The Infamous Cav Spam"

[Monarch]

Extacly Monarch

so I hate when people Whine "oh, Cav is overpowerd,we must use 6 cav max and if not,we might lose to a all cavarly"

Cav Was overpowerd in real life, and if it wasn't, Prove it,Monarch..



Aslo, I had 800 Spears today, and I got kill by a Full army of Cav, and he only flank me with 1 unit..

Hello,

Not one for ancient history, but I feel Hellenes has pretty much proven cav wern't really used for more than screening and guarding flanks until Medieval era.

But that wasn't my point. Please try to read my posts a little better. My point was you said cavalry was overpowered in real life. To which I responded very basically, nothing can be overpowered in real life. Why? Because it was my understanding that by the word overpowered one would be refering to overpowering a unit, in the game, so it was more powerful than it was in history.

So my point wasn't that cavalry wasn't strong in real life (though as Hellenes has pointed out, cavalry wasn't really very strong until Medieval times) but that something in history cannot be overpowered, it can on only be overpowered in a game.

[x-dANGEr]

Cavalry WAS strong 2k years ago, but yes their weren't armies of it. A single horse would go over 10 men in a single lance charge.

[hellenes]

Cavalry WAS strong 2k years ago, but yes their weren't armies of it. A single horse would go over 10 men in a single lance charge.

Without:
Stirrups?
Saddle?
And its 2274 years ago, no huge Medieval horses that would bite your arm off, NO COUCHED LANCE technique, NO CAVALRY STACKING (this is practically impossible)...
The game has the uber cavalry for ONE SINGLE reason:
DUMBING DOWN for the ignorant masses, to excite and entertain them, the jumping horse animation (that defeats 7 meter long pikes HEAD ON), the HUGE amount of FANTASY Roman cavalry and the total absence of balance prove that.

Hellenes

[x-dANGEr]

I do believe that someone riding a horse would have adventage on someone not. Surely, they wouldn't beat spearmen, but also sure enough they would beat Swordsmen. Their is no cav unit that can beat a phalanx head on in game, I don't know where you see that (It's fixed anyway).

[Puzz3D]

Their is no cav unit that can beat a phalanx head on in game, I don't know where you see that (It's fixed anyway).

Is it really fixed? Warman88 said his 800 spearmen lost to cavalry. I can tell you that in STW, STWmod for MTW/VI and DUXmod for MTW/VI spearmen beat cavalry decisively. In STW, a speaman can beat two cav units which each cost twice as much as the spearman. You can field 8 spearman costing a total of 1600 and beat 16 cav costing 6400 as long as you don't get flanked.

In an RPS system that works you have inexpensive spears that beat cav, medium priced swords that beat the spears and expensive cav that beat the swords. If I take 8 low cost spears, you take medium cost swords to beat them, but I have expensive cav to beat your swords. You can't take cav to beat my cav because you've spent more on your swords than I spent on my spears, so your cav will be weaker. You have to take low cost spears to beat my cav which frees me up to take some medium cost swords to beat your spears. The armies naturally converge to balanced combined arms armies without the need for any rules limiting unit types. If someone takes an unbalanced army, there exists a complementary unbalanced army which defeats it. That sets up a psychological guessing game during army purchase, and, if you guess right a couple of times, your opponent will have to come up with a different army next time.

There is also a second RPS system involving the ranged --> infantry --> cavalry --> ranged. In STW, we had a third RPS system involving cav archers --> yari cav --> heavy cav, but it's less well defined since heavy cav can't catch cav archers and yari cav can catch cav archers. Also, foot ranged units can win a shootout with cav archers.

[Monarch]

Is it really fixed? Warman88 said his 800 spearmen lost to cavalry.

Well with all due respect to Warman I highly doubt that. First of all who in the name of all things holy would choose an 800 spearmen army? I mean you don't know what your enemy will have when you choose your own units...

Also some spear units, in BI at least, are not effective against cavalry according to their unit decriptions when you hover over them when chosing your army. Perhaps Warman had 800 spearmen that arnt actually good against cav lol. Examples include Legio Lanciari (Eastern Rome Unit) and the Frank spearmen unit, which name escapes me.

Also depends on the cavalry, I'm guessing Warman was playing against all cataphract type units, heavily armoured?

[Puzz3D]

Also depends on the cavalry, I'm guessing Warman was playing against all cataphract type units, heavily armoured?

In RTW you need spearmen that are almost equal in cost to the cavalry they beat. This isn't good because cavalry have an advantage in mobility.

All the spearmen should have to do to win is maintain their facing to the cav, but this isn't possible in RTW because a cav unit can circle around a spear unit faster than the spear unit can rotate. In STW and MTW, cavalry couldn't do that so a spear could always maintain its facing to a cav unit. MTW does suffer because spears are too expensive relative to the cav they beat, and the swords are so cheap that upgraded swords beat spear and cav. As a result, spears disappeared from play and what you see are cav/sword armies since the ranged is also weak.

[NihilisticCow]

In RTW you need spearmen that are almost equal in cost to the cavalry they beat. This isn't good because cavalry have an advantage in mobility.

That isn't true in BI though, as spears costing about half as much as cavalry do defeat them. Kind of why BI armies tend to be very infantry heavy when horse archers are restricted.

[BHCWarman88]

Well with all due respect to Warman I highly doubt that. First of all who in the name of all things holy would choose an 800 spearmen army? I mean you don't know what your enemy will have when you choose your own units...

it was a BHC tryout game, I fought this Noob (I really hate noobs, I beat them easy :-) :-) )
who was Germania, after losing my cav,chariots and eles, by beating him, I added up how many spearmen I had left, and I came up with 770-800 guys..

and I told my BHC mate to get all Cav


and No, he wass Scipii

[x-dANGEr]

@Puzz3D: I really agree to what you decribed up their. And I think a unit of triarii can take out 6 units of catas if attacked head on. At least it did in my last MP game, maybe it was upgraded I don't know, but it surely gave me a headache. Though, the RTS system you mentioned should be implented in the next game, at least IMO, because as you said it limits someone choices to only choose balanced armies to have a chance against other balanced ones.

[Puzz3D]

Though, the RTS system you mentioned should be implented in the next game, at least IMO, because as you said it limits someone choices to only choose balanced armies to have a chance against other balanced ones.

You don't want the RPS so strong that a 4x4 army beats all other armies. For example, in STW 4 spears, 4 swords, 4 cav, 4 ranged doesn't beat all cav. You need at least 6 spears to beat all cav, and that prevents the 4x4 army from being the only one you ever see.

[x-dANGEr]

Well, many factors should go into the equasion of course. Like, I do think that a cheap Spearmen unit shouldn't beat 2 cav units.. But maybe an expensive one can. And so on..

[Monarch]

it was a BHC tryout game, I fought this Noob (I really hate noobs, I beat them easy :-) :-) )
who was Germania, after losing my cav,chariots and eles, by beating him, I added up how many spearmen I had left, and I came up with 770-800 guys..

and I told my BHC mate to get all Cav


and No, he wass Scipii

Oh I see where I was getting confused. Just to prevent as much lag as possible leohonorius play all our games with normal unit scaling (although most of us, myself included, can easily run with full settings on large), so a whole army usually comes up to 800 units (usually less)

So when you said you had 800 units of spears I took that to be a whole army. I'm guessing you where on huge/large?

[Puzz3D]

Well, many factors should go into the equasion of course. Like, I do think that a cheap Spearmen unit shouldn't beat 2 cav units.. But maybe an expensive one can. And so on..

Don't forget that cavalry have an advantage in mobility, and that's worth a lot on large open maps. In STWmod for MTW/VI, we have spears costing 400 and they beat cavalry costing 1200 frontally. Before we fully battle tested STWmod for MTW/VI, we had spears with 2 melee + 8 anti-cav bonus = 10 combat points. The heavy cavalry has 8 melee combat points, so the spears have a 2 point advantage in that matchup, since charge is cancelled by a spear, which is approximately a 40% combat advantage in the MTW/VI engine. A 40% advantage will give you a win about 90% of the time often with considerable losses to the winning unit (I'll look for my test results on this later.). There is another cavalry unit, naginata cav, with 6 combat points priced at 900. The spears have a 4 combat point advantage in that matchup which is approximately an 88% combat advantage which should produce a win every time.

In the ensuing battle tests in team games with players who knew how to use massed cav attacks and players who knew how to defend with spears, the spears couldn't hold against a frontal attack by massed cav. The spears have their lower morale and lower mobility (1/2 the speed of cav) working against them. Based on these tests, the anti-cav bonus of spears was increased to 10 combat points, and only then did the spears hold. We didn't want to solve this problem by increasing the morale of spears because that would reduce the ability of cav to rout them with a flank attack.

So I agree with you that there are many factors that go into determining what is "balanced" in terms of gameplay. You have to do battle testing and modify the unit stats based on the test results. It's an iterative process that will converge to a solution given enough iterations. In STWmod for MTW/VI, we had a good starting point by using the original STW stats. With only 15 units types, it still required 10 iterations of battle tests by highly skilled, veteran players to get the gameplay up to the level where the tactical play blossomed. You don't get this blossoming of the tactical play until the stat is very well balanced.

[x-dANGEr]

But wouldn't it better to keep the +8 bonus, but also make the depth of the unit matter? So if the unit is spread wide, no wonder it won't hold for a massed cav charge. But if it is fully squeezed, it should hold one I think.

Today, I tested triarii and cav on R: TW. I had a Praetorian cav unit charge a trairii one head one, while the triarii unit is braced. The fight ended with the trairii winning and having 25 men left (25/41). I did another one, but in that one, triarii was charging and cav counter-charging. Triarii won but had 30 men (30/41). Now, I understand through what you've written, that their are random factors in the procces of who wins and who loses. So, does the above 2 results confirm/proove a thing or I should it over and over till I get some percentage?

[BHCWarman88]

Monarch,

I play Large. More Bodies,the better,lol.