Chariots.... any good?

[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.