Eastern Cavalry

[Black Prince IV]

What's so great about the eastern cavalry? Other than the horse archers the eastern cavalry seem a lot weaker than the western cavalry. They have 2 less charge and all their other stats are the same so why are they any good?

[Shadowcry]

Qapakulu are awesome though overpriced while they have generally better light cavalry on average in comparison to their western counterparts. However the Horse archers are their special bonus which allows them to field better armies in an area of hte map where a straight forward charge will tend to be less effective.

[Legionary Jezza]

Well they are also faster IMO opinion so great for flanking on light infantry.

-Evil

[Pinky333]

Ya and just the fact that they get early horse archers is just amazing, you can roll the western factions since they do not have any untill late game. Just mix some horse archers with some charging calvery for their archers, and you pretty much win even if they run outta arrows just mass charge them and they route

[Double A]

What? You're saying that what's so good about their calvary besides HA's?

Quite frankly, not that much.

HA = PWNAGE!

Rest = meh...

except those things someone else mentioned that start with Q. Because Q's are awesome.

[Pfundner]

haha yer, what double a said

also if you count byzantines as eastern they have some pretty hard core cav, kataphractoi and latikon...

[Old_Scratch]

Eastern heavy cavalry is way better than western heavy cavalry, IMO. First of all, units like Qapakulu, Royal Mamluks, and Khans guard have a lot of armor and secondary weapon that's effective against armor. That makes them better at a prolonged fight. And the charge bonus isn't such a big deal, just add the numbers up. Royal Mamluks have an attack of 14 and a charge bonus of 5, that's a 19 charge. Lancers have an attack of 13 and a charge bonus of 8, that's 21 charge. Not that big of a deal considering that the Royal Mamluk has high armor two armor upgrades available, which make him nearly impervious to anything except spears/pikes and their maces will make short work of anything else wearing armor. You definitely use eastern heavy cavalry differently from the western chargers, but if used properly they are far more deadly.

The only comparable western units are Teutonic knights (2 armor upgrades, AP weapon) and Norse war clerics (Very high armor, AP weapon.) It doesn't help to have an AP secondary weapon with out the armor to sustain yourself in a prolonged fight.