Triarii vs Cavalry

[Murmandamus]

After seeing my triarii slaughtered by cavalry while defending I decided to do some tests with formation depth etc to try and figure out what happened.

Defender: 1 unit triarii 83 men
Attacker: 1 unit gaul light cavalry 55 men AI controled.
Flat open gound. No mods.

5 runs of each test

Unit depth: I found that there was no difference beyond 3 rows. Even 8 rows deep the kill ratio was about the same. when 2 rows deep they suffered heavy losses. 5 rows deep seems the best to me because after losing men while 3 rows deep, the unit would reform with much of the line 2 rows deep putting them at a dissadvantage.

What was interesting was that with the unit at 5 or greater rows deep, the horses appeared to baulk at the line and halt their charge just before engaging. Good news if you have some missile troops on hand. This only happened on the 1st charge though. On subsequent charges, the cavalry would engage at full speed. If you had a missile unit though, there probably wouldn't be a second charge. :)

Defensive mode on:
Average 55 Triarii remaining and 20 cavalry. The cavalry would rout after the 3rd charge. There was usually 65 triarii and 35-40 cavalry remaining after the first charge.

Defensive mode off:
The results became very variable. I had everything from 15 triarii survive to 45. Still less than with it on and I found the reason my units were getting destroyed in my campain.

The next test was the most interesting to me. I decided to counter attack with the unit 3 and 5 rows deep. On first contact the triarii suffered almost no losses. On 2 goes it had zero losses, the most was 4. The cavalry lost a similar amount of men as previous tests, down to ~35. On the first contact, there was no cavalry penetration of the triarii. While defending there was some penetration on all charges. The cavalry would break away and on the second and always final contact the cavalry fully penetrated the triarii and were uterly destroyed. 3 times having 0 survivors and the most was 9 while the triarii always survived with around 65-70 men. Presumably because the units beyond the first row turn to kill the enemy coming through, rather than just standing there and getting stabbed in the back like they do when defending.

So much for my thought that the triarii was a defensive unit.

[Morindin]

Ive always charged with my Triarii which is why I've had extremely good success with them so far against cavalry.

I've alway used them in ranks of 3 deep also to wrap around enemy cavalry. They kill them much quicker that way.

[Red Harvest]

Good informative post. The new engine really likes charges and countercharges. I've seen highly variable results testing units charging vs. standing still or countercharge.

Your results explain a lot about the AI. It uses a mass rush pretty much every time. Since this takes all of a few seconds to hit your line, there is little time for a human to stop and countercharge. Too bad we don't have some sort of "charge closest opposing unit command for battle lines." Deployment be damned, because if you aren't charging, even defensive troops buckle. There is some presidence for this with sword armed infantry. Caeser said that charges should be met with a charge, rather than lying there and taking it.

No wonder my cav tactics work so well in SP. I end up charging everything and am not getting stuck defensive. If the AI rushes I withdraw the cav and hack at the chargers flanks with my own charge. You can't do that with infantry, because you lack a speed advantage. I rarely hit spears/infantry frontally unless I need to hold a unit for a few seconds while flanking cav destroys it.

One has to wonder why the cav is allowed to charge completely at close formation spears or pikes *frontally* in the first place...not too historical. Perhaps some heavy cav would if trained, but I doubt light cav would. Horses are smart animals--although it has been a very long time since we've owned any.

[Morindin]

As per discussed in the MTW threads horses would charge a wall of spikes, its the Humans that might not want to.

You can still play defensively. It just depends what you're coming up against.
And yes receiving a charge doesnt work as well in RTW as MTW, but on the other hand countercharging puts all sorts of holes in your line.
This is why I always deploy with two lines when fighting defensively. One line up front (Triarii or Infantry depending on what im facing) to "counter charge" and one line behind to plug the holes. If your "countercharge" troops are getting isolated and picked off you can always send in your second line or have the opportunity to use some flanking manouvers. Because I dont seem to have the 20 second fight problem most people have, this works well.

Also I always use guard mode on ALL my infantry even when on the offensive, which might have something to do with it. Chasing down routers is not infantries job, skirmishers/cavalry/wardogs yes.

[Red Harvest]

Funny, I remember horses stopping suddenly if they didn't like where they were headed. The rider might end up on the pikes while the horse stands there after balking. I've seen horses balk at jumps before, throwing riders.

[Morindin]

Funny, I remember horses stopping suddenly if they didn't like where they were headed. The rider might end up on the pikes while the horse stands there after balking. I've seen horses balk at jumps before, throwing riders.

I guess it depends on the training of the horse, but war horses were often braver then their riders and trained to be completely trusting in them.

This is medieval times of course, not sure if the horses in Roman times being smaller and all that would be as brave.
Horses arnt as smart as people give them credit for, some of them sure have an attitude though :)

[andrewt]

From this post and other posts, it seems CA went overboard with the charging bonuses, don't you think?