Really, sedentary light cavalry should be a different unit from nomadic cavalry. They tend to have different tactics, for example sedentary cavalry (even light) sometimes operated as dragoons on foot and horse, whereas most nomadic cavalry would rather flee the battle than dismount. A few sedentary states had professional cavalry that fought like nomads despite not being such, but as a rule having a forge and trade routes and other things that come with being settled encourage heavier equipment in general. On the other hand Sarmatians and Mongols had very impressive and well armored cataphracts to go along with their traditional pony-and-archer troops.Cumandante wrote:That would be true if all Light Javelin Horse in the game were from nomadic peoples. There are many from settled nations as well.Cheimison wrote:Most nomadic horsemen would be considered expert horsemen by the standards of settled people. I'm sure that Numidians were life long riders and experienced in cavalry warfare. So were almost every single group of nomadic people from Mongolia to Morocco. Being expert horsemen is not exceptional for them, it's normal, and does not indicate military capacity greater than average.
Now, we can represent nomads' superiority in this role by making them more numerous, while keeping their quality Average. That is apparently how the developers went about it, and of course the accuracy of this approach is subjective.
But Light Horse, while mostly from nomadic factions, are not exclusively available to them.
I don't necessarily think that the Numidians should be better but there should probably be more variables in unit types overall. The actual tabletop game is quite good about this, but it wasn't translated over for learning curve reasons. I hope modders bring it back in.
