Mass of horsies in EB

[Woreczko]

Hi!

What is the reason for EB horses to be so lightweigh? In vanilla horses weighted around 5-7 (of err... something), while in EB their mass is around 2-3. It makes cavalry charges rather ineffective in disrupting infantry formation, as pedites have more or less the same weight, as in vanilla, ie: 0.8-1.5

[Senatus Populusque Romanus]

- That way, you can preform more strategies with cavarly.
- Also the charge is effective enough already. Against Roman Italic Allies Elite infantry, or later imperial legions, a medium cavarly unit can kill 30 men at one charge while losing 10 of them.

[TWFanatic]

Just don't use wedge, it's ineffective in EB (especially on bigger unit sizes).

[antisocialmunky]

You just have to use a formed charge. I've seen Iberian lancers kill 3/4s of a unit of Triarii on the first charge and only take 3 casualties on impact.

[Tellos Athenaios]

We've had a discussion about this internally and IIRC basically it boiled down to: give them cavalry low attack + high charge values and you will see them act more as cavalry (i.e. only the very tanks will survive melee) *but* accurate horsie-mass would result in bodies flying all over your screen. So that's why the horse-mass was lowered: to make the cavalry behave.

[Woreczko]

I`m absolutely content with cavalry kill rate in charge and melee, no problem with that. The thing, that bothers me, is that I don`t see those bodies flying. I mean: cavalry charges home, sometimes it kills almost whole 1st line of infantry unit (and sometimes not) and then... just stops, as if it had hit a wall.

One of the very few advantages of Rome over Medieval 1 was IMHO introduction of mass factor. Charging cavalry, even if it didn`t kill a lot of men in the charge, would penetrate into the unit of infantry, disrupting it, sometimes even splitting it in half. It wasn` always beneficial - cav had a harder time disengaging from such a mess. But it looked cool and IMHO realistic. Head on crash with a horse WILL send you flying back, I had a pleasure of experiencing it.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Yeah but the problem with the RTW engine is that the bodies do not always go the right direction. They tend to get magically surged upwards into the sky instead...

[TWFanatic]

So? The angle is off a few degrees, big deal. Cavalry should have more power to split a formation and drive through it (particularly in a wedge) which theoretically can be achieved through raising their mass.

I'm going to test this.

[Charge]

Just for fun, set elephant mass to 70 and see what heppens :)

[fenix3279]

Just for fun, set elephant mass to 70 and see what heppens :)

You'd think a warhead had just gone off.

[Maksimus]

I`m absolutely content with cavalry kill rate in charge and melee, no problem with that. The thing, that bothers me, is that I don`t see those bodies flying. I mean: cavalry charges home, sometimes it kills almost whole 1st line of infantry unit (and sometimes not) and then... just stops, as if it had hit a wall.

One of the very few advantages of Rome over Medieval 1 was IMHO introduction of mass factor. Charging cavalry, even if it didn`t kill a lot of men in the charge, would penetrate into the unit of infantry, disrupting it, sometimes even splitting it in half. It wasn` always beneficial - cav had a harder time disengaging from such a mess. But it looked cool and IMHO realistic. Head on crash with a horse WILL send you flying back, I had a pleasure of experiencing it.

I somewhat agree on this.. it is very unlikely that heavy or medium cavalry would clear just the first line of some (in my cases low-end) infantry and than stop's like it the wall there.. And then they get slaughtered by the same infantry even if you swich weapon's and try to run away.. For me, cavalry is underpowered anyway's .. I was reading some diadochoi battle's description's recently and I am sure that the cavlry in EB (specially hellenic and Stepe) could have +10 to +20% of general strength - that would not hurt the balance much

[antisocialmunky]

Except RTW and M2TW doesn't have a true physics system so all this stuff is sorta not right. Gameplay wise, I think cavalry is pretty good though I would like to see some conservation of momentum.

IE. Get a Havok lisense CA!

[NeoSpartan]

funny that u guys mention cavarly charging though infantry and sending the several men stacked deep flying.....

one of the things Vanilla got all wrong is for cavarly to just charge head on to heavy infantry and kill 1/3 of the unit. Now thats just silly

Besides:
-Cavarly in EB's time did not have stirups so its very easy for a rider to fall off after a charge.
-Horses rarely (if ever) charge a tight-even line of men with pointy things (like hoplites). If there are holes and gaps in the formation then it is easier for the horse to charge. Its all in the animals mind why it charges or not.
-Cavarly already has a high mass value, they will push around all but the heaviest of infantry.
-Once a charge is stopped the cavarly becomes an easy kill for infantry, unless the horses are heavily armored and mantain a tight formation (thus keeping infantry from getting to the sides)
-Heavy cavarly, like Hetareoi (sp) and Cataphract (sp) already play out like the cavalry you guys are talking about. High mass, big charge, lots of regular infantry dead, hard to kill in melee, etc...



So I don't know what u guys are talking about???.....
What u want Equites and Louge Epos to behave like a Cataphract (sp)????

[antisocialmunky]

I just want the cavalry to hit the first line and stop. It looks funny since they stop all of a sudden and a bunch of dudes fall dead and the laws of physics go WTH!?!