That would have been a tough matchup for me in that game, but those mercs evened the odds a lot. I still remember those Horse Archer mercs I hired against the Caliph, who was fielding nothing but cultural Heavy Infantry. If you're concerned about counters, there's the possibility of hiring mercenaries which counter your opponent. Thus, for some cultures the cultural MAA may not be relevant. I don't think this is usually a stat you need to stack, especially considering that each point of screen blocks about 2 points of pursuit.

For example, Caballeros are actually worse at pursuit, but have much higher screen than stock light cav. There are some oddities out there, though. Most of them are a straight upgrade over standard units, but usually at an increased cost.

Once you consider the rather strong bonus to toughness that pikemen get in hills, this is another reason why terrain is such a factor.Īs far as cultural MAA are concerned, I think it's somewhat situational. Still, you'll see some benefit to pikemen if your home territory is full of hills, from all the hill farms you should eventually have there. Now that building buffs are much less effective, I don't think this is as much of an issue. For this reason, I think you should still have some investment in light cavalry in most single-player situations. Also, if you're going to be winning wars handily anyway, the high pursuit value of light cavalry makes your inevitable victory much quicker and cleaner. The fact that having a lot of them buffed light cav to the moon was like a bonus. You can build Hunting Grounds in most terrain, and it's one of the better money-making buildings due to its low cost. In the early patches, before the changes to MAA buffs from buildings, I was a big proponent of light cavalry.

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