Bronze Rider

The Bronze Age saw the first true heavy cavalry: riders armored in hammered bronze cuirasses, mounted on the largest horses selective breeding could produce, armed with long thrusting lances that concentrated the momentum of horse and rider into a single devastating point. Early Mycenaean and Hittite cavalry were small in number and enormously expensive, but capable of shattering infantry cohesion that had no answer to a massed mounted charge. Egyptian reliefs at Kadesh depict exactly such horsemen riding down infantry. The bronze cuirass offered real protection against bronze-tipped spears but was heavy, limiting these riders to shock charges rather than sustained pursuit. In the game the bronze rider is the era's premier cavalry unit, devastating on the charge against light and medium infantry, expensive, slow to recover, and countered by dense spear formations.