Empire: Total War - Game Mechanics - Land Battles - Cavalry - part 2 - game guide, walkthrough, secrets, game tips & strategies

Attacking the artillery

The first thing is that artillery can fear your soldiers. So destroy it as fast as possible. If you have cavalry, attack hostile cannons from the back or flank (this will limit the toll in your units). Horses are fast and they will quickly eliminate enemy artillerists (the are not many of them so they won't kill too much cavalry units). In fact, in most cases your opponent will leave his artillery without any defense so even light cavalry can kill crews of the cannons.

Killing of refugees

When you will destroy the morale of the whole enemy army, you will have a choice - end the battle or continue it and try to eliminate as many fleeing soldiers as you can. I always recommend the second option (in the first situation hostile army will be still on the campaign map and you'll have to fight with it once again).

Fleeing infantry is quite fast – it is hard for your units to catch up with them. Because of that, it is good to use cavalry to take them down.

Technology on the battlefield

Apart from improvements such as "Carbines" (allows to train firearm cavalry), it is worth noting that there are additional technologies, such as Wedge and Diamond.

Cavalry improvements

Personally, I found Wedge very useful. It can be used to break-through wide column of hostile regiments. However you should be very careful here, because horses surrounded by infantry can be easily killed with bayonets. When you have to deal with poorly trained troops (mob) or fatigued and discouraged soldiers (for example, because of the death of the commander), you can try to charge using a Wedge.

Diamond have a rather modest military usage. This is useful mainly for the maneuvers. Cavalry formed in diamond formation reacts slightly faster to orders and changes direction much quicker, so I recommend turn off the diamond and form wedge formation just before the fight.