Do you prefer light spear cavalry or lancers?

[kvnrthr]

Curious to see what some people think.

I really like the evasion capability of light spear cavalry, so you can still keep your horse alive in the face of superior numbers/quality of enemy cavalry. They are more likely to run away from enemy infantry while lancers seem to get stuck in melee more often.

Lancer impact ability seems to really be useful only against enemy cavalry, and unless they are also lancers they will just run away. Against enemy melee infantry (impact foot, pike, or spearmen) it won't help unless they charge you.

I generally like my guys to run away, it leaves them free to maneuver and maybe get a flank charge later, in which case the lancer impact doesn't matter and the cohesion drop will end things quickly.

How do you like to use your lancers?

[MVP7]

I prefer lancers. Most of the time if lancers are attacked by infantry (and even when they attack the infantry) they will retreat after impact unless they win big (or have been blocked by friendlies). Evading cavalry can often be run down by attacking cavalry and that results in extremely devastating rear charge that will often end the light spear cavalry in 1 or 2 turns. Lancers can also frontally charge light spear and medium impact foot with reasonable odds while light spear is only good for flanking or against light infantry and bowmen.

[AlexDetrojan]

I find Lancers underwhelming in this game. Not at all, as I have read about them in military history books. And if you include Cataphracts under the Lancer moniker then they are doubly underwhelming.

[devoncop]

I would agree with the comment on the Cataphracts....overpriced showponies the lot of them.

[MVP7]

What interactions of lancers and cataphracts do you mean specifically? In my experience their performance is quite believable although raw spear infantry might be a bit too stable against cavalry charge. Sometimes when lacking infantry I have even used catapracts frontally against Roman legionaries and the catapracts perform surprisingly well in the melee.

[Nosy_Rat]

It depends on what you want your cavalry to do, obviously.
Generally speaking, light spears cav makes a good support for your strong infantry line or distraction for superior enemy cavalry, while lancers, vice versa, form the core of your force with infantry as support.
Cataphracts are pretty good, but you need to use them more like infantry or support them with lighter cav.

[sIg3b]

How do you like to use your lancers?

I would like to use them well, but I tend to use them rather badly.

[jomni]

I generally have success with lancers as anti cavalry force.

[Morbio]

I struggle with lancers. They are good at pinning units, but their weakness, in my opinion, is their inability to evade. I always seem to get them facing off with HF and then no way to get away as other units come to the flanks.

[Okie]

I'm with Morbio on this one as I have noted the same thing! Also when I get to be a Sr. Colonel I want an Iowa class battleship!

[MikeC_81]

They are totally used for different purposes

Lancers are to ward off enemy Cav or to deny expensive enemy foot but the ability to advance and/or ZoC lock a specific high impact enemy foot unit. They are a premium unit though so you *need* to find a useful job for it to do. Otherwise, you are just bleeding points. Being mounted really helps with that. I just finished a league game where I Zoc'd an enemy Roman Legionary unit for the entire game with a Noble Lancer. 64 points to tie down 78 points is a definite win in my books.

LS Cav isn't meant for combat with foot, they really only exist as a very mobile unit that can flank lines that don't have proper flank protection. They can still do some of the ZoC locking but it is going to be through evasion which means they can only really delay a high impact unit for a turn or two before it can get a charge off.