Cavalry tactics Puns

Haven't seen one of these in a while, so here goes. I've got about 600 hours into Bannerlord so far, and here's what I've figured out about cavalry:

Fighting Tactics

There are some things you can do to live longer as a horseman.

1. Do NOT charge the center. This seems obvious, but it can be hard to keep in mind mid-battle. Do not charge the center of an enemy line, ever. All it takes is one guy with a spear to stop your horse, or a lucky hit from a sword, and you're down. The odds of that happening go up a LOT when you're surrounded.

2. DO charge the flanks. The idea is to charge the flanks, targeting one enemy that you can keep your eye on, and lance/shoot/slice them as you make a pass. Don't stop, don't get bogged down. Kill one guy, ride out, come around for another pass.

3. DO charge the rear of an engaged unit. The idea is to wait until the enemy is distracted by an infantryman in their face, then come up behind them and stab/shoot/slice them in the back. Kill a couple of enemies, disengage, and come around for another pass.

4. Choose your weapon - spear, glaive, or bow. Your greatest strengths as cav are movement and striking at a distance. Pick weapons that maximize your charge bonus and harassment ability. Spears are for lancers - high single-unit damage off a charge. Glaives (and war razors and other long slashing weapons) are for high-damage melee - getting into a formation, doing a lot of damage, and leaving. Bows are for harassment - picking off enemy lords from a distance, forcing the opposing army off a hill, that kind of thing.

5. Choose the right weapon for the right enemy. If you're fighting Kuzait, a glaive is your friend - you can plow right through a horse archer formation swinging left and right, and cut them down like wheat. If you're fighting heavy cav, take a lance (a LONG lance) for high-impact charges. If you're fighting infantry swarms, break out the bow and pepper them until they engage your line, then switch to melee and have at 'em.

6. Avoid short weapons. It's hard to hit an infantryman with one-handed weapons, unless they're routing. Too easy for them to hit you back.

7. Movement is life. Your hitting power and survivability are tied to speed. You're a big target if you just stand there, so don't do that. Remember to juke a but when riding anywhere around enemy archers - the AI is good enough to hit you if you ride in a straight line.

8. Surprise is everything. Never charge a prepared line. Avoid jousti

From my reading, most historical warfare cavalry was used in two basic roles. One was the shock cavalry, a mass of horsemen charging to destroy an enemy formation. But the other role was that of a scout, using hit and run tactics.

Edit: There was a third major use of cavalry, where it was used as mop up at the end of battles, but since the big point of my question was how cavalry faced another cavalry (which wouldn't really happen at a rout) I didn't feel like it was pertinent.

I am posting this question on the tactics used when cavalry was facing another cavalry unit. For example, when the cavalry wings of each army would engage each other in pitched battles. Or the tactics used when opposing scouts came into contact for a meeting engagement. Did horsemen get into formations? What did the formations look like (a square, an arrowhead, upside-down V)? How did they plan to disengage and retreat, did a part of the cavalry act as a rearguard? Was it a chaotic free-for-all if they didn't have time to get into formation?

Does anyone have any doctrine documents, or know of tactics, for how the French use VBL’s and Americans use Hummers in the Cavalry scout role? Or how similar types of smaller Combat Reconnaissance Vehicles are used by militaries? Cheers!

Hey all

So, I have a problem where I stick to spears/archers/trebs and lure them in to me, and I have trouble getting my head around anything. As a way to force myself out of this, I decided to do an All Cav Ma Teng campaign starting with his 182 start when the DLC hits.

Is there anything I should know when trying this?

Thanks

I understand there's some debate on what a heavy melee cavalry charge looked like and how it functioned in practical terms. I've seen several people in this subreddit recently suggest that the popular imagination of cavalry charges (by which I assume they mean the kind of crushing, irresistible head on assault type things you see in the Lord of the Rings or total war games) is an egregious misconception. If that's true then it begs the question: what were these things actually, historically like instead?

Greetings fellow Guardsmen,

With the obvious caveat that we have yet to see all the rules for 9e, I wanted to start a discussion on how armoured formations might adapt to the new edition. It certainly looks like we will be getting a lot of love, especially with being able to fire in close combat, which turns tank strategies from generally being static gunlines relying on infantry screens, into fast-moving shock assaults.

GW have said that point are going up (in some cases considerably), and the PL system will get a rework. It is understandable that our Leman Russes will get a price hike as a result. However, earlier I did some analysis on the PLs from the Indomitous box (said by GW to have 52 PL for both armies), which when compared with existing equivalent Primaris units, is virtually the same as current (49 PL). I expect this simply means that Primaris will become the benchmark for how PLs are worked out (which is sensible IMO).

That means I would expect there to be a big difference between PL-focused games and matched-play games, potentially with the new Crusade mode (which uses PL, though GW have said you can use points if preferred), and the potential for the max-size 300 PL Onslaught games having one hell of a lot of units, as they will be slightly bigger than 8e 2,000 point games. I intend to mostly play Crusade since I'm predominantly a narrative/casual player.

So, where does that leave us tankers? Well, for one we are basically auto-including hunter-killer missiles, track guards, pintle mounts etc on everything. So the idea of a massive turn 1 HKM volley is already fun. We also know 9e will be more objective focused, so netting victory points is more important than kills. The trade-off however is that units now perform "actions" to cap objectives which means giving up a shooting and fight phase - so that's a costly move if it prevents a Russ from engaging (unsure if you can still pop smoke).

Another problem will be more terrain in games, which will block LOS. For artillery that's not a problem, but for a battle tank formation it might be - the trade off being you can create piecemeal fire lanes and lock down key routes through the map. However melee and short-ranged AT units will have an advantage. Also if our battle tanks charge forward, we leave any static artillery vulnerable (though so far it looks like Basilisks etc can still move and fire, wh

To preface, I wasn’t a huge fan of Terrence Poulos’ Extreme War and would only recommend its brief chapter on General Alexander Patch as the most underrated general of Workd War II (but I digress from my main question). In one of the last chapters discussing General Allenby’s use of cavalry leading up to the battle of Beersheba he states...

“If, however, one looked at a map of Palestine, then there were gaps galore and General Allenby made sure of it. He used cavalry to impart strategic mobility, but often fought dismounted to give it more effectiveness tactically. Cavalry, for example, would reach the rear of an enemy position, dismount, and establish a line from which it could pour in fire... Thus, the strategy was offensive, but the tactics were defensive.”

It’s the last sentence that gets me. How is flanking an enemy force and attacking them in the rear a defensive tactic? Is it technically because they establish a line before engaging the enemy?

How do you guys command the cavalry as a commander in a combined arms ? specifically orders in the likes of follow or delegate command.