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Are cataphracts really THAT strong? 9_6

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M

Mjolnersson

First Lieutenant
Jul 22, 2013
211
86
I had battle with random adventurer. He had 28200 people, I had 10000 κατάφρακτοι. I also had 20000 levy 2 provinces away, but they didnt make it in time.
My best general had 20 martial, two others just 13. Battle took place in mountains, so i got deff mods.

Battle strarts:
28200 vs 10000
losses:
20000 vs 3000
survivors:
some 8000 vs 7000

Dont you think it's a "tiny bit" weird?


EDIT: second battle, my 7000 vs his 8000 - total victory, I lost only 800 people.
 
Doesn't sound the least bit unexpected to me. If you have a lot of Cataphracts in mountains and a motley adventurer army that may or may not have had good leadership on the flanks attacks you, you're usually pretty well set. It really is a case where the larger numbers don't usually matter. Even if you attack them, you still have a chance.
 
His generals were mediocre, but not crap. Just meh.
Another battle, with Abbasids this time, their 20000 vs my 10000. Attacked them on desert and still won easily. Lost 4000 men.
Seriously, they are OP. When they face army 2 or 3 times bigger they should suffer, even if the enemy are caveman from stone age.
I could never achieve scores like this with generic levies, hussars, housecarls, elephants and even longbows.
Its fun to win like this, but dont seem very balanced nor realistic to me.
I know it's greek retinue, posessed by spirits of 300 spartans and all, but...:eek:o
 
Heavy cavalry is very strong and horse archers are very, very strong. Together you have a unit that excels in all phases of combat so yeah, unit for unit they're pretty much just that strong.
 
Mjolnersson said:
His generals were mediocre, but not crap. Just meh.
Another battle, with Abbasids this time, their 20000 vs my 10000. Attacked them on desert and still won easily. Lost 4000 men.
Seriously, they are OP. When they face army 2 or 3 times bigger they should suffer, even if the enemy are caveman from stone age.
I could never achieve scores like this with generic levies, hussars, housecarls, elephants and even longbows.
Its fun to win like this, but dont seem very balanced nor realistic to me.
I know it's greek retinue, posessed by spirits of 300 spartans and all, but...:eek:o
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Why shouldn't Heavy Cavalry/Horse Archer combo win over some peasant rabble 3 times their size?
 
Raczynski said:
Why shouldn't Heavy Cavalry/Horse Archer combo win over some peasant rabble 3 times their size?
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Cause its too easy to win against these huge viking/muslim adventurer blobs and bordering empires. Wanna conquer county but enemy have 40000 soldiers in the middle of desert? No problem, send spartans, I mean cataphracts.

I wonder if asian retinues (LC, HA) are equally good or weaker. (Never played as turks or mongols)
 
Mjolnersson said:
I wonder if asian retinues (LC, HA) are equally good or weaker. (Never played as turks or mongols)
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Horse Archers are pretty devastating as well. In my opinion, if adventurers are dumb enough to try to knock off the Byzantines or some large Central Asian state, they should lose 95% of the time. Think of what happened with the peasant crusade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Crusade when they attacked the Turks ... so it really is historical that gigantic ragtag armies can be decimated by small, well trained armies on horseback.
 
Muslim troop moral may be greatly affected by high decadence making them easy to ROFLStomp.

Cataphracts are the most expensive retinue both in cost and cap space. That means you could have close to double their numbers in a mixed Skirmish/Shock regular retinue for the same cost/cap space.

So, are they powerful? Yes but, they are designed to take on double their numbers. Levies (and by the same token adventurers) are the worst quality of troop (mix of everything under the sun), this makes their chosen tactics never optimal (some troops will benefit others will suffer). They make up for that in numbers but, you'll need more than 2x the number of cataphract to compete.
 
Most retinues will wipe the floor with levies. Your 10k cataphracts take up 2500 cap per 500 soldiers, that's 50000 retinue cap for that army. Pair that up against a comparable retinue and see how they do.
 
Historically speaking, cataphracts (if we use the 50/50 archer/lancer ratio), were very well armored, often even with shields and helmets. This protected them from pelting fire, obviously not from a well-placed crossbow shot, but a few javelins wouldn't hurt them. This means that for most of the skirmish phase, (adding in that the 50% horse archers keep firing themselves too,) they are the dominant force. Second is the melee phase, where easily heavy cav wrecks face. While using about 20% more pikes than the enemy has heavy cav would destroy them, most other units are destroyed easily. Two heavy infantry soldiers are as strong in melee defense as one pikeman, and that is the second best infantry unit in defense. In real life, too, their heavy armor and relative mobility (think of cataphracts as tanks while light cavalry would be jeeps), made them true dangers on the battlefield. Finally, in the pursue phase, while not having the perfect ten that the light cavalry has - and is specialized in -, heavy infantry and horse archers have 8 and 7 in offensive pursue, respectively, solid scores for their other values.

Add in tactics and retinue bonuses and yeah, they get hella strong. For example, if a British player defends using a roflsiege army consisting of 100% longbows, tactics would usually switch to charge on undefended, leaving all archers useless in the melee phase.
 
Rambo Panda said:
Most retinues will wipe the floor with levies. Your 10k cataphracts take up 2500 cap per 500 soldiers, that's 50000 retinue cap for that army. Pair that up against a comparable retinue and see how they do.
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Pretty much this. The thousands upon thousands of Longbowmen you get for this would probably wipe the cataphracts before they they into melee phase. But yeah, cataphracts are amazing, they are also amazingly expensive.
 
Korashy said:
Pretty much this. The thousands upon thousands of Longbowmen you get for this would probably wipe the cataphracts before they they into melee phase. But yeah, cataphracts are amazing, they are also amazingly expensive.
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It's basically a playstyle choice. Do you want to win by massive awesome battles? Get Cataphracts or Scottish Pikeman (I think those are still pretty good). Do you want to have so freaking many troops that factions will never fire even a little and be able to siege to 100% war score before your enemy gets the troops out of their capital? Get Archers, Longbows if possible.
 
Cataphracts take a big chunk of your retinue cap, bear in mind. For the same cost you could get 3 times as many longbowmen. The real advantage of cataphracts is the punch they have for their size. You could gets tons of longbowmen for the same price, but marching 30k longbowmen into the desert will result in massive attrition, while 10k cataphracts will be fine.
 
LACKADAISICAL said:
Cataphracts take a big chunk of your retinue cap, bear in mind. For the same cost you could get 3 times as many longbowmen. The real advantage of cataphracts is the punch they have for their size. You could gets tons of longbowmen for the same price, but marching 30k longbowmen into the desert will result in massive attrition, while 10k cataphracts will be fine.
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Indeed. With attrition being a soft cap or how much power you can pack into one province, the cataphracts probably give you the most condensed fighting power.

Another nice thing about them is the fact that will absolutely obliterate everything in retreat phase, while being very strong in skirmish and melee phase as well. Basically once you break enemy morale it's done (well this would be a bigger advantage if CK2 actually had a better retreat mechanic).
 
Rambo Panda said:
Most retinues will wipe the floor with levies. Your 10k cataphracts take up 2500 cap per 500 soldiers, that's 50000 retinue cap for that army. Pair that up against a comparable retinue and see how they do.
Click to expand...

Actually, it's only 1600 cap per 500 soldiers for Cataphracts, or 32,000 Cap. So that'd be 32,000 Longbows, 16,000 Camel Cavalry (or Hussars, or Caballeros, or...), etc. That's about right for winning a major battle, especially if you have good generals and/or any type of terrain modifier such as crossing a river, or defending in the mountains.

This applies even more so when you start really gaming the individual flanks for optimal effectiveness. So if you had (let's say) 4,000 Varangian guard in addition to your 10k Cataphracts, you could have put 2k of those on the side flanks and your 10k Cataphracts in the center. Your side flanks would crumble, but by that point your Cataphracts would have totally decimated the center and basically wiped the floor with even MORE enemies...

Personally my favorites are the Camels, but since I don't like playing as a Muslim my only real option is Nestorians in that case.

(edit: With Tengri Hussars being a VERY close second)
 
wingzero890 said:
How good are the war elephant retinues compared to Cataphracts? The Hindu ones called 'Steel Bow Infantry' retinue.
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Unless its been changed since the last time I tried them, they are horrid. To spendy to mass produce and still get charge on undefended flank and routed very easy. In my opinion the worse retinue there is, was pretty disappointing, was looking forward to conquering the world with elephants!
 
Kumicho said:
Actually, it's only 1600 cap per 500 soldiers for Cataphracts, or 32,000 Cap.
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That'll teach me to trust my oaf of a room mate.

wingzero890 said:
How good are the war elephant retinues compared to Cataphracts? The Hindu ones called 'Steel Bow Infantry' retinue.
Click to expand...
They are awful. I tried using them as a homogeneous retinue and in combination with others, they were massacred by even levies except when the fights were at least 1:1. I think having elephants unlocks some combat tactics that just screws the rest of the army in that flank. For retinues they should be able to take on levies 2:1 to even compare to a cheap retinue.
 
StrikerThrex said:
Unless its been changed since the last time I tried them, they are horrid. To spendy to mass produce and still get charge on undefended flank and routed very easy. In my opinion the worse retinue there is, was pretty disappointing, was looking forward to conquering the world with elephants!
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This. They have to be mixed with either shock, or a lot of defense. Either way it kills their effectiveness.
 
StrikerThrex said:
Unless its been changed since the last time I tried them, they are horrid. To spendy to mass produce and still get charge on undefended flank and routed very easy. In my opinion the worse retinue there is, was pretty disappointing, was looking forward to conquering the world with elephants!
Click to expand...

Rambo Panda said:
They are awful. I tried using them as a homogeneous retinue and in combination with others, they were massacred by even levies except when the fights were at least 1:1. I think having elephants unlocks some combat tactics that just screws the rest of the army in that flank. For retinues they should be able to take on levies 2:1 to even compare to a cheap retinue.
Click to expand...

KingNothing said:
This. They have to be mixed with either shock, or a lot of defense. Either way it kills their effectiveness.
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They're atrocious. Beyond worthless... They don't even siege as well as Skirmishers since they a) cost more and b) don't get the +60% offense that the archers in the Skirmish retinue get. The only way they're any good at all is if you mod out the "Charge on Undefended Flank" tactic when Elephants are present.
 
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