Cataphract Issues

[VAE VICTUS]

so...my cataphracts tend to get owned by other cavalry factions if they don't have superior numbers, and if I try to disengage, I lose half the unit, what is going on and will CA fix this and let my shock cav cycle charge?!

[ReluctantSamurai]

As the #1 fan of Armenia in R1, I can attest to a fondness for cats...heavy and archers. But....

....I'm inclined to think that CA has this one correct. Cataphracts as a "shock" unit is meant for infantry fighting and with all the heavy armor would be at a disadvantage against more nimble cavalry that are armed and trained to fight other cavalry. After the initial charge with the lance, cats can switch to a mace for melee but they have no shield which makes them more vulnerable in prolonged melee.

Just my thoughts on the matter

[VAE VICTUS]

It just doesn't make sense for a more expensive unit to be worse off in TW logic. Plus the infantry is almost useless anyway, so if parthia has an edge its cavalry. in melee heavily armored cap. shouldn't be torn apart by less armored units with *swords*...their armor should make shields superflous, especially when facing swords in melee. Just wish the INSANE stats for some other elite cav (arveni noble horse, heroic rides, preat. cav etc ) units could be fixed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFYhKXSBz3g

[ReluctantSamurai]

There's no doubt in my mind that there is a need for better balancing, from what I've seen. I do believe the real problem is as stated by the fellows presenting that video...that of disengaging. Heavy cavalry depend greatly on the charge to do their damage. After the charge finishes, it's virtual suicide to your cats to try and disengage as they suffer horrid casualties. So you are committed until one unit routs or is destroyed.

However, I still believe that cat vs. melee cav should favor the melee cav in prolonged combat due to the fatigue factor and the lack of shield for the cats. If the cats can get a flanking charge upon initiating combat, the losses inflicted on the melee cav should hurt them considerably.

There's been a lot of hoopla about this, I know, and I certainly am no expert on cavalry warfare of the period, so take my opinion with a grain of NaCl

[Jarmam]

This is from the beta patch 3:

• Melee defence has been reduced for most melee cavalry units and for some elite infantry units. (note: The Noble Cav that used to have the listed 88 melee defense are now listed as having 70 melee defense)
• Substantially reduced free hits from enemies in battles, when moving a unit through enemy units (without attacking them), so units can disengage with less penalty.

If it is true that Cataphracts are supposed to have their advantage in cav-vs-melee, with their low movement and weak anti-cav-performance as drawbacks to this, then I'd say the beta patch attempts to correct the unit. I havent tested it, but I will after this and edit in my results.

What is really interesting is, yet again, what exactly unit stats do. This annoyed me in Shogun 2 as well, since the closest thing to official explanations to stats didn't synch up with my results in tests. Cataphracts have good charge - aite, that makes sense, but what does a charge value do, exactly? How much of an advantage does 30 some more charge give?

[Sp4]

Shock cavalry = crap in melee. If they are not charging, they're doing it wrong.
Melee cavalry = not so crap in melee but still not great. You want to be charging with any cav really imo but melee cav beats shock cav in melee. They're also better at killing off units they charged into. Shock cav is more for the morale hit I guess. They are meant to end fights whereas melee cav seems like more of a battlefield fire brigade to me.

I have not played any factions with good shock cav yet, so I can't really comment on them an awful lot but I find them less versatile and useful than melee cav.