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Thread: Cavalry acting a bit funny....

  1. #1
    Senior Member Senior Member Dionysus9's Avatar
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    Default Cavalry acting a bit funny....

    First off I'm kicking myself that I didn't get the replay, but here's what happened:

    I played a couple MP games last night and my opponents were routinely targeting artillery with their cav, so when I played them again I was ready. I had four prussian lancers ready to intercept any incoming cav. I set my arty marching forward to set the trap-- sure enough I see enemy cav start moving. I target each of their 4 incoming light dragoons with one of my 4 lancers and move my entire army forward so that my arty will be protected. I stop my arty and it has two rows of infantry and 4 counter-charging lancers now between it and the incoming enemy cav.

    First off, my counter-charging lancers are apparently affraid to hit the light dragoons head on and instead try to come in on their flank. This takes extra time and lets about 1/2 the light dragoons past before the impact of the lancer charge. This is the first thing I've noticed-- charging cavalry appears to automatically attempts to charge around the side of its target instead of head on. Most of the time I want a head on charge, but my cav is not cooperating.

    So then these light dragoons, who should be pretty beat up from a lancer charge, start ploughing through my skirmishers and line troops (which are admittedly on the move themselves, still falking forward). My lancers are lagging far behind, now, even though they should have stop the light dragoons dead in their tracks.... but the light dragoons keep coming, and they are not getting "hung up" on the Lancers, or on any of my other units, either. Normally an enemy unit will stop and fight whatever unit it comes in contact with.

    Now, after charging through my entire army to get at my arty, these un-upgraded light dragoons (british) hit and destroy my two howitzers, despite having been targeted by 4 lancers even before they left enemy lines... they are still being fought and pursued by lancers... and now I set two infantry on them too...

    Finally, after polishing off my artillery, the light dragoons (still not under any morale pressure, by the way, despite having been countercharged by lancers and having to wade through an entire army) pass out through the back of my army and carry on toward my allies arty! My 4 lancers are still in pursuit, each attempting to target one of the 4 light dragoons, but they are not catching up. This might be a speed issue, but again it looks like instead of targeting the center of the enemy formation, they are trying to flank-- which allows the fast moving enemy cav to keep moving forward and not get hit...

    ... so eventually I instead decide I better just send my lancers directly to my ally's artillery and stop trying to target these enemy dragoons because its obviously not working.... once I do that my lancers finally seemed to catch up with the enemy and "tie them down" in combat.

    It looks to me like this is really 2 problems:
    1) the old "click behind" bug that allows cavalry to bypass the "stickiness" of enemy units and run through/past them like butter, and
    2) some new cav charging behavior (at least new to me) that the cavalry does not charge directly at a target, but instead swerves a bit trying to hit their flank.

    I've also noticed cavalry is fighting awfully well in the trees (used to die fast in the trees)...

    I can probably re-enact this tonight with the same opponents and come back with a working replay...I'll try...

    If his dragoons had been highly upgraded with experience, it would make some sense-- but these were stock-dragoons, no upgrades.
    Last edited by Dionysus9; 04-06-2010 at 20:47.
    Hunter_Bachus

  2. #2
    Senior Member Senior Member Tomisama's Avatar
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    Default Re: Cavalry acting a bit funny....

    My first thought is that Lancers are good charging attackers, but very poor defenders.

    I would not have sent them on a mission to intercept other charging cavalry.

    More a job for heavy cavalry I think.

    But I could be totally wrong
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  3. #3
    Senior Member Senior Member Dionysus9's Avatar
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    Default Re: Cavalry acting a bit funny....

    Hmmm... good point, thanks for the comment. I'm still trying to figure out this "new" engine.
    Hunter_Bachus

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    Senior Member Senior Member Dionysus9's Avatar
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    Default Re: Cavalry acting a bit funny....

    Tomi-- it looks like you hit hte nail on the head regarding the effectiveneess of Lancers against other cav-- they don't do well. I also noticed I was able to get my light cav to disengage from enemies it had charged fairly easily by giving it another target...

    That said, I've noticed some more of the "charging into the flanks without orders" behavior...the charging cav will swerve at the last minute and try and hit the unit in the flank instead of head on-- that works great against infantry but not so well against cav that is on the move...

    obviously I'm still learning...
    Hunter_Bachus

  5. #5

    Default Re: Cavalry acting a bit funny....

    Hi Bachus.

    I've noticed this with the cav as well as inf. I had a similar situation, with my waloon guard matching up for a shoot out with a musketeer. My walloon guard would keep marching sideways trying to line up on the flank of the musketeer instead of just firing straight.

    Is there a way to avoid this?

  6. #6

    Default Re: Cavalry acting a bit funny....

    Theres lots of bugs like this in game too many to mention, drives me nuts with all the walking instead of running or u drawn ur unit abit forward in the woods by dragging and it runs off in an big banana shape getting shot to hell. Lancers are the best cav in the game dont let the early problems put u off. the great thing is there charge and if u see somone whos experienced with ntw like aggony ducky they get a shed load of charges in each game. he doesent seem to have any probs with cav movement/control but that probably just comes with time and learning to cope with the bugs.


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  7. #7
    Rolluplover Member Kocmoc's Avatar
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    Default Re: Cavalry acting a bit funny....

    lancer got a 37 charge, if im not mistaken... if you want many charges, you have to get our cav out once they did charge. If you let your lancer fight till the end vs a high h2h units, the lancer will die.
    The majority mostly move units in and than wait how the battle goes, this is also the main reason for the behavior you experienced.

    I would just create some 1v1 vs the AI in the game and try to figure our how your can behave in different situation, also you will get a feeling of how quick you have to move back your cav.
    Just count the charge-losses and try to work with the delay, since i didnt had time to play a lot this weekend, i didnt had time to test the bonus of the singlelines, might be useful to also check, if this has any effect.
    If not, than the charge should be done in 3 lines in my opinion, since the single lines has some insane overlapping, since i couldnt see speed ups from single-mens, it seems that the units counts in every single men.

    Koc

    edit: There is also some borderbug, if you fought close to the border, the units also behave very weird. I had one unit which kept moving, but didnt attack anything, i clicked many times. Same happend with missles, they didnt stop moving and kinda did slight more and more towards the border, this did look weird, it was clearly a bug.
    Last edited by Kocmoc; 09-06-2010 at 11:35.

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