The reason why cavalry are so damn effective

**Lusted** · 12-10-2006, 19:13

In the course of trying to balance cavalry for my Lands to Conquer mod, i decided to remove all charge bonuses for primary and secondary weapons for cavalry units. This, combined with some slight changes i'd made to spearmen(slightly better attack) results in a charge by Mailed Knights being halted by Armoured sergeants, whereas normally the Knights would flatter the sergeants.

**GODzilla** · 12-10-2006, 19:26

I wish there would be an easy way to make spearmen more efficient vs. cavalry whilst not to overpower them vs. infantry.

Imho armored saegeant should withstand a cavalry charge of these early mailed knights in vanilla game, shouldn't they? They have shields and spears. Of course infantry with swords or axes should be totally destroyed by knights of every time...

**Lusted** · 12-10-2006, 19:31

There is, the changes i've made to spearmen make them better aganst cavalry, but make them no more stronger against sword/axe infantry, because the spear attrbute all spear units have makes them weak against sords/axes.

**Malachus** · 12-10-2006, 19:39

Lusted, how are you able to make all those changes? Do you have an unpacker? Cuz I'd like to mod stuff for my game, too, but I can't unpack those files.

Are you using the files ER posted earlier? If so, how are you implementing them in the game cuz I tried and failed.

**Lusted** · 12-10-2006, 19:43

Are you using the files ER posted earlier? If so, how are you implementing them in the game cuz I tried and failed.

Yes they are, you need to use the mod switch to use the files.

**Malachus** · 12-10-2006, 19:46

Thanks man, now I can finally get started... I've already lost favor with the vanilla game and I've only been playing it for a week

**Fisherking** · 12-10-2006, 19:47

Look! Spears were not all that great against knights. It wasn't until pikes came back into use that knights began to suffer. Scottish skilitrons(SP?) of pike were the first units to surprise the knights and stop a charge in several hundred years. But don't take my word for it...look it up!

**Lusted** · 12-10-2006, 19:53

Historical accuracy be damned, spearmen in this game are meant to be useful against cav, but in the default game they are completely useless.

**Freedom Onanist** · 12-11-2006, 12:15

Originally Posted by Fisherking

Look! Spears were not all that great against knights. It wasn't until pikes came back into use that knights began to suffer. Scottish skilitrons(SP?) of pike were the first units to surprise the knights and stop a charge in several hundred years. But don't take my word for it...look it up!

How wrong can one be? Besides all the historical examples that could be dredged up, rememebr that pikes were replaced when the bayonet was invented. I will leave to your estimation the total length of a musket plus bayonet, but it wasn't anywhere near as long as a plain old spear - let alone a pike.

In fact you don't need a pointy thing to stop cavalry at all, the Saxons did it plenty fine at Hastings to the Norman cavalry.

**Kraxis** · 12-11-2006, 03:02

Originally Posted by Lusted

In the course of trying to balance cavalry for my Lands to Conquer mod, i decided to remove all charge bonuses for primary and secondary weapons for cavalry units. This, combined with some slight changes i'd made to spearmen(slightly better attack) results in a charge by Mailed Knights being halted by Armoured sergeants, whereas normally the Knights would flatter the sergeants.

Are you sure?

I mean I could get Khazaks to act as heavy cavalry with nice formed charges. And their charge value is 2 I think. Given that they use their secondary weapon in the charge, what would the result be there?

And how about units such as Merchant Cavalry Militia? They have no secondary weapon, yet they can punish spears a lot in their charge. I don't mind them being lousy chargers really, they are not meant to, so perhaps removing their chargebonus would be a good idea?

Anyway, until this is tested through I will remain cautiously optimistic.

And yes spears certainly could turn knights. The simple fact that knights didn't charge spears (look up the battle of Bouvines where one allied unit of spears got charged a few times but managed to turn back the French knights, and thus managed to get a favourable surrender agreement) and the few times they did they ended up feeling a bit hung over, is enough point for me. Spears were not pikes, but a 9 foot spear is still plenty long to kill horse and/or rider. While a sword can be troubled to do the same (lance outreaching the sword by a great margin).

**Carl** · 12-11-2006, 12:09

And yes spears certainly could turn knights. The simple fact that knights didn't charge spears (look up the battle of Bouvines where one allied unit of spears got charged a few times but managed to turn back the French knights, and thus managed to get a favourable surrender agreement) and the few times they did they ended up feeling a bit hung over, is enough point for me. Spears were not pikes, but a 9 foot spear is still plenty long to kill horse and/or rider. While a sword can be troubled to do the same (lance outreaching the sword by a great margin).

Indeed, people need to remember a couple of things here.

First, a spear formation would be a lot more densely packed than a Knight formation, so even Lances will only kill some of the formation. The rest are still going to be stood their when you slam into the formation. That's instant skewerd horses, even if the dead horses fall on the spearmen and kill them.

Second, once you have dead horses and people on the ground theirs a LOT of stuff for charging horses to trip up over. If you've seen horse racing even once you'll have seen examples of this happening. The falls are going to kill and injure still more horses and riders. They won't wipe a unit of knights out I don't think, but they will do a fair bit of damage overall.