Cavalry charge, a game based perspective..

[Bob the Insane]

Why cavalry is pretty ineffective against 'spear' type units.. This is an possible reason why this happens in the game, not any look into whether it should or shouldn't and contains no historical perspective.. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

Charge and pushback... The Stratey Guide doesn't not really explain it but states that when a charging unit hits it's target, not only does it get it's charge bonus, but there is a chance that each individual soldier can be pushed back in the target unit and as a unit's soldiers are pushed back it get loads of attack and defence penalties (I think, this is from memory..) and they are more likely to be killed. Also, if a charging soldier kills a soldier he make an 'out of turn' attack on the next soldier and so on until the attacking soldier runs out of steam... then it is normal melee time.

This pushback thing is not really explained, but it does state cavalry units are especially good at this and automatically pushback an opposing soldier. It also states that cavalry does not automatically pushback any 'spear' type of unit. So effectively any cavalry charge against a spear unit will not (or stand a very small percentage change) penetrate a 'spear' unit and the charge effective stops at the first rank..

The right or wrong of this I leave to others, but I would liked to have seen this pushback thing better explained..

I put this on the 'other' forum, but would like to hear the opinions of those here...

[This message has been edited by Bob the Insane (edited 10-16-2002).]

[Pachinko]

Look for this...
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum7/HTML/002606.html

[martin4444]

I don't even bother with Cavalry, AI is a whimp as it is at highest difficulty... 4 speark/pike, 4 shock, 4 arbelasters and that pretty much does all the job.
Slaughtering routing enemies with cavalry is fun.. but, well the AI need all the help it can get. It's bad enough as it is.

[Puzz3D]

Bob the Insane,

I think you're interpreting that section in the Strategy Guide incorrectly. In the section on charge it states, if a charging man keeps killing or pushing back his opponent, he retains some of his momentum. Once his momentum is below a certain (undefined) amount, the charge ends. I wouldn't interpret that to mean he gets extra attacks during a combat cycle. I've never seen that happen. It is true that cav has its charge completely cancelled
by spears or pikes in frontal assault, and there is no initial pushback. If cav charges into a man who is not facing him, there is always a pushback, and on page 56 it clearly states to add +6 combat if the target is falling back as a result of a previous pushback. I've seen men get pushed back, recover and come forward before engaging again. In that case, I guess there would be no pushback combat penalty because the man is no longer falling back.