Light Cavalry vs. Steppe Lancer vs. Heavy Cavalry

[Silver]

I was thinking, especially as cumans, what you should use for close combat cavalry and I think the answer depends on your resources in relation to each other:

surplus of food, moderate gold: (elite) steppe lancer
either surplus of food and gold, or food and gold roughly the same level: heavy cavalry (paladin)
no gold: light cavalry (hussar)

I think the steppe lancer is basically a stepping stone in terms of power level from light cav line to heavy cav line. he costs gold, but not as much as heavy cav do, and is trained much faster due to the cuman tech, so it is much easier to raise an army of steppe lancers as your main melee cavalry than to wait an eternity raising paladins and the lancer has a faster chance of disposing of enemy monks or injured pikemen without taking damage due to his 1 ranged attack so they wont fold as easily to a pike wall as light cav do.

resort to hussars only if you really have run out of gold.

[Heimdall313]

There's already another thread with a good amount of useful info on the same topic.

tl;dr Steppe Lancers give a good power spike in early Castle age, similar to Eagle Warriors, can kite and kill basically any unit in that time frame. Later in the match, a handful can be mixed into your other cavalry (Knights and Hussar) to add an edge on Knight v Knight fights.
Mongol ones are probably the best ones, and mix exceptionally well with Mangudai/Cav Archer to raid.

[BirbNotBird]

Steppe alone in most case are bad bad. It's crucial to think Steppe as some sorts of artillery vehicles in modern war game. Sure they can pick a good fight on their own until being overwhelmed. Pair with other units for better results.

The trade of Steppe is giving an edge to existing combo, so magonel/scorpion/any AOE dmg output units work well in hurting the composition of Steppe + Meat shield.

[James3157]

Light cavalry is mainly good for scouting in addition to good against monks, archers, skirmishers, villagers, and siege weapons (except for scout because they are overall weak units even against siege weapons, but Teutons are also one of the few civilizations who do not have an upgrade for scouts), but are overall weaker than heavy cavalry and possibly weaker than steppe lancer as well.