Casse campaign report (long)

[Nightmare]

So another chariot story. So I'm rolling through puke gr... I mean Averni (heh) like a hot knife through butter, with 3 separate stacks taking cities at once. At any rate, my swordsmen stack, together with my faction leader, attacks one of his cities. I get inside and kick his butt all the way back to his little city square area. He has almost nothing left by this point - literally a unit of naked gallic swordsmen (forget their actual name, but you know what I'm talking about). I purposefully and neatly line up all my units in rows completely surrounding him. About 7 or 8 units of fully-topped up belgae swordsmen in the front, the same number of southern gallics on the side, and a bunch of stuff at his rear, along with my faction leader who has 30 - count them 30 - men in his unit (normal unit sizes). I give the order for everything to charge in and attack all at once, and everything does. I'm thinking "this is gonna be a slaughter, haha!" and as soon as my chariots his naked guys - from behind no less - with everything else colliding from the front and sides at the same time, I get the mini-cinematic of my faction leader going down, then get the message that he's killed. There's still 30 men in his unit of chariots, but he's dead. I just laughed and shook my head.

I don't care what anyone says, they are one of the worst-designed units in the game. If the game was full of esoteric units that were hard-countered in many situations but did good when severely micromanaged just right, it would be par for the course. But the game isn't full of units like that - it seems this is the only one, or one of the only ones.

[d'Arthez]

Now you are complaining that skirmisher cavalry cannot do the job of cataphracts. Chariot units are not meant to engage in city skirmishes, and certainly not against Gaesatae, which are very powerful warriors (they eat elites for breakfast), but very susceptible to missile fire.

[Ca Putt]

they actually are Elites, check their price^^

And one does not even charge (barbarian) town squares with cataphracts, unless you are really desperate and don't have ANYTHING else^^

[Nightmare]

Now you are complaining that skirmisher cavalry cannot do the job of cataphracts. Chariot units are not meant to engage in city skirmishes, and certainly not against Gaesatae, which are very powerful warriors (they eat elites for breakfast), but very susceptible to missile fire.

Look, disagree with my position all you want, just do it substantively.

1. I'm not complaining that skirmisher cavalry cannot do the job of cataphracts. It isn't a cahaphract's job to charge full force into the back of an utterly defeated, outnumbered 100-1 enemy, while at the same time a thousand heavy infantry are charging from the front and sides. A cataphract can charge into the front of a non-defeated, non-outnumbered enemy, comprehende?

2. Don't tell me that a chariot cannot charge into the back of an enemy unit in a city. In fact, my chariot did just that. The horn blew, I checked the chariot, and it said "charging" the whole way. Then it crashed into the back of the enemy unit and my general flew off his chariot. There is no magic code inserted into the game preventing chariots from doing just that. Now, is it sometimes quite difficult to get them to do it? Sure it is, and it's difficult to get other units to behave in cities too. That's why I almost always leave my chariots outside the walls nowadays. But this was a different circumstance. There was ONE ENEMY UNIT LEFT. And it was totally surrounded and defeated.

I didn't boo-hoo and complain that I tried to charge my chariot but it went the long way around the stupid town square, couldn't get a charge off, meanwhile the enemy is hacking away at it, and then my general died. If I had said that, I could see why you wrote what you wrote. I didn't say that. The charge went off perfectly. In fact, all charges from all directions went off perfectly, which usually doesn't happen.

3. I don't care how powerful the naked swordsmen are, they can't pull the trick of killing a chariot with their bare backs the instant the chariot crashes into those bare backs. They aren't supermen. This had nothing to do with those naked swordsmen, it had everything to do with chariots and how they are balanced.

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

This can also happen with cavalry generals too. Sometimes the general just flies off his horse in a charge. Its rare but on occasion it happens. It happens to other men in the unit too (you'll especially notice it with lighter charge cavalry like Numidians or Arabians) but it is just rarer with the general because of his multiple HP. And I would go ahead and say it is even more likely with multiple HP units who receive the charge like Gaesatae, since they won't immediately die and need another rank of horses to hit them if they aren't already reduced to 1 HP.

[PelicanMan]

lol
sorry. That's just crappy luck.

Still one of the best units in the game.

THE P-MAN

[d'Arthez]

By the way, how would you charge at anything when you claim it is already being engaged from 4 sides? Especially something as unwieldly as a chariot? Racing with one through town is tricky enough, try doing that with thirty without getting in any accidents whatsoever? But of course they can, and they will never have any accident, because you desire it so, and thus it shall be.

Just edit the EDU to give your units god mode. You simply cannot be pleased

ETA:
There are some serious bugs in RTW. Solving one problem will only create other problems, and as such it is a matter of finding a satisfactory balance. Some units will be underpowered as a result, others overpowered, often dependent on the circumstances offered by the battlefield.

If you had bothered to check the Gaesatae have 2 hitpoints, meaning that any charge against them is far less effective.

[Stark]

I played vanilla RTW recently, and my cavalry charged at the backs of militia hoplite unit (all of them facing the other side). At the moment of impact a dosen of my cavalrymen died, without anyone ever attacking them. That was fully patched up, vanilla Rome. That game is seriously retarded. EB just has some minor hickups (which are impossible to repair due to hardcoded engine).

[athanaric]

So another chariot story. So I'm rolling through puke gr... I mean Averni (heh) like a hot knife through butter, with 3 separate stacks taking cities at once. At any rate, my swordsmen stack, together with my faction leader, attacks one of his cities. I get inside and kick his butt all the way back to his little city square area. He has almost nothing left by this point - literally a unit of naked gallic swordsmen (forget their actual name, but you know what I'm talking about). .

Some points:

1 - I don't know if you prefer to play in a more historically accurate or in a fun fashion, but making stacks of only one type of unit (plus FMs) isn't really accurate. Especially if it's swordsmen (quality longswords were - and still are - expensive). IMO you should have mixed stacks based on an infantry line made up of spearmen (preferrably Gaelaiche if you fight in Gaul - they are the most reliable regular spearmen for Celtic factions, and retrainable in all of Gaul). Shortswordsmen are also pretty historically accurate core units, but weaker than spearmen. Also, at least one unit of Teceitos and either slingers or archers each. Belgae units are also useful, as you've already discovered.

2 - Cavalry is only useful against Gaisatoi when on an open battlefield. Even my customized, toned down version of them (I reduced their HP to one, like for every other infantry unit) can take care of most melee units. Moreso if they are "unroutable" due to standing on the town square. I'm afraid you have to use missiles, and swords after that (axes are less efficient in this case because there is, obviously, no armour to crack).

3 - When assaulting an Eleutheroi Belgian (or British?) town, I once killed an entire unit of chariots with one unit of Milnaht - without losing one man. This might help to reinforce my point that chariots are useless in static melee - and unfortunately, the engine bugs city fights in such a way that charges count as melee (due to being executed as such).

[Nightmare]

I don't know if you prefer to play in a more historically accurate or in a fun fashion, but making stacks of only one type of unit (plus FMs) isn't really accurate.

Thanks for the tip, it is much appreciated. But in fact I don't like to play in a historically accurate fashion; otherwise the game might as well just be a video where I don't even participate, and where it just shows me what happened. I already know what happened - Rome eventually won and killed everyone and everything else.

I like to change history. I like to be better, in generalship, in strategy, etc. than whoever or whatever it was that came before me. And I play to win, meaning use whatever units, tactics, and strategies are available to get me the victory. Which is leading me to something that seems somewhat disturbing. It seems all I need to win the game easily and cost-effectively is stacks of slingers :-( which I'm starting to build and just utterly dominate with. But I guess that's another thread for another day.

EDIT: Re-reading that, it came off sounding... not like I wanted it to sound. I respect the way you play. It sounds fun. Perhaps I'll give it a try sometime.

In truth, I've actually played this particular campaign a good bit as you described, not because I wanted to or intended to, but simply because I couldn't build much else except low tier units. The enemy would send swordsmen stacks at me, I'd throw skirmishers and spears back at him out of necessity. Most recently I've been able to build swordsmen stacks of decent quality, but again that's a recent development.