Chariots get even more effective if you can gharge your infantry or cavalry into the enemy units right after the chariots have ran trough them. With the enemy's formation disrupted and morale weakened you are bound to do heavy damage amongst them.
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Chariots get even more effective if you can gharge your infantry or cavalry into the enemy units right after the chariots have ran trough them. With the enemy's formation disrupted and morale weakened you are bound to do heavy damage amongst them.
I primarily use chariots to A) frighten the enemy B) murder enemy cavalry stupid enough to get mixed up with my Chariots and C) hit engaged infantry from behind. I play on Hard battle difficulty - considering bumping it up to VH - And I find that if I use my chariots correctly I win battles that by all rights I should have lost. Their charge in to the back of an engaged enemy unit is great for damaging morale. Just make sure to never let them stay still, as they'll start dropping like flies.
edit: and as someone else mentioned, Chariots break up enemy formations amazingly well, which in turn helps your own infantry gain an advantage.
one charge with chariots is enough to rout an army. take ur starting casse army of 4 units of infantry and ur faction leader and go to the nearest town to besiege it. they will sally out with about 12 units of elites and semi elites. simply, line up your infatyr in front of gate and when they charge ur weak line, send ur chariot in. make sure it keeps moving and after 2 seconds most of the rebel units are routing. in VH i suspect chariots wont work as well (or at all) because they get a lot more morale, and so are harder to break and thats the real point of the chariots. they dont kill much but they can rout an army instantly
And that is why they are so useful, SE :). They help to win battles that you shouldn't be able to win, simply because of the damage to morale they do.
Celtic chariots are probably one of the most discussed issues on this forum. A favourite unit of mine I might add.
there's no way celtic chariots will ever do anything on my game except just die. even if i just instantly retreat them from battle (which is what i do now) they just die. for instance the last time i did it he was retreating as the battle started, then all of a sudden the wheels fly off the chariot, the general hurls headlong into the air with the camera zooming in on him, and i'm like "what happened?!?! did he hit a rock? was there some random arrow that got him? some hidden enemy ninja with a javelin?" i mean they just suck utter and complete fill-in-the-blank.
they can't even charge into the backs of defeated enemies without instantaneously routing and dying. sometimes i wonder if people aren't playing a comletely other game than me, or we are all in the twilight zone.
actually, sometimes i have strong suspicions that the game plays severely differently on different people's systems. the stranger and i have confirmed that his cost efficiency unit tests play out differently than mine. his koinon hellenon campaigns act ridiculously different than mine do. people talk about how awesome celtic chariots are but i can't keep them from dying even if all i do is retreat them upon start of battle. i have wondered if unit sizes has anything to do with these different outcomes, because it seems most people play on huge settings, and i always play on normal.
I play on huge settings and at first, I was really disappointed with the Cidainh, but now, after several re-starts of the Casse campaign to see which moves are the best for opening it, I have gotten used to using them correctly. Sometimes, especially in siege battles, you have to resort to maniac-clicking a far-away corner of the city to keep them moving. They still take casualties, so it is usually best to only move them into the city after all infantry units are engaged and moving them in is a move to speed up enemy routing, not a last-ditch attempt to reinforce your own troops.
In field battles, they are total steamrollers, also in siege battles where the enemy sallies.
In the latter case, I have found that chariots can cause a lot of enemy casualties, quite contrary to what other people have been saying here - or at least they make infantry get more kills out of the enemy unit they are fighting but I really think it was the chariots making those numerous kills going by the battle results scroll (and the infantry unit in question here was a unit of britons shortswordsmen fighting belgian spears, so they should normally have gotten obliterated in no time). I didn't have the chariots attacking most of the time - just auto-firing and moving around behind the enemy unit, just skirting their rear ranks. Somehow, the result was a bit as though they had skythes on the wheels; the rear enemy lines were more or less getting mowed down and occasionally one or two chariots would break out of the formation and plunge into the enemy unit and come out at the flank... After three passes behind the enemy army in this manner, they chain-routed.
Even balroae, who should be *the* counter-chariot unit, routed in one field battle in light woods when I just ran my chariots through their loose formation and they had lost about a quarter of their men (something like 30) from that one pass after my slingers had slightly reduced their numbers as they were still closing to javelin range.
So, regarding chariots I must say, they are extremely powerful on my computer, and it gets even more so with some experience - my faction leader routed and slaughtered a unit of drwdae in a siege battle today... Alone. With hardly any previous casualties from slingers etc on the not even exhausted drwdae unit and with few if any casualties on my cidainh. I was just clicking into the opposite city corner to get them the hell out of there and then I noticed the druids were falling but not killing my unit and then they routed... It seems that both the javelin throwing and the splash damage attack do not require the chariots to be explicitly "attacking" or "fighting" the opposing unit in terms of "alt-clicking" on them. They also kill them when you send them somewhere else but they are still in contact.
Oh and on the original topic about which factions are fun etc - I didn't think I would ever say this in the past, but Casse are awesome great fun.
You just have to do the right opening moves:
Recruit a unit of gaeroas and send all except for the FM who is neither king nor heir to Bratosporios with the fleet, take the settlement, then disband what you can to get out of dept and build the pre-government and a coastal clearing to get the ridiculously lucrative dover-calais trade route going. A occasionally, for a few turns the Eleutheroi fleets will disrupt it but most of the time they will leave your ports alone and from there, you will have no financial recruitment or building problems at all for the rest of the campaign, just make sure that you don't deplete any cities and if you do - hey just hire mercenaries and disband them in the cities to replenish or even boost population, you have to put all that cash somewhere...
Really, it's just sit and push end-turn and occasionally conquer a settlement when you feel like it from there.
The other gauls will completely leave you alone and honour their alliance with you and you can even take the other Belgae settlement (Bagacos, I think) and the Sweboz will take ages to even get all the border territories between you and them, giving you the options to
- kill off their full stack before they conquer anything
- buy their full stack as soon as they leave it without a FM for a turn (yes, you get that rich)
- let them grow for a future challenge.
You can also take other Eleutheroi settlements that should be on the Aedui or Arverni hit list and they won't do anything about it for a long time...
The only annoying thing is that the romans eventually make the Aedui a protectorate and thus cause peace between them and the Arverni and more or less halt any changes to the political landscape in Gaul.
Do be mindful to keep your starting fleet safe in ports at ends of turns though as it is your only means of transport for quite a while. Just taking Darioritum or Ictis will not instantly give you recruitment options for ships and if you want ships that will stand a chance against the pirates, you need (in turns for construction): 4 (town upgrade), 2 (clearing), 1 (pre government), Darioritum 6 or Ictis 10 (proper government), 4 (trade port), 4 (military port), 6 (bigger military port), and maybe another 6 for a blacksmith, makes an absolute minimum of 16 for the minimum port with a type 4 government (which I think is stupid if your faction is building its novel fleets there and on a level 1 port you can only build the flimsy skin boats that can't fight at all) or 31 for a type 1 government in Ictis with proper warships, plus 6 (makes 37) for this with a blacksmith... But at least 16 turns AFTER you take Ictis for flimsy skin boats that die from pirate attacks just to move units back and forth, IF you lose your starting fleet. So don't lose it and bear the upkeep, is my suggestion.
Also, Casse family members get wicked good traits for governing cities and if you take Ynys-Mon, you get a much more potent "Agoge" that gives your FMs druidic traits, influence, management and command boosts AND high-level super ancillaries like the "geographer", even on sharp/charismatic/vigorous FMs.
They are just not as decadent and wasted as the mainlanders. ^^
The only thing that can spoil a Casse game is expanding too fast because it destroys the feeling of heroic conquest and turns the campaign into a subject-processing, uh, process.
Oh and you get to keep the chariots after the reforms it seems. And if you don't rush the other gauls, you can later recruit Brihentin from their lvl5 MICs when you finally do conquer them. And you can also build temples to Andraste. Wicked. :skull:
yeh nightmare has been complaining about chariots since he joined the forum. as petite wolf said, they win battles you shouldnt be able to win and allow you to conquer all of britain with your tiny starting army. I believe the best way to play casse (im talking about quickest way to build a powerful empire. not roleplaying) is to blitz all of britain using that starting army. Some people decide to send their forces to mainland europe because the rebel cities there are easier to take (british cities are full of fullstacks of elites) but with chariots, you can take britain in like 5-7 years anyway
i have no doubt they can be good. i just have no clue how to use them.
this must be on medium because i tried it on vh and my army just died...Quote:
Originally Posted by seleucid empire
they do totally massacre cavalry tho... perhaps i should just use them as such but it makes them quite limited :S
i guess i just prefer heavy cavalry or better yet armored horse archers... those saka/sarmatian/pahlava bodyguards can steamroll empires
Well obviously the game was balanced for Medium battles (as stated in the FAQ), so anyone playing on H or VH is doing so at their own risk. Those settings reward missile spam while rendering historically accurate compositions ineffective.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Stranger
That said, I've even had success with these guys when playing Aedui and Arverni (they're hard to get for those factions because they are rendered unavailable by the first reform, which tends to occur early on). I've won a battle outside Gergovia where I was badly outnumbered, had one unit of Gaesatae (the Aedui had four), some Gallic and Greek slingers, archers, and spearmen, an FM who wasn't in charge, a unit of Leuce Epos and one of Cidainh. The enemy had a full stack comprised mostly of Gaesatae, Gaedann, Gaeroas, and Botroas. I was on low ground and the Aedui were deployed in one of those retarded Californian Redwood forests. My chariots managed to rout all enemy Gaesatae units and massacred the Aedui faction heir.
my chariots just get stuck even if i tell them to keep moving...-_-
too bad.
I'm surprised that people are saying Spain is hard to play and doesn't have good elites. I thought they had the heaviest elites of any barbarian faction and on average the heaviest rank and file troops? They also have heavy cavalry lancers.
The Lusotannans have Ambakaro, Loricati Scutari, and Dunaminica - all elite infantry with heavy armor and I think all or 2 of them have AP weaponry. And they have the Dosidataskeli (or did the EB v1.2 remove them), the heaviest heavy infantry in the game with the best armor except with the exception of the Seleucid version of heavily armored Elite Spearmen.
the dosidataskeli are better than the seleukid version in all aspects. but ye they were taken out in 1.2
Nice description of your Casse campaign, Nachtmeister! Thanks for posting it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nachtmeister
I'm definitely not spoiling my latest Casse campaign with blitzing expansion! In this game, it's 246 BC, and I've conquered no provinces and fought no battles! I'm making money by staying at peace with the Eleutheroi. It's an M/M campaign, so they're not aggressive, they haven't attacked me. I've been able to build up Camulosadae into a major city of over 13,000 citizens. My army is two swordsmen, one spearman, one slinger, and six FM's. Enough to deter the two small rebel armies from attacking me. It's lovely and peaceful here in Britannia.... I don't mind if it takes Casse 50 years to conquer one province, there seems no reason to hurry. The Romans are far away in Massilia and the Sweboz haven't yet conquered any of the three towns between them and the Belgae.
It's been a great campaign, where I've played EB without sitting at the computer. All I do is construct buildings, move my diplomat, and click end turn, then I can do my ironing while the PC runs through the AI factions.
Yeah that's quite normal. Using them properly is difficult and depends on experience as well as preference (either you like this kind of unit or you don't).Quote:
Originally Posted by The Stranger
Dunaminica use the gladius hispaniensis - which is basically the point of this unit (you gotta represent the original inventors of this weapon type. Of course, there's other good reasons for their inclusion). Their javelins are indeed AP, though. And they have three of them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Intranetusa
You have to remember though that the "proper Iberian" units (including vital units such as lancers) are counted as auxiliaries, which requires the Lusitanians to construct an additional set of MICs to access them, consuming time and money.
I prefer to expand quick with the Casse. No sense in letting all the rebels have it easy, and I want their units in my armies! Building alone is boring to me. I am the conquer and build type. You can easily conquer the Isles by 250 and then go take the two rebel Belgae towns. It just becomes a matter of keeping the Sweboz at bay and that's where I play defensive ambush. They intrude and are ambushed by chariots and belgae swordsmen. Love it! In my Casse campaign I am focusing on taking all coastal towns from Bagacos to Burdigala as well as Tolosa. Now I've got Romans and Lusotanans in play against me With the Arverni and Sweboz in suit. So it's been very fun and challenging fighting all four at once! I will go for Gawjam-Skandzwarjoz and Gawjam-Gotanoz just for the hell of it and it fits my goal of being the sole naval power of the game! I am limiting myself to conquering only coastal towns, thus reaping the trade for me and denying it for them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nachtmeister
yeh i dont play VH battles on EB. i use to on vanilla but on EB ur looking at 1 hr battles and combined with VH campaign its gonna take you so many hrs of playing just to get to victory conditionsQuote:
Originally Posted by The Stranger
i like them, atleast i cannot just steamroll everything with a few horse archers, tho it can be frustrating at times definitly when facing enemy missile troops because thats where it really goes bad... my archers do like 1/10 the damage their archers do :S luckily i outmass their archers so its usually fine but fighting on the steppes is hard!
It's strange how there have been so little talk about Swebos. Can't see why, since they are pretty much the most "barbarian" of all the barbarian factions in the game: heavy hitting close combat and ambush specialists with little to no armour and underdeveloped infrastructure. They are - along with the Arverni and Koinon Hellenon - one of those factions I seem to be especially fond of. They are the only faction with wich I have had the nerve to play until 190 BC - and that was with my old computer wich was so slow I could practically make coffee while the start screen was loading. I in fact did that a couple of times. Tells something.
What can I say about them? First of all, they are tougher than they look like. When you look at their stats they seem so weak, with low armour and only medium sized shields, while being armed most of the time with not-the-most-offensive weapons such as spears, and javelins with high damage but short range. Still they are able to beat the living daylights out of most of the troops they will face in western europe, including Romans if you know how to use them correctly. They are tough even in AI's hands: in my current Casse campaing they have given the toughest fights of all the barbarian factions I've faced, and aren't too far behind the Romani.
Darn they are fun to play...
I haven't been playing EB all that long, honestly. The Sweboz are one of the factions I plan on playing, but right now I'm loving my Casse campaign. Its 258 BC and I just conquered Attuaca a turn or two ago. But yeah, I have a fondness for barbarian factions. Sweboz or Getai - or both at once - are who I'm going to try next I think.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vilkku92
i like the hellenic factions more i think (except ptolemaioi and makedon for some reason...) and i do like the steppe factions but their campaigns are quite boring
sweaboz have that special batle philosophy wich i have mixed feelings about
the upclose and personal kind of batle if they get near you enough they are like lions stalking a prey 30 centimeters closer and you´re toast only way to deal with them is lead bullets beteween the eyes so slingers are a must \o and thus the reason why it´s important to keep your distance
the one unit i like the least are the clubmen :\ i don´t know if it´s the crazy gay shirts their alchool abuse or their crazy attempts to get girls druged but i tend to deslike the club dudes
I love the clubmen. Them boyz hit yer wen youz not lookin', den dey hitz youz 'ard wen youz are! Waaagh!!! (AP helps.) :clown:
I personally think the clubmen are little overrated. They have wide spacing and low defense and attack, so they usually get killed very quickly against most enemies without doing that much damage. People have been reportedly been talking about them "eating" armoured enemies, but I usually have them lose almost as much men as they kill, and that is counting the chase. They come dirt cheap though, and the Swebos are usually quite low in cash, so it increases their usefulness. They are also very good in semi-forested maps, where they can ambush the enemy from behind - deadly especially if you have hired some of those wolf mercenaries. Still, they are overrated, and I prefer to use the Baltic axemen when I have a chance.
Missiles are the Sweboses nemesis and Achilles's heel, but can be countered with screen of Jugundziz and/or fast advance. This makes it harder to use ambush tactics though, so when facing missile troops you have to choose between two not-that-good options: Quick head-on assault and casualties while slugging it out, or staying put and casualties while being fired upon by slingers/archers/both. Ah well, you can't have everything.:shrug:
crazy gay shirts? they don't wear shirts :D tho that could be the point aswell^^
Personally I preffer their local youngster variant. Cheap, die like flies but deal with those Evil tin cans, plus they seem wilder, may be the haircut may be the laughably small shield and as Sweboz temples boost groth rather than law the AOR is not a biggie.
The Baltic axemen ARE better but where you can train them few people have heard of armor at all :/
Arrows are the Arch nemesis of all Sweboz armies. However don't fear to engage the enemy head on, Dugunthiz and their local variants all have a good charge bonus and are good line holders. As soon as they are in running distance a head on charge is not that bad an idea, provided the enemy does not field phalangites and you can quickly deploy your clubmen to ... well kill them^^.
some people seem to phail miserably on the joke part about club dudes :\ go watch vice city the show from the 80´s to understand what i mean about clubmen (dudes who attend the clubs not dudes who use clubs)
sorry, but that's none of the things I have knowledge of. Make a Monty Python quote and I'll respond with the something from exactly that sketch.
i meant miami vice i made a mistake XD but still club men are wierdos :|
i dont like ptolemaioi either. for some reason i find them the hardest hellenistic faction to play on H/M. even though it has the easiest difficulty rating of all the greek factions, i seem to run into a slogfest with grey death and carthage. it also might be due to the fact that there are so many rebel stacks in egypt which you have to fight off before consolidating your kingdom, namely the rebel general from kyrene and he other one from ethiopia which in all of my games surprise me at around 260 BC by attacking nubia. On M/M though the ptolemaioi are really easyQuote:
Originally Posted by The Stranger