Overview
This is a guide to teach players the art of using sabre cavalry on the battlefield and racking up 1,000s of kills with them
Welcome
In reading through posts on this forum I have seen that there are a number of players who either don’t know how to use sabre cav or who have had bad experiences with them and as a result swear off of them. By request, I have written up this post in order to offer my experiences in using cavalry as a deadly effective tool on the battlefield. In using my tactics, I have been able to get as many as 1-2k kills per cavalry unit (I usually have 6 by mid game) in battles where the terrain for them is favorable and usually at a rate of 2-4:1 in kills to deaths and I hope to help anyone who wants to to achieve similar results with their cav.
What cav can’t do
To begin with, I need to make one thing very clear about the nature of cavalry. Cavalry are a very effective tool when used properly but they are not in any way a substitute for infantry. In fact Cavalry are often best utilized in combination with infantry but we will come to that later. Infantry are simply indispensable in order to hold the line and inflict and suffer the lion share of casualties in battle. But where the infantry are the brawlers and bullet sponges, cavalry are far more delicate. Often a single volley can kill anywhere from 50-100 cav in one go which, given that cav units have a max of 750 troopers per unit and are only really worth risking in combat (in order to avoid shattering) if their numbers are above 400, means that any losses that cav suffer unnecessarily will cost the unit dearly. This makes their role far more niche compared to infantry and makes the principle imperative in using cavalry to minimize their losses and maximize their killing potential. This means that cav are not suited to all circumstances and in fact there are some battles in which their role will be negligible if not nonexistent due to the nature of the terrain or due to the actions of the AI.
It is also important to state that cav should never, ever, be used in single units. This game makes it so that having 2 or more units to 1 enemy unit will increase the impact of the involved units’ melee ability well beyond what their individual effect might be regardless of how many men are in each unit or how many are in the enemy unit and with cav’s far superior melee ability this is even more true. As such, cav must always be used at a minimum in groups of 2 with obviously the more cav involved at the same time the better. I usually like to have 2 cav per corps so that I can have access to them in any battles involving any of my corps and to have hordes of them where multiple corps are involved simultaneously.
The first category: lone cavalry units vs skirmishers artillery and other cavalry
With that said, what then are the best roles for cavalry to fill? Their roles can be divided into 2 categories the first of which is the lone wolf cavalry approach. This category involves cavalry that act alone without any infantry support. Due to their mobility and speed it can be very tempting to send your cavalry far afield around the enemy’s flanks and into their rear areas. This is not an entirely bad use for cav but it is important to note that this is a far more dangerous especially if the enemy has their own cav as they can interfere with your efforts and force you to suffer needless casualties. In fact, it is rather ironic since in my experience it is often best to avoid trying to fight enemy cav with your own and that it is in fact far better to lure enemy cav into the teeth of your infantry since their rifles will be able to do more damage more quickly and at far lower cost than your cavalry will be able to do if they try to take the enemy cav head on.
What then are cav good for when they are used alone in this manner? Where cav excel in this category is in taking down lone isolated units, especially units that it would be difficult or costly for regular infantry to take down such as skirmishers and artillery. This does not come without risk however as both of these units can fire at cav and inflict losses but usually the kinds of losses these units can inflict is minimal compared to the benefit of wiping these units out. Usually so long as there are no other enemy units around, it is ok and in fact probably just better to simply rush these units as quickly as possible, take the few shots they may get off and get the business over with. If either of these unit types has a regular infantry brigade around them it probably is not worth the trouble to go after them unsupported and if there are other skirm or arty units neighboring them it will be best to shy away from them unless you have 3-4 cav units, enough to keep the 1 or more neighboring units occupied while 2 cav units take on the first target since cav are especially vulnerable to enemy fire when they are caught in the web that is melee combat in this game.
The first category: lone cavalry vs regular infantry
Cav can also attack lone infantry brigades when they are on their own as well but there is more danger in this and so it requires greater caution. If you simply charge an enemy infantry unit with its rifles fully loaded, even if you were to reach and get into melee with it before it manages to fire, the enemy brigade will be able to fire a volley at your cav and, besides inflicting heavy, needless casualties, cause at least 1 of your brigades to route which will leave the other brigade alone to fight the entire enemy brigade on its own in a battle that will be costly, likely inflict few losses, and lead to your remaining cav unit getting routed as well and leave the enemy brigade more or less unphased especially if it is a veteran unit. This problem is far easier to address another way but for now we will discuss the best way to do it with lone cavalry units.
In this case, the best thing to do is to approach the enemy brigade while in cover, let the enemy unit see your cav while it is in cover and simply allow the enemy unit to fire on your cav. In good cover, this will mean that your cav will likely lose around 15 troopers which is regrettable but worth the price as now the enemy unit will be busy reloading and your cav and rush in without fear and cut that brigade to pieces. Infantry brigades are quite another animal from skirms and arty however as their sheer numbers mean that they can take a lot of pounding without shattering which means that you need to be aware of any other units in the area. You will want to break off melee with the enemy unit immediately if it starts retreating into range of another brigade for very obvious reasons. Also, cav are at their best in terms of melee when they have stamina which in the case of infantry brigades they will run out of relatively quickly. Once the cav run out of stamina it really isn’t worth the losses to keep them in melee with the routing enemy brigade unless that brigade is very close to shattering. You will then want to rest your cavalry for a while before employing them again so that they can be as useful as possible to you.
The second category: Cavalry as charge breakers
Now we come to the second category which encompasses the use of cav in combined arms roles with infantry. It is here that cav are probably the most useful and their most deadly but they must still be handled with care. There are a number of roles cav can fill in support of infantry units. The first is to serve as mobile fire brigades. Chances are if you have played this game you have had the ai launch charges against you quite a lot. Especially on higher difficulties, highly veteran enemy units, even acting alone, can usually rout whatever infantry unit they attack and especially if your forces are stretched thin you might not have the concentrated firepower necessary to fire into the melee and rout the enemy brigades before they do serious damage and cause the brigade in question to rout. This is where cavalry come in. Because of their far more deadly melee abilities and because of the ‘the more units involved in a melee the better principle’ cav can serve as the perfect charge breakers by riding to the aid of the threatened unit and cutting down enemy troops in large numbers and causing them to rout.
This, however, is not one of my preferred uses for cav as usually there will be supporting enemy infantry behind the charge firing into the melee and unless the unit under threat is in good cover or if the enemy charge is unsupported the losses to your cavalry will likely be not worth the effort to break the enemy charge.
The second category: fire supported cavalry
Another role is a modified version of the lone cavalry roles listed above all of which involve the cavalry taking losses to enemy fire in order to get the chance to get in close to the enemy. With infantry support, however, you not only have the benefit of using your infantry as bullet sponges by drawing the enemy’s fire while the cav get close, you also get the infantry’s supporting fire while the cav is in melee and the infantry’s fire will be even more effective because for some reason friendly volleys into melee combat are a lot more damaging than they will be if the enemy unit is not in melee. This will drastically increase the rate at which the enemy unit both routs and suffers casualties and save your cav some much needed stamina.
The second category: using cavalry to cause a mass rout
One of the most effective though more difficult and thereby rarer way you can use cav is to create a mass rout among enemy units. The method here is a sort of variant of the above listed cavalry role only on a bigger scale. If you are able to find a group of enemy units more or less in a line trading volleys with your troops and without any supporting infantry immediately behind them, you can swing around to the flank with your cav and start attacking up the line of enemy infantry. This puts the AI in a very tricky dilemma. If they don’t turn to fire at your rampaging cav, they will risk being routed one by one. If they turn, however, they will be exposing their flanks to withering fire from your infantry which will also cause them to rout. I have been able to put as many as 4 enemy brigades to flight at once using this method and have often seen the Ai get very confused by the maneuver as their units constantly turn one way and back again, unsure of which threat to fire on and being routed while gripped by this indecision. As I said though, this maneuver is much harder to pull off as it requires both a coincidence of the right conditions and the right timing in order to succeed.
The second category: breaking entrenched or in cover enemies
Finally, the last role that cav can serve in is to dig out entrenched enemy units. As counterintuitive as this may sound, it really does work. Provided that you are able to find a relatively isolated entrenched enemy unit, usually on the flanks (you can almost always find at least one somewhere) and you draw its fire with infantry you can then unleash the cav and quickly rout the entrenched enemy. This also works more generally on any enemy units that are simply in good cover as well. Although cav are not all that great at fighting in forests, often that is inconsequential as the lowering of the enemy’s morale through melee and supporting fire is enough to cause the enemy to flee a great distance and allow your troops to make good progress through dense terrain.
And that is all that I have to say on the matter. I am not the best one to ask about skirm cav but in my experience small well-armed units following similar principles to the above will do the trick.
Thanks for reading. I hope that this will help everyone when it comes to cavalry warfare in this game and I am more than willing to answer whatever questions anyone may have on the subject.
equipment
I usually equip my cav with the palmettos and that grey colored set of sabre and pistol weapons. They are the best sabre weapon sets out of the group and will usually be available in large enough quantities to outfit as many cav as you want. If you play as the CSA the Lematt is an absolute butchers weapon if you can get enough of them but to my mind their relative benefits over the other 2 are not worth the price as having more cav is always better than better equipped cav. Last of all the Remington set is like someone tried to combine skirm cav with sabre cav which means that they ended up with the worst of both: skirm cav that has really short range and poor accuracy and melee cav that sucks at melee
Skirmish Cavalry
Below is an addition to my guide on cavalry written by [CELL] Jaydent97 on the subject of skirmish cavalry. I edited his work and added some of my own thoughts on the subject which you will be able to find in parentheses. I hope you will all find it informative.
Lone Skirmish Cavalry vs Skirmishers, Artillery and other Cavalry
Enemy skirmishers are one of the most annoying things in this game, regardless of what units you have to oppose them. Their ability to move stealthily around the battlefield allows them to be able to surprise your forces with a volley and then retreat beyond the range of your unit before they can fully react. You can of course use your skirmish cavalry against skirmishers, but if they are in an area with a lot of good cover it will be a waste of your time and men and is a task best left to your infantry or to your melee cavalry.
Artillery, by contrast, make for excellent targets for your skirmish cavalry as it is relatively easy to flank around them and shoot them from behind which can sometimes cause them to rout in the first volley, but most of the time it will require a second volley.
Once routed, you can chase them either with melee cavalry or with your skirmish cavalry. Of course, it’s still important to make sure an artillery unit can’t shoot on your cavalry especially if you’re in canister range. Be sure to dance around them, and make sure you don’t walk into another enemy infantry or artillery unit.
As for enemy cavalry, if you playing CSA you will almost always only encounter Union skirmish cavalry equipped with sharps model 1855. The Union rarely if ever has any sabre cavalry so we won’t cover those in detail. Suffice it to say, you do not want to allow your skirmish cavalry to get caught in melee with sabre cavalry because they will be at a disadvantage.
That leaves enemy skirmish cavalry. The Union will usually have a few cavalry units, mostly around 800 men. The biggest problem is that they will have the same range as you if you use the sharps model 1855 which means there is a risk that they will be able to fire back at you before you can get away but sometimes you can get away with it especially if you act from the flank before they have the chance to fully turn to face you. If you use pattern 1861 Enfield, than you got a bit better range than them and you can just simply shoot them and retreat. (Personally I think the 1861 Enfield is the best skirm cav weapon in the game. Since most skirm cav weapons have fairly high rates of fire I find that accuracy and range are better stats to judge the weapons by and the 1861 has the longest range and a decent accuracy compared to its competition.)
The above goes for the Union as well, but you will usually face less enemy CSA cavalry than you will encounter playing against the Union. Most of the time as the Union you can afford to invest more money in your cavalry than you would be able to as the CSA and you can also equip them with better guns like the spencer carbine.
Lone Skirmish Cavalry Against Lone Infantry
Skirmish cavalry are one of the trickiest units to use in the game. Unlike sabre cavalry which you can simply charge into a unit, skirmish cavalry requires more focus and more micromanagement. If you want to attack a unit like an infantry brigade you will want to attack them from behind or from the flank and get away before they can fire back in turn. With this in mind, it is best to coordinate your skirmish cavalry with other infantry or to encircle them with other cavalry to reduce the risk of suffering casualties. (Watch out with enemy infantry though as they can sometimes make a rapid about face and get off a volley before you can so attacking from the flanks or attacking from behind but at an angle will usually be a safer bet than attacking directly from behind.)
But this doesn’t mean that skirmish cavalry can’t act alone, however. Against enemy infantry it will be the question of if they turn to fire slowly or if they immediately change orientation. If they slowly turn around you can safely shoot them and cause around 30 to 50 casualties. If you do this several times you can rout them and safely chase them with either sabre cavalry or with skirmish cavalry though you will have to watch out for other enemy units in the vicinity. If they turn instantly, however, you will quickly suffer heavy losses that can vary depending on the terrain and hurt your morale.
Lastly, if you got two or three skirmish cavalry you can just search out for enemy artillery, cavalry, generals, supply wagons or lonely infantry. Most of the same rules apply as what I said before about lone skirmish cavalry but you can have a greater degree of tactical flexibility. One cavalry brigade can act as bait to draw the enemy infantry unit’s attention while the other 2 approach from different angles allowing them to hit the enemy unit from the flanks and/or rear and quickly rout the unit. From there you can either pursue the routed unit and destroy it or search for a new target.
You can also this in combination with your own infantry, using them to draw the enemy’s fire while your skirmish cavalry hits it from behind. This is particular useful if you are hard pressed by their infantry and need to quickly rout or distract a few enemy units to keep from being overwhelmed.
Unit Size
In the early game, your ability to have and maintain skirmish cavalry brigades will depend on how many guns are available and how much you can afford to spend on skirmish cavalry but having 250 men per unit is a safe starting size and a good way to get some practice using skirmish cavalry (It is also a good way to gain experience for the unit as smaller units will be more efficiently handled by lower tier commanders and will gain experience more quickly). Around midgame you can probably afford groups of 500 or even 750 men but only do so if you can afford it and if it won’t be at the expense of the rest of your army. Also 2 or 3 skirmish cavalry per corps is around the right size. Adding more per corps will be too much, especially if you are using sabre cavalry to. (I usually like to have 1 skirm cav and 2 sabre cav per corps but how you arrange your corps will have to depend on how comfortable you are with the 2 branches of cavalry and your play style. The most important thing though, as Jaydent mentioned, is to not go overboard with cavalry as they are not a substitute for infantry.)
Equipment
For the CSA you should equip your cavalry with sharps model 1855 early game. This gun has a very high rate of fire and with one of the best ranges (230 meter) of the early game skirmish cavalry weapons. Its accuracy is quite low, but as it reloads very quickly I find this less important. Yes I know isn’t the smith better? Yes its got a bit better stats but it’s also more expensive with the sharps model 1855 costing 34 dollars and the smith 52. Also you can capture some 1855’s from the Union and its much more readily available in the armory. Personally I was able to maintain a reserve of 2600 sharps model 1855’s while equipping three cavalry brigades of 750 men at the beginning of the battle Stones River.
As you advance into the game you should slowly try to equip your skirmish cavalry with the pattern 1861 Enfield. It is an excellent gun with very good range, better accuracy and a bit more damage though at the cost of the fire rate. I managed to equip two cavalry brigades of 750 men with the 1861 by the battle of stones river.
For the Union, the equipment early game is pretty much the same as CSA: the sharps model 1855.
But around mid-game you get access to the sharps model 1859 (not available for the CSA sadly).
The 1859 is a significant improvement on the model 1855 with better accuracy, a better fire rate and a small improvement in range. Just phase out the sharps model 1855 as fast as possible for the model 1859 as this should be your standard cavalry gun for the rest of the game.
The next guns for the Union will be the pattern 1861 Enfield and the Spencer Carbine. (Note, the 1861 is only available to the CSA but you should be able to capture a rather large amount of them from the CSA over the course of the campaign.) The Spencer Carbine is just the best gun in terms of fire rate and this will allow you to destroy artillery and other cavalry fast. Even if they manage to shoot you first, you will probably shoot four of five times and rout them before they can even reload. Lastly, this gun has a decent range of 280 meters and a reasonable accuracy. Unfortunately the gun will not be available in large numbers so if you want to be able to equip your units with them you will have to buy them up as the opportunity presents itself.
The pattern 1861 Enfield you get mostly to improve your sharps model 1859 and because the Spencer carbine just doesn’t get in sufficient numbers to equip around 6 cavalry brigades with it.
Other guns like the Maynard, Burnside, frank Wesson and smith are good but as CSA they will be a lot more costly to obtain and they are not available in sufficient numbers to equip a sizeable number of brigades. As the Union, this is less of an issue but still the numbers likely won’t be sufficient to equip more than one brigade with any 1 of these weapons. And then just get the spencer carbine or pattern Enfield.