Cathay Peasant Horsemen - just fantastic?

[Meriwether]

Hear me out.

As one of the primary roles of light cav in a sweeper role is chasing off routed units, it seems Peasant Horsemen can't be beat. Why do I say this? Thank you for asking and allow me to explain, dear reader.

If you have experience with light cav, you will no doubt have noticed that they are generally quite bad at running down fleeing infantry. They wheel around like a flock of migrating birds, bumping over entities without attacking, all the while burning vigor points like crazy and generally getting little done.

Sure, they will get some kills, but it is painfully slow. This is why Warhounds are so valued despite them being generally weak - they won't bump over entities and will in fact rip through fleeing troops.

ENTER THE PEASANT HORSEMAN.
They are as fast as other light cav, similar in attack, defence and charge stats , but they have a leaping, lunging attack that actually lets them hit entities whilst chasing. Peasant Horsemen will rip down fleeing troops faster than any other light cav, including glass-cannons like Doomfire Warlocks. I've had two units run down over 200 troops each whilst getting only winded, a feat that even Warhounds would struggle to match.

So why aren't other light cav designed to do this? Are we saying that Glade Riders and Ellyrian Reavers, Dark Riders and Kossovite Dervishes, Skeleton Horsemen and Mounted Yeoman don't know how to make a horse jump, but Peasants do?

Discuss - it'll make a nice change from all the usual complaints

[Fear2288]

In general, Cathay’s peasant troops are a lot more useful than what you’d expect and they can hold their own pretty well against early and mid game units.

Certainly not like the Bretonnian peasant troops which always seem a lot less effective and more easily routed.

I think this is due in part to the unit roster of Cathay. Compared to most other factions, Cathay’s roster is noticeably smaller and so it’s balanced in a way to accomodate that.

Thus peasants are supposed to be viable in the early/mid game, Jade troops in the mid/late, and celestial in the late.

With larger rosters, the other factions have troops that become “obsolete” a lot faster and a greater variety of units that fulfill specific roles. Their units tend to lose their viability a lot faster when compared to Cathay’s.