Cavalry Tactics for Bannerlord

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 jousting, where you and the enemy heavy cav are just charging at each other. Don't hang around off the left flank of enemy horse archers. Pick opponents who aren't looking at you or are distracted, and then one-shot them.

9. Aiming is for chumps. You're going to be trying to aim your bow from a moving platform, usually at a moving target. Shoot at clumps of units, not individuals. Remember that your speed adds damage to your arrows, and maneuver until you're in a position where you're guaranteed to hit something. There is an exception when you're trying to snipe enemy lords, but that's it.

10. Armor is your friend. Buy the heaviest armor you can find. The horse doesn't care, and it'll keep you alive for a few hits in melee.

11. Shields are superfluous. You're rarely going to be facing the right direction to make effective use of your shield against archers, and cavalry weapons do not favor using the shield in melee. Again, speed is your best defense.

Unit Tactics These are some things you can do to make your cavalry count in battles.

1. DO NOT just give the "charge" order! Or even the "advance" order! Your lads will hare off and do the dumbest possible things. Horse archers will get chased into corners of the map and irrelevancy, heavy cav will waste itself charging a prepared line. Happens every time.

2. DO monitor and control your cavalry. Get a unit to follow you into an ideal charge position. Hide your heavies in the forest until it's time to charge. Swap your horse archers between "charge" and "advance" to get them to actively engage or run from enemies. If you see your cav milling around or about to do something stupid, pull them out, reform their formation somewhere safe, and then send them back in.

3. Keep in mind what the "advance" command does. Horse archers will advance until they are within bowshot of the enemy, and will retreat if the enemy tries to attack them. Javelin-armed cav will throw their javelins, then engage in melee. And heavy cav will break out the lances. It's usually a good idea to put units into groups that make best use of these behaviors (i.e., don't mix all your cav together in group 3).

4. Hold your heavy cav until the infantry engages. Then rear-charge for maximum damage, minimum casualties, and maximum morale shock. Ideally you want to have your heavies in a position where they can hit the enemy from the rear before the lines engage, otherwise you waste some time trying to get them in place.

5. Horse archers are for disruption. It's not really their job to kill things (although they will). It's their job to harass the enemy out of position, draw fire, and pull heavy cavalry away from the fight.

6. Heavy cavalry is for shock and awe. Send them in, let them get in a few good hits, pull them out, rinse, repeat. When they get bogged down in melee, they die. Try not to let that happen.

7. In large battles, keeping control of your line is absolutely essential. The AI tends to just charge in once the swords start swinging. Use that to your advantage. Keep your infantry line consolidated, use your horse archers to distract the enemy when necessary, and use heavy cav to chase off enemy horse archers, counter-charge enemy heavy cav that are threatening your archers, rear-charge enemy infantry, and cut down retreating units. Remember that combined arms is the name of the game.

8. Remember to retreat. Cav is fast, they tend to get wounded rather than killed, and it's always to your benefit to pull them out of bad situations rather than let them die heroically.

9. If you're a commander, be a commander. Commanding an army isn't the same as fighting a 1v1 party skirmish. You're gonna want to keep control of the battle if you want to win. That means keeping yourself out of the fight. This is the hardest thing for me, but it's a critical part of winning huge army-on-army battles with 2k units on the field. That means you need to pick a good spot where you can see the battle, stay in motion, and have a small bodyguard unit that just follows you around to keep enemy heavy cav off your back.

Strategy The difference between good generals and bad generals is their grasp of logistics. Here are some things to keep in mind for maintaining cav on the map.

1. Find the right village. Certain villages on the map routinely have large numbers of cavalry available. Find these villages, make friends with the notables, and you won't have to spend as much time training tier 1 units into cavalrymen.

2. Solve your cash flow problems FIRST. Cavalry is expensive. Figure out how you're going to pay for it so that you don't bankrupt yourself in the early game. I suggest blacksmithing.

3. Choose your horses carefully. Not all horses are created equal. Imperial chargers, for example, are SLOW. Try to only keep one or two types of horses and war horses in your army. That way when you promote units to cav, they have the same speed stats and will hit in a group, not all strung out. I keep waiting for the devs to give us an option to choose which horse to use when creating cav units, but so far no dice.

4. Keep a stock of horses and war horses. You won't always be able to get back to your preferred recruiting grounds, and you will be constantly promoting units.

5. Lame horses can heal! If you capture a bunch of lame horses, they will eventually heal back to normal. You can also use lame horses to promote units to cav.

6. Buy low, sell high. Get your trading stat up to the point where you can see "good" prices, and avoid buying expensive horses. Remember that Kuzait and Asrai territories usually have cheap, good horses. It's pretty easy to make a profit from horse trading too, especially if you sell to Vlandia.

And that's all I've got! For sure I forgot something, but this ought to help a couple people. Good hunting, fellow Butterlords!

Submitted October 29, 2021 at 11:32PM by thecastellan1115 https://ift.tt/2ZFEppm