Cavalry attacks - in case you didn´t know

[Husar]

I just found out something which I think is worth telling the ones that don´t know it yet.
I just tried some custom battles(didn´t have time to repeat them, it´s late here ) and found out that my Parthian cataphracts got slaughtered by roman urban cohorts and I thought about the description of the Praetorian cav, sacred cav and cataphracts saying they would have weapons for melee aswell. Knowing from very rare occassions I knew they had them, but in 99% of all melees they didn´t use them. So I looked up the stats for the cataphracts´ weapons to see if it´s worth using them and recognized that their spears have 7 base attack and 15 charge bonus like we all should know, but their maces have 9 base attack and 4 charge bonus, plus armor piercing which means that only half of the enemy´s armour counts when attacking with this weapon. So there had to be a way to make them use the maces and I wanted to know if it was worth it.
My 1st approach was the ranged weapons approach with ALT + rightclick that makes ranged guys like archers fight in melee - and it worked.
I let my cataphracts charge the urban cohort like always to get that nice +15 charge bonus and in melee I gave them a new attack order while holding down ALT, they immidiately switched to their maces and while before with their lances they sucked and got routed by a lot of surviving romans, this time they routed the romans and won, although it was close and I had only about 7 men left.
Perhaps some knew this already, but I hope it helps the ones who didn´t and though it may be a bit of micromanagement I think it´s worth doing it at least for cataphracts(didn´t check the other units).

[Blodrast]

hmm, so they wouldn't automatically switch to their secondary weapons after the charge ? sigh, more micromanagement...(if this was intended)
but at least if you're right, we can partially fix it, by forcing them to switch whenever time allows (and if you only have a few cav units ;P)

[Husar]

I just checked some stats, most spear-armed cav have swords as secondaries, swords have no armour piercing, but a few get +2 attack for using swords. But even if they don´t get any bonus for their secondary weapon I think it could be still worth using it because I got the impression that the attack-rate of those short weapons is higher(shorter animation) and so they can do more damage in the same period of time.

edit: it´s getting better I just gave some roman cav only one attack order with ALT and watched them charge with lances and then switch to swords immediately, guess that makes micromanagement superfluous.
But now I have to get some sleep, good night and have fun.

[Servius]

best post this in the stickied Bugs List. I think it's a great improvement to allow cavalry to have two weapons and to use them in different situations, but not having the switch occur automatically seems like it HAS to be a bug, because there doesn't seem to be any benefit to leaving the switch manual. When would someone want their cavalry, post-charge and engaged in melee, to continue using lances and not switch to swords?

[Spetulhu]

Would this make much of a difference for my Generals and their heavy cavalry?

[Kekkonen]

Ah, so this is why my equites stink in close combat. They're great in creating panic (esp. in light infantry or when flanking) with a charge, but they've been having problems finishing off units even though the last remnants of the enemy are running in panic right in the middle of the cavalry group.

[Husar]

Equites are one of the few cav units that don´t have a secondary weapon...
For generals I think there´s only the attack speed advantage if any.

[Alrowan]

try tihs technique for phalanxes as well ;)

[Doug-Thompson]

Now that's something worth knowing.

[Servius]

we should try to find a way to make the switch automatic. To do so we're going to have to find some kind of situational trigger, like when two units are in or very close to the exact same map coordinates AND the cav unit is no longer sprinting/charging. You wouldn't want cav to drop lances while still charging through the nme unit now, would you?