Re: Cavalry way overpowered
I haven't found that to be the case at all. Cavalry does overwhelm lower grade infantry, but against better units like the Gaul swordsmen, they often take more punishment than they hand out. If anything, I have been gravitating to infantry as I find the cavalry expensive and their performance less than stellar.Originally Posted by Red Harvest
When you decide that servicing your core niche is no longer important, you might as well put a gun to your corporate temple. - Red Harvest -
Re: Cavalry way overpowered
Elmark, how many times you going to post that link?
I don't find the cavarly overpowered. Are we playing the same game? Do you not recall what cavalry could do to non spear units in MTW?
If you use cavarly correctly they will cut through the enemy. Otherwise they get bogged down and die quickly. Seems pretty accurate to me.
Jacta alea est!
Re: Cavalry way overpowered
I find it a bit wiered, in some situations my cavalry get killed by skirmishers, like greek peltasts and heavy peltasts(illyrian mercs), but they do pretty well against militia hoplites (not frontal, but when flanked them or attacking from the rear of the unit)... i'm talking about the equites, i haven't tried the other factions cav yet. But overall i find cavs satisfactory, and and very maneuverable and almost useless in melee, wich is pretty much historically correct i guess.
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SFTS =The rest =
Re: Cavalry way overpowered
I agree, I don't see much of a problem. Cavalry works well when attacking a flank or the front of a THIN line. Frontal attacks against most units in deep formation is very bad news. This seems to make sense from a realism perspective. If you are having problems with your armies being destroyed by cavalry, use deeper formations and cover your flanks with your own cavalry. This is the exact same 'counter' that was used historically.
Re: Cavalry way overpowered
Not really. With the cav you just flank the heavy infantry or swordsmen and they rout immediately. I've adopted the cavalry rush tactics of the AI. Pick off skirmishers, pick off light infantry. Then pick off heavy infantry. Use the cav to hit each unit from multiple directions and it rapidly succumbs. You can't really create a spear or shield wall, and even if you could, the AI wouldn't use it properly.
Rome Total War, it's not a game, it's a do-it-yourself project.
Re: Cavalry way overpowered
If half of what I'm hearing is true, then I can only say...
GOOD!
I know that scissor/paper/rock is a nice principle, but spearmen were VASTLY overpowered in MTW compared to their real-life counterparts, and when hit at the flank or rear, they should indeed rout almost instantly. That's why generals spent so much time trying to secure their own flanks while trying to flank their opponents.
It's what happened in real life, time and time again. Doesn't mean that cavalry can't be countered, but hearing this is a heartening note of realism across my humble desktop...
Ngata tsukelan mokwisipiak!
Re: Cavalry way overpowered
I like the Cavalry as it is. Of course, I've only played as the Parthians, and they should of course have the best cavalry, along with the Scythians.
I noticed that charges are extremely costly things, escecially if the unit doesn't break. OF course, I'm playing on Huge units, so things might be a bit different for me.
"But if you should fall you fall alone,
If you should stand then who's to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home."
Grateful Dead, "Ripple"
Re: Cavalry way overpowered
Just for the record I have only played battles as the Julii, Scipii, and Carthaginians.
I still have not gotten to a good mid-game point so I have mostly faced lighter cavalry with the occasional General's Bodyguard.
Cavalry is behaving exactly like I would expect. It destroys unsupported or out-of-position units.
Depending on the AI General's ranking I have owned the battlefield, had a slugfest, or been owned.
Cavalry may be to fast but its effects feel accurate.
Myself, I try for deep infantry-melee lines with missile behind and cavalry on the flanks. Never let elephants run free on your flanks.
I counter their cavalry with mine and I have seen the AI do the same.
Of course its seems harder to control the chaos than it did in STW or MTW but hopefully one of our esteemed modders will find a way to slightly slow down movement speeds and disable the (insert echo here) Battle Timer of Dooooom.
Sir Robin the Not-quite-so-brave-as-Sir-Lancelot,
who had nearly fought the Dragon of Agnor,
who had nearly stood up to the vicious Chicken of Bristol,
and who had personally wet himself at the Battle of Badon Hill.
Re: Cavalry way overpowered
No it is not what happened in real life. Real life battles usually took some time in melee, minutes or hours even. Things collapsed in minutes when flanked, not in less than 10 seconds. It takes time for panic to set in and for the men to run. I doubt you will find it realistic. Heavy infantry is peasant level in RTW with respect to morale. And no, a unit of cav didn't kill every man 5 seconds after they routed. These units rout so fast that the forward guys wouldn't even KNOW they had been flanked yet. They wouldn't panic, because they wouldn't even be aware of what was happening. That is how fast it happens in RTW.
Relatively few men were killed until armies actually routed. That is one reason that in *hard fought* battles the victor might lose a few hundred or thousand men out of tens of thousands, while the loser lost 2/3 of his force.
If you think it is realistic that I can crash 6 or 8 light cav units into a mixed infantry wall frontally, and watch it collapse in seconds, then you are sorely mistaken. While I usually flank as well, I just rush straight in if I'm not facing much in the way of spears and want to get it over with. Target 2 or 3 cav on a single infantry unit, and it crumples at the charge. Then hit the adjacent flank units and they rout before they can react.
In MTW, I found that units routed relatively soon if you flanked them unless they were high valour. I always thought that flanking effects were under represented to some degree in MTW (especially in the HTW mod, where surrounding a phalanx had no effect). In RTW you get an increased flanking effect or morale hit, plus a very high movement speed that increases the number of flank attacks disproportinately, along with a rapid kill speed. Does three wrongs make a right?
Rome Total War, it's not a game, it's a do-it-yourself project.
Re: Cavalry way overpowered
I feel like I'm playing a different game from some of you. I am not seeing infantry evaporate or route that quickly.
Jacta alea est!
Re: Cavalry way overpowered
If your problem is simply that you kill the enemy too fast with lots of cavalry, might I suggest using less cavalry? That might not be the ideal fix to your problem, but all that matters is that you enjoy the game... so just stop using them if that helps.
Re: Cavalry way overpowered
Nice try, but it isn't just me, the AI has the same issue. When I used infantry I got whipped by cav the same way (even worse on "very hard.") I started out using an historical mix of units. What I found was that the infantry was useless. They couldn't hold in melee while things happened on the flanks. There is no real battle line being formed. Battles devolve in just a few seconds to a mess where the AI has the advantage of issuing orders to everyone simultaneously as often as it likes.
The AI likes to do lots of bizarre crossing patterns as the units close and this disorders the line.
Rome Total War, it's not a game, it's a do-it-yourself project.
Re: Cavalry way overpowered
So far I have played around with Cavalry in Multiplayer and as the Julii faction in single player
Roman Cavalry/Esquites/Generals Bodyguards vs Warband/Swordsmen or any lightly armoured unit...
Front on they will take a few out in the initial hit but usually get cut to bits shortly after.
On the Flanks they will crash through the enemy lines usually causing them to rout IF they are pinned.
Gaul and Macedonian Cavalry vs my own units
Usually they will take a small number of troops out on a head on crash (5-10) and then get decimated by my Roman Infantry. If they hit me on the flanks they will do much more damage but my units still chew them up in melee.
Multiplayer with tougher units. Urban Cohorts, Legions, Legion Cavalry,etc
Cavalry is fairly lame here. The tougher units are hardly phased by a front on or even flanking cavalry charge. Even elephants, while they will clearly rip through units quickly do not cause a rout in these men until they are down to 5 or 6 men left.
In a single player game vs Macedonia my tired cavalry got beaten in HAND TO HAND BY FRESH ARCHERS. Cavalry is very powerful vs unarmoured or lightly armoured men with their initial charge, but they are generally MUCH weaker (except Elephants) in melee.
Spearmen also take a while to kill cavalry but they take very minimal loses. Playing a multiplayer game on one of those histroic battles (the same one as in the Demo I think) my Triarii spearmen completely wiped the floor with Hannibals cavalry and then were the only units intact after numerous elephant rampages.
Is cavalry overpowered? No. Infact it gets worse the later on in the tech tree you go.
Talk is cheap - Supply exceeds Demand.
Re: Cavalry way overpowered
Sir, what you're describing is either patch or mod material, similar to my difficulties with horse-archers in MTW: finessable material. The speed of collapse may be one thing... the expectation of collapse, another, and the difference between a swordsman and a pikeman against cavalry... vast. There's a REASON Giovanni Villani was woken up from his bed in the middle of the night all the way in Florence with the news that the Flemish infantry had defeated the french knights at Courtrai -- it was the equivalent of hearing that the US 2nd Infantry had gotten routed by the Taliban in a heads-up fight. Certainly the Normans wiped the walls with the (elite) Swabian greatswordsmen at Civitate, who were killed to the man. The Hungarian heavy cavalry inflicted huge casualties on the Ottoman infantry, scything back and forth through their ranks like wheat until the latter finally figured out how to defeat them (by opening their ranks and then falling on them from all sides).
Was heavy infantry raised that could stand against a charge? Yes, such infantry did exist. But they were by no means the norm, and the ease with which they are able to be raised in MTW is a fairly unrealistic thing. Fine for game balance.. but it's nice to see that they figured out a way to keep the game balanced while putting the "realism pendulum" closer to the center.
Ngata tsukelan mokwisipiak!
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