Gameplay Balance

[mlp071]

I am not sure that you are taking into account additional factors such as:

a) units experience (did they had chevrons and if so which ones?) and if there was AI FM around and some others.

b) EB AI generals are packed with stars and all different goodies in order to prolong fight, since AI is not capable itself to do that.

c) Was your cavalry also tired or not ? I mean, no ones runs same if they are tired, and horses are not exception to that.

All that also affects units moral and liability to break.

Even so, no unit will break from one cavalry charge while they are still not tired, unless you charge them with cavalry with very high charge value.

Personally, I tried several M2TW mods and didn't like it ,because suggestions that you are making made my game unsatisfactory for me.Example 2-3 units of my Armored Sargents( T1 or T2 cavalry with almost no charge value) would rout pretty much any army, including elite one off the field.And as human i know how to take advantage of that(high unit mass) , but AI is completely incapable to do it.

Result of all that for me was very short battles and i would win without even trying to use any tactical knowledge.I found that gamebreaking for me and unrealistic.

For me it comes down to this:

1) Cavalry (with some exceptions like Cata's) of classical period was not all powerful to win battle by single charge, if it was Romans would be first to use and abuse that considering their history of using others knowledge in their favor.

2) Only coming Dark Ages Cavalry got more power and even then it could not resolve battle alone, you still need infantry and other support units to do that.
You can see Battle of Adrianople(Goths) in 378 for that, as that was historically(i believe wrongly) marked as start of cavalry domination in battle . Or you can see Battle of Mohi and Batlle of Legnica in 1241(if anyone had best cavalry it was Mongols).

In all those cases cavalry charges in the back were used to win battle after infantry, archers and HA's tired, demoralized and somewhat depleted enemy.

3) Having cavalry with mass like in RTW vanilla or in Darth mod in M2TW( if you check my posts in the past i am huge fan of Darth's but nevertheless) is just way to much, it takes away tactical point of battles.All you need is to lineup infantry to hold other side and then charge once. Game over without any sweat.

Same applies for lowering down defensive values of infantry.

4) Price of cavalry(and prices in general) in EB is pretty much on the mark. You pay less then for infantry if you recruit unarmored , crappy nomad HA's (very useful ones though), but you will pay bunch if you want Ornamented, heavy armored cavalry that has a punch.

You can ask Antiochus III the Great how much it cost him to recruit his army at Magnesia(he had 12000 cavalry).And he still lost to Romans without almost no cavalry(5000 cavalry).

I am not sure, but it looks to me that you are looking for quicker battles where you can decide battle in first couple of minutes with 1-2 cavalry charge.Or i am wrong in that ?

Sorry for lengthy post.