Light Cavalry (Caballero) viability

[Beagá]

Question but how buildings affect retinues? Does each building that gives bonuses give bonuses to units of the retinue, or only buildings in the capital count? For example, suppose I have cataphract training in a castle and my capital is in another castle - if I build a heavy cavalry retinue, will it benefit?

 

[Grubnessul]

Cultural retinues always have the bonus, regardless of your buildings. Non-cultural retinues never get a bonus afaik. The building provide their bonus to the units raised in their own province.

 

[Beagá]

But just to make clear, if I only have cataphract buildings outside the capital and raise any retinue with heavy cavalry, will the retinue (that will be raised in the capital) have attack bonus or not?

 

[Grubnessul]

But just to make clear, if I only have cataphract buildings outside the capital, will the retinue (that will be raised in the capital) have attack bonus or not?

Yes, it will always have same bonus a maximally upgraded province would have, regardless of the same buildings being in your capital.

 

[Beagá]

Fair enough, also are the effects added, or only the most upgraded buidling counts? That is, if I have 3 cataphract buidlings, the bonus will be the sum of all bonuses or only the higher bonus counts?

 

[KPJ]

The highest potential building counts (i.e. the fully upgraded Caballero training ground, for example) towards all retinues, once, no matter which buildings you have or where. Clear?

 

[Eldorian]

But just to make clear, if I only have cataphract buildings outside the capital and raise any retinue with heavy cavalry, will the retinue (that will be raised in the capital) have attack bonus or not?

Retinues are completely divorced from cultural buildings, mechanically. A cultural retinue has at least some of its troops the kind of troops your cultural building makes, and any stat modifications your cultural building provides, your retinue gets the same benefit as the total of all those cultural buildings.

As far as what troops get the cultural building's bonus, only the troops raised by that castle.

 

[Beagá]

The highest potential building counts (i.e. the fully upgraded Caballero training ground, for example) towards all retinues, once, no matter which buildings you have or where. Clear?

Chill ok? There is no way to tell how the mechanic works in the game. No in-game tool-tip and nothing in the manual either since retinues are a relatively recent addition. I´m sure more people will ask this in the future, this info should be on the Wiki.

 

[The_Blind_One]

Chill ok? There is no way to tell how the mechanic works in the game. No in-game tool-tip and nothing in the manual either since retinues are a relatively recent addition. I´m sure more people will ask this in the future, this info should be on the Wiki.

Yeah the game is really unclear as it gives no extra explanation when hovering your cursor over the retinue you want to buy. It just tells u the name...well great...

It's because I love fiddling with the code that I find out the answers to these questions. But otherwise when I booted it up, I was just creating army compositions which I found cool, didn't even know that it had any impact till I read the code -_-

In any case, cultural retinues provide maximum cultural building bonus regardless of when or where you hire them from.

But whats more strange is that only the big cultures get a cultural tactic. The iberians don't have a culture tactic it seems and don't have an extra shot at a great tactic for this reason. Making the cultural retinue and cultural building troops less worth it.

 

[icedt729]

Once the retinue is raised, you can see its bonuses by hovering your mouse over the troop types. It'll show you the bonuses both from tech and from your cultural buff. Simple. It'd be nice if you could see the bonus before raising it, but there's really not that many retinues out there so once you've seen them once it's easy to remember them.

 

[Cèsar de Quart]

The whole concept of the caballero is wrong.

Playing this game with the retinues and all, Spain seems to be a place completely devoid of knights. Royal retinues made of light cavalry? What the heck does that mean? Do you really imagine the mighty King of Castile and León riding with light cavalry guarding his back?

The compostion of Spanish medieval armies might have been a bit different from that of France or Germany (might, because there would not have been much of a real difference except for knowledge of the field), but the noblemen were mostly the same thing. A king, a lord, rides with heavy cavalry. With knights.

I've already said that in the early game Christian armies lack knights desperately. 1200 guys army with 5 to 10 knights? Really?

Now that we're talking about Spain, the reason why most of the times Christian coalitions defeated Muslim armies much bigger in numbers and logistics was knights. And still, in 1066, which is the birth of knighthood, more or less, there are almost no knights. I can accept that Paradox depicted knights sparce because it's the beginning of the tradition, but having royal retinues of "caballeros" (which means knights) that are not knights is very bad inspiration.

 

[The_Blind_One]

Th game has a false concept of knight and light cavalry

The game portrays the unit type knights as mounted nobles with the BEST equipment possible.

And light cavalry on the other hand is just another light infantryman put on a horse...

A much more realistic depiction would be having the light cavalry depicted as the light lancers (leather or mail) of medieval armies. Thereby replacing the role of unarmored cavalrymen for light armored lancers. Similarely knights should depict any heavy armoured cavalry soldier.

But to be fair to the game, it's got a much more gamey setup to it on purpose I suspect. Castles don't start with any archers for instance or any other unit except for some light infantry, alot of heavies and a sprinkle of light cavalry. You can multiply the amount of levy in a province by aproximately 12 times by the end of the game. Realisticaly you'd be pushing it if you got 6 times as many men out of the same province (historical population records and black plague and all). If you get all the french squire list upgrades, you'll be boasting knights like in the thousands, crazy ! (up to 30% knights per levy!)

Don't pay too much attention to the troops unless you want historical realism. Which you will not find in the military of this game which has retinues in western europe. Which historicaly didn't even make babysteps untill like 1450...(the only nation which did have retinues was byzantium, and quite extensively too though)

 

[icedt729]

I just look at it as Light Cavalry standing in for the mailed knights of the early middle ages and Heavy Cavalry representing kataphractoi or knights in plate on barded horses. Spain is much more famous for its Arab-influenced jinete tradition than for the destrier (associated with France and Germany) so if you were going to add Spanish flavor, tough light cavalry seems more appropriate than some variation of heavy cavalry.

If it makes it easier to swallow, Polish husaria were well-armored lancers but they're also considered light cavalry with a defense buff in this game.

 

[Eldorian]

I just look at it as Light Cavalry standing in for the mailed knights of the early middle ages and Heavy Cavalry representing kataphractoi or knights in plate on barded horses. Spain is much more famous for its Arab-influenced jinete tradition than for the destrier (associated with France and Germany) so if you were going to add Spanish flavor, tough light cavalry seems more appropriate than some variation of heavy cavalry.

If it makes it easier to swallow, Polish husaria were well-armored lancers but they're also considered light cavalry with a defense buff in this game.

Jinete are from Berber influence, not Arab. Otherwise I agree. Heavy cav means barding.

 

[NosgothKingdom]

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.

He's got a really good point. I always overlook these tactics, but they indeed provide some awesome bonuses for some units. If you have only 1 type of unit as it's the case, you can get a huge bonus for the whole army if your generals ain't stupid.
If you consider they're cheaper and take less retinue upkeep, this plus their higher numbers might compensate. Never really tought about that.

 

[NosgothKingdom]

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.

Agreed. Mongols made heavy use of light cavalry (and not heavy) in support of their archer cavalry, that's why they could pull out those awesome tactics and own european cavalry at battles. LC needs some buff.

 

[Talq]

Agreed. Mongols made heavy use of light cavalry (and not heavy) in support of their archer cavalry, that's why they could pull out those awesome tactics and own european cavalry at battles. LC needs some buff.

Nope. Mongols were 60% horse archers, 40% spear armed, (more) heavily armoured cavalry. Their job, was in part to keep the opposition off their skirmishers, and in part to get in close combat once the skirmishers have worn down the enemy - which is pretty much a textbook heavy cav role. And lets just say that by the time they reached Russia & Iran, they were considerably more well armored than your average nomad army (& certainly as well armored as a cataphract).

Paradox confuse things by splitting light cav & horse archer, and putting 'early period' & 'poorly armored' shock cav in as light cav. But then having asserted that nearly all cav were light, they let the Byzantines build hordes of heavy cav, because they are cool.