols using only cavalry. That was quite a blast, and it was actually quite effective as well. Also, the same can be said of the Cumans in XL as well, as they are rather similar to the Mongols.

[Heidrek]

Yep, gotta support the cavalry. An all cavalry approach has some big weaknesses, particularly dealing with Tank armies full of Halb's or pikes and Arbalesters, or any infantry heavy force that's defending good terrain, particularyly forests or hilly areas. An all Cavalry army might be fun, and might even work some or most of the time, but there are situations where it'll get crushed badly.

As I've said earlier, it's not that cavalry can do it all by itself, it's more like cavalry can do more to win the battle than any other type of unit. Good use of Cavalry has won me more battles than anything else. Good cavalry, and using it well has been the key to beating superior quality and numbers of enemy troops.

Case in point:

I refought that battle I mentioned earlier and won.

My 0 valour army of 2 Hobilars, 1 pesants and a balista which did nothing the whole time Vs 2 Crossbows and 1 Halbardiers all of which were 2 valor at least thanks to their 4* General. They stayed together this time, using the Halbs to back up the Xbows. I managed to manouver my cavalry in such a way that it could flank and rear attack the generals unit (an Xbow) while my pesants were getting slaughtered by the Halbs. I killed their general but they didn't run. I disengaged one of the Hobilars and charged it into the xbows again, and they broke. Almost immediately they both other units broke as well, and my decimated pesants were soon chasing they Halbariers off the map.

End result: They lost a 4* general early in the game, along with 2 units of Xbows and a full complement of Halbardiers (sent one of the hobs to run these guys down as they ran so they couldn't rally). I lost about 50 pesants and 10-15 Hobilars. I also took Normandy and Valored up both Hobs. I'm now lauching a double assault on Ilse de France and Flanders.

[Bregil the Bowman]

Hreidek, you began one thread asking what use there was for spearmen and another on how much impact cavalry have on the game. Can I sugest the topics are related?

Cavalry come to grief when they go head to head with spears, even vanilla spears. They might win, but cavalry cost more than spears and you can't afford to trade losses. The best way to kill cavalry is to pin them with a block of spears and hit them in the rump steak area. And the best way to use cavalry imho is to pin other units - e.g. with spears - and hit them in the rump with cavalry.

You can make an army of 100% cavalry work very well, depending on the terrain and the make-up of the opposition. Conversely, some battles you can win with little or no cavalry. Just as a football coach won't always pick the same XI against all opposition, you need to think about what you are facing and which troops will tackle them best. Cavarly, even light cavalry, are great for rushing missile troops, but don't try this against archers combined with spearmen.

In a campaign as the Byzantines in early I got great use out of horse-archers as light cavalry, attacking units that were broken or nearly broken. Horse archers can't really fight but they can kick a man when he's down and that's how I used them. And even if they get caught out, they're cheap as chips and easily replaced. Whereas Chivalric Knights, much as I love them, cost a lot and therefore have to be used with much more caution.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Hey Heidrek, have you read froggy's unit guide? It's....beyond praise.
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[Heidrek]

Hi Bregil,

I started both threads because I had made some observations through playing a couple of campaigns and wanted to find out if others agreed or disagreed with my thoughts.

I originally didn't like Cavalry much, having thought that thier inability so destroy other units on the battlefield single handed made them inferior to many of the heavy infantry units available. Combined with their cost and the amount of infrastructure required to build the better knights, cavalry didn't seem to shine.

then I faced the Golden Horde for the first time and got slaughtered. My infantry were breaking and running, my cavalry were fruitlessly chasing down horse archers but never quite catching them and the resulting mess was easily dispatched. That's when I first had Cavalry used devastatingly well against me and it opened my eyes.

Worse than this was the fact that I had 3 spear units, an Italian light infantyry and 2 Chivalric Sergeants that I'd expected to be able to counter cavalry charges, but they worked out to be worse than useless. They lived the longest because the Mongols refused to engage them and just went around them or camped in front of them peppering them with arrows. I soon learned the joys of heavy infantry fighting cavalry in a forest and eventually slaughtered the Horde.

Cavalry need other units to work at their best, as you and many others have said, they need to hit a unit that is already pinned and or vulnerable. I give spears their due - they are good for this, but I'd almost always rather have Halbardiers.

In general I've found Spears to be under powered and cavalry to be very strong when used well. Mobility and the ability to strike the enemies weakest points seem to be the keys to victory in MTW, which is probably why cavalry have such a big impact on the game and why I find Spears hard to use.