Combat in the Med II engine

[vartan]

The horse conversation is the one we've had a million times. Should we really derail an engine thread to have it again?

Listen to bobby! Heh. Horses and the TW engines go hand in hand. Nothing more relevant.

[MisterFred]

Is there a reason we haven't brought up stirrups yet?

Edit after Ichon's post: I did know stirrups were not present in the EB time-period, but I was hoping someone would ensure lurkers and commenters not super familiar with ancient history that EB would naturally have weaker charges than other Med II mods for this reason. And thankfully, Ichon did, and much better than I could.

[Ichon]

Stirrups and saddles plus the size of the horse and type of armor the rider wearing all bear on the shock of impact and how much force able to be transferred through a lance. I'd assumed most people are familiar that in EB time frame most cavalry(maybe all cavalry though the record is not totally clear) did not use stirrups or much of a saddle.

Stirrups probably aren't that important for light cavalry unless they are archers since a good rider does not benefit hugely from stirrups when unencumbered. Heavier armor on rider, longer lances, and throwing/shooting missiles benefit greatly from stirrups since all those things affect the riders balance/weight distribution and the horse maintaining a steady speed. Riding without strirrups or a good saddle that secures rider and distributes weight makes a big difference in how fast a horse can run and carry home a charge as well.

It shouldn't be that charges are impossible or totally ineffective for EB era cavalry but less effective and more prone to cause casualties to the cavalry with generally smaller/less armored horses compared to medieval heavy cavalry and riders plus no strirrups/saddles seems reasonable.

A cavalry charge hitting the side or rear of a phalanx would still be quite effective and the problem of RTW phalanx ability to compeltely turn 180 in 2 seconds isn't in MTW2. A cavalry charge hitting heavy infantry frontally is something that should be possible but cost high casualties for the cavalry- even elites though elites should be able to fight in the melee after with much less losses and withdraw to charge again. Though cavalry should be able to scythe down most skirmishers(perhaps not peltasts though depends on EB portrays such medium infantry units). If only MTW2 mechanics could be such that cavalry only scare certain types of infantry units in certain relative positions but that isn't how it works. So best compromise is probably give most heavy infantry spear units bonus vs cavalry and low enough cavalry charge value that trying to take one of those spear units down from a frontal charge is a very poor tactic wasting precious cavalry but allows rear charges and cavalry that toss javelins, shoot missiles, engage enemy cavalry and skirmishers without huge losses is ideal. How to balance skirmishers vs heavy infantry vs cavalry is probably the most difficult for MTW2 engine. It's not totally rock, paper, scissors, but a bit of that. Balancing it so skirmishers having high enough missile attack to cause damage to infantry but not enough to completely wipe out smaller cavalry units who charge by is difficult.