Shifting fortunes with halbs

[Doug-Thompson]

I was pretty thrilled when some Eastern Halberb Militia beat some Dismounted Feudal Knights, a sword and shield unit, on grassy plains. I had the halbs in open formation and assumed that made the difference.

So I ran some more units into each other in custom battle the next day — and got exactly the opposite results.

All of it was on grassy plains, normal unit sizes and difficulty, Egypt vs. England. I have the numbers for the second set of tests. Battles in which the leader was killed early enough to make a difference were disregarded.

I suspect that the difference was heat, the one variable I can't control. I'm assuming the first batch where the halbs did well was in summer and the knights suffered heat exhaustion. That is only a blind guess on my part, however.

Tabardariya, on the other hand, do well. It's a tough fight. Notably, the English would break away and charge again, as much as three times in one fight. That's four charges once you include the initial charge.