Is RTW Cavalry a bit too much?

[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.