Tip of the day — light cavalry hand combat

No Flag a passing slimey
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Tip of the day — light cavalry hand combat

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Post by a passing slimey »

Idk i just felt like doing it :p

Some might not know, but you can actually put your ranged cavalry into hand combat mode, letting you dragoons charge in with their swords and stuff just like normal hand cav. There are in fact some very nice uses for doing that, so dont forget to use it once you finish reading this stuff.

One of the main uses of the hand combat mode is for snaring raiding cavalry. Most of the ranged cavalry are faster than hand cavalry, so ideally you would want pursue the cavalry without letting them land a single hit on your dragoons. However, that isn't the same for cavalry archers. Not only can't they kite like most ranged cavalry can to begin with, but they also have the same speed most hand cav have. The snare comes in handy in that case; putting some of your CA in hand combat can get you some extra kills. You can still use this trick with dragoons, but it isn't always guaranteed that you would get a better trade by doing that since it would allow the hand cav to get into hand combat with you.

Another one of its uses is for raiding villagers. As you would have expected, you always want to put your dragoons into hand combat whenever facing villagers that have ranged resist (courerours, settler wagons) instead of the melee one. Against villagers with melee resist, you don't want to use it since it is better to just shoot them, but you can still put a few in melee mode to snare the villagers.

It is also usefull against skirmishers. The difference isn't very noticeable against most skirms, but i would recommend to use hand combat whenever you can against the portuguese cassadores. Fighting in hand combat makes it harder to pull out a retreat, so only do that when you see that the enemy skirms are vulnerable.

Last thing to consider is that there is a complication to using hand combat with ruyters (keshiks too actually). Differently from other ranged cav, ruyters pack themselves together into a very tight formation to compensate for the extra space you occupy by needing to have more units. The formation becomes more spread like the ones of the other ranged cav once you change into melee mode, and because of that you would rather never change them out of the ranged mode. Having them packed together is better because it makes kitting easier and also allows you to have more of them shooting since each occupy less space. There is no way to change them back unless all the ruyters in the formation that had gone into melee mode before die, so you might as well say that it is gone for good if you do that. Its not worth it most of the times, but the call is up to you. (Now that i think about it having them spread out might be useful against cuirassiers)
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No Flag howlingwolfpaw
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Re: Tip of the day - light cavalry hand combat

Post by howlingwolfpaw »

I use this sometimes for artillery.
Or even howdas in melee to kill masses of cav can work somewhat well.
I think it would have to be a desperate situation to kill skirms with them though. its a sacrifice where it might be better to run them away.
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Poland pecelot
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Re: Tip of the day - light cavalry hand combat

Post by pecelot »

Further formation issues is actually a major drawback and I've heard many players never switch ranged cavalry into melee mode just because of that. It's indeed painful to deal with later on when range matters, your goons then take too much space and usually it's pretty disadvantageous.
I actually wanted to write something similar about this, as you could guess from my previous tips :P So I'll add some points from me, I guess.
When raiding with ranged cavalry, you can actually put only one of your units in hand combat to snare and leave the rest to shoot. That way you'll omit regular vills' melee resist and still slow them down. Of course it will not prevent the aforementioned clumsy positioning, but you can choose to just commit and deal with it. Against settlers with high RR you should obviously switch to melee, as it's just a bigger damage output, as you can see on goon's stats:
ranged vs vills: 22*0.5*(0.6 or 0.7) = 0.66 or 0.77
melee vs vills: 11 (+ additional ROF)
You can also abuse that vs skirms, especially in lower numbers, since they get only one thirds of their regular damage in hand combat, whereas goons, as stated, half of their attack (6 vs 11). Hint: don't do that with Black Riders (40 range vs 10 melee damage).
Another interesting fact I've just noticed: Cavalry Archers' bonus vs hand cavalry increases in melee to *4.5. If you test ranged and melee CA vs a hussar, you'll be left with 55 HP remaining in both cases (no kiting involved). :hmm:
About fighting hand-to-hand with artillery: I used to do it quite often, but after some point figured out it's not the most effective way to deal with them since you don't utilise your goons' range and it all gets too cramped when you try to do it. I'd rather recommend quick engagements to snipe artillery or if you feel so putting only the closest goons manually into melee combat.

I'll link this thread in my „Tips of the Day from pecelot" thread, if you're not opposed, of course with proper credits :)
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Holy See Imperial Noob
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Re: Tip of the day — light cavalry hand combat

Post by Imperial Noob »

Yojimbo. If not for their sickly meagre numbers in the shipments, high cost otherwise and the might of comparable ashigaru musketeers, those guys would be a bunch of beasts.

Couple of months ago we tested them together with @pecelot and the results were as following: (see: attachment)

In a combined force they could probably also snare nice (think: 0.55 faster cuirassiers) but their low numbers would mean death sentence in such a battle

I felt this thread is the most apropriate to post about the only dedicated melee light cav in aoe 3
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Poland pecelot
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Re: Tip of the day — light cavalry hand combat

Post by pecelot »

Agreed, Japan has just broken units :uglylol:
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Re: Tip of the day — light cavalry hand combat

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Post by Kaiserklein »

The main goal of the melee mode for goons is imo against artillery. Goons have 4* more dps vs artillery when put in melee mode. But you mostly can't reach the falcs anyway, against a decent player.

Goons have a 0.5 multiplier against vils when shooting, but not in melee mode. So they deal more damage in melee mode anyway, regardless of the resist. But it's true that against settlers, it can still be better to shoot sometimes, for pathing reasons, and because the range is useful.

Against skirms it's mostly useless, because skirms in melee mode also deal more damage to goons than skirms in ranged mode. So you deal more damage, but also get more damage. It's only useful when you want to snare the skirms, but this doesn't happen so often.

One last thing worth being noted : melee mode for cav archers is awful. If you do some quick maths, you see that the dps for goons in melee mode and in ranged mode is the same : their attack is halfed in melee mode, but their rof is also doubled. However, cav archers have the same rof in melee and in ranged mode (they shoot twice faster than goons). And yet, their attack is still halved when they go in melee mode. So in the end, their dps is halved, which is very bad. Never put cav archers in melee mode, unless you indeed want to snare raiding cav. This ofc works for manchus, keshiks, comanche as well. Instead, I'd advise you to surround the skirms with your cav archers, while remaining in range mode. This way, some of the skirms will attack them in melee mode, which is good for you because of the range resist. If your opponent just attack moves, and doesn't hit and run your cav archers, his skirms will actually lose to cav archers lol, because cav archers are so strong in immobile fights.
Ah and also don't do it with blackriders, because for some reason their hand attack is divided by 4 instead of halved...

But it's a good tip overall.
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Poland pecelot
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Re: Tip of the day — light cavalry hand combat

Post by pecelot »

Kaiserklein wrote:Goons have a 0.5 multiplier against vils when shooting, but not in melee mode. So they deal more damage in melee mode anyway, regardless of the resist. But it's true that against settlers, it can still be better to shoot sometimes, for pathing reasons, and because the range is useful.

Isn't it about equal? Of course in melee goons have a bigger ROF, but usually the resist and walking time should make up for it.

Kaiserklein wrote:Against skirms it's mostly useless, because skirms in melee mode also deal more damage to goons than skirms in ranged mode. So you deal more damage, but also get more damage. It's only useful when you want to snare the skirms, but this doesn't happen so often.

How come? Assuming a goon vs skirm battle: goons do 11 dmg vs skirms' 6*2 in melee instead of 22*0.7 vs 18*2*0.7 (or even 18*3*0.8 on EP :!:). The thing it's about is that goons' attack in hand combat drops to one-half, whereas skirms' one to one-third.

Kaiserklein wrote:One last thing worth being noted : melee mode for cav archers is awful. If you do some quick maths, you see that the dps for goons in melee mode and in ranged mode is the same : their attack is halfed in melee mode, but their rof is also doubled. However, cav archers have the same rof in melee and in ranged mode (they shoot twice faster than goons). And yet, their attack is still halved when they go in melee mode. So in the end, their dps is halved, which is very bad. Never put cav archers in melee mode, unless you indeed want to snare raiding cav. This ofc works for manchus, keshiks, comanche as well. Instead, I'd advise you to surround the skirms with your cav archers, while remaining in range mode. This way, some of the skirms will attack them in melee mode, which is good for you because of the range resist. If your opponent just attack moves, and doesn't hit and run your cav archers, his skirms will actually lose to cav archers lol, because cav archers are so strong in immobile fights.
Ah and also don't do it with blackriders, because for some reason their hand attack is divided by 4 instead of halved...


Like I said, CA have an increased multiplier vs cav in melee mode, which compensates for the attack nerf, but of course only partially. Just a side note :) Well said, nonetheless. :love: :love:
That Black Rider thing I noticed as well, it's indeed interesting... :hmm:
No Flag a passing slimey
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Re: Tip of the day — light cavalry hand combat

Post by a passing slimey »

Against skirms it's mostly useless, because skirms in melee mode also deal more damage to goons than skirms in ranged mode. So you deal more damage, but also get more damage. It's only useful when you want to snare the skirms, but this doesn't happen so often.

melee combat against cassadors is definitely worth it. Check it out yourself :p

The main goal of the melee mode for goons is imo against artillery. Goons have 4* more dps vs artillery when put in melee mode. But you mostly can't reach the falcs anyway, against a decent player


Yeah, i pretty much only get to use melee dragoons against art in 3v3s. I really forgot to comment about that tho.
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Re: Tip of the day — light cavalry hand combat

Post by momuuu »

Ranged cav in melee mode is a risky but often rewarding strategy in skirm goon fights that you won. It prevents the opponents inferior army from getting away making the trade often more in your favor. If hes reinforcing with hand cav and youre just a little bit low on anti cav trading anti cav for skirms can bite you in the ass, its thus sometimes also better to completely pull back all ranged cav.
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Re: Tip of the day — light cavalry hand combat

Post by tedere12 »

If you realise that your opponent has no anti cav units and you have not any cav unit but a lot of dragoons, you can use the hand combat quite effectively. Then again its a bit risky because he might be making cav or shipping some, and your goon losses might hurt you more than his skirm losses
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Poland pecelot
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Re: Tip of the day — light cavalry hand combat

Post by pecelot »

In bigger numbers there are also pathing issues and the cat that goons deal relatively little damage to skirms — troops at the back can just back off a bit and fire at range. That's why I suggested doing so in smaller skirmishes, as it's not really possible there.

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