Which Cavalry should I take?

[Hardcase726]

Starting a Cavalry Corps nothing but cav, 6pdr artillery, and a few units of sharpshooters and I can't decide whether I should have more Melee cav with the Palmetto equipment or skirmisher cav with the Burnside/Spencer rifles or should I mix it up? Let me know your thoughts.

[The Soldier]

Skirmisher cavalry.  Melee cav is still difficult to use and expensive to replace.

[sonnypemberton]

1 minute ago, The Soldier said:

Skirmisher cavalry.  Melee cav is still difficult to use and expensive to replace.

agreed

[Hitorishizuka]

2 hours ago, Hardcase726 said:

Starting a Cavalry Corps nothing but cav, 6pdr artillery, and a few units of sharpshooters and I can't decide whether I should have more Melee cav with the Palmetto equipment or skirmisher cav with the Burnside/Spencer rifles or should I mix it up? Let me know your thoughts.

You want both, they have different uses. Mass melee are still worthwhile to force breaches (if expensive) and relatively safely wolfpack enemy formations to death by engaging each brigade and protecting each other. Ranged will do much, much safer damage in most other situations however and the high ROF carbines are incredible when you micro them to stay in range instead of cycle shooting. One or two brigades of ranged cav right on the flank of your line shooting into the flank of the enemy will do incredible damage over time/repeated engagements and can be used to pursue routing troops and keep the pressure up.

[Aetius]

Also be aware that skirmisher cavalry on horseback currently has an extremely slow turning speed, and will mill around in front of their target for a while before firing. It's best to dismount them and fight as skirmishers.

[william1993]

do both. more skirmish than melee though/. Skirmish cavalry can hold the line for a little dismounted.  Melee cavalry just run around like headless chickens and maybe stab someone every now and then.  Use the melee cavalry to attack routed units

[Hitorishizuka]

3 hours ago, Aetius said:

Also be aware that skirmisher cavalry on horseback currently has an extremely slow turning speed, and will mill around in front of their target for a while before firing. It's best to dismount them and fight as skirmishers.

Eh, everyone turns kinda poorly, it's what cavalry are supposed to abuse. Keep them mounted and just make sure to approach from the right angles and have them 180 and back up and circle around to a different angle.

[Wright29]

It's very tough to micro more than five melee cavalry at a time since the'yre so sensitive. Small errors can easily result in a rout. Skirmisher cav hits and then runs away very far so you have to keep grabbing them and pulling them back. 

I tried to do an all-cavalry campaign and it was utterly terrible. Moral of the story: don't have a cavalry corps except for reinforcements for very large battles. And even that can be bad because enemy scenario cavalry will scale with all the cavalry you have even if they're not deployed for the battle. 

[The Soldier]

1 minute ago, Wright29 said:

Skirmisher cav hits and then runs away very far so you have to keep grabbing them and pulling them back. 

There are actually situations where Carbine Cavalry (mounted or unmounted) will stay their ground and continue firing without falling back to reload.  Usually if the unit in question is occupied with fighting another unit or if the unit is below 50% Moral and can't put out a proper volley.

[Wandering1]

Other things to remember when playing skirmisher cav blobs: make sure the entire division is skirmisher cav, so you can just hit the quick button to select all of them. Once you get up to 10/15 cavalry units, it starts becoming a lot more manageable to divide them to eat stragglers/lone units (e.g. on Stones River, if you cut off the Union from Nashville Pike).

[Lif]

Hm, recently both cavs are kinda stressfull. It's babysitting all the time and a little failure results in high replenishment costs. I like melee cav more, but it's true: You have to pay a lot. Skirm Cav is more or less great situational.

[Bigjku]

I have had a ton of success using 4 or so brigades of carbine cavalry to rush to and hold key pieces of ground dismounted.  The keys I found were this.

1.  They need heavy cover even more than infantry.  They won't hold up to a pounding in the open.

2.  Keep them concentrated, if they have high quality carbines they can kill a lot for you if they can let the enemy come into effective range.

3.  Run away when it gets hairy then reoccupy the position or find another after breaking contact.  Generally the AI seems to get frustrated and try to charge with infantry.  Just mount up and run away in most circumstances.

In general I use it to allow me to be places I otherwise wouldn't be able to be.  I hardly ever have them fight mounted for any length of time.

[Perkon]

On 9.04.2017 at 1:49 AM, The Soldier said:

Skirmisher cavalry.  Melee cav is still difficult to use and expensive to replace.

Has anything changed in the recent patches? The last version I played was 0.6 something, and I would never take anything other, than melee cavalry back then.

[Wandering1]

5 minutes ago, Perkon said:

Has anything changed in the recent patches? The last version I played was 0.6 something, and I would never take anything other, than melee cavalry back then.

Lots have changed in the cavalry performance since 0.6. Since melee cavalry turned out to be the forest boogiemen due to how cover works in the game.

[Hitorishizuka]

2 hours ago, Perkon said:

Has anything changed in the recent patches? The last version I played was 0.6 something, and I would never take anything other, than melee cavalry back then.

Melee cavalry performance was very heavily nerfed in trees.

ROF fixes/buffs were put in place which primarily affect Henry rifles and all relevant skirmisher and cavalry carbines to greatly improve their damage potential.