Cataphract Issues

**ReluctantSamurai** · 09-22-2013, 02:04

If you're worried

No...no....not worried. My comment about the Romans having heavy cavalry was pretty much tongue-in-cheek

After that, they become Legionary Cavalry, which is classed as heavy melee cavalry. Those two are basically the same: riders with some armor, on horses with no armor, wielding spears.

These guys you would expect by 150BC to 50BC.....

The SEE unit is a mailed rider on an unarmored horse wielding basically a kontos.

These guys don't show up in Roman OOB's for another 200 yrs. or so

**Grin** · 09-22-2013, 03:37

Couple things I noticed that seem relevent

Cataphracts will lose to most barbaian heavy 'melee' calvary because they are spear calvary and share traits with spear infantry.

They've also overhauled the way armour and health work. Units have to be 'worn down' by ranged fire, melee, or repeated charges before your going to see the high damage charges we're used to in these games. Especially the high armoured late game units.

**Jarmam** · 09-22-2013, 11:25

So yeah.. the AI isnt as helpful as it was in earlier games and wont let me do a full melee. So cant test the new patch status on our favourite metal dress Persians vs The Tanks of the Barbs. What I can document is that breaking off a melee with cavalry now loses you less guys than before. It still hurts, but not as badly.

Specifically related to Cataphracts is their formation, which is effective for a charge but it has the nasty sideeffect of this efficiency: The unit will plow into the enemy unit to hit as many as possible with the charge - which is good! The problem is that when disengaging (which, I will remind our noble audience, is the point of shock cavalry) the individual riders get stuck in the enemy formation! I lose maybe 10 horsemen when disengaging (fewer than the 30+ prepatch) and then 10 more than are sort of stuck in the enemy. And maybe due to their royal status the rest of the unit faithfully wait for their trapped comrades, which means they will disengage slower to "allow the rest to catch up". Boys... the rest are dead. Haul ***! I cant charge if you dont put distance between you and the Gauls!

One thing I also found was that units seem to tire off very quickly when fighting, as in, when I charge a group of Oathsworn (be afraid btw) I will deal a massive blow within the first few seconds, and now both units are exhausted? What? I know that exhausting was way too slow pre-patch but this is ridiculous. And this hurts Shock Cavalry much harder than other units, especially Cataphracts. They're slow already, there really is no need at all for them to run any slower!

**VAE VICTUS** · 09-24-2013, 17:36

I took someone's advice here and charge in a staggered line, or just avoid using them unless I have to. They demolish archers, so I space archers from their support, crush the archers, then surround and chip away at the infantry until they run away or are ready to break at a charge. Cavalry make it tricky, but H/A usually deal with them, although I haven't face the Barbarian tanks. I do weep at the trend of consolizing this game. Can't wait for all the mods that will fix it.