Calvary, high level deaths in vain

A problem with calvary, that I am not sure can be fixed.

In EB, calvary units charge regardless of situation. What makes it worse, is for factions like Rome, the family members are cavalry units. So for battles in which I have a roman general coming as reinforcements (they attack a critical spot and my combined armies are to big to allow for player control), I will win the battle with little causalities, among them the consul of rome. Nothing is more frustrating then to have two stacks of armies fighting a few iberian milites, and losing a consul and two tribune militum because they decided to do a charge and refuse to retreat, while there 500 units of troops stand by idly watching their leaders battle in vain.

I do know that general units are now on foot. So I guess the question is: Does the AI in medieval treat commanding units with any more regard?

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Originally Posted by VARVS

Does the AI in medieval treat commanding units with any more regard?

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no - simple

If I'm not completely confused you can order the whole reinforcement army to stay back, advance to archery range only or to attack though.
So you can at least prevent your reinforcing general(s) from dying due to AI madness. :)

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I do know that general units are now on foot.

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I guess you misunderstood the screenshots of the generals preview. :)
The general units that were mounted in EB I will be mounted in EB II as well. (And there were not many EB I general units that were not cavalry units - infact I can think of only Casse (chariots), Koinon Hellenon (foot) and Sab'yn (foot) at the moment.)

The reason you didn't see mounted carthaginian or roman generals in the preview is just the fact (I guess at least) that the horse models weren't finished at the time the preview was produced.

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Originally Posted by fightermedic

no - simple

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actually, modders have managed to get the ai generals to be much more cautious in mods like stainless steel.
still not perfect, but much better.

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If I'm not completely confused you can order the whole reinforcement army to stay back, advance to archery range only or to attack though.

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yeah, but when i found that out I had already losthald of a rather good fullstack to an AI halfstackduringa Bridge fight -.-(silly me controllingthe guys guarding the bridge and waiting for a heroic victory)

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infact I can think of only Casse (chariots), Koinon Hellenon (foot) and Sab'yn (foot) at the moment.)

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and sweboz(foot)

btw do Maruyans Takshilians getElephant generals?

So far about the EBII's general's bodyguards, I think that the Pritanoi will be foot aswell; while for Taksashila, in the video preview we saw them on horse, would be nice if they took over EB's Taxilan Agema...

The generals of Taksashila will ride chariots.

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Originally Posted by Shadowwalker

If I'm not completely confused you can order the whole reinforcement army to stay back, advance to archery range only or to attack though.
So you can at least prevent your reinforcing general(s) from dying due to AI madness. :)

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How do you command them to stand back? Tiberius Cornelius Dollabella would have benefited from this...

In Kingdoms, you can order your reinforcing army (not sure how well they respond though), but this was not possible in RTW and thus not in EB as well. But this feature will most likely be there in EB 2 as it is based on kingdoms

There are 3 stances- attack, hold, advance to missile range.

Attack is an all out charge, Hold the AI does fairly well keeping its line together etc and AI units will generally obey if both generals are alive, of one dies then even in hold the AI is likely to all out charge. Missile range is fairly useless for anything other than HA skirmishers. If you want infantry guarding archers to advance leave them in hold position but indicate a different spot on the battlefield for the AI to hold at.

Germanicus got AI doing much better lately but still its not perfect but probably getting close to the best can do with MTW2 engine. I've heard that EB2 plans to have units with overall higher morale than many mods and more units with leadership attribute so the AI general dying won't always lead to a mass rout.