The general consensus is that unless your country is a Horde or has ridiculously high cavalry bonuses, or it's very early in the game, cavalry are only really good for flanking, literally putting them on the margins of your army. In particular, a country like Russia has no good reason to field lots of cavalry, so the whole Cossack thing is mostly moot for them.
Some thoughts on the current situation:
- The main issue is that on a per-regiment basis, cavalry are too unreliable in terms of raw power. There are certain brief tech windows when cavalry has a significantly higher total damage modifier (fire+shock) or a better unit type than infantry, but then infantry almost immediately catches up, because infantry upgrades are far more frequent. Also, you can't rely on rolling a high-shock general, which is absolutely essential for getting cavalry to work well. So most of the time, at best they are slightly better per regiment than infantry. But that doesn't justify the huge difference in cost. Could the cavalry unit and damage modifier upgrades be made more frequent, so that they aren't quasi-obsolete for large stretches of the tech progression? Maybe the base cost of cavalry regiments should be a bit lower, say 2 times infantry instead of 2.5 times? Also, can we please have a revision of the unit types list to recognise the fact that a cavalry offensive fire pip is worth much less than an offensive shock pip? All those 'dragoon' cavalry unit types are a waste of time because they simply don't have the offensive power to do anything. (Supposedly cavalry-loving Muslim-tech countries especially suffer from their poor unit selection.)
- Insufficient support only punishes too much cavalry - there's no corresponding penalty for having no cavalry, nor for too much artillery (unless you literally can't fit all your artillery on the back row, which is a crazy proportion of artillery). The current setup is especially unreasonable for countries that historically used a lot of cavalry but are in a 'low cavalry' tech group, such as Ottomans (this one is especially weird, as the Ottomans historically used much higher proportions of cavalry than their Christian opponents) and hordes that reform into Chinese units. Instead of a penalty for too much cav, maybe it would be better to have a combined arms bonus for having a non-zero but not excessive cav:inf ratio?
- Cavalry flanking as currently implemented is an inherently marginal role: you get free hits on the enemy, but only over a strictly limited number of files, whereas artillery are landing free hits on the enemy from the entire back row, *and* they can flank like cavalry can. Maybe cavalry flanking range should also let them hit targets on the back rank (assuming these targets are near the edge of the front rank), with double damage against enemy artillery? This would also make cavalry useful later on as a counter to excessive artillery.
- One way to bring cavalry closer to their historical role in the late game would be to give cavalry units large amounts of offensive morale pips. Relative to his ability to kill you, a guy standing or walking towards you and pointing a stick at you is less scary than a guy charging at you on a horse. So at high tech levels, an army with a relatively high proportion of cavalry in it (say half as many cavalry as infantry) will take relatively high losses per phase in battle (due to their lack of fire defence), but it has a good chance of scoring a quick win against an inferior enemy through morale damage, whereas armies with only the bare minimum of cavalry have to grind the enemy down more.
Some thoughts on the current situation:
- The main issue is that on a per-regiment basis, cavalry are too unreliable in terms of raw power. There are certain brief tech windows when cavalry has a significantly higher total damage modifier (fire+shock) or a better unit type than infantry, but then infantry almost immediately catches up, because infantry upgrades are far more frequent. Also, you can't rely on rolling a high-shock general, which is absolutely essential for getting cavalry to work well. So most of the time, at best they are slightly better per regiment than infantry. But that doesn't justify the huge difference in cost. Could the cavalry unit and damage modifier upgrades be made more frequent, so that they aren't quasi-obsolete for large stretches of the tech progression? Maybe the base cost of cavalry regiments should be a bit lower, say 2 times infantry instead of 2.5 times? Also, can we please have a revision of the unit types list to recognise the fact that a cavalry offensive fire pip is worth much less than an offensive shock pip? All those 'dragoon' cavalry unit types are a waste of time because they simply don't have the offensive power to do anything. (Supposedly cavalry-loving Muslim-tech countries especially suffer from their poor unit selection.)
- Insufficient support only punishes too much cavalry - there's no corresponding penalty for having no cavalry, nor for too much artillery (unless you literally can't fit all your artillery on the back row, which is a crazy proportion of artillery). The current setup is especially unreasonable for countries that historically used a lot of cavalry but are in a 'low cavalry' tech group, such as Ottomans (this one is especially weird, as the Ottomans historically used much higher proportions of cavalry than their Christian opponents) and hordes that reform into Chinese units. Instead of a penalty for too much cav, maybe it would be better to have a combined arms bonus for having a non-zero but not excessive cav:inf ratio?
- Cavalry flanking as currently implemented is an inherently marginal role: you get free hits on the enemy, but only over a strictly limited number of files, whereas artillery are landing free hits on the enemy from the entire back row, *and* they can flank like cavalry can. Maybe cavalry flanking range should also let them hit targets on the back rank (assuming these targets are near the edge of the front rank), with double damage against enemy artillery? This would also make cavalry useful later on as a counter to excessive artillery.
- One way to bring cavalry closer to their historical role in the late game would be to give cavalry units large amounts of offensive morale pips. Relative to his ability to kill you, a guy standing or walking towards you and pointing a stick at you is less scary than a guy charging at you on a horse. So at high tech levels, an army with a relatively high proportion of cavalry in it (say half as many cavalry as infantry) will take relatively high losses per phase in battle (due to their lack of fire defence), but it has a good chance of scoring a quick win against an inferior enemy through morale damage, whereas armies with only the bare minimum of cavalry have to grind the enemy down more.
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