Knights are too weak

[Cousin Zoidfarb]

This game is great but knights and knight-type cavalry are too weak. The medieval elite, from Europe, the Mamlukes and Ottomans, the Mongols etc were made up of heavy cavalry relying upon a lance armed charge. In the game spearmen can put up a pretty good fight against them. Historically the knights' achilles heel was also their greatest strength: their charge. This made them unable to pull away when things were against their favor and separated them from other elements of their army which made them easily outflanked and surrounded. Most armies of the period were cavalry dominated until the English in the Hundred Years War and Swiss revolts. We can argue that the mountainous region of Switzerland was unfavourable to cavalry. Note that the Poles lengthened the lances of their hussars which made them able to defeat pike formations in the 16-17th centuries. These re the changes I would make in an expansion or mod/patch/whatever.

1. Knights and knight-type units (kataphractoi, polish retainers, etc) cause fear by their charge. This would reflect that peasant spearmen would be easily overwhelmed but well trained pikemen would be able to put up a fight.

2. These cavalry-archer units would have bonus against armour:
mongol horse archers
sipahi of the porte
mamluke horse archers
boyars
byzantine cavalry
turcomans

This would balance out the knights improvement. My reasons are these. The composite bow used in the middle-east and asia was powerful and these cavalry were extremely accurate shooting. (the Russians are included because their use of bow from horseback was adopted from the mongols, before the mongols invaded, the Russians used lance-armed charging cavalry, it would be really cool if you couldn't produce boyars until the Golden Horde event)
This would reflect the western knights disastrous performances at Manzikert, Hattin, Khalka, Legnitz, Nicopolis, Varna, etc. as well it would probably favour the use of light cavalry to chase down the horsearchers which is exactly what the Hungarians and Poles did.

3. Take away the charge bonus of the spears.
Spears were usually poorly trained and needed tight cohesion to be effective against cavalry or infantry for that matter. A charging unit can't keep tight cohesion. Even Hollywood knows that. Just look at Braveheart, they defended with the pikes, but charged with swords, axes, etc.

[Vanya]

He-he hum he-he...



GAH!

[Gringoleader]

Personally I reckon most folks have an inflated opinion about how good knights really were historically. Against light infantry there was no contest, but well formed infantry and spearmen could hold cavalry and knights. Think about it, on a horse you are very vulnerable in close quarter fighting, although you get a good swing at the heads of the enemy they get a better swing at the legs of your horse, so it evens out.

Knights are good, and used properly they can cause immense damage, but they were not that hot, and they are rightly not so hot in the game.

The most successful armies in ancient and medieval history have almost all been based on good infantry. The Huns and the Mongols were obvious exceptions to this, but then there are no hard and fast rules to the fighting of a war.

[chunkynut]

Im sorry composite bows have accuracy but no armour piecing properties. Horse archers used very small bows and they were certienly not AP.

As such many of your points may be historical but your summary of these points is warped .... sorry

[Austaro]

The "problem" is exacerbated by the slowness of cavalry generally.

They definitely need to speed cavalry up a bit.

[Niccolomachiavelli]

Mounted knights were the equivalent of ballistic missiles. Used against disciplined spearmen or pikemen, they simply crash into the ranks, and if outnumbered, are surrounded. Their only real purpose was to gain speed, momentum and rocket towards enemy formations, in the hope of breaking them and causing them to retreat. In fact, alot of historically impressive troops used this tactic. Berserkers of any nation did this--the running and the crashing, but if the troops held formation, the guy was screwed after the initial crash.

Anyone have good experiences with the Armenian Heavy cavalry? I recently had to fight this: http://216.136.200.194/auction/Oct/2...9862480282.jpg
(mostly peasants with a few abyssinian guards I think) And yes, I lost, even though the cavalry fought hard, long and had a great kill ratio.

[This message has been edited by Niccolomachiavelli (edited 10-01-2002).]

[Soapyfrog]

Beavis:

DON'T cite Braveheart for historically accuracy, you seriously undermine your case.

Pike/Spear units could and did charge, maintaining unit cohesion over short distances, and losing it the futher they had to go... JUST like in MTW.

Read up on the battle of Bannockburn, where Robert the Bruce's pike armed schiltrons charged the English army after defeating the Heavy cav.

The introduction of the pike as a weapon was dependent on units being able to move and fight (and yes, charge) as a disciplined mass.

[spmetla]

the problem with the cavalry isn't their stats. It's just that every unit in the game stays in a nice formation instead of sorta moving around like a horde.

Would be intresting if you had to build a training center or something in order to effectively use formations. Next game or add on hopefully.

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"samishika wa nai shitte irukara saigo wa itsumo hitori to"

"I'm not lonely Because I know I'll be Alone at the end"

email me at: Luftwaffle@mad.scientist.com

[Cousin Zoidfarb]

I have attracted only naysayers.
Chunkynut, your claims are not supported by any facts, and if what you claim is true, the Mongols should have lost in Europe, their army being mostly horsearchers, as well Manzikert should have been a Byzantine victory. These horsearchers were extremely effective, period. Gringoleader, most armies of the period were cavalry based with the exceptions being the Swiss and English of the hundred years war in the later middle ages. You neglect the military successes of the extremely successful Ottomans, Timurids, Lithuanian-Poles to name but a few. Soapyfrog, the reference to Braveheart was sarcastic, but I bet they tried to run with the pikes and couldn't when they filmed the movie. Remember how William defeated Harold at Hastings, he feigned retreat and when the housecarls broke the shield wall to pursue, they were defeated: spears good on defence, bad on offense. Further east, the Teutonic knights had defeated the infantry-based Prussians but were unable to defeat the nimble Lithuanian cavalry. My points are that heavy cavalry was the elite of almost all armies of the period, and the game should reflect that, as well horsearchers were just as deadly to heavily armored knights as were the longowmen.

[Galestrum]

Beavis:

As far as Manzikert, it would be wrong to assume the defeat of Manzikert was caused due to horse archers

Factors such as:

(1) Emporoer Romanus' western mercs failing to show up
(2) his turkic mercs switching sides the day before the battle
(3) his skirmishers being greatly outnumbered by turkish skirmishers
(4) poor unit cohesion and that one of his nobles failed to support the general advance and in fact betrayed and left his emporer on the battlefield

among other reasons were the reasons Manziket was a loss, not any "superiority" of the horse archer, furthermore, Manzikert was not decided until the end of the night, after the main body was entirely surrounded. It was hardly a foregone conclusion that this was the only possible result of this engagement.

Manzikert was the result of a bad series of events and mistakes for the byzantines, good tactics of the turks, as much as anything else

[Galestrum]

Beavis:

In your defese, I do agree that Hv Cav should be tweeked

(1) causes morale loss against undisciplined - poor morale units when being charged

(2) more speed

maybe a few other changes

[Boleslaw Wrymouth]

To say Knights "weren't that hot" during the time period we are discussing is to live in the a fantasy world of Keegan. Agincourt(and later battles) introduced the idea that horsemen armed with a couched lance were neither effective nor even shock troops. Any cursory reading of eyewitness accounts should disabuse latter day historians of this fallacy but apparently being a contrarian is more profitable.

Tiny numbers of Knights routinely routed huge armies of disciplined infantry and lightly armored cavalry during the Crusades. Relatively small groups of lancers routed highly disciplined pikemen in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. If used well, they were unstoppable.

The only point in which I would argue with beavis is the idea that knights couldn't disengage once in melee. It depended on how far into the enemy formation they were. A good article that discusses multiple charges in the middle ages can be found here:
http://www.deremilitari.org/mcglynn.htm

A list of great articles from this site:
http://www.deremilitari.org/articles.htm


All that said, I think the knights are o.k. as is. My only problem is that casualities may be to high. If you take a good look at casuality lists from the largest medieval battles it becomes very clear that knights were very difficult to kill and that most troops would rather capture then kill them anyway.

A last point about the armor piercing qualities of the Mongol bow. At the range in which it was typically fired, it had no problem penetrating chainmail.

[Kraxis]

This going to be a hot topic for some time...

But what I want to see is the knights having a weightfactor.

If you notice, Chivalric Men-at-Arms can actually stop the heavy cav charge, yes they will lose a few men, but the chrge won't run over them. That is because a really heavy charge adds 8 to the attack value. So a unit with good defence can soak up the charge without having spears.
I would like for that to change.
Heavily armoured men would get pushed aside if they were not killed when the charge hit. That is where the weight of the knight comes in, a lighter cav such as the Feudals will still have a good chargeas it is now, but won't be able to push the heavy infatry aside, while very heavy cav such as the Kataphraktoi would be able to push them aside a bit, so they would break the formation. That would give the very heavy cav a much more powerful charge without actually changing their stats.

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BTW, Danish Crusades are true to history.

You may not care about war, but war cares about you!

[Soapyfrog]

I agree that in William the conqueror's day, there did not exist the level of training required to attack cohesively over any great distance.

OTOH, cavalry could not break a shieldwall, noway nohow short of blind luck or really nervous spearmen who turned and fled at the approach of a big scary heavy horse.

Pikemen require a great deal more training and discipline, and so it is much more likely that they would be able to charge en masse.

ANYWAY:
Point 1: the impact of a HC charge DOES cause fear, and can often cause peasants to route right off, and sometimes spearmen too if their are other factors present.

Point 2: AP bonus for horse archers... this is mainly the effect of the horse archers being able to kill or wound the horses, instead of the actual knight... it would be cool if the game could convert mounted knights to foot knights when their mount gets killed As it stands the horse archers can do a pretty good job of exhausting the HC as it chases them willy nilly across the map...

Point 3: Spearmen charge bonus... why take it away? 100 men bearing down on you is a scary charge, whether they are armed with spears or very small rocks. That's why peasants have a strong charge. I don't think it is neccessarily spear related.

[Soapyfrog]

Yes it would be good to see a heavy charge better able to have a chance to dirupt the target unit... forceing them into an engage at will mode, breaking ranks etc.

[AgentBif]

Quote Originally posted by Kraxis:
But what I want to see is the knights having a weightfactor.

If you notice, Chivalric Men-at-Arms can actually stop the heavy cav charge, yes they will lose a few men, but the chrge won't run over them.[/QUOTE]

Now I would LOVE to see that... hvy knights overrunning a block of infantry: *CRASH*, crunch, CHRUNCH, whoosh .... out the backside of the formation leaving only carnage behind. Then they wheel around for another pass...

They'd be quite handy then.

bif

[Hakonarson]

IMO knights are lacking kinetic energy - I guess that's what their charge factor is supposed to represent, but imagine 1000 lb of horse and man chargine into infantry on foot at 15mph (23 kph) - they don't just stop and fence with their lances!!

As for horse archer bows - every tried to pull a replica?? those things can be as strong as longbows.

Yes they are short, but their compound and recurve construction makes them much, much more efficient than longbows.

And they did have AP arrows - almost exactly like English Bodkins.
However like longbows they needed to get in close to be effective, and they weer dead scared of European crossbowmen, who outranged them and could easily penetrate the light mail armour that was about as much as they ever wore.

Early Crusades mention knights looking like porcupines because the asiatic archers shot from long range and so their arrows lacked power to penetrate.

IMO this is another interaction that isn't really represented in MTW - Crossbows should cause fear among horse archers who are within their range - they should move away from them when shot at, and be reluctant to get within their range in the first place.

[Grifman]

Quote Originally posted by Beavis:
[B]Remember how William defeated Harold at Hastings, he feigned retreat and when the housecarls broke the shield wall to pursue, they were defeated: spears good on defence, bad on offense. [/QUOTE]

Uh, wrong. The shield wall at Hasting was not manned by spearmen. The housecarls were primarily armed with battleaxes, while the levies would have been armed with a mixture of battleaxes, swords, spears, javelins, even farm implements. When they broke to pursue the Normans it was not a disciplined advance as a Greek phalanx but an undisciplined attack on what they thought was a routing army.

You can't use Hastings as an example of spear formations inability to advance offensively.

Grifman

[Hakonarson]

Yes yuo can - most of hte Saxon army at Hastings was Fyrd spearmen, not Huscarls.

And you also need to consider teh wording - it's "Shield"-wall - not "Spear"-wall or "Sword"-wall.

It is the close formation and overlapping shields that give the shieldwall it's name and it's resistance - to some degree teh weapons the men carry behind it are irrelevant.

However a shield wall isn't much use againt charging cavalry - the shields dont' actually injure the other guy, horses CAN be trained to charge into it if you really want them to, and couched lances will impact the men in it before their own spears or axes can hit the horsemen.

Hence the move to longer hand weapons - firstly longer 1-handed spears (Scots, Flemings), then 2-handed pole-arm axes such as Bills and Halberds, and finaly pike.

For an indepth and controversial analysis of Ancient Greek shield walls (Hoplites) see if you can find a copy of "The Western Way of War" by Hanson.

[cart6566]

I have been very pleased with the chivalric knights. Not good in the desert, but dominate other units other than spears. They can't chase anything down, but bring some hobilars if you have room for that and need the speed and maneuverability. Mounted seargents, on the other hand, I have found useless.

[Grifman]

Quote Originally posted by Hakonarson:
[b]Yes yuo can - most of hte Saxon army at Hastings was Fyrd spearmen, not Huscarls.[/QUOTE]

Wrong. As I pointed out, the Fyrd was armed with a mixture of weapons, swords, spears, battleaxes, javelins and farm implements (1066: The Year of the Conquest, by David Howarth). Being a levy, it is hardly likely that they were all primarily of one weapons, since it was up to each man to arm himself. And again, the housecarls that manned the main part of the line used primarily battleaxes or swords. Neither they nor the fyrd was a force made up primarily of spears. And your source is . . . ?

Quote And you also need to consider teh wording - it's "Shield"-wall - not "Spear"-wall or "Sword"-wall.[/QUOTE]

And your point is . . . did anyone suggest otherwise?

Quote It is the close formation and overlapping shields that give the shieldwall it's name and it's resistance - to some degree teh weapons the men carry behind it are irrelevant.[/QUOTE]

I don't think anyone has argued this point one way or another, so I don't see its relevance.

Quote However a shield wall isn't much use againt charging cavalry - the shields dont' actually injure the other guy, horses CAN be trained to charge into it if you really want them to, and couched lances will impact the men in it before their own spears or axes can hit the horsemen.[/QUOTE]

Again, what's the relevance? See John Keegan as to whether horses will charge into a packed formation of men . . .

Quote Hence the move to longer hand weapons - firstly longer 1-handed spears (Scots, Flemings), then 2-handed pole-arm axes such as Bills and Halberds, and finaly pike.[/QUOTE]

Again, relevance to the argument at hand . . .?

Quote For an indepth and controversial analysis of Ancient Greek shield walls (Hoplites) see if you can find a copy of "The Western Way of War" by Hanson.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I've read it, but I don't see its relevance to Hastings.

Grifman



[This message has been edited by Grifman (edited 10-02-2002).]

[dej2]

Quote
The most successful armies in ancient and medieval history have almost all been based on good infantry. The Huns and the Mongols were obvious exceptions to this, but then there are no hard and fast rules to the fighting of a war.[/B][/QUOTE]

Actually the Mongols carried a number of weapons into battle, not just the bow. Each warrior carried a battle axe (effective against armor), a scimitar, a lance, and a light compound recurved bow, and a heavy recurved bow (that was not used on horseback). They also carried a variety of arrows... which included armor piercing, weighted blunt nosed arrows which could knock a rider off his horse, whistling signal arrows, as well as incendiary arrows... from what I've read though some knights were more heavily armored than others, they would shoot horse instead of the knight. Once the knight was on the ground use the lance or axe to finish him off.

Though when the Mongols started this conquest with mostly cavalry... as they conquered other armies they would incorporated them into there own. By the time they reached Russia they had quiet a large infantry. as well as siege equipment, including iron bomb, rockets and fireworks from China... But they won on tactics, the "fiend retreat". By hiding their infantry in the woods or over a hill they would use the light cavalry to harass their enemy over and over. Without the heavy armor they used speed and endurance to wear their enemy down. When they thought them sufficiently angered, exhausted and disorganized they retreat back to where they had the heavy cavalry and infantry waiting. Usually the knights thinking the tied had changed for the better would race ahead chasing the retreating foe. The Mongols even used smoke bombs to obscure the view on the battle field as the knights raced ahead into the ambushed, their own infantry units would be unaware of the massacre just a few hundred yards in front of them. What it boils down to is that the Western armies would place high emphasis upon strength and heavy armor and most importantly Chivalry, the Mongols mobility and swiftness, attack when the enemy when he is weak avoid the enemy when he is strong.

sorry for the long post

[This message has been edited by dej2 (edited 10-02-2002).]

[Boleslaw Wrymouth]

Grifman,

Yes..see John Keegan if you want to entirely ignore 1000 years of eyewitness accounts. I choose to ignore him. I don't really need a 20th century historian describing a 19th century battle who completely invalidates a thousand year history of combat, well described by soldiers who were the victms and victors of these tactics. A lot of these chroniclers were soldiers...they knew what they were talking about.

A horse will charge anything, if trained. It's even a misrepresentation to say they wouldn't charge dangerous obstacles as late as the Napoleonic Wars. Someone was training them to go over a sea of bayonets at Somosierra or even Borodino.

Keegan is a popular historian, but he gets lazy when infantry is not involved. And if his description of Agincourt is any measure, he doesn't even try to understand medieval warfare. He is much more interested in making his point.

[Boleslaw Wrymouth]

One other point:

"No way knights could defeat a shield wall, no way no how". That's a patriotic Saxon for you. How can you possibly defend that when the battle of Hastings was decided by mounted knights crushing the Saxon shield wall?

I thought you were joking. Are you serious?

[Hakonarson]

Grifman my sources are:

The Battle of Hastings, edited by Stephen Morillo - a series of essays on the battle, the social and military situations and institutions in England and Normandy, and the lead up and aftermath.

Armies of the Dark Ages 600-1066, and Armies of Feudal Europe, 1066-1300, both by Ian Heath and published by Wargames Research Group.

The Fyrd were divided into classes - the Selct Fyrd comprisd up to 45,000 men in Saxon England (based upon 1 individual serving per 5 hides of land, and over 230,000 hides of land known to exist in the 10th century).

These men were expected to serve with helmet, shield, mail coat and spear.

The remainder of the Fyrd - the greater Fyrd, were indeed armed with an assortment of weapons - they were the peasants of MTW.

While many great fyrd were present at Hastings the front ranks were made up of hte Select Fyrd and Huscarles.

As for Keenan and horses charging home - re-read it. He clearly says that horses could be trained to do so and were expected to do so.

I quote from page 83 of "The Face of battle":.....the horse trained to charge home, while it was the principle function of the riders to insist on the horss doing what their nature rebelled against." (Italics are in the original).

My point about "The Western Way of War" is solely for information - anyone wanting an insight into how a shieldwall functioned should read it.

[This message has been edited by Hakonarson (edited 10-02-2002).]

[AgentBif]

Quote Originally posted by dej2:
Actually the Mongols carried a number of weapons into battle, not just the bow. Each warrior carried a battle axe (effective against armor), a scimitar, a lance, and a light compound recurved bow, and a heavy recurved bow (that was not used on horseback).
[/QUOTE]

Where the heck would you put a lance when you're not using it?? Seems to me that it would be more likely that those who elected to carry lance would store their bow until the lance was expended... But that's kinda wierd to charge with lance and then switch to bow later, so perhaps the lance and bow were used by diff troops? Also, the lance guys would want armor while the archer guys could get away with less armor... Just speculating.

Quote weighted blunt nosed arrows which could knock a rider off his horse,
[/QUOTE]

No arrow is gonna knock a 200lb man off a horse... Perhaps a headshot would stun him and he'd fall off on his own?

(One of my pet peeves about Hollywood... 150 grain 9mm bullets that blow men on their asses.... heh!)

Very interesting stuff about the variety of arrows though. I had no idea the Mongols were that sophisticated.

bif

[Cousin Zoidfarb]

Finally some supporters.
Galestrom, you have mentioned other factors that have contributed to the Byzantine defeat, but in the end it comes down to the individual soldiers, if the horsearchers were inffective against the kataphractoi they would not have won. How do you explain the Mongol victories at Khalka, Legnitz, Mohi. If their arrows didn't penetrate armour there is no way they would have won. Arrows fired from compound bows could penetrate armour, and the mamluke horsearchers had longer range and could fire quicker than ''longbowmen''. Soapyfrog, the Housecarls were the elite and were disciplined enough to perform a shield wall of tight cohesion. Don't forget that the Greek phalanx was defeated by the flexible legion as the phalanx formation was disrupted. Phalanx/pike tactics were a steady push in unison rather than a charge, which would easily disrupt the formation. Grifman you are wrong, the battleaxes and swords were sidearms, and the shieldwall is a formation similar to that used by spears and pikes: very tight.
So I think that the knight-type units should be beefed up, as well as the horsearchers and the spears should be toned down, they are defensive units. Even after the hundred years war the knight dominated European armies, Tannenberg one of the largest battles of the middle-ages was essentially a cavalry battle. Interestingly some ''longbowmen'' took part in the Baltic crusades without any success. I guess that's why you don't hear about it.

[Soapyfrog]

Boleslaw, the Saxon shieldwall was defeated by plunging arrow fire, which caused just enough confusion for the knights to break through...

[Niccolomachiavelli]

Quote Originally posted by Hakonarson:
IMO knights are lacking kinetic energy - I guess that's what their charge factor is supposed to represent, but imagine 1000 lb of horse and man chargine into infantry on foot at 15mph (23 kph) - they don't just stop and fence with their lances!!
[/QUOTE]

I think Hakonarson hit the Knight issue square on the head. No way that a unit weighing as much as a knight does, and having the momentum that it has, will just suddenly come to a complete halt (as if it were evenly physically possible with the momentum involved)and start to tickle the enemy with his lance/spear. There has got to be some display of momentum. I saw somewhere a guy complaining that his knight units dont break through enemy formations often, and I think he had a point. If the enemy formation is thin enough, and you hit it on the right side with Knights, it absolutely should crash right through, tight formation or not. Now if we were to stay realistic however, if the Knights charged a pikemen or spearmen formation, they should crash through, but the first few knights in the charge would probably be A) thrown from their horse and B)dead, very dead. Of course that goes for the first row of soldiers in the formation, who would be killed by the impact, rather than a good lance tickling, as is currently the case.

[Mori Gabriel Syme]

The success of a cavalry charge depends on the use of combined arms. The cavalry charge was best timed when archers had already disrupted the enemies formations. Here's a bit from Nicholson's The Knights Templar : a new history, p. 67; material in parentheses is original, brackets editorial:

"[A set system of manoeuvres] had been described in Vegetius's famous treatise De re militari (On military matters) written in the late fourth century AD, which was the standard written work on warfare in the West during the Middle Ages. Vegetius had suggested various ways in which battle could be joined, but by the twelfth century commanders generally used only one. First the [archers] would fire ... with the aim of breaking up the enemy lines. Then, when the [archers] had run out of ammunition, the cavalry would charge and break through the enemy lines. They would be followed by the footsoldiers, who would kill the soldiers knocked down by the mounted knights."

While the engine in MTW keeps units together until they rout, the morale system ameliorates that somewhat because less disciplined unit have lower morale & will be more prone to run when charged after being decimated by archers.

Also, sometimes a charge must be nursed to the enemy line because charging too soon quickly tires the unit. Quite often, however, I've set a unit of heavy cavalry to attack at a walk & seen them break into a charge on their own shortly before contact.

While I have my issues with some of the unit attributes & have some sympathy for improving knights a bit, I think on the whole it works pretty well.

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Once more into the breach, dear friends; once more consign their parts most private to a Rutland tree! & men in London, still a-bed, shall think themselves accursed they were not here & hold their manhood cheap while others speak who fought with us on Ralph the Liar's Day!
--Richard III
The Black Adder: Ep. 1-The Foretelling