Using Cavalry Efficiently

[pokeytrev]

For some reason, I can't get my head wrapped around a good way to use cavalry in 7YW. I feel like my charges are largely inefficient, and dragoons are fairly useless except for scouting and mobility. Can anyone here offer some tips/suggestions to me so that I can use cavalry a little more efficiently?

[Captain Al]

For some reason, I can't get my head wrapped around a good way to use cavalry in 7YW. I feel like my charges are largely inefficient, and dragoons are fairly useless except for scouting and mobility. Can anyone here offer some tips/suggestions to me so that I can use cavalry a little more efficiently?

- You have to be really patient with your cavalry compared to Napoleonics.  Even heavy cavalry is useless against fresh infantry.  Wait until the enemy is completely fatigued, disordered or routed.  

- I like dragoons in 7YW.  Dismounted dragoons are very useful to keep enemy cavalry off your flanks.  But their fire is only effective at one hex.  A tactic that has worked well is to use dismounted dragoons to wear down the enemy cavalry until they disorder or rout, then charge them with regular or heavy cavalry. 

- My only complaint is that dragoons are coded as cavalry and therefore can't enter chateaus.

[O.Schmidt]

Lt cavalry is best used for reconnaissance!

Medium cavalry, I do not know yet how I use this! (maybe to protect cannons and villages?)

Hv cavalry, best hide and attack artillery or shaken infantry!

If Cavalry detachment Cavalry can not attack!

[pokeytrev]

Thanks! Great tips so far! I can see using them for countering regular cavalry, which makes a lot of sense.

[jim pfleck]

I too have been trying to figure this out. I think their main job is to defeat the enemy cavalry and keep it away from your army. I agree with Captain Al that it is a bad idea to attack infantry that is not disordered and worn out (and hit them in the flank). In the Napoleonic games, 400 cavalry can attack a well ordered zero fatigue 800 man infantry battalion in line formation from the front and ride the infantry down. In 7 years war game, that cavalry will be shot to pieces and lose the melee...

[Laborde]

1st pbem with 7YW for me now, that really needs patience, cant dare to use the cavalry tbh in the view of such information above 

[-72-]

I too have been trying to figure this out.  I think their main job is to defeat the enemy cavalry and keep it away from your army. I agree with Captain Al that it is a bad idea to attack infantry that is not disordered and worn out (and hit them in the flank). In the Napoleonic games, 400 cavalry can attack a well ordered zero fatigue 800 man infantry battalion in line formation from the front and ride the infantry down.  In 7 years war game, that cavalry will be shot to pieces and lose the melee...

Not to mention, gift your opponent a nice haul of vp's that you might not be able to afford to lose.

[berto]

In the Napoleonic games, 400 cavalry can attack a well ordered zero fatigue 800 man infantry battalion in line formation from the front and ride the infantry down.  In 7 years war game, that cavalry will be shot to pieces and lose the melee...

How is cavalry less effective in the Seven Years War than the Napoleonic Wars?  Hadn't musketry advanced in the intervening 50 years?  Why wouldn't Napoleonic Era cavalry be even more "shot to pieces"?

[berto]

This:

Prussian cavalry grew from 1,000 sabers in the early XVII century to 6,000 by 1750. During the Seven Years War it was decisive in a number of victorious battles, both by bold charges and enveloping operations. In several occasions it even prevented disaster by covering army retreats. The cavalry was probably the most vaunted arm of the Prussian army until 1800. Under a leader as renowned as Friedrich Wilhelm, Freiherr von Seydlitz (1721-1773), the Prussian cavalry achieved the nearest to a state of perfection that it was ever going to. So great was its reputation in the Seven Years' War that Napoleon made a special point of warning his men at the beginning of the 1806 campaign to beware of the Prussian cavalry.



In 1757 at Rossbach the Prussian army (22,000 men) under Frederick the Great defeated the French and German armies (54,000 men) under Marshal Prince de Soubise. 
About 3,500 Prussian horsemen had defeated an entire army of two combined European superpowers. Frederick was heard to say "I won the battle of Rossbach with most of my infantry having their muskets shouldered." 
Casualties: 550 Prussians and 5,000 French and Germans ! Most of the allied cavalry in front were smashed to pieces by the initial charge and many of them trampled over their own men trying to flee.

[Gary McClellan]

Heh, loaded topic here, and a fair bit to digest (and my tactical tips are dubious, I'm actually very limited as a player.)

I'm going to talk more in general about cavalry than the ingame tactics.

Berto asked how Napoleonic Infantry could be "worse" than SYW at holding off Cav charges. That's actually a bit backwards. Cavalry technique substantially improved in (and after) the SYW. During the SYW, the Prussian Cavalry was the best at the massed charge, (and approached the effectiveness of Nappie era.) That's why they actually get an extra bonus above everyone else's cav. Everyone else was considerably less effective.

All of that said, a fair bit of the modeling of Cav in the game is based on the idea that Cav could not assault fresh, good order infantry from the front. If you think about it a moment, that makes sense. The same hedgehog of bayonets that makes a Nappie square effective also works even if a unit is simply in line, so long as the enemy attacks from the front. Then, the gaps between battalions in line were generally small enough to prevent Cav from sneaking in between. So, for the Cav to effectively get away from the bayonet wall, they would have to loop to the far end of the line. Even then, it was common to post the grenadier battalions between the 1st and 2nd lines at the far end to create a box (Look at the Prussian deployment in Gross Jaegersdorf to see a good example of this.) Even at times if the cav got the flank, the rear rank of a line formation could fight off enemy cav (this happened at Minden, if someone wants, I can post up from something one of the soldiers there wrote.)

Then, lets look at the most decisive cav charges of the war(s)

1) Hohenfriedberg (War of the Austrian Succession) This is the biggie, as it's likely the most successful single charge of either war. The Bayreuth Dragoons (double sized regiment) broke the back of the Austro-Saxon forces. How did they do this? They found a seam that allowed them to attack the Austrian flank and rolled the whole thing up. (I'll admit, getting something quite to this scale is hard in game terms, but I've not messed with setting up any WAS stuff.)

2) Rossbach (as someone else mentioned). The Prussian cav first broke apart the Franco-Imperial Cav. However, the F-I infantry was in his horrid, ungainly road column, and ended up "having their T crossed" by the Prussian infantry. While they were involved in that battle (and losing) the Prussian Cav reformed, looped to the flank and attacked that monstrosity in the flank. (See the Rossbach "Infantry Battle" scenario for a setup of this.)

3) Kunersdorf. After a long, hard fought day, the Prussian infantry had been repulsed when the Austrians brought up reserve Cav (I'd have to look, I think some Russians were in it, but this stage was mostly Austrians) and launched a backbreaking charge.

Now, you can argue this is cherry picked, but the point here is that in each of those cases, the Cav was decisive by either attacking from the flank (Rossbach), exhausted troops (Kunersdorf) or both (Hohenfriedberg). (I would want to doublecheck on Granby's charge at Warburg, but I suspect it's more the same.)

So, back to the original question. How do you use cav? Against other cav, then to launch assaults against flanks and D or High Fatigue troops.