Is going wide and utilizing retinue still a valid strategy?

[Kryndude]

So back when I played CK2 heavily I enjoyed keeping all the 5,6 holding coastal counties as my demense and filling them with cities to maximize tax income. Then I would use that money to raise massive LI retinue army and just stomp all over the place with it.
Now that I'm playing CK2 again in about 6 months I'm not quite sure if the strategy would be valid, since I heard that retinue cost have been severely nerfed.
Is it better now to just go tall and maximize my levy? Or is going wide still okay?
Thanks for the reply.

 

[DukeDayve]

I think you have wide and tall mixed up. Wide is when you have a huge empire. Tall is when you have a small but efficient and rich one.

I don't see why playing tall wouldn't be possible still. You won't be able to rely on retinues as much anymore though because they suck now and are too expensive (unless you play as nomads, whose armies are like retinues).

Though obviously some areas will be better for playing tall. Some duchies suck.

 

[Kryndude]

I think you have wide and tall mixed up. Wide is when you have a huge empire. Tall is when you have a small but efficient and rich one.

I don't see why playing tall wouldn't be possible still. You won't be able to rely on retinues as much anymore though because they suck now and are too expensive (unless you play as nomads, whose armies are like retinues).

Though obviously some areas will be better for playing tall. Some duchies suck.

Do you know exactly how much the retinues have been nerfed? I can't decide whether it's still worth the cost cuz I don't have the numbers.

 

[Iron Chariots]

Retinues are absolutely still worth it. Pure LI might not be your best bet anymore, though, unless you're just trying to pad out your numbers to prevent factions from firing in the first place. Pikes are quite nice to have when it comes to actual fighting, so defense retinues with a Scottish or Italian commander will do great.

 

[Dragatus]

To give you a feeling for how retinues are these days, IIRC in my Carphatia game I was able to have some 10K Heavy Infantry as retinue with a realm that was the entire empire of Carpathia and half of the kingdom of Ruthenia and in which I personally held 12 holdings. And in the same game my personal levy was about 40K troops.

 

[Kryndude]

To give you a feeling for how retinues are these days, IIRC in my Carphatia game I was able to have some 10K Heavy Infantry as retinue with a realm that was the entire empire of Carpathia and half of the kingdom of Ruthenia and in which I personally held 12 holdings. And in the same game my personal levy was about 40K troops.

Thank you very very much! Now I can dive into the game without having to experiment first.

 

[Dragatus]

Mind you those number are from the late game, around the year 1400, and with all holdings as fully upgraded as technology allowed.

If you are going to use retinues I'd generally suggest the standard Defence unless you have a cultural Pikeman or Heavy Infantry retinue in which case you'll want to use that instead (unless you are Norse or other north germanic culture in which case stick with Defence). And mix in a few archers, you need 1% Archers in order to use Shieldwall tactic during skirmish phase.

 

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

I hope to get more Information out of this thread:

What is everyones favourite Retinue mix?
I am lacking at forming good warrior bands and go for 2x LightInfantry&Archers for 1x Pikemen&Archers.
But I dont know if that is actually a good idea.

 

[Kryndude]

Mind you those number are from the late game, around the year 1400, and with all holdings as fully upgraded as technology allowed.

If you are going to use retinues I'd generally suggest the standard Defence unless you have a cultural Pikeman or Heavy Infantry retinue in which case you'll want to use that instead (unless you are Norse or other north germanic culture in which case stick with Defence). And mix in a few archers, you need 1% Archers in order to use Shieldwall tactic during skirmish phase.

Why not Norse retinues? I saw someone say in reddit that berserkers are one of the best cultural retinues right now. Especially with berserker charge tactic and massive offensive bonus from cultural building.

 

[Dragatus]

Berserker Charge tactic is actually bad for you. It does give a bigger offensive bonus than Advance (an extra +60%), but that doesn't compensate for the large defense penalty (-50%).

Another thing is that offensive bonuses from cultural building are less valuable than defensive ones, especially for melee units. This is partially because combat tactics already give large offensive bonuses (Advance for example grants Heavy Infantry +300% offensive bonus) so you get the diminishing returns effect. The other reason for it is that melee units only deal significant damage in the melee phase, but take damage in both skirmish and melee phase. So a defense bonus not only helps them to win melee phase, it also helps them to survive skirmish phase and actually get to the melee phase in which they excel.

To translate all that into numbers let's assume tech level is 4 in everything and we have a level 4 cultural building as well. A Norse Housecarl that triggers Advance will be fighting with 530% base attack and 130% base defense while one that triggered Berserker Charge would be fighting with 590% base attack and 80% base defense. If we multiply attack and defense together to get overall performance in melee phase we get the one with Advance fighting at 689% of base combat power and the one with Berserker Charge fighting at 472% of base combat power. So regular Advance is better than Berserker Charge by half.

And if you want to see the benefit of a defensive bonus compared to an offensive one, imagine we have an Irish Gallowglass, which is essentially like a Housecarl except with a defensive bonus instead of an offensive one. That one will fight at 430% of base attack and 230% of base defense, giving him 989% of base combat power. That's more than twice as good as the Norse Housecarl that got Berserker charge and still more than 40% better than the Norse Housecarl that got Advance. And that's without taking into account the reduced loses in skirmish phase (19% lower if using Shieldwall, 43% lower with other tactics).

Now, you may be thinking that just means that defensive HI is better than offensive HI, but surely a cultural retinue is going to be better than a standard one that doesn't even benefit from a cultural building. But the thing is, while 1 Pikeman may be roughly as strong as 1 Heavy Infantryman, HI retinues cost 50% more per soldier. Which actually makes them only half as cost effective. I ran some tests just yesterday where the standard Defense retinue without any cultural building bonus and Russian Druzhina (best defensive HI retinue in the game) benefiting from a level 3 cultural building had the same survival rate. To quote what I wrote in the other thread:

As far as yesterdays' testing is concerned, the main thing for me was that we found several areas in which I can improve the test mod. But in addition to that we did get to test out 4 retinue compositions, each amounting to 36K retinue cap worth of troops (or as close as we could get): 60x Defence, 30x Knight, 45x Druzhina + 3x Shock (to trigger Shieldwall), and 40x Schiltron + 6x Defence (again so that we can trigger Shieldwall). They fought against 36K retinue cap worth of standard levy mix and everyone was supposed to have martial 13 commanders, but they kept picking up traits in battle so I can't guarantee they were martial 13 for every battle. I also forgot to swap in French commanders for the Knights, but I did remember to give Scottish commanders to the Schiltrons. All cultural retinues benefited from their respective level 3 cultural building. We recorded results for 5 battles with each retinue compositions and this are the results:

Defence composition: 91% survival rate and 29% kill rate
Knight composition: 75% survival rate and 30% kill rate
Druzhina composition: 92% survival rate 34% kill rate
Schiltron composition: 94% survival rate and 45% kill rate

Survival rate is the average percentage of troops that survived the battle. Kill rate is the average percentage of enemy troops killed in battle. Do note that with only 5 battles fought per composition the results are far from definitive. And the knights had Irish commanders instead of French ones which did reduce their performance.

While I did point out that with 5 battles fought the results aren't entirely reliable and that is true, the standard Defence retinue still proved that it can compete with the best HI retinue in the game and as we've seen above there, Norse Housecarls are significantly worse.

 

[Kryndude]

Berserker Charge tactic is actually bad for you. It does give a bigger offensive bonus than Advance (an extra +60%), but that doesn't compensate for the large defense penalty (-50%).

Another thing is that offensive bonuses from cultural building are less valuable than defensive ones, especially for melee units. This is partially because combat tactics already give large offensive bonuses (Advance for example grants Heavy Infantry +300% offensive bonus) so you get the diminishing returns effect. The other reason for it is that melee units only deal significant damage in the melee phase, but take damage in both skirmish and melee phase. So a defense bonus not only helps them to win melee phase, it also helps them to survive skirmish phase and actually get to the melee phase in which they excel.

To translate all that into numbers let's assume tech level is 4 in everything and we have a level 4 cultural building as well. A Norse Housecarl that triggers Advance will be fighting with 530% base attack and 130% base defense while one that triggered Berserker Charge would be fighting with 590% base attack and 80% base defense. If we multiply attack and defense together to get overall performance in melee phase we get the one with Advance fighting at 689% of base combat power and the one with Berserker Charge fighting at 472% of base combat power. So regular Advance is better than Berserker Charge by half.

And if you want to see the benefit of a defensive bonus compared to an offensive one, imagine we have an Irish Gallowglass, which is essentially like a Housecarl except with a defensive bonus instead of an offensive one. That one will fight at 430% of base attack and 230% of base defense, giving him 989% of base combat power. That's more than twice as good as the Norse Housecarl that got Berserker charge and still more than 40% better than the Norse Housecarl that got Advance. And that's without taking into account the reduced loses in skirmish phase (19% lower if using Shieldwall, 43% lower with other tactics).

Now, you may be thinking that just means that defensive HI is better than offensive HI, but surely a cultural retinue is going to be better than a standard one that doesn't even benefit from a cultural building. But the thing is, while 1 Pikeman may be roughly as strong as 1 Heavy Infantryman, HI retinues cost 50% more per soldier. Which actually makes them only half as cost effective. I ran some tests just yesterday where the standard Defense retinue without any cultural building bonus and Russian Druzhina (best defensive HI retinue in the game) benefiting from a level 3 cultural building had the same survival rate. To quote what I wrote in the other thread:



While I did point out that with 5 battles fought the results aren't entirely reliable and that is true, the standard Defence retinue still proved that it can compete with the best HI retinue in the game and as we've seen above there, Norse Housecarls are significantly worse.

How about if you think of it this way?

1. One more valid tactic (berserker charge) = more stability in performance

2. Huge offensive bonus = less enemy remaining on day 2, 3, 4... so on = less need for defense

3. Offense and defense are two seperate stats, don't you have to add them instead of multiplying them? In which case advance vs berserker charge becomes 5.3o + 1.3d vs 5.9o + 0.8d, and since o (offense) value of HI is 6 (during melee) and d (defense) stat is 4, overall it'd be a bigger bonus than Druzhinas.

It would've been great if you included housecarls in your experiment.

Anyways I think I might alter my game plan and convert to scottish maybe. I was expecting housecarl to be one of the best.

 

[Arsonik]

I hope to get more Information out of this thread:

What is everyones favourite Retinue mix?
I am lacking at forming good warrior bands and go for 2x LightInfantry&Archers for 1x Pikemen&Archers.
But I dont know if that is actually a good idea.

I've been using mixed retinues exclusively since Conclave and they seem to work just fine. I came up with 1 Goedendag Militia, 1 French Knight(s), 1 Skirmish, and 1 Light Skirmish as a nice French/Dutch retinue mix I made as a brainchild awhile back. The ideal plan was to raise the whole retinue minus the french knights slowly over time and then later culture convert to French to fill up on Knights when I had a huge retinue cap available. I didn't finish this game but the plan worked more or less. This retinue works out to 700 (48%) Light Infantry, 350 (24%) Archers, 50 (3%) Heavy Infantry, 100 (7%) Pikemen, 100 (7%) Light Cavalry, and 150 (10%) Heavy Cavalry. 1450 Troops / 2470 Retinue Cap. I decided on this retinue composition early on after the Conclave patch when I was struggling a lot with faction revolts. I wanted to come up with something utilizing light infantry to inflate my manpower and discourage factions. This is what I came up with. I didn't take any notes on the tactics but I made sure the composition had decent tactic(s) outcomes.

In my current game I am a custom Empire of Valois which is essentially the HRE + Spain without all of the pope-y nonsense. I'm using a mixed retinue of French Knights, Shock, and Light Skirmish. I didn't plan this one out as extensively as the previous retinue so I don't have a structured organization to offer you. I can say that currently with 40k (40200 used exactly) retinue cap I have 2k (16%) Light Infantry, 1.5k (12%) Archers, 3.2k (26%) Heavy Infantry, 2.3k (19%) Light Cavalry, and 3.2k (26%) Heavy Cavalry. My rule of thumb since I had around 20k retinue cap has been to try and keep cavalry to about 40-55% of the total retinue.

My advice to you is to experiment around and do what works best for you. I find the best use and value I get from my retinues is very early on in my campaigns when my retinue cap only allows me to raise 2-3 retinues. At this stage of the game it may seem like the potential 600-1200 or so men isn't enough to spend the money on, but I disagree there. That little bit of extra manpower usually is something like a 10% or so boost to my total manpower which is a big help every succession when you have 2 years of discontented councilmen all trying to mess your shit up and factioning against you.

And bookmark these three pages if you have any serious interest in retinues.
http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Combat
http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Combat_tactics
http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Retinues

Retinue test mod made by pDox user Dragatus: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tajtcbywoej8hz8/retinue_test_mod.zip?dl=0

 

[Thorkel the Tall]

I feel (i havent done eact calculations like Dragatus above), that the Huscarls are really nice early in the game., but less so later on.

If you are tribal or early feudal, you tend to lack something that can secure your damage during the close combat phase. As even a large retinue is not going to win the the big wars alone with the retinues, but you need tribal vasals or levies, i looked at the remaining compostion of my armies and that of the enemy: I usually won the skirmish phase by having more archers, so even my light infantry did suffer too bad, but had no possibility to deal damage in the close combat phase, meaning that even with good defensive units i still lost those - or only had a draw. By having 3-4 huscarl units with a good general, I could follow up on my advantage in the skirmish phase on at least one flank (or the centre), and make one of the enemies flanks (or centre) crumple completely very fast.

The defense unit might mean that my "block" did crumple, but as I could never get enough retinues to fight solely with those before the late game (by which time it wasnt needed), they could only really cover one "flank", and when the other one crumpled in time I lost the battles. Instead by securing one flank quickly (but sure at a loss of men), I could then be the one attacking with superior numbers against the centre.

 

[Dragatus]

How about if you think of it this way?

1. One more valid tactic (berserker charge) = more stability in performance

2. Huge offensive bonus = less enemy remaining on day 2, 3, 4... so on = less need for defense

3. Offense and defense are two seperate stats, don't you have to add them instead of multiplying them? In which case advance vs berserker charge becomes 5.3o + 1.3d vs 5.9o + 0.8d, and since o (offense) value of HI is 6 (during melee) and d (defense) stat is 4, overall it'd be a bigger bonus than Druzhinas.

It would've been great if you included housecarls in your experiment.

Anyways I think I might alter my game plan and convert to scottish maybe. I was expecting housecarl to be one of the best.

1. This is an interesting point that I haven't considered, though it's more relevant for levies than for pure retinues. A pure HI retinue can only ever trigger two tactics, Advance and Force Back, both of which give them better stats than Berserker Charge.

2. That is true, but in the specific case of Berserker Charge you kill 11% more enemies (590% damage vs 530% damage) while the enemy kills 63% more of your own troops (80% defence vs 130% defence). It's not a good trade.

3. Combat works like this for each day of battle:
Step 1: Total attack values of all soldiers in a flank are added together and multiplied by 0.01 to get damage.
Step 2: Damage is divided by number of soldiers in enemy flank to get damage per soldier.
Step 3: For each unit type damage per soldier is divided by that unit's defence value and multiplied by the number of soldiers of that type. This gives us number of deaths per unit type.

So if you multiply attack by a certain value, that is how many times deadlier your army becomes (enemy deaths are multiplied by the number). And if you multiply defence by a certain value, that is how many times tougher your army becomes (your own deaths are divided by that number). And if you do both the army's power is multiplied by both numbers.

Although in truth that only applies for a specific day of battle. Doubling attack makes you more than twice as good, becuase on the next day there will be fewer enemies left to hurt you. And doubling defense makes you more than twice as good, because on the next day there will be more of your own troops left to kill the enemy. And this only serves to make the total multiplier more important, but it's hard to calculate exact values.

That's why I decided to run practical tests with a few simple metrics to judge units by (survival rate and kill rate). Theoretical calculations just get way too complicated to make it worth doing the calculation.

Retinue test mod made by pDox user Dragatus: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tajtcbywoej8hz8/retinue_test_mod.zip?dl=0

Here's a link to the post where I described the features of the mod. It also contains a link to download the latest version of the mod: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/retinues-in-2-5-2.915702/page-3#post-21049993

I feel (i havent done eact calculations like Dragatus above), that the Huscarls are really nice early in the game., but less so later on.

If you are tribal or early feudal, you tend to lack something that can secure your damage during the close combat phase. As even a large retinue is not going to win the the big wars alone with the retinues, but you need tribal vasals or levies, i looked at the remaining compostion of my armies and that of the enemy: I usually won the skirmish phase by having more archers, so even my light infantry did suffer too bad, but had no possibility to deal damage in the close combat phase, meaning that even with good defensive units i still lost those - or only had a draw. By having 3-4 huscarl units with a good general, I could follow up on my advantage in the skirmish phase on at least one flank (or the centre), and make one of the enemies flanks (or centre) crumple completely very fast.

The defense unit might mean that my "block" did crumple, but as I could never get enough retinues to fight solely with those before the late game (by which time it wasnt needed), they could only really cover one "flank", and when the other one crumpled in time I lost the battles. Instead by securing one flank quickly (but sure at a loss of men), I could then be the one attacking with superior numbers against the centre.

This is a good point. Everything I said applies to pure retinue flanks. If you can't afford enough retinues to do all your fighting and have to mix them with other troops, it's indeed better to match whatever the other troops are.

 

[Dragatus]

It would've been great if you included housecarls in your experiment.

I actually did that now. I tweaked my testing method a little so now I'm also measuring win rate and battle length. And I'm using "death rate" (percentage of own troops killed in battle) instead of "survival rate". All cultural retinues now also get the benefit of a fully upgraded cultural building of the appropriate type. All retinues were tested against a levy mix of equal retinue cap value.

First I redid tests for Defence and got:
12% death rate
34% kill rate
90% win rate
40 day duration (on average).

Housecarls composition (57 Housecarl + 3 Shock retinues) with Norse commanders had:
19% death rate
33% kill rate
90% win rate
40 day duration.

Then I replaced the commanders with Irish ones and the Hosuecarl's results improved visibly:
13% death rate (32% improvement)
35% kill rate (6% improvement)
100% win rate (11% improvement)
37 day duration (8% improvement)

I also tested a Longbow composition (30 Longbow + 6 Light Skirmish + 15 Shock + 12 Defence) with English commanders and the results blew me away:
4% death rate
28% kill rate
100% win rate
18 day duration

Longbow composition had relatively low kill rate, but that's largely because they win them so quickly and it's more than offset by the ridiculously low death rate. One thing worth noting though is that they work so well because they break enemy morale and send them running before the battle can enter the melee phase and a big reason why this worked so well in the test was because the Longbow composition actually outnumbered the levy mix they were fighting. If it's the levy that outnumbers the Longbows the situation can change. As long as the enemy army is small enough that you can break them in skirmish phase, you will win spectacular victories. But I suspect that if you're up against an enemy that outnumbers you so much that you fail to break them in skirmish and the battle enters melee phase you'll be in trouble.

Still, the Longbow composition (10/2/5/4 ratio between Longbow, Light Skirmish, Shock, and Defence retinues) is well worth using if you happen to have Welsh or English culture. You don't have to abide rigidly by those numbers, but you do have to make sure you have less than 60% Archers and less than 20% of the other troops in order to prevent anything but the unique English/Welsh "Massive Longbow Volley" tactic to trigger.

 

[Kryndude]

I actually did that now. I tweaked my testing method a little so now I'm also measuring win rate and battle length. And I'm using "death rate" (percentage of own troops killed in battle) instead of "survival rate". All cultural retinues now also get the benefit of a fully upgraded cultural building of the appropriate type. All retinues were tested against a levy mix of equal retinue cap value.

First I redid tests for Defence and got:
12% death rate
34% kill rate
90% win rate
40 day duration (on average).

Housecarls composition (57 Housecarl + 3 Shock retinues) with Norse commanders had:
19% death rate
33% kill rate
90% win rate
40 day duration.

Then I replaced the commanders with Irish ones and the Hosuecarl's results improved visibly:
13% death rate (32% improvement)
35% kill rate (6% improvement)
100% win rate (11% improvement)
37 day duration (8% improvement)

I also tested a Longbow composition (30 Longbow + 6 Light Skirmish + 15 Shock + 12 Defence) with English commanders and the results blew me away:
4% death rate
28% kill rate
100% win rate
18 day duration

Longbow composition had relatively low kill rate, but that's largely because they win them so quickly and it's more than offset by the ridiculously low death rate. One thing worth noting though is that they work so well because they break enemy morale and send them running before the battle can enter the melee phase and a big reason why this worked so well in the test was because the Longbow composition actually outnumbered the levy mix they were fighting. If it's the levy that outnumbers the Longbows the situation can change. As long as the enemy army is small enough that you can break them in skirmish phase, you will win spectacular victories. But I suspect that if you're up against an enemy that outnumbers you so much that you fail to break them in skirmish and the battle enters melee phase you'll be in trouble.

Still, the Longbow composition (10/2/5/4 ratio between Longbow, Light Skirmish, Shock, and Defence retinues) is well worth using if you happen to have Welsh or English culture. You don't have to abide rigidly by those numbers, but you do have to make sure you have less than 60% Archers and less than 20% of the other troops in order to prevent anything but the unique English/Welsh "Massive Longbow Volley" tactic to trigger.

Wow. I thought the Longbow build was severly nerfed to the point that it's not usable anymore. What might be the reason why you're conclusion and the one on the reddit vary so radically?

Anyways, good news for me. I used to love shooting down enemy troops with English bows. My next game will be an English one.

Also thanks for sharing your results. Appreciate it very much

 

[Dragatus]

If by "conclusions" you mean the Berserker Charge opinion my assumption is that the person from Reddit either made the assumption that special cultural tactics are supposed to be good and didn't really look into it or thought that you can look at the sum of the offensive and defensive bonuses to see how good a tactic is (which is wrong).

Archers were indeed nerfed into the ground in the 2.4 patch. Both in terms of direct nerfs to archers (skirmish attack was reduced from 5 to 2, skirmish defence was reduced from 3 to 1) and by a nerf to the skirmish phase in general (morale loss was greatly reduced, making skirmish phase largely unimportant). But in the 2.5 patch archers got a slight buff (their skirmish and melee defence values were both increased from 1 to 1.5), but even more importantly the morale loss during combat was increased, making skirmish phase relevant again.

Do note though that Archers in general are still bad. If you have 40% or more archers in your army you can't trigger Volley and if you have 60% or more archers the enemy gets to trigger a special charge tactic that shifts the battle to melee phase faster than normal. The second problem applies to everyone, but Welsh and English manage to bypass the first one thanks to their unique cultural tactic, the Massive Longbow Volley. That tactic has no upper limit on how many archers you can have and if you have 40% or more archers that actually increases your chance of triggering it, because you can no longer get regular Volley.

 

[CaptainPolyp]

I actually did that now. I tweaked my testing method a little so now I'm also measuring win rate and battle length. And I'm using "death rate" (percentage of own troops killed in battle) instead of "survival rate". All cultural retinues now also get the benefit of a fully upgraded cultural building of the appropriate type. All retinues were tested against a levy mix of equal retinue cap value.

First I redid tests for Defence and got:
12% death rate
34% kill rate
90% win rate
40 day duration (on average).

Housecarls composition (57 Housecarl + 3 Shock retinues) with Norse commanders had:
19% death rate
33% kill rate
90% win rate
40 day duration.

Then I replaced the commanders with Irish ones and the Hosuecarl's results improved visibly:
13% death rate (32% improvement)
35% kill rate (6% improvement)
100% win rate (11% improvement)
37 day duration (8% improvement)

I also tested a Longbow composition (30 Longbow + 6 Light Skirmish + 15 Shock + 12 Defence) with English commanders and the results blew me away:
4% death rate
28% kill rate
100% win rate
18 day duration

Longbow composition had relatively low kill rate, but that's largely because they win them so quickly and it's more than offset by the ridiculously low death rate. One thing worth noting though is that they work so well because they break enemy morale and send them running before the battle can enter the melee phase and a big reason why this worked so well in the test was because the Longbow composition actually outnumbered the levy mix they were fighting. If it's the levy that outnumbers the Longbows the situation can change. As long as the enemy army is small enough that you can break them in skirmish phase, you will win spectacular victories. But I suspect that if you're up against an enemy that outnumbers you so much that you fail to break them in skirmish and the battle enters melee phase you'll be in trouble.

Still, the Longbow composition (10/2/5/4 ratio between Longbow, Light Skirmish, Shock, and Defence retinues) is well worth using if you happen to have Welsh or English culture. You don't have to abide rigidly by those numbers, but you do have to make sure you have less than 60% Archers and less than 20% of the other troops in order to prevent anything but the unique English/Welsh "Massive Longbow Volley" tactic to trigger.

Thanks for your tests. how many battles did the armies fought in you test?

 

[Silver Wizard]

What is everyones favourite Retinue mix?

Call me crazy all you want, but I'm still with pure Cataphracts.
* Tears through enemy armies twice its size while attacking across a river.
* Very good at pursuit.
* No attrition problems.

 

[Dragatus]

Thanks for your tests. how many battles did the armies fought in you test?

I ran 10 battles with each of those, with units spread evenly between 3 flanks. So that's 30 times a flank faced another flank and it should average out fairly well.

Call me crazy all you want, but I'm still with pure Cataphracts.
* Tears through enemy armies twice its size while attacking across a river.
* Very good at pursuit.
* No attrition problems.

I will call you crazy (you did ask for it after all). In my tests the Cataprhact retinue performed by far the worst. They won only half their battles (the majority of retinues won them all), lost an average of 45% of their number (26% when winning, 64% when losing), and killed an average of 23% of the enemy army (30% when winning, 16% when losing).

The second worst was the Horse Archer retinue which had 80% win rate, 25% death rate, and 29% kill rate.

The third worst were the already mentioned Norse Housecarls with 90% win rate, 19% death rate, and 33% kill rate.

It is worth noting thought that part of the reason Cataphracts are so bad is because of a bug in the combat tactic condition that can trigger Harass tactic for them, even though they have no actual Light Cavalry and if that happens they do pretty much no damage at all in skirmish phase and get torn apart. But you'll note that even when they do win, they still perform worse than everyone else.

If you want to know more about the bug, the problem is that all special unit have a defined "base type" and combat tactics count them as that base type for the purpose of determining army composition. Horse Archers and Camel Cavalry both have Light Cavalry as their base type so any condition that checks for how much Light Cavalry you have will look at the total of Light Cavalry, Horse Archers, and Camel Cavalry. For this reason a Cataphract retinue satisfies the 1% Light Cavalry condition to trigger Harass. There is a safety measure in the conditions for Harass in that it can only trigger if you have less than 50% Horse Archers. But that's 50% of the entire army, not 50% of skirmish troops. And a Cataphract retinue is 40% HA and 60% HC so it satisfies that condition as well. And that's how it gets to trigger Harass, a tactic that gives Horse Archers a -150% offense modifier.