Is Cavalry worth it - discussion

[WolframS67]

One of the things that's often neglected is that Cavalry is useful in trying to stackwipe the opponent.

Say, a simple war. Very early game. You have 14 regiments (10 infantry + cav) and your opponent has 2 stacks of 10 regiments (so 20 in total), you can very easily win that war by stackwiping the enemy stacks. If they're on top of each other, don't engage. The moment they're split, you can swoop in and stack them.

EU4 single player is not simply a game where you always have equal numbers as your opponent and always have your combat width filled. Especially early game. You have to try to have more than your opponent in a per stack basis, and cavalry helps making your stacks overpower the enemy better. So a 1 for 1 comparison simply doesn't do it justice.

I think you are presenting the best case scenario for Cav and I still disagree about its usefulness.

In the 14 vs 10 + 10 situation it is sufficent to get one of the stacks stackwiped. Then the other stack will go to Siberia or will sit somewhere in the corner.
The first battle 14 vs 10 should be in the first month of the war to catch them with reduced, if not min morale.
For a stackwipe it is necessary in the first 12 days of battle, to get the enemies morale to 0 and a 2:1 numerical superiorty.

The second condition is important, as the morale is no problem with 10/4 vs 10. But it needs some casualites on both sides to get the 2:1. Lets say in an (optimistic?!) assumption the kill ratio is 3:2. Then the Cav-stack has to suffer 3k losses to get the stackwipe. 14k - 3k = 11k, while 10k - 4.5k = 5.5k.
Now if I go with 20 infantry into the battle, I have the 2:1 superiorty right from the start. It might take a bit longer to get the hostile morale to 0 than with Cav, but in my experience battles are shorter and less lossy with pure infantry.

The non-outflanking scenarios are even worse for Cav.
Wars are decided by the speed of sieges, not by mass-battles. Unfortified provinces - Inf. Forts - Cannons, and before Mil Tech 7, Inf again. Cav useless.
In SP the player should avoid battles, unless a stackwipe is highly likely. In (the rare) case of a mass-battle a player should use CW to his advantage for optimization of morale, whereas the AI just blindly throws the stacks in.

Battles with CW:
For fans of Cav, I suggest this tests on Mil Tech 3 in an non-Iroman game. Western units, with balanced modifiers (terrain, generals, morale, etc) and fixed dice:
a) 20/0 vs 16/4 (Chevauchée) (spoiler: Inf wins)
b) 20/0 vs 16/4 (Western Medieval) (spoiler: Cav wins)
c) 20/0 vs 16/4 (Western Medieval), but give the Inf a bonus of x% morale, so Inf wins again. (spoiler: x is very low)

My conclusion is: In SP Cav is not needed. That is coming from 1.29 and earlier on VH, not even 1.30 on normal.

 

[Kryndude]

In the 14 vs 10 + 10 situation it is sufficent to get one of the stacks stackwiped. Then the other stack will go to Siberia or will sit somewhere in the corner.
The first battle 14 vs 10 should be in the first month of the war to catch them with reduced, if not min morale.
For a stackwipe it is necessary in the first 12 days of battle, to get the enemies morale to 0 and a 2:1 numerical superiorty.

The second condition is important, as the morale is no problem with 10/4 vs 10. But it needs some casualites on both sides to get the 2:1. Lets say in an (optimistic?!) assumption the kill ratio is 3:2. Then the Cav-stack has to suffer 3k losses to get the stackwipe. 14k - 3k = 11k, while 10k - 4.5k = 5.5k.
Now if I go with 20 infantry into the battle, I have the 2:1 superiorty right from the start. It might take a bit longer to get the hostile morale to 0 than with Cav, but in my experience battles are shorter and less lossy with pure infantry.

There are more to consider. Your force limit might be lower than combat width early in the game. In that case, you might want to prepare cavalry if you're planning to fight someone also with a small force limit so that you maximize your chances of stack-wiping with tech 4 advantage. And while 20k infantry is easier to satisfy the second condition, 12 vs 10 might not be enough to deplete enemy morale within 12 days. By including 4 cavalries and doing 14 + 6 vs 10, you get much better chances of stackwiping the enemy in your scenario.

The non-outflanking scenarios are even worse for Cav.
Wars are decided by the speed of sieges, not by mass-battles. Unfortified provinces - Inf. Forts - Cannons, and before Mil Tech 7, Inf again. Cav useless.
In SP the player should avoid battles, unless a stackwipe is highly likely. In (the rare) case of a mass-battle a player should use CW to his advantage for optimization of morale, whereas the AI just blindly throws the stacks in.

It really depends on the situation. Sometimes you can base race the AI, sometimes you have to defeat their army before you can safely siege forts. You can use CW to you advantage while using cavalry, they're not mutually exclusive.

Battles with CW:
For fans of Cav, I suggest this tests on Mil Tech 3 in an non-Iroman game. Western units, with balanced modifiers (terrain, generals, morale, etc) and fixed dice:
a) 20/0 vs 16/4 (Chevauchée) (spoiler: Inf wins)
b) 20/0 vs 16/4 (Western Medieval) (spoiler: Cav wins)
c) 20/0 vs 16/4 (Western Medieval), but give the Inf a bonus of x% morale, so Inf wins again. (spoiler: x is very low)

I'm not arguing that cavalry is always useful. There are certain tech levels that favor cavalry more than others and if you happen to be in a tight war with enough money to spare for extra military advantage during those time periods, you might want to consider using cavalry as your main fighting force. Try western tech 11 or 18, cavalry is notably stronger. Yes, it's a small window of opportunity but it's there, it's certainly not never worth it.

 

[BlazeKnight_]

Western Cavs are actually awful early game, although yes, Cavalry are good before cannons start being the main source of damage.

 

[iClipse]

I think you are presenting the best case scenario for Cav and I still disagree about its usefulness.

In the 14 vs 10 + 10 situation it is sufficent to get one of the stacks stackwiped. Then the other stack will go to Siberia or will sit somewhere in the corner.
The first battle 14 vs 10 should be in the first month of the war to catch them with reduced, if not min morale.
For a stackwipe it is necessary in the first 12 days of battle, to get the enemies morale to 0 and a 2:1 numerical superiorty.

The second condition is important, as the morale is no problem with 10/4 vs 10. But it needs some casualites on both sides to get the 2:1. Lets say in an (optimistic?!) assumption the kill ratio is 3:2. Then the Cav-stack has to suffer 3k losses to get the stackwipe. 14k - 3k = 11k, while 10k - 4.5k = 5.5k.
Now if I go with 20 infantry into the battle, I have the 2:1 superiorty right from the start. It might take a bit longer to get the hostile morale to 0 than with Cav, but in my experience battles are shorter and less lossy with pure infantry.

The non-outflanking scenarios are even worse for Cav.
Wars are decided by the speed of sieges, not by mass-battles. Unfortified provinces - Inf. Forts - Cannons, and before Mil Tech 7, Inf again. Cav useless.
In SP the player should avoid battles, unless a stackwipe is highly likely. In (the rare) case of a mass-battle a player should use CW to his advantage for optimization of morale, whereas the AI just blindly throws the stacks in.

Battles with CW:
For fans of Cav, I suggest this tests on Mil Tech 3 in an non-Iroman game. Western units, with balanced modifiers (terrain, generals, morale, etc) and fixed dice:
a) 20/0 vs 16/4 (Chevauchée) (spoiler: Inf wins)
b) 20/0 vs 16/4 (Western Medieval) (spoiler: Cav wins)
c) 20/0 vs 16/4 (Western Medieval), but give the Inf a bonus of x% morale, so Inf wins again. (spoiler: x is very low)

My conclusion is: In SP Cav is not needed. That is coming from 1.29 and earlier on VH, not even 1.30 on normal.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not the biggest fan of cavalry. Late game compositions don't have cavalry at all, or at most 2 stacks (but usually I'm using 20/0/20 stacks). I was just saying that early game they have some use. And considering we're all playing the early game again and again, and quitting at the mid to endgame, it's quite important.

Also, cavalry is specifically useful when fighting with MORE troops than your opponent. So comparing 20/0 vs 16/4 is missing my point. See the post of @Miganto who made the same argument as I did, only better. Compare a 10/0/0 stack vs a 10/2/0 stack and you can easily see a big difference. I'm not planning on battling even sized armies at the early game anyway, unless with a tech advantage.

You can say this is a niche situation, but in my experience it's something that happens quite often. Starting as Najd? Cav are quite good. Your neighbours are small and by adding cav you can stackwipe more easily. Starting as a OPM like Mulhouse? Again, cavalry is quite good if your stack is bigger than your opponent's. And you generally want to declare when your stacks are bigger than your opponent's individual stacks. My 10/2/0 stack might not win versus 20/0/0, but it might versus 2 x 10/0/0 if I can engage when they can't reinforce.

Of course I know that sieges win wars, not battles. But it's not like you can always avoid battles, especially if the opponent has more troops combined than you or double as many forts to siege. Specifically fighting as an OPM versus 2 OPMs for example it's wishful thinking you can outsiege your opponent in speed.

 

[Cancerofthehead]

Cavalry is situational. Early game when you are more force limit and manpower limited and don’t have artillery doing a ton of damage it is very useful especially if you are dealing with battles like 7 v 5.

It’s value tails off as you have larger battles (because they stop fighting once the outer enemies die), more damage dealt by artillery making the cavalry contribution less significant, and because you are far more likely to have infantry bonuses accumulating than cavalry (and outside a few tags most of your front line will be infantry so you will usually want infantry bonuses). You also get bigger manpower pool and force limit reducing the benefit of cavalry there. Plus infantry and artillery do flanking damage.

In the late game without large bonuses cavalry they tend to be not very useful (without significant bonuses). In full stack vs full stack with reinforcements more infantry to absorb casualties tends to be better at keeping your cannons safe and you can’t utilize the flanking advantage anyway, in battles where you outflank your enemy (or vice versa) you are probably looking at a quick retreat or a stomping regardless of cavalry. It can still be used and beneficial, but it’s value is much smaller and generally just not worth the effort.

This trend actually makes a lot of sense historicallly in Europe. By 1444, cavalry were well in the decline from the knights of the crusader era, but still a core of armies. But they generally reduce in importance to the infantry line with the rise of the pike and shot formations and then socket bayonets and by the Napoleonic era were clearly a support arm to the infantry.

I still say the obvious way to change cavalry is to create some flank slots for cavalry (say start with one and rise up to three or four per side) which function like the front row but once their opposing number are dead they can attack the outermost enemy units. The other option I like but is probably much more complicated is adding a “pursuit phase” where you get to do extra damage to a retreating enemy based on relative cavalry strength.

the fundamental idea behind both of those is it gives cavalry a truly unique feature (like artillery has).

 

[iClipse]

I still say the obvious way to change cavalry is to create some flank slots for cavalry (say start with one and rise up to three or four per side) which function like the front row but once their opposing number are dead they can attack the outermost enemy units. The other option I like but is probably much more complicated is adding a “pursuit phase” where you get to do extra damage to a retreating enemy based on relative cavalry strength.

the fundamental idea behind both of those is it gives cavalry a truly unique feature (like artillery has).

I like your ideas, or in general, just change it so Cavalry moves positions inwards during battles.

 

[Reman]

Cav is still generally not worth the investment.

I agree that cav can do more damage than infantry, and even that the difference can be significant on some techs (e.g. 18). However, when is sheer damage dealt going to be the primary concern? The point of player armies isn't to grind enemies into dust, it's to scare the AI away from sieges. Combat gives very little warscore and is often mostly unnecessary with how the AI uses its troops. Why bother optimizing for straight combat when a correctly managed war will end with sieging 90% of the time? Adding another artillery will save you more manpower through reduced siege time --> reduced attrition than a cavalry would with better frontline efficiency.

Prior to patch 1.29, cav was really easy to ignore considering its cost meant it competed with either artillery or merc infantry, and a little extra damage paled in comparison to better sieges or frontline regiments that never use manpower. Cav might have gotten a little better in 1.30 with how unwieldy mercs have become, so cav might have a niche as a more granular way to preserve manpower in combat-heavy wars. However, patch 1.30 also introduced the governing capacity mechanic, which requires expensive courthouses to counteract. It's no longer possible to hide from Paradox's anti-expansion mechanic by beelining trade companies for the first half of the game. If anything, I've consistently found that money is a much bigger bottleneck in my games than manpower is these days.

As a meta point, discussions of the relative worth of different strategies in PDS games can drag out for a long time simply due to the sheer number of mechanics that exist. People naturally see an attack on their ideas as an attack on themselves, so conversations can drill down into crazy rabbit holes with increasingly convoluted scenarios and edge cases. For what it's worth, this conversation on cavalry is less disconnected from reality compared to some of the people seriously defending innovativeness as a competitive mechanic in that thread we had the other day. It might indeed be worthwhile to mix in some cav into battle-oriented stacks at tech 18, then delete them at tech 20. That said, good players will ALWAYS find little parts of their playstyles that could use improving, and cav is so niche that minmaxing it isn't a very high priority.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Broadly speaking, for armies with all neutral modifiers/NIs cavalry is junk. Costs more, can't do siege assaults, is sometimes marginally better than infantry in 1:1 combat and sometimes worse, and since flanking in EU 4 is busted it can't do its best role effectively.

It starts to look better in situations where modifiers impact it, and those modifiers tend to be more lopsided than alternative military modifiers (for example horde shock or Poland's combat ability modifier). This thread is interesting to me because I have recently been trying out the Anbennar fantasy mod and some of the racial militaries get big shock damage given/taken modifiers (+33% to both shock damage given and -33% taken). In this type of environment cavalry starts to look justifiable, since its shock multipliers are more than double infantry's and you're putting a large bonus on that phase. Said nations also tend to have a superiority CB from game start, further making this relevant rather than the comparative meme it is in vanilla EU 4.

In base game for most nations you can straight up ignore cavalry and lose little if any practical utility. If you're winning wars with sieges (often better than spending manpower in combat + money reinforcing and a lot less hassle chasing crap around), even more so. It's mildly nice for fights < combat width where you have numerical advantage (flanking contributes until you route the units on edge), but I'm not sure that justifies added maintenance cost.

 

[EarlKonrad]

Could you put other tech groups in your calculator if you haven't done so already? It would be interesting to see how Western tech compares to the other techs, mostly in the early and late game, where the pips difference is the most pronounced.

 

[Kryndude]

Cav is still generally not worth the investment.

I agree that cav can do more damage than infantry, and even that the difference can be significant on some techs (e.g. 18). However, when is sheer damage dealt going to be the primary concern? The point of player armies isn't to grind enemies into dust, it's to scare the AI away from sieges. Combat gives very little warscore and is often mostly unnecessary with how the AI uses its troops. Why bother optimizing for straight combat when a correctly managed war will end with sieging 90% of the time? Adding another artillery will save you more manpower through reduced siege time --> reduced attrition than a cavalry would with better frontline efficiency.

Prior to patch 1.29, cav was really easy to ignore considering its cost meant it competed with either artillery or merc infantry, and a little extra damage paled in comparison to better sieges or frontline regiments that never use manpower. Cav might have gotten a little better in 1.30 with how unwieldy mercs have become, so cav might have a niche as a more granular way to preserve manpower in combat-heavy wars. However, patch 1.30 also introduced the governing capacity mechanic, which requires expensive courthouses to counteract. It's no longer possible to hide from Paradox's anti-expansion mechanic by beelining trade companies for the first half of the game. If anything, I've consistently found that money is a much bigger bottleneck in my games than manpower is these days.

As a meta point, discussions of the relative worth of different strategies in PDS games can drag out for a long time simply due to the sheer number of mechanics that exist. People naturally see an attack on their ideas as an attack on themselves, so conversations can drill down into crazy rabbit holes with increasingly convoluted scenarios and edge cases. For what it's worth, this conversation on cavalry is less disconnected from reality compared to some of the people seriously defending innovativeness as a competitive mechanic in that thread we had the other day. It might indeed be worthwhile to mix in some cav into battle-oriented stacks at tech 18, then delete them at tech 20. That said, good players will ALWAYS find little parts of their playstyles that could use improving, and cav is so niche that minmaxing it isn't a very high priority.

Very well said. Can't really argue with that. New buildings and governing capacity mechanic really consume a lot of gold. I was originally going against the assessment that cavalry is almost never worth it, but the more I look into this the less feasible it seems.

Could you put other tech groups in your calculator if you haven't done so already? It would be interesting to see how Western tech compares to the other techs, mostly in the early and late game, where the pips difference is the most pronounced.

You can check all test results in the attached files of the analysis thread. I'll also share it here because why not, I just have to click a few buttons. See 'EU4 Combat Test Results 1.xlsx'.

 

[BadOrc]

The cav is needed to pull the Cannons. This is common sense, southern europens are very small so they need the horses to help them out. This is why Sweden and Prussia have 20% ICA, we dont need no animal muscle power.

 

[EarlKonrad]

Very well said. Can't really argue with that. New buildings and governing capacity mechanic really consume a lot of gold. I was originally going against the assessment that cavalry is almost never worth it, but the more I look into this the less feasible it seems.

You can check all test results in the attached files of the analysis thread. I'll also share it here because why not, I just have to click a few buttons. See 'EU4 Combat Test Results 1.xlsx'.

Thank you

 

[Jarvin]

oh my that scuffed combat simulator actually for the first time ever doesn't seem to be as scuffed anymore

not that it actually helps much because coming up with a test case to properly evaluate cavalry's usefulness is borderline impossible. There are way, way too many in-game combat modifiers that affect different units in different ways.


So as unsatisfying as it is, the answer to the question posed is really just: depends

worth noting though that in MP cav is extremely viable and very much underrated. There are techs in the game(18 ish 22 ish) where cav is borderline broken as long as you play it smart.

can't really say much about SP but what I heard from some decent-ish players from the community is that in SP in general you want to avoid fighting battles and just focus on sieging, which would make cav obviously not too good because it's value in scaring AI away is the same as infantry's.

 

[Kryndude]

An example using my current game's numbers.

Muslim, tech 18, discipline 115%, morale 65%, CCA 10%, die roll 9 to favor fire phase

32 infantry, 32 artillery VS 16 infantry, 16 cavalry, 32 artillery


Surprisingly lopsided result if you consider my 1v1 calculation, which is not too impressive compared to other tech levels.

I'll have to test a different setup to see if things are proportional.


edit: Wow, it is proportional. Slightly less winrate but better k/d ratio, as it should be according to the charts. This might indicate that cavalry is viable in many occasions. It's also worth noting that the cost difference is only 15~20% due to how expensive cannons are.

 

[WolframS67]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not the biggest fan of cavalry. Late game compositions don't have cavalry at all, or at most 2 stacks (but usually I'm using 20/0/20 stacks). I was just saying that early game they have some use. And considering we're all playing the early game again and again, and quitting at the mid to endgame, it's quite important.

Also, cavalry is specifically useful when fighting with MORE troops than your opponent. So comparing 20/0 vs 16/4 is missing my point. See the post of @Miganto who made the same argument as I did, only better. Compare a 10/0/0 stack vs a 10/2/0 stack and you can easily see a big difference. I'm not planning on battling even sized armies at the early game anyway, unless with a tech advantage.

You can say this is a niche situation, but in my experience it's something that happens quite often. Starting as Najd? Cav are quite good. Your neighbours are small and by adding cav you can stackwipe more easily. Starting as a OPM like Mulhouse? Again, cavalry is quite good if your stack is bigger than your opponent's. And you generally want to declare when your stacks are bigger than your opponent's individual stacks. My 10/2/0 stack might not win versus 20/0/0, but it might versus 2 x 10/0/0 if I can engage when they can't reinforce.

Of course I know that sieges win wars, not battles. But it's not like you can always avoid battles, especially if the opponent has more troops combined than you or double as many forts to siege. Specifically fighting as an OPM versus 2 OPMs for example it's wishful thinking you can outsiege your opponent in speed.

My answer to your former post has two parts. The first part is discussing your scenario of 14 vs 10+10.
While the second part starting with "The non-outflanking scenarios are even worse for Cav" are general comments about Cav, not directly connected with that scenario. Sorry, if I have been unclear about that. I might state obvious knowledge, but I am not indicating that you, other posters or any other reader aren't aware of this.
My apologies in advance, if this will happen by my following comments again.

In a OPM vs 2OPM situation it is not good to go for a pure siege race. Agreed. I go for the kill of one army in the first month of the war, as I said before. Then I siege this OPM down. After that I have 2 vs 1 forts and I can go for the siege of the second OPM. If he sits with his 10-stack on his province, I can e.g. ask one of his neighbors for mil access. If I come with my entire army, he will go away and I can siege his fort. If the enemy goes to one of my forts (1 owned, 1 occupied), I can leave a 4-stack behind for the continuation of my siege. With the rest (say a 10-stack) I simply disturb the AI from sieging my forts. So I can avoid a 2nd battle and still win the war by sieges.

For the 20/0 vs 16/4 tests: If I want to test the strength of Cav, I have to negate Cav the advantage of out-flanking. So I have to go to CW, if I do the testing in a non-ironman game and not on paper or in a simulator.
The tests show me that Chevauchée is weaker than Inf and that Western Medi Knights is just a touch stronger than Inf. Sure, a 10/2 stack is stronger than a 10/0 stack. But a 12/0 stack is also stronger than a 10/0 stack. So if it is possible to win a war with a 10/2 army vs two 10/0 armies, it is posssible with a 12/0 as well.

There are more to consider. Your force limit might be lower than combat width early in the game. In that case, you might want to prepare cavalry if you're planning to fight someone also with a small force limit so that you maximize your chances of stack-wiping with tech 4 advantage. And while 20k infantry is easier to satisfy the second condition, 12 vs 10 might not be enough to deplete enemy morale within 12 days. By including 4 cavalries and doing 14 + 6 vs 10, you get much better chances of stackwiping the enemy in your scenario.

It really depends on the situation. Sometimes you can base race the AI, sometimes you have to defeat their army before you can safely siege forts. You can use CW to you advantage while using cavalry, they're not mutually exclusive.

I'm not arguing that cavalry is always useful. There are certain tech levels that favor cavalry more than others and if you happen to be in a tight war with enough money to spare for extra military advantage during those time periods, you might want to consider using cavalry as your main fighting force. Try western tech 11 or 18, cavalry is notably stronger. Yes, it's a small window of opportunity but it's there, it's certainly not never worth it.

In addtion of some of my points above:

FL is a soft cap. In my experience going above FL with pure Inf for a short time and then consolidating down after battles is cheaper than recruiting, maintaining and reinforcing Cav. For the manpower problem early game, that's what Mercs (pure infantry) are for.
In the 20 Inf vs 10 scenario, it is effectively just 12 vs 10. The remaining 8 regiments are just watching, taking morale damage, but ensure the 2:1 superiority. So this (effective) 12 Inf are responsible for taking the enemies morale down. And so they do. Thus if I get the stackwipes with pure Inf, why should I consider hiring Cav to increase chances? More than 100% chance is not possible.

Again it is important to note, I am talking about SP against weak AI. Even at the start of the game I get advantages, like morale from the mission tree, advisor etc. The more the game progresses, the gap gets bigger. Because of growing prestige, AT and PP. After that by better generals etc.
Post Mil Tech 7, I usually get 8 bonus for my sieges. 5 from cannons, 3 from my general. While the AI just manages a bonus of a about 2-4. And leaves sieges completely for no reason, occasionally. So the significance of battles goes down even more at that time and it is way more effective to invest in sieges (= cannons) than in Cav.

 

[Kryndude]

In the 20 Inf vs 10 scenario, it is effectively just 12 vs 10. The remaining 8 regiments are just watching, taking morale damage, but ensure the 2:1 superiority. So this (effective) 12 Inf are responsible for taking the enemies morale down. And so they do. Thus if I get the stackwipes with pure Inf, why should I consider hiring Cav to increase chances? More than 100% chance is not possible.

Because you can stackwipe much more reliably with 14 vs 10 than with 12 vs 10. You don't always get stackwipe with 12 vs 10. That said, I'm also leaning towards SP cavalry not being that useful. MP is a different story tho.

worth noting though that in MP cav is extremely viable and very much underrated. There are techs in the game(18 ish 22 ish) where cav is borderline broken as long as you play it smart.

Not just tech 18 and 23. According to my charts there are many other tech levels that should heavily favor the cav heavy army. And if you're using artillery already it's not that big of an increase in maintenance. I think cavalry could be the meta.

 

[lambda x.x]

One extremely crucial thing that people don't stress enough with the whole infantry vs cav debate is that in SP, wars are primarily won by sieging. If you accept this doctrine, then it's clear infantry is the better of the two given its cheaper cost. There's also a minor detail that you can only assault with infantry, which comes into play in horde speedruns.
If you have to fight multiple decisive battles past early game (when you're smaller than the nations you have to fight), then you're not microing as well as you can. Reman at one point suggested Kazan vs Muscovy as a great way to train army micro, which I agree with, but the "next level" to that which I like to suggest is Oirat vs Uzbek + Nogai + Great Horde (all at once); mastering those sorts of war scenarios really train you to win wars by sieging while avoiding costly battles, not by bashing CW vs CW stacks and bleeding manpower. For reference, a well executed Oirat vs Uzbek + co lets you get close to 100% peace deals with every belligerant in two years with almost no manpower loss and no loans. Kazan vs Muscovy sadly takes longer mainly because of all the cancer forts you have to siege down.

Next, there's also the issue of how you fight battles in SP; typically, you want to look for straggling below CW stacks and look for stackwipes -- there aren't too many situations where you have to fight CW stacks. Now the issue with below CW stacks is that you can consistently stackwipe them with just 2 infantry flanks! If there's a random 6k stack, you can stackwipe with 8k infantry -- you do not need to invest in 6k infantry and 4k cav. Players who don't go mil ideas have much stronger armies than AIs through army tradition, prestige, power projection, and better generals, and that's enough.

As for MP? Idk, I let them do their own thing since competitive players presumably will have good fort lines and will not let you carpet siege them for free, so I have no idea.

tl;dr:
1) sieges are way more important in wars, therefore cheaper units are more effective, and besides inf vs cav are fairly competitive even in a 1v1 scenario for most tech groups anyway while easily outperforming cav in a 2.5 v 1
2) cav doesn't really "enable stackwipes" -- 2 flanking inf is more than enough to do so. It may lead to fewer casualties or a more consistent stack wipe, but from experience, I found that those benefits are not as impactful as many people who theorize the effectiveness of cav claim.

e: guess I'm reiterating points that other brilliant people have stated oops. Just count my points as a +1 for the other similar points that have been stated.

 

[Ruian]

Worth noting that most of the observations are for playing on normal. You can't scare the AI with your 20 stack of infantry outnumbered 5 to 1 on VH. When every point of manpower and force limit is absolutely needed to be maximized building cav is often a good play.

The Ottomans will hunt you down like a dog and you better have your 20 best men show up for the fight if you want to beat 100.

 

[Cavalry]

Wars are decided by the speed of sieges, not by mass-battles. Unfortified provinces - Inf. Forts - Cannons, and before Mil Tech 7, Inf again. Cav useless.
In SP the player should avoid battles, unless a stackwipe is highly likely. In (the rare) case of a mass-battle a player should use CW to his advantage for optimization of morale, whereas the AI just blindly throws the stacks in.

It is dangerous to go to war like that. If you have advantage you should try to annihilate enemy troop. I lost a close war trying to siege a hill city with enemy army intact!

At the game start, cavalry has many advantage that some may not recognize in full:
- the shock damage (modifier) double that of infantry
- much more pip. Even at mil tech 10, it is 8 pip vs 5 pip of Western infantry. Or 9 vs 6 Chinese group.
- These above advantage get multipled by shock generals.
- Save manpower on attrition and combat
- Concentrate attack on the point of contact: the cavalry can defeat an facing infantry quick, then turn to other units.


If one is poor and weak in a dangerous war, one can use the all infantry strategy by mobilize the whole manpower before go to battle. But if one has enough gold, short in manpower or lower in tech or morale, or facing a shock 5 enemy general with a lot of cavalry, then it is fine to get some cavalry

 

[k4sp3r00]

Cav is treated so unfairly in eu4...

Personally I'd go as far as to say it's the same as with light ships, they aren't always worth it and noticing those cases where they're doing badly(notably tech 14 for any cav and tech 3 for western cav) births a strong sentiment against them since people (incorrectly) assume they always perform the same no matter what.

As per that one analysis on direct combat impact of cav flanking notwithstanding, yes 5% discipline is unconditionally better than having real amounts of cav if we ignore flanking and sure I'd rather have 5% discipline but you can't buy 5% discipline with money so instead you buy cavalry.

Very often in eu4 ducats are just a number and in those cases you get cav no questions asked since it's a boost you can't get anywhere else. Sure if you're Russia or smth then maybe you actually don't want cavalry but usually you aren't. Also courthouses be damned, they're worthless if you aren't going over your governing cap yet and popping them on every 1 1 1 province is always wasteful.

If you play well the cav partially pays for itself anyways since it has a faster looting speed so the 1 cav vs 2.5 inf argument is unfair towards cav. Either way the fairer comparison is cannons since they're the actual option to getting more cav and not only is cav cheaper and outright stronger than cannons for the longest time, you can have both.

Also I'll be fair the fact the power of cav waxes and wanes with tech absolutely is bad but you CAN play around it by taking the wars where you really need cav when cav is at it's strongest and taking wars where you don't care when cav is weak. Either way in the parts of the game where cav is worthless without heavy combat ability bonuses you can simply shift what cav you've gotten before that into carpet sieging duty which cav excels at anyways due to the improved looting speed.

Stackwipes are also being underestimated by anti-cav peeps. Sure stackwiping 6k will work out even without cav but when you're facing 10k or 15k or heck even 20k(and the ai does throw around stacks those sizes quite often) then that isn't getting stackwiped without cav for flanking in your army and in case of the 20k probably a tech where cav isn't bad.

Yes it's difficult to micro and macro all that but either you do it or you do worse. Saying cav isn't worth it is plain wrong, it might not be worth the effort and it might not be worth it in your current run but it is usually worth it if you do put in the effort and knowing whether or not it's worth it is important in itself.