Weak cavalry?

[Redtemplar]

I and group of my friends have a strange feeling that cavalry will be weaker in Medieval II than in Medieval I. What is with this strength of horses?
Ordinary medium cavalry should easily destroy for example sword infantry with little amount of casualties.
Peasants couldn't do anything to charging knights. Cavalry was the hammer in medieval times which could easily defeat any infantry (only well trained pikeman were difficult enemy and of course another cavalry).
Do you think that in Medieval II cavalry will be such strong?

[Bob the Insane]

I think cavalry should work well in M2TW...

From my little experiments in the demo that certain effects have been exaggerated for gameplay reasons such as the suicidal nature of charging prepared spearmen. But it seems to work well as using cavalry correctly against the flanks of spear units or a direct charge into light infantry or archers in open ground appear to be very effective...

[LadyAnn]

I don't think cav was weaken, although I believe the way of using cav has changed a bit. You can't just walk over to fight infantry (or caught standing on horses fighting cav 1vs.1). You must charge, disingage, charge again to use maximum charge effect.

So, yes, cav is the hammer of medieval time. But you can't use it as anvil...

Anniep

[Furious Mental]

Any reasonable infantry formation could hold its ground against cavalry if it was determined enough, especially if dismounted knights were placed in the van. They did not have to be pikemen. This myth that cavalry were for some reason invincible in the Middle Ages is such a tired old cliche. The reason cavalry often won was socio-economic; the military aristocracy spent money on itself whereas states like the Roman empire had spent money drilling professional infantry. However some states, like England, did emphasise infantry warfare and were able to field semi-professional foot soldiers which withstood cavalry charges on multiple occasions, pikes or no.

[Satyr]

Knights, when charged into archers should just about break the archer formation and kill many and probably rout the company, yet that doesn't happen at all in the demo. It takes just about the entire battle to take out one archer company with your knights. If this is the way the game plays then cav will be used much less than it was in MTW where cav was used to get behind enemy lines and rout the archers.

[LadyAnn]

I actually didn't do that in MTW (get behind archer lines to route them). They usually are well protected by their fellows.
I guess I need to play more games...

Anniep

[Tempiic]

Knights, when charged into archers should just about break the archer formation and kill many and probably rout the company, yet that doesn't happen at all in the demo. It takes just about the entire battle to take out one archer company with your knights. If this is the way the game plays then cav will be used much less than it was in MTW where cav was used to get behind enemy lines and rout the archers.

If you are referring to these scottish guards... sometimes they get killed by my general cav, sometimes not. I am thinking that these scottish guards might in fact be hybrids rather than pure missile troops.

Besides that, I find myself very agreeing with Bob the Insane and Lady An on the effectiveness of cav in the demo.

As another note, I enjoyed how cav charging charging cav works as well.

[Bob the Insane]

Knights, when charged into archers should just about break the archer formation and kill many and probably rout the company, yet that doesn't happen at all in the demo. It takes just about the entire battle to take out one archer company with your knights. If this is the way the game plays then cav will be used much less than it was in MTW where cav was used to get behind enemy lines and rout the archers.

I beg to differ... If you look at my post in the thread linked below (near the end) you will see a demonstration of what a cavalry charge can do to regular longbowmen out in the open (note also these longbowman are 2 gold chevrons for valour too):

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...t=70402&page=2



Put simply I think the Scots Guard are a special case and you should not juse the efeectiveness of cavalry against light infantry by them...

Additionally while playing around I had a unit of dismounted knight charge to the rear as I was repositioning them. Normally head on they decimate the cavalry, in this instance the dismounted knight where wiped out neardy to a man very quickly. I think face will have more of an effect than ever...

[Aracnid]

Defiantly on Pavia I first charged my cav in and was getting trashed until I diverted my landsknechts from attacking the other Scots guard unit in an effort to save my general (it worked and I won in the end). Second time I hit them from the flank with my cav and I killed nearly half the unit in my charge. Face has a huge effect.

[ProudNerd]

Cav seems very weak to me especially conquistadors. they died very quickly against the Aztecs as did cortez's bodyguard. It was crushed in seconds.

[DukeofSerbia]

Ordinary medium cavalry should easily destroy for example sword infantry with little amount of casualties.

Not so simple as you think. Depend on what type terrain and various other conditions.

Peasants couldn't do anything to charging knights.

True.

Cavalry was the hammer in medieval times which could easily defeat any infantry (only well trained pikeman were difficult enemy and of course another cavalry).

Partly true. Good infantry will always destroy group of knights.

[Watchman]

The Northern Italian urban infantry seem to have made something of a habit out of giving knights a bloody nose (as in, "from running headfirst into a wall").

Not that the Anglo-Saxon infantry militia appears to have had tremendous problems holding the Norman cavalry at bay at Hastings, either.

Actually, if knights really were able to plow aside everything, one has to wonder at the standard Medieval practice of using heavy infantry spearmen as a solid fallback/reform base for the cavalry, and for shielding your own knights while they switched to their proper warhorses from the riding horses they normally rode ("got on their high horses", as they saying goes)...

Or how for example Middle Eastern cavalry, once the novelty of the massed couched-lance charge wore off, could readily enough take knights head on and not get pulverized.

[Horatius]

Middle Eastern Cavalry (Unless you count the Byzantine Heavy Cavalry) always got pulverized when facing Knights head on, for example at Dorylaeum which featured Knights at not their heaviest armor (It was still chainmail during the First Crusade) the eastern cavalry really was not able to stand up to the Knights when facing them head on.

Ann and Orda that if very clever, although I guess it will depend on the strength of the to sides when it comes down to it.

Louis maybe we could do a MP game with each other some time.

To Louis and Ann did MTW get a major upgrade after patch 1.00 because that is all I played of MTW.

[LadyAnn]

After MTW 1.0, there are major patches:
MTW 1.1 quickly followed
then MTW/VI 2.0
then MTW/VI 2.01

MTW1.0 has a lot of bugs
MTW1.1 made cav more powerful, making MP imbalanced. There are several exploits in MTW 1.0 and 1.1 that MTW/VI fixed: the "swipe".

[BDC]

I think there's probably a couple of things that are getting confused here:

1) Big pitched battles were RARE. Even the best generals only fought one or two. Perhaps that's why they were the best. Far too much is at stake. You could lose everything in one swoop. Therefore actual big, organised charges wouldn't have happened often.

2) The quality of the opposing troops. Knights were soldiers (essentially, trained from childhood etc), equipped with the best equipment, and keen to show off their bravery to their peers. They might be charging untrained peasants, armed with a stick. Of course they are going to win. But maybe not against a motivated and trained block of well equipped men on foot. Probably not in fact. How many cavalry charges worked against well equipped, trained and positioned pikemen?

[Kavhan Isbul]

Middle Eastern Cavalry (Unless you count the Byzantine Heavy Cavalry)

What makes you think that the Heavy cavalry of the Eastern Roman Empire was significantly different than the Muslim cavalry of say, for example, the Seljuks? After all, the Byzantines modelled their cavalry on the cavalry of the Persians, Avars and Bulgars. It can also be said that the Avars influenced the French themselves. And judging on contemporary iconography, the Eastern heavy cavalry from the times of the first Crusade was probably heavier than the Western European.
Back to Middle Eastern cavalry - the Mongols themselves were similarly equipped, if not identically as the Muslims the Crusaders faced. After their successfull campaign in Central Asia and the destruction of the Khwarezmid Empire, the army that Subodei had at Khalka was equipped with trophies, taken from Persia. The Russian cavalry he faced was equipped in predominantly Western fashion, but was defeated handily when the Mongol Heavy Cavalry center charged it. Then two tumens of light Mongol cavalry defeated a combined Polish and German army, supported by order knights sent from the Pope. And finally, the Mongols were able to defeat the Hungarians at Mohi, where on the side of the Christians fought Knights Templar.
I do not think all these victories prove anything about what cavalry was better or worse. It all came down to tactical skill, good discipline (this one was crucial) and sometimes even bravery, such as the one shown by Batu at Mohi, which is believed to have saved the day when the Mongols were nearly rooted. Making a broad general statement that Western heavy cavalrymen were much better than their Muslim counterparts is not only inaccurate, but over-simplified and biased.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Middle Eastern Cavalry (Unless you count the Byzantine Heavy Cavalry) always got pulverized when facing Knights head on, for example at Dorylaeum which featured Knights at not their heaviest armor (It was still chainmail during the First Crusade) the eastern cavalry really was not able to stand up to the Knights when facing them head on.

Oddly enough...Eastern cavalry did better later versus more armoured knights

Louis maybe we could do a MP game with each other some time.

Sure, PM me anytime, take an hoplite square and see for yourself

To Louis and Ann did MTW get a major upgrade after patch 1.00 because that is all I played of MTW.

What Ann said. With 1.0, people complained that cavalry was too weak, not able to push back spear and swipe ( ) infantry . 1.1 patch gave pushback for cavalry, increase the cost of spear... And basically, overnight, nobody played spear anymore in MP.
1.1 patch is acase study of players asking the wrong thing, getting it, and breaking the game balance they had.

That's pretty much why that kind of topic is ... not a welcome sight for me... We've been there, done that, and screwed up badly.

Louis,

[Watchman]

The European practice of using the couched lance in massed linear charges initially took the Eastern armies by surprise. Once they learned to appreciate its capabilities and limitations, and more importantly were no longer caught off guard, they could deal with it on more even terms.

"Eastern" cavalry doctrine emphasized rather different aspects than the "Frankish" one however, even for armoured shock cavalry, so in terms of pure impact power the latter were always readily recognized as the top dogs. That, however, didn't mean eastern heavy cavalry could not clash with their "Frankish" colleagues head on and win; on the contrary both sides developed a healthy respect for each other's main fighting techniques and put some serious effort into trying to exploit their respective strenghts and weaknesses.