Light and Heavy Cavalary

**Blitz** · 01-26-2005, 18:38

Originally Posted by Somebody Else

Cavalry is made up of lots of funny people on horses.

Funny people like this guy

, can some one explan clearer

**Red Harvest** · 01-26-2005, 18:52

Cavalry

Light cav is faster in the game. In the files they are listed as "light_horse". These are typically skirmisher type cavalry with javelins are bows.

Med. cav is an "average" speed cav. riging "medium_horse". I believe "heavy_horse" is slightly slower. There may be fatigue effects as well. Higher end cavalry ride heavier horses and have higher stats. I'm not sure that the mount itself has much effect on the performance other than the aforementioned speed.

There are differences in "mass" listed, but I'm not sure how "mass" is being used by the game. The difference is very small for light vs. med/heavy.

**Blitz** · 01-26-2005, 19:05

I have also seen many horsemen fell during a charge attack on infantry, and by that time they are automatically dead, does it affect wheter you are light or heavy horse, Most of my horsemen died by charging and fell over

**Woreczko** · 01-26-2005, 19:49

AFAIK mass is used to dtermine what happens if 2 soldiers/animals crush with each other. Higher mass gives greater probability of pushing back or even causing your opponents to "fly away" and thus greater ability to disrupt formation.

In MTW, if soldier pushed his enemy back, he gained a considerable advantage in the next combat round, this can be true (and IMHO should) also in RTW.

**Red Harvest** · 01-26-2005, 19:59

Originally Posted by Woreczko

AFAIK mass is used to dtermine what happens if 2 soldiers/animals crush with each other. Higher mass gives greater probability of pushing back or even causing your opponents to "fly away" and thus greater ability to disrupt formation.

That is what I thought as well, until I tested it by adjusting the mass of some elephants up and down. I was trying to understand why they couldn't cut through cavalry like butter. Now perhaps I messed up the test...but mass had ZERO impact. Think I'll try it again.

EDIT:
SCRATCH THAT--My previous mod of the mass must not have "taken" when I tested it. I just went back and moved the base level elephant mass up to 99 again from 10. This time the elephants visibly shoved the heavy cavalry out of they way, as they should. I don't think the ratio is high enouhg between them with med/heavy horse at 4.5. So now I need to go in and reduce the mass of light cav from 4 to about 3...and possibly reduce the mass of scythed chariots a bit...and up elephants some more from about 10 to 30 for the forest type (since I am reducing their hit points and the numbers per unit.)

**Blitz** · 01-26-2005, 20:14

Another thing is that for example

There is a unit of warband just right behind an unit of swordsmen. So i am thinking of charging the Warband via the swordsmen. so i attack through the swordsmen.

What i want to know is do the charge bonus being inflicted on the swordsmen or the warbands. Because i right click on the warband. and since i pass through the swordsmen of course i am gonna be fighting them aswell.

**Woreczko** · 01-26-2005, 23:28

Originally Posted by Red Harvest

That is what I thought as well, until I tested it by adjusting the mass of some elephants up and down. I was trying to understand why they couldn't cut through cavalry like butter. Now perhaps I messed up the test...but mass had ZERO impact. Think I'll try it again.

EDIT:
SCRATCH THAT--My previous mod of the mass must not have "taken" when I tested it. I just went back and moved the base level elephant mass up to 99 again from 10. This time the elephants visibly shoved the heavy cavalry out of they way, as they should. I don't think the ratio is high enouhg between them with med/heavy horse at 4.5. So now I need to go in and reduce the mass of light cav from 4 to about 3...and possibly reduce the mass of scythed chariots a bit...and up elephants some more from about 10 to 30 for the forest type (since I am reducing their hit points and the numbers per unit.)

Heh, I `ve just recently done a test with cataphracts and libyan infantry. Unfortunately I was too lazy to this on vanilla units, but you shoul get the picture.

1. 60 cataphracts mass 6 vs 160 libyans mass 1, ranks 4
Around 15 libyans die in a charge, few catanks get past the formation. After a while catanks lose - ~15 of them is fleeing before ~90 libyans

2. 60 cataphracts mass 12 vs 60 libyans mass 1, ranks 4
WOW! Catanks trample over libyans, as if they were training dummies. ~35 libyans die in a charge and the rest is laying on the ground, scattered somewhat. Their formation is completely messed, they are nicely mixed with catanks. Then in a melee catanks push around individual libyans and win big time - ~35 catanks lost, libyans slain (pursuit). However "pushing power" of the catanks was visibly lesser, then that of war elephants (15 mass), they were, after all, stoppable.

In both of these tests I commanded cataphracts, so i decided to test it in reverse, to see what will happen if libyans stayed in place (AI libyans were moving when I charged)

3. 160 libyans mass 1 vs 60 catanks mass 12
My libyans received enemy charged on "ready" stance. Again most of them was knocked out/down, however only ~15 were killed, the rest bravely stood up and fought. AI decided however to disengage and charge again, so I ceased the test in this moment.

Isn`t it wonderful game?

**Sinner** · 01-26-2005, 20:32

Originally Posted by Red Harvest

Cavalry

Light cav is faster in the game. In the files they are listed as "light_horse". These are typically skirmisher type cavalry with javelins are bows.

Med. cav is an "average" speed cav. riging "medium_horse". I believe "heavy_horse" is slightly slower. There may be fatigue effects as well. Higher end cavalry ride heavier horses and have higher stats. I'm not sure that the mount itself has much effect on the performance other than the aforementioned speed.

There are differences in "mass" listed, but I'm not sure how "mass" is being used by the game. The difference is very small for light vs. med/heavy.

Light horses are the only ones that have a different speed, being faster than medium, heavy and cataphract horses. While the 3 heavier mounts maybe were intended to have different speeds, they all use the same skeleton model and thus move the same.

I've played custom battles with one of each type of mount and ran 'races' back & forth acorss the field. The light cavalry always wins, while the others are equal, with results being random based based upon the slight variations when a unit obeys orders and starts running. As well as the speed being the same among the 3 heavies, I saw no difference in their fatigue rate, something that makes even less sense with cataphracts.

**Red Harvest** · 01-26-2005, 20:43

Sinner,

I expected as much with the medium/heavy mounts. There is some difference in speed at times in the game with those mounts, but the cause is fatigue from what I can tell. Usually the heavy horse are carrying more armour and fatigue a little more rapidly. That was why I listed the difference as "slight"...I wasn't sure if there was any "real" difference, but put the extra armour on the unit that has the heavy horse, and it seems to slow down a bit sooner, producing some "effective" difference. Of course, you have to mod to make sure the stamina and stat_heat issues are not reversed or it might work backwards again!

**Oaty** · 01-26-2005, 22:59

What I hate is when 1 of those suicide generals charges my elephants and walks away and since mass was brought up that could be why the elephants get slaughtered. I'm all for the elphants not reviving after battle but when those 21 paccy's came back I had no second thoughts on that one.

Another thing I'd like to see is horses running amok from camels and elephants, the only problem right now is when a unit goes amok they cannot be recovered. Elephants I can understand but horses should be able to recover.

As it is right now cavalry walks all over camels, I unserstand the slow part but the fact that horses can just walk up to them and slaughter em when horses would typically veer away.

**Red Harvest** · 01-26-2005, 23:31

Originally Posted by oaty

What I hate is when 1 of those suicide generals charges my elephants and walks away and since mass was brought up that could be why the elephants get slaughtered. I'm all for the elphants not reviving after battle but when those 21 paccy's came back I had no second thoughts on that one.

Another thing I'd like to see is horses running amok from camels and elephants, the only problem right now is when a unit goes amok they cannot be recovered. Elephants I can understand but horses should be able to recover.

As it is right now cavalry walks all over camels, I unserstand the slow part but the fact that horses can just walk up to them and slaughter em when horses would typically veer away.

Yes, the historical aversion of horses to camels and elephants is only weakly implemented. The way around this is to individually set the mount effect in each of the cavalry units. I've experimented with setting the mount effect to the negative sum of attack plus charge. If you set it to a single value across the board as CA has done, the heavy cav runs roughshod over everything. The values are set to the lowest common denominators: light cav.

Amok doesn't work that well. Amok elephants don't seem to cause much trouble for my own army. They should cause havoc. I don't even spike 'em. I just let them run wild until the battle is over.

Variants of amok for cav would work. Shying away and breaking for a time makes sense--out of human control until they rally. Becoming badly disordered from a repelled charge would also work. I think horses should only be able to charge and melee elephants if they have an approriate training level AND high morale at the time.

The reincarnated elephants are beyond explanation. Any unit with a scarce resource like elephants should not get them back...they shouldn't be replaced without retraining in an appropriate province. Camels might also fall under this heading unless the battle occurs in a camel province, although I could more easily accept the idea that the rider was killed/wounded/dismounted and the mount ran off...only to be recovered after the battle.

**Kraxis** · 01-27-2005, 04:06

About Light and Heavy cavalry.
I don't seem to notice any difference in speed between the Equites and Roman Cavalry. Used both in a number of cavalry actions.

Perhaps camels should rout cavalry very fast, perhaps not instantly (giving the cavalry a chance to rout the cmales with a mighty charge). That should make camels powerful against horses. Right now it is only a rather weak combat bonus.

In all it seems that most heavy units could need a boost in mass (though I have not noticed any particular weakness in Cataphracts). But I think I will only strengthen the elephants in this department. Hate how cavalry can stop them when elephants were cavalry killers big time. But will this not result in the eles being able to break out of an encirclement of infantry? For the sake of balance I would not like for them to be able to break out.