Light Cavalry (Caballero) viability

[Zakath]

I've been playing as one Byzantine noble or another since the DLC was released, but now I figured I'd go for something completely different so I've started the long road of uniting the Iberian peninsula to form Hispania. As a Byzantine ruler the cultural building is fantastic, what's not to love about better heavy cavalry and horse archers after all, but the Iberians seem just a bit weak to me. A total of 180 Light Cavalry and +60% attack isn't really all that good, and the Cultural retinue of 500 light cavalry just seems weak, especially considering that it costs 80 gold as opposed to the 60 gold you pay for a regular Cavalry retinue. It makes for an army that will slaughter a fleeing enemy, which isn't all that good at actually defeating the enemy.

Am I overlooking something, or am I better off just sticking to regular Shock/Cavalry retinues and not prioritize the Caballero training grounds?

 

[Grubnessul]

My feeling is the Spanish/Arabs actually have viable LC with the bonus and huge numbers of it available. Outswarming your opponents with huge, fast armies of these horsemen sounds viable, not sure if it really would work, though.


Don't forget btw that cultural retinues receive the same bonus as your max level cultural building, so a caballero retinue receives the +60% attack as well.

 

[Yenzen]

Well, a few things:

- Yeah the cultural retinue sucks.
- The bonus to attack also apply to units coming out of the normal stables, making the cultural building potentially much more worth than the Byzantine equivalent, that is halved and apply to very few actual units (doesn't hold a thing to the heavy infantry specials though)
- The bonus is, percentage wise, double that of the Byzantine special buildings.

So, raising normal retinues may be a better idea, but the cultural buildings themselves are sound.

 

[No idea]

I've been playing as one Byzantine noble or another since the DLC was released, but now I figured I'd go for something completely different so I've started the long road of uniting the Iberian peninsula to form Hispania. As a Byzantine ruler the cultural building is fantastic, what's not to love about better heavy cavalry and horse archers after all, but the Iberians seem just a bit weak to me. A total of 180 Light Cavalry and +60% attack isn't really all that good, and the Cultural retinue of 500 light cavalry just seems weak, especially considering that it costs 80 gold as opposed to the 60 gold you pay for a regular Cavalry retinue. It makes for an army that will slaughter a fleeing enemy, which isn't all that good at actually defeating the enemy.

Am I overlooking something, or am I better off just sticking to regular Shock/Cavalry retinues and not prioritize the Caballero training grounds?

Not long ago (around a month) somebody reach the same conclusion as you: Light cavalry is not worth, because other units are the ones that really win battles. LC is here mostly to wipe out the enemy AFTER the battle. IIRC he even gave several tests he had done which pointed that light cavalry is the worst of all cultural buildings, giving you expensive units that won´t win battles for you, even if they reduce the ping-pong effect a lot.

 

[grumphie]

i personally disagree with that thread. yes, he had some viable points, but his end result of building light cav is what i highly disagree with. while you shouldnt go pure light cav or get 4 retinue's a flank, having like 3k light cav on a army completly mauls an enemy once its broken. even better if you manage to make a 10k pure army and can smash an army towards it.

 

[unmerged(26764)]

So, I'm actually thinking the consensus is wrong and the light cav cultural retinues might be quite awesome. The east european defensive more than the spanish offensive, but both pretty good. What everyone is forgetting is tactics.

Light cav on it's own has pretty bad stats. And when it's grouped with other units it doesn't get any real bonuses. But when it's in a group alone, it can take advantage of some very good tactics. In every single phase of battle.

In skirmish, it can get a 300% bonus. And then in melee, it can get another 240% bonus. And in pursue, it's obviously amazing.

So if all you have is a light cav army your stats are:

Offensive (Spain): 4.8/5, 11.52/3, 10/8
Defensive (East Europe): 3/8, 7.2/4.8, 10/8

Now, that's pretty decent. That's pretty effective in every single phase of battle. But here's what makes it better. It's every single unit of your army. It doesn't shine in any one phase. So an all cultural light cav army has decent killing power for every unit in every phase of battle.

Think about how that compares. Longbows are amazing. But only in skirmish. They sit around in melee doing nothing. And you can't mass them because they get wrecked without melee units. So as good as they are in skirmish, half your army is going to be something else that's sitting around doing nothing in that phase. So while the longbows shine during skirmish, at any time half your army is going to be sitting around doing nothing. While every single light cav unit is working during every phase, none of them is every sitting idle.

Same goes for heavy cav. First, they're so expensive you'll never have a lot of them. And then come with light cav. Which because they're massed with heavy won't be using the right tactics, won't have cultural bonuses, and will be less effective.

Same goes for heavy infantry. They sit around doing nothing during skirmish. And you pretty much have to group them with horses of some kind or they'll rout their enemy and then kill none of them in pursue.

So I'm thinking big groups of cheap light cav cultural retinues might be pretty darn good after all. You can mass them into big groups. They can win battles plus assault fortresses at an affordable cost. They're pretty cheap. But they're only good if they're massed without any other unit type so they're using the right tactics at all times. I'm going to try a Hungary game at some point to try it out.

 

[unmerged(457738)]

The problem with the caballero is the volatility of the iberian peninsula. You end up frequently losing fiefs temporarily to jihads and caliphate doomstacks and each time that happens your cultural buildings get deleted. That's 1k of build costs and 2-3 years of build time down the drain per castle, and it's easy to lose 10+ at a time. That basically makes the cultural building impractical until you have a really firm grip on the peninsula, by which time it's fairly moot anyway. Obviously all cultural buildings have this same limitation but in most other geographic areas the risk of losing your core lands multiple times is far lower.

 

[No idea]

i personally disagree with that thread. yes, he had some viable points, but his end result of building light cav is what i highly disagree with. while you shouldnt go pure light cav or get 4 retinue's a flank, having like 3k light cav on a army completly mauls an enemy once its broken. even better if you manage to make a 10k pure army and can smash an army towards it.

Once the enemy is beaten it really doesn t matter much if you can wipe it out in the same battle or after 3 ping pong battles.

 

[No idea]

Same goes for heavy infantry. They sit around doing nothing during melee. And you pretty much have to group them with horses of some kind or they'll rout their enemy and then kill none of them in pursue.

Are we playing two different games? When melee combat phase comes, heavy infantry is the one that really shines. And it really doesn´t matter if they suck at the last phase, because the enemy is already beaten forever (unless it gets a goos amount of reinforcements). It´s just that it will take more time (more ping pong battles). Nothing else.

 

[unmerged(26764)]

Are we playing two different games? When melee combat phase comes, heavy infantry is the one that really shines. And it really doesn´t matter if they suck at the last phase, because the enemy is already beaten forever (unless it gets a goos amount of reinforcements). It´s just that it will take more time (more ping pong battles). Nothing else.

I love heavy inf. I think it's the best cultural retinue. Better than heavy cav. Probably better than Cataphracts. Powerful and cheap. I would rather play a heavy inf culture than any other. I'm not saying it's bad.

My point is that it's not as far ahead of light cav as you might think. While the stats look much better, it's only effective in one phase. Plus you'd never build a heavy infantry only army -- at least I don't. It's suboptimal always. So it's power is watered down inside your army.

Light cav on the other hand is less effective in each phase, but effective in all of them. And you can build a light cav only army in which every unit takes advantage of very powerful tactics in the first two phases. While the units look bad, a light cav cultural retinue stack can actually be pretty darn powerful.

At least so it seems. Haven't tried it yet. Probably will try a Hungary game next and check it out just to experiment with it.

Edit: I meant skirmish. I edited the prior post.

 

[_krampe_]

Are we playing two different games? When melee combat phase comes, heavy infantry is the one that really shines. And it really doesn´t matter if they suck at the last phase, because the enemy is already beaten forever (unless it gets a goos amount of reinforcements). It´s just that it will take more time (more ping pong battles). Nothing else.

I think he ment skirmish


Are the different tactics a flank uses somewhere visible? Can anyone give me some hints for the different possibilties? I always have my army autoassigned/mixed and only change the commanders.

 

[Kaiser Ludwig]

There's this...

http://ckiiwiki.com/Battle

Though I'm pretty sure it's not exactly what you want, but I don't know where the tactics-in-battle are to link them to you (things like shieldwall, timid advance, advance, charge, etc.) to see what the options are and their effect, I presume?)

Edit: and I followed the link, and here's what you want...

http://ckiiwiki.com/Combat_Tactics

 

[_krampe_]

There's this...

http://ckiiwiki.com/Battle

Though I'm pretty sure it's not exactly what you want, but I don't know where the tactics-in-battle are to link them to you (things like shieldwall, timid advance, advance, charge, etc.) to see what the options are and their effect, I presume?)

Edit: and I followed the link, and here's what you want...

http://ckiiwiki.com/Combat_Tactics

Nice, thanks a lot!

 

[Sard]

Don't forget btw that cultural retinues receive the same bonus as your max level cultural building, so a caballero retinue receives the +60% attack as well.

That information might just have made my day!

 

[unmerged(26764)]

Are the different tactics a flank uses somewhere visible? Can anyone give me some hints for the different possibilties? I always have my army autoassigned/mixed and only change the commanders.

You see the little symbol by each flank during a battle? Tooltip over it. It will tell you what tactic is currently in use.

It will also tell you the probability of the general changing to other tactics available. Those probabilities are based on the composition of the army and the quality of the general. Better generals will pick tactics best suited for the force in the flank -- if you have a lot of heavy cav, they'll use tactics that buff heavy cav, if you have archers they'll use tactics that buff archers. Bad generals pick poor tactics.

 

[_krampe_]

Does that only apply to the cultural retinue or for any of them? Like when i have the light cav cultural building and recruit the 300 light cav + 100 heavy cav retinue, do the light cav get the attack bonus?

 

[unmerged(26764)]

Does that only apply to the cultural retinue or for any of them? Like when i have the light cav cultural building and recruit the Knight retinue 300 light cav + 100 heavy cav, do the light cav get the attack bonus?

No. Only the cultural retinue gets the cultural bonus. I wish the tooltips told you this. But if you build them and then scroll over the retinue to look at unit stats you'll see the difference.

 

[_krampe_]

And thank you aswell for the info, most appreciated

 

[Eldorian]

So, I'm actually thinking the consensus is wrong and the light cav cultural retinues might be quite awesome. The east european defensive more than the spanish offensive, but both pretty good. What everyone is forgetting is tactics.

Light cav on it's own has pretty bad stats. And when it's grouped with other units it doesn't get any real bonuses. But when it's in a group alone, it can take advantage of some very good tactics. In every single phase of battle.

In skirmish, it can get a 300% bonus. And then in melee, it can get another 240% bonus. And in pursue, it's obviously amazing.

So if all you have is a light cav army your stats are:

Offensive (Spain): 4.8/5, 11.52/3, 10/8
Defensive (East Europe): 3/8, 7.2/4.8, 10/8

Now, that's pretty decent. That's pretty effective in every single phase of battle. But here's what makes it better. It's every single unit of your army. It doesn't shine in any one phase. So an all cultural light cav army has decent killing power for every unit in every phase of battle.

Think about how that compares. Longbows are amazing. But only in skirmish. They sit around in melee doing nothing. And you can't mass them because they get wrecked without melee units. So as good as they are in skirmish, half your army is going to be something else that's sitting around doing nothing in that phase. So while the longbows shine during skirmish, at any time half your army is going to be sitting around doing nothing. While every single light cav unit is working during every phase, none of them is every sitting idle.

Same goes for heavy cav. First, they're so expensive you'll never have a lot of them. And then come with light cav. Which because they're massed with heavy won't be using the right tactics, won't have cultural bonuses, and will be less effective.

Same goes for heavy infantry. They sit around doing nothing during skirmish. And you pretty much have to group them with horses of some kind or they'll rout their enemy and then kill none of them in pursue.

So I'm thinking big groups of cheap light cav cultural retinues might be pretty darn good after all. You can mass them into big groups. They can win battles plus assault fortresses at an affordable cost. They're pretty cheap. But they're only good if they're massed without any other unit type so they're using the right tactics at all times. I'm going to try a Hungary game at some point to try it out.

Everything you said here is nice, and all, but realize that light infantry cost half as much, with very similar stats outside of pursuit. Your massed light cav army vs a massed light infantry army leaves you dead. And guess what armies are mostly composed of? You're going to need numerical superiority with your light cavalry retinues to be able to beat generic levies. A heavy infantry cultural retinue, on the other hand, will eat you alive with minimal losses. And they have pursue attack 2, not the 0.2 of pikemen, so they won't even have to ping pong you to death for very long. light cav is only superior at pursuit, which means it's only really useful for battles you'll win overwhelmingly.

 

[sergeant113]

Obviously, light cav stats need to be changed. In reality, light cavalry was a capable and flexible fighting force both in border skirmishes and pitched battles. Arguably, William's cavalry at Hasting were armoured light cavalry, fighting with light cavalry tactics. Perhaps, light cavalry should be made into a jack-of-all-trade troop type that does not excel in any battle phase, but does ok in all, similar to horse archer, but with more emphasis towards melee and pursuit phase.