Optimizing Heavy Cavalry charges in the Campaign

[Spendius]

It would be nice if people reporting working/non working charges specify the unit size they are using. Unit cohesion can be much more of a problem with very large size.
Also, almost all knights are "impetuous" and can decide to charge by themselves: will they then achieve a proper charge ?
I like the idea of this new system, especially if xp influences how well a unit can charge, but it still should be tuned. It makes no sense that the charge is stopped because one single guy has a faster horse and connects 2 seconds before the rest of the unit.

[Kraxis]

If you remember Sir Robert in the tutorial, he clearly states that cavalry should be in 2-3 lines, not a block.

So obviously something isn't working as it should. O else he would have said something like "while 2-3 lines have a greater potential for destruction, keeping heavy cavalry in a nice dense block assures a better chance of the charge going off as it should."

[jabo0511]

Just a quick hint when you charge I always DOUBLE click at the enemy on the 2nd or 3rd line. What happen is the cavalry will ALWAYS charge and trample anything in its way including (check this out!) routing archers. Playing as the turks right now I have 2 armies, 1 army 90% infantry/archer 10% light cav the other one 100% heavy cavalry+cavalry archers (Qapakulu, sipahi lancers, sipahi archers). Whenever I'm on the open terrain I use my cavalry force and most of the time I only need to engage 50% of my cav force. Those qapakulus are amazing and they're good against armor (or other knights)

[Bijo]

Interesting.


Anyhow, I also noticed that if you're running/charging to an enemy unit downwards - as in going off a cliff, even a small one - the charge will be effective immediately. My general unit actually started charging enemy infantry down a not-so-steep little hill a split second (or slightly more) after I double-clicked them to attack.
But this also (or only) might have to do with the fact that the cavalry unit was experienced.
Still, when it happened I had this gut feeling it was due to the downwards charge. I did the same thing again in that same battle on the same ground.

[Carl]

Having just come off Otumba and Pavia I can say that single clicking on a unit does make them charge cohesively, AND they can even do it to moving enemy units. Really Nasty. (This is in the second Demo BTW, the full game may vary).

For reference in Otumba I had the enemy peasants start running at 90 degrees to my 2 full units of conquistadors, they STILL pulled of a frightening charge in spite of this that killed over 150 peasants from 2 units.

Likewise similar charges into other units seemed to produce similar effects (a rear charge at a bodyguard unit killed all but 2 guys, one being the general).