Let's talk about cavalry

[QuintusSertorius]

Quintus, I trust your judgement in cavalry, but you must see the use of 1 unit of superduper heavy cavalry. They can route a steady-wavering unit in one thunderous charge, where mediums would do in 2-3. I do prefer medium, but if i have the money and the time to train, ill keep my reserve of Heavies.

Problem is, you'll only get that one charge out of them, then they're blown. Which means they may not even have the energy to chase down that now-routing unit.

As before, for the cost and limited usefulness, I'd rather have light-mediums.

[artavazd]

Problem is, you'll only get that one charge out of them, then they're blown. Which means they may not even have the energy to chase down that now-routing unit.

As before, for the cost and limited usefulness, I'd rather have light-mediums.

light-mediums will be shread to pieces by arrow fire. Even though cataphracts tire quicker than medium or heavy cav, they have alot of staying power.

[QuintusSertorius]

light-mediums will be shread to pieces by arrow fire. Even though cataphracts tire quicker than medium or heavy cav, they have alot of staying power.

Arrows from whom? I've got slingers to deal with archers, they're usually all dead by the time my cavalry is in any danger.

[vollorix]

Hm, i think, aside from european archers, i allways used to get pwned by Sauromate, if i would dare to engage them with slingers, because most times i am the attacker, and then half of my slingers get killed, before i even come in range of eastern bows...
I tried to use foot archers against horse archers with almost the same devastating result - loose formation doesn´t really help.
And if you try to chase HA with any cavalry, even the bodyguards, if they are not Catas, it´s going to be a suicide mission.
But, in any case, medium cavalry is a quite multitasking force, while heavies get slaughtered by any levy skirmisher unit wich carries spears.

[QuintusSertorius]

That would be one of the many reasons I stay well away from the steppes or far east. As someone who's primarily an infantry general, horse-archers aren't something I want to deal with.

[Captain Trek]

Anyone who's read my "some random thoughts" thread will have seen me say the following about cavalry... I've decided to repost these points here because I feel they are pertinent to the thread...

Whilst wielding my Thessos like the mighty hammer that they are, I seem to have discovered what makes cavalry charge without having lowered their lances (and thus not dealing the level of damage that they should). It seems to be that if they facing away from the unit they are ordered to attack when already inside of charging range, they wheel around and run into the enemy unit without leveling their lances. In contrast, I've found that if they were either initially outside of charging range when told to attack (and thus given sufficient time to get turned around before entering charging range), or else within charging range but facing the enemy, they seem to almost invariably lower their lances successfully. This may not be all there is to cavalry failing to lower their lances, but taking it into account has made my already powerful Thessos (not to mention my general's bodyguard, which is quite large as he's the faction leader and has a good influence score) even more deadly...

3: I've seen the constant complaints about heavy cavalry tiring too quickly, but honestly it doesn't appear to be as big of a problem as many make it out to be. Sure tired Thessos are slower, but not only have I found that my Thessos often stubbornly refuse to drop below "winded" (wherein they are still relatively fast), but that even being exhausted doesn't appear to affect the power of their charge all that much. Case in point, the recent battle I mentioned earlier against three 'tolly armies coming at me from three different directions. My Thessos and general were charging around the battle field hammering infantry units and chewing up skirmishers for ages and were soon exhausted, but during the process of mopping up what was left of the enemy force after things swung to my favour, I charged one of these exhausted Thesso units onto the back of a unit of engaged and undamaged unit of Klerouchoi, the unit suffering 10 casualties on impact and another 15 within the next second or two, the Thessos suffering only one or two casualties (and that's not a hyperbolic statement, it was literally either one loss or two, but I cannot remember which) in return. The Klerouchoi then proceeded to route and my Thessos cut them down pretty much before they could even start running. 30-odd casualties is what I would, from my experience during the campaign, expect fresh Thessos to deal upon charging into the rear of a well-ordered medium phalanx, so if exhausted ones are only losing a little over 15% of their charge effectiveness, I personally consider that to be pretty good... And as I said, they're hard-pressed to drop below "winded" most of the time, from what I've seen...

In addition, I have now run some custom battle experiments to see whether the observations I made of my Thessos hold up in a controlled environment... Turns out, they don't in the least... What I did was play as Makedonia with a unit of Phalangitai Deuteroi and a unit of Hetairoi vs a unit of Selukid Pezhetairoi. I'd let the Selukid phalanx walk onto my own and then hit it in the back with the Hetairoi at different stamina levels, testing each of fresh, winded, tired and exhausted three times and counted how many troops the Hets killed before "bogging down". The results were interesting to say the least...

Fresh: The Hetairoi dealt 18 kills before "bogging down" on the first trial, 24 on the second and 20 on the third.
Winded: 24 on the first trial, 20 on the second and 23 on the third.
Tired: 13 on the first trial, 15 on the second and 16 on the third.
Exhausted: 9 on the firs trial, 21 on the second and 9 on the third.

That second "exhausted" trial appears to be an outlier. If we ignore it, it appears from these preliminary tests that the charge of vanilla Hetairoi is all but identical at "fresh" and "winded", but loses around a third of its standard effectiveness at "tired" and perhaps 60% of its standard effectiveness at "exhausted". If this is true across the board (and I'll run this test again with Thessalikoi when I can be bothered), then my observations of my Thessos in my Makedon campaign (which is now finished, by the way) must be due to terrain features or else upgrades and veterancy (though I could have sworn the unit I am refering to in the above quotation had only a weapon upgrade and one bronze chevron, which you wouldn't think would make such a massive difference).

I also did some quick tests with Hippakontistai (mostly for giggles) and Hippies (to see how the so-called "medium cavalry" would fare), again with the cavalry charging onto the back of Pezhetairoi pinned by Phalangitai Deuteroi (Deuteroi so they'd be less likely to kill many of the Pezhos themselves) . I only did these tests on "Fresh" (I may do them on the other fatigue levels later)...

Hippakontistai: 4, then 0, then 2.

Hippies: 8, then 4, then 8.

The difference between the Hippies and the Hetairoi is quite staggering, with their fresh charge being less effective than the exhausted charge of the Hets... Again, I actually used Hippies in my Makedon campaign and I could have sworn they were more effective than that (if a little casualty prone)... I don't know, maybe my choice of unit explains the differene (certainly Pantodapoi Phalangitai were my most common main-line enemy in that campign, which are weaker than Pezhos), but regardless, it does indeed seem that being tired or worse is severely degrading to a unit's charge. I do plan to do more tests later, but for the moment, what do you think of these preliminary results?

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

That would be one of the many reasons I stay well away from the steppes or far east. As someone who's primarily an infantry general, horse-archers aren't something I want to deal with.

Yes, HA are bad news. Two strategies (for infantry) work against them - hiding behind stone walls (Greek tactic), or swamping them with vast hordes of cheap arrow fodder so the HAs run out of of arrows and then get owned in melee in the corner of the map (Persian tactic). Although your losses will be far worse than theirs.

[QuintusSertorius]

Yes, HA are bad news. Two strategies (for infantry) work against them - hiding behind stone walls (Greek tactic), or swamping them with vast hordes of cheap arrow fodder so the HAs run out of of arrows and then get owned in melee in the corner of the map (Persian tactic). Although your losses will be far worse than theirs.

I'm planning a third approach in my Epeiros-as-Bosphorous Kingdom game, a combined arms tactic that's different from those two. Have your own horse archers, plus an infantry force (including foot archers) who are well-armoured enough to make their arrow fire ineffective. Allegedly ten points of armour is usually enough to preserve an infantryman against arrows. Close to that plus a shield from the front.

Basically the heavier infantry protect your archers, who harass the horse archers from range, while your own join in the shooting. When they run out of ammo (and are hopefully whittled down some), your horse archers and medium cavalry chase them down.