Light Cavalry

[Cron]

Why light cavalry is in such bad spot right now?
I believe in many factions light cavalry takes seperate building chain slot so you need to sacrifice something for it, but why would one deliberately do so?
I think the only thing in which light cav really shine is taking out artillery as AI often leaves it unprotected.
First thing that comes to mind is that it should also trash ranged units, but in fact it isn't true.
Many factions have hybrid ranged units at disposal and AI tends to recruit them. I did run some tests on 100x100 map, so basically enemy units had no opportunity at all to shoot or they performed one volley.
Tested on Normal difficulty, as we know on hard or very hard it would be much worse.

I did use Dark Raiders with shields.

They lost against:
Lothern Sea Guard (obviously)
Dark Ark Corsairs
Free Company Militia
Night Runners
Quarrellers with Great Weapons

Won slighty against regular Quarrellers

And there is one exception that Dark Raiders not only consistently won against, i would say they consistently trashed that unit:
Orc Arrer Boyz and Savage Orc Arrer Boyz
CA where is rework???

[THEDOSSBOSS]

So you're saying that dark riders are able to deal with every range unit except those select few

And have you taken into account rear charges?

With just war dogs, I have found a lot of use in light cav. Their ability to outrun everything and get to range IS valuable. As soon as they take out an artillery unit, they have paid for themselves. Being able to kill a unit or two of ranged infantry, or cycle charging the rear of the engaged enemy line, is just icing on the cake

Then we get to light cav like wild riders, who are capable of so much more

[Raider Deci]

Originally posted by Cron:

Why light cavalry is in such bad spot right now?

2 major reasons. First they lack the charge-bonus to do anything. Second and the major reason is that the game is not design around breaking units but rather killing them, and the units themself are more stat-based. Cav is made to break units rather than kill. Similar to ex Rome2 where units just shrug of a charge unlike say shogun2, attila or medieval2. Cav is with fewer entities against large masses. So cav overall suffer (except highest tier, but thats more brute force through high stats than anything else)

[cb4n28]

Many of them are expendable, meaning it doesn't matter so much if they get thrashed in melee by ranged. There's still value in bogging down ranged units and keeping them from firing while your infantry advances, even if ultimately your light cav or similar unit ends up getting beaten up and retreating.

A cheap unit thay can keep high damage enemy units out of the fight for a bit while soaking damage that would otherwise be absorbed by your more expensive units has value and utility

[Ashley]

I wouldn't waste my time with black riders when I could at the same time just build shades that are high quality in the range department. Big pass.

[MeDaDaddy]

Dark Riders' advantage is vanguard deploy and speed, so as others above have mentioned, their use is context-specific.

Want to tie down enemy archers/artillery? Great.
Want to charge into units? Not so great. They aren't shock Cav.
Want to charge into units with charge defence? Wave goodbye.

They have Attack and Defence stats but are good "skirmishers" so are prolly best used in pairs so that 1 unit can charge a rear.

Really, they are early-game only optional/ sacrificial units and useful only because they are quick and can deploy Vanguard.

[Hurricane]

Unit is designed to chase down retreating units.

Even heavy cav struggles vrs nearly every unit its supposed to beat 1v1...

I think black knights have faster attack speed or something because these even being a t2 cav unit do very well vrs infantry yet reiksguard suck??? Better stats all round but take forever to actually do any dps.

Cav in warhammer is a bit meh.

The only cav that is fire and forget is chaos knights and grail knights. The rest is a mess. Even cycle charging is fruitless most times and taking heavy infantry is just better all round.. its like cav lose their stats in melee and do nothing or its an animation bug. Either way they are pretty weak most the time.

Look at lotrs cav charge it just torpedos through infantry. In attila tw cav is kinda like this it ruins infantry. In warhammer cav kills the front line and then gets stuck. Its terrible compared to what it should be. It looks strong but does no damage...

Knights errant vrs skeleton swordsman should 1 shot them yet gets stuck on them and takes forever to kill them. While peasant archers can just rek them at ranged. A unit 3 times cheaper almost.

Cav need big buffs. Expensive upkeep and cost to produce yet do nothing.

[Kaaz]

everything melee struggles in legendary, that's not a cavalry thing

[Tritium]

How to use Light Cavalry:

- Tie down ranged units and artillery.

- Making sure that high damage expensive unit you just routed doesn't rally and rejoin the fight.

- Flanking and rear charging. (Just make sure another unit is fighting it before you charge in)

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by Kaaz:

everything melee struggles in legendary, that's not a cavalry thing

No it doesnt... elite infantry is the strongest unit...

Well ranged ap is due to no nerfs but then elite infantry.

A group of greatswords is just better value than a group of reiksguard.

Infantry is either too tanky or cav is too weak. Either change can fix this. A cav buff is the best fix as you dont wanna nerf infantry too much for ranged damage or spells.

Even without the md buff in legendary cav still sucks.

[Kaaz]

Originally posted by Tritium-X:

How to use Light Cavalry:

- Tie down ranged units and artillery.

- Making sure that high damage expensive unit you just routed doesn't rally and rejoin the fight.

- Flanking and rear charging. (Just make sure another unit is fighting it before you charge in)

^ light cav generally has the hefty speed too, so artillery tying up is a prime target for them

[Prisoner 76561197992841073]

Originally posted by Hurricane:

Originally posted by Kaaz:

everything melee struggles in legendary, that's not a cavalry thing

No it doesnt... elite infantry is the strongest unit...

Well ranged ap is due to no nerfs but then elite infantry.

A group of greatswords is just better value than a group of reiksguard.

Infantry is either too tanky or cav is too weak. Either change can fix this. A cav buff is the best fix as you dont wanna nerf infantry too much for ranged damage or spells.

Even without the md buff in legendary cav still sucks.

yeah melee is crap in legendary, greatswords are a waste - at least reiksguard could skirmish a missile unit or run down a routing unit. elite infantry are crap unless you boost them, get the lord skills, upgrades, etc, and for all that you couldve just got some artillery or a missile unit

either way greatswords/reiksguard are both trash units on legendary, trash units in general as well tbh except maybe on easy mode

with factions like HE/DE, you should literally just spam shades /sisters of avelorn instead of wasting money on black guards or phoenix guards, this game is heavily skewed to favour ranged combat

[Wyvern]

All cav classes are fine(some specific examples might not be but thats beside the point). Light cav struggles for similar reasons to why other low tier melee trash struggles on legendary, the system is just not favorable to melee, and where heavy cav can get monstrous stats or charge to compensate(which makes cav scale better than infantry in this game) light cav does not. It still beats the vast majority of missiles without cycle charging and in reality can ping pong and disrupt a massive chunk of the enemy backline

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by Jewstorm:

Originally posted by Hurricane:

No it doesnt... elite infantry is the strongest unit...

Well ranged ap is due to no nerfs but then elite infantry.

A group of greatswords is just better value than a group of reiksguard.

Infantry is either too tanky or cav is too weak. Either change can fix this. A cav buff is the best fix as you dont wanna nerf infantry too much for ranged damage or spells.

Even without the md buff in legendary cav still sucks.

yeah melee is crap in legendary, greatswords are a waste - at least reiksguard could skirmish a missile unit or run down a routing unit. elite infantry are crap unless you boost them, get the lord skills, upgrades, etc, and for all that you couldve just got some artillery or a missile unit

either way greatswords/reiksguard are both trash units on legendary, trash units in general as well tbh except maybe on easy mode

with factions like HE/DE, you should literally just spam shades /sisters of avelorn instead of wasting money on black guards or phoenix guards, this game is heavily skewed to favour ranged combat

Nah GS last a while and can hold the line perfectly well, most empire lords buff them too so they end up even better.

They also melt all infantry even dwarfs, they only suck vrs vranged AP and chaos infantry. They soak charges perfectly well too.

While reiksguard even with buffs does nothing... ZERO DPS, i suppose they can distract ranged fire as they are kinda tanky outside of melee but thats about it. Even rear charges they have zero impact.

GS can also help in siege defense... GS is far far far better and the best line infantry empire has so a few is basically needed to hold while your ranged reks everything.

[luci-27master]

As stated by me da daddy are, light cav very situational

Since they are so fast can you use them as auxelery if a unit starts to lose the fight on the other side of the map/line/city

Or you suddenly got an gap in your lines and and need an unit to "hold" it for a few seconds until the other units arrive

Catching fast monsters who are fleeing from your slow Speer men

[Sn3z]

I believe in many factions light cavalry takes seperate building chain slot so you need to sacrifice something for it, but why would one deliberately do so?

Because all the basic military buildings T1-T3 and by extension T3-T5 when put together for every faction form rudimentary army compositions. The high growth rates you can stack and skip tiers is at complete odds with this as is playing on single building chains until progessing into advanced tiers. The proving grounds did try to address this in ways but I think the game was slowed down far to much.