What's the point of light cavalry if you have resources for heavy cavalry?

What's the point of light cavalry if you have resources for heavy cavalry?

I know that historically they were used to hunt archers, but archers are almost always protected by spears. Plus they are also vulnerable to arrows.

Other urls found in this thread:

gizmodo.com/new-study-busts-the-myth-that-knights-couldnt-move-well-1783051334
benjaminrose.com/post/mobility-in-medieval-plate-armor/
metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aams/hd_aams.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_Middle_Ages
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destier
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Scouting. Skirmishing. Raiding.

An experienced squad of light cavalry, when used well, can adopt the hammer and anvil tactic used for generations to attack an enemy and make their troops route at a critical juncture on the battlefield. Once the enemy is routing, it is much easier to shatter the morale of the other units.

You can do that with heavies. They are slower but still much faster than those on foot.

are you retarded?

Heavy cavalry is also, well, heavy: slower and unefficient against light-equipped armies (look for the turks/seljuks against byz and crusaders) and unable to fight at all in damp fields of battle.

Horses arent machines, they get tired

gizmodo.com/new-study-busts-the-myth-that-knights-couldnt-move-well-1783051334
benjaminrose.com/post/mobility-in-medieval-plate-armor/
metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aams/hd_aams.htm

While slower than light, they are still much faster than those on foot.

Stamina seems to be a problem through, but I couldn't find any research about that.

>You can do that with heavies
To slow, too heavy, to valuable to risk in such a manner with rough terrain also makes broken legs an occurrence. As good as their stamina is Heavy Horses tire faster. Other than scouting, skirmishing and raiding, light cav serves as a quick reactionary or a diversionary force.

And in a game of chase the pony heavy a dettached heavy cavalry can easily be withered and destroyed either by skirmishing or a surprise charge by enemy heavy cav.

Wouldn't the problem actually be enviromental? Heavy armor really isn't the best thing to have on desert.

Scouting: If all you want to do is ride around and look at stuff, why slow yourself down and make your horse tired by carrying useless metal?

Skirmishing: If you intend to be doing lots of running around with only occasional light fights, the extra logistics of heavies might not be worth the benefits.

Raiding: Speed is paramount, and you're attacking surprised opponents, likely not heavily armed.

Sometimes light calvary will do the job just fine.

alright, you are retarded.

>Wouldn't the problem actually be enviromental?

You dont always get to fight when and where you want, like Napoleon at Waterloo.

the best reason to have light cavalry is if the other guy has light cavalry

if you can't catch them, you can't engage them on your terms

>Heavy armor really isn't the best thing to have on desert
Depends on the area. The Seljuks, Arabs used heavy armor on both infantry and Cavalry. The difference is their heavy use of light cavalry as a major part of their armies as opposed to how the Europeans deployed them, their horses are more acclimated to the rough and arid terrain as well.

Read the links. H. Cavalry is still faster than infantry.

And you can do those job with heavies, but as another user posted I have to admit that stamina makes light more adequate.

The label of Light/Heavy Cav is entirely contextual and is determined by role/type of mount rather than purely by equipment on some universal scale.

Late Medieval/Renaissance light cavalry could wear extensive plate armor, but were mounted on faster unbarded horses compared to heavy cavalry on larger and stronger mounts with plate barding. Napoleonic cuirassiers only wore breastplates and helmets and other types such as Heavy Dragoons wore no armor at all, but were big men on big horses compared to faster light cavalry and so were classed as heavy by the standard of their times despite wearing far less armour than some medieval light horse.

They serve different purposes and each can be very unsuited for the missions of the other, light cavalry are not just the cheap but less useful version of heavy horse.

Are you actuallt retarded, both those links refere to a knights plate armour on foot. You force a horse to carry a lot of metal, it tires faster.

Speed matters. Every minute before your cavalry hit the archers is multiple more volleys at your men

And men with armor running also tire faster. The fact of the matter was that armor was spread through their bodies (both man and horse), so the myth that heavy armor was too slow is just a myth. That was my point and I didn't talk anything about stamina.

They were slower, but not much slower.

Most combat losses before artillery came about happened while the enemy was routing, not during the actual battle and light cavalry is best at harassing fleeing enemies.

nobody argued that heavy cavalry is faster than infantry.
That's the first point why you are retarded.

But everybody else said that light cavalry is clearly better for scouting skirmishing and raiding. But you instantly started to talk about infantry
Second point why you are retarded.

And you think heavy cavalry can do those things.
Third point why you are retarded

Which doesn't change that heavy cavalry can still do that. The point is that they are less effective when compared with other cavalry on those tasks.

What physically stops an armored horse scouting? You can insult as much as you want, but not being the best tool =/= unable.

>men with armor running also tire faster

H Infantry is not supposed to run or outmaneuver reparts, they usually hold the centre and do the dirty job.

Way to put all your chips in one move. 10/10 strategist nobody will ever bait and switch you into losing a year's worth of the country's treasury in one skirmish.

>cavalry can still do that
The counterpoint is would they?
It would be a waste, they would be vulnerable, and overall inefficient.

>OP thinks heavy cavalry doesn't get btfod by light cavalry.

Silly user, heavy cavs are for breaking and enduring infantry. Light cavalry will run circles around heavy cavalry while harassing them. Sure the knights are invincible, but the arrows will hit the horse and pin the knights down while he gets stabbed/executed/trampled on.
And if you think to put armor on your horse too, then that horse will collapse after a short distance chasing the lighter cavalry. It doesn't help that most of the time people fell for the "chase the faster light cavalry into an ambush" trick.

Heavy cavalry is for infantry, and they're not worse or better than light skirmishers. Just different roles.

my grandma could do it, nothing stops her physically from doing it. It would be still a shit idea.

Technically she couldn't, because in order to do those things you need to at least be faster than a foot army. Except scouting. But boy that would be a slow scout.

Kudos to your gradma btw.

Being capable of something does not mean being good at it. The horse with lighter armor will scout faster. It isn't a matter of outrunning footmen, just of getting where you need to go quickly. Light Calv does that better, so why waste resources on heavy calv?

>What physically stops an armored horse scouting?

Lack of stamina, weakness in combat in rough fields like forests and hills, their slowness make them also more weak in ambush since they cant escape with ease

why would you spend two times more money on something that isn't as good?

hey, I mean if it's okay for a scouting party to be one day late than yeah it's totally okay.
Then again in sane armies that would count as "can't do it"

The distinction is not the man's armor, it's the horse.
Heavy cavalry were on bigguy4U horses bred to fight. Light cavalry were on fast horses bred for speed.
Heavy cavalry won't scout, skirmish or raid as effectivelly as light cavalry because the fucking horse is slower and needs to eat/drink more at shorter intervals.

foot armies are slow user. They are as slow as the slowest cart / cannon.

Cheaper.

>Why don't we replace all light military vehicles with heavy tanks?
They perform fundamentally different tasks.

This, there's a reason the Mongols use basically ponies to conquer one third of earth's landmass in a lifetime. Smaller horses can go much further and faster than giant ones.

>why field humvees if you have the resources to build tanks?

Nothings physically stops it happening, its just a stupid plan and a waste of materials. Lets have a little example of why to use light cav for scouting.

Oo this is a good position if our army sets up here, it will be hard for our enemies to deal with us. Oh no the enemy, using light cav not armoured cav found the samespot at the exact same time. Travelling faster and needing less stops for rest, the light cavalry bring the information back faster so your enemy can mobalise faster and beat you to the favourable ground.

Use the right tool for the job.

That's actually a myth user:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_Middle_Ages
> Size of war horses

>what do you mean TW isn't reality

Why use humvees if you have half-tracks?

why use half-tracks when you have BTRs?

????
what are you trying to say???
pretty much no one uses half-tracks today.

Technically his grandma could. Physically nothing stops her from scouting. Sure the army would have to wait longer, like with armoured cavalry, but physically nothing is stopping her.

>except scouting

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destier
Big Knights and big horses were a thing, but fuckhuge horses were rare and expensive and are more likely to be used on Tournaments than on the battlefield. There are no specific breed of Destrier, any horse that is unsually big is called one.

Most Heavy cavalry used Rounceys and coursers, which are still big and stocky compared to Pack horses and stout but hardy Ponies, mostly used by light cavalrymen.

You forgot screening enemy formations.

As well as the obvious scouting and skirmishing, the key thing to remember about cavalry is that by a certain point in development, heavy cavalry existed pretty much solely as a means of force maximisation; ploughing as much kinetic energy as possible into the enemy's lines in order to break them apart. They were an answer to the incredible power of well-shielded heavy infantry, and a very effective one; but their specialisation meant that applying extreme force to a front line was about all they could really do.

Enter light cavalry. While at the charge they wouldn't be much faster than heavy, they are vastly more manoeuvrable, and have weapons that do things other than "apply entire force of charging heavy horse and rider to point X", whether those be cavalry sabres, throwing weapons, bows, all manner of other possibilities. These allowed them to fulfil lots of roles on the battlefield, and to control lots of the ground with significant ease. Just as important as controlling the ground was their ability to harass enemy units, which could be used to break up battle lines and stretch the enemy's discipline to its limits as well as disrupting units of archers. Finally, they were the ultimate in hunters; you could send them after escaped units to round them up as prisoners, or hunt down a specific fleeing commander or other high-value target. None of these roles are practical at all for heavy cavalry.

Just to add: pursuing a routed enemy.

Alternatively you go the Roman way, and put so much armor on you and your horse that you don't give a fucking damn what is shooting or stabbing you, because they can't do shit.

>the Roman way

Cataphracts are a Partic thing, Byz (not Rome) adopted them later.

"Byzantine" is a bullshit phrase invented by a German historian to justify the

>Holy
>Roman
>Empire

As the one true successor of Rome. The Eastern Roman Empire wasn't just the legal successor of Rome, it was Rome itself. The capital had been already moved about throughout history (Rome isn't central to the identity well into the Imperial era) and they culturally did not change. Greek after all was already the noble tongue.

But now we use to differentiate time periods of the Empire. Please do not take this brand of autism outside of Veeky Forums.

>Byz (not Rome) adopted them later.
Cataphracts were used by Romans before the split.

Byzantium is stil Roman

>The capital had been already moved about throughout history

Never seriously before Constantine

>Rome isn't central to the identity well into the Imperial era

It's central until Marcus Aurelius, after him the whole Empire started to crumble so it doesnt matter that much

>they culturally did not change

This is false on every level, i wont bother writing a tome to confute such a stupid thing

>Greek after all was already the noble tongue

Greek never been the noble tongue, only hellenistic emperors like Adrian or Aurelius regarded it as much.

No, it's used by people completely ignorant of actual history and deserves as much derision and ridicule as the usage of words such as plate-mail or ring-mail. There's an easy way to talk about specific eras of Roman Civilization- Kingdom, Republic, Empire. If you want to get more specific, you mention specific dynasties/consuls/emperors.

>Cataphracts were used by Romans before the split.

True, but never on a level to call it "the roman way".

Oh shut the fuck up already you autistic spazz. It is used even by todays historians as a distinctive period for the Eastern Empire after the fall of the West to the Turkic Conquest and final end of the Roman Empire. You are not impressing anyone with your ramblings fagnut, you even got your information about armored Cataphracts wrong.

>Never seriously before Constantine
And it had still fluctuated before him. The point being that precedent existed, and as Emperor Constantine could do whatever Constantine so well pleased barring the minor legal limitations on the imperial throne.

>It's central until Marcus Aurelius, after him the whole Empire started to crumble so it doesnt matter that much
Arbitrary bullshit at that.

>This is false on every level, i wont bother writing a tome to confute such a stupid thing
They didn't culturally change. The East did not suddenly overnight undergo some rapid cultural shift rendering it unrecognizable to the west. It took time, and to say it was a different state for it is just as stupid and nonsensical as to claim that the various dynasties of Imperial China are not legal successions by right of conquest.

>Greek never been the noble tongue, only hellenistic emperors like Adrian or Aurelius regarded it as much.
Greek was the noble tongue. As the days of the "classical" empire waned, its influence spread via the Greek tutors of the noble's children and eventually supplanted high latin.

I know you are autistic because you make fun of the Holy Roman Empire but get assblasted on the subject of Rome.

It's an inaccurate phrase with bullshit origins that- as a falsehood should be put in the ground instead of grossly misinforming our children of history. Especially when the Romans themselves never considered or called themselves "Byzantine". It's almost as bad of a linguistic cockup as "Hungary" and "Hungarians".

Because the Holy Roman Empire was ultimately a meme, unlike Rome. Rome at least spent half its time doing something other than fighting itself.

see? autism

Ah yes; the bare exposed head of the horse will block arrows for sure

The eastern side of the empire was already culturally distinct before the final split so what's your point

What's wrong with Hungry and its Hungrarians?

They're Magyars and refer to themselves as such.

Even if you told knights to scout an area, they wouldn't do it in full armour and with barding.
Why?

Because the job isn't to fight. The job is to get information fast and without being noticed. If you get into a fight you fucked up.

Being better in a fight doesn't make you a better scout.

>But why would my 20 stack of Total War units include light cavalry

kys

I'm Hungarian and I refer to English people as Angolok. Will that invalidate the term "English" as well?

England and English is accurate as it's still semi derived of the main population.

Last I checked very few people in Hungary actually have any Hunnic ancestry. Rather they're predominantly Magyars who settled the area in the 800's. It'd be akin to naming England Pictland and referring to Anglos as Picts because once upon a time the isles were the home of Pictish tribes which were later diluted/wiped out.

desu the eastern side always been culturally distinct to the western side

>The point being that precedent existed

It never mattered, Constantine was a despot and used force to spread his ideas. West by then was too much corrupted and weak to revolt against such offense as switchin the capital.

>They didn't culturally change.

Rome culture undergo many changes, there's an abyss between Trajan and Constantine.

>As the days of the "classical" empire waned, its influence spread via the Greek tutors of the noble's children and eventually supplanted high latin.

Greek spreaded thanks to its poets and phils, but it NEVER been regarded more noble than latin by the most important emperors, no matter how many you write it.

actually it was just the name of one of the seven tribes that "conquered" this land.

This is a meme. First because not all the Middle East is desert. Second because the middle east started using heavy cavalry way before western europe.

And also I have to point out the "hungarian" thing doesn't come from the "huns"
It comes from the on-ugor thing which was an alliance of ten tribes of hungarian, bolgarian and turks, back in the sixth century then it became unugor. Then later the Ungarus, Ungar, Venger forms only meant the hungarians. And THEN the ungarus, ungaria latin words became hungarus hungaria when the franks borrowed it. Etc.

Genghis tactics relied on heavy cavalry. He used this against his fellow mongols succesfully. Persia and China used heavy cavalry succesfully against horsemen people of the steppe. Heavy cavalry doesn't have to be just european knights with lances. You don't become light cavalry the second you get a bow.

I think we should start with: what exactly defines light and heavy cavalry? Is cavalry on chainmail heavy or light?

Can be both depending on the period, their role in battle and what you mean by "cavalry on chainmail". Do the horses have mail? How much does this mail cover the rider? What other kinds of armor are used?

I honestly don't know how much faster a horse tires if it's carrying an armored man compared to an unarmored man. Most people ITT seem to think that the horse tiring faster would be the answer, but I don't really believe them. I think this is the more simple answer:

There's better uses for the extra equipment other than giving light cavalry heavier gear.

it's not just the man on the horse but also the armour on the horse. If there is no armour on the horse then it's not heavy cavalry at all.

Heavy cavalry are cavalry where both the rider and the horse are armored. This requires a bigger, stronger, thus a less endurant horse. The Mongol's use of their equivalent of "heavy" cavalry is still hit and run rapid attacks. Their light cavalrymen are still very heavily armored. It's not because you wield a bow that you must wear light silk and leather armor.
I guess people are mixing up light cavalry with skirmichers and heavy cavalry are chargers.
As for OPs question, metal is expensive and hard to process. Skirmishers shouldn't get caught, so there's no point in heavily armoring them. An effective armor for cavalry must also cover the horse, and although an armored or unarmored human changes little for the horse, that beast will feel the weight of a horse armor, which can weigh as much if not more than the rider fully armored.

If a rider is armored and the beast isn't, then the rider will either dismount (like knights sometimes do) or the rider doesn't expect to be in the pitch of combat for long (like the Mongols like it)

>le HRE XD
Why do redditors like this meme so much?

Light cavalry are horsemen meant to provide reconnaissance, skirmishing and raiding duties for an army giving them versatility outside of a battle. Usually lightly equipped, in the battlefield they are meant to harass and harry the enemy, create or exploit weaknesses, provide, act as quick reinforcements to critical locations and screen other units such as heavy cavalry.

Heavy cavalry on the other has one duty. To engage the enemy and in an ideal situation deliver a decisive smashing blow to enemy.

Read the story of Aurelian's campain against Zenobia. It makes me fucking mad that her dumbfuck of a general fell for the same trick twice. Heavy cavalry's lack of stamina can really turn the tide of a battle.

They can go further, but not faster. They were hardy little beasts that were easy to maintain, but they weren't particularly fast due to their short legs.

well, speed wins battles, logistic wins wars.

Ponies are quick as fuck not racehorse fast but still considerable, they have less stride but they can cycle their gallop pretty quick,

How is this Veeky Forums related?

what kind of nigger are you? a mentally challenged one?

We all don't sit around and roleplay anime schools girls user.

Not as retarded as you, seeing as you think a thread about military history has anything to do on a board about playing make-believe with shitty action figures.
sick b8 m8, have a (You)

do you also think that only DnD stats are Veeky Forums related?

Not really. Cataphract style cavalry was very, very rare. Most heavy cavalry in history didn't use heavily armoured horses.

> our children
I don’t think you’ll have kids.

Which was pretty much how they rolled in most campaigns. I remember one instance where they had someone chasing them for a week before they lured them into terrain suitable enough for them to turn and fight on.

Or compared to most chargers. They weren't Japanese pony slow, but they weren't as fast as most war horses either.

Cavalry is best used for when the enemy breaks and runs. Then you send the cavalry to murder them from behind or in the side.

If you're enemy is planted and ready to defend themselves you're using cavalry wrong.

Now, war isn't on your side and it never goes to plan so heavy cavalry is great. But when cavalry is doing cavalry things they don't need much armour.

When guns happened they were better at taking on infantry directly while heavy cavalry became more specialized at countering light cavalry. By the end of WWII the only distinction between the two was that heavy cav used lances while light cav used sabers, if you didn't subscribe to the idea that armored cavalry was heavy cavalry and those still horsebound were light.

I think history shouldn't be discussed by faggots with the historical and social acumen of thirteen year olds

and yet, we have Veeky Forums
But we aren't talking about history, we are talking about tactics, and obviously we take examples from history for it. To use the end product in the motherfucking make believe games we play for fun.
Stop being a retard and try to think for a second, will you?

Because talking about history requires having plenty of charisma and social grace.