How much cavalry do you use?

[Roma_Victrix]

Oh dear, the stirrup myth. Stirrups have nothing whatsoever to do with shock cavalry, Alexander's Companions didn't need stirrups to charge home. What they do is provide side-to-side stability in the saddle, making for a more stable archery platform. They also make you less likely to lose your seat in a standing melee.

Let's not downplay the stirrup too much. The stirrup, with an early toe version in India around 200 BC but the modern version first appearing in Jin dynasty China around the 4th century AD, provides a rider with great leverage and support. The stirrup alongside successively larger versions of the couched lance and gradual improvements to heavy armor from mail to full plate led to the devastating success of mounted European knights from the High to Late Middle Ages, at least until the improvement of gunpowder weaponry in the Early Modern era rendered them less effective.

You're right, though, that shock cavalry existed well before then. The Macedonian Hetairoi Companion Cavalry were undoubtedly shock cavalry able to land decisive killer blows from the flanks and rear of enemy armies in the classic "hammer and anvil" tactic when combined with phalanx infantry. Also, early versions of the saddle in a padded treeless form existed among ancient Scythians, Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks, Macedonians, etc. Perhaps without sharing such knowledge with each other, the ancient Han dynasty Chinese and Romans seem to have both separately invented their own four-horned saddles by the 1st century BC, within the EBII timeframe! While these saddles lacked stirrups, they nevertheless provided decent support for heavy cavalry charges.

To answer the question of the OP, I usually use 4 to 6 cavalry units in a full stack army regardless of the faction or culture. I also had no qualms using Black Sea horse archers as the Romans, the Pergamon and Koinon Hellenon Greeks, the Macedonians, or even the Carthaginians. If you expand that far as an empire you might as well take advantage of local units and fighting styles.

[Hellenikon]

What you say is true, but remember: Romani infantry polls are always cheap and plenty, esp. if you build lots of coloniae, and also it suits historically the sort of approach they had to warfare. Camillan-Polybian approach to battles was always to use plenty of reserves and grind the enemy to death.

... In truth, however, we must remember this: cavalry really didn't succeed in becoming truly decisive and strong on its own until saddles, stirrups, and larger breeds came in from Asia. So most Greeks and Romans didn't have that, their breeds were also smaller, making them unsuitable for shock roles.

This is what Quintus was answering to. Stirrups weren't a requisite for shock cavalry to exist and be important, and there are hundreds of examples already mentioned. The idea that stirrups made heavy cavalry relevant all of a sudden is very very outdated. What stirrups did is free the hand of the rider so he could couch his lance and carry a shield, instead of using two hands on it. It made these cavalrymen more resilient while allowing them to carry less armour on themselves and the horse, so they were much faster than old fashioned cataphracts. So yes the stirrup was important in the development of the knight, but shock cavalry had existed for hundreds of years before. And it's wrong to say that Greek and romans didn't have shock cavalry, because lots of "greeks" did, and lots of roman consuls used allied shock cavalry when they could, eventually making their own units in the imperial era.

[Camcolit]

Not really knowledgeable in this debate, but wouldn't the horned saddles the Romans and others had (very early) be just as good or better than stirrups for a skilled rider? I remember seeing a demonstration on Youtube of these being used, seemed to be it would be great for both charge stability and more flexible than stirrups for shifting around in the saddle. I'd guess if you are a truly skilled rider (few around these days that haven't been trained using stirrups), you'd get similar performance.

Disclaimer, again, about having little knowledge of cavalry or horses, those are the big dog shaped things right?


This was just posted today - spooky!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOwuIsQgby0

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Shock cavalry could be good with enough training, but never became decisive in itself, until the advent of stirrups and saddles.

[Shoebopp]

Intentionally placing your army at a cavalry disadvantage to facilitate grindy battles is soooooo satisfying. I do this now, but back then I always had 5-9 units of cavalry including the general. Battles were uniformly bland, consisting of splaying my heavy infantry in a long line, and overwhelming enemy cavalry on the flanks. My victorious riders would then slaughter enemy light troops before killing their general. Finally, the abundance of cavalry makes mopping up the routing enemies trivial.

All that changes when you only have 1 General, 1 heavy unit, and 2-3 light units of cavalry. Suddenly you have to rely on your infantry for support to win the battle on the flanks. Maybe even employ some kiting and baiting maneuvers with your light cavalry. Casualties increase but so does the room for tactical innovation. This also has strategic map ramifications. No longer can your massive cavalry arm win you battles against 3 enemy armies at once. Reinforcing armies are now a threat, so you have to seek them out and destroy them before settling down for a multi-year siege. This also necessitates the need for spies to spot reinforcements trickling in.

I've been playing the game wrong dammit

[OwainKGB]

Using a spy, I check how much cav the opposing army has, and try to match it. If I dont, the enemy cav plays Hell with my skirmishers.

[Shoebopp]

Using a spy, I check how much cav the opposing army has, and try to match it. If I dont, the enemy cav plays Hell with my skirmishers.

I'm imagining your foot skirmishers running so fast their legs form a circle like Sonic. What have you been feeding them?

[MeiguoJinjang]

(no history analysis here)

Usually 5 (including general) in a full stack (if I can field them). I tend to regard the battle in more Rome Style TW games as cavalry being analogous to air superiority. Once you have established cav superiority over the field it is hard to lose.

Now, the AI OPFOR can come with more than 5, but given this is TW, the opportunities to defeat a cavalry imbalance in detail or ambush a general are numerous. Not to mention, TW AI shows a tendency cavalry charge heavy infantry frontally and get immersed using the wrong tactics.

Thus, 5 not be the best MP game number or real ancient tactics ratio, but it TW mechanic which works.

PS: Another TW oddity is charging skirmishers ... In real life, you would be afraid if you saw the charge; even if it was the unit next to you. But TW seems to identify the player charge target. So, if you want to totally catch archers with their pants down change the charge target to one unit over at the last minute. This works in other contexts where a unit of spears might be coming up to assist, and you change charge targets at the last minute.

[Jurand of Cracow]

PS: Another TW oddity is charging skirmishers ... In real life, you would be afraid if you saw the charge; even if it was the unit next to you.

Even more odd tactics is that based on sending skirmishers around the enemy lines to shoot in the (unshielded) back.

[Mamlaz]

I don't really care about skirmisher life, their role is to absorb cavalry charges anyway in my book.

[eyelurker]

I said before i usually used 4-6 cavalry. But playing nomad faction thought me the joy of using 12-16 cavalry but not full cavalry.

What end up happened is the AI will square up against my weak and few infantry line and only send a bit more than usual infantry to support chase down my cavalry. They are usually a problem with 4-6 cavalry but 12-16 cavalry even if they're mostly horse archer are large enough to rout any enemy cavalry and infantry try to stop my cavalry.

I don't use full stack cavalry not only because i want to siege but also because to split AI attention into 2 like normal army despite my tactic being Cavalry zerg rush like cavalry full stack tactic.

[randy_cat]

Hammer and anvil tactics usually work great in all total war games... a good main line of medium or heavy infantry, coupled with decent cavalry in the wings, ready to strike the flanks or the rear of the enemy line, is all you need to win battles. If you notice, the most difficult battles happen when the enemy has a lot of good cavalry, coupled with some decent infantry... in the case of EB2, i usually make an infantry line of thureophoroi/hoplitai/machairophoroi, and 5-6 companies of any medium or heavy cavalry. The only distaste i have for total war is that it usually doesn't matter a lot what kind of troops you deploy, just make sure you have decent infantry to hold the line, then strike with your cavalry as soon as possible.