Are Cavalry bad in Single Player?

[enricofermi2]

I really like using cavarly/chariots but after using them a bunch they just don't feel great in single player.

I do want to note that I play in very hard battle difficulty which effects stuff.

It just feels like a combination of a bunch of things which make them not tend to be super useful.

1. The AI has all ranged units on skirmish, This seems to decrease the charge effectiveness because your and their units are moving in same direction.

2. The AI often outnumbers you in fights (It's expected that you outplay them to win). The issue is that leadership is tied to balance of power, so you have a difficult time routing units at all early in the battle. You can only really start routing and chasing down units once the fight is already won.

3. The AI combat bonuses from difficulty make charging less effective. More leadership means they don't rout, and more attack/defense means that you deal less and take more damage.

4. The AI blobs up units. Generally speaking you want the enemy to blob, but this is actually bad for cav. You cant charge through a blob of units, and you will end up with half of units stuck in the blob, and then they die trying to pull out. Blobbing means your better off just bringing AOE, ranged, or monsters.

I have gotten solid value out of higher tier cav like horned ones, who have enough stats to not need to rely on their charge bonus to win fights. Still it feels like the game is stacked against cav.

[Ferreus the Umbral Arrow]

Originally posted by funkmonster7:

Originally posted by Skragrott the LoonKing:

When you pull out, you take attrition damage as I understand it. It is meant to punish cycle charging a LITTLE bit. Otherwise people abuse it.
Against wolf riders, I'd let the Blood knights fight it out and just boost them with vanhels and invocation of nehek.

Attrition damage? First time I hear of it. It's not actually logical. Shock cavs are designed to cycle charge. Why punish them for doing the very thing they're supposed to do?

If you mean they get hit as they try to pull out, yes that's true. But your initial impact hits harder than anything they can do to you. Losing a few models is not a big deal compared to what you did to them.

As I said before, when you play at higher battle difficulties, you basically negate that very advantage shock cavs have. So either lower the difficulty or don't use shock cavs. But they're by no means useless, unless you 'use mods' to make it so.

I say use mods, because there's no difference between using mods to simulate difficulty by giving AI buffs, and doing it with a vanilla setting. We tend to use mods to make things easier. It doesn't change the fact that you can use one to up the difficulty. So the solution is don't use mods. Simple.

they take attrition dmg. I dunno if it's a new thing or what, but I either read it or one of the youtube shills were talking about it. An I have noticed it since the latest patch at least. Might be worth skimming over the patch notes. I know they wanted to "shake the meta"
Something I hate. Because they will nerf or buff units across the board, not just for multiplayer. SOOO if something is performing well in MP, they will nerf it and it will suffer in single player.
Something that always irritated me in MMOs. Companies (most of them) are either too lazy, or too stupid to separate MP and SP balancing.

[kekkuli]

Depends on a cavalry really. I personally dislike weak cavalry like pistoliers and marauder horsemen but something like demigryphs, grail knights or even knights of the realm are invaluable when used correctly. In fact bretonnian full cavalry army is one of the strongest in the campaign imo.

[Wh♂♂par]

Eh. Are you sure about that "attrition"? When they pull out, they normally face with their sides or back, lowering MD to much lower percentages.

[Haggis]

Very hard battle difficulty makes a lot of units obsolete or at makes them massively under-perform. Shock cavalry are designed to hit hard and fast and break the morale of their enemy after inflicting high damage. The insane leadership buffs coupled with the melee defence buffs make this significantly less effective on higher difficulties.

Very hard battle difficulty basically funnels you into abusing ranged weapons and magic because they still do 100% damage against the enemy whilst melee infantry and fear/terror causing units are massively nerfed. With some factions you can brute force your way to victory by abusing faction strengths; for instance the t1/2 melee infantry of Lizardmen are so powerful that they just straight up mash through clanrats and skeleton spears even with their ridiculous buffs; but in general you are far better off just massing ranged infantry.

Very hard battle difficulty basically sucks. CA's approach to making the game more difficult in reality just forces you into a singular playstyle, essentially making a good portion of their game and its design completely irrelevant.

[Zane87]

Originally posted by Skragrott the LoonKing:

Originally posted by Fähnrich Ingram König:

I kind of agree to an extent. I returned to the Vampire Counts recently and found that Blood Knights are really kind of frustrating to use and it mirrors a lot of similar frustrations I've had with other factions cav. Sometimes they would deal poor damage on a good downhill charge in a solid but not loose formation to the rear of an unbraced enemy unit and then get stuck in the mess, refusing to extricate themselves regardless of how many times I gave the order. They also seemed to get hit hard by any form of ranged unit, even goblin archers managing to take off models after only 2 volleys while they were on the move.

But then sometimes I'd absently right-click them onto something, not particularly caring, and they'd just smash into the front of a braced halbard unit for critical damage.

700+ hours and lots of guides later I still feel like cav is a part-time arcane ritual that will either misfire and leave my expensive unit half-dead after being choked up on a single ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ unit of goblins with spears, or they'll pillage and conquer like the Blood God intended. Which will I get? Dunno. Terrain, formation, speed, direction, unit size and all of that seems to matter until it just doesn't. Does Calvary have value? Absolutely. Can it be frustrating as all hell to watch some cheap garbage infantry batter your beautiful horsie bois because your unit just decided NOT to do a charge animation after charging halfway across the map to get to your target? Absolutely.

2000hrs here, and if you can't make blood knights work and dominate....somethin's wrong man lol.
God Vamp counts have the BEST blitzing capabilities. Tie up archers with bats or summons, slam into them with blood knights or hex wraiths. Even black knights. You route everything, mulch everything. Throw in some vargheists and yeah XD You won't even notice your graveguard.

Agreed.
Blood Knights are great, if they underperform it's not their fault, it's the fault of the player.

[Ferreus the Umbral Arrow]

Originally posted by Wh♂♂par:

Eh. Are you sure about that "attrition"? When they pull out, they normally face with their sides or back, lowering MD to much lower percentages.

am not 100%, no - but as I said, I either read about it recently or heard about it from one of the youtubers. If I find where it was I saw/heard it, will post it.

[Ferreus the Umbral Arrow]

Originally posted by Zane87:

Originally posted by Skragrott the LoonKing:

2000hrs here, and if you can't make blood knights work and dominate....somethin's wrong man lol.
God Vamp counts have the BEST blitzing capabilities. Tie up archers with bats or summons, slam into them with blood knights or hex wraiths. Even black knights. You route everything, mulch everything. Throw in some vargheists and yeah XD You won't even notice your graveguard.

Agreed.
Blood Knights are great, if they underperform it's not their fault, it's the fault of the player.

Blood Knights might just be the best heavy cav in the game tbh

[SoulHunterWirriam]

Just turn the battle difficulty down. The higher you go the number of viable builds goes lower. On legendary campaign and normal battle difficulty almost everything is viable. On legendary and very hard battle difficulty going melee heavy without sufficient magic and skill support can be very frustrating. The thing is most of those buffs go to melee stats and only reload speed is affected by battle difficulty for ranged warfare. This enforces armies that are missile heavy while the melee focused factions need more focus and micro to get results. For example you can win easily with Vampire Counts on legendary and VH battle difficulty by having multiple casters that will cast buffing and debuffing spells or hitting enemy units when profitable.

Cavalry is perfectly viable in this game. You just need to practice your micro with cycle charging and never leaving your cav in sustained combat unless they can easily handle it. The reason for this is because the charge bonus expires after around 10 seconds.

Another thing is that you need to recognise the natural strengths and synergies that cavalry has with each faction. For example while playing the Empire you will want to have a warrior priest always near your cavalry units for the added buffs he can cast. This nets multiple kill easily.

If you dont want the Ai to blob make a wide formation from your frontline and order them to move in formation or control lock them to engage the AI on a wide front. The AI usually does the same to engage every unit.

Skirmishers can be countered. Use either range, magic, or simply flank them. They will often react too late and engage in combat. This lowers their value already.

The most dmg to leadership is done by kills. A good cavalry charge can net multiple kills and morale reduction. The unit will rout and you can capitalize on this by ordering one unit to futher beat it down to the point of shatter if possible and profitable. Take into consideration that this wont always work on higher battle difficulties because the AI gets a IIRC +10 LD bonus so some units will fight literaly do the last model.

[Kameh]

Cav, bad in single player? ROFL

[Inardesco]

From the factions I've played with cav (Empire, WE, HE, DE, TK) the only ones I used cavalry as a base ingredient in the army was Wood Elves and Empire. Both High and Dark elf cavalry (bar Dragon Princes) are just terrible in my opinion when put against their "natural" enemies.

[Ogdai_Smasz]

There's only one answer to this question - it depends how you use them

[enricofermi2]

Originally posted by omnisarch:

On legendary campaign and normal battle difficulty almost everything is viable.

Legendary difficulty forces you to pick very hard battle difficulty, and prevents pausing.

[Hieronymus]

L2P issue, cav is still good.

[valky]

'Blood knights weak' ..yeah, sure....
also, there is no attrition while pulling out, whoever came up with that garbage should maybe looking at the table first, before doing such incredible 'strange' statement.
Shields in WH are nulled completely and don't provide any additional protection but missiles. In older titles (and recent 3k) they get additional defense, which is set to 65° (or something like that) protection frontal.

My Blood knights currently do some hell of wreckage ..even the 'lesser' Black Knights' .. maybe my game is bugged and it's vanilla
edit: even with proper-combat ^^

[Greldinart]

I agree with you,
shock cavalry isnt the ultimate weapon, they dont deal massive damage, they can have hvy damage by special unit or missile, and have problem to escape other lethal ground unit like heroe monster spear, they suck in siege...
i prefer :
1/light cavalry with missile, they are enough for deal deal with other cavalry, aerian, artillery and rooted ennemy....with skirmish stance by default they lvie their life in battle, wheras shock cavalry need cosntant watch
2/air cavalry...pterodactyle, varghesit, more usefull because safe from most of ground unit, you can make precise charge just where you want without going by flank, they have more speed. they are usefull in city siege.
3/ monster who act like cavalry, frontal or rear, they are easier at handle.

some cavalry like coldblood are ♥♥♥♥...yet some high tier cavalry like undead blood knights are exceptionnably reliable, not with basic statisics but with high morale resistance and charge bonus, thats enough for break most of ennemies.
i dont give a ♥♥♥♥ to chariot, they are boring to use with lot of micro, and fail most of their charge...