Is RTW Cavalry a bit too much?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Having browsed here for a while before joining, I have noted a lot of the guides/discussion/tactics center on the use of cavalry. I wonder, if this is a bit much.

Cavalry in classical times was often (as it is today in armored format) the arm of decision. Alexander of Macedon, Hannibal Barca, and others gained much of their success through the correct use of cavalry. Scythia and Parthia, historically, fielded armies that were mounted in their entirety. This is often reflected in the strategies and tactics of these forces (even by the AI), so all well and good.

Discussion here, however, seems to center on the use of cavalry to break the opponent almost exclusively -- with a number of posters asserting their use of ALL cav armies in anything but siege assaults regardless of faction. This is, at the least, a-historical. Historically, mounted troops did not make the foot soldier irrelevant on open terrain until the development of the stirrup -- and even then infantry was (and is) more useful in difficult terrain. Commentary here, however, seems to suggest that having more infantry than a screening force for your missile troops is just adding casualties since enemy cav will chop them up almost as though they aren't there. There're even those who favor puppies over infantry to beat cav!

Is the game's design distorting their effect? Are all-cav armies a functional necessity in order to be effective? Have any of the "private" patches addressed this and how (specific thread refs appreciated)? Cavalry in ancient times was often decisive, but who issued them the Superman suits?

[antisocialmunky]

Yes.

[econ21]

Yes, I agree that cavalry is overpowered in vanilla RTW. I'd recommend you try Rome Total Realism - they weaken light cavalry a fair bit. I think it gets cavalry back to the kind of power it had in MTW. This particularly affects the Romans, as they lose their fictious but extremely powerful "legionnary cavalry". Nonetheless, cavalry can still be very strong in RTR - horse archers and javelin cavalry are good and recently I have been marvelling at the power of Companion bodyguards.

[conon394]

Yep cavalry is ridiculously overpowered.

Cavalry in classical times was often (as it is today in armored format) the arm of decision. Alexander of Macedon, Hannibal Barca, and others gained much of their success through the correct use of cavalry. Scythia and Parthia

It may have been the arm of decision used by the above generals and nations, but none of them could or did drive it through any decent quality heavy infantry (Hoplites, Macedonians, Romans etc..), head-on like you can in RTW.

[Puzz3D]

Have any of the "private" patches addressed this and how (specific thread refs appreciated)?

The jumping horses are a problem for the phalanx because they cause the men to switch to a sword weapon. The phalanx works better against cav in the mods that remove the jumping horses.

Mordred didn't want to change the skeletons file, so he reduced the lethality of all non-spear units to 0.75, added +4 morale to all units, added +1 to the defensive value of the units and reduced all movement speeds by 0.9. It seems to play quite well because all cav armies are not good, but cav is still dangerous if it charges in from a flank. Also, the strongest phalanx units can now give the best Roman infantry a good fight frontally. So, in my Carthaginian campaign I was eventually able to attack and take Rome, and I used several armies with sacred band infantry as the primary units with archers and cavalry as support units. In one battle, I had quite a bt of good cavalry and tried a frontal charge with all of them and it failed miserably. The sacred band infantry was just barely able to hold against the Roman counterattack and sustained heavy losses. In another battle, I lost an entire 1200 man army composed almost entirely of sacred band infantry to a 1500 man Roman army composed of more balanced forces with very good urban cohorts as the main infantry. I was able to inflict 600 casualties on the Romans of which 200 healed. In another big battle I had with about 1000 men vs 1700 spanish, I lost although I did inflict heavy casualtied on the enemy. At that time I was using Poeni infantry as the main line. These battles seem to play out at least something like ancient battles I've read about whereas vanilla RTW plays nothing remotely like ancient historical battles.

Now these battles are not less fun because they play out in a more historically accurate way or because the fighting lasts for about 15 minutes. They have a sustained intensity, and you have more to do during the fighting. I don't know how Macedonia or the Greek Cities play, but I'm going to try one of those faction next campaign.

[econ21]

Puzz3D, I should know this, but what is the mod/private patch are you referring to by Mordred?

[Ptah]

It may have been the arm of decision used by the above generals and nations, but none of them could or did drive it through any decent quality heavy infantry (Hoplites, Macedonians, Romans etc..), head-on like you can in RTW.

But then again, none of the ancient heavy infantry were merely 5~6 ranks deep.

[ToranagaSama]

Having browsed here for a while before joining, I have noted a lot of the guides/discussion/tactics center on the use of cavalry. I wonder, if this is a bit much.

Cavalry in classical times was often (as it is today in armored format) the arm of decision. Alexander of Macedon, Hannibal Barca, and others gained much of their success through the correct use of cavalry. Scythia and Parthia, historically, fielded armies that were mounted in their entirety. This is often reflected in the strategies and tactics of these forces (even by the AI), so all well and good.

Discussion here, however, seems to center on the use of cavalry to break the opponent almost exclusively -- with a number of posters asserting their use of ALL cav armies in anything but siege assaults regardless of faction. This is, at the least, a-historical. Historically, mounted troops did not make the foot soldier irrelevant on open terrain until the development of the stirrup -- and even then infantry was (and is) more useful in difficult terrain. Commentary here, however, seems to suggest that having more infantry than a screening force for your missile troops is just adding casualties since enemy cav will chop them up almost as though they aren't there. There're even those who favor puppies over infantry to beat cav!

Is the game's design distorting their effect? Are all-cav armies a functional necessity in order to be effective? Have any of the "private" patches addressed this and how (specific thread refs appreciated)? Cavalry in ancient times was often decisive, but who issued them the Superman suits?

To answer your last question: The Creative Assembly. In response, I can only presume, to all the rather long and somewhat tedius threads examinaing and complaining that the Calvary *charge* should have greater effect in STW and MTW.

Such comments have been made going back to the Dojo, as well as in the Guild. I never agreed with these comments and arguments, and to my chagrin, don't believe I engaged much in them. Ignoring them, as my emphasis was on the SP Campaign. Most of the people, from my recollection, who advocated for a *charge* of greater effect were MPers.

TW MP in its present form, inherently, is a distortion. The tactics used are distorted as they ALWAYS are in RTS games. MP is not historical nor realistic (as much a game could be). MP is a *kludge*. It was always intended to be tied to the Campaign, but they couldn't get it to work. So, we were left with the kludge version which appealed to a relatively small portion of the general TW community.

Apparently, CA did not disregard those arguments (to everyone's complete surprise!), and so we have what we have in RTW. An over-the-top gross exagerration in both horse cavalry and elephants; practically cartoonish.

So, yes, its all ahistorical, but RTW is the most ahistorical of the TW series, deliberately as it seems, so the Cav seem to be right in line with CA's aims.

IMUHO, The Creative Assembly took an overemphasis from the wrong people; and, that would be those TW players with an emphasis and preference for Multiplay.

So, the result in CA's efforts to satisfy this small group, is a GROSS imbalance in the Campaign/Single Player game.

The notion of *All-Cav* armies is just an abomination to the spirit of the game. You already have an over-powered unit, so let's have a whole army of them.... Yet, in that which is RTW, it seems so appropo, the visual joy of it all must surely be appealing to some....

Your best, present, hope for a more historical experience, as well as a more balanced game is the Rome Total Realism mod, though you still may not find it fully satisfying.

[NihilisticCow]

IMUHO, The Creative Assembly took an overemphasis from the wrong people; and, that would be those TW players with an emphasis and preference for Multiplay.

Well I'm a TW player with an emphasis and preference for Multiplay, and I can tell you that we have far more problems with game balance than are mentioned for single players. Cavalry is a seriously overpowered in the game against infantry, this is especially true for multiplayer games, as you cannot just avoid it as you can in single player. Humans are also far more effective at controlling their cavalry than the rather inept AI, which makes it all the more obvious.

The truth is more that MP'ers form a small minority of the total number of RTW players, so CA apparently decided to concentrate the game much more on to the SP'ers. If you played MP regularly, you would see and understand this. I'm not saying that the game isn't fun for MP, but it is obvious that the emphasis was placed in the SP game.

[Wishazu]

if CA was appealing to the MP`ers then we would have a MP campaign, something we`ll all been begging for since shogun.

however, i do agree that cavalry is overpowered, i like mp in rome, not nearly as much as i enjoyed it in the previous games. the overpowered cav has resulted in very quick games where the cavalry battle is the most important part, if you win the cav battle then youve allmost allways won the battle as a whole, i hate having to be rushed into things but i like mp enough for me to get on with it. However im hoping they get it right with BI or the next game.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

To answer your last question: The Creative Assembly. In response, I can only presume, to all the rather long and somewhat tedius threads examinaing and complaining that the Calvary *charge* should have greater effect in STW and MTW.

Such comments have been made going back to the Dojo, as well as in the Guild. I never agreed with these comments and arguments, and to my chagrin, don't believe I engaged much in them. Ignoring them, as my emphasis was on the SP Campaign. Most of the people, from my recollection, who advocated for a *charge* of greater effect were MPers.

The notion of *All-Cav* armies is just an abomination to the spirit of the game. You already have an over-powered unit, so let's have a whole army of them.... Yet, in that which is RTW, it seems so appropo, the visual joy of it all must surely be appealing to some....

There is some merit to what you say. It's true that, as a MPer, I would qualify cavalry charge in MTW as weak. For example, it was particularly annoying that cavalry was getting stuck by pavese crossbow, that the charge was not powerful enough to break those.

Today, I got less issue with cavalry behaviour than I used to have in MTW... A few things are still not good, such as cavalry jumping over pikes (pikes shall be a bit better against cavalry), but I do like cavalry "running throught" weaker unit. It's a kind tough problem to keep cavalry strong against weak unit, but make them less strong against pikes.
Overall, if putting the jumping aside, I do like cavalry behaviour on the field.

What I really, really don't like is cavalry cost. Sometimes I feel like doubling it! I wish we would get battles with 20 units, including maybe 1 heavy cavalry and 2 light cavalry. This game ought to be about infantry fight and it is not so unfortunately

In SP, as buying cost is irrelevant, I would double, triple the maintenance cost... I still don't understand why Equites and Town watch got nearly the same maintnance cost...

I'd like Ca to fix some cavalry issue (jumping, some mass movement), and more important, to get the cost up DRASTICALLY.

Louis,

[conon394]

Ptah

But RTW cavalry cuts through even deep formations of Heavy infantry.

[Puzz3D]

To answer your last question: The Creative Assembly. In response, I can only presume, to all the rather long and somewhat tedius threads examinaing and complaining that the Calvary *charge* should have greater effect in STW and MTW.

Such comments have been made going back to the Dojo, as well as in the Guild. I never agreed with these comments and arguments, and to my chagrin, don't believe I engaged much in them. Ignoring them, as my emphasis was on the SP Campaign. Most of the people, from my recollection, who advocated for a *charge* of greater effect were MPers.

Well cav charge has no effect in original STW. It's completely broken, so I think anyone who was saying cav should have better charge in STW was onto something. At the time, the players didn't understand the charge was broken, but anyone could see that HC wasn't beating WM. That is what allowed the 16 monk rush to work so well. MP'ers did identify the problem of routing units killing anything in their path. Ironically, that problem was caused by a bug where routing infantry units got a constant charge bonus. Creative Assembly fixed that in the STW v1.12 patch, but no changes were made for the MP'ers.

STW/MI (Warlords Edition) was rebalanced by a community team, and there were SP'ers on that team. I don't think it was a successful rebalance effort, and you can keep the official STW/MI v1.01 stat in place if you want rather than use the v1.02 rebalanced stat.

MTW v1.0 had very expensive cav and relatively expensive ranged units. The valor upgrade was also underpriced. MP'ers asked for cost reductions on them and an increase on the cost of valor upgrades. I remember asking for a reduction in movement fatigue, and it turns out I was onto something there because MTW fatigue rates had not been readjusted by Creative Assembly to reflect the larger map size used in MTW. At this same time, SP'ers were asking for better sword performance vs spears and better cavalry performance vs spears. Except for a 10% reduction in cavalry running fatigue, all the MP'ers got from Creative Assembly in MTW v1.1 were cost adjustments: 25% reduction in cavalry cost, 15% cost increase in spears, 10% cost increase in some swords, a discount on ranged unit upgrades and 70% cost for valor upgrades. These have practically no impact on SP. The SP'ers got cavalry pushback on spears, a increase in the morale penalty on infantry by a cavalry charge and a hidden +1 attack bonus for swords vs spears. Those changes that the SPer's got had an adverse impact on MP when coupled with the cost adjustments.

Later in MTW/VI 2.01, MP'ers got the swipe bug fixed, and they got battlefield upgrades removed from MP (they are still in SP) and a few unit types, such as lancers and arbs moved to later eras. My call to improve spears went unheeded by Creative Assembly, and I was lambasted in the forums as a spearlover. So, now MTW/VI MP is a cav/sword dominated affair.

The dominance of cavalry in RTW has nothing to do with MP'ers. They don't want this and never did. This is coming from Creative Assembly who can't seem to get their game engine properly tuned.

[NihilisticCow]

Louis, have you tried Mordred's mod? It has increased the cost of cavalry units (amoung other things), which providing the game is played at a sensible denarii level (the mod is designed for 10k), does balance the game much more.

[Puzz3D]

Louis, have you tried Mordred's mod? It has increased the cost of cavalry units (amoung other things), which providing the game is played at a sensible denarii level (the mod is designed for 10k), does balance the game much more.

I believe Louis helped Mordred develop that mod which is aimed at improving MP gameplay. It improves SP gameplay as well which shows that MP'ers and SP'ers both benefit from improved balance in the battles.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

I think I let Mordred down recently

Yes, a long time ago, I was working with Mordred, Cranda, and few others (hello all of you!) into modding RTW in a better game.

From what I know of Mordred current mod, I think it's quite close from what we were thinking back then... There were lot of talk about upping armour a bit, changin lethality, doing both, changing unit size, etc, etc... fixing a few glitches in the unit files... and cost.

I still play RTW a little bit, like once every other week. I got some issues with the current gameplay, cavalry being only part of it. After a lot of testing (of vanilla...), what became obvious was that fight results were a bit random, and fight duration were VERY random... IMO that is very detrimental to gameplay. With very random fight duration it's more difficult to plan for reserves, and your line might break in one spot really fast, whereas it holds everywhere else... Problem is; the weakest spot triggers everything else.

And it has been a long time since I haven't talked with Mordred about that...

Louis,

[Kourutsu]

Great, first the elephants where too strong now the cavalry is. Eventually every unit in the game is going to be fighting like a peasant.

[Puzz3D]

And it has been a long time since I haven't talked with Mordred about that...

Well Mordred has done a remarkable job with a minimum of changes, and he did work along the lines that you and Cranda suggested. Movement speed is set at 0.9 with fighting times in the 1 to 2 minute range. So while units are still moving pretty fast, you still have time to excecute complex tactical ideas. I played a 2v2 and 3v3 online with this mod and the battles were good. I took phalanx based armies, and although I lost both games I didn't feel that it was due to my army selection. This mod does not alter your vanilla RTW install. Installation is a snap, and it makes its own shortcut on the desktop.

[Oaty]

Well to add to the topic, I never was able to smash an army like some people could in MTW with 1 jedi general. But in RTW I can defeat a whole army with 1 family member. Sure they should be a strong unit but not cakewalk everysingle unit in an army.

Part of the problem is fatigue/killrate, most battles are over with most units saying warmed up. In MTW a cavalry unit might be able cakewalk a few units but after the second are 3rd unit they'd be fatigued enough that they needed support to be of further use. Cavalry and support !!

Now I do love some of the ways the new fatigue system works, such as all units can get back to being fresh status wich was actually more of a needed feature in MTW than RTW due to the reenforcement mechanics. I could live with desert fatigue but nothing as drastic as MTW. It's also nice that cavlry can recover fatigue while marching but infantry should also be able to do the same or at least get back to winded or warmed up while marching

Overall though I'd say it's more to do with killrate than fatigue. The other problem is that cavalry moves so fast that it can move to hit the flank of infantry. You can see it coming and the infantry have no chance of facing the threat. You are better of letting the infantry stand still and take the hit in the flank than have them facing the cavalry but moving.

Cavalry was usually pretty poor when attacking (prepared) stationary infantry, this is in consideration that the infantry is professional.

Cavalry's biggest power was thier mobility, not the power of thier charge. They could fallback when the losses weren't acceptable and they could rush to exploit an enemies weakness or rush in to a weak spot of your own.

Also thiers a reason why cavalry was almost always deployed on the flanks, mainly due to thier mobility. Think about when the A.I. charges your skirmishers in the center. Thier cavalry gets mobbed because there is just to much support there or just from the natural pushback they cause they are quicly surrounded on 3 sides.

[Oaty]

But then again, none of the ancient heavy infantry were merely 5~6 ranks deep.

Hate to tell you but historically the Romans fought in ranks that deep or that is how historians believed they fought.

A cohort would march around in a square formation due to that is the most maneuverable formation. But when they engaged they filled in the gap. A cohort with 80 men would make almost a perfect 9 by 9 square. So when they filled the gap they were probably only 4-5 ranks deep

[Cheater]

Yes, I agree that cavalry is overpowered in vanilla RTW. I'd recommend you try Rome Total Realism - they weaken light cavalry a fair bit. I think it gets cavalry back to the kind of power it had in MTW. This particularly affects the Romans, as they lose their fictious but extremely powerful "legionnary cavalry". Nonetheless, cavalry can still be very strong in RTR - horse archers and javelin cavalry are good and recently I have been marvelling at the power of Companion bodyguards.

Actually, it's the Praetorian cavalry that gets ousted in RTR. The Legionnary cavalry stays... or at least, they do in version 5.1. I don't know about the other versions, though.

[antisocialmunky]

If my understanding is correct.

The only true Shock Cavalry in that period were possessed by the Macedonians- who had superior horses, and the Selucid and Parthians.

Lancers, Companions, and Cataphracts.

Most other cavalry was used for maneuvering and flanking.

[Ptah]

Hate to tell you but historically the Romans fought in ranks that deep or that is how historians believed they fought.

A cohort would march around in a square formation due to that is the most maneuverable formation. But when they engaged they filled in the gap. A cohort with 80 men would make almost a perfect 9 by 9 square. So when they filled the gap they were probably only 4-5 ranks deep

So a typical Roman army of, let's say, 10 thousand men would line up its soldiers 4~5 ranks deep in a single line, which would spread the formation of 2000 x 5 men for 4 kilometers wide?

Or would they be stacked up with individual units of 80 men/5~6 ranks in the first line, second-line units behind them, third-line units behind, and reserves in the rear?

[edyzmedieval]

I agree about this.

A single unit of a Gaul general completely smacked my 3 units of Hastati, 2 units of Principes and 2 units of Roman Archers...

I was so furious....

[Steppe Merc]

In the game itself, no, but yeah in vanilla.