Retinues

[FinalLegendZero]

If the tactics issue is solved for Cataphracts then they easily become one of the best retinues in the game again. They always absolutely obliterated AI armies, the only issue was the tactics selection would cause them to suffer atrocious casualties in the process. You'd usually lose close to half the retinue due to firing tactics that were completely useless to you and were easily countered by AI tactic selection. With Embolon improved the only AI that I can honestly see fighting evenly against a sizable pure Cataphract army would probably be the Mongols, and they can be dealt with because Crushing Charge will fire and immediately move the Skirmish phase into the general melee, which will wipe the floor with the hordes.

Crushing Charge doesn't exist in EMF. Even if it did, it's been nerfed in vanilla to only fire if at least 10 days of Skirmish have already passed, eliminating its one advantage over Charge for a non-Elephant army. From what I understand, Paradox did this specifically to keep Cataphracts from having a chance against the Mongols.

 

[Starki113r]

Crushing Charge doesn't exist in EMF. Even if it did, it's been nerfed in vanilla to only fire if at least 10 days of Skirmish have already passed, eliminating its one advantage over Charge for a non-Elephant army. From what I understand, Paradox did this specifically to keep Cataphracts from having a chance against the Mongols.

Making an incredibly weak retinue even less viable. Wonderful balancing. *sighs*

Well, even without it I've noticed that I have no trouble against the Mongols. Then again, I do rule an Empire stretching from Southern England to the Levant with everything in between with a retinue numbering in the tens of thousands, so your results may vary.

 

[FinalLegendZero]

Making an incredibly weak retinue even less viable. Wonderful balancing. *sighs*

To be fair, the Crushing Charge nerf was introduced before the HA nerf. But yeah, Paradox is terrible at balancing combat - their policy seems to be "make whatever players complain about completely useless". One of the big reasons I'm switching from CK2+ to HIP is for the EMF tactic system, as Plus has reverted from an EMF-like system to vanilla tactic selection, while having retinues altered to operate in the modified system and are all but worthless in vanilla.

 

[Tirion1987]

I don't play nomads myself, but from what I understand Camels are probably the best outside of the Altaic hordes and their Horse Archer retinues.

For nomads, I usually get very good results with Heavy Vanguard hordes, which unlike Camel and Knight (pure HC) aren't region-locked. Once I have 10k+ of those, winning any war is trivial.