[Army Compositions] Feedback requested

[QuintusSertorius]

I've done this before, but I'm interested to see if anything is different in 2022. Particularly given the upcoming release tinkers with some important things, like the size of cavalry units, a big buff to javelin cavalry and what we hope is a fix to the perennial issues of javelin-armed line infantry failing to use their missiles properly.

Does anyone shy away from javelin cavalry in the current release, because their missiles are rather weak, for example? Is there an incentive to always hire as much of the heaviest cavalry you can get hold of?

Show me what your armies look like.

[Shoebopp]

If you use cavalry for attacking enemy units from behind, then the order of effectiveness go from:

1. Non-missile cavalry with a huge charge bonus
2. Bow missile cavalry
3. Non-missile cavalry with a middling charge bonus
4. Javelin missile cavalry

Charges by any good heavy cavalry unit will inflict much more casualties both in the short term (steamroller upon impact) and long term (cycle charge)
Bow missile cavalry will shred units by shooting them from behind
Light lancers will inflict decent casualties
Javelin missile cavalry will slowly whittle away enemies from the rear

In my experience, I always use heavy lancers whenever I can, for gameplay reasons. Not only are they extremely effective against infantry, they beat other cavalry in headlong battles as well. Since the battle_config makes javelin cavalry react too slowly to incoming heavy cavalry, you can always catch them anyway.

There's also a strategic incentive for using heavy cavalry - simply put, there's a ton of them, even for factions like the Romans and western Hellenes (from my understanding, Hellenistic cavalry was supposed to be high quality but also rare). In Greece, you have Hippeis everywhere, and tons of Thessalians from both the polis and mercenary pools. In western Anatolia, Lydian Lancers can be recruited from the entirety of that region when fully developed. Then there's the Supervised Hellenic Administration building and equivalents for Makedonia, Epeiros, Pergamon, Ptolemaioi, Seleucids, and Baktria, which provide a pseudo "retinue" of 1 Xystophoroi/Aspidiotai Hippeis. Problem is, you can build so many of these that you end up having entire cavalry flanks of heavy cavalry.

Two suggestions:
1. Drastically buff light cavalry on the battle map for all light cavalry units. Make them even faster, very_harder, and tinker with battle_config.xml to make them react faster to incoming heavy cavalry.
2. Drastically nerf heavy cavalry on the strategic map for Hellenistic and Roman heavy cavalry units. Remove the "CORE" Xystophoroi/Aspidiotai Hippeis from the Supervised Hellenic Administration building and equivalents. Remove Lydian Lancers from Ipsos and Side, which are pretty far away from the Meandros Valley where they originate. Lower the pool of Thessalians in Hellas, Syria, and Egypt from 2 to 1. Rework polis recruitment so that only regions with a good cavalry tradition will support Hippeis/Xystophoroi. Regions like Pella, Ambrakia, Syracuse, and Pergamon. Otherwise, that slot is replaced by Hippakontistai.

These should incentivize (and somewhat strong-arm) players into using javelin cavalry.

Anyways, to answer your final question:

The Pergamene Zero-IQ Stack
1 General
1 Hetairoi
1 Galatian Nobles
5 Lydian Lancers
3 Xystophoroi/Aspidiotai

1 Galatian Retainers
2 Peltastai Logades
2 Hoplitai/Thorakitai
2 Hemithorakitai/Thureophoroi
2 Cretan Archers

[QuintusSertorius]

There's also a strategic incentive for using heavy cavalry - simply put, there's a ton of them, even for factions like the Romans and western Hellenes (from my understanding, Hellenistic cavalry was supposed to be high quality but also rare). In Greece, you have Hippeis everywhere, and tons of Thessalians from both the polis and mercenary pools. In western Anatolia, Lydian Lancers can be recruited from the entirety of that region when fully developed. Then there's the Supervised Hellenic Administration building and equivalents for Makedonia, Epeiros, Pergamon, Ptolemaioi, Seleucids, and Baktria, which provide a pseudo "retinue" of 1 Xystophoroi/Aspidiotai Hippeis. Problem is, you can build so many of these that you end up having entire cavalry flanks of heavy cavalry.

This is a good point, and has now been addressed. There was some unintentional stacking of medium cavalry coming from government, polis and colony. The government source has been removed, which should make them a deal less plentiful.

Meaning mercs, locals and lighter units might become more attractive. With the changes to unit sizes for cavalry coming, that will change the calculation too. Especially for Roman cavalry, which is has much smaller units.

[QuintusSertorius]

Uh, OK, people used to love talking about their armies...

Subsidiary question for any Seleukid players, how much of the broad roster of native cavalry available to you do you use? Do you make use of all-cavalry armies for internal security, to quickly deal with randomly spawning Rebels?

[bordinis]

Didn't we already had cavalry size changes two years ago? And javelin lethality changes also? Why this topic?

[romulus_aeneas]

I've done this before, but I'm interested to see if anything is different in 2022. Particularly given the upcoming release tinkers with some important things, like the size of cavalry units, a big buff to javelin cavalry and what we hope is a fix to the perennial issues of javelin-armed line infantry failing to use their missiles properly.

Does anyone shy away from javelin cavalry in the current release, because their missiles are rather weak, for example? Is there an incentive to always hire as much of the heaviest cavalry you can get hold of?

Show me what your armies look like.

Hi Quintus. Yes, I shy away from javelin cavalry all the time. As the Pahlava, I always disband any javelin cavalry and replace them with horse-archers, which are much more effective. Although, I don't spam heavy cavalry like others do. I try to maintain a horse archer heavy army as the Pahlava. For other factions, I try to avoid stacking heavy cavalry for many reasons (realism, balance, etc).

My current Pahlava army is 1 FM, 8 Pahlavan HA, 8 Dahaen HA, 3 Cataphracts.

A successor army would be 1 FM, 5 phalangitai, 5 thorikitai, 3 Cretan Archers, 2 Cretan Infantry, 4 Hetairoi.

Rome would be 1 FM, 6 Hastati, 4 Principes, 3 Triari, 3 Velites, 3 cavalry.

[QuintusSertorius]

Didn't we already had cavalry size changes two years ago? And javelin lethality changes also? Why this topic?

Cavalry size changes was last summer, looking for specfic feedback on how that's impacted people's unit choices.

As the guy who does the unit balance in EBII, the topic is pretty important to any adjustments I need to make ahead of the next release.

[King Shoshon]

I tend to use javelin cavalry only when there aren't dedicated other cavalry to use. They don't feel reactive enough to me in a skirmishing role at the range they use their missiles and get caught constantly compared to bow cavalry which can hit from a decent distance and leave. This means I need to micro the javelin cavalry more which is tedious. Lance cavalry is better at hitting and bow cavalry are better at skirmishing so javelin cavalry are just in this uncomfortable medium where they use their missiles ineffectively or die trying then charge ineffectively and die trying. Their best use is mopping up fleeing units or hitting units that are already close to breaking. My exceptions are the Spanish/Celtic light horses because I love the look of them and they are a workhorse, literally, of any barbarian campaign. Outside of those two, I only use javelin cavalry when I don't have another cavalry option and in that case I generally don't bother using their javelins.

Recommendations - maybe increase their ammo so they have more use in battle, increase their damage so their missiles hit harder, or increase the max range from which they can throw so they have time to escape a responding unit trying to catch them.

[bordinis]

I started recruiting less cavalry with factions like Lugiones Swebozez. I thought the numbers were a bit too small. Also the squads visually looked weird on the battlefields. For example, idea was to make cavalry factions dependent on the cavalry and infantry factions more dependent on infantry. It worked, , less cavalry in my army stacks. It is a good change if the desired effect was also "nerfing'' already too strong unit such as it is. But I have to say, I did not like it for ''light'' to ''medium'' cavalry, I think that pushed people recruiting only heavy cavalry because you would get same or similar sizes for all 3 classes. So having heavies or no cavalry got it s way. I think the sizes for cavalry should be made more to traditional fashion : light cavalry to medium bigger size and if it s not a cavalry faction, heavies a lot less of them. So Parthian Armenian cataphracts should still be in a big good size. But then there are some problems with this. How one labels Makedonia as infantry faction or cavalry faction or a hybrid and desides what size the Thessalians are or Hetairoi aswell.

Javelin cavalry is fine especially when in high numbers for factions like Numidia. The problem really is javelin units in the East, they compete with bow units, so maybe pure javelin units should get numerical changes, since bow cavalry have superiority, which is fine and historical, but maybe damage should be tweaked or they made armour piercing with lesser damage values, so their desirability increases against heavy infantry rather then just trying to kill everything on the screen with bow units.
I really like where sling damage and bow damage is right now in the game. They feel powerful and needed to be dealt with. Javelins could get a new damage system like AP.

[Shoebopp]

More players have given their input on this thread https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...ght=Royal+army though the army compositions they gave were more of a "nice to have" royal army, than a practical one born of necessity.

Edit: This post by BailianSteel shows just how easy it is for not just Hellenistic factions, but any faction like the Boii to build up massive reserves of elite and professional troops https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...1#post15941062 . Troops above professional-grade literally outnumber the militia-grade and below. Granted, it's an earlier version, but Boii colony recruitment has yet to change

[King Shoshon]

I think players are going to try and mass the best units together in an army no matter how difficult it is to get them. It's just fun to have a top level death stack. I know this already kinda exists with cultural requirements for governments/colonies but maybe add in cultural requirements within each building for recruitment. That way getting heavy recruitment from a province would require a significant time investment from the player or be stuck in their own homelands. The Celtic recruitment feels a bit weirdly stratified to me because you have the militia guys, the semiprofessional spearmen/swordsmen, the professional swordsmen, the elites, and then regional units all competing for slots. You end up with lots of total recruitment but weirdly shallow recruitment for individual units where I feel that historically the militia and semiprofessionals should dominate.

I am interested in what buff to javelin cavalry Quintus is referring to, as well as a fix to the infantry. I've noticed when you have an infantry unit with 2 javelins sometimes individuals don't throw in a volley so you get 2 decent throws and then a half-hearted pitch with 4 late-comers throwing which makes the whole unit keep their secondary melee weapon's sheathed until they are done. It looks a bit awkward and amusingly probably a bit true to life given some units aren't "professional" soldiers.

Army comp-wise I mostly enjoy playing Carthage so it looks like
Core
1 FM - Heavy Cav
1 Puno/Libyan Cav - Medium Cav
Possibly the Heavy Cav unit if I want to mix it in instead
1-2 Units Puno/Libyan Hoplites - Heavy Infantry
One maybe replaced by the Elite Hoplite unit if I want instead
Replaced or mixed in with Libyan swordsmen after reform
2-3 Units Libyan spearmen, replaced with the later version post reform

Assuming I'm using 7 slots for the core units, the rest come from wherever the army happens to be deployed drawn from colonies, allied governments, and mercenaries.
2 long-ranged skirmishers - archers or slingers, preferably Balearic as one because they look cool
2 - 3 local cavalry - if 3 it's 1 med/heavy and 2 javelin (although I usually use the javelin cav more to mop up defeated units or mob enemy cavalry than actual skirmishing)
4 - 5 local medium infantry - might mix in a local heavy infantry for flavor
3 - remainder local lighter infantry, usually with javelins.

Long ranged guys open up the fight, javelin cavalry mob enemy cavalry to fix them in place for the mediums/heavy to strike and defeat. Infantry move up, Local taking the initial fight with the core troops on the right or in reserve. Light local infantry sit in front initially or on the flanks to soak up enemy fire or cavalry charges. Once the enemy cavalry is defeated, my cavalry returns to support the infantry or rout the enemy line.

After a campaign, the core units ship back to the homeland for replenishment. The hired help are either disbanded or left as the garrison of the new territory until Allied governments are up and running.

[QuintusSertorius]

I tend to use javelin cavalry only when there aren't dedicated other cavalry to use. They don't feel reactive enough to me in a skirmishing role at the range they use their missiles and get caught constantly compared to bow cavalry which can hit from a decent distance and leave. This means I need to micro the javelin cavalry more which is tedious. Lance cavalry is better at hitting and bow cavalry are better at skirmishing so javelin cavalry are just in this uncomfortable medium where they use their missiles ineffectively or die trying then charge ineffectively and die trying. Their best use is mopping up fleeing units or hitting units that are already close to breaking. My exceptions are the Spanish/Celtic light horses because I love the look of them and they are a workhorse, literally, of any barbarian campaign. Outside of those two, I only use javelin cavalry when I don't have another cavalry option and in that case I generally don't bother using their javelins.

Recommendations - maybe increase their ammo so they have more use in battle, increase their damage so their missiles hit harder, or increase the max range from which they can throw so they have time to escape a responding unit trying to catch them.

In the last update they did get more ammo and a select group had their stamina and hiding ability upgraded. But I am thinking about a little more ammo and a small range increase.

Nothing can be done about them requiring more micromanagement than horse archers, that's a function of their shorter range and less plentiful ammunition.

I started recruiting less cavalry with factions like Lugiones Swebozez. I thought the numbers were a bit too small. Also the squads visually looked weird on the battlefields. For example, idea was to make cavalry factions dependent on the cavalry and infantry factions more dependent on infantry. It worked, , less cavalry in my army stacks. It is a good change if the desired effect was also "nerfing'' already too strong unit such as it is. But I have to say, I did not like it for ''light'' to ''medium'' cavalry, I think that pushed people recruiting only heavy cavalry because you would get same or similar sizes for all 3 classes. So having heavies or no cavalry got it s way. I think the sizes for cavalry should be made more to traditional fashion : light cavalry to medium bigger size and if it s not a cavalry faction, heavies a lot less of them. So Parthian Armenian cataphracts should still be in a big good size. But then there are some problems with this. How one labels Makedonia as infantry faction or cavalry faction or a hybrid and desides what size the Thessalians are or Hetairoi aswell.

As a general rule, heavier units are smaller than lighter ones. But you can't vary size by faction, that's not how the unit roster is constructed. Every faction can recruit almost every unit, so the variation is by unit and the culture it is drawn from. Which is why steppe (and most Eastern) cavalry units are unchanged, for example.

Javelin cavalry is fine especially when in high numbers for factions like Numidia. The problem really is javelin units in the East, they compete with bow units, so maybe pure javelin units should get numerical changes, since bow cavalry have superiority, which is fine and historical, but maybe damage should be tweaked or they made armour piercing with lesser damage values, so their desirability increases against heavy infantry rather then just trying to kill everything on the screen with bow units.
I really like where sling damage and bow damage is right now in the game. They feel powerful and needed to be dealt with. Javelins could get a new damage system like AP.

Javelin cavalry are never going to be made effective against heavy infantry as a goal. That's not what they're for. They are doing their job when they can drive off enemy skirmishers and lure away enemy cavalry.

The contrast with horse archers is an interesting one. Worth noting the Iwzag Riders and Arachosians should be able to keep up with them in terms of stamina.

[bordinis]

The Basternai cavalry are known from the sources to be in quite big numbers, but are considered as medium-heavy and probably not considered as "cavalry tribe'' what to do about their numbers?
The biggest problem in my eyes about Eastern part of the map cavalry is not their damage output, but what role can they practically do on the battlefield. Especially considering that bow cavalry after missiles can charge in on identical manner and stats as jav cavalry. So for them to have a defined role stats have to change, either bow cavalry should get lowered even more on their charge and jav cav buffed on that. Because as of this moment, bow cavalry are a safer option to recruit. So the role for these units should be created and defined on practical level. They really miss practicality on what they should be useful for, since bow cavalry does the same and even better. Maybe then players will consider recruiting more of jav cav if they had something outstanding of value then the bow ones.

[bendsley]

Does anyone shy away from javelin cavalry in the current release, because their missiles are rather weak, for example? Is there an incentive to always hire as much of the heaviest cavalry you can get hold of?

I essentially use javelin cavalry as a self-nerf: since battles against the AI are always too easy, I've been making myself include two units of javelin cavalry in each of my stacks, essentially as a way of taking up space where more useful cavalry could go. But as others have noted, this only applies in the East, since I regard javelin cavalry as basically worse horse archers, and the West lacks a reliable supply of the latter. If you wanted to buff javelin cavalry, you could consider upping their charge bonus (while still keeping it inferior to true shock cavalry) to represent the throwing of a javelin as part of the shock of a charge.

As far as army composition goes, here's what I'm running in my current Hayastan campaign.

1-2 FMs
1 Cataphract, all Armenian at this point since I have no Large Cities to get level 3 foreign settlers and access to Iranian Cataphracts
2 Medium Cavalry, mostly Eranag Aswar since I get those most everywhere, but supplemented with Aswar i Mad where I can get them and Aswar i Kappodakiya sometimes
2 Horse Archers, primarily Netadzik Ayrudzi, being gradually superseded by the Baragatae I get from foreign colonies
2 Javelin Cavalry, exclusively Mudunup i Kappodakiya at this point
2-3 Foot Archers, chiefly Kamandar i Kappodakiya

The rest I just stuff with the best line infantry I can get, trying to keep types roughly equal across my stacks. Regular cast members include: Hai Nizagamartik (I recruit as many of these as possible for flavor reasons), Khaldilae, Doryphoroi Kolkhoi, Akkadian Heavy Infantry, Phaezaeghashkha, Katusages, Kartvelni Mehomni, and Misthophoroi Hoplitai.

I've only in the last decade achieved the Hayastan Caucasian Kingdom and beaten the Seleukids, so I'm starting to add more Hellenic troops from my new Philhellenic Satrapies, and am still a few years short of the Thureos reform.

On the subject of reforms and troops, I've noticed that in many of my provinces, "upgrading" to a Satrapy brings a significant decrease in troop quality, and so have refrained from doing so in many cases. Examples include: Ganzak gets Cataphracts(!!!) as a Tribal Kingdom but loses them as a Satrapy, several provinces get Median Cavalry as a Strategiai but lose them on becoming a Satrapy, with many Anatolian provinces doing the same for Katusages (who are my only source for swordsmen this early outside the two provinces I get Kartvelians). This was disappointing to discover, and has taken a lot of the wind out of my sails to dedicate time to this campaign. I'll still probably continue, but it's taken a bit of a backseat lately. Is this an intentional development choice, or an oversight?

[Krampus]

To me, jav cav's value are that they are cheap and easy to recruit (widely available and low replenish).

They're most useful charging light and missile infantry, or fighting other light cav. Cav fights tend to rack up lots of casualties very quickly, and I would rather soak those losses with expendable jav cav than more valuable bow cav.

I use jav cav the most to fight steppe factions. Back in EB1, missile troops were useful enough that I could fend off massive stacks of bow cav with a combined force of foot archers, spearmen, and cav. But in EB2, mounted units feel nearly impervious to missiles. Even unarmored horses. They just sit in skirmish mode, wiggle around for a few minutes until your archers run out of ammo, and then charge you after only having lost a few horses. So now I have to field full stacks of around half or more disposable jav cav, the rest bow cav, mash them against the enemy horses until they rout, chase them down once they recover morale, rinse and repeat until I've killed as many as I can. usually taking 30% or more losses.

I also like using jav cav as garrison troops in settlements where they have free upkeep. Fill up the free slots with jav cav and have a few cheap spear units, giving me a balanced force to fight bandit spawns.

But it also depends on their overall stats. I almost never recruit akontistai cav and the like, because they have such little value in melee. Medium jav cav can be great in combat, unless their cost/upkeep is so high that I would rather recruit something else in their stead.

[QuintusSertorius]

I essentially use javelin cavalry as a self-nerf: since battles against the AI are always too easy, I've been making myself include two units of javelin cavalry in each of my stacks, essentially as a way of taking up space where more useful cavalry could go. But as others have noted, this only applies in the East, since I regard javelin cavalry as basically worse horse archers, and the West lacks a reliable supply of the latter. If you wanted to buff javelin cavalry, you could consider upping their charge bonus (while still keeping it inferior to true shock cavalry) to represent the throwing of a javelin as part of the shock of a charge.

As far as army composition goes, here's what I'm running in my current Hayastan campaign.

1-2 FMs
1 Cataphract, all Armenian at this point since I have no Large Cities to get level 3 foreign settlers and access to Iranian Cataphracts
2 Medium Cavalry, mostly Eranag Aswar since I get those most everywhere, but supplemented with Aswar i Mad where I can get them and Aswar i Kappodakiya sometimes
2 Horse Archers, primarily Netadzik Ayrudzi, being gradually superseded by the Baragatae I get from foreign colonies
2 Javelin Cavalry, exclusively Mudunup i Kappodakiya at this point
2-3 Foot Archers, chiefly Kamandar i Kappodakiya

The rest I just stuff with the best line infantry I can get, trying to keep types roughly equal across my stacks. Regular cast members include: Hai Nizagamartik (I recruit as many of these as possible for flavor reasons), Khaldilae, Doryphoroi Kolkhoi, Akkadian Heavy Infantry, Phaezaeghashkha, Katusages, Kartvelni Mehomni, and Misthophoroi Hoplitai.

I've only in the last decade achieved the Hayastan Caucasian Kingdom and beaten the Seleukids, so I'm starting to add more Hellenic troops from my new Philhellenic Satrapies, and am still a few years short of the Thureos reform.

I did wonder if it's possible to add a charge bonus to the missile attack itself (as in whether it will actually work, not if you can put it in the EDU), I'll have to check.

That's a nice, varied stack you've got. I'm always encouraged when I see people are actually using the broad range of units available to them, instead of just recruiting heavy cavalry and heavy infantry.

I still muse on whether we could add a trait which gives increased line of sight and reduced chances of being ambused based on the proportion of light cavalry in a stack...

On the subject of reforms and troops, I've noticed that in many of my provinces, "upgrading" to a Satrapy brings a significant decrease in troop quality, and so have refrained from doing so in many cases. Examples include: Ganzak gets Cataphracts(!!!) as a Tribal Kingdom but loses them as a Satrapy, several provinces get Median Cavalry as a Strategiai but lose them on becoming a Satrapy, with many Anatolian provinces doing the same for Katusages (who are my only source for swordsmen this early outside the two provinces I get Kartvelians). This was disappointing to discover, and has taken a lot of the wind out of my sails to dedicate time to this campaign. I'll still probably continue, but it's taken a bit of a backseat lately. Is this an intentional development choice, or an oversight?

Government upgrades are not necessarily improvements in every sense. The advantage of the Satrapy is that it's able to be deployed in a much wider geographical range than the Tribal Kingdoms. But it's also a more direct/centralised kind of government which doesn't encourage the best locally. Similar to the difference between the Hellenistic Native Admin compared to Supervised Native Admin.

In mechanical terms, it has a smaller unit "budget" so some units got cut. As a general rule, the highest quality units go first when reducing a unit pool.

To me, jav cav's value are that they are cheap and easy to recruit (widely available and low replenish).

They're most useful charging light and missile infantry, or fighting other light cav. Cav fights tend to rack up lots of casualties very quickly, and I would rather soak those losses with expendable jav cav than more valuable bow cav.

I use jav cav the most to fight steppe factions. Back in EB1, missile troops were useful enough that I could fend off massive stacks of bow cav with a combined force of foot archers, spearmen, and cav. But in EB2, mounted units feel nearly impervious to missiles. Even unarmored horses. They just sit in skirmish mode, wiggle around for a few minutes until your archers run out of ammo, and then charge you after only having lost a few horses. So now I have to field full stacks of around half or more disposable jav cav, the rest bow cav, mash them against the enemy horses until they rout, chase them down once they recover morale, rinse and repeat until I've killed as many as I can. usually taking 30% or more losses.

I also like using jav cav as garrison troops in settlements where they have free upkeep. Fill up the free slots with jav cav and have a few cheap spear units, giving me a balanced force to fight bandit spawns.

But it also depends on their overall stats. I almost never recruit akontistai cav and the like, because they have such little value in melee. Medium jav cav can be great in combat, unless their cost/upkeep is so high that I would rather recruit something else in their stead.

That's an interesting approach to dealing with the abundance of light cavalry.

Has cavalry always felt unthreatened by missiles in EBII, or has that changed with any of the rebalancing we've done over time? It should always be the case that light cavalry (even the vaunted horse archers, if unarmoured or lightly armoured) should be at risk when facing foot archers (and if they come in range of javelineers). Historically, that's the only way settled civilisations were able to fend off the roving horselords, by putting their (foot) archers behind heavy infantry or walls.

[King Shoshon]

I think the most I've ever seen a foot archer do is 30 - 40% to a horse archer unit, given they can dodge and skirmish and such. The foot archers take about 10 - 20% in return and then 60% of a horse archer can easily take 80% of an archer unit on the charge. My most successful tactic is basically waiting for the horse archers to get in too close to spears or run out of ammo. Foot skirmishers don't feel like a counter.

[Shoebopp]

Wondering if the Western/Eastern Iranian Archer-Spearmen could be upgraded to professionals. Which means:

Higher mass
Higher morale
Higher spear attack
Higher defense skill

This would give eastern settled factions more of a chance against nomadic horse archers. Problem is, their description at https://europabarbarorum.fandom.com/...cher-Spearmen) implies they're a non-professional militia... but nothing is stopping you guys from sneakily buffing these guys in your local installation's EDU

[QuintusSertorius]

I think the most I've ever seen a foot archer do is 30 - 40% to a horse archer unit, given they can dodge and skirmish and such. The foot archers take about 10 - 20% in return and then 60% of a horse archer can easily take 80% of an archer unit on the charge. My most successful tactic is basically waiting for the horse archers to get in too close to spears or run out of ammo. Foot skirmishers don't feel like a counter.

I note the missile hit-rate against cavalry of 0.45 is the lowest it's been (they all used to be 0.6). Also lower than that against infantry (which is 0.55). Going to test it at 0.5.

[King Shoshon]

Historical question here, would bows used by foot and horse archers be the same or different in this period? I know in Medieval times bows for infantry could become large enough that using them on horseback is impractical but is that something present in Antiquity? Could be a buff for the Eastern Archers.

Wondering if the Western/Eastern Iranian Archer-Spearmen could be upgraded to professionals. Which means:

Higher mass
Higher morale
Higher spear attack
Higher defense skill

This would give eastern settled factions more of a chance against nomadic horse archers. Problem is, their description at https://europabarbarorum.fandom.com/...cher-Spearmen) implies they're a non-professional militia... but nothing is stopping you guys from sneakily buffing these guys in your local installation's EDU

This could be neat in reference to the Persian Sparabara model. Presumably it was decently effective against the lighter Steppe forces that Persia faced to its north and east. Speaking of other foot counters I have seen references to an "Amentum" which is a sort of leather strap used to increase the range of a thrown javelin being used by Greeks. It could be extrapolated that other ancient cultures used this as well although I have no sources at hand for it. Any thoughts? I don't know if such a thing would be possible to use on horseback (in reference to the original javelin cavalry question), but it would certainly give foot javelin users a small edge.