Gray Fox wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 5:29 pm
I fought a lot of battles in beta and light cav were the best support/ranged unit that are generally available. I don't pound nails with a screw-driver. The force structure I used was a line of heavy infantry equal to the frontage, with light cav in equal number and 5-6 units with the besieger trait as needed. The light cav exhausted the enemy and the HI did the rest. I can see the effect. This worked for Rhodus as well as for Rome.
An all cavalry stack gets mauled in combat against infantry. The stirrup doesn't get invented for another half millennium, so cav do not make head on charges. They were used to harass, flank and pursue. I do use a stack of 8 cheap light cav as a garrison for low loyalty regions, because you can shift them around quickly to other regions. However, the decisive role of heavy cavalry holding a place in the front line as shock troops did not exist yet.
I mean, you can believe that, but the numbers don't back that up. Light cavalry have a lower ranged attack value than archers, as well as a lower damage value. So archers will be more likely to damage enemy units during the skirmish phase. Take Regular Foot for example. With a Stamina value of 2, a solid hit from an archer will render them exhausted, while the same hit from light horse will only render them tired. Exhausted provides an additional combat value penalty of -3, beyond the normal penalty to dice minimum that exertion applies. Regular Foot hit by light horse would have a minimum re-roll of 3 and a combat value of 3. Regular foot hit by an archer would have a re-roll of 2 and a combat value of 0. One situation is substantially better than the other.
On top of that, you still have the archers applying a support bonus of +3 instead of the light horse's +2.
Don't get me wrong, light horse is still a great unit, with superior flanking and movement values. But archers are a dedicated ranged unit, and so will be better when it comes to the skirmish phase. And theoretically they're better on defense with a combat value of 3, but that's not something I'd rely on too much outside of broken terrain (especially when you can combine that with something like the Mountainous trait that units like the Lydian Archers have).
As far as heavy cavalry is concerned, you're kind of wrong. Cataphracts were capable of frontal charges against infantry units as early as the Battle of Magnesia. Macedonian heavy cavalry was also plenty aggressive prior to that, which you can read in the sources talking about the deadliness of Macedonian horse against disrupted pikes, or of Pyrrhus getting unhorse charging Spartan infantry. Sending valuable cavalry composed of your elite and best against infantry was still a poor idea, but it wasn't automatically suicide. Cavalry was the decisive factor in many battles of the Hellenistic era in ways that went beyond merely harassment, flanking, and pursuit.
