unstoppable charges

[Lord Adherbal]

just a thought that would add a bit of realism:

in reality, once a unit/group of knights charged their enemy it is was (near) impossible to stop them/call them back. In RTW, you can break off their charge much too easily, which makes cavalry much more maneuverable and controllable then they should be.

IMO it would be interesting if, once a unit switches to "charging", it can nolonger be stopped or called back, until it enters the fight ("fighting" state). Fighting units should also be difficult to disengage, just like in MTW.

This would cause some interesting "problems", such as impetious knights charging the enemy without orders. This would allow for historically accurate situations: annoy enemy knights by shooting some arrows at them, and taunting them by placing units close to them. The impetious knights would soon lose their patience and charge, and their player would nolonger be able to stop them from doing so, being forced to send in extra units to support the knights.

[Dooz]

That is a wonderful idea. I'd love to see that implemented. If it were to be, the stats should probably be tweaked to allow the charge to have a really devastating impact, so it's a viable option and realistic to boot. If a unit of 40 knights were to charge a unit of 60 archers, the equivalent of at least 50% of the knights should be killed initially, perhaps more?

If this isn't put in the game by CA, any way of modding it to work? Can this be done for RTW?

[Ciaran]

Perhaps in a way that a unit engaged in a fight can´t receive any orders at all apart from retreat, "do or die", sort of. It might especially eliminate the "knight charge" cheat, crushing in the heavies, calling them back and rush them back in and so forth instead of charging once and then hack it out. So that you really have to think about whether you want your most precious units charge into the fray.

[econ21]

If a unit of 40 knights were to charge a unit of 60 archers, the equivalent of at least 50% of the knights should be killed initially, perhaps more?

Do you mean 50% of the archers? There was a TV reconstruction of a knight charging a longbowman across a medieval battlefield. The archer got maybe two or three shots off before the knight was upon him. The conclusion was that archery fire alone would not have been that devastating against a cavalry charge - although a last direct volley at close range would still have been nasty.

[Lord Adherbal]

If this isn't put in the game by CA, any way of modding it to work? Can this be done for RTW?

maybe by making the charge animation travel the same distance (= very long animation) as the charge distance value in EDU.txt. But even if that works it'd probably have a lot of bad side-effects.

[Mooks]

It would be very very annoying and very frustrating.

[Sykotyk Rampage]

Yes annoying and not very realistic.

Of course the knights can veer and change course, pull up a charge, fake an attack, engage then withdraw, Once on the battlefield units followed orders, but they also had commanders in their unit that made decisions. That engage and die order would take the individual unit experience and command away. I envision that the units act semi-autonomous once the battle has begun and the “orders” that I as a player give them are unit choices and occasionally general commands.

If you were to do this to knights/Cavalry all units would have to have this, because once a battle is started, especially once the general unit is engaged, the field is mayhem. Why only knights/cavalry that have no choice but to engage/follow orders with no choice or field tactics?

I enjoy this game for the very reason you would do away with, the individual control of units, the click and go games pale in comparison.

Nine times out of ten archers ran away before the knights engaged them, especially the late era knights in German made gothic style and Italian made armour plate. The arrows bounced off or didn’t penetrate through the mail underneath and the horses were plated also.


oh the fun we have with games, we don't design....LOL...till after

[Rodion Romanovich]

Would be good if some professional eastern and/or light cav units could be controlled while western knights with undisciplined trait would be difficult to disengage. Historically among the ottomans for example every cavalryman had a little drum to send signals to others with so it was easy for them to give - and recieve - orders. As it is now, the "may charge without orders" rarely has any effect at all in for example RTW (and seldom in MTW). But I think the discipline levels of units should be increased if they're under the command of a good general. Maybe discipline could be of several levels, determining the distance from an enemy a unit needs to be before it wants to charge, with very disciplined units only charging when the enemy is so close it's appropriate/necessary to charge.

[Sykotyk Rampage]

Yes, I had a few units in mtw1 on the weekend charge without orders- it is a great feature- as you scramble to support them or cover their flanks, rearrange your well laid plans.

I have never had it happen in rtw or bi (suicide general excluded).

And to quote that famous general of the kitchen

“It is a good thing”
Martha Stewart

But I would not want to lose complete control of a unit.

[Kraxis]

The Normans were known for heir effective 'fake charges', and no I do not base this on Hastings alone. It was used before that and later again quitea few times.

Norman knights are considered some of the most impetuous knights, and yet they were disciplined enough to perform fake charges and feigned retreats.

[Orda Khan]

The Knightly class were generally a bunch of hot heads and this feature would be nice to see, far nicer than the charge, disengage, pull back and charge again that we see in order to get the charge bonus. I want to see a less gamey approach. Norman Knights were a fairly disciplined bunch but by the time they were 'classed as French' and let's not forget that some Barons etc held almost as much power as the Sovereign, they became aloof and arrogant. This applies to Knights in particular because on more than one occasion their arrogance cost the battle.
I think there would be a general outcry from the members if this was implemented because people like to have control of their units. Speaking for myself I would love to see it

......Orda

[Lord Adherbal]

you could still fake an attack by running your unit toward the enemy, instead of ordering them to attack. If you rightclick an enemy unit you order your units to attack, not to feint-attack. And once soldiers would charge their opponents, I seriously doubt their commanders could stop them in time by saying "hey, come back, we're just going to faint attack".

btw I'm not only talking about knights, this should probably go for all units, but especialy cav units because even if you can convince the riders to stop, they still need to convince the horses to do the same.

As for loss of unit control, how would this feature take that away ? All it does is make you think twice before ordering a unit to charge/attack. But I guess a lot of you prefer less "thinking" and more AoE/WC style "click-festing".

[Dooz]

Do you mean 50% of the archers? There was a TV reconstruction of a knight charging a longbowman across a medieval battlefield. The archer got maybe two or three shots off before the knight was upon him. The conclusion was that archery fire alone would not have been that devastating against a cavalry charge - although a last direct volley at close range would still have been nasty.

Heh, I saw that show. Pretty interesting.

Anyhoo, I meant 50% of the knights because I'd assume at least 1 out of 2 knights on a charge would get a kill. So the initial charge of 40 knights onto 60 archers should kill at least 20 archers. It could of course end up being 50% of the archers if the charge is especially successful and 30/40 knights get a kill.

[econ21]

My bad - I did not pay enough attention to the wording "the equivalent of" 50% of knights in your post.

[Cowhead418]

I've had some problems in MTW with units charging without orders. I was sitting on my laurels in a defensive position waiting for the enemy army to approach while I moved some cavalry around to the rear of the enemy in a flanking manoeuver. When I looked back to my front line I saw that one of my Ghazis had charged the enemy before I was ready to engage. I won the battle but nearly all of this Ghazi unit were killed (which probably would have happened anyway).

[Kraxis]

Ahh the Ghazis... The cruise missile of MTW. Fire and forget.

[Watchman]

Knights were initially pretty tactically canny. Later on - by about 1200s or so - "knight" had become synonymous with "nobleman" and the predictable high-faluting attitude this led to could cause problems. As did the chivalry's increasingly single-minded devotion to the linear lance charge as the virtual end-all be-all of heavy cavalry tactics.

It's probably a little telling that knights who regularly faced enemies operating by different rules, such as those in the Crusader Kingdoms who were constantly fighting off the hyper-controlled Arab and Turkish armies, had exceptionally good battlefield controllability particularly in comparision to their colleagues back in Europe who mainly just fought each other. Isolation leads to stagnation and stupidity.

The late-Medieval "infantry revolution" kind of forced the heavy cavalry to relearn a little more tactical sense though. Lance charges against pike squares weren't terribly popular after all.

That aside, when particularly cavalry is committed to a shock charge the simple limits of period methods of communication - little more than "shouting loudly" - ought to have made made it somewhat difficult to alter the orders over the sheer noise of thundering hooves and rattling equipement. All the more so if an entire "battle" went to the attack in single massed line - at that point trying to get the idea through to the various sub-commanders was no doubt next to impossible.

[Oaty]

Also (lance) cavalry ahould only be allowed a charge with there primary weapon once every ~ 3 minutes for gameplay reasons and to top it off it would add realism. Most knights had to dispatch there lance after a charge due to - the lance is sticking out of the back of someones body, stuck in someones shield, gets deflected and is near inoperable, simply they kept control of there lance but is now a suicidal situation to try to kill a guy in the rear ranks when some guy 1 foot away is ready to make a deathblow on the knight, or multiple other reasons.

Since there is no baggage train (currently known of) to resupply the lances having a timelimit on thier charges(with primary weapon) would be the best way to implement this.

[sapi]

Do you mean 50% of the archers? There was a TV reconstruction of a knight charging a longbowman across a medieval battlefield. The archer got maybe two or three shots off before the knight was upon him. The conclusion was that archery fire alone would not have been that devastating against a cavalry charge - although a last direct volley at close range would still have been nasty.
He must have meant that.

I'm for the idea though...

[Dooz]

He must have meant that.

I'm for the idea though...

Nope, didn't actually. There is a reply a few posts up : )

[Dark_Magician]

The Knights were the celebrities of the battlefield.

It reminds me of an old USSR soundtrack about the cavalierguards of the Russian Empire. Could be translated like this:

In one unbelievable gallop
You've used up all of your short epoch
And your curls were covered up
And your curls were covered up
By falling snow

This is a female song, of course.

[buujin]

In MTW i feel itwas harder to controll your knights once they were in combat or in persute of fleeing enemies. They often have to be issued orders twice or three times before they respond. If this was amplified any more than it was i think it would reduce the fun in the game, and also the overall value of knights on the battlefield.

[Akka]

This is a good idea, but I think it should be reserved for "impetuous" units (the same that can "charge without orders". Disciplined and well-trained units, like the Byzantines, shouldn't suffer from the same drawbacks.

[Watchman]

Well, many elite heavy cavalry suffered from it to at least some degree. It's just that the European chivalry were the only ones for whom it became a problem, probably mainly due to their military context.

[Leonin Khan]

i like the idea, many knights would go and plunder the enemy camp when they broke their resistance....id like to see that 2...extra cash or less cash just the way you look at it (since they might keep it) and no cavalry on the map

[Leonin Khan]

Would be good if some professional eastern and/or light cav units could be controlled while western knights with undisciplined trait would be difficult to disengage. Historically among the ottomans for example every cavalryman had a little drum to send signals to others with so it was easy for them to give - and recieve - orders. As it is now, the "may charge without orders" rarely has any effect at all in for example RTW (and seldom in MTW). But I think the discipline levels of units should be increased if they're under the command of a good general. Maybe discipline could be of several levels, determining the distance from an enemy a unit needs to be before it wants to charge, with very disciplined units only charging when the enemy is so close it's appropriate/necessary to charge.

i had it once in my barbarossa historic campaign where you had to keep the towncenter of a village...damn that sucked :wall:

[HighLord z0b]

I agree with some of the previous posts in that I don't think this is a great idea, whilst some knights should be impetuous (especially compared to Byz and Islamic cavalry) if anything there should be more control over cavalry than there already is. The charge, retreat, charge again tactic was widely used by the Normans, as was charging from an angle so as to sweep through the first few rows of infantry and then circle around for another sweep. The problem with cavalry in MTW is that you can only directly charge an enemy, there are no other options for cavalry.

It would be nice if a certain amount of lances broke on the initial charge and those knights were forced to use maces, axes and swords, but it would be even nicer if there were supply trains/wagons. That way knights could make one charge with a devestating result but each subsequent charge would be less effective as there lances broke, unless they marched back to their supply wagons to be reloaded.

[Watchman]

That starts sounding like the most tedious micromanagement, you know. What next - keep track of all those squires, servants and suchlike who did the grunt job of fetching new lances as needed ? Actually I think the normal practice was for them to hang back from the fighting with spare lances ready and resupply their bosses when necessary. Although presumably missile troops could replenish their ammunition in the same ways...

Still, that starts creeping suspiciously in the direction of some RTS games and I wfor one would prefer it didn't go there.

Then there's the little detail the ammunition of archers was often replenished by the simple expedient of looting enemy arrows from the battlefield, even during combat. Must've been nice job for the guys who got to head out into the no-man's land between the armies... :dizzy2:

Really, why bother ? The game runs a *lot* more pleasantly if you concentrate on the main thing and leave the boring and tedious behind-the-scenes stuff there, at least in tactical combat.

[King Yngvar]

just a thought that would add a bit of realism:

in reality, once a unit/group of knights charged their enemy it is was (near) impossible to stop them/call them back. In RTW, you can break off their charge much too easily, which makes cavalry much more maneuverable and controllable then they should be.

IMO it would be interesting if, once a unit switches to "charging", it can nolonger be stopped or called back, until it enters the fight ("fighting" state). Fighting units should also be difficult to disengage, just like in MTW.

This would cause some interesting "problems", such as impetious knights charging the enemy without orders. This would allow for historically accurate situations: annoy enemy knights by shooting some arrows at them, and taunting them by placing units close to them. The impetious knights would soon lose their patience and charge, and their player would nolonger be able to stop them from doing so, being forced to send in extra units to support the knights.

Of course, this would not affect Mongol cavalry I hope.