[Submod] Cavalry redone (updated 08/04/14)

[Gaios]

Updated 03/04/14

This is what the mod does:
- Medium and lighter cav got their charge speed increased.
- Cav against cav fights are a lot faster.
- Shock cav got a little buff to their charge power.
- The javeling precursor of cav units got their damage buffed and no longer fly high in the air to fall on their targets, it was realy ugly.
- Elephants got their damage increased.
- All cav units take longer to get tired


Here is the link of the mod:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=240644265


I hope you all enjoy the mod and any feedback is welcome.

[tomFoolery]

A few points about cavalry melee: I think it's good to differentiate between the cavalry types better, but not precisely like that. I really feel that in a one to one cavalry versus cavalry melee fight, sword wielding cav should come out on top against shock cav (by a lot) and spear cav (by a little) and shock cav should come out the worst. Sure, shock cav will do some very impressive damage against anything with their charge but they really should start taking casualties fast when in melee with other cavalry, especially sword wielding cavalry. If I'm sitting on a horse right next to another guy sitting on a horse, the easiest thing to kill someone with is probably all in all going to be a slashing sword and for cavalry the highest effectiveness of a long and pointy spear is for sure from the momentum of a charge. In a melee attack, the majority of the power is from the entirety of the body's movement. A sword is all in all much easier to wield, especially on horseback in close melee against something about as tall as you are (i.e. another guy on a horse), particularly without the full usage of your feet to get momentum into an attack, I would think you can really only make relatively small stabbing motions with a spear via trunk rotation, whereas you have your whole arm to add into sword slashing, so I always thought the key difference between sword and spear cav should be a somewhat higher melee attack and a much higher charge bonus, respectively. Those giant lances/cavalry pikes most shock cavalry have ingame would be extremely unwieldy in plain melee combat (especially against other cavalry) in anything but a charge, and I can't imagine trying to swing that thing around against someone else on a horse right next you with your own horse's head and rear in the way. I've always been a proponent of shock cav having some of the lowest cavalry melee defense (but not necessarily the lowest armor, a la cataphracts, etc, etc). I always thought Napoleon TW was good at differentiating its cavalry types like this. All of this is compounded by the primitive horseback gear of the times, which you could really flail about much on.

On a semi-related note, I also always thought something akin to a rock-paper-scissors system was better for game balance (where everything has its own place), as opposed to a simple tiered list.

Just my 2 denarii.

[Gaios]

The fact is after the charge shock cav(using the big lances) switch to swords as you can see in game, as u said it would be impossible to use the lance without moving, in reality a shock cav would be able to do 2 charges at best and their lances would all be broken or abandoned on enemies corpses and they would have become a meele cav. Even with the changes i did some meele cav is still better in meele against shock cav of the same level but their loses on the charge are so big that they cant recover even being better in meele.

[tomFoolery]

The fact is after the charge shock cav(using the big lances) switch to swords as you can see in game, as u said it would be impossible to use the lance without moving, in reality a shock cav would be able to do 2 charges at best and their lances would all be broken or abandoned on enemies corpses and they would have become a meele cav. Even with the changes i did some meele cav is still better in meele against shock cav of the same level but their loses on the charge are so big that they cant recover even being better in meele.

Oh, I see. I hadn't much noticed that before, as when I'm going in for cav charges and the like, I'm zoomed pretty far out for the sake of micromanaging. If they switch to swords, I understand, and realistically if they did that they'd be dropping the lances, broken by then or not, but unfortunately there's no way for us to so accurately tie unit stats in to things like that. I guess due to that they'll be the king of cavalry mostly for good. I really hope the next TW game's general mechanics and stats are made with a single soldier and the realistic things he does in battle in mind...

Also, how universal between the factions are your changes? I do agree cav archers should not do well at all in melee against much of anything, but with the strong exception of nomadic factions, those cav archers, especially the Saka, should really be able to handle a good close in scrap. I just didn't see a mention of that and wanted to clarify.

[Gaios]

Nomadic archers are basicaly a mix of the best cav archer with meele cav so they should beat meele cav but lose to shock cav of same level, if you compare their stats with dei unchanged u will see that i reduced their meele defence but left their meele atk unchanged so they have a good meele atk and low defence, since they can shot arrows even while in meele the only way to defeat them is killing them fast and that is the reason shock cav is the only cav that beats them.

[tomFoolery]

since they can shot arrows even while in meele

Oh gods, I've witnessed this with some other missile outs and it's nightmarish.

[Gaios]

Oh gods, I've witnessed this with some other missile outs and it's nightmarish.

Yea I tried to solve this problem but even removing the shot while moving(that is not an option) wont remove their ability to shot in meele whitch is completely nonsense, they shot through their on allies and dont hit them, but if they hit horse archers in meele would pretty much be selfsuficient in killing themselves. But with my mod the increase in shield block reduce their effect from the front (they wont completely destroy infantry with frontal charge anymore) and at least something(shock cav) can defeat them now because cataphrath horse archers were unstopable while they still had ammo.

[Jin-]

Nice to see Elephants got their charge speed increased. Always hated when DeI made Elephants and cavalry charge like a little snails without any Inertia

[tomFoolery]

Well, I have it up in my load order(could you provide a non-steam download link?), but I'm currently sitting around in peace time updating all my armies to the Marian reforms. Once war starts up, hopefully I'll have some enemy cav units to deal with for some feedback.

[tomFoolery]

Thus far I've had a bit of experience using numidian cavalry and a bit of expereince fighting against some hellenic shock cavalry and spear melee cavalry. The cav balance seems okay, but slingers are ridiculous death machines. In both battles I played I was able to nearly completely route a force of about a half stack with just my skirmishing force (4 balearic slingers). I don't know if it was just the sheer amount of skirmishers I was using or the particular ones, so I'll try to either play a battle using those slinger with your mod off or play a battle against some enemy coontrolled slingers of some other kind with your mod on and see how things differentiate.

[Gaios]

My alterations to sling damage were realy small i dont think it can make such a diference. alterations:

sling stone damage 13 => 14
sling stone inproved damage 13 => 15
sling stone lead damage 15 => 17

So even with these changes, slings stones from the front should be weaker than normal DeI since majority of infantry got quite a buff to their missile block (bonus to pike units was small because I dont want to make them even more powerful than they already are). But I will make some tests with slingers just in case.

[tomFoolery]

Must have just been the shear concentration of missile fire (4 balearic slingers all firing on a lot of infantry bunched up fairly tightly). It was a small town siege, so my slingers weren't spread out and the AI infantry was squished together in those relatively cramped streets. And also the fact that the AI just sat in place and took all those missiles without a care...

[Gaios]

Must have just been the shear concentration of missile fire (4 balearic slingers all firing on a lot of infantry bunched up fairly tightly). It was a small town siege, so my slingers weren't spread out and the AI infantry was squished together in those relatively cramped streets. And also the fact that the AI just sat in place and took all those missiles without a care...

In this situation the problem is not the slingers damage but the Battle AI, I seriously dont know why CA cant make the AI judge when they should attack the enemies even if they are defending a city, they follow almost always the same pattern with their infantry stoped on the front that wont attack ( the max they will do is switch place with other infantry after taking some damage) with their skirmishers far behind that wont move to confront your and will only fire if u get in their range.

[SD_Man]

How do hoplites fare against heavy Melee-Shock cav? In reality, heavy spear infantry should get bonuses against other infantry but only average against cav, compared to lighter spears.

Light spears should be especially susceptible to shock cav, dying in droves on initial contact, but winning in the long run. Heavy armoured spears should hold firm against shock cav but take a nice beating when up against melee cavalry, but still endup in victory. Heavily armoured hybrid cavalry is another story, expect lots of death, even up against heavy spears.

[Gaios]

Who use meele cav will notice they got huge buffs, what I'm doing is trying to make them an option because if u could choose betwen shock cav and meele u would never choose meele cav, in normal DeI they were just a weaker shock cav, with my nerf to their charge they become even more useless(my buff to their weapon damage wasnt even nearly enough). My intention is for meele cav to be able to fight sword inf destroy skirmishers and loose to spear infantry and shock cav(if they somehow evade the shock cav charge they may be able to win). There is tons of meele cav and I cant test them all so your feedback is welcome.

[Gaios]

Steam mod updated only keeping changes to cav, I will update all feactures of the mod if nessessary when DeI update to 0.85 then there will be a lot of changes to things this mod also changes so somethings may not be necessary anymore. For now I made this lighter version, here is what is still on the mod:
- Shock cav have a better charge now and beat all others cavs.
- Meele cav is stronger in meele but had their charge power reduced.
- Cav Archers had their charge power reduced more than meele cav.
- All cavs got a little speed increase especialy charge speed.
- Cav against cav fights are a lot faster.
- Their strength agaist each other should be shock>meele spear>meele sword>archer if they are of the same level.
- Elephants got their charge power, speed and hp increased

The download here is still the older version.

[Gaios]

Updated with 0.85 for now its only changing cav speed(cav, charriots and elephants) and as a consequence increasing charge damage and a little increase to shock cav mass. Just an explanation for those who dont know, charge damage depend on 3 factors, mass, speed and charge atribute. I may make other changes but i need to do tests to see if they are necessary.

[Gaios]

Update, changes on the first post.

[Gaios]

Updated with 0.85b changes to elephants.

[skysyk]

Hi, have you done adjustments to unit-exhaustion ? In two battles against armenia i noticed that their Cataphract-Generals where exhausted just from slow-horse-walking to the battlefield ?