Yesterday I went around killing Looters with my army doing some experiments on cavs. I had 80 tier 4+ cavalry, i'd say maybe 30 are the noble types, 20 javelin types and the rest tier 4-5 heavy cav like the vet caravan guard or vlandian vanguards. in all the fights i was against 40 looters+, i set all my other formations to face away, run back and hold fire. so only my cavalry was engaging.
I had heard from someone setting your riders to skein formation would improve their ability to charge so i did for all tests.
I was trying to figure out the most effective way to attack enemies with cavs resulting in the highest casualties. and basically tested 3 methods on repeat. After an initial charge, i would form up the cavs, face enemies and charge again as squre as possible for max collisions.
the set up: i line all the cavs in front of the oncoming looters, facing the enemy, in skein, when they are about 75 meters away i order to attack.
1) ordered them to charge with f1 f3. they rode towards the enemy, kinda held formation but squished a bit towards the center, passed through the looters killing about 5-10 each time . after the charge however, they go into headless fly mode and run around indivitually, had to form them up again. after 3 charges the looters routed with 10-20 men left still alive. i left the knights to their own devices after their third charge and they eventually mopped up the enemies.
2) order the knights to fire at will (this allowed my compaions holding bows to shoot and javelin guys like the aserai faris to throw) and then charge with f1 f3. this time instead of heading straight for the enemy, they tried to circle around like horse archers, all the javelin and bows went on ahead and circled the enemy while the ones without ranged attacks were behind in the formation and when they closed in they charged loosely. Despite this method being the most messy and my men didn't stay in formation. they got about 30 kills in the initial charge and finished the enemies quickly after
3) order the knights to "move through" the area i want to attack by commanding them to run past the enemy. only movement orders, no charge no attack, no fire arrows. they stayed mostly in skein formation, had the best collision with enemies and ended up killing 10-15 per pass. one time, i was against 80 looters and they seperated into 2 layers, some kept running forward towards my army location, some turned around to chase my knights. this resulted in 1 charge passing through their seperated 2 groups once each, allowing for a massive 30 kills.
conclusion. seems javelin riders are more useful offensive wise. but of course they tend to have less armor and the throwing opens them up for attacks, when i lose riders they die the most. noble knights are not much stronger offensively than their average counterparts. even though the weapon skills for same tier units has an advantage, i guess it's mostly the extra armor? idk. and lastly, the charge command sucks, they lose formation and attack inefficiently. just move them, they'll automatically attack enemies as they pass, this will allow for much easier form up of your knights after the initial charge so you can easily do another one quickly. one of my companions that started this experiment with 40%hp got forked off his horse by a looter with pitchfork and wounded in the process. no casualties otherwise.
But you gotta take into account that i'm fighting looters, with no shields and no armor. they are basically 1 shot kills for the knights. while tier 4+ units might take 2-3 stabs to go down not to mention shields can block 100% of damage. it looked awesome vistually, but 80 tier 4+ cavs performed as well as 40 tier 2 infantry vs looters. i can't really say i'm happy about the results.