What do you guys think about elephants/cavalry charging?

[Nerouin]

The elephants are insane!!! I LOVE THEM!!!

Also the cav is great. It always used to anger me in MTW and STV how HEAVY, HEAVY cav like Lancers or Golden Horde Heavy would simply hit a unit of anything, no matter how weak, i.e. peasants, and just STOP. The point of heavy cavalry in history was that they RAN YOU OVER. In melee, though they were proficient, they could be unseated by someone with a pointed stick.


In reality, if you were hit by an armoured horse running at full tilt, even more so by an elephant, you would be run over in a second, and the unit would continue and run over the rest of your unit as well.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Cavalry are way better now. More realistic power-wise, they now at least push back units, they jump over individual soldiers sometimes, knock soldiers flying, and even knock over soldiers temporarily (they may get back up).

CHARGE!

[Medieval Assassin]

Oh man oh man oh man, I need this game!

[Spino]

The extra oomph of RTW's cavalry charge is welcome but I think the elephant charges are way too powerful, especially with regards to the 'flinging' effect which tosses enemy infantry dozens of yards away! I can live with little soldiers being knocked into the air a few yards away but not like they're balls being kicked about a playground!

[andrewt]

I think it's overpowered right now. Sacred Band Cavalry charges kill around half of a 100 unit Roman infantry when they charge from the flanks or back. Considering there's only 30+ units in the cavalry I used to do this, that means they a little more than one enemy per cavalry. I even saw some of them leaping over their fellow cavalry and killing a few soldiers on the way down (not one, around 2-3).

[LordKhaine]

Let's not leap to comment on the power of units in the demo... Remember the battle is made to be very one sided, and the roman units aren't nearly as powerful in the demo.

[andrewt]

It looks really great but I didn't like the cavalry jumping too high and too far. It looks too fantasy. The elephants throwing soldiers in the air throws them a little too high and too far. The cavalry in this game is what it should've been like in Medieval.

[Thoros of Myr]

Some parts are an improvement and some parts are not, in regards to cav.

Not sure what to think about elephants right now.

[Jeanne d'arc]

I love the elephants throwing away people, i hope they wont change anything on this issue cause this game needs spectacle like that.
The sacred band cavelry is powerfull but this is mostly due to the high valour it gets from the general.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I like the cav charges, yes they are very powerful from behind but the should be, you will have to be really careful not to let cavalry get behind you...

[Jeanne d'arc]

I like the cav charges, yes they are very powerful from behind but the should be, you will have to be really careful not to let cavalry get behind you...

Yea imagine 60 horses charge from behind, the initial blow from such a charge would trample a good 1/4 of the unit thats being attacked for sure.

[Tamur]

I live in horse country in the Northwest US, and have actually seen someone get plowed over by a horse... luckily the fellow in question just had a few broken ribs.

BUT, what it taught me was to respect a horse at full gallop. I would guess that a charging horse could plow over six-eight average height people before their inertia drops to zero.

Those who think cavalry charges are overpowered, find a good horse and watch the raw power. Wowwee... and BTW, it's cheating to watch a movie or television, that's nothing like the real thing. Watching the SBC's smash into the back of Roman hastati made me wince, I can imagine such a devastating thing happening.

Tamur

[Blodrast]

I think that the impact of a cav charge should highly depend on the formation of the unit they're charging.
If they're relatively loose, sure, they deserve to be swooped.
But if they're really tight, the horses _should_ get stuck; spear wall, right ?
besides, heavily armored people are harder to kick around/trample upon, so few of them should be affected (because the horse does lose impulse with every victim it hits, more with heavier armoured (and hence heavier) targets).

[Tamur]

Agreed Blodrast, on both the tight-packed formation and the armour. The cavalry should be able to plow into a tight-packed formation, though with less effect, but then they're very, very stuck and will probably get chopped down.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I think that the impact of a cav charge should highly depend on the formation of the unit they're charging.
If they're relatively loose, sure, they deserve to be swooped.
But if they're really tight, the horses _should_ get stuck; spear wall, right ?
besides, heavily armored people are harder to kick around/trample upon, so few of them should be affected (because the horse does lose impulse with every victim it hits, more with heavier armoured (and hence heavier) targets).

The spear wall would only come into play if the cavalry charges head-on - and cavalry dies if it does that (though it pushes back the infantry and kills a few). From behind, I would imagine that cavalry would have no problem knocking over many men - those that get knocked over by the horses will knock over the ones in front, and so on, until the back quarter of the unit is at least knocked down (those directly hit are of course dead, with those that get simply trampled).

Cav will only bog down in very deep formations if it hits them from behind.

[Jeanne d'arc]

Agreed Blodrast, on both the tight-packed formation and the armour. The cavalry should be able to plow into a tight-packed formation, though with less effect, but then they're very, very stuck and will probably get chopped down.

Not really , beiing on a horse is still a considerable advantage and lets not forget the horse itself that can be used as a weapon even when charged in tight formations.In other words an attack from rear or flanks with a cavalry charge should result in loads of losses to the unit that is beiing attacked no matter how tight its formation is.

[Marshal Murat]

Well, you know TC where they constantly said the withdraw and crap, well why don't you do that with infantry. Slam them into the Hastatii rear, have them turn, pull away the cavalry and have the Ponei charge into thier rear. While disorganized

[nightcrawlerblue]

The extra oomph of RTW's cavalry charge is welcome but I think the elephant charges are way too powerful, especially with regards to the 'flinging' effect which tosses enemy infantry dozens of yards away! I can live with little soldiers being knocked into the air a few yards away but not like they're balls being kicked about a playground!

You ever had an elephant stick its tusks into your chest and throw you? I imagine it would be a very long drop.

I do agree that sometimes the elephants do seem to fling soldiers a bit too high sometimes but then elephants really IMO seem kind of underpowered for the graphical damage that they seem to be doing. Elephants are immensly powerful but 9/10ths of the units they knock down just get right back up and shake it off as if they were never stepped on by an elephant.

[andrewt]

That's what I heard all the time in TC, too. Cavalry should charge the rear, flanks and openings in the lines. They should charge, retreat and charge again. If they get bogged down, they should lose a lot of men.

[Red Harvest]

What you should probably see when cavalry charges a spear wall is the horses balking...and the rider flying off the horse and being impaled on the spears.

Big four legged animals definitely pack a wallop though. I've seen rather small bulls nearly turn a truck over when they were fighting (I happened to be in the truck...) I don't scare easily and can handle animals, but I always kept a close eye on bulls when I was in a pasture or enclosure with them. As a youngster I also remember my grandfather knocking out a charging young bull by hitting him in the head with a 4 foot long 2x4, but that's another story.

Back on topic. War horses do more than just run things down--they can kick. They are trained to be a weapon as well. I've never been kicked by a full grown horse, bull, or cow (not by lack of effort on any of their parts), but I have taken a couple of shots from calves. I would not want to be on the receiving end of anything larger.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

hmm elephants seem to be able run through my men without hurting them much and crush the enemy unit they were fighting with?

Also the cavalry seem to be able to charge into a unit after being engaged by a unit...
I had 400 spearmen on a hill lose to 80 cav killing only 29...

[Nelson]

I think that the soldier tossing by elephants is over done. Crushing some guys, sure, but instantly launching several men high into the air? Nah...

[son of spam]

I think that the soldier tossing by elephants is over done. Crushing some guys, sure, but instantly launching several men high into the air? Nah...

defenitely cool tho.

[Sinner]

While charging horses may have a lot of momentum, thus potentially able to smash through multiple ranks, they will lose momentum with each impact, and so riding into a dense formation - whether it is facing them or not, whether armed with spears or wooden spoons - will eventually bring them to a halt as long as the infantry can hold and there are enough of them to slow/halt the horse before it blows through the other side of the formation.

There's also the issue of the obstacles from dead or otherwise fallen men and horses, etc. CA have maybe addressed this with the horses jumping over bodies, etc and perhaps it might be that the occasional death/injury of a horse & rider during a charge is actually them stumbling & falling to the ground rather than being attacked. While the graphic displayed in the jump might be a little... ummm... heroic, that's perhaps just an attempt to make it look good, rather than a serious suggestion or belief that the horses can damn near fly.

How easy it would be for a horse to jump an obstacle in the midst of a charge/melee into is the difficult question. Even during the relatively sedate event jumping or steeplechasing even the smallest of jumps can go wrong and that's without the added complexities of people stumbling into your path, bodies or men and horses scattered all over the place, people trying to kill you or your horse, the weight of armour and other equipment, or the more adhoc and instantaneous nature of the jumping required in battle as opposed to the clear cut and easily preplanned event/race jumping.

As well as obstacles, there's the question of mass and nerve/discipline: can the horsemen hit the infantry with enough men and horses so that their combined mass and momentum at the point(s) of impact smashes them apart; do the infantry have enough numbers at the point(s) of impact, and thus mass, to hold their ranks if they are so inclined; can the horsemen overcome their own and their horses' natural tendancy to want to avoid plowing into the infantry, who will probably want to introduce them to their pointy things; can the infantry overcome their natural tendancy to want to flee from the possibility of having 100s of pounds of armoured horse and rider tapdancing on them and poking them with their own pointy things.

Overall, if you have steady infantry and especially if they have time to prepare - with certain equipment such as caltrops, pre-sharpened stakes, etc reducing that time - then they can make it very difficult if not impossible for roughly comparable numbers of cavalry to defeat them. The trick for the cavalry is to try and attack the infantry before they can set their ranks &/or prepare defenses - even experienced and disciplined troops will break if caught unawares by a surprise attack, especially if they have little chance to form ranks.

Personally I think the Eastern cultures had the smarter idea: use your horsemen primarily as mounted archers. Their mobility and ability to kill & injure at a distance means that they're effectively immune to any counterattacks from the infantry. Even having foot archers in support, the infantry's life is going to be rather uncomfortable and potentially shortened. They need to keep in close, massed ranks to lessen the vulnerability to being charged, but that then makes them perfect targets for arrow fire. While the horse and rider are a bigger individual target, unless the infantry archers have a range advantage the horsemen only need to dash into range just enough to loose an arrow at the infantry's ranks and then dash back out of range, potentially before any counterfire can reach them. Yes, the occasional foot archer might get lucky with his timing, anticipating just the right moment when a horseman will move into range, but overall the horse archers will slowly whittle away at the infantry. As we know from MTW, the best counter if your own archers don't have a range advantage or a significant numerical superiority, is to have your own cavalry. Alternatively, the infantry just have to hope the horse archers run out of arrows before they run out of men.