I play with a single cavalry civilization, RUS. So, let’s say… I’m in the cavalry civilization club.
Let’s go to the club: Mongol, France, Rus, Byzantines, Mali, Japanese… anyway… these civilizations particularly have good cavalry.
Age of Empires, like all war games, involves a lot of mathematics. Players need to make quick mental calculations about whether their cavalry is in good numbers, whether it can fight well, perform micro attacks, not lose units and cause as much damage as possible to the enemy team’s economy.
The great advantage of cavalry is its incredible mobility and the ability to cause damage to the enemy and simply run away without being punished. In addition, cavalry is extremely resistant to projectiles and is capable of defeating a good part of the units in the game, Men-at-Arms, light units, siege weapons, etc.
In Age 2, cavalry is dominant and the strong game unit.
In Age 3, cavalry is even more dominant because the Japanese can make samurai on horseback and the Byzantines can make Cataphratics.
In Age 4, since the unnamable update that was terrible… Cavalry gets an extra bonus! And that’s totally nonsensical, but anyway… that’s what we have for today.
It’s been a while since I played infantry… Returning to the subject of chivalry.
I’m not suggesting this strategy is perfect. Basically, it needs to be in a favorable situation and works best between Ages 2-3.
You can do like the Chinese players who play Go, flooding the enemy team with cavalry to destroy the villagers, and this can work especially well with the Mali civilization. Or do like I did in this video, destroying the economy of some players in a 4v4 match.
In some cases the match is decided by a single or a few players who make a deadly heavy cavalry. Regardless of the Age, it works in any Era/Age, but the situation needs to be favorable. What is a favorable situation? When the enemy team has not built adequate walls and fortifications, allowing the cavalry to act too freely or when they do not defend themselves adequately.
This also explains why many players of cavalry civlizations surrender first when they are pressured when their attacks fail to work while their team is sleeping.
I really want to see the game more balanced in the way it was created in its first concept.