Chariot Questions

[Red Harvest]

Ok, I've been looking through the unit files. Mounted units are lumped into mount types, and the mount type seems to determine their speed. I think chariot speed is set the same as "medium horse." I already knew I could chase them down with "light horse" (mercenary Numidian cav) The buildable light cav for Carthage is actually "medium horse." That's not too unreasonable--although I think chariots should take big speed penalties for certain kinds of terrain--essentially anything that isn't open ground... Darius carefully prepped the ground before the battle for his scythed chariots when facing Alexander.

[hoof]

The annoying problem with cavalry/chariots running alongside the unit they're attacking is due to lead-computing behavior.

In previous Total War games, cavalry would always head directly towards their target. This would cause them to arc in behind them, as opposed to "heading them off at the pass".

In RTW, cavalry (actually all units, best I can tell) take the speed of the target into account. Thus they head towards where the target will be, not where it is. Kinda like skeet shooting, you aim ahead of the target.

This works great in most cases (it allows a cavalry unit coming in from the side to intercept a routing unit nicely). However, it has a big problem in one situation. When cavalry overtake a unit, they slow down to let the unit catch up. However, the lead-computing part of their algorithm still attempts to run an intercept course. Since they are now going at nearly the same speed as the target, the intercept point is way ahead of both of them. Thus, even though the unit is right next to them, they are still attempting to intercept them at a point ahead of the cavalry.

The way to fix this would be to turn off the lead computing part when within a certain distance. If the cavalry is still going too fast, it will turn into the target, overshoot, then either turn back or do a 360. Both will allow the target ahead and will then allow the cav unit to intercept properly.

Until a change like that is done, the trick is to either stop your cav unit and let the target run past them, or to order the cav unit to one side. Once the geometry improves, you can then reissue the attack order and they'll start slaughtering again.