Quote Originally Posted by Quirinus
Haha, yeah, I remember reading with interest your description of the difficulty and pitfalls of modding (or something like that). But, as previously mentioned in this thread, wouldn't reducing the hit point of the chariots from two to one and increasing their armour turn them into (essentially) just another cavalry unit?


I've never actually seen that in played battles, only in auto-calc results. What causes them to die individually rather than break their necks simultaneously when their cart collapses?
No the chariots are still chariots. They charge through the enemy, knock them flying, kill the occasional troop, get themselves into a mess and need to escape sharp-ish before their massive frame gets hacked to pieces; whereas cavalry tends to charge and immediately destroy a unit, or at least get stuck into a melee. The advantage of extra armour as opposed to hitpoints means they withstand missile fire better and are less likely to be weakened before they engage in melee. Ie: a 4 hitpoint, 0 armour chariot will be utterly destroyed it if it has already been hit a couple of times before it enters combat, whereas a 2hitpoint, 7 armour chariot is considerably more likely to withstand a couple of melee attacks. If I recall (it's been a while), whilst the combat effectiveness seems to be improved a bit, the battle advantage rating for the chariot seems to have declined - which is a good thing as if you pit a unit versus a chariot unit you are incorrectly told the chariot will win by a mile, when in fact it will probably rout before killing anyone.


As to the passenger dying on his own accord, I don't know what causes it. I just performed dozens of tests in a row whereby chariots were pitted against archers and a spear unit, and on one test, as the chariots routed under archer fire, one passenger fell off the back. I'm pretty sure it is possible for this to happen to elephant crews as well. It's possible the crew has their own very small hit-box, or it's random, or I was tripping.