Bang per buck: Melee cavalry

[Guru]

Excellent!

-- Guru

[Phog]

Thanks for the info Doug.


- Phog

[Doug-Thompson]

[Edited consumer warning: Scrap this theory. Didn't work. See post #60.]


Alt-Charge

Miracle's formula gives a bonus of 3 to a unit with a secondary melee weapon that has an anti-armor bonus. That figure's pretty conservative when attacking the best units. If I understand correctly, having the bonus means that the opponent's armor is effectively halved. Armored swordsmen, for instance, have a base armor figure of 8, making the anti-armor bonus worth 4.

Even with that conservative figure of 3, there are still eight melee cavalry units that apparently should charge with their secondary weapon instead of their main spear when first attacking a well-armored unit. Here they are, in order of how much difference it should make:

Russian Druzhina
Mercenary Albanian Cavalry
Italian Stradiots
Byzantine Kataphractoi
Egyptian Mamluks
Turkish Quapukulu
Muslim factions' Late Bodyguard
Egyptian Royal Mamluks

Note that Norse War Clergy and Huscarls are honorary members of this category, since they don't have secondary weapons.

The margin with the conservative figure of "3" is so close on Gothic Knights, English Knights, German Imperial Knights, Mercenary German Knights and Teutonic Knights that Alt-Charging should get serious consideration against well-armored targets, at least until somebody with experience about this comments otherwise.

[Shahed]

Have'nt got M2 installed at the moment, or I would test it. You'd have to run a test e.g Armored Swordsmen vs Druzhina, just walk them in and see what happens. This would have to be performed against S&S, pikes, 2Hs and spears.

[Doug-Thompson]

You can't just walk them, though. You need a charge because the secondary weapon gets a charge bonus too.

[Shahed]

Sorry, I always say walk in when I mean don't lance charge.

[andrewt]

Just curious, what pushed Christian Guard to the top of the list. I've yet to get these in my Moors campaign but I've always thought of them as same price but a bit inferior to the order knights. I don't have the stats with me atm, though, so my recollection could be wrong.

That list just made me sadder that I got Qapaluku and Janissary musketeers too late in my Turkish campaign. I pretty much owned Egypt and Byzantine with Sipahis and crap. I finished Byzantines off with Janissary heavy infantry and Hashishim. I was mostly cleaning up when I got the Qapakulu and Janissary muskets and I only got to field a few of them in battle.