Nothing Wrong With Cavalry. Everything Wrong With The Player

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bestmods168

Sergeant at Arms
So, there's been complaints about cavalry in the few latest patches. However, after a simple and quick look at the complainer, its clear that they do not know how to play the game. It doesn't matter what they say because the proof is in the pudding. It clear that they do not know how to play the game. Trying to ram your cavalry into a shieldwall does not work. Of course you'll get stuck. Everyone seem to know The Art of War. Sun Tzu's F1 F3. But as history continues to prove, it's about application.

@Dejan Tell TW I said good job. Although cavalry still needs improvement such as staying in formation during the charge, TW has done a good job; slowly, but surely.
I like the new ai cavalry charging the enemy, then they turn away at the last second. All the while allowing some daring ai lord to bravely charge the ranks. Awesome.

The reskinned cavalry units have the specs as the imperial cataphracts. Played in a tested campaign playthrough.
Cavalry does what it was meant to do. They charge and smash the enemy rank. Get away, wait for the others, turn around and charge again. They don't get stuck because I don't charge a shieldwall directly.

cliff notes: Don't charge a shieldwall, don't get stuck. Don't be that guy.

The video below isn't embeddable, so move on if you have a problem clicking on a link. (as some people actually do :rolleyes:)

 
Cavalry is fine. You can't charge cavalry directly into the front of infantry without taking losses. Cavalry works the same way in other games too, like the Total War series where you will lose a lot of cavalry if you charge into the front of infantry. You need to use the Hammer and Anvil method. Enemy infantry has to be distracted, like fighting your own infantry, then you can bring down the hammer on them with your cavalry charge.
 
Trying to ram your cavalry into a shieldwall does not work.
Okay @bestmods168 , Do you not understand that in native Bannerlord you do not have group targeting? Nobody can try to ram a shield wall or NOT ram a shield wall in an un-modded game. You just launch the brain dead base AI and hope it does what you want. The best you can do is put it in SW and a good starting location with ranged support.

Many peoples complaints have nothing to do with enemy AI stabbing the horses at all, the problem is Cavalry dog piles together and gets stuck because they can't reach with their weapon and a few enemies are mushed between them.

Your video about camel armor has nothing to do with this topic.
 
I've not tried, but if you "put in charge of seargant" (think i managed to accidentally do this command the other day) does your cavalry suddenly seem to be much more useful (i.e do the behaviour the OP mentions the AI does when charging alone?).

I usually try to flank with cavalry and charge the archers and infantry from the rear. I've not checked all commands to see if there is a "charge ranged..." option to ensure you don't have to micromanage them to get the desired results though.

Seems to work okay, but I imagine my tactics are seriously sub-optimal.
 
I've not tried, but if you "put in charge of seargant" (think i managed to accidentally do this command the other day) does your cavalry suddenly seem to be much more useful (i.e do the behaviour the OP mentions the AI does when charging alone?).

I usually try to flank with cavalry and charge the archers and infantry from the rear. I've not checked all commands to see if there is a "charge ranged..." option to ensure you don't have to micromanage them to get the desired results though.

Seems to work okay, but I imagine my tactics are seriously sub-optimal.

Cavalry will eventually take down the archers but it is not a fast process and requires multiple charges if you have a relatively balanced number of cavalry-infantry-archers vs same from the enemy. If you go with half infantry half cavalry it goes a bit faster but if you have more cavalry proportionally, 9/10 times your infantry will lose their fight vs the enemy infantry long before your cavalry finish off the enemy archers which is where I think a lot of the complaints come from.

If you have a bunch of Elte Cataphacts that have similar numbers to the enemy... yeah, the cavalry will roll right over them and usually with zero losses. Most battles though you'll be running around with relatively lower numbers of cavalry and at least they way I see the AI put its cavalry on the wings, normally if you want to freely charge the enemy archers your cavalry first has to defeat 1 of the enemy wings which you can do since you'll outnumber it but it is common to take a few losses from the enemy archers who are in range while you do that, then charging the enemy archers and taking a long time to clear them.

Back at your infantry/archer line the other enemy cavalry wing will be wasting itself and usually die without causing many casualties since the AI charges too early but when the main enemy infantry line arrives since your archers were shooting the enemy cavalry attack and the enemy infantry will usually outnumber yours, they will win that battle and then turn and move back toward your cavalry which just finished the enemy archers.

Meanwhile, despite how much slower they move, sweeping the field with infantry is just quicker. In high enough numbers good archers or crossbowmen are even faster but in my experience you need to outnumber the enemy for archers to win with low/zero losses.

The end result is that at least while you are working your way up as a mercenary or low clan tier vassal, all infantry armies tend to be strongest in more situations with the big exception being fighting HA swarms.

Usually the best tactics vs the AI is to divide your melee cavalry into 2 groups, 1 group to harass the enemy archers, 2nd group to remain to protect your archers and hit the rear of the enemy infantry just before it makes contact with your infantry and the 3rd group to be the HA which should be following the enemy infantry as it marches toward your infantry/archers and picking off the polearm troops.

That means you as the player will have to be running back and forth to give the correct orders and will only work efficiently in battles under 400 v 400. Once battles get above that size putting a companion with buffs to the group it is leading and only dividing your cavalry into 2 groups once the first clash occurrs is optimal and then recombining your cavalry as each wave of enemy reinforcements arrives while setting your infantry and archers to F4 advance/engage.

The above is predicated on taking relatively even fights or being slightly outnumbered to gain more renown and battle loot- if you have the patience to run around and only take fights where you outnumber the AI party you'll get much better use out of cavalry but you'll also take weeks longer to advance clan tiers and gain the XP to achieve the larger party sizes that can take on full enemy armies by yourself (300-400).
 
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I've not tried, but if you "put in charge of seargant" (think i managed to accidentally do this command the other day) does your cavalry suddenly seem to be much more useful (i.e do the behaviour the OP mentions the AI does when charging alone?).

I usually try to flank with cavalry and charge the archers and infantry from the rear. I've not checked all commands to see if there is a "charge ranged..." option to ensure you don't have to micromanage them to get the desired results though.

Seems to work okay, but I imagine my tactics are seriously sub-optimal.
My tactic for archers is to have my cav follow me. Ride slow and follow the line of archers and there will not be many left.
 
@bestmods168 even though the ai cavalry is far from 100% operational, I'm glad to see that camel armour. I trolled with this scale barding image a while ago, but as of today it's a reality.

In Open source Armoury soon... (Ultimate Mounts Reforged + Camel scale armor test phase)Photoshoped trolling fake 2020

camel.jpg
xXCZP.jpg

Despite being at 90% (polishing edges still wip... I need to make some weight paint corrections...) we will soon enjoy both assets in Open Source Armoury.

I don't know if you have a mod in mind with this asset, but a donation/contribution to OSA of this complete bard would delight a lot of players. Cheers.
 
Actually i believe you can
Okay @bestmods168 , Do you not understand that in native Bannerlord you do not have group targeting? Nobody can try to ram a shield wall or NOT ram a shield wall in an un-modded game. You just launch the brain dead base AI and hope it does what you want. The best you can do is put it in SW and a good starting location with ranged support.

Many peoples complaints have nothing to do with enemy AI stabbing the horses at all, the problem is Cavalry dog piles together and gets stuck because they can't reach with their weapon and a few enemies are mushed between them.

Your video about camel armor has nothing to do with this topic.
Tinker around controls, pretty sure you can fix postion your cav behind the shield wall for example and charge then.
Also i lovee the so called "dog piling" it is treully immersive in big scale cav battles.

P.S: There was a mode for friendly fire, this makes those dog piles even more immersive
 
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@bestmods168 even though the ai cavalry is far from 100% operational, I'm glad to see that camel armour. I trolled with this scale barding image a while ago, but as of today it's a reality.

In Open source Armoury soon... (Ultimate Mounts Reforged + Camel scale armor test phase)Photoshoped trolling fake 2020

camel.jpg
xXCZP.jpg

Despite being at 90% (polishing edges still wip... I need to make some weight paint corrections...) we will soon enjoy both assets in Open Source Armoury.

I don't know if you have a mod in mind with this asset, but a donation/contribution to OSA of this complete bard would delight a lot of players. Cheers.

Looks great. But what I want from OSA are pantless Battanian armors, to say something totally unrelated to the topic. :wink:
(BTW what I don't like on the camels, actually dromedaries (?), is the sitting position. The legs should be kind of crossed and the feet should be on the beast. Of course that's vanilla, not an OSA problem).

I find cavalry lacking a bit, it's kind of ok after the I-cannot-hit-anything-with-my-lance time is gone and it's better than in Warband (where it was op) but it suffers a lot from the inability to apply targets for assault. So it forces me to micromanage more than I like, because I prefer to be at the infantry. It's easier without a lot of cavalry, however I really don't know how to deal with horsearchers without me having melee cavalry. Against foot archers I ususally just lead one of my heavily armored cavalry units among the archers from the flank. The archers change to melee and lose most of the times.
 
Actually i believe you can

Tinker around controls, pretty sure you can fix postion your cav behind the shield wall for example and charge then.

I think the point is, you're depending on the AI to choose what to charge, and the best you can do is kinda place them on the flank and hope they charge where/what you want.

You can place your cavalry behind the shield wall, and face them into their rear... then a single random horse archer rides past at the wrong second and your cavalry are off across the map after it.

A real commander can say to their cavalry: "charge into the flanks of that enemy unit" and they reply "yes sir". Banerlord's AI cavalry respond with "no sir, we shall charge what ever takes our fancy, and if that's directly into the front of a wall of pikes, then so be it."
 
I think the point is, you're depending on the AI to choose what to charge, and the best you can do is kinda place them on the flank and hope they charge where/what you want.

You can place your cavalry behind the shield wall, and face them into their rear... then a single random horse archer rides past at the wrong second and your cavalry are off across the map after it.

A real commander can say to their cavalry: "charge into the flanks of that enemy unit" and they reply "yes sir". Banerlord's AI cavalry respond with "no sir, we shall charge what ever takes our fancy, and if that's directly into the front of a wall of pikes, then so be it."
Well said ... this is the key point.

This is just a silly toxic OP ... which sets out to insult players and their intelligence from the beginning.

You can't have any sufficient precision with cavalry at the moment. That's the point. So cavalry are most definitely not fine.
 
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I think the point is, you're depending on the AI to choose what to charge, and the best you can do is kinda place them on the flank and hope they charge where/what you want.

You can place your cavalry behind the shield wall, and face them into their rear... then a single random horse archer rides past at the wrong second and your cavalry are off across the map after it.

A real commander can say to their cavalry: "charge into the flanks of that enemy unit" and they reply "yes sir". Banerlord's AI cavalry respond with "no sir, we shall charge what ever takes our fancy, and if that's directly into the front of a wall of pikes, then so be it."
Yep, the only way to get them to work is to practically hold their hands while you charge together. If they want the player to be that sort of 'commander' sure, but give us better UI tools to do that (ie RTS mod). If they want it to be 'realistically difficult' commanding while in the midst of a battle, at least make the AI somewhat more competent then they are currently.
 
'Kinda' but not really, OP.

Cav has gotten significantly better than last year, it just needs a better sense of when to flee than it has.

I should not have 50 cav bunched up in an infantry line for 2 full minutes. You have a horse. Get out of there.

If you have 2-3 people to hit? The horse should be running away. That's it. I know there are limits and compromises. Just use the horse.

Horses were so much smatrter in Warband...
 
'Kinda' but not really, OP.

Cav has gotten significantly better than last year, it just needs a better sense of when to flee than it has.

I should not have 50 cav bunched up in an infantry line for 2 full minutes. You have a horse. Get out of there.

What's stopping you from ordering a retreat or repositioning them?


If you have 2-3 people to hit? The horse should be running away. That's it. I know there are limits and compromises. Just use the horse.

Push 3. Pick position for horses to regroup and click mouse button. It takes like 2 seconds. Literally.


Horses were so much smatrter in Warband...

No they weren't. They simply bulldozed everything in 1 charge, so people simply did not feel the need to regroup anything.



Whatever one may think about the sarcastic tone the op was using, what he wrote, isn't wrong.
 
Yeah i find a lot of the frustration to be connected with people just not willing to use the commands enough. I view it as a RTS, i'll tell them mfs to retreat couple of times just to make sure.
What i deem an issue is the intuitive control menu, maybe that created the inability to command your squads properly.
 
Yeah i find a lot of the frustration to be connected with people just not willing to use the commands enough. I view it as a RTS, i'll tell them mfs to retreat couple of times just to make sure.
What i deem an issue is the intuitive control menu, maybe that created the inability to command your squads properly.
The UI does take a bit to get used to; the 'fallback' should function differently, both for infantry and cavalry (iirc, it's practically retreat?).
Why not allow us to add a 'banner' spot at the start (whether it's movable or nor or only in pre-battle spots) that certain commands can reference to besides the mouse pointer? Infantry can actually fallback (walk backwards) to said 'banner' or cavalry to 'fallback>charge>cont'd' versus having to 'tell' them a new position each time, whilst trying to enjoy the combat aspect of the game.
Reinforcements coding issues aside, but would've been if they could've been tied so they reinforce/'collect' at said banner (or even spawned from - balance TBD) instead of trickling in; also gives you an idea where the potential enemy's one is to be wary of vs them spawning on top of you.

The slow-down option for sure made it loads better and was a good QoL addition to account for the unwieldy UI.

But this is all too late anyways...
 
Yep, the only way to get them to work is to practically hold their hands while you charge together.

You're unlikely to get a couched lance in this scenario. When you get a decent charge of Sturgian or Imperial or Vlandian heavy cavalry on their own, they absolutely blitz archers or unprepared infantry. It is magical to watch the wall of green appear. But there is just too much luck involved in getting it to happen, so it becomes a rare thing to see.
 
You're unlikely to get a couched lance in this scenario. When you get a decent charge of Sturgian or Imperial or Vlandian heavy cavalry on their own, they absolutely blitz archers or unprepared infantry. It is magical to watch the wall of green appear. But there is just too much luck involved in getting it to happen, so it becomes a rare thing to see.
It's because you can't really control when they couch or don't (believe it's just the speed threshold). So you have to really 'manage' them to even do that - from forming a skein far off perpendicular to their line of archers and charging/reposition/'follow' me to the opposite side. The aiming window for couch lances is also much smaller than in Warband it seems, so it's already finicky and hard for the player to aim (still not very efficient vs just stabbing); now imagine that for the AI.
 
OP, you're completely off on what the problem is.

See:

Okay @bestmods168 , Do you not understand that in native Bannerlord you do not have group targeting? Nobody can try to ram a shield wall or NOT ram a shield wall in an un-modded game. You just launch the brain dead base AI and hope it does what you want. The best you can do is put it in SW and a good starting location with ranged support.

Many peoples complaints have nothing to do with enemy AI stabbing the horses at all, the problem is Cavalry dog piles together and gets stuck because they can't reach with their weapon and a few enemies are mushed between them.

Your video about camel armor has nothing to do with this topic.

I think the point is, you're depending on the AI to choose what to charge, and the best you can do is kinda place them on the flank and hope they charge where/what you want.

You can place your cavalry behind the shield wall, and face them into their rear... then a single random horse archer rides past at the wrong second and your cavalry are off across the map after it.

A real commander can say to their cavalry: "charge into the flanks of that enemy unit" and they reply "yes sir". Banerlord's AI cavalry respond with "no sir, we shall charge what ever takes our fancy, and if that's directly into the front of a wall of pikes, then so be it."
 
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