Carbineers and such

[Justaguy101]

How do you effectively use carbineers/dragoons and such or are they pretty much useless compared to melee cavalry?

I seem to have a lot of problem to even get them to fire at the enemy. It takes a long time before they get into formation and they just seem to stand there still even longer before firing. Its quite hard to actually harass anyone with them because of this since it takes less time for infantry face them and fire or just charge at them. After a few shots from enemy half of them end up dead.

Seems that they wont have enough time to run away from charging infantry, fire at them and run away again. Also the skirmish ability in general seems to be pretty awful for any unit. They will run off and end up facing away from the enemy. Sometimes in the heat of the battle i wont notice this and some units of light infantry will end up just sitting through the battle withough firing a single shot.

Why cant carbineers just fire automatically like horse archers in the earlier TW games? Or at least the first rank?

[nepereta]

You can use them for all sorts of things the watch word here is flexibility. They are NOT line troops or Lancers.

Things I use them for:

1) Running down routers.
2) Rush -> camp enemy reinforcement zone (enemy does that me so I think its fair).
3) baiting enemy to engage main line.
4) Hitting non bayonet missle troops. I use em to hit native bowmen in america they seem to do a fairly good job.
5) deploy a quick flanking firing line. ( quicker to deploy than normal foot troops)
6) Running down artilery.
7) Creating a rapid response force.
These guys are a flanking force also the units are nice and small. Their reload times are far worse than most line infantry and they don't appear to have a bayonet.

[Totenkopf]

afaik dragoons are only good for garrisoning. even then you might as well use militia.

I normally use dragoons or carabineers for high risk jobs like taking out an army's artillery. One good charge is enough to normally route the crew after a few seconds, by then you can gallop away into the sunset or set them on another gun piece before whatever guards the enemy has in place can react, or shoot too many down.

They're also fairly useful for general cavalry work, in melee mind you, finishing off infantry or just harassing the enemy's flanks. Dismount option for dragoons is fairly useless tbh.

[alteropptatt]

I only use dragoons to keep order in my cities. The few times I've used them in battle, they do a pretty good job untill somethinghappens that makes them just stand around untill slaughtered. I think it happens when there's fewer horses than men. Extremely annoying and caused my left flank to collapse in one battle.

[Mahatma Gandhi]

Personally, I like carbineers, they're pretty useful for harrassment duty along the flanks to kinda get the AI to break some ranks or get out of focus. They're pretty decent overall, if you hit and run when you have the time.

Dragoons on the other hand, I cant stand. WAYYY tooo much micro-managing to even get them into a viable position. I have had some successes w/them in the flanking roll to break up bowmen and the like from time to time, but the amount of work to use them effectively, for me, is better spent on another unit, skirmishers for example, set, SM, forget, reap the benefits.

[zerathule]

France has no access to Dragoons in European theater :'( it really is a shame.
They get the carabinier and chasseur a cheval units, with suck in game (contrary to their real life reputation)