Attack, Charge.....What's the Diff?

[EatYerGreens]

Ahh the swipe tsk tsk

Yes it works best in a 1-2 rank line. The secret is the banner. As long as the soldier with the banner doesnt face an enemy you can get the swipe effect.

CBR

CBR, just out of interest, what does 'swipe' (or was it 'swipe card'??) mean in the context of multiplayer?

I wasn't in the conversation but watched this scroll by and got the feeling it had something to do with a cheat or exploit people use. Is it the same thing?

[Grey_Fox]

It's the same thing, but it is viewed as a bug and a cheat amongst the older players and clans (by older I mean long-term). Unfortunately it is now prolific amongst the new players and new clans in MTW.

[CBR]

CBR, just out of interest, what does 'swipe' (or was it 'swipe card'??) mean in the context of multiplayer?

I wasn't in the conversation but watched this scroll by and got the feeling it had something to do with a cheat or exploit people use. Is it the same thing?

Swipe was a bug that got introduced in MTW 1.1 and got fixed in VI 2.01. It took a while before players starting realizing precisely how to exploit it and it gave cavalry immense power.

Swipe had a few good things actually as cavalry was much better at killing off enemy pavs but overall it was annoying and made for some very random cav v cav fights as one unit might be totally devastated just because the enemy came in just at the right angle.

Swipe was the golden days of cav in thin 1 rank lines heh. It was only after the VI patch that the standard of 10k came into being as 15k had been the standard before and even still was a standard after VI came out (even with VI increasing morale by 2 for all units) You simply had to have highly pumped up infantry to deal with powerful cavalry.

Swipe was not the only thing that was removed in VI 2.01 as the automatic charge when running was removed too (I actually think it was the main way CA fixed swipe) Before that it was easy to make large scale attacks with your whole army as all you needed was to select the units and doubleclick/drag behind the enemy line and make them run. With VI 2.01 you have to select each unit and click on an enemy unit to get the charge bonus.


CBR

[EatYerGreens]

Thanks Grey Fox and CBR.

Seems my idea wasn't so original after all. Though I didn't picture it as a single line of cav and the message further back about chasing archers isn't the same thing either. Not sure what that was about. And banners? That went over my head too.

I was on about a straightforward cav wedge into the side of an already engaged, squarish shaped block of inf, but not explicitly engaging it, just running to a destination on its far side, by running through.

I see in the notes to VI on the CD that it says they fixed "certain occasions where cav get perpetual charge bonus", so I suppose what I'm proposing is exactly that. I didn't know about it at the time, is all I can say in my defence. I thought it would be a safer mover than charge, meleé, disengage, turn around, pull away, turn around, charge again... which is a lot of clicking to do and diverts attention for rather more time than I'm comfortable with.

I prefer 'move to position' because, for as long as I've retained overall cohesion, I tend to think in terms of "I want my men to be here, here and here" and, if enemies are in the way, then my units engage automatically and I don't have to think about it, or even look at what's going on.

However, when it turns chaotic I do switch to attacking 'targets of opportunity' wherever I see them.... but I don't always see everything and often find full-strength units sat idle, whilst others are in deep trouble but too far away to be rescued. The idle units are often ones I ordered to attack but ended up in a pursuit and they weren't fast enough to catch the enemy unit. That's how they end up on the edge of the map.

Frustrating normally but this actually kept me in a recent MP battle for a good 10 mins extra, with just 2 units left (CMAA/FMAA). Lots of marching to get to the final piece of action. Our side regrouped, attacked what was left - and lost - but it was a fun match and good to have lasted that long.

[Puzz3D]

One other important thing was removed from VI v2.01 multiplayer, and that was battlefield upgrades. On the unit icons, you still see the valor increase during the battle as though the units got upgraded, but, if you count the small flags, you'll see that the unit didn't actually get upgraded. We did tests to verify that the battlefield upgrades are definitely disabled in multiplayer. They are still present in single player and custom battle.

I thought it would be a safer mover than charge, meleé, disengage, turn around, pull away, turn around, charge again... which is a lot of clicking to do and diverts attention for rather more time than I'm comfortable with.

That's a technique used during the pre-melee skirmishing, especially with fast cav, when you are only controlling a few units. Once the main fighting starts, you really don't have time to micomanage to that degree, and if that cav unit routs when you try to pull it back, it could cost you the whole battle.

I prefer 'move to position' because, for as long as I've retained overall cohesion, I tend to think in terms of "I want my men to be here, here and here" and, if enemies are in the way, then my units engage automatically and I don't have to think about it, or even look at what's going on.

That's the right way to play except you usually don't want your units to charge forward automatically due to the way outnumbering penalties and flanking penalties work. Some unit types (undisciplined) will charge forward on their own and they get +4 morale when they do that, but it's not good when those units are on a flank which is supposed to be holding rather than attacking.

However, when it turns chaotic I do switch to attacking 'targets of opportunity' wherever I see them.... but I don't always see everything and often find full-strength units sat idle, whilst others are in deep trouble but too far away to be rescued.

This is what makes MTW or STW difficult. You have to manage all your units individually during the fighting, and they have to be well placed relative to the enemy units before the fighting starts. I think people who say RTW is harder are missing that, unlike in RTW, in MTW and STW you need excellent individual unit control during the height of the battle. It's very hard to achieve a level of control where you have no idle units, but the top players do achieve that level of unit management.

Frustrating normally but this actually kept me in a recent MP battle for a good 10 mins extra, with just 2 units left (CMAA/FMAA). Lots of marching to get to the final piece of action. Our side regrouped, attacked what was left - and lost - but it was a fun match and good to have lasted that long.

This is an aspect of MTW that most RTW players would call boring. It's even more fun when you start winning games like that because you were able to minimize the fatigue of your surviving units and get them to the required place in time due to foresight of how the battle was likely to unfold. This is strategic thinking in a tactical game, and is what raises it to another level. You want the tactics to become second nature so that you can concentrate on strategic aspects. This is why removal of the battlefield upgrades was important and why the game should not be played with lots of money which allows bizarre upgrading of units. You can't get to a strategic level of thinking if you don't know what beats what tactically or how long a unit is lilely to hold.

[Patron]

Choosing what troops to invest in is part of the strategy, also whenever you decide not to slide and double click on a unit 2 very stupid things happen. The Swiss invested in spearmen and advanced to using pikes and the English invested in archers telling their peasants to practice with their bows and perfect the war bow, the player should have some sort of ability to do the same.

Either you hold formation and when the leader is stopped instantly every other soldier unexpectedly stops his charge in it's tracks, even if he is 1 metre away from the enemy unit at the most distant point from the leader. and spent the last 10 seconds charging at him.

When you deselect hold formation the charging units cross other each other's paths and slow down and sometihng don't even reach the unit they were charging at. Even if it is a mathematically perfect spearmen vs spearmen pm steppes, same ranks engagement they still bump into each other whilst charging.

The only way to charge properly is to slide. I think removing sliding ruined the strategy of the game and an important part of the realism. It is now more like a real time strategy game like warcraft 3, than something which is supposed to be modelled on history. I never saw anything wrong with sliding from the realistic point of view anyway, I often had problems with valourous men at arms when sliding into them with upgraded chivalric knights.

[Puzz3D]

ok never mind.

[Patron]

booo