Rorgash - Sure, but with this release, cav would be less efficient to break sieges (in terms of killing ration, in terms of building efforts compared to killing ratio,...). I recall this is based on the fact most sieged are setted on mountains and forests (and many cities have some mountains or forests touching it). So if you can't reach a siege in time with massive infantry armies, you will use cavalry by default.
But the point which has been developped by Sloter and myself is that is now even more effective to break a siege with infantry. But infantry is slow, so it favors regional alliances, who could break sieges more efficiently than more spread out alliances, which will use cavalry by default, which is less efficient.
I think it's goodd to develop territorialism. But some old and spread out alliance will suffer from their distance between players further more because of reduction of cav efficiency against sieges, and cavalry getting less useful in already regional alliances, that is sure.
Cavalry can indeed break sally forths, and as JimJams rightly said, it's not that much used cause of wiping with cavs, as cities are mostly on plains. So here is an usefulness of cav i forgot about: players dont sally forth because they fear some cav attacks. Personnally, i think as JimJams: a city should be better defended, to make sally forth more attractive. The interest to put units in a sieged city is to sally forth... with infantry then: the infantry can come in the city before the siege starts, and then get rid of travel times from the start of the siege. I think that's what the idea the Devs had when they thought about the sailly forth stratagem. Though, even with sailly forth was more attractive due to more defendable cities, the use of feinted sieges makes the sailly forth stratagem irrelevant cause you dont know which city will be sieged for real... So im traying to demonstrate by A+B that cavalry could be extremely useful against saimly forth, but that as sailly forth cant really be used, and as general attacks on cities give almost 0 casualties to the target city, cavalry can only be used to break seiges on plains/small hills (but that doesnt represent the majority of the sieges), or be used to break sieges on Montains/forests, where it's getting less and less efficient.
So yes, i support that Cav is getting less useful, and when it's used in war it's by default, on terrains on which they are really not efficient, in terms of build efforts, angainst the defense. The defense on Montains/forests already recovered way more easily than the Cav attack on Montains/forest before this update. Now it's really prohibitive to attack with cav on Montain/forests (which is normal of course), but then i think Cav should have something else to be useful for, if you know what i mean. How? Tough question.
Edited by opk - 31 Mar 2013 at 23:21