should I skip light cavalry

[coffeemm8]

are katana and/or yari cavalry just better?

[Trebor797]

Light cavalry has no advantage over Yari cavalry except the costs. But so is light cavalry enough to run down fleeing troops or great for using on risky maneuvers. Like a backside charge in the right moment can cause enemies to break, but also be risky if enemies have other units near that can kill ur cav

[BastardSword]

Katana/yari cav are better, but they are twice as expensive.

Similar to yari/bow ashigaru, I find that they are maybe 2/3rds as good as the more expensive versions, but are half the cost. But the more expensive units are still better, if you can afford them.

Light cav are quite good at killing of enemy generals. Other than that they're just kinda eh. Yari cav are way better at killing cavalry, and katana cavalry are way better at smashing into melee units.

[RammerTime!]

The most important merit of light cavalry, which many players neglected, is that the light cavalry has the largest recon range to discover enemy hidden troops in the forest or any units with special hidden skills like kiso ninja. Light cavalry's recon range is about the same as the shooting range of bow ashigarus, so it could safely recon the enemy location without being shot by hidden bow units. Unfortunately in the single player campaign or even avatar matches this trait hardly got any use, but in the drop-in battles I did find it very useful (or annoying if the opponent send light cavalry to thwart my ambush)

[ZED]

In campaign just skip them.

[Datau]

One thing that has yet to be mentioned: you need horses (the resource) to train better cavalry. This is usually not a problem, but some clans may not have access to it in the early game.

[MFD Suraj]

They can't be the bones of armi , but some here and there can give chance to diversive tactics, i like them. Also other cavalry.

[markeason]

I find light cavalry are absolutely invaluable.

I don't have them in the army, the only mounted unit I occasionally have in an army is bow cavalry. All the others are too easily countered by the cheapest unit in the game, so there are better places to invest koku.

My light cavalry operate independently, they may reinforce an army in a battle if they are in range, but that is not their prime role for me.

I use the light cavalry on the campaign map to sabotage infrastructure outside the town (port, farms, mines, resources, speciality buildings etc) and then besiege the fort to prevent recruitment and, in the case of the home province, trade. Six light cavalry each performing this role will trash an enemies economy very quickly and can bring them to peace without ever fighting a battle (useful when you are turtling and not wanting to expand).

The damage done to the infrastructure is minimal, but negates all bonuses that it gives the owner and means that, if you decide later to capture the province, the repair cost is low.

The other benefit of having a light cavalry unit precede the army is that it will trip any ambush that your agents have failed to spot. Losing a light cavalry unit is a small price to pay compared to having your ashigaru army ambushed by an AI samurai/monk stack or two.

[MFD Suraj]

Also in early game it help finish the routing enemy , so the second battle is just cakewalk.
In autoresolve are just useless , but in manual fight a single unit of light cavalry can drive enemy out of position and gain the upperhand for the rest of the armi.
Bow cavarly is good instead also for autoresolve( they gain experience quickly and with few losses) if the stack composition have a decent amount of bow ashigaru/samuray.
Not more than 2 units anyway.

[markeason]

Originally posted by MFD Suraj:

Also in early game it help finish the routing enemy , so the second battle is just cakewalk.
In autoresolve are just useless , but in manual fight a single unit of light cavalry can drive enemy out of position and gain the upperhand for the rest of the armi.
Bow cavarly is good instead also for autoresolve( they gain experience quickly and with few losses) if the stack composition have a decent amount of bow ashigaru/samuray.
Not more than 2 units anyway.

I get bow cavalry because they are fun to use in manual battle, I don't recruit for auto-resolve capability :)

[Milites]

Originally posted by markeason:

I find light cavalry are absolutely invaluable.

I don't have them in the army, the only mounted unit I occasionally have in an army is bow cavalry. All the others are too easily countered by the cheapest unit in the game, so there are better places to invest koku.

My light cavalry operate independently, they may reinforce an army in a battle if they are in range, but that is not their prime role for me.

I use the light cavalry on the campaign map to sabotage infrastructure outside the town (port, farms, mines, resources, speciality buildings etc) and then besiege the fort to prevent recruitment and, in the case of the home province, trade. Six light cavalry each performing this role will trash an enemies economy very quickly and can bring them to peace without ever fighting a battle (useful when you are turtling and not wanting to expand).

The damage done to the infrastructure is minimal, but negates all bonuses that it gives the owner and means that, if you decide later to capture the province, the repair cost is low.

The other benefit of having a light cavalry unit precede the army is that it will trip any ambush that your agents have failed to spot. Losing a light cavalry unit is a small price to pay compared to having your ashigaru army ambushed by an AI samurai/monk stack or two.

sounds like the playstyle from an old TW player from Empire or Napoleon. There are plenty of villages in Empire TW to be pillaged, but in Shogun 2 only farms, ports and specialty buildings

[MFD Suraj]

Originally posted by markeason:

Originally posted by MFD Suraj:

Also in early game it help finish the routing enemy , so the second battle is just cakewalk.
In autoresolve are just useless , but in manual fight a single unit of light cavalry can drive enemy out of position and gain the upperhand for the rest of the armi.
Bow cavarly is good instead also for autoresolve( they gain experience quickly and with few losses) if the stack composition have a decent amount of bow ashigaru/samuray.
Not more than 2 units anyway.

I get bow cavalry because they are fun to use in manual battle, I don't recruit for auto-resolve capability :)

Do you play manually also fullstack armies battles ?
Probably this the worst part of shogun 2 , you get better results with autoresolve most of the times , in big battles.

[BlackKatana]

Originally posted by MFD Suraj:

you get better results with autoresolve most of the times , in big battles.

Thats just not true, or you are bad at tactics.

[markeason]

Originally posted by Milites:

sounds like the playstyle from an old TW player from Empire or Napoleon. There are plenty of villages in Empire TW to be pillaged, but in Shogun 2 only farms, ports and specialty buildings

You're not wrong.

I have both but never really got around to playing them as much as I would have liked. Then I picked up shogun in 2020 and had the time to play.

I tried going back to the earlier titles but they didn't stand up to the quality of shogun which, for me, was a great shame as Napoleonic is my preferred time period.

But the tactic works just the same. It can lure full stack armies away from the theatre you want to fight in as they chase down single light cavalry units.

And because the AI tries to perpetually run very high tax rate, the sabotaged buildings and drop in income from farms, special resources etc forces them to choose between reducing tax or facing rebellion. You can see their wealth status decline in the diplomacy screen.

Most satisfying :)

[markeason]

Originally posted by MFD Suraj:

Originally posted by markeason:

I get bow cavalry because they are fun to use in manual battle, I don't recruit for auto-resolve capability :)

Do you play manually also fullstack armies battles ?
Probably this the worst part of shogun 2 , you get better results with autoresolve most of the times , in big battles.

I auto-resolve when the odds are massively in my favour and I am too lazy to fight a battle where, for example, I have 2 full stacks against a single AI stack.

If it's only marginally in my favour or worse, I will fight it manually. In a full scale battle I expect to get significantly better results than auto-resolve would give.

[easytarget]

Originally posted by BlackKatana:

Originally posted by MFD Suraj:

you get better results with autoresolve most of the times , in big battles.

Thats just not true, or you are bad at tactics.

If I bring 3 stacks against 1 my losses are negligible enough I consider them trivial and hardly worth the time and effort to fight manually.

So when we're talking large I suppose it would be good to first establish what large even is.

I consider 60 vs 20 or even 40 large. And given how the game mechanics work you can in fact lose a fair number of men fighting what in fact turns into 20x20 until the 2nd army gets into play which can frankly depending the map be rather late verging on never making it to the party at all.

In which case auto does in fact produce better results. In most cases for me at least, YMMV.

Edit: Oh and back to the thread topic, meh, I like light cav. I like running down routing armies as early as possible in a campaign. Light cav do this perfectly well.