Light Cavalry (Caballero) viability

[Divi]

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.

I feel like both light cav and light infantry have too low base skirmish scores; I always sort of assumed these would be men fighting with javelins as primary weapons, like celtic cavalry would tend to historically at the beginning of the game. Skirmish at 2 or 3 makes light cavalry a lot more of a jack of all trades, master of none unit.

 

[Zakath]

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.

Haven't played any Heavy inf cultural armies, but I might have to give it a go. Regardless of that, I doubt they're better than Cataphractoi armies. Granted you need a much larger demesne before a Byzantine cultural army becomes viable, but once you stack 10k cataphractoi armies you're pretty much unbeatable. Had a game as Byzantium with holdings from the middle east with one 12k stack, another 12k stack in Rome and a last 12k stack in my Iberian holdings. Pretty much made mincemeat of anything, only occasionally requiring the backing of local levies, until the mongols showed up that is.

I didn't know that only cultural retinues got the bonus, assumed it was related to all units, but I very much doubt a stack of 12k light cavalry would be all that viable. Might have to save and go pick a fight with someone with an all light cav stack, but I fear it'll get butchered compared to my current mix of retinues. I just don't see the light cav winning a battle all alone, unless it massively outnumbers the enemy or has divine commanders.

What I use, and which seems like a well balanced force, is 3 shock retinues, 3 caballero retinues and the rest regular cavalry retinues. Might have to toss in an additional caballero retinue or three eventually, but they just don't have the punch of heavy infantry or heavy cavalry.

 

[Grubnessul]

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.

Given the number of cultures with LC cultural buildings, this indeed. Or the Arabs & Spaniards need an extra buff (LC+CA for Arabs, LC+HC for Spain?)

 

[unmerged(26764)]

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.

That's only true when you don't consider cultural bonuses and tactics.

Light infantry doesn't get those great tactics. With cultural bonuses and tactics these are your stats again:

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

What you notice here is that the Spanish light cav is acting as well as archers during skirmish, and is then devastating during melee. It's going to really damage the other army during the start of the fight, and then rip through units during melee making it break fast. Which it will then punish in skirmish. These have the offensive power of archers plus are better than heavy inf -- all in one unit. The only problem is there's not that sturdy during melee. But that might not matter because they whittle the opponent down during skirmish first, while their infantry enemy can't respond, outnumbering their opponent during melee where they unleash the damage.

The defensive on the other hand is weaker than an archer during skirmish, but it's still hurting the enemy. But it's very hardy -- it's going to take very little damage itself even against an archer opponent. During melee it's about as good as heavy inf on offensive and defense. So these are heavy infantry units that also do damage during skirmish and destroy things during pursue.

Plus, you have to realize, every unit in your army in this set up is this effective. You never have archers sitting during melee doing nothing, or infantry hiding behind a shieldwall during skirmish. Everybody here is always damaging the opponent no matter what phase it is.

You can't just compare it's vanilla stats. It looks very weak when you do, as you said like light infantry. But with the cultural bonus plus the tactics available to it, it's suddenly very good. Which light infantry won't get. But this only works for cultural retinues, and only when you don't mix light cav with other units to ensure you use the right tactics at all times.

If your general suddenly picks bad tactics, your army suddenly is acting like slightly better light inf. But that won't happen with halfway decent generals and an all light cav set up. I'm thinking with no other units available in the army to throw off the balance, even no general will pick the right things every time.

 

[No idea]

That's only true when you don't consider cultural bonuses and tactics.

Light infantry doesn't get those great tactics. With cultural bonuses and tactics these are your stats again:

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

What you notice here is that the Spanish light cav is acting as well as archers during skirmish, and is then devastating during melee. It's going to really damage the other army during the start of the fight, and then rip through units during melee making it break fast. Which it will then punish in skirmish. These have the offensive power of archers plus are better than heavy inf -- all in one unit. The only problem is there's not that sturdy during melee. But that might not matter because they whittle the opponent down during skirmish first, while their infantry enemy can't respond, outnumbering their opponent during melee where they unleash the damage.

The defensive on the other hand is weaker than an archer during skirmish, but it's still hurting the enemy. But it's very hardy -- it's going to take very little damage itself even against an archer opponent. During melee it's about as good as heavy inf on offensive and defense. So these are heavy infantry units that also do damage during skirmish and destroy things during pursue.

Plus, you have to realize, every unit in your army in this set up is this effective. You never have archers sitting during melee doing nothing, or infantry hiding behind a shieldwall during skirmish. Everybody here is always damaging the opponent no matter what phase it is.

You can't just compare it's vanilla stats. It looks very weak when you do, as you said like light infantry. But with the cultural bonus plus the tactics available to it, it's suddenly very good. Which light infantry won't get. But this only works for cultural retinues, and only when you don't mix light cav with other units to ensure you use the right tactics at all times.

If your general suddenly picks bad tactics, your army suddenly is acting like slightly better light inf. But that won't happen with halfway decent generals and an all light cav set up. I'm thinking with no other units available in the army to throw off the balance, even no general will pick the right things every time.

Yuo can´t compare caballeros (I dont mean light cavalry, which dont get any cultural bonus, I mean the cultural light cavalry, which do get the cultural bonus) with PLAIN archers, because one gets cultural bonuses, while the plain archers dont. If you want to make a comparison, then compare them to longbowmen (the english and welsh cultural unit). You´ll see longbowmen are superior. I think the same goes for other cultural units (they are clearly superior to caballeros), although they are more difficult to compare.

 

[Talq]

Yuo can´t compare caballeros (I dont mean light cavalry, which dont get any cultural bonus, I mean the cultural light cavalry, which do get the cultural bonus) with PLAIN archers, because one gets cultural bonuses, while the plain archers dont. If you want to make a comparison, then compare them to longbowmen (the english and welsh cultural unit). You´ll see longbowmen are superior. I think the same goes for other cultural units (they are clearly superior to caballeros), although they are more difficult to compare.

Well if you are making a choice between the cultural retinue and the skirmish retinue as spain its the correct comparator (which is effectively the choice when the words 'are these useless?' are bandied around). If you wanted to come to a view whether the english or spanish cultural retinues are better you would use buffed vs buffed.

 

[Grubnessul]

Yuo can´t compare caballeros (I dont mean light cavalry, which dont get any cultural bonus, I mean the cultural light cavalry, which do get the cultural bonus) with PLAIN archers, because one gets cultural bonuses, while the plain archers dont. If you want to make a comparison, then compare them to longbowmen (the english and welsh cultural unit). You´ll see longbowmen are superior. I think the same goes for other cultural units (they are clearly superior to caballeros), although they are more difficult to compare.

It's a valid comparison because you can never have those two at the same time. For the Spanish, Caballeros are valuable and worthwhile, for the English/Welsh, lbows are a better idea.

The discussion was about cabelleros being worthwhile; they seem to be. For the English, LC is less useful.

 

[unmerged(26764)]

Yuo can´t compare caballeros (I dont mean light cavalry, which dont get any cultural bonus, I mean the cultural light cavalry, which do get the cultural bonus) with PLAIN archers, because one gets cultural bonuses, while the plain archers dont. If you want to make a comparison, then compare them to longbowmen (the english and welsh cultural unit). You´ll see longbowmen are superior. I think the same goes for other cultural units (they are clearly superior to caballeros), although they are more difficult to compare.

Again, I'm just not sure they're not better as they're actually used in the game.

You can't just compare them one to one. You have to consider how you actually use the units. The question isn't whether one longbow is better than one caballero -- it is. The question is whether a longbow based army is better than a caballeros one. There I'm just not sure.

Here's what you have to consider:

1. You absolutely have to group longbows with a lot of melee units. A group of longbows alone will get the "charge undefended flank" event and skirmish will last all of three seconds. Then they will be destroyed. So your army will have to be half something doing no damage in skirmish. And the longbows are useless during melee. So while every individual unit in a light cav army may be worse, the army may do more damage during each phase in total.

2. The longbows have almost no morale. An army with mostly longbows that stays in battle too long will break and run. If you don't kill your opponent quickly in skirmish, your army will run away and get destroyed in pursue.

3. The longbows are only good in one of three phases of battle. The light cav -- with tactics -- is good in all three.

Overall, I'm just not sure than a longbow army is better. You'd have to run some experiments to know. On paper, I think it might be worse.

Edit:

So I looked at the actual longbow numbers. A longbow unit also using the proper tactics is doing 41 damage during skirmish. That's quite amazing. So given that half the army is doing nothing, call it 20 damage per unit. That's still I believe better than any other unit in any other phrase.

The longbow army is clearly far better than anything when it comes to raw damage, even with half the units sitting around doing nothing but protecting them from a charge. The only question is whether the lack of defense and morale during melee makes it break so quickly that it still loses the battle once the skirmish phase ends, and then gets ripped apart during pursue.

 

[The_Blind_One]

Yeah longbowmen are like entrenched machine guns if ur lucky and get a good tactic.

However as an iberian player I will vouch for the caballero's and even camel riders of the arabs.

Where does light cavalry really shine? In tight fought battles where your army wins by a margin. I've had cases where I have stationed my army strategicaly across a strait in the mountains to defeat the oncomming french enemy doomstack (me 10k vs french 18k). It's a tough fought battle and I usualy barely win thanks to good generals and defensive bonusses (after battle I have 8k vs french 13k). Pursuing them when my own army is close to morale defeat and leaving my defensive position usualy results in losing against the bigger AI army in the province they are retreating to. However if you have a tonne of light cavalry, they'll slaughter like 50% of the enemy in the pursuit phase. So the battle with my light cavalry stack resulted in only about 6k french troops retreating. Now that is an army I can re-engage in a battle and wipe out!

But in all honesty, LC is a tad underpowered. It's more of a light infantry troop with better skirmish phase and great pursuit phase.

Having said that, the most pathetic troop type is probably ethiopian cultural building. Where as most heavy infantry types get great bonusses in most combat tactics, light infantry receives almost no bonusses except for the odd few which are minor and based on getting a lucky combat trait.

The only reason its not terrible as a retinue unit is because it's half priced compared to all other units, so you could end up using it as free siege units...

But compared to the equaly priced longbowmen who will gun them down...they are practicaly useless and merely there as cannonfodder

 

[Xiathorn]

There's a lot of cool details in this thread - could somebody point me towards a thread that explains the maths behind what you guys are calculating? I have tried in vain to come up with a 41 damage per unit for Longbowmen I am clearly missing something, just can't see what it is. The wiki page is a bit sparse on how combat tactics actually work.

 

[Zakath]

The argument with only stacking LC cultural retinues doesn't really hold, since that would require you to have a rather massive demesne to avoid brining along the levies. Having recently formed Hispania I could still only get a retinue of 15k men, that includes some regular cavalry retinues and some shock retinues. Translating that to pure Caballero should come out to about the same number of men.

A 15k stack might be workable, but I still say that the Byzantine Cataphractoi are superior, but where does that leave you as the king of Castille or one of the other smaller kingdoms?

By all means, LC is amazing when it comes to butchering fleeing armies, but it just doesn't have the punch of HC or HI. Change the unit mix to be 300 LC / 200 HC, or even 400/100 as the regular cavalry retinue, and spread the cultural bonus between the two units (7.5%/7.5% or 10%/5%) and you have a fantastic retinue. Otherwise it's just a bit too weak to work on it's own from my experience.

 

[Eldorian]

There's a lot of cool details in this thread - could somebody point me towards a thread that explains the maths behind what you guys are calculating? I have tried in vain to come up with a 41 damage per unit for Longbowmen I am clearly missing something, just can't see what it is. The wiki page is a bit sparse on how combat tactics actually work.

Longbowman: Base damage for archer in skirmish is 8. Longbowmen retinue get +60%. Volley tactic in skirmish gives +300% to archers. I am getting 51.2 damage per longbowman.

edit my bad arithmetic =P

 

[Jeltz]

Longbowman: Base damage for archer in skirmish is 8. Longbowmen retinue get +60%. Volley tactic in skirmish gives +300% to archers. I am getting 38.4 damage per longbowman.

Hmm, how is that 38.4? It is either "8 * (1 + 0.60 + 3.00) = 36.8" or "8 * (1 + 0.60) * (1 + 3.00) = 51.2".

 

[Xiathorn]

I also calculated 38.4

I'm reading http://ckiiwiki.com/Combat_Tactics - can someone explain the table in brief? I don't fully understand what actually makes the tactics be selected. I get the impression that it works something like this :
<IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER FOR PEOPLE SCAN READING - THE BELOW IS ALMOST DEFINITELY WRONG>

Harass has LC Trigger of 0.001 and Skirmish.

If in Skirmish and with 1000 LC, then we select Harass. If 500 LC, we have a 50% chance of selecting Harass.

The modifiers are hard to read though. Anybody able to explain this? I suspect that I am wrong in my hypothesis above, as it doesn't make sense with the modifier values.

EDIT: For the 38.4, I read Light Cav Offensive (3) in the Harass on the wiki page I linked above. I assumed this was a modifier rather than a flat increase of nx, where x = initial_value;

 

[unmerged(26764)]

You're right about that 41. I made a math error somewhere on that.

Each longbow is 12.8 attack in skirmish. That's 38.4.

The caballero on the other hand is actually 1.6 attack in skirmish, so 4.8 damage per unit with the comparable tactic by comparison. That's a big difference.

But it's also 4.8 attack during melee. The tactic during that phase is 240%. Which I correctly called 11.52 damage per unit. So in both phases combined, the caballero is still only doing about half the damage of the longbow during the skirmish phase alone. And the caballero costs twice as many retinue points per unit to boot.

The only upside is the caballero has 4 morale and the longbow has 1. So if the longbow starts taking damage, it's going to break much faster. And the caballero will run it down.

I think I agree that the light cav really needs to be buffed. It probably needs another point or maybe two during skirmish, and then one more point during melee. It's fine as it is for levies because everyone is going to build them in the same quantities so it all balance out. But for the cultural retinues, they're really too weak by comparison.

That said, I stand by the notion that an all light cav army would be effective, and more effective than levies. Just less effective than a longbow or cultural infantry or cataphract army costing the same amount of retinue points.

 

[Xiathorn]

Are we sure that the bonuses are compounded? i.e. It's 51.2 vs 36.8?

 

[unmerged(26764)]

II'm reading http://ckiiwiki.com/Combat_Tactics - can someone explain the table in brief? I don't fully understand what actually makes the tactics be selected. I get the impression that it works something like this :

As I understand it, those are weights. So if an army has light cav in it, the general might pick that tactic. The more light cav, the more likely. Which is why if you want to get the best tactics, it's good to limit the unit types in the stack. If all you have is light cav, the generals will only pick from the light cav tactics.

This is why when I play a heavy infantry culture, I don't put archers in the group ever. Because I'd rather have them shieldwall during skirmish and take little damage than have them use some mixed tactic in which the archers do little good and the infantry dies.

 

[Xiathorn]

Yeah, I figured as much - is there any post somewhere that explains the exact calculation in detail? Do we know the calculation for selection of tactics? I assume it's randomised, based upon the MTTH, but the weighting will make an impact.

Thus, at LC 0.001, I assume it means 1000 LC = weighted at 1. Still don't know what the modifier does though.

For example, in the table it shows "1.5 + Martial 8, Light Cavalry 0.7", "1.5 + Martial 12, Light Cavalry 0.6"

I'm wondering if this is an additive or multiplicative weight, and precisely what they actually mean.

Does it mean :

LC = 1000, base is 0.001. Thus, 1
MODIFIER : 1.5 + 0.7 @ Martial 8, thus we actually need 1000 * 1.5+0.7 = 2200 LC for a 100% chance of Harass.

This seems to make sense, as it implies how many troops you need to pick this one is reduced by martial skill (At 16 skill, you would only need 2000 LC for a 100% chance at the harass tactic).

Seems a big high though, particularly for harass (as all the others are 0.01 base, not 0.001 base for the LC)

However, at 0.01 base, it implies that, with Martial 8, 230 archers in Skirmish mode would mean volley.

So confused

 

[The_Blind_One]

The combat tactics work just like regular triggers.

They only apply if you validate for the trigger conditions.

MTTH is the chance weight that this tactic has. You could compare it to the regular modifiers which increase or decrease the AI's decision to take an option.

See here for an explanation on combat tactics...

volly_harass_tactic = {
	days = 18	#amount of days this tactic lasts, this tactic lasts 18 days
	sprite = 4	#picture used when viewing when this tactic is used in combat screen
	group = harass	#groups are used to determine a strategic concept
	                #a certain group has an advantage over another,(see below)

	trigger = {	#when can this tactic be used?
		phase = skirmish 	#during skirmish phase
		light_cavalry = 0.01	#army has atleast 1% cavalry
		archers = 0.01		#army has atleast 1% archers
	}

	mean_time_to_happen = {		#what are the odds of this tactic being picked?
		days = 3		#base weight/chance of picking this tactic
		modifier = {
			factor = 1.5	#multiply the chance by 1.5 if...
			flank_has_leader = yes	#the flank has a leader
			leader = {
				martial = 8	#leader has atleast 8 martial
			}
			light_troops = { #light cavalry is atleast 70% of the army (very unlikely unless its a retinue army)
				who = light_cavalry
				value = 0.7
			}
			light_troops = { #horse archers are atleast 30% of the army (very unlikely unless ur the mongols)
				who = horse_archers
				value = 0.3
			}
		}
		modifier = {
			factor = 1.5
			flank_has_leader = yes
			leader = {
				martial = 12
			}
			light_troops = { 
				who = light_cavalry     #light cavalry is 60% of army
				value = 0.6
			}
			light_troops = { 
				who = horse_archers	#horses archers are 30% of army
				value = 0.3
			}
		}
		modifier = {
			factor = 1.5
			flank_has_leader = yes
			leader = {
				martial = 16
			}
			light_troops = { 
				who = light_cavalry
				value = 0.5
			}
			light_troops = { 
				who = horse_archers
				value = 0.3
			}
		}
	}

	light_cavalry_offensive = 1.8		#light cavalry offensive +180%
	horse_archers_offensive = 0.6		#horses archies offensive + 60%
	archers_offensive = -1.8		#archers offensive -180%
	enemy = {
		group = swarm			#if enemy is using swarm strategy group
		factor = 1			#+100% bonus damage vs enemy
	}
}

A general overlook.

There's 3 strategic groups for each phase and an extra defensive group. Skirmish phase has these 3 groups and they work like a rock paper scissors system. Each group is usualy linked to a favored unit type.

Harass (light cavalry) > Swarm (horse archers) > Volley (archers),
Defensive group, (includes shieldwall tactic), has no weakness to any group.

Melee phase is initiated whenever atleast 10 days of skirmish have passed and an army decides to pick a tactic which engages the enemy force directly (changes phase to melee).

The strategic groups of melee are:

Advance (hvy inf) > Stand Fast (pikemen) > Charge (knights),
Defensive group, generic tactic with no pros or cons vs other groups

The pursuit phase has only one tactic which is to pursue and is part of the charge group, it is also the best time for light infantry and light cavalry to shine.

P.S
Let's say there are only 6 tactics which are valid for your general to pick. Each one has 3 days as MTTH. That is 18 MTTH total. Now lets say you add an extra tactic for a total of 7 tactic to be chosen and it has a MTTH of 18. Now the total MTTH is 36 of which 18 are the new tactic. The odds of getting the new tactic are thus 50%.

P.P.S

Alot of people are miscalculating the bonus from tactics when going above the 1.0 threshold. The bonus for example 3.0 is not base * 3.0 but base * (1+3.0).

Max light cavalry attack in all phases are...(with +60% offensive boost) (not counting special tactics and/or culture tactic, since iberians have none, its easy)

6.4 skirmish (base = 1, * (1+0.6 cultural bonus * (1+3 for harass tactic)
10.2 for melee (base = 3, * (1+0.6 cultural bonus * (1+2.6 for raid tactic)
16.0 for pursuit (base = 10, * (1+0.6 cultural bonus * (1+0 no tactic bonus for pursuit)

But these damage potentials are not realistic at all unless your army is atleast +50% light cavalry. Otherwise your odds are 1/6 to get these attack values. Under normal circumstances, light cavalry does not do more damage than its base stats during all phases of combat, so 1 skirmish, 3 melee, 10 pursuit.

Compared to heavy infantry max dmg

1.12 skirmish (base = 0.25 * (1+0.6 cultural bonus) * (1+1.8 for feint tactic)
38.4 melee (base = 6 * (1+0.6 cultural bonus) * (1+3 for advance tactic)
3.2 for pursuit (base = 2 * (1+0.6 cultural bonus) * (1+0 no tactic bonus for pursuit)

Quite a sucky skirmish stat there, but if ur lucky u pick the shieldwall tactic and mitigate most of the damage. The hvy infantry really shines in the fact that you get so much of them early game from castles that they make up a high portion of your troops and allow you to trigger the awesome heavy infantry boosting tactics. The odds of getting these tactics are roughly 1/2, compared to the 1/6 of light cavalry, that is quite a bit better! Not to mention their melee damage is huge!

 

[Xiathorn]

This is precisely what I was looking for! Thank you very, very much The Blind One. I am surprised that MTTH days being higher actually increases the chance of the tactic being selected - very, very interesting. Thanks!