Weak cavalry?

[Aracnid]

Horses weren't the tanks that people seem to think they are.

Imagine a line 10 men deep (not unusual in fact rather thin), then imagine horsemen charging it. Front line of infantry are in trouble, unless they can keep the horses away with pikes they are gonna be hit by 800 pounds of man and beast. The second line is also in trouble, they are gonna be hit by lances. Third line are untouched apart from being pushed backwards. Now the Cavalry first line is in trouble, their horses have just run into a solid wall of men, they have run onto spears and swords etc, and then had the men behind them hit them in the back. Now the charge is over the front lines of both sides have been mostly wiped out. Now you have a heavily armoured man on a horse using a sword, mace etc (his lance will have broken very quickly). He is packed in between his fellows and the enemy front line, his horse is very vulnerable, because while you can armour his breast against a pike how do you armour his knee joints or hamstrings? Thus our infantry can deal with the horse pretty easily providing they avoid the horseman's sword (and they outnumber him and he can only really use his sword on his right side (if he is right handed). Now once the horse has gone down (and it will with cut hamstrings) he is screwed. He is wearing 100 pounds of armour and while he might be able get up unassisted in normal conditions this is a battle, he might have fallen under his horse or be trapped under one of his comrades. He is screwed.

The only way a cavalry unit can break infantry is fear, if the rear ranks react to the front rank getting trampled by turning and running then the cav has one, otherwise their only hope is to retreat, which is a lot harder than it sounds, after all there are corpses scattered everywhere, you are pressed between the men behind you and on either side not to mention the enemy.

Edit: This assumes horses who have no sight, sense of smell, or generally emotion, in all probability you couldn't even get them to charge.

[Marquis of Roland]

I think CA is just adjusting from RTW, where they made cavalry too strong.

Wonder if you guys tested charges on various depth of the formation and also the morale of the unit.

Realistically speaking, the majority of troops in medieval era armies probably had low morale, perhaps resulting in european heavy cav's reputation. I know I wouldn't want to stand in front because my landlord told me to

[Satyr]

Thanks for the link Bob_the_Insane. I hadn't seen that post in the earlier thread and I like what I see.

And LadyAnn, having been killed by you a few times in multi in the early days of MTW, I have lots of respect for your skills. But being a weaker player than you means I got to play weaker opponents than you probably usually played and I could, on occasion, get cav into the rear of an enemy and decimate their archers. And of course, the AI was particularly weak in preventing this sort of attack so I was successful with it while playing campaigns.

[LadyAnn]

*blushes*
I just like to have units closer, mainly because of the morale penalties for having detached troops. Plus, the opponent will likely rush either the detachment or the main army and I am not good enough to prevent it.

Annie

[Watchman]

Realistically speaking, the majority of troops in medieval era armies probably had low morale, perhaps resulting in european heavy cav's reputation. I know I wouldn't want to stand in front because my landlord told me to

Well, feudal aristocraties always had reservations about commoners properly trained and equipped to fight for some fairly readily obvious reasons. And pretty much the whole point of feudalism (okay, one of many) was always and everywhere the raising and maintenance of the invariably hideously expensive heavy cavalry, which duly drew the lords' attention and resources away from infantry.

For quite a while the most effective infantry forces in medieval Europe came from regions for one reason or another not "properly feudalized" - much of Scandinavia proper was flatly too agriculturally poor to support much in the way of landed aristocracy for example, as well as geographically rather unsuited for heavy cavalry dominance - and the numerous urban communities that existed in practice separately from the feudal system (and made a point of maintaining both proper fortifications and decent military forces to keep it that way). While the feudal lords naturally had and needed some capable infantry among their pool of military manpower and vassals (to man the assorted fortifications for example - no point in getting all of them horses too), when decent infantry was required in large numbers they usually turned to allies and mercenaries from the aforementioned "infantry heavy" regions.

[blahblahblah]

Wow. I guess calvary isn't as dominant in the medieval times as I thought.

[Watchman]

Depends entirely on what part of Europe and which time period you're talking about. Much of Italy, particularly the northern part, was heavily urbanized and the local knights really just provided a mobile striking arm to complement the solid shieldwalls of the communal infantry; ditto for the Low Countries; in the Iberian peninsula lighter cavalry played a greater part due to the geography and the hit-and-run characteristic of many conflicts fought, and the difficult terrain probably kept infantry comparatively valuable too; Fennoscandia was absolutely rotten with dense forests and never good "cavalry country" anyway, as well as so poor proper feudal chivalry were comparatively few in number for economic reasons. France and England, as well as some areas of Central Europe, were relatively open country and prosperous enough to support extensive feudal structures, and it was really there the knights dominated. Germany (as a geographical region) I know less about, but would suspect the trend varied considerably by the specific circumstances and terrain of a given area.

Obviously once you get to the wide open steppes of Eastern Europe and southern Russia, the natural domain of the horse, cavalry becomes rather overwhelmingly dominant for the obvious reason its mobility can be exploited to the fullest; access to traditions of mounted archery and composite bows no doubt further helped in this.

[Orda Khan]

Using Mongol cavalry as an example of the superiority of mounted troops is quite a good argument, they were very successful, even in Europe (Poland, Hungary, Transylvania, Bulgaria) However, in the Civil War between Qubilai and Ariq Bukha, the limitless inclusion of infantry available to Qubilai was one deciding factor in his eventual victory

........Orda

[Redtemplar]

Exactly (I didn't write everything about tactics of Mongols because it is not theme in this discussion - sorry for history fans :) - fact is that Mongols used cavalry). But true is that waves of horses one after another is very hard to defend against.

If charge was unsuccessful they turned around and attack another time. Infantry had weak mobility and low defense values against cavalry (exception are pikes and some weapons). Imagine to stand in one place with your battle colleagues (about 500, armored with swords and round shields, flat terrain) against 100 medium heavy cavalry units. You couldn't have a chance to survive this.

Battle horses were trained to kill and were not afraid of enemies. Even if they had number superiority. When you fight in battle you want to survive, the same does the enemy. I really doubt that you could stop cavalry with ordinary infantry. When order to charge was executed there was nothing to stop this (some of you say that horses were afraid of dying- it very funny but the soldiers were too and none of them was stopping suddenly in battle).

I repeat again battle horses were trained to fight and had huge courage - when you talk that these horses could run away - it is nonsense (much sooner would run away enemies infantry).

IMHO medieval times are ages of cavalry supremacy.

[andystyle]

in all probability you couldn't even get them to charge.

I agree with everything you say up to this point...warhorses were trained to charge. No cavalry unit would go into the field if they weren't confident their mounts would actually charge when required.