question: cavalry on wedge

**Watchman** · 12-30-2009, 09:18

It was a statement of fact, not a judgement.

Anyway, CW ? Doubtless a light cavalry trooper could get his horse to jump a pretty decent distance even under combat conditions. It's just very very hard to see why he would want to, as it serves no purpose at all (beyond clearing the occasional obstacle, and really, you're better off just going around) and mainly runs an unpleasantly high risk of something going seriously wrong, chiefly regarding the issues of "landing", "footing" and "the horse's legs"...

Let's not even talk about what a gigantically bad idea it would be if the "projected landing zone" were full of grown men with shields and long pointy things.

**fallen851** · 12-30-2009, 18:31

So, do you generally state "boy this is a nice fresh thread" when a new thread is formed?

No, you don't. And therein lies the problem. The fact that you even made a statement, shows a judgement.

Anyway, does anyone play EB online?

**Philippus Flavius Homovallumus** · 12-30-2009, 19:41

Originally Posted by Watchman

It was a statement of fact, not a judgement.

Anyway, CW ? Doubtless a light cavalry trooper could get his horse to jump a pretty decent distance even under combat conditions. It's just very very hard to see why he would want to, as it serves no purpose at all (beyond clearing the occasional obstacle, and really, you're better off just going around) and mainly runs an unpleasantly high risk of something going seriously wrong, chiefly regarding the issues of "landing", "footing" and "the horse's legs"...

Let's not even talk about what a gigantically bad idea it would be if the "projected landing zone" were full of grown men with shields and long pointy things.

All true, except that cavalry were in the habit of doing it, along with getting their horses to hop, rear and buck on command.

**Watchman** · 12-30-2009, 22:37

Light cavalry ? Leaping their horses into serried ranks of infantry ?
...I reserve the right to regard the idea with heavy scepticism.

Also, not the same as the industry-standard training in wheeling and rearing and whatever on command that all warhorses got more or less by default.

**fallen851** · 12-30-2009, 22:46

Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

All true, except that cavalry were in the habit of doing it, along with getting their horses to hop, rear and buck on command.

I own two Arabs, and it takes an incredible amount of training to get a horse to hop or jump on command. It is easy for a horse when it sees a jump to jump over it, but extremely hard to get it to hop on command. Many horse breeds are simply incapable of learning it also.

It takes many years of training to get a horse to do this and I doubt they had the training techniques (modern day behaviorism) then that we have now that allow the horse to learn the command "easily."

The famous Lipizzaner Stallions are among the horses in the world that can do this, and I really doubt the horses of even elite cavalry units were trained anywhere near that well. So as for the hopping on command, it simply isn't historical.

**tarem** · 01-01-2010, 14:26

yesterday i did use a wedge with great success in the following way:

me ant the AI had a symetrical deplyment all our heavy infantry on my right and all our cavalry on my left. however the field was only wide enough to deploy 2/3 of the army in continous line so we both had reserves in the back. as we aproached i ordered my 3 rows deep cavalry to charge the AI cavalry and my infantry to charge the oposite infantry. because of the difference in speed i very thin gap formed betwean the infantry/cavalry lines, so i put my rear cavalry into wedge (i enabled it before) and rushed through the gap, not engaging eighter infantry or cavalry along the way. then after i got behind the enemy lines i quickly turned left and back and struck the AI's rightmost cavalry, causing them to rout left which caused the neigbours to rout and so a chain rout of al the 3 frontal cavalry units before the one in the reserve could react

**seienchin** · 01-02-2010, 12:13

I made an wedge test in vanilla today and although in my test game the cavallery units with wedge took more casualties they were able to disrupt the ranks of hoplites when atacking from the front.
In the description of the wedge it also says that the wedge is good for breaking enemies formation.
I am going to take a test in EB today to see if it works in EB too.