Horse archers are overpowered.

[SoulBlade]

Hordes of HA are truly OP.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

1st battle against a egyptian army

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

2nd battle

2nd battle was in a jungle and I played just for fun so I had more casualties.

[RabidSheepLegion]

gotta watch out for that friendly fire... I like to encircle them and watch them try to chase me

[nhinhonhinho]

HA rule the east after all and the horde of Mongol HA trembled the known word in their time. It's accuracy

HA is extremely devastated to lightly and medium armor unit. However in the game mid and late heavily armor force reduce arrow damaged greatly. I tried to use light HA and found it is very hard to shoot down late pikeman.

HA also lose to foot archer in fire fight (not mention elite troops). And the last thing make the game balance is HA have a small "winning ability" in auto resolve

[Medkirtys]

I found early era Alani troops (melee light cavalry) are absolutely amazing in chasing HA, they're somewhat faster

[RabidSheepLegion]

do they have very good stamina and fast moving attributes?

[chris7ian]

Hordes of HA are truly OP.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

1st battle against a egyptian army

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

2nd battle

2nd battle was in a jungle and I played just for fun so I had more casualties.

Is it all HA's or just Byzantines?

[bɑne]

Is it all HA's or just Byzantines?

The bulk of his army is AOR troops mainly available to the turks. Unless that got changed.

[Gogolometro]

In fact that turkish HA suck a bit. I play turks myself now, and that HA I use only forced by situation. In fact, the only advantage of that army is how fast move on campaign map. And I say that after I played byzantines and turks. Turkish horse archers are great versus spear militia. When fight versus Hungary for example, will discover they use not maghiar cavalry, but noblemans HA of hungary who owns. My Fari cavalry and I,qtar very few are things who can survive to hungary HA. No need to say in east i have a 30 turns long war with mongols. Turkish horsies are just waste of money there. In fact I beat mongols only when I not allow them to move their HA. Get them in melee, pin them and use the wonderful turkish foot archers and otoman infantry especially. HA have bad morale, will brake easy. Yes is cool to put 4 units of Fari to kill their feudal on march. But if I am pragmatic, and balance costs, HA are not cheap at all in upkeep, I will always go for a mix. A HA cant climb walls, cant charge, cant brake morale and cant garison a city. If you count on AI sally, when need 7 turns to make AI to go out. In that time will have at least 1 enemy army like reinforcement.

[Gogolometro]

Sorry if I was a moron with previous post, but why to use a stack of HA and not a stack of murtadoi/toxotai? I think are more effective even they will not run fast at first sign of trouble.

[Meneth]

Sorry if I was a moron with previous post, but why to use a stack of HA and not a stack of murtadoi/toxotai? I think are more effective even they will not run fast at first sign of trouble.

Some heavy cavalry will probably quickly decimate a stack like that, since they don't have any stakes.

[SoulBlade]

Sorry if I was a moron with previous post, but why to use a stack of HA and not a stack of murtadoi/toxotai? I think are more effective even they will not run fast at first sign of trouble.

FUN!
I have like 150k in treasury and I can recruit endless armies of Scoutatoi and those light cav. So I thought I could have some fun with killing a few stacks of Fatimid troops with my HA horde and it worked well.

edit: I must agree with you on the archers vs HA. Archers easily kill horse archers and usually have longer range. Luckily the Fatimids had only 1-2 Desert archers so I charged them with my light cav and general.

[Medkirtys]

As Byzantines, 6.3 early, I had 10-12 HA's, few Magyars, mostly Turkish horse, turkopoles and turkomans. The others were my general with 40-46 bodyguards, full xp Armenian Heavy, 2 Alani, and rest was Stratiotae. I decimated few stacks of Seljuks with this setup, mostly sending Alani and Stratiotae after enemy's HA, and charging armenians and general into infantry and archers, while HA would shoot enemy's HA who weren't engaged, or would charge in the side of those who were fighting my light cavalry

[SirRobin]

I don't know if they are overpowered, but I always found them extremely annoying to fight against. While foot-archers will "win" in a 1-to-1 shootout, they will still take lots of casualties

[Miroslav Klose]

Horse Archers are just as overpowered as a stack full of Cataphract when playing the Byzzies

[ecclesian_knight]

Well. the title said it all. Horse Archers are very overpowered.

One that influences this is their moblity. They can shoot and run

Second is on how you place them. The placement of your horse archers can greatly affect the amount of enemies killed

[Callawyn]

The problem against AI is the AI doesn't know how to deal with my HA. When the situation is reversed its easy enough - my foot archers can devastate them, slower heavy cav can surround and get them in melee (because the AI is stupid enough to get caught in the trap and then 10x stupid to stay and fight rather then try to run right away), faster light cav can chase them down and get them in melee while slower heavy cav comes to reinforce. So, except against uber Mongol HA, AI HA is a nuisance but never a threat.

In reverse though, my HA stay away from enemy foot archers until they're dealt with by other units (easy enough), never get trapped, and devastate whatever target I pick for them (which targets often ignore them while slowly dying on their walking pace approach to my main battle line).

So, are they overpowered or is the AI just stupid?

[Ichon]

So, are they overpowered or is the AI just stupid?

Probably this...

HA offer the player the most advantages(speed, range kills) that can be used while offering the AI most disadvantages(small size, low armor) in most cases.

However try fighting an AI controlled HA army with an army of mostly infantry and you get the feeling of how the AI is overmatched by player controlled HA army.

Foot infantry can't catch the AI HA and have no choice but to wait until arrows are exhausted and AI charges. I'd usually rather fight an AI army with 10 HC than 10 HA even if my army has some cavalry of its own. At least with the HC if you have the right terrain its over fast. When AI has 10 HA the battle takes 15-20 minutes if you care about casualties.

[RollingWave]

Probably this...

HA offer the player the most advantages(speed, range kills) that can be used while offering the AI most disadvantages(small size, low armor) in most cases.

However try fighting an AI controlled HA army with an army of mostly infantry and you get the feeling of how the AI is overmatched by player controlled HA army.

Foot infantry can't catch the AI HA and have no choice but to wait until arrows are exhausted and AI charges. I'd usually rather fight an AI army with 10 HC than 10 HA even if my army has some cavalry of its own. At least with the HC if you have the right terrain its over fast. When AI has 10 HA the battle takes 15-20 minutes if you care about casualties.

this is also because the AI typically uses HA as poorly as they defend against them though, they never try to avoid foot archers, keep running, or consider terrain much. all they do is run up to u and start doing the fairly useless circle (I almost never circle with any missile unit, whatever defense you gain from missile isn't worth the risk of you being more vunerable to other cavalries running into you, not to meantion you probably gain more defense from arrows simply by going loose and keep running)

[midget_roxx]

OP? Maybe, but they're amazingly good. And if the AI is deploying foot archers against your HA, just charge them :p. Since levy archers are made of paper I'm sure even Turkomans can cause a rout.

[Fakir]

If you don't want them to be overpowered, then don't micromanage them like crazy, cause that's unrealistic. Obviously if you keep pausing and adjusting those kids like nobody's business, there ain't gonna be nobody else's business.