Death of a General

**El Diablo** · 04-11-2008, 01:43

New a strange thing happened in my Macedon campaign last night.

I was teaching the Pontiacs the foolinshness of being on my territory with a resounding whooping.

A phlanax front line of "royal pikemen" backed with plenty of gold weapon archers behind caused them to have an "insta-rout" on contact with my spears.

I had not put my horses exposed on the flanks due to heavy chariots on there side but with the mass rout going on I decided to ensure that there would not be much to fight in round two by hunting down everything with a white flashy banner.

No here is gets a bit bad. I had two family members in the stack along with two light lancers and two companion's. I sent them all to attack THROUGH my front line to the feeling Pontiacs (note that the spears were pointing the other way) when all of a sudden my horses (in all 6 units) start flashing red and even one of my generals is killed.

I am not sure if this was from the non-pointy endof the spears or from a last final salvo from the archers.

I have has casualties from running horses through friendy phalanx before but not from the back. Is this normal or was I unlucky?

ED

**Gaius Scribonius Curio** · 04-11-2008, 02:01

To be honest I think your just unlucky. I've never had anything quite like that happen before. Although recently (this is completely unrelated), my best general charged a unit of peasnants from the flank and died on impact. I think its just one of those things.

**Caius** · 04-11-2008, 03:36

Spear units are bugged. IF a cavalry unit charges from the rear, it will suffer the phalanx bonus.

**El Diablo** · 04-11-2008, 04:45

Thanks for that Caius but the "spear unit" was MY OWN Phlanax and I was charging through.

So do you think that my General was killed by the spears or the volley of arrows. Note there was NO ememy units there so he did die from "friendly fire" or "friendly sticky pointy thingees"?

Obviously if it is dangerous for horses to run through the rear of friendly spear units it will cease to be a tactic of mine when playing RTW. I just wanted to know and bring it to the attention of other players.

"Please people - let my stupidity be an example to you all"

**Gaius Scribonius Curio** · 04-11-2008, 05:45

Out of the two options, I'd go with the arrows then. As I said above I've never had mass casualties when sending cavalry through my own spears before. Unless you're playing with a different version (Ie; I play 1.5 (gold)).

But its definitely weird though.

**Thundermace** · 04-11-2008, 07:51

Originally Posted by El Diablo

No here is gets a bit bad. I had two family members in the stack along with two light lancers and two companion's. I sent them all to attack THROUGH my front line to the feeling Pontiacs (note that the spears were pointing the other way) when all of a sudden my horses (in all 6 units) start flashing red and even one of my generals is killed.

I am not sure if this was from the non-pointy endof the spears or from a last final salvo from the archers.

ED

Ha!
Very nice to meet smb that has had the same problem! Welcome to the club, El Diablo

You see, I was very surprised when it happened to me some time ago in my German campaign ( H/H, vanilla Rome patch 1,5)... my generl charged over the spear warband and fell dead... and it was a nice general

Anyway - I thought I missed sth, so I went on. Some turns later, the same thing happened and then it occured to me that the general had stabbed himself on the spears, trying to jump the horse over them. And I noticed that even some from the rest of my cavalry suffered losses in similar situations.
I don't think it's the missile fire, because I usually (if not always) set them on disable fire at will and aim at targets far enough from my front line

I have to say that in a earlier campaign with zee Germans I haven't had such a problem - or at least not with the General, so I hadn't noticed it? However my former German camp. was at normal battle difficulty, so a part of my suspicions on the problem are, that it has to do with difficulty level. But, nevermind - this way the game is even more realistic - after all in history nobody charged his cavalry through the back of his own battle line. And, as history shows, all sorts of freaky accidents happen - even the greatest leaders are not deathproof in some very silly situations

Something else - I have never had such a problem with infantry charging in the same manner through the back of the phalanx.

And I have had another weird problem with germans - once I charged some crappy unit with a generals bodyguard and a couple of other cav. units and - guess what

- hefell dead during the charge, although he was NOT in the first line and there was NO missile fire at all!!!

And as a whole, I have found that even during the easiest of charges sometimes elite cav. units fall like pears, with no obvious reason...

By the way - sorry it has nothing to do with the topic - can anyone tell me how to change my avatar? I want one from RTW, but when I try to change it only avatars from M2TW are available and I don't play M2 TW, so, you see...?

**Thundermace** · 04-11-2008, 08:00

Originally Posted by Thundermace

By the way - sorry it has nothing to do with the topic - can anyone tell me how to change my avatar? I want one from RTW, but when I try to change it only avatars from M2TW are available and I don't play M2 TW, so, you see...?

Sorry - just found out how to solve my problem!

**RLucid** · 04-11-2008, 13:31

When the opponents rout, take them out of Phalanx mode, so they can pursue opponents running after them. Then open them, so your Cavalry can pass between the gaps between the files, rather than run them through a solid mass of men.

It is really stupid, that RTW units in close order, can mingle so much, passing through each other without harm, so I try to avoid it. It actually annoys me that running cavalry can knock over own side, and never seem to cause casualties.

This seems like what happened is more realistic, and should happen more often, rather than be "unlucky".