Why British Heavy Chariots and British Generals are such wimps

[bach01]

Forgive me if this has been identified before. I did a search of the forums and could find no entries addressing this issue.

I was playing my first campaign as the British, and notice something interesting. I captured a settlement with the capability to produce the Heavy British Chariots, and built some so that I could see how they worked.

I had heard some stories about how wimpy they were and had of course experience the problem of charging my British General after some routing barbarian peasants and having him die.

So I build them and in the next battle put them through their paces. Just as advertised, they charge an enemy that is engaged from the flank and immediately start taking heavy casualties. I pulled them back from the engagement, paused the game and brought up the unit information card to see what exactly their defensive rating was. Imagine my surprise when I saw that it was this:

Total Defense 2
Armour 1
Defense Skill 1
Shield 0

After the battle I brought up the descr_unit file for the unit and it showed this:

stat_pri_armour 6, 1, 4, metal
stat_sec_armour 0, 1, flesh

It appears that the the application is taking the stat_sec_armour and using that in the place of the stat_pri_armour. Also, that within the game engine a 1 is automatically added to a units Armour rating. I checked this out by comparing the unit identification displayed with a couple of other units, and it appears that in all cases the armour rating is increased by 1.

So I modded the unit's sec_armour to 6, 5, flesh. (Note: can't added shield value to stat_sec_armour as the game will CTD.), and took them for another test drive battle. Lo and behold, now they mix it up and do not suffer devastating casualties, (actually had 1 battle where they took no casualties).

The British general also appears to have the same bug associated with it. After modification of the descr_unit file, I haven't had a general die, while before everytime I engaged the enemy with the general unit the general would 65% of the time.

These chariots should be now quite devastating, and while you can't add the shield stats to the unit at least the defensive skill can be raised to compensate. Also now your general wont die as easily when engaging just peasants.

Bach01

[iostream]

Why is the low defence of british chariots a bug? Don't they have multiple hitpoints to compensate? Playing as the julii on m/m, I disliked taking on british chariots the most, especially generals, because they were totally lethal against cavalry and did very well against infantry too - charging head on into a formation of hastati and throwing men aside like rag dolls, even more so than cavalry. My armies took more casualties from british troops than any other babarian faction.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Yes, it's no bug. The defense is low to reflect the historically most important aspect of chariots - they can't handle a prolonged meleé and die easily if they lose momentum in the middle of a formation. Attack and charge stats are however high. Chariots are best used to charge right through enemy formations and keep moving a while, then regroup and turn back, doing the same thing. The chariot generals are best kept out of battle except when hunting routing enemies. The chariots shouldn't be used in any situations you wouldn't use cavalry - so hitting massed enemy formations is not a good idea, instead they are best used against isolated units on flanks etc., preferably with the enemy being pinned by infantry first.

[vastator]

I find British heavy chariots a :furious3: pain in custom battles. I think the Brits have something like a 6-1 record against my Roman forces. It's worth noting that Caesar was impressed by the Britons' use of chariots, but the one time they got too close to his infantry the legionaries cut them up pretty badly. They were then chased off by the Roman cavalry.

The AI (particularly in custom battles) fields WAAAAAAAY too many chariots. Basically only the generals should have them, and they should be armed with javelins rather than bows. There's no evidence for scythe blades, either; the Victorians seem to have just added them because the Persians and Pontics used them.

[tibilicus]

The defence stat is not a bug. If you think of some one in a cart getting charged from behind hes not going to have very good defence is he?

[Kraxis]

If I'm not totally wrong her I think most chariots have a defense of 1. The other stats are applied against missiles (that is why Scythed Chariots are damn near impervious to arrows).

[Oaty]

What patch?

Prior to 1.2 patch generals with chariots were bugged.

The A.I. is good at tearing up chariots for some odd reason. Probabaly it's because they try to attacke them when chariot unit's flank is exposed, even though chariots should have no flank penalty since chariots are not a really unit but a specialty on the battlefield for breaking formations.

[Rodion Romanovich]

If I'm not totally wrong her I think most chariots have a defense of 1. The other stats are applied against missiles (that is why Scythed Chariots are damn near impervious to arrows).

Yes. However, scythed chariots are easily routed by 2-3 volleys of flaming arrows. If the enemy advances with more than 1 chariot in an area, routing the closest one makes it run amok THROUGH the others, resulting in a cascade rout - really fun to watch actually. I saw it in a 2vs2 online battle when one of my opponents brought a spam army with chariots and eles only...

[professorspatula]

I kind of find chariots are a little too fragile too. Because the chariot itself has virtually no defence, a unit has only to attack to knock off a hitpoint. The size of the chariot means it is being attacked by several units at once, hence why even General's chariots can fall to pieces on contact with an enemy unit - even when the enemy unit is facing the other way. This wouldn't be such a disaster if it wasn't for the fact that the chariot itself isn't all that deadly. A chariot charge can knock over nearly an entire unit of infantry, only for 99% of them to get up again. Even with a fair bit of modding, the scythed wheels aren't that effective. I suppose chariots are a lot like the smaller elephants: they cause disruption to the enemy unit so other units can finish them off, but they don't do too much direct damage themself (unless they're chasing routers) .

If you've modded your game to boost the morale of all units, I think it's fair to up the armour or defence or even hitpoints of the chariots. Their greatest ability is to cause fear to infantry, but if the infantry has extra morale, the chariots are now considerably less effective. However, boosting the chariots against infantry boosts their abilities against cavalry too.