Chariots.... any good?

[Gith]

So far I've had limited use with scythed chariots in my single player campaign as the Seleucids. They tend to just ride through, knock men over, and ride around until they die. They seem to be very ineffective at actually killing enemy soldiers.

Is there really any place for scythed chariots? Should I experiment with riding chariots through followed by heavy cavalry to massacre the broken infantry?

[hoof]

Like elephants, they do two things very well: 1) disrupt enemy formations, 2) scare the heck out of enemy formations. Neither does a whole heck of a lot to kill many soldiers on their own.

However, if you happen to have a unit of cavalry right behind them, or have and advancing line of soldiers, this can often be enough to either rout them, or put them at a severe disadvantage.

Chariots (in RTW) are best when used in a combined arms setup. Other units can accomplish the same thing. I prefer elephants when I want to disrupt a unit before cavalry hit them, because it's much more believable that your units don't get injured with elephants than chariots (elephants can actively avoid your guys, wheel spikes aren't as bright or as discriminating).

Chariot Archers make good mobile arrow towers (arrow towers like those on stone walls, for example).

Since you're playing the Seleucids, I'd recommend focusing on Elephants instead. They do the same things, tend to kill faster, and aren't nearly as frustrating as Chariots (too many times have I had chariots unable to figure out how to go through a gate). However, building one or two units of Chariots to try out might be fun. Keep in mind that Chariots also can go amok, and there's no spike to kill them with if they choose to go amok with your soldiers ...

[LordKhaine]

Bear in mind most of my chariot experience is with British Chariots... but you can't expect them to kill many men themselves. They are however perfect for charging the flanks or rear of the enemy battle line (once engaged with your infantry/cavalry). Before I've caused literally an entire battleline to flee at once when they were flanked by chariots this way.

Personally I'd say elephants are far more powerful, since they can stay alive as well as disrupt the enemy. Chariots really are very flimsy and if they stop moving in an enemy formation they wont last more than seconds (Try keeping a British general alive, it's not easy). The moment you engage the enemy run *through* the enemy unit and keep moving. Never stop chariots.

That's not to say chariots are useless when your army has access to elephants. Elephlump's are very expensive to recruit and maintain. And let's face it, chariots are faster and cooler.

[Schnief]

I personally have made some very good expierences when using chariots.. Don't charge them straight into an enemy formation but let them use the blades on their wheels to cut down the enemy. To achieve this you'll have to get them to turn sideways and run up the enemy ranks.. I know it's difficult to time this but if successful this will cause the entire first rank of units, no matter what kind of unit you're attacking, to die instantly!!

[Yasko]

How do you guys handle the british chariots when you play as romans? I have lost an entire army becouse of those pesky chariots... What kind of unit do you use to handle them, especially if your opponent has 2 or more of those units?

[Dark_Magician]

scyth chariots are uber unit. Every time I used them they achieved same result as cataphracts with only 1-2 chariots lost when it took 1/3 of cataphracts. I don't get why it is important that they do not kill soldiers at their charge, because they turn them routing. Chasing them thoough takes time provides with more enemies dead. Of course, being such a powerful unit they have special weakness.

I remember one time huge initially successful SP battle with Egiptians which I had to reload. Because I had too many chariots and few normal units and great micromanaging difficulties. I was defending. Closer to the end, one routing enemy soldier stuck into my phalang somehow.
I noticed it because my archers fired at my own troops with enemy retreating. AND, they did not miss chariots. Who went amok. And ran through elephants. Of 12 elefants 3 instakilled, the rest went amok and ran through my army, while mad chariots, as you know circle around. This accident caused casualties in couple of hundreds of good troops.

[Watchman]

I've gotten the impression chariots are on the whole rather better at killing cavalry than infantry - infantry get distrupted and knocked down and (if they don't die) stand up some five seconds later, cavalry just die. I guess horse legs get torn up really well by those scythes all chariots have (yes, even the Brit chariots seem to have scythes as far as the game is concerned; they just don't show).

'Course, cavalry can also absolutely shred most chariots *if* they catch them stationary, as unfortunately tends to happen if you forget to micro the buggers as they have this really annoying habit of starting a charge, slowing down about ten to twenty meters from the enemy, and restarting the charge. Works against infantry, but counter-charging cavalry come in too fast for the chariots to accelerate...

The AI, naturally, has no problems of this sort (double-click seems to do the job, and the AI can multitask) which in practice mean I pretty soon stopped sending any cavalry after those pesky Egyptian chariots. Cav Aux, Rom Cav, Legionary Cav... all got torn up something nasty.

[Orvis Tertia]

I have not experimented with this tactic yet, but last night playing the Seleucids, I noticed that chariots showed good potential at chasing down horse archers.

One common problem I have had with chariots is that they sometimes will run amok as soon as the battle starts--before any enemy contact has been made or is even imminent. Seems like a bug. This happens typically to chariot units that are depleted in number from a previous battle. It's turned me off to using chariots very much, and now when I do, I treat them as expendable and charge them at something far away from my battle line and let them fight until dead or routed.

[Siris]

Hm, if your playing as the Romans and have to fight some chariots, use your Triarii spearmen, they should be similtar to my phallanx of Armoured & Spartan Hoplites.

If your on the defense, put your men in the unit deployment screen in a square formation, put about two units on the main front, where the hammer stroke will fall hardest, with two or four support units behind them. On the right put one or two units, same with the left. On the rear put two units protecting your flank, and put your General or Captain in the center, on Guard mode along with archers or peltasts.

Put your entire force on guard mode. If you only have some Triarii, put them up front to take the blunt of the force. Hold your ground, and you should prevail. Chariots get massacred by the spears pointing forward, they just fall over dead. Occassionally a few may get through, but are always killed or rout.

**On A Side Note**

You may eat a ton of missles or peltasts and feel the urge to charge forward, but hold fast. I've done this battle defense formation many times now when horribly out numbered, and still won. You may suffer extensive losses, depending on the number of the opposition missle groups, or lack of phallanx formation units or Trarii, but you should inflict much damage to your enemy.

This is effective vs. Chariots, Horses, foot troops. Do NOT use this vs. Elephants, you'll be massacred! If you do not have any sort of strong spearmen, do not use this formation either, do the typicall battle.

I'll post a Screen Shot of my first square defense battle this weekend, if I remember. I won the battle & was out numbered by over 1,300 enemies.

[Gith]

So basically use chariots to knock everyone down and then hit them while they are disrupted. I'll try it some. I'm at the stage where I get armoured elephants, so I'm kind of set on those right now, but there are some regions far away without the ability to build armoured elephants, so I'll experiment around with them.

[The Wizard]

I've not used chariots much - solely the Seleucid scythed chariots. The only thing they seem good to, to me, is to disrupt enemy light formations, or to annihalate formations of enemy horse, which seems about accurate, since those scythes would hamstring the horses and thus essentially nullify a formation of cavalry. In RTW this is depicted by simply killing horse and rider, which is fine with me.

~Wiz

[bmolsson]

Have only been defending against them and they don't scare my guy's a lot.....

[Epistolary Richard]

Again, this is from experience with Britannia, but I imagine will hold true for other sorts:

General/Heavy Chariots:

Do not use them against:

Ordered/dense infantry formations, they will get stalled and killed (and usually your general is the first to go)

Spearmen/Pikemen especially, even in the back, they will turn around and muller you.

Do use them against:

Any kind of cavalry, especially in combination with cavalry of your own. Combined even with barbarian cavalry, heavy chariots will destroy even a full-strength Roman General retinue with few losses if it can get the charge in. I imagine this may be based on chariots being very good at knocking things down, infantry just pick themselves up, horses are crippled and are a casualty.

Loose, shaken light infantry (not spears/pikes!), chariots are pretty scarey and will put shaken infantry to flight especially coming from the rear or the side.

Routing troops, chariots cause very few casualties but they slow routers down enough for other troops to catch up, and they also ensure that routers _keep_ routing and do not reform.


Light Chariots:

These are the British uber-unit, even better than Horse Archers at the fire & flight and are therefore able to destroy staggering amounts of enemy taking very few losses of their own. I got bored with the Parthians because every battle was the same, I decided to go for the extreme west from the extreme east only to find exactly the same thing!

Do not use them against:

Archers, as they simply don't have enough firepower to win (12 bows vs 40). If you want to take down archers always concentrate all your fire on them and charge them whenever possible.

Light cavalry, they move too quickly to effectively fire and flight and if they get caught running they'll be for the chop. So instead just turn the chariots around and crash into them, it'll be far more effective.

Do use them against:

Anything else.

There are only two caveats to light chariots:
Watch the red line Skirmish mode works very well, up until you hit the red line (especially the corners) where the chariots go a bit beserk and try and skirmish away by going _through_ the enemy chasing them. This is especially bad if the battle has dispersed across the entire map, if the enemy lie in every direction (no matter how distant) the chariots will keep trying to skirmish back to the red line.

Count your archers Casualties heal by individual crewman, not by entire chariot. I have had three units of medium-sized gold experience light chariots go into a battle, I tried to put them on fire at will but the option was greyed out. I thought it was a bug until I looked at the chariots close up and realised that absolutely none of them had a second crewman.

[Razor1952]

I'm a big fan of sythed chariots. My uber suicide troops for field battles( not used in seiges).

Particularly fantastic for defending . Position them at the other end of the field to the rest of your army , send them to the back of the enemy army , watch how the enemy usually will send many units to deal with you lone chariots. By the time your SC's have been routed the enemy troops are exhausted and they havn't really begun to fight yet. Cut the enemy down with your archers and peltasts , finish them off with phalanxs if not routing already, usually a huge victory everytime for Cost 1 unit of Sythed chariots ~1k denarii made in any old city with a blacksmith.

BTW as noted above send your depleted SC's and elephants to combine or retraining, otherwise they run amok immediately.

[son of spam]

Chariots are anti-heavy horse, especially catas.

Eggy chariots can beat catas in a head on charge, all things being equal.

[lancer63]

Can't say I like chariots very much, but then again haven't used them much either. Scyted chariots are a blast, the thicker the enemy formation is, the easier they disapear. but british and egypthian chariots have the same problem. They carry the family members and they die so easily when the heat gets too close it's unnerving.
I lost all my british generals in battle but the king in less than 15 turns and the king was spared because I never let him come close to the battle but the oldes heir was a toddler, the king was on ensure diet and gaul and german generals wouldn't even look at my diplomats and my gold. Scratched the campaing and went back to being roman. But with the tips I've found here I can give it a try again in the near future.

[The_Emperor]

Do not use them against:

Archers, as they simply don't have enough firepower to win (12 bows vs 40). If you want to take down archers always concentrate all your fire on them and charge them whenever possible.

That is not true. You can use them against archers and win.

I once did this as the Britons and practically wiped out a chosen archer warband in a missile duel. The key is to place them in loose formation and then to use the Cantabrian Circle... As a moving target they will be much more difficult to hit and you'll find that your light chariots are excellent marksmen (admittedly mine were at V2, but then those chosen archers are armoured).

Against unarmoured vanilla archers you'll rout them off the field in no time with the minimal loss of probably one chariot.

[Epistolary Richard]

That is not true. You can use them against archers and win.

I once did this as the Britons and practically wiped out a chosen archer warband in a missile duel. The key is to place them in loose formation and then to use the Cantabrian Circle... As a moving target they will be much more difficult to hit and you'll find that your light chariots are excellent marksmen (admittedly mine were at V2, but then those chosen archers are armoured).

Against unarmoured vanilla archers you'll rout them off the field in no time with the minimal loss of probably one chariot.

I've never tried this (somewhat ironic being a Cantabrian myself), but I will.

If light chariots can beat archers it makes them even more powerful. I think the only thing able to stop them is the computer slowdown as it tries to render the 10,000 arrows stuck in the ground!

[Kraxis]

Why not try and run down the archers with the chariots? I mean in confined siatuation where there aren't melee troops around.
The chariots fire on the move anyway, and any archer that is knocked to the ground or killed won't fire back (at least for a while).

[Epistolary Richard]

That can work, just remember to take Skirmish off!

From my own experience, the AI doesn't take many archers and tends to sit them in between its front line and its cavalry reserve so there's no great opportunity to charge them.

I would imagine a fresh tight formation archer unit would still be capable of destroying or crippling a light chariot unit in combat if you just left it there (see other posts concerning uber-combat archers around..., if anyone wants to test this one I'd be interested in the results) but against a loose, shaken formation it'd be an entirely different story. So it's just the usual thing of fighting on your terms rather than theirs.

[Fridge]

I found the scythed chariots useful for the Seleucids for a little while - blacksmiths are available much earlier than the buildings you need for your half-decent units, and the chariots dont use many men, so there isn't a huge hit on population.

When I had them, I used them either as shock troops - get in and target any missile or cavalry troops long before the rest of my army arrived, so that, hopefully, they're still fleeing/routing when the big boys turn up. That way, if (when!) they run amok, they're a long way from your army and continue to keep the enemy occupied while you march up. If they do run, they're fast enough to flee the battlefield and survive to be retrained another day.

The other use was to just get an army of, say, 6-10 chariot units and occassionally an inexperienced general, and just send them off on the map in advance of the main army. Any one they ran into, just send them in! They delay the opponent, can completely rout any weaker units, and will usually do a few hundred casualties to a large army, before running away to fight another day. It makes a perfect army to clear peasants away as well!

Once you get decent elephants, cataphracts and the rest, don't look at them again, but early on, they're the best the Seleucids have. Check out the 'guides' section for more details on the different factions' chariots - there are more details in the Seleucid and Brit guides.

[Watchman]

With the Seleucs I've found them quite useful for rebel clean-up work, not in the least because they're very effective for their measly 18-man head count and being outnumered gives general stars better. Those stacks of 3-4 Cilician Pirates plus maybe a Rebel General that regularly pop up in southern Asia Minor ? Two scythes, two militia cavalry (more for pursuit) and any two-bit general takes care of them just fine, often with zero casualties.

The Eastern Infantry stacks you get in northern Mesopotamia every now and then kill a few chariots before routing, but aside for their fairly hefty initial training price the things are dirt cheap (upkeep 110 ? Sign me up) and easily retrained.

Given that the drivers wear cataphract-grade armor (18; this appears to be the one ranged attacks "roll" against) and are thus almost armor-proof the things could also be good against those Parthian horse-archer stacks. Dunno, haven't yet tried it out in practice.

[Somebody Else]

Interesting idea a friend of mine proposed for using chariots - that is, those that are capable of the cantabrian circle manouevre. If they remain on this, and get engaged - they should keep moving through rather than being bogged down. I suppose the same would work with cataphract archers...

[jerby]

I loving the chariots,
you shouldn't use them with sieges of bridges or inside your own line ( will be disrupted)
I ahd a situation inside a city, were a bunche of HA's got trapped between my phanlanx and the charging S chariots. they chose the chariots, the battle was 3 seconds... They may not be a powerfull as elephants, but can be trained everywhere(!), and with 2 HP they are a goog rundown-opponent for HA's
against inf they arrent the best, but disrupting a phalanx form the flank is nice when your got your own phalanx about to fight.
the are also quite capable of kamikaziing, since they can be reatrained in any settlement with a armory(!) so they are a nice canonfodder with extraordenary capabillities.

[Zorn]

Charriots just own cavalery.
Especially generals.

The trick is, every time they would just knock down a foot soldier, the horse dies instantly. Even if the charriots are routing, they still kill cav. All they have to do ist touch them, the scythes will do the rest.
What makes this so powerful is my assumption that this totally ignores hitpoints. So a general with 7 HP dies just as fast as a light cavallery. This makes them totally lethal general assasins.

They are the ideal cav-counters.