Invincible Royal Knights?

[Beirut]

What's the deal: twice in my campaign, I've had hundreds of Swiss Armoured Pikemen assaulting a single Royal Knight at the end of a battle and the shmuck either fights like Superman before dying or escapes.

In a battle I just had, over 1000 Swiss Armoured Pikemen were surrounding a single Royal Knight. They were attacking him from every direction, it looked like wheel spokes going into the center. The Knight fought for about two minutes (while I laughed ) and then escaped (then I just groaned).

Anyone else see this weirdness? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif

[|OCS|Virus]

Ive had that happen to me, not in as great of numbers as you said here though. I hate that superman unit, I wonder if anyone has figured out why it happens. The whole game is based on percent chances so somewere they must have messed up.

[Thon]

ya general's and king's are way too hard to kill.

at most they should only be slightly harder to kill, they don't need divine protection.

[solypsist]

keep in mind that if the melee gets too crowded, then your men suffer big penalties for getting in each other's way.

when facing one guy, best to just flank him and leave it at two units engaging, tops.

also, remember that generals, kings, and heirs all have "hit points" that are higher than a normal soldiers. so it might take a while to kill them.

[Phatose]

Jedi Generals. Yep, fun, aren't they?

Thing to remember is that a general has more hp then other men. Every other man in a unit has 1 hitpoint, which means it takes only one success to kill them. Typical generals have, I believe 5 - though that might just be princes and kings - and quite possibly even more through a few V&V.

Which gives you a king who you have to 'kill' a bare minimum of 5 times before he dies, possibly more.

The you tack on the fact that only 2 (or was it 3? can't remember) melee units can attack any other unit at a time. Which means 100 pikeman actually get 3 attacks - the supporting rows only serve to add a bonus to those 3 attacks.

Then you tack on that kings are usually in a pretty strong unit to begin with, like royal knights or kataphraktoi - and often have large bonuses to valour through V&V. Plus, when there is only one guy to get all the kills, his valour is going to go up quickly.

You end up with a situation where you've got 100 guys, 3 of which can attack at any one time, trying desperately to kill a king with very, very high stats, and having to kill him the equivalent of 5 or more times. Needless to say, this doesn't happen easily - especially when the man is trying desperately hard to get out of dodge.


There are ways around this little feature though - missile weapons don't have to pay heed to the 3 on 1 limit, so a unit of 60 archers gets 60 shots at the king per volley, versus 3 for a melee unit. Longbows or javelinmen have armor piercing attacks, which makes them attractive for this purpose. You can also use naptha throwers - they don't have the 3 to 1 limit either, but more importantly naptha kills kings dead - 1 hit kills him whether he's got 2 hit points or 12. Siege engines are usually pretty limited in how many shots they get, since you only get one engine per unit, but they also only need hit once.

[pdoan8]

solypsist & Phatose are correct.

King and generals are harder to take down in melee. Besides the bonus health, these guys usually have higher valour than the rest.

- Shoot him with your best missiles (xbow, arb, jav) would be the best solution or if you want him dead rather than alive. Surrounding him only to hold him in place or to slow him down.

- If you have no missiles, surround him with your best melee troops and use prefered troops such as polearm on cav, sword on spear, cav on sword,... (avoid using spears and pikes). No more than 3 units engaging. Make sure that all of your engaging units are in engage at will mode. Wedge formation or deep may be better sometimes.

- Use the remain troops to form another net just in case he manages to escape from the first net.

[Beirut]

Interesting conversation. Thank you, I understand much more now, though I still find it... odd.

I've had the same thing happen with longbow attaks on a single Royal Knight, though certainly not so exagerated as with the pikemen. There have been hundreds of arrows descnding on him at once, and it took more than a few volleys to bring him down.

Did this http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cheers.gif

Now this http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-computer.gif

Time for http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-zzz.gif Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.............

[motorhead]

My apologies to the original poster, i didn't save their name. Here's their post on hitpoints:

====== START
Ok, lets see if I can remember it...
Hitpoints of unit leaders and kings
The system looks like this:
Base hitpoints: 4
King: +6
Prince: +4
Command: Adds +1 per rank
V&V: 1/3 of Health bonus, rounding down. +5 to Health means +1 hitpoint.

So a king of Rank 6 with the Virtue Mighty Warrior (+ 10 Health) would look like this:
4
+6
+6
+(1/3 * 10 = 3)
= 19 hitpoints. Not bad at all.

I was told by a dev once, I believe it was Mike, that the max hitpoints lies at 30, but then you would need a good number of V&Vs.
====== END

[HopAlongBunny]

Same thing happened to me against a Byzantine general. I knew he was tough, but surrounded by billmen I figured I had him. After killing some 500+ (another 400+ fell to his sidekick) he started to march off the battlefield. A fresh unit of HA's dogged his every step to the opposite edge of the map...they killed him just as he was leaving. I almost felt bad about that.

[Sir Chauncy]

You should have had that "almost" part in italics you know, irony and sarcasm are very hard to spot in text form...

[NewJeffCT]

What I hate is when I have a king surrounded by several mounted units... I get the message that the coward flees and he still beats all my mounted units off the board...

[.:vVv:.Monkey]

I have had some success with surrounding Luke Skywalker http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif with the melee units to slow him down and then rush armor piercing projectiles such as javelins, naptha or crossbows to the scene. This seems to work a little better and consistently http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

[The Tuffen]

I've found out that high valour Khazar Royal Cavalry (i've modded them in) r very effective general/royalty killing units. I usually have about 3 high valour units charge the general straight away. They r nearly unstoppable http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif