Vet Hussar or Cuirassier

[Garja]

To be fair as Brits you ideally aim at mass cav + some lbows vs Fre. Brit cav kinda perform better than French one in late fortress. Both Brit huss and goon benefit from the colonial upgrades and I feel like huss+goon trades better anyway vs cuirs+goon.
Cuirs just more practical because no vet up required.

[momuuu]

Btw just a quick test in scenario editor: Vs formation hussars a cuir dealt 60 normal damage and 46 area damage in two wacks. It's efficient damage output would then be 53 instead of 30. That's quite a big effect actually. Versus skirmishers in formation it dealt 30 normal damage and 39 splash damage in just one hit. We're looking at 69 damage compared to 36 for a hussar. That's a huge bonus in dps, even against hussars.

Given that with steel traps and placer mines cuirasiers are 57% more expansive, they actually have 47% more dps against widely packed units such as hussars and about 90% more dps against skirmishers. So whenever you're whacking at densely packed units like skirmishers and also for example ruyters, Cuirasiers have a lot of extra damage. If you want to make a reasonable comparison at all, you HAVE to include the effect of area damage because it can do as much as double the dps.of cuirs.

--> Cuirs are ~60% more expensive, have 30% more HP, but do 16% less dmg (though area dmg).

That means that this 'fact' is basically useless. It also doesn't account for the loss of attack damage that lower hitpoint units suffer from.

[Gendarme]

Yeah my trample attack is devastating AF. I tear through troops upon troops of densely packed Antifa-terrorists on my own, and my melee resistance is redundant anyway since those idiots can't even land a punch.

[Luciofrancosi]

In my opinion I think that if you need a good mass of cav in early fortress then vet huss are better, unless you have stage coach!! They are cheaper and train faster and you simply can't get a good mass of cuirs out on early fort and if you do you will have no army behind it!! You definitely want to switch to cuirs later on though once your eco is better.
A cav semi with about 10 huss for example makes it very worth it to upgrade them and use them for a while in early fort. You just need to save 200w from the 700w shipment, u can train a few more huss in transition and then just add the seccond unit group like skirms or goons!!

[Kaiserklein]

If you want to have a good mass of cav early on, it sucks to have to pay and wait for the veterancy :/
But it can be a good early timing if you get 5+8 skirms and 10 huss from colo + 5 huss batch in transition/early fort and then upgrade your huss while crossing the map.

[GiBthedurrty]

I only do vet huss if it's not tp

[gibson]

vet huss are always better in every single situation

[evilcheadar]

Cuirs > huss 100% even theoritically, why youre not taking into account the area damage ? Its like i would compare a dopp without area damage and a pik and show the pik is better.
The area damage is huge and keep in mind that more you have cuirs more this area damage is big and do more damage, its expensive. More you have cuirs more the difference with huss is good.
Anyway early age 3 you want skirm goon most of the time and the moment where you want to do a hand cav switch your huss from age2 are probably already dead so upgrading huss is useless everygame.

what's pik

[P i k i l i c]

what's pik

???

[Gendarme]

Lmao

[Cocaine]

I would recommend to use hussars at least until you send cav combat cards. Since hussars stats are based on age II levels while cuir stats are based on age III levels, cuirs get relatively better compared to hussars with every cav improvement you send or research in arsenal. You could arguable keep doing hussars until age IV.

Let's do a comparison of vet stats:
Vet. Hussar (without upgrades through cards etc.): 384 hp, 36 dmg, 120F 80C
Vet. Cuir (without upgrades): 500 hp, 30dmg, 150F 150C
--> Cuirs are ~60% more expensive, have 30% more HP, but do 16% less dmg (though area dmg).

With all upgrade cards + arsenal techs:
Vet. Hussar: 528 hp, 45dmg, 120F 80C
Vet. Cuir: 725 hp, 39 dmg, 150F 150C
--> Cuirs are still ~60% more expensive, have 37% more hp and do 13% less dmg (though area dmg).

Cuirs are expensive business for fortress age. This changes only in industrial with the completely overpowered -15% cost card and the guard upgrade.


edit: one more thing about the area dmg. Area dmg does have some effect in cav to cav combat, but it scales with the quantities on both sides. That means you need to have a high number of cuirs to really have a significant effect. In my opinion that would be too costly for age III fights. Finally, it depends on your enemy whether cuirs are useful. If he fields large quantities of skirms/lb's/strelets, then building some cuirs is surely a good option. But the more muskets/goons/hussars he has, the less cuirs are a viable option to me (in fortress age).

Excellent comparison thank you.

[pecelot]

That's a good question I asked myself lately, too. The thing that lost me many games in Fortress Age as the French and akin is having not enough meat-shield against a hand cavalry switch from my opponent. Cuirassiers are pretty hard to mass due to their long training time, huge costs and usually only one stable early on (for both them and dragoons) and they get picked of by enemy light cavalry relatively easily. A very important factor I've seen not being taken into account is the overkill. Micro at a decent level allows splitting the dragoon volley on two targets in the midst of the battle, as far as I know, hence the more cavalry you have, the harder it is for your opponent to pick them off.

However, upgrading hussars to veteran status is quite tricky, too. As said, you should pretty much always do that when you have about 8 or more hussars left from Colonial Age, but when you don't...