Combat in the Med II engine

[Ichon]

Comparing 18th century cavalry to Celtic/Germanic or other EB era cavalry is a bit weird. Not only are the weapons and training vastly different the entire way wars were fought was much different as well.

I don't think many people are advocating that EB2 heavy cavalry should suffer losses RTW style on disengaging from a phalanx that turned 180 but from a game mechanics view it is important to establish how the cavalry should work.

In RTW cavalry could completely wipe out a single enemy non-spear infantry unit and often disengage with no loss vs that unit. However there were often some other infantry already closing(who move much faster relativeling in RTW then MTW2) in and it is unlikely you can take 2 heavy cavalry and defeat a full stack infantry army.

In MTW2 it is actually possible to take a couple heavy cavalry with strong charge in vanilla and many mods and defeat entire full stack enemy army. That might be minimally acceptable due to the dominance of heavy cavalry in the medieval period MTW2 was made to reflect and mechanically in the game is mostly due to the much slower movement of infantry relative to cavalry. In both games shock of cavalry can kill almost any non-spear infantry with a good charge but in RTW phalanx could shift spears so quickly that it is quite hard to flank and the spears length and attack bonus vs cavalry made disengaging even after a clean charge that didn't totally break the unit cost many casualties. That is not an issue in MTW2 and as such cavalry are even more powerful than RTW due game mechanics of slower speed of infantry and phalanx type formations not instantly turning 180.

Given the timeframe of EB where heavy cavalry was not the full or nearly fully armored feudal knights trained from birth riding specially bred large armored steeds the shock of a heavy cavalry charge is still important but not the total crushing tactic it was for most of the medieval period. The way to refelct the differences in training, and above all equipment and type of horses available between EB era and medieval always seems to draw debate.

EB cavalrymen were normally armored but even heavy cavalry wore much less armor than their medieval counterparts and EB era had generally smaller horses rode without stirrups most likely- so the shock of a charge would still apply but to a lesser degree. It will be interesting to see what EB team does as they can adjust basic stats as well as change the mass, fatigue, heat stress, morale etc of units. More options than were in RTW. From what I've seen how the engine works it will be extremely hard to make any cavalry charge which is disruptive from the rear also not able to shatter an infantry unit from the front just as if it were a medieval charge. And even possibly in EB timeframe such a charge could be as disruptive. However it did not seem to happen very often... my guess would be because with smaller/less armored horses and cavalrymen and lesser equipment(saddles/ stirrupts) such frontal charges would be costly in casualties. The tactics which usually worked was flank or rear charges or chasing down targets other than heavy infantry and then isolating those heavy infantry without support. How to model that with available engine seems to be reduce mass and shock stat of cavalry(but apply full morale hit) so a cavalry charge from the rear could still cause many casualties and even more is likely to shatter the victim units morale and start a rout where the rest of the unit is killed by the cavalry. This way if a cavalry unit tried a frontal charge on a decent heavy infantry unit it would cause mass casualties but not completely destroy a unit just from the charge. With less of a hit on their morale the infantry unit could then more likely fight back. The cavalry would still have their armor and speed to get away but probably is going to take more casualties than otherwise. Probably not enough to make the unit incapable of fighting but should be enough losses to make such frontal charges a bad tactic to use repeatedly all battle long.