Magical cataphracts beat phalanx...

This bug is one of the most annoying issues that i have with RTW...
The riders armour is magically transfered to the horse, because of the fact that phalanx spears are piercing and work like arrows the only defence against them is the armour of the unit fighting them and the shield this bug makes the phalanx useless against gavalary with armoured RIDERS but NOT horses, just try it yourself a companion cavalary unit with armour 10 riders will have its horses survive the FRONTAL charge as there would be cataphracts now if you reduce the RIDERS armour to 2 they dies like flies...
Now as I know the pikes hit 99% the horse and rarely the rider so if the horse had SEPARATE armour values from the rider it would not defeat the pikemen with a frontal charge...

Hellenes

well it doesn't happen in my game and i'll tell you why and wich i modded.

here comes the layout

all spearmen and phalanxes have a mount efect of +4 against chariots, cavalry and eles

i added additional morale like this

peasants=0
militia=2
light=6
medium=9
heavy=12
elite=14
berserker=16
spartan=18

made cavalry more expensive but that's inrelevant now.

gave all spear units the 'spear atribute'.

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Originally Posted by Emperor Umeu 1

well it doesn't happen in my game and i'll tell you why and wich i modded.

here comes the layout

all spearmen and phalanxes have a mount efect of +4 against chariots, cavalry and eles

i added additional morale like this

peasants=0
militia=2
light=6
medium=9
heavy=12
elite=14
berserker=16
spartan=18

made cavalry more expensive but that's inrelevant now.

gave all spear units the 'spear atribute'.

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But still on the charge the pikes dont stab/kill INSTANTLY the horses as the should..
Only if there was a way to make the horses unarmoured and the riders armoured that would solve the problem...

Hellenes

no it does, phalanx miss the mount_effect normal spearman get. and cataphracts were very ar,oured horse and rider this realistic. they had a irresisteble charge(from MTW). so they could disrubt formations but will loose eventually as the second row pics up the fight.

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Originally Posted by Emperor Umeu 1

no it does, phalanx miss the mount_effect normal spearman get. and cataphracts were very ar,oured horse and rider this realistic. they had a irresisteble charge(from MTW). so they could disrubt formations but will loose eventually as the second row pics up the fight.

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But im not talking about the CAtaprhacts but about the unarmoured horse who are magically armoured because of the riders armour stat...

Hellenes

but what is the horse without the rider and the rider without the horse. i know what you want, that if the horse is killed the rider carries on. but you could wait a long time for it or play, EMPIRES:DAWN OF THE MODERN WORLD

Hellenes, that is a real problem for the engine. The combat engine does not seem to compute rider and mount defense seperately. It would take some more thorough logic to do so.

The problem I have with horses charging spear walls is: 1.) Lower quality units (most units) should balk in the last phase of the charge. 2.) Unarmoured horses should be impaled--but then we need dismounted men rendered too. 3.) Casualties should be very high from the charge. 4.) Riders seem to be getting their charge bonuses, and phalanx spears are supposed to get the "spear" attribute bonus (seperate from "mount effect" reserved for non-phalanx), but the spears deserve a really large initial impact bonus--while the cav's charge bonus should be cut for frontal.

I wonder if we should put in "frighten_horse" for phalangites/hoplites?

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Originally Posted by Emperor Umeu 1

but what is the horse without the rider and the rider without the horse. i know what you want, that if the horse is killed the rider carries on. but you could wait a long time for it or play, EMPIRES:DAWN OF THE MODERN WORLD

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No I dont want the rider to walk after the horse dies I just want the rider to have separate armour and the horse seperate so if the rider dies the horse can run away but not the opossite just like the elephant riders...
The pikemen should kill the horse and the archer should be able to kill just the rider (if hes unarmoured) but if the horse dies the rider dies too...

Hellenes

Erm, well, so you got a well armoured rider and a peasant kills his unarmoured horse with his dagger and then you want the rider to be dead as well?
I think a problem with dismounted riders would be how you handle them concerning their group. If you let them stay in the cavalry group, the whole group will be slowed down when they win the battle and have to move on, if you let them make up a new group, you end up with too many groups and if you let them fight as individuals making them uncontrollable fighters like people/groups fighting to death, then you end up with a bunch of people standing around while the rest of their army dies.
Just think about a whole unit of companion cav charging a phalanx frontally, they all but one lose their horses but fall into the phalanx and kill the hoplites, now they are needed somewhere else but the engine renders them as uncontrollable and so they just stand about and you can only attack withz the single guy who is still mounted. I think that´s the biggest problem, what do you do with single dismounted men? In MTW you could dismount the whole group but only before the battle started, so they were all infantry, not just a part of the unit.

oke there is something very wrong with AI units. when i am 80 cataphracts i can narrowly beat 160 sacred band hoplites with +6 mount effect vs horses.

but the AI cant beat my regular greek hoplites. with 80 cataphracts vs 160 hoplites and end up loosing and only killing 40 men.

my conclusion: the cavalry isn't overdone the AI just doesn't hit 'backspace' to go back in formation after the formation is disrupted after a charge. so their units are separated and get killed more easily.

I dont know a lot about horses, but I'm reasonably sure that the chances of a horse riding into (what appears to them to be) a solid wall of people and pointy sticks is virtually zero. The occasional stupid one will do so, but most will not. If the spear unit stands firm the horses wont charge into it. If the spear unit breaks it's another matter.

yes that's true but trained horses will

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Originally Posted by Emperor Umeu 1

yes that's true but trained horses will

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Horses can be trained but they dont always follow commands. Even show jumpers, who are well trained for their sport, will refuse to attempt jumps that make them nervous (because of height or solidity) for example. In addition, there debate whether a cavalry charge ever broke a formed square in napoleanic warfare. If the horses wouldnt do it in the 18th and 19th centuries then why would they have done it in other era's? Even if some napoleanic squares were in fact broken by cavalry, it was clearly difficult to do so. Horses are not machines, the likelyhood that even a trained horse will run onto a solid wall of pikes is very slim.

that's true but they still did it some times and cavalry wasn't used to attack any formation from the front but take out small groups. cavalry charged in after the infantry broke the formation

Husar

"Erm, well, so you got a well armoured rider and a peasant kills his unarmoured horse with his dagger and then you want the rider to be dead as well?"

Yes, because at least for cataphracts, the historical record is pretty clear. Fall off horse; lie prostrate under the weight of you armor until said infantry has the time to jam the butt spikes of their spears into the eye holes of your helmet (or any other convenient point); die.

Cataphracts should be modeled a bit more dependant on their first charge (very scary, very powerful). But if the Infantry holds, their secondary performance should fall off dramatically. Unlike say companions, they could neither remount, nor really effectively duel from the saddle.

What is really torquing me at the moment is that in custom battle testing, cav are doing better vs. the phalanx than against sword units... I've got a heck of a lot more modding to do than I originally thought. As best I can tell, I need to increase the phalanx mass. They get pushed around badly by cav, and by sword infantry, and that is baloney. I reduced horse mass a tad, but the problem of doing much to this is that they have trouble charging sword units if I adjust the cav much at all. So phalanx mass must increase so that are not easily pushed back by anyone except superior phalangites.

Have you tried the mount effect route for the Spear and Phalanx units?

can CA make phalangites brace for impact by pussing their bud-pikes into the ground? and if the 4th row will do the smae horses couldn't jump as well( maybe it will break teh shaft, or squash a few men by falling, but in game phalanxes could stop teh frontal charge)?
if hoplites didn't push teh bud pike in, the mass of a horse will rip you spear out of your hands...

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Originally Posted by conon394

Have you tried the mount effect route for the Spear and Phalanx units?

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tried it as well seemed like it has little impact. the best way is reduce the soldiers in a unit from 27 to 20.

in MTW cavalry wasn't that powerful because they had less than half the man a medium/heavy spear unit had. now they got more than half against hoplites and crach true pike spears just like they weren't there

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Originally Posted by conon394

Have you tried the mount effect route for the Spear and Phalanx units?

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A little. The problem though is that the phalanx is ending up using its 2nd weapon as the cav are pushing through easily.

And mount effect won't help with infantry pushing them back. Legionaries all get 1.3 for mass, while only a few phalangites get the same. This allows them to push others back. So I am looking at 1.3 fo militia hops and levy pikes. 1.5 for regular hoplites, 1.8 for greek hoplites, poeni, phalanx pikemen, and other high end spear phalanx units.

I tried "frighten_mounted" as well but that didn't have much effect.

A horse really wouldn't charge a pike phalanx. Absolutely no way. They might be trained but if they had trouble taking a square of men with short guns and bayonets then huge pikes are really going to turn them away.

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Originally Posted by Red Harvest

A little. The problem though is that the phalanx is ending up using its 2nd weapon as the cav are pushing through easily.

And mount effect won't help with infantry pushing them back. Legionaries all get 1.3 for mass, while only a few phalangites get the same. This allows them to push others back. So I am looking at 1.3 fo militia hops and levy pikes. 1.5 for regular hoplites, 1.8 for greek hoplites, poeni, phalanx pikemen, and other high end spear phalanx units.

I tried "frighten_mounted" as well but that didn't have much effect.

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I think that frighten effect causes a rather slight moraledrop, nothing big. It is meant to augment a powerful charge so that the enemy breaks on impact. Such as when eles thrashes a line of infantry.

Anyway, I think I will follow that line of mass. I have weakened cav mass slightly (1 point and 0.5 points for some). But you might be right that incresing phalanxes need more mass. After all that means more resilience towards push, and push is what makes cavalry go around.