A big thanx and a question about Roman Cavalry

**Shadowwalker** · 11-09-2007, 08:06

Hi there,

I'm new here (you wouldn't have noticed that, right?

), although I use your wisdom (and EB) for quite a few months now. This mod is great!

I tried other mods also (like C:TW or RTR), but this one... you know, what I mean?

But there is something thats really annoying.
[Playing Roman Campaign on M/E ('cause I'm a terrible tactician and don't want to get crushed before 260BC) and with the recommended permanent fixes plus Citymod 3.1.]

In battle all my Cavalry units (Generals unit, Camillan Equites, Campanian Cavalry) are sometimes lazy. Means, if I order them to hunt a routing enemy down, they stop when they reach the enemy unit. Not everytime, but in most cases. (And if the first unit does so once in a battle, all cav will do so for the entire battle.)
If the enemies are not routing, all is fine.
Any ideas what the problem could be?

[It occured in 0.81b also, I remember.]

Btw: please excuse any mistakes in this post (and all eventually following),
I'm no native speaker.

**Long lost Caesar** · 11-09-2007, 08:21

this happens to me sometimes aswell. more often than not the AI seems to be unable to kill a wide spread retreating army, so it just folows one path, regardless whether or not its ACTUALLY killing enemies. just an AI bug i reckon.

**L.C.Cinna** · 11-09-2007, 08:31

Happened to me too but only during sieges when the AI sallies.

**Cheexsta** · 11-09-2007, 08:44

So wait, the cavalry literally just stops ang does back into Idle or Ready mode? Or do they go into Pursuing mode but just trot alongside or just in front of the enemy?

If the former, it could be related to grouping your cavalry together. Make sure they are not assigned to a group - groups are just plain bugged.

If it's the latter, this is usually because cavalry will chase the central point of a fleeing unit and kill anyone in their way. To get around this, get your cavalry to chase a unit that is further away but has fleeing enemies in its path. Alternatively, tell them to move quickly to a point in front of the intended target, and when your cavalry is suitably intermingled with the enemy, attack them. Your cav will probably drop back to the central point, but you will have done a fair amount of damage.

As a general rule as well, I tend to pursue enemy units until there are around 1/4 of their original starting strength. If there are no enemy family members left, such small units tend to count as destroyed at the end of the battle anyway.

**L.C.Cinna** · 11-09-2007, 08:59

Well during the sally bug I mentioned your cavalry will attack the routing unit but stop as soon as they killed one soldier, they simply don't like to hunt down troops fleeing towards a town but this is actually not an EB bug afaik.

**Goth47** · 11-09-2007, 09:01

I have noticed this happen in many RTW games not just EB, I believe it to be a bug in the RTW game engine.
What is happening is that the routing unit is spread over a wide area and the pursuing cavalry unit tends to aim for the middle of the unit. So if they have killed all the enemy in the middle and others are spread far and wide but are retreating in a certain direction then your cavalry will advance in the same direction at the same pace.
What needs to be done is to program RTW to get the pursuing unit to aim either for the first soldier or the last soldier in the routing unit.
Currently i get around this problem by manually moving my pursuing cavalry once i see them slowing down.

Goth

**L.C.Cinna** · 11-09-2007, 09:14

well that's a thing you can solve by directing your cavalry manually but the thing I was talking about is something different...

your troops refuse to kill routing enemies even if they're all on one spot and not spread out. you can even attack them from the front and your cavalry will stop as soon as the 1st soldier they reach is killed, then you can have the whole stack of enemies run through your cavalry and they will not kill a single one and this happens only during sieges when the enemy sallies.

**Shadowwalker** · 11-09-2007, 12:09

Thanks for the quick answers. You're almost as fast as my favorite forum (*too shy to write the link down*

) when it comes to Baldurs Gate or RPG in general.

@L.C. Cinna
Exactly! You're right, it happens only during sallies.

And you described the problem in your 3rd post much better than I've done.

And if you're right too about the AI bug, I'm satisfied, 'cause this would mean, I'm not as dumb as I'm afraid of.

@Cheexsta/Goth47:
Sometimes they're "riding along" the enemy, thats right, but in that cases they're doing damage and killing some of the enemy men (although that takes an eternity...).
I meant, they just stand still when reaching the unit.

**blacksnail** · 11-09-2007, 20:03

Yeah, this is a Vanilla RTW issue. The advice provided by Cheexsta & Goth47 are the workaround.

**Cheexsta** · 11-10-2007, 11:45

I started a Pahlava campaign yesterday for the hell of it, and having pretty much nothing but cavalry means the enemy will sally forth a lot. And now I finally see what the problem is, though it only seems to happen in sally battles. You send cavalry to pursue a fleeing enemy unit; they come into contact (sometimes not even inflicting casualties) and then stop and go back into Idle/Ready mode.

Seems to be a hardcoded issue, the only workaraound I can think of is to move your cavalry beyond the enemy unit so they're intermingled (as I explained above) before ordering the attack. A lot of micromanagement, but it seems to work.

**antisocialmunky** · 11-10-2007, 21:42

Well, in a sally battles, all you have to do is let them come to you until every unit is routing and you win.

**NeoSpartan** · 11-11-2007, 00:08

I always manually control cavarly chasing routing units because i've know of that bug since 09/2005 when I starting playing RTW...so I got no problems.