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Thread: cavalry: use as a raiding tool?

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  1. #1

    Default cavalry: use as a raiding tool?

    So I have been really bothered by the cavalry in this game... it seems basically useless.

    Then I'm reading the hub-and-spoke guide again for the n'th time, and it hits me what the cavalry tip about raiding means... when you plan to run attacks outside of your "known" area (where retaliation is likely), you send in the first wave with the "break through force", i.e., slow moving... this one is the boring part. But you follow it up with wave after wave of cavalry, which get there faster, to bring down the morale and cart off the resources.

    It's basically like scout spamming, but you get prestige and honor I think. And the other side can't black it by simply having 1000 scouts in the garrison.

    So is that it? Is that all that cavalry is good for in this game???

  2. #2

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    Cavalry are also quite good on defense for stomping those Archer/Warrior armies...

  3. #3

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    Calvary are 'supposed' to be a good defense. But they tax your food too much.

  4. #4
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    either they eat it or the enemy archers do...
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  5. #5

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    Or you could feed it to your own archers that take less time to produce and eat less resources per hour and can actually be used to attack things...

    I'm too big for anyone to attack so I can't speak from experience, but from the exercise function cavalary can actually hurt you for some reason (I made a thread showing that adding cavalary to a side can actually cause them to receive more casualties for some unknown reason).

    If you can afford them though, they in theory could make the difference between two similar sized archer armies (they bolt out, slaughter a bunch of archers, now they have less than you and thus lose the archer war) but what they REALLY seem good for is resource hauling. They're basically fast transporters in my eyes. If I need to haul a couple hundred thousand resources or if I've melted resources into gold they can lickity split carry it around, which is surprisingly useful now and then.

    So, cavalry. Not the best thing in the world, but it has its place too.

  6. #6

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    I would move them out of a castle defense. They have their uses as other posters discussed but their cost and weakness to archers puts them as a big pile of dead resources in any real battle.

    As for potentially harming the enemy archers, including them in your army drops the maximum amount of archers you can field so unless the can take more than their number its not a good idea. And I doubt they could unless you have huge numbers of them, which means less archers. Including them in a separate wave is a possiblity, but really to many variables to be able to say one way or the other its a good idea.

  7. #7

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    Use them for raiding all those dead accounts that surround you once a day, especially if you use a Privateering enabled city as your raiding hub. They can carry a lot of resources. Then when not raiding undefended accounts use them to transport mid range levels of cargo quickly between your cities so you can keep your transporters where they ought to be with your raiding forces. You're always going to want a bunch in your forces to take out abatis, so you may as well find ways to put them use when not fulfilling their main role as abatis fodder.

  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by phoule View Post
    Use them for raiding all those dead accounts that surround you once a day, especially if you use a Privateering enabled city as your raiding hub. They can carry a lot of resources. Then when not raiding undefended accounts use them to transport mid range levels of cargo quickly between your cities so you can keep your transporters where they ought to be with your raiding forces. You're always going to want a bunch in your forces to take out abatis, so you may as well find ways to put them use when not fulfilling their main role as abatis fodder.
    Until they made the scripts for deleting inactives, I made more with my horses then regular armies. Now I was only able to attack twice with my horses. Does help with transporting that 250,000 needed for science to start in 1 minute instead of 10.

  9. #9

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    It's sad that Cavalry is nothing more than glorified "gophers". Since you can mass produce warriors, archers and swordsman, it make Cavalry obsolete. If I can create tons of warriors cheaply and overwhelm your opponent, why bother to create Cavalry? It would nice if they had 3 types of Cavalry: Heavy, Light, and Skirmishes. Heavy cavalry would be nice to break down the bazillion warriors. Light cavalry should be used in conjunction with swordsman, warriors or pikeman to enhance attack and durability. And Skirmish cavalry should be used in fast raids. I think this provides more interesting dynamics. You need someway to counter these mass onslaughts.

    Since everyone is mass producing swordsman-archers-warriors because they are cheap, cheap, cheap, this would be a nice counter. It would be nice to have slow but steady stream of Heavy cavalry. It may be more expensive to produce. But it should make up for it in kills. In terms of kill ratio, it would be 3 to 1 ratio.

    But then again, I am not a dev.

  10. #10

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    Cavalry by themselves are both too weak and also attack in the front row. There's nothing else you can put in front of them. However, a force of 1k defending cataphracts can wipe out 8k archers with only 50% casualties provided you place just one single cavalryman in front of them. Add just one archer on your defending side and casualties will drop to 30%.

    Caveat: If the attacker has the wits to bring any pikemen with, the result will be horribly different and pikemen are pretty cheap...

    IOW it is pikemen that are the death of cavalry force in this game, not archers.
    Last edited by Thinker; 05-12-2009 at 03:49 PM.

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