Elite/heavy forces less effective than previous TW games?

[CVD]

This is a bit of a newb question, but I am having trouble reconciling my style of playing RTW with MTW2. I'm used to the good old days where an elite force of heavily armed and armored soldiers would simply smash a lesser group. A solid Cohort could be counted on to stand in a breach and make the enemy pay for every inch. Now when I commit my elite units in MTW2 I am a little shocked to see how ineffective they are compared to the elite units of past Total War games. I watch in horror as my foot knights, clad head to tow in plate, get absolutely mauled by lesser units. This includes everything, archers, crossbowmen, militia, I even watched as a unit of armored sgt's was destroyed almost completely by a group of peasants. I've watched a single pavise crossbowman kill 3 elite soldiers in rapid succession before any of them even engaged him. Even when things are clearly in my favor, I still take a real beating. It used to be that a poorly organized rebel army would leave 10 men on the field for every one of yours. Now I feel like losing "only" 500 knights to 1000 militia is a major success. My militia on the other hand still seem to get stomped on even I have a tactical advantage. It just seems that in a drag out melee I always have the short end of the stick. What gives?

I have played the Total War games since Shogun and never had this steep a learning curve. One that I am still having difficulty overcoming. Am I playing incorrectly? Is this game all about massed formations of cheap units? with previous games I would never think of using anything with the word "militia" in the title for anything but population control or severe emergencies.

I'm playing as Germany with campaign set to the hardest setting but battles set to medium. I feel like I must be doing something wrong though, could someone shed some light?

[Tristrem]

well my first question would be have you patched your games. This can lead to very different outcomes for your battles.

As far as weird things happening like knights losing to milita and armoured sargents losing to peasents, those are bugged at the moment. These bugs are known as the sheild bug, and the 2hand animation bug. For some bug free battles you should try using soem mods like Carls problem fixer, or lands to conquer mod.

Hopefully the next patch should fix these issues, but for now mods work decently and fix most problems. Hopefully this helps explain these odd moment you have been having.

[Carl]

You can find my ProblemFixer in my Sig.

As has been noted their are major bugs affecting anyone with a sheild or 2-handed weapon who is on foot, and theirs issues with pikes too.

[chickenhawk]

The advantages of good units might show up better on battles set to VH. My understanding is that fatigue and morale matter more on the higher settings.

Peasants do not have much of either.

Patch will restart all of these discussions from scratch, most likely.

[Mega Dux Bob]

Mounted knights are the real elite units of the game and are vastly more powerful than the mounted units in the other TW games. They can literally plow threw just about any infantry outside pikes. Your infantry is pretty much there to be sword fodder or an audience to applaud the knights are they slaughter the other side.

[Whacker]

Mounted knights are the real elite units of the game and are vastly more powerful than the mounted units in the other TW games. They can literally plow threw just about any infantry outside pikes. Your infantry is pretty much there to be sword fodder or an audience to applaud the knights are they slaughter the other side.

I gotta disagree with you here my friend. Cav in M2 is significantly nerfed from RTW IMO. My stance is that the heavy cav in M2 should decimate anything it hits, short of braced spears or pikes head on, just like the heavy cav units in RTW. The lighter cav units in RTW were overpowered and should have been less effective.

[Quickening]

I gotta disagree with you here my friend. Cav in M2 is significantly nerfed from RTW IMO. My stance is that the heavy cav in M2 should decimate anything it hits, short of braced spears or pikes head on, just like the heavy cav units in RTW. The lighter cav units in RTW were overpowered and should have been less effective.

Agree with you there. After all it was cavalry that dominated the Medieval world for quite some time. It never sat right with me that my sword and sandal Generals in Rome were more devastating than my full plate armoured feudal knights with their lances in MTW2.

[chickenhawk]

This is getting into an endless historical argument but the Romans had armies of trained professional soldiers with logistics, effective signaling, and, and .... It makes a huge difference.

[TevashSzat]

Umm.....People Cavalry in M2TW will basically kill or severly depleat any unit with a good charge. It was significantly more powerful than those of RTW. If you played on vh/vh in RTW, some of your cav would literally die from charging the back of a hoplite unit due to the insane attack bonuses the ai gets.

If you were playing on easy mode, your cav might seem better but you recieved an attack bonus from being on such easy difficulty, and if the ai cav seemed too powerful at vh/vh, it was because they recieve attack bonuses at that difficulty

[Whacker]

Umm.....People Cavalry in M2TW will basically kill or severly depleat any unit with a good charge.

Sorry friend, not my experience at all. And yes, I know how to charge and what the mechanics are, so it's not my ineptitude.

It was significantly more powerful than those of RTW.

Again, complete opposite of my experience.

If you played on vh/vh in RTW, some of your cav would literally die from charging the back of a hoplite unit due to the insane attack bonuses the ai gets.

You do know this is a well known bug right? It was introduced in the 1.5 patch. It's known as the "butt-spike" bug, in that (iirc) the cav charge bonus is still reflected back at them, even though they're charging the rear of a spear unit.

If you were playing on easy mode, your cav might seem better but you recieved an attack bonus from being on such easy difficulty, and if the ai cav seemed too powerful at vh/vh, it was because they recieve attack bonuses at that difficulty

I've tried it at all difficulties, and the results definitely confirm to me that cav is not nearly as powered as it was in RTW. If you go and read on the tw blog site and their forums, you'll see where CA has basically acknowledged that they felt cav was way too powerful from RTW (I completely disagree with this for the record) and made some changes to it for M2, mainly based on feedback from the MP community. Part of these changes are evident in the new charging mechanic that I linked to in another thread, CA told us about if officially in a Dec post on the twblog site.

[Budwise]

I kinda agree, I really miss my "kill all, ubersoldat" Billmen with upgrades.

[CVD]

I havent had a ton of luck with cavalry either. I suppose I should work on charging them more, but they get REALLY hacked up in a melee. I havent ever been able to comfortably "commit" my knights or generals to battle. If I leave them in the fight there will be nothing left of them.
I've recently patched the game, I will run the problem fixer and see how it goes.
Thanks guys.

[rvg]

From my experience in M2TW, any Heavy Cavalry level unit armed with a Lance is capable of utterly destroying any non-spearwall capable foot unit in a head-on charge...

Cavalry as a whole might not be overpowered, but the cavalry charge certainly is....

In MTW1 I would never charge head on into a spear unit....in MTW2 I do it without a shred of worry. If that's not overpowered, I don't know what is.

[Mega Dux Bob]

From my experience in M2TW, any Heavy Cavalry level unit armed with a Lance is capable of utterly destroying any non-spearwall capable foot unit in a head-on charge...

Cavalry as a whole might not be overpowered, but the cavalry charge certainly is....

In MTW1 I would never charge head on into a spear unit....in MTW2 I do it without a shred of worry. If that's not overpowered, I don't know what is.

Even at a walk knights are pretty vicious. Just order them to move threw the unit they are attacking and they will break most infantry that way. It really is like watching a snow plow. You can do the same thing with foot if you have double the numbers of the defenders but 80 knights can push 150 foot into a rout.

[vonsch]

I am of the "cavalry is powered less than RTW" school too. I hold my generals until they have the chance to charge pinned or depleted units, and then from at least a flank, usually. No trying to maneuver for a simple open flank or rear on a standing or marching unit. If their target turns to face the charge, the payment is too steep and the risk of a morale hit high. If the target is moving too much, the charge is too likely to fail.

And light cav gets hurt badly if they don't do likewise. But in pure pursuit they are great. They also work just fine in charge mode to close the noose around a unit, though leaving the unit with no escape route can result in a lot more cav casualties. Better to follow Sun Tzu and give them that gap to flee through, then you can send the cav off to round up prisoners with little risk.

But this is all sorta realistic and sensible.

I do love my jinettes though.

Based on my one-on-one unit charge tests I am confident heavy cav can bust a similar spear wall, but at a high cost. The difference in charging frontally and into a flank or rear is more in the casualties to your cav than in the resulting instant destruction. Charges hurt.

[Hollerbach]

Cav seems less powerfull than in RTW to me, but to be honest, apart from the known bugs it feels okay to me. If you get the charge right heavy Cav are wrecking balls and are effective but die reasonable quickly in a protracted melee.

IMHO the biggest change the affects Cav is that your own troops are not nearly so ethereal as they were. In RTW you could charge straigth through masses of your own troops and still dance around the heads of your opponents. In M2TW the ability to waltz through your own lines has been much reduced, for all units, but for Cav it makes the biggest difference. You used to be able to charge 3-4 units of cav at the one target and they would all kind of join toghether in this dense amoeba of doom. Try that now and they units will wreck each others charges and your units troops will spread out disorganised and attack the enemy peice meal.

It's a good change and particulary for siege battles with the narrow streets makes managing your cav much more of a challenge.

This only, regardless of the stats, has changed Cav a lot making them less easy to use to simply walk over your opponents but still devasting if used skillfully