Cavalry charge and experience

**Slaists** · 11-28-2006, 15:47

Yesterday, I read a post on twcenter.net that suggested, the cavalry charge actually would improve as the knights got more experience. Reply posts were not conclusive: some people agreed, some did not.

After having read the post, I started to pay attention to my cavalry's experience and, to my amazement, experience did seem to help the cavalry to keep cohesion and perform consistent successful charges. Even a couple bronze chevrons seemed to matter... If this is true and not just a random coincidence, it's IMHO a great gameplay feature. Those jousting field castle upgrades giving up to +2 experience to knights are actually very important...

Anyway, if me and other people who have noticed this are not dreaming, if CA comes up with a fix for charge in the patch, I hope they do not take away this "feature".

--

Here is a link to the original post at twcenter: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=70608. today, there seems to be more support for the camp believing experience matters in charge.

**Kraxis** · 11-28-2006, 17:35

This sounds great...

I'm a staunch supporter of tough charges (making them harder to pull off), but currently it takes a bit too much to make it work. And the 'swordcharge' is indeed a problem.

If the technical problems were fixed (swordcharge and extreme loss of cohesion), then I think charges would be perfect. And that wuold still leave the possibility for this little feature to work.

One could even argue that as it is now, this supposed feature might get lost in all the jumble and messed up charges.

**Slaists** · 11-28-2006, 17:49

Originally Posted by Kraxis

This sounds great...

If the technical problems were fixed (swordcharge and extreme loss of cohesion), then I think charges would be perfect. And that wuold still leave the possibility for this little feature to work.

That's the "thing" - with higher experience, sword charge and cohesion problems seem to disappear. Folks have been reporting successful double-click charges, side charges, charges on the move (with lances lowered) with high valor knights...

**Fridgebadger** · 11-28-2006, 17:55

Fairly easy to test in custom battles? Anyone at home now...?

**Kraxis** · 11-28-2006, 17:59

Ok.. I will try then.

But I have been getting consistently good charges in Custom. So I might not be able to recreate the faulty situations.

**Kraxis** · 11-28-2006, 18:15

No... I took a unit of Feudals and squared them off against two units of Levy Spearmen and one of Armoured (the general).

I tried turning, running parallel all kinds of things that usually messes up charges. But each time the knights carried out their charge nicely.

But I did noticed something very odd.
When I did my last charge it involved a bit of turning and messing up. That was interesting as I attempted a walking charge (single click). Right when the bugle sounded the knights lowered their lances and went into gallop. Meanwhile my general cut across the formation to reach his position on the left (what had he been doing elsewhere?). And just as my first knights reach the line of infantry (the formation looked much like a shallow wedge then), I get the little view of my general dying.

Well, it is not the first time a general has died in a charge. But for me it is the first time a general has died with no enemy within reasonable distance. In fact it looked like one of the knights charged him down. There was a knight that had his lance lowered and the point looked like it went into the general when he died... It was all very fast so I'm not sure.

In any case, it seems rather tough to reproduce the anomolies of campaign play in custom. At least in regard to knights. I have seen the cohesion problems in my Peasant tests.

**Slaists** · 11-28-2006, 18:23

Yes, it has been reported, that it is difficult to reproduce knight charge problems in custom. Last night I had the luxury of playing 6 hours of straight campaign game and I was trying to keep an eye on my "developing" knight unit and a green one I was dragging around. It seemed, the experienced one was able to pull off charges in most cases, even down hill and even running.

**Musashi** · 11-28-2006, 19:35

You can always test it by using the create_unit command to create low experience and max experience cav in campaign mode

**IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer** · 11-28-2006, 20:05

In my campaign as the Turks, most of my Qapukulu are in the 2-3 silver/1 gold chevron experience range, and they never fail to do a charge successfully. They've always been a war-winning unit for me though ever since I got them, I never noticed any charging problems even when they were fresh from training.

In custom battles, though, even when I give them three gold chevrons they sometimes screw up. I don't know what it is - the charge problems only seem to happen in custom battles for me.

**kercool** · 11-29-2006, 01:33

ok that explains why my mamluks doesnt always have a successfull charge they always regroup n i hear a horn blow but sometimes they just end up marching towards the enemies?!