Horse Lords ideal horde composition?

[los_tomatos]

Title says it all

[CosmicOdeum]

jfoytek님이 먼저 게시:

All I can say is why pay maintanance out the butt for Heavy cavalry.... There should be zero reason you cant crush anything and anyone with the cheepest horde?!?

.02 and 25 Gold is the only one that makes sense.... IMHO

No reason to pay far too much for so few troops no matter how beastly they maybe!

In single player yeah. If you're playing against a human player with heavy your light will die. Fast.

[Warlordnipple]

I am only using hordes not specifically a religion. I would guess that a lot of people are playing as Manichean and Jewish Hordes. If you add up all the buildings then light cav has the same bonuses as horse archers do, not counting composite bow. So yea I already knew they ahd bonus buildings but horse archers still have a 50% bonus over light cav as Tengri and 80% as anyone else.

The pursuit difference becomes negligible when the extra attack from composite bow is added in. The gold cost for troops is actually a lot less than the prestige cost for troops for some reason. Not sure if it is a bug or what, but the only time it really matters is when they are regenerating manpower and because prestige cost seems to be hgiher and you can only increase prestige so much before it will be a drain no matter how large you are (I kind of doubt you want to create extra empire titles to maintain troops). Gold obviously will increase as you increase.

Overdoing prestige troops is a pretty common early mistake for people trying out hordes early, especially because hordes care so much about prestige. You get or lose clan sentiment based on prestige and you can only start ducal wars with prestige until you have taken pretty much the whole steppe.

I fell into the light cav trap as a Zorastrian (former Manichean) horde fighting Tengri, and it bit me in the ass pretty hard. Unless you are Tengri the light cav can really suck in the steppe and after.

[CosmicOdeum]

Warlordnipple님이 먼저 게시:

I am only using hordes not specifically a religion. I would guess that a lot of people are playing as Manichean and Jewish Hordes. If you add up all the buildings then light cav has the same bonuses as horse archers do, not counting composite bow. So yea I already knew they ahd bonus buildings but horse archers still have a 50% bonus over light cav as Tengri and 80% as anyone else.

The pursuit difference becomes negligible when the extra attack from composite bow is added in. The gold cost for troops is actually a lot less than the prestige cost for troops for some reason. Not sure if it is a bug or what, but the only time it really matters is when they are regenerating manpower and because prestige cost seems to be hgiher and you can only increase prestige so much before it will be a drain no matter how large you are (I kind of doubt you want to create extra empire titles to maintain troops). Gold obviously will increase as you increase.

Overdoing prestige troops is a pretty common early mistake for people trying out hordes early, especially because hordes care so much about prestige. You get or lose clan sentiment based on prestige and you can only start ducal wars with prestige until you have taken pretty much the whole steppe.

I fell into the light cav trap as a Zorastrian (former Manichean) horde fighting Tengri, and it bit me in the ass pretty hard. Unless you are Tengri the light cav can really suck in the steppe and after.

You must be extremely bad at the game if you think you can run out of prestige as a horse. Simply not possible. My empire stretches from Anxi to Bulgaria, and I never used horse archers.
Not that I used pure light of course, I stuck with my heavy/light mix to the end. And now I've settled.
The Uyghurs are gone. Long live Tartaria!
Abbasids beware, thunder descends from the north! The empire of light will be restored!
Ahem. Anyway, HA bad, LC good. That's no trap, you're just bad at the game.

[Warlordnipple]

You are using light cav that cost gold then. The prestige costs become insane if you are actually fighting battles.

Yea I would stay away from being bad accusations, since apparently you did not realise composite bows can go up to +80%. My empire is actually much larger than yours and I did it in about 200 years starting as a Mongol Tributary of Kirghiz. Conquering the Steppe is a pretty pathetically easy task because the AI does not seem to understand they need toupgrade their cap holding.

If you only have the steppe You may still be using the prestige LC tho, just you would only have like 15k troops. My Empire is all of Russia, Finland, Lithuania, Tartaria, Persia, Byzantium, and Western Rajastan, and Arabia up to Egypt. I conquered all os Hispania, Africa, and Egpy, but released them as Feudal Tengri Kingdoms of my dynasty, because my pillaging finger was tired.

Once you have a couple empire sunder your built and you are using the units that use prestige you may start to feel that -50 prestige while your men regenerate.

But really armies should just include Horse Archers and Elephants. The best Skirmish followed by a godly melee phase

[CosmicOdeum]

Warlordnipple님이 먼저 게시:

You are using light cav that cost gold then. The prestige costs become insane if you are actually fighting battles.

Yea I would stay away from being bad accusations, since apparently you did not realise composite bows can go up to +80%. My empire is actually much larger than yours and I did it in about 200 years starting as a Mongol Tributary of Kirghiz. Conquering the Steppe is a pretty pathetically easy task because the AI does not seem to understand they need toupgrade their cap holding.

If you only have the steppe You may still be using the prestige LC tho, just you would only have like 15k troops. My Empire is all of Russia, Finland, Lithuania, Tartaria, Persia, Byzantium, and Western Rajastan, and Arabia up to Egypt. I conquered all os Hispania, Africa, and Egpy, but released them as Feudal Tengri Kingdoms of my dynasty, because my pillaging finger was tired.

Once you have a couple empire sunder your built and you are using the units that use prestige you may start to feel that -50 prestige while your men regenerate.

But really armies should just include Horse Archers and Elephants. The best Skirmish followed by a godly melee phase

I don't only have the steppe. I have russia too. And I specifically did not conquor south because I wanted to invade them as a settled empire.
Continuing as a nomad after a certain point is just boring. But I guess if you're using horse archers, the tiny duchies you're fighting must still be a challenge to you.

[jfoytek]

Wow guys! Nomads are so over powered if you can't take over the world then you likely are not even human its so easy a cat could do it while dancing on the keyboard....

This whole discussion is almost silly....

A better discussion is why are Nomad's SO over powered vrs Feudal army's with even the highest Tech.... There really needs to be some balancing...

[CosmicOdeum]

jfoytek님이 먼저 게시:

Wow guys! Nomads are so over powered if you can't take over the world then you likely are not even human its so easy a cat could do it while dancing on the keyboard....

This whole discussion is almost silly....

A better discussion is why are Nomad's SO over powered vrs Feudal army's with even the highest Tech.... There really needs to be some balancing...

That's why I settled! I'm gonna keep gavelkind and conquor the world and let the entire map be divided amongst a bunch of Zoroastrian Uyghur tribal empires. Then I'll convert the save to EUIV. It will be glorious!

[Tymefor]

yeah as always with these sort of thread on the steam forums, they don't take combat tactics into account properly. both warlord and groovy are probably "right" in each of their games.

what is getting confused is TOTAL COMPOSITION vs FLANK COMPOSITION. a players total army composition will have a lot more to do with his meta-game. Eg cost vs prestige, total size for intimidation and anti AI aggression, siege and anti raiding considerations. This is what those two are mostly arguing about, and total changes depending on a particular games situation.

When I'm talking about "best", I'm referring to flank composition. When you have an army you'll notice it divided into 3 sections (flanks). To the right of the total army numbers (above that division) you'll see an arrow. If you click on that it lets you organise those flanks by regiment.

What you want to create is at least 1 of your flanks to be "perfect" this is called a BREAKTHROUGH FLANK. The spread sheet that I linked is the maths behind what is currently "perfect" organised by combat value. So for your horde you what to have 1 flank that is 100% HC the leader of that flank NEEDS to be brave and have a combat +14 , I like him to have holy warrior for even more rofls, but cavalry leader, flanker or aggressive leader work also.
that is the current "best" but if you look through the spreadsheet there are many other options which may suit your situation better

While my total army may be full of many random things at different stages of my game I will always try to build an incredible breakthrough flank. 3x perfect flanks and its game over lol.

[CosmicOdeum]

Rhodry님이 먼저 게시:

yeah as always with these sort of thread on the steam forums, they don't take combat tactics into account properly. both warlord and groovy are probably "right" in each of their games.

what is getting confused is TOTAL COMPOSITION vs FLANK COMPOSITION. a players total army composition will have a lot more to do with his meta-game. Eg cost vs prestige, total size for intimidation and anti AI aggression, siege and anti raiding considerations. This is what those two are mostly arguing about, and total changes depending on a particular games situation.

When I'm talking about "best", I'm referring to flank composition. When you have an army you'll notice it divided into 3 sections (flanks). To the right of the total army numbers (above that division) you'll see an arrow. If you click on that it lets you organise those flanks by regiment.

What you want to create is at least 1 of your flanks to be "perfect" this is called a BREAKTHROUGH FLANK. The spread sheet that I linked is the maths behind what is currently "perfect" organised by combat value. So for your horde you what to have 1 flank that is 100% HC the leader of that flank NEEDS to be brave and have a combat +14 , I like him to have holy warrior for even more rofls, but cavalry leader, flanker or aggressive leader work also.
that is the current "best" but if you look through the spreadsheet there are many other options which may suit your situation better

While my total army may be full of many random things at different stages of my game I will always try to build an incredible breakthrough flank. 3x perfect flanks and its game over lol.

Hey now, let's be clear:
Pure LC isn't always best, but it sometimes is the right choice. It is NEVER the right choice to have HA.

[Tymefor]

Well HA can still be very strong just depends what you are up against and what you are using.

Pure Horse Archers (Altaic) are actually the strongest during skirmish (attack) at 13.5 vs HC at 0.7 for the same phase. The problem is their defanse for that phase at which is the lowest at 2.7. what that means in real terms is that someone going heavy or wholly HA will feel a lot of smash in that phase as 13.5 is strong but they will have a lot of deaths every engagement. They will also wonder why they get WTF moments when they are up against a flank with a defense through that period of 10.

So basically a pure HA army can be strong but you are playing a numbers game relying on skirmish attack phase where you really only have a 3-4 combat edge on opposition. so as long as you have >30% on their flank youll always feel like your hammering.

But really try out a HC flank its so frakking lol. they have a 10 for skirmish defence which lols almost every other attack. and the moment your brave, aggressive commander rolls hell heroic countercharge for 660% ontop of a 20.5 (that's without capital buildings). Ive destroyed 5k flanks with 400 HC.

[CosmicOdeum]

That does sound pretty funny.

[Warlordnipple]

Rhodry님이 먼저 게시:

Pure heavy cavalry sims best on EVERY AREA. a 100% HC army dominates against any AI composition. Their combat value is sitting at 20.5

Warlordnipple님이 먼저 게시:

@Groovy Genie he specifically said Horse Lords DLC meaning as a nomad. You have not figure in any of the insanely massive bonuses that Horse Archers get because of the composite bow building

They also do over double damage in the Skirmish phase, which Europeans are pretty awful at. I have had many large battles that never get past the Skirmish phase because of my horse archer hordes

you are overvaluing that phase, with new army builds and commander, It is totally negated and your archer get rofl stomped by heroic countercharge. A minimum of 10% heavy cavalry is required for favorable tactics to fire, and specifically you need to have the "heroic countercharge" tactic available for this to be a superior fighting force to pure light cavalry. Heroic Countercharge fires most often when using a commander with martial 14+ who has the "Aggressive Leader" or "Brave" or "Cavalry Leader" traits. This is one of the more flexible favorable traits, so it shouldn't be too hard to field a few of these commanders with the mixed HC and LC troops, for a slight edge over pure LC (and, of course, lower prestige costs, if you care about that kind of thing).

actual number not "thoughts" here

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GUmYlDxNaIEi-OcdKm4c7AywsLr2m6fsvcusWQfORf0/edit#gid=0

you are forgetting about retreat and ambush, which would be available with 30% horse archers. The Skirmish phase cna potentially last forever and this tactic gives horse archers +200% offense. They also don't die very much in skirmish phase because no one else can bring that many good archers with that many upgrades, except the nomads. Europeans will have all of their units crushed within a few second of skirmish phase beginning, then once it gets to melee phase it reverts back to skirmish if you happen to be altaic and have a measley martial ability of 12.

The calculator you used also notes that one of the deficiencies is that the calculation is for a unit that never entered the skirmish phase. Obviously Horse Archers without composite bow in pure melee phase are not the best unit. Skirmish Phase is overall a weaker phase when it comes to deaths, the HA advantage comes from the fact that they can prolong Skirmish Phase indefinitely.

The list also does not include any of the bonuses from faction buildings, which is a pretty big amount for the Horse Lords.

[Warlordnipple]

Groovy Genie님이 먼저 게시:

Warlordnipple님이 먼저 게시:

You are using light cav that cost gold then. The prestige costs become insane if you are actually fighting battles.

Yea I would stay away from being bad accusations, since apparently you did not realise composite bows can go up to +80%. My empire is actually much larger than yours and I did it in about 200 years starting as a Mongol Tributary of Kirghiz. Conquering the Steppe is a pretty pathetically easy task because the AI does not seem to understand they need toupgrade their cap holding.

If you only have the steppe You may still be using the prestige LC tho, just you would only have like 15k troops. My Empire is all of Russia, Finland, Lithuania, Tartaria, Persia, Byzantium, and Western Rajastan, and Arabia up to Egypt. I conquered all os Hispania, Africa, and Egpy, but released them as Feudal Tengri Kingdoms of my dynasty, because my pillaging finger was tired.

Once you have a couple empire sunder your built and you are using the units that use prestige you may start to feel that -50 prestige while your men regenerate.

But really armies should just include Horse Archers and Elephants. The best Skirmish followed by a godly melee phase

I don't only have the steppe. I have russia too. And I specifically did not conquor south because I wanted to invade them as a settled empire.
Continuing as a nomad after a certain point is just boring. But I guess if you're using horse archers, the tiny duchies you're fighting must still be a challenge to you.

yea the tiny Duchies of the Knights Templar who can't even kill 500 of my men when they have armies of 20k vs my 12k.

Very sad that you don't understand how the game works fully so you must resort to attacking the competency of others to hide the fact that you don't really know what you are talking about.

[Warlordnipple]

@Groovy Genie - Must be pretty tough to play games without ironman on. Very Hard to win a game when you save scum, right?

[Langkard]

The numbers for the nomad horde armies are pretty straight forward.

When you can move your capital to Western Europe, you can get all heavy cavalry horde units, 250 HC per 100 gold. Combine an all heavy cav flank with a commander from a culture which gets cavalry bonuses (Frankish, German, Occitan, Norman, Breton commander) and you have the best possible nomad horde retinue.

Next best is if you can move your capital to India and get the nomad light cav + elephant units for 100 gold with the flank total = 80% LC / 20% elephants using a Tengri religion commander.

Third best is a capital in desert terrain for the LC + camel horde units with a flank total of 40% LC / 60% camels and a Tengri commander.

Since it is not possible to do the above early in the game, the next best mixes are:

90% light cav / 10% heavy cav (for the Heroic Countercharge to happen) + a Tengri commander for the Tengri light cavalry bonus. That means using a mix of the on all LC 250 unit for every 200 LC + 50 HC type until you get the 90/10% for a flank. Do not go below 10% HC. The whole point of having 10% HC instead of all LC is to get the heroic countercharge tactic to fire.

100% Light Cav with a Tengri commander is next best and obviously the easiest to acquire, especially early.

If you can find an Altaic culture commander, and ONLY then, 100% Horse Archers. Altaic commanders get a horse archer bonus, which is the only time you should ever be using horse archers.

There is more, such as what skills you need in a commander to get heroic countercharge to fire more often and other things. It is thoroughly and nicely explained at the end of a post about retinues by a someone over on the paradox forums here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/comprehensive-retinue-comparisons-for-horse-lords-2-4-x.872371/

Note that the above is only for nomads. For non-nomads the retinue options are much different, with heavy infantry especially pikes with Scottish commanders being the masters of battle. Camels are the best light cavalry. Archers, even horse archers (except with Altaic commanders) are consistently at the bottom of the list. Archers used to rule the battles, but this last DLC gutted them entirely. Archers are now only 1/5 as effective as they used to be. That means everything else got better respectively.