Where Do Calvary Archers Belong?
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I’m new to this game and I’m finding that the units are expensive compared to some other options.
From what I saw in a video, they don’t seem to be very effective until they’re upgraded, which seems like it might be too late for a hit-and-run strategy.
Is it better to use crossbows or arbs instead?
Even though they may not be as cool, I’d still like to use them in every game.
This subreddit has been really helpful, thank you for the advice and ideas.
They are more expensive, have less range, need more upgrades than crossbows and can’t be produced while advancing to castke age like archers.
They habe the upside of having the best two traits: range AND mobility. (They get the first hit and force fights or abort when threatened.
And can defend from behind of walls against a stronger melee army or raid villagers behind tree.)
They are kind of a premium tier unit that is hard to get running, but once it does, it’s great.
Knights or crossbows are easier to get into and have the advantage of being easier to mass.
They have a timing advantage.
They can hit while cav archers are still in preperation.
One of my casual friends always wants to go straight up into cav archers…
And dies to militia, scouts, archers in feudal or crossbow, knights, mangonels.
At some point I have to tell him. 11
Cavalry archers are stronger than foot archers and their hit and run speed means they are better at handling cavalry.
Their biggest issue is that crossbows are made in Feudal Age and that not a lot civs have necessary upgrades for them to reach their pick.
So not the most often 1v1 pick but certainly a great choice in team games.
And of course there’s the unique cavalry archer units who inspire nothing but fear.
More HP, more Attack and most importantly mobility and the ability to disengage.
Your Archers are caught by a Knight army, rip your Archers.
Your Cav Archers are caught by a Knight army, cya buddies we’re going home!
Catch us if you can!
You can play consistently aggressive with CA and still you should basically never lose them.
And if you never lose them, you’re going to have a biiig ball of them pretty soon and it gets pretty tricky for any unit to take that down.
Biggest things they are useful for is they counter the same things archers do but they have higher mobility and hit harder.
They are much harder to counter with siege and cavalry and also can run away from the normal skirmishers counter.
Much better than archers for raiding villagers as well!
They are devastating if you know how to micro well.
Put it this way, they are countered by every trash unit (light cav, skirms, pike), but properly micro’d, they can effectively overcome nearly every unit.
Cavalry, not calvary, just fyi
You’ve evaluated them correctly.
They are expensive and slow to get going compared to xbows and knights, so we still in the xbow knight meta mostly.
I see them used with civs that have solid bonuses for them.
Huns are the OG CA civ.
It might be worth learning the classic huns scouts into cavalry archers play, as they have always fit right in there and it is real fun to pull off.
Other civs have particularly strong cavalry archers and may go for them late castle or in imp, Magyars and Turks may consider this.
Even on a map like BF, they can be good because they are a strong unit and can raid to end games, though beware seige rules that map and sometimes they just suck in a matchup.
Sometimes I see Hindustanis go cav archer just because they want an archer unit for some matchup and their xbows don’t scale into arbalest.
If you get a really strong ball of CA, there is basically no unit that can counter them.
Hit and run with 20 CA isn’t just hit and run, you can kill 30 vills in less than a minute and that is a game over situation.
As with a lot of the other comments I agree with your assessment that they are powerful but hard to mass and upgrade.
A few things to keep in mind when thinking about going for cavalry archers:
– If you are behind in early castle age it is generally not a good idea to go for CA as it will take a bit of time before they can be used effectively due to the time it takes to mass and upgrade them.
This will give your opponent a window to get even more damage in.
This is especially the case if you are behind and your opponent has a mass of Xbows, going CA in this situation is usually a death sentence.
– If you have a lead in early castle age then you may be in a good position to go for CA as you can use this lead to buy time to mass your CA and upgrade them.
However in some scenarios if you already have archers from feudal going for Xbow and siege to try and end the game in castle age may be the better play.
– Considering the civ match up is very important, basically the only real counter to massed and upgraded cav archers, in the hands of a player with a bit of micro, is a mass of skirms.
For civs that don’t get all the archer upgrades even skirms can struggle.
For example if you can get an early lead against Franks with a good cav archer civ and then get to Imp they really struggle to deal with CA as they don’t get the final attack or armour upgrade for their skirms.
Also, this mainly applies to open maps such as arabia, obviously arena and black forest can be quite different!
If you have the pressure on the enemy and you hit castle age first it’s a good all-in option. 2-3 archery range CA and get forward siege and a forward castle up with the pressure, meanwhile you are raiding eco much more effectively than archers due to mobility.
If you hit castle age second / do not have priority you need to do something else probably.
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