How do you use chariots?

[gauch0]

I've played a little bit of an Egyptian campaign, and I'm now playing Iceni. In both, I've had some opportunity to use chariots, and I haven't figured out yet what to do with them. Any tips?

[Sp4]

No idea. I guess they're good at crashing through lines and breaking them like that but it's kind of crap because of the way everyone's been complaining about units being too quick, so chariots are now about as fast as light infantry and you charge them somewhere only once because by the time you turned them around, they'll be dead.

-E- I think the Iceni chariots also have javelin people on them, so super slow skirmishing cav is another 'role' I can see them in.

[Grin]

Near as i can tell chariots have no melee attack, they only score kills by charging. They automatically try to push through enemy units and will continuously charge them, but (and here's a big but) if they get bogged down in enemy units they don't seem to be able to defend themselves and get slaughtered.

[ReluctantSamurai]

if they get bogged down in enemy units they don't seem to be able to defend themselves and get slaughtered

Which is exactly what happened to them in R1. I never used chariots much in R1 and I don't know if any of the following could apply to R2:

Pick a point beyond the unit you want your chariots to attack. You want your chariots to wreak as much havoc on unit formation as possible, and move through the enemy to regroup on the other side, if possible. Chariots don't get many kills, outright, but they disrupt formations and lower morale.

Follow up the chariots with a hard-hitting cavalry unit. The unit just hit by the chariots will likely be disorganized (although if R2 "unit-blob" doesn't get fixed, it won't make much difference) and taken a morale hit. In R1, as the Seleucids, a devastating combo was scythed chariots followed by cataphracts. Only the most elite of units could take this double hit and not immediately rout....

[AntiDamascus]

Were chariots used in real life as a continuous melee unit or did it just blow through a line and move on? What I'm asking is are these units actually true to life?

[Grin]

Historically chariots were mostly used as transports for the nobility, they'd ride them into battle then hop off to fight. The greeks actually practiced boarding and disembarking chariots as an Olympic competition. Some cultures also used them as mobile archer/skirmisher platforms, but that died out in favor of horse mounted archers/skirmishers. Chariots were pretty much only ceremonial vehicles by the games timeline. Only the Britons still really used them in the west. The Scythed Chariots were developed as a dedicated shock weapon during this time, but there's not much evidence they were widely used.

[Sp4]

Were chariots used in real life as a continuous melee unit or did it just blow through a line and move on? What I'm asking is are these units actually true to life?

They were used to get rich people into the fight. I have no idea how it worked irl or how it must have looked but I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would think the sort of tactics they explain in the encyclopedia are any good or any better than any other tactic really.

You use 2 horses, or 4 in some cases to get -a- guy, two at the most into the fight. Seems a bit hurrr to me but maybe they had 500000 chariots constantly swapping out 500000 guys but that seems unlikely too.