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Because in MP you can buy upgrades to each unit. As spears are slightly more expensive than swords you can buy more upgrades for swords and it doesnt take much before the spears lose and are not worth it.Quote:
Originally Posted by squidums
As the swords, like CMAA and FMAA, can have 2-3 valor upgrades while heavy cavalry like Chiv knights have none, the swords are so powerful that cavalry can only defeat weakened sword units or if attacking the flank/rear.
CBR
I was never able to demonstrate in controlled tests an advantage for charging with cavalry in wedge despite the +3 points added to the charge. It seems that the wedge causes greater collisions between the horses and they loose momentum which causes the charge bonus to end. Cav did just as well or better charging in a wide formation because more horses would come into contact at full speed with enemy men. Some multiplayers would charge with cav in wedge and then immediately shift out of it into close formation.
I did see an advantage to using swords in wedge vs spears. The wedge would penetrate into the spear formation and disrupt it causing the spears to loose their rank bonus. In addition, since swords have a combat advantage over spears, wedge is good to accelerate the combat resolution.
A flank is anything outside of the 90 degree arc of the facing whether this be an individual man engaged in combat (for determining combat penalties) or the whole unit (for determining morale penalties). Formation doesn't affect what is considered to be a flank. From what I can determine for a whole unit, the center of the four axes which define the four quadrants is placed at the center of the front of the unit. Just imagine an X with 90 degree angles drawn over the unit and centered on the front center man to visualize the unit's flanks for morale penalty purposes. The flanking effect extends out about 75 meters from the center, but this changes somewhat for units in a very wide formation. Enemy units do not cause a morale penalty on units with flanks "covering" by a friendly unit. Covering units must be directly to the side or to the rear of the flank to be covered.
I have found that the wedge formation is the Formation of choice against other cav. I once fought with 20 royal knight vs 20 royal knights and 60 pavise crossbows. The small size of the cav unit allows it to be penetrated by the wedge quickly and i ended up losing 3 royal knights to the enemys 20 knights. Also note my knights had no vallour points pre-battle
Wow to see another Kansan here, Geezer.
The other day, I was playing the English on VI/Expert/High and did a turn 3 attack on France. Well, if you've played this scenario out, you would know that the French usually will retreat until all its stacks are by the provence directly east of Flanders. Now, you have to kill them all... which is a problem because you'll be outnumbered from taking over the rest of France.
I was sieging Flanders and all the units over there, plopped into Flanders. So I have my army camping on my side of the map. A few MAA, RKS and Hobs in the forest with 4 spearmen types and 6 archers deployed so the French RKs couldn't flank except through the forest occupied by MAA.
So this is how the first battle went. The French RK went through the forest, and charged into my wall of seemless spearmen in wedge(I had them so it was a continous line of spears). It SHOULDN'T have been a problem but, the RKs hit the area right between two spearment and eventually split the line and routed everyone.
Now, I thought, hmmm; a flanking issue with the AI Knights caused them to hit exactly between two spearment units and it chewed through them into the archers. Hmm, I began thinking about wedge.
Since wedge arranges your men so they can attack forward on two different sides most efficiently:
"Hmmm," me thought, "if one was to use wedge and order a run through at the exact point where two units met, would you get a flanking bonus?"
Now if anyone wants to run a few tests with it, I suggest first to goto the RTW Coloseum and find Divanius Arma's fighting with Phalanx for some ideas with using cav to punch holes through enemy lines.
I always like the wedge not wedge discussions as there is good arguments on both sides.
Just to throw out some cons for a true discussion.
The biggest reason to wedge is the big bonus it gives to the charge, but as soon as the charge is stopped the bonus goes away. The problem is if the charge doesn't spilt the unit then the attack swings the other way and negitive bonuses start to pile on the attackers for being flanked, outnumbered locally, etc. :whip:
Also the wedge charge seems to very dependent on the lead attacker and his success or failure which makes or breaks the charge. To further this pont, the "point" of the wedge is the units leader which is often a general you are sending directly into the most dangerous position on the battlefield. ~:doh:
Another downside is the attack is very isolated because it is shaped as a point. This means the impact on the unit as a whole is very small and again if the charge doesn't spilt the formation will provige little damage. This furthers the arguement that your charge is better served spread out as far as possible to do more damage to a greater percentage of a unit greatly increasing the chances the unit will fold and rout. :inquisitive:
Damn connection, freezing all the time, making me press "reply" many times:P
Personally, I use wedge mostly with inf, when you need to bring down fast high defense units of questionable overall stability tho, and maybe to ensure that cav will be routed/killed fast from the flank or rear, while utilising the greatest advantage of wedge IMO, that of mobility and fast maneuvres in small places. Esp when using fast cav and HA a lot, sometimes a sharp turn using the wedge will save you from getting any contact with your pursuer, and we all know that most of the time, if 2-3 men of a unit touch the enemy, the whole unit will possibly get drawn into an unfavourable combat.
Thanks for the compliment. I'll try to keep them coming...Quote:
Originally Posted by Geezer57
My understanding of the theory behind those +/- scores was that, if you were defender and trying to hold a hilltop, say, then you don't want any of your formations to attempt to defend, whilst in wedge. That's because of the leader issue you raised.Quote:
Originally Posted by Geezer57
Having reviewed the contents of various battle logfiles, I've noticed that where a unit leader has a commander star rating of any kind (and it's exaggerated even more for princes and kings), his personal valour level is higher than that of the rest of the men in his unit. You can see these scores even in a unit which finished the battle 100% intact and killed/captured nothing, so it's apparent that this was the condition they were in right from being trained.Quote:
Originally Posted by Geezer57
Archers are my fave cav target - they die like flies. As I said before, my cav can be what looks like 100 yds away and it's sufficient to start a charge and stop it (my order) after a few seconds, for the archers to respond to the threat by switcing from firing to heading for safety. The reason I stop the charge is so as not to get into a melee at such an early stage. If they start hacking at something, a spear unit could close in on them and they're goners.Quote:
Originally Posted by Geezer57
So, harrass the archers to keep them from firing, so the inf can get close without losing too many to missiles. Not until after the full rout begins do I send cavs in pursuit and allow them to make contact.
Routing units have this odd habit of losing formation and spreading sideways. I like the way the cav AI automatically spreads out, to match what the fleeing troops are doing. This must be the effect of 'engage at will' and I think 'hold formation' on yur cav will keep them in a tight block, so it won't capture/kill as many as it otherwise would and also you get that thing where only the front rank can fight and all the men behind it just sit there, making up the numbers. In this situation, I suspect that wedge/close wouldn't matter because the EAW mode will make them spread out and all get their chance to attack.
Yup.Quote:
Originally Posted by Geezer57
The main point I wanted to address is this business of attack bonus and defence penalty. It's difficult to second-guess the game designers' thinking about this with accuracy but there's two ways I can see the system working: -
1) After contact is made, a unit's combat status is a binary condition - at any given moment they're either attacking or defending. This might even be independent of what orders were actually issued - the program decides which unit is the stronger of the two, gives that one attack status and the other one adopts a defensive stance, even if whichever side controls it told it to attack. If this is dynamically reassessed every time either unit loses a man then there could be a crunch point where attrition suddenly makes the attacker unit rate as weaker and it goes into defensive mode.
If it's not been made that complicated then that implies wedge gets its +3 attack for as long as the resulting melee persists and provided it had been issued an attack order. On the other hand, if the unit is standing at idle (say it's out of your sight, after chasing something to the far edge of the field) but is still in wedge formation when an enemy unit engages it, then it's now classed as defending, so it suffers -3 defence for the ensuing melee.
2) Either at the unit level or at the individual man level, their results are calculated for attack and defence simultaneously. Imagine, for a moment, that sword/spear/lance units are regarded as having 'x' number of sword blows/parrys per minute, analagous to an archer's rate of fire. This time, while in wedge, their blows are at +3 but their parrys are at -3. That would probably explain the casualty rate.
I'm interested by a.s.m's observation of the AI using wedge in exactly the way I imagine it was implemented in real life. Not necessarily to hit and fragment a specific unit but to strike between units, drive them apart and stop them from being mutually supportive - that's where the exposed flank penalty comes into play. Yes the wedge must suffer a flank penalty too but if it's a strong enough unit in its own right, it should cope for long enough for the inf, following behind it, to exploit that gap.
Better yet - if the two units, either side of the wedge, turn to scissor in on it, their flanks will ten be exposed to the follow-up infantry. Presumably, the game can process situations where one unit has to engage two or more others simultaneously but, in this scenario, the prospects are not good for the units which turned to face the wrong way, at the wrong time...
That's along the lines of what I was thinking. I read Divinius Arma's phalanx tip guide where you engage the enemy from an angle with your troops in an echelon formation. You have that reserve unit behind the echelon's leading unit that runs out and engages the enemy and slowly pushes them away from the line. This create a gap which you attack with Knights. Then everyone decides to run like hell when the Knights break through and start attacking the rear and the general.
The regular flanking penalty isn't too bad. There's a list of all the penalties and gains for situations. The flanking penalty isn't bad enough to rout a decent unit on its own. The cavalry vs infantry penalty can make units instantly rout. However, Cavalry + Flank + Being Engaged from two different directions will probably be enough to instantly rout a unit that's lost a few men from attrition.
What am I doing wrong then? When the impetus of the charge falters, I try to send the cavalry away, and they rout!Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcellus
If that isn't bad enough, they run away, right through enemy spearmen!
So now I try to keep my cavalry on the flanks, move them back when they are approached, and send them in to start cutting down enemy routing units, once I've carefully guided them around the spearmen waiting for them.
Strength and Honor
Celt Centurion
My suspicion is that you are waiting a tad too long before withdrawing your cavalry for another charge.
Once the cavalry reaches a certain point of interspersement/engagement amongst its target unit, it is much more difficult to extract.
I micromanage my cavalry charges to try and time them perfectly so that, immediately after the initial shock, they are already wheeling back for another charge. It decreases the chances of getting glued into a melee and having to resort to FrogBeastegg's "hold position and double-click away" tactic.
Just to follow: There's a certain "greed" involved with deploying cavalry charges. It's really nice to watch the impact and the continuing depletion of the enemy unit, but one has to resist this and get the horses out before they're too entangled with the foe.
It's possible to kill even the mighty Billmen if one can extract cavalry in time.
Hmm, in my experience, to get the cav. out it´s better to press "line formation" to disengage.The attempt to switch usually wedges most of the unit out of it's targets, which in turn allows your sudden "turn back" command to succeed. You still get one or two units stuck, and might be killed, but that´s a minor loss compared to the charge slam you deal.
One thing I´ve been trying are "chained charges" against units, if numerically superior. AKA: Two princes of the blood on the field: one charges, deals damage, starts withdrawing. Of course he has problems because units become stuck (sometimes even the general -horror-), but then you slam the second unit in a side, which breaks the enemy formation, and allows your first unit to withdraw. The unit refocuses on the new attacker, and you repeat the process. This way I´ve managed to destroy feudal sergeants with two units of Ghulam bodyguards (I began testing it in an Almoravid Pocket Mod campaign)
That's a great strategy. Especially if you've got weaker cavalry.
I had some fun with it last night with 1x vanilla horse archer + 1x Armenian Heavy versus some feudal sergeants.
I shot them up a bit first, obviously...
Regarding the wedge formation - I always use it to finally break the moral of an already sotened up unit - the power of the charge can be enough to cause a rout and from then on, no need to worry about dead horses!
I usually play as a Catholic nation and use a army balanced with spears, swords, archers and cavalry. I use my light cav as auxiliary units. Mop ups, chasing missle units and flank attacks. My heavies I hold as a reserve. If a unit begins to waver or I am going to be flanked then the reserves go there. With this approach my heavy cav is usually in a good position to engage and win. Very low rate of attrition in my cavalry.
My current campaign has seen a complete change in tactics by me. I am playing the Turks and I am using quite a few Turcumon Horse with Armenian Heavy as my reserve units with few spears and missle units. I use the Turumon's to encircle the enemy formation and scatter them. Once their formation breaks down I charge with my Armenians. I am suffering more horse losses but that is due mostly to how I am using them.
Recently sent an entire stack of Turcumon Horse to battle an army of mostly slav warriors in Hungary. I won but at a heavy cost. My men were exhausted from firing and retreating, operating alone caused several to waiver.