I understand that they shouldn't be insta pulverizing armies, but generally when I've experimented with them unless you leave them in a static position, they tend to just miss most of the shots and are more effective if you just charge them into the enemy instead of running around getting no kills, then getting charged by enemy cavalry and taking loads of archer fire after accomplishing very little which begs the question of why they cost so much in the first place. Anything short of Khan's Guard barely ever gets any ranged kills.
This makes sense as the Khan's Guard has pretty great bow skill at 260, and a great riding skill at 200 so they can actually hit stuff while moving. The only other comparable unit is the Fian Champion, which is of course an excellent unit and doesn't cost a war horse while doing more damage because of a better bow. Almost all other horse archers however are essentially just mounted version of archers that still suffer a big penalty to their accuracy relative to their unmounted kind while moving and have inferior bows. The advantage of cavalry over their unmounted cousins in addition to the mobility is usually their better armor, but crucially their charge damage and extra weapon damage from movement speed. Horse archers however actually generally get better armor, but also *less damage* alongside the movement accuracy penalty.
Bucellari for example: gets Steppe Recurve Bow (89 speed, 62 pierce, 94 accuracy, 78 missile speed) x2 Barbed Arrows (1 Piercing, stack size 20), Imperial Palantine Guard gets Steppe War Bow (89 speed, 66 pierce, 95 accuracy, 80 missile speed), x2 Bodkin Arrows (3 Piercing, stack size 24). Their effective body armor goes up by 6 (+15%) and they get a slightly heavier hitting but slower Palmerion (84 swing speed, 72 swing damage) vs Spatha (91 swing speed, 64 swing damage) for a Palantine Guard, but overall their melee performance isn't improved greatly and their ranged damage is actually worse.
So what you end up with is an expensive, hardly improved archer. The cost vs benefit analysis basically says never ever get any horse archer except Khan's guard, the cost from recruitment to promotion of an Imperial Palatine Guard in this case is 15 + 25 + 50 + 100 = 190 vs 190 + 1,000+ (and usually it's more + a pain to go find a bunch) = usually 1.2k+, in no world is a Bucellari anywhere near 6x better. You can make arguments for party size efficiency but at that point you might as well just stack the actually decent cavalry lines that go to tier 6 instead of wasting your time and money on a mediocre horse archer.
I think either these horse archers need stat buffs so their accuracy is actually decent while moving, or to only cost normal horses, because otherwise I feel like horse archers (aside from Khan's Guard) are a waste of time and money and you're better off just upgrading your main cavalry lines and sticking to dismounted archer spam. Kuzaits noble line get a pass since you can normally spam the lower tiers and you actually get a decent unit for the cost of the war horse, but the rest are trash. This also goes somewhat for the non-noble regular cavalry lines but at least they get a bit more benefit from the upgrade.
This makes sense as the Khan's Guard has pretty great bow skill at 260, and a great riding skill at 200 so they can actually hit stuff while moving. The only other comparable unit is the Fian Champion, which is of course an excellent unit and doesn't cost a war horse while doing more damage because of a better bow. Almost all other horse archers however are essentially just mounted version of archers that still suffer a big penalty to their accuracy relative to their unmounted kind while moving and have inferior bows. The advantage of cavalry over their unmounted cousins in addition to the mobility is usually their better armor, but crucially their charge damage and extra weapon damage from movement speed. Horse archers however actually generally get better armor, but also *less damage* alongside the movement accuracy penalty.
Bucellari for example: gets Steppe Recurve Bow (89 speed, 62 pierce, 94 accuracy, 78 missile speed) x2 Barbed Arrows (1 Piercing, stack size 20), Imperial Palantine Guard gets Steppe War Bow (89 speed, 66 pierce, 95 accuracy, 80 missile speed), x2 Bodkin Arrows (3 Piercing, stack size 24). Their effective body armor goes up by 6 (+15%) and they get a slightly heavier hitting but slower Palmerion (84 swing speed, 72 swing damage) vs Spatha (91 swing speed, 64 swing damage) for a Palantine Guard, but overall their melee performance isn't improved greatly and their ranged damage is actually worse.
So what you end up with is an expensive, hardly improved archer. The cost vs benefit analysis basically says never ever get any horse archer except Khan's guard, the cost from recruitment to promotion of an Imperial Palatine Guard in this case is 15 + 25 + 50 + 100 = 190 vs 190 + 1,000+ (and usually it's more + a pain to go find a bunch) = usually 1.2k+, in no world is a Bucellari anywhere near 6x better. You can make arguments for party size efficiency but at that point you might as well just stack the actually decent cavalry lines that go to tier 6 instead of wasting your time and money on a mediocre horse archer.
I think either these horse archers need stat buffs so their accuracy is actually decent while moving, or to only cost normal horses, because otherwise I feel like horse archers (aside from Khan's Guard) are a waste of time and money and you're better off just upgrading your main cavalry lines and sticking to dismounted archer spam. Kuzaits noble line get a pass since you can normally spam the lower tiers and you actually get a decent unit for the cost of the war horse, but the rest are trash. This also goes somewhat for the non-noble regular cavalry lines but at least they get a bit more benefit from the upgrade.
