The Eastern Roman Empire has both kinds of cavalry: Equites Clibanarii and Equites Catafractarii. Which is best?

I've found the Clibanarii to be faster, and hit hard. The Catafracts are somewhat slow, but can act as good heavy calvary.

Best advice? Build both, and flank with the Clibanarii.

Thanks! Do any of the two have bonuses against any kind of units?

Thanks! Do any of the two have bonuses against any kind of units?

None that I've observed practically.. I tend to ignore all the Best vrs. sort of things when it comes to offense.

Flanks = Your friend.

I've found the Clibanarii to be faster, and hit hard. The Catafracts are somewhat slow, but can act as good heavy calvary.

Best advice? Build both, and flank with the Clibanarii.

I second that motion. A diverse army is a strong army. If you stick with strictly one type of cavalry, one type of infantry, and one type of archers, your enemy will eventually (depending on the opponent, AI and level, or other person) will find a way to nullify it's advantages.

Armies in RTW need to be like you portfolio, diversified.

Or like your sideboard in Magic:the Gathering ;)
Flanks = Your friend.
What´s that mean?

What´s that mean?

I meant that no matter if your building the light, fast calvary, or the heavy catafracts, always flank.

I've used two Fuedal Men at Arms units to Close-Formation/Hold formation march up to a load of spearmen, flanked with calvary, and completely decimated them.

Sometimes you can do the opposite tactic: make a head-on charge with heavy cavalry, while the infantry come round the flanks and attack them in the rear and 3/4 arounds!
A diverse army is a strong army. If you stick with strictly one type of cavalry, one type of infantry, and one type of archers, your enemy will eventually (depending on the opponent, AI and level, or other person) will find a way to nullify it's advantages.Not so much anyway. Most units fight best when they´re teamed up with more of the same.

yea and then your cavs get totally pwned

oh, if its a sideboard, then we can go old-school on them and living wish for more units, right?
ha i called it old school, but i remember the days when we couldnt even see rarity symbols!

Well you can always look at the attack and defence, and amount of denarii it costs to recruit, and speed. That pretty much tells you. Of course, also, experience points gained int he past, if they have already been used.

I have another question, this time about Vanilla Rome TW, as the Julii:

I have one city (capital) which can train Praetorian Cavalry. I have about 6 which can train Legionary Cavalry. 3 of these cities are Patavium, Mediolanium and Ariminium (plus the capital, Arretium, so 4). The other 3 are in the far east: Athens, Thessalonica and the city directly north of Halicarnuss (I forgot what its called).

To continue invading Gaul, should I train Praetorian Cavalry since they are slightly better, or Legionary Cavalry since they will get retrained more easily? The thing is, to retrain them I am probably going to have to bring them back to Northern Italy anyway, so I might as well go for Praetorians when I build a Circus Maximus? What do you all say?

This question also applies to Urban Cohorts vs Legionary Cohorts in exactly the same way.

I would go with the Legionaries, it takes too much time to get the Prateorians, though they would own more. Legionaries can get the job done, Gaul is a piece of cake when the AI is using them, I almost always take Gaul out FIRST if im the Julii, with usually nothing more than Hastaii, Principes and Velites. I would put few units, maybe one or two, or Praetorians in each army anyways, just so you have a really hard core if things get thick.
Urbans are really really expensive, and take a long time to manifest, but they are just unstoppable, think about Varagian Guard in the Early age of MTW, just absolute pwnage, but as i said they are expensive as all hell. It really comes down to your priorites, do you want to save time and money, or troops?

I would go with Legionary cohorts. 2 legionary cohorts beats 1 urban cohort anyday. It doesn't much matter, though, as the Gauls won't be able to touch the quality troops you have no matter what you field. You'd probably have a cakewalk with Roman Cav and Early Cohorts.

The difference between Legion Cav and Pret Cav is only +3 attack, so, between the cost, the training time, the distance, and the general weakness of Gaul´s regular armies, I´d stick to Legions...

What about Urbans vs Legions?

Urbans take 2-3 turns to train and recruit, I can´t recall... Against most standard units you can use both, but if you´re fighting against chosen/picked axemen/swordsmen, or heavy phalanxes, like Spartans, Urbans and Praetorians have better chances of survival in usable conditions...
Once I had an army that was mainly Urban Cohorts, and the units used as skirmishers were Praetorians... :)

What about Urbans vs Legions?
Urban Cohorts take very long to recruit. I would stick with Legionaries. They still will own just as well but have the advantage of being easily retrained. Also, in the time you will have built 5 Urbans you could have had 10 Legionaries. I would definitly prefer 10 legionaries to 5 Urban cohorts.

Praetorian Cavalry are just cool, but again stick with Legionary Cav unless you are fighting a cavalry specific faction like Parthia whose Catrafracts will be unmatched unless you have Praetorian Cav.

The Parthians rule in the East. Besides, by the time you´ve reached Parthia they´ve already got Cata-tanks, camel cata-tanks, persian horsmen, etc... if only th AI didn´t use so much infantry and used only cavalry, they´d rule the world!

Clibs have the armour-piercing ability, whereas Catafracts do not, so Clibs can easily kill general units, catafracts, whatever!

But clibanarii are on BI, and Parthia is in vanilla.

The Parthians rule in the East. Besides, by the time you´ve reached Parthia they´ve already got Cata-tanks, camel cata-tanks, persian horsmen, etc...
This is true, but I don't really care how elite or armoured your cavalry, they charge your phalanxes (that the Seleucids have, pretty good ones later on, though they don't really stand a chance in hell against Spartan Hoplites) and they will be hacked to pieces. That's why I believe the advantage switches to the Seleucids LATER ON. I in no way dispute the Parthian godliness in the early game.

if only th AI didn´t use so much infantry and used only cavalry, they´d rule the world!
Until they ran into me. I am a known cavalry murderer (though I do use a lot myself :lol: ).

Against a phalanx, first you riddle it with arrows, then you can use elephants or throw kata-tanks in from the back... normally, the AI assigns the phalanx to one kata-tank division, so you can charge them with another....
Until they ran into me. I am a known cavalry murderer (though I do use a lot myself ). :lol:I´d like to see that...