useless Lancers

[Frederick]

Playing as France. I have always heard that in a charge, Lancers are more powerful than chivalric knights, since they have a greater mass. They lack shield, but their advanced plate should have compensated. On a battlefield, they just looked awesome. Now, I should test it out myself.

I put a chivalric knight and lancer side by side on a battlefield. Danish peasant archers are shooting on my infantry. It's time for me to release the cream of French chivalry.

Lancers had the honour to be the vanguard. They cantered, then charged into a Danish peasant archer unit. To my astonishment, one volley from the peasant archer shot down 1/5 of my lancers unit, when they did not even have armour piercing capability. I lose even 2/5 of my lancers in the melee. My charge had eliminated 10 peasant archer. What happened to my charge? It was on a flat plain, and the charge was fine. I did it again with chivalric knight, and not one was killed.

I decided to do a 2nd test. In front of my lancers a few hundred metres away was an English dismounted Feudal knights. I charged. The furious thing was that the charge only eliminated half the feudal knights, while the survivors hacked my calvary and was routed. I did the same for chivalric knights, and the charge had eliminated 4/5 of it without any loss.

I think the lancers are crap of **** when a mailed knight unit could have performed much admirably considering their preposterous equipment.

[Lusted]

You sure your using them right, and never ever EVER leave Lancers in prolonged melee, they should be used to charge, withdraw, charge, withdraw, inflicting mass casualties each time they charge.

[kelvintyk]

Perhaps due to the armoured horse, they are slower?

[Frederick]

I have used them correctly. First, i lined them far away, double rank. Second, I click on the enemy unit once, allowing them to move slowly. Then, I click on the "run" button, and they will move very fast. Then I double click on the enmy and it will charge. I charge very fast, but I find something very annoying. Their line was never straight, though I appreciated the difficulty of horsemen charging in a straight line. I charged them across the plain , which means they were undisturbed or unhindered by geography.

However, I did notice that Lancers could not be as effective due to the speed. The lancers were not fast enough, hence gained not enough momentum. For mailed knights, their charge was always very effective because they strike hard and fast.

[kelvintyk]

There! I was right, they are slow, thats the reason. But their charge, if it hits home can cause some havoc!

[Frederick]

The problem is when they hit home, they are clumsy. Sometimes, for some reasons, they just stopped in front of the enemy with their lances??? and refuse to charge the enemy.

Sometimes, their home charge killed a few people while swordsman hacked them into pieces.

[kelvintyk]

Are you using patch 1.2? I didn't have that much trouble with cavalry now.

[Frederick]

I use patch 1.2 with LTC mod v2

[kelvintyk]

LTC mod? Well then this would best be in the LTC's forums. Since its lusted's mod, he would know it best.

[Lusted]

Indeed moved to the LTC sub forum.

Your frontally charging with Lancers in my mod? Are you mad? You'd have to be amd to charge any cav unit frontally into infantry unless it was say Gothic Knights or Lancers against peasants. Cav in my mod are designed for use as the hammer in hammer and anvil stlye tactics, and should be sued to deliver a crippling flanking or rear charge. In those circumstances Lancers are one fot he best cav units in the game.

[Gaba]

Your frontally charging with Lancers in my mod? Are you mad? You'd have to be amd to charge any cav unit frontally into infantry unless it was say Gothic Knights or Lancers against peasants. Cav in my mod are designed for use as the hammer in hammer and anvil stlye tactics, and should be sued to deliver a crippling flanking or rear charge. In those circumstances Lancers are one fot he best cav units in the game.

I usually charge frontally with heavy cavalry - thats what they are for. Sure they do less damage than in the vanilla version, and die a bit faster, but they perform really well against non-spear units, and even against lower tier spear units. But you can't let them bogged down in melee.

[Lusted]

I usually charge frontally with heavy cavalry - thats what they are for.

Not in LTC. In LTC i've gone for the kind of balance there was in the original MTW, where cav were mainly for flanknig and rear charges, and frontal charges resulted in big losses for the cav.

[Daovonnaex]

Frederick, I've seen this debate before. While you are certainly correct--heavy cavalry should be able to destroy non-spear infantry, I don't think Lusted or any of the other major modders want to introduce this into their mods the way a lot of the major mods for Rome did.

[Ludicus]

I usually charge frontally with heavy cavalry - thats what they are for.

They were military disasters in Agincourt,Crecy,Aljubarrota.
Provide me a link or information about the number of famous shock attacks in the medieval times in Europe;they were few.
For most of european history, cavalry was almost nothing more than mounted infantry, including knights.Only for a short period in medieval european history, the mounted charge was more dominant than fighting on foot.

[Daovonnaex]

They were military disasters in Agincourt,Crecy,Aljubarrota.

These battles consisted of heavy cavalry charging over prepared earthwork to break up their formations (pits, ditches, and spikes), longbowmen to reign death and destruction on them for quite a long time, and when (and if) they finally reached the front lines, they arrived few in number and one at a time.

What do you think would happen if heavy cavalry charged non-spear infantry on regular terrain? The infantry would break very rapidly. All of the notable victories of infantry over heavy cavalry involve either the use of terrain, spears, and/or missiles.

[Sonny WiFiHr]

Vanilla H cav is to powerfull I agree with that, but here is damn useless (Lusted give H cav a chance! ).
My solution for that : use horse archers they are 5 times more powerfull.Go to crusade take Jerusalem buy horse archers .Come back and kill H cav as you like they can't catch you and they can't resist arrows not even from lowest H A.

[Lusted]

What do you think would happen if heavy cavalry charged non-spear infantry on regular terrain?

Well at a battle in Italy against Sicily the Sicilian infantry held their ground against the cav and resisted the cav charges.

Vanilla H cav is to powerfull I agree with that, but here is damn useless (Lusted give H cav a chance! ).

Charge them into the rear or flanks and tell me their useless.

[Sonny WiFiHr]

For that I dont need H cav.I use HA or some other cheaper foot unit.Ha dont even have to charge they kill them from range.On VH/VH resources are limited why waste money on H cav ? They are expensive and they hold ground agains peasant ? No I rather buy some archers because they can hndle most swordsman same as cav and they can hurt spearman (cav can't).If the H Cav is just a bit stronger (not like vanilla) it would change everything.Chivalric knights should beat at least spear militia.This balance I would like.Give some juice to the knights

BTW chivalric knights have same charge as lancers.

[Sonny WiFiHr]

To ImKyleJames

It is not poroblem to flank this is common knowlege.It is problem when I see my knights so weak and I'm tired of flanking . If AI have better H cav my flanking moves should be limited because I will have to guard my line.Now is to easy to kill AI cav, flank them and win with so little loses.Even with holibar you can do it and win heroic victory.

[ImKyleJames]

I like using calvary a bit, and I have a few notions on how to use them. How I do it, at least, is:

They sit far behind my lines, usually at the far corners. If a unit makes it through my line and attacks my archers they come crashing together to deafeat it, and maybe pull one reserve infantry to fight off the attackers and move my Cav out the way. In Melee, calvary die really fast! 90 vs 15, even with those 15 on horseback means they all deserve to die.

If I'm holding the lines, and can spare a few moments I curl my knights around the outside and ram into their archers/crossbowmen. Against those units it's a slaughter, and I might lose a few knights, but not many.

After the Missle units are running for the hills, I turn my Knights to the back of the forces fighting my lines and charge in behind them. I've found that this, no matter WHAT knights you have, gives you the game almost every time. One thing I wonder, is should I play with Morale off? I know it's wierd sounding, but then the enemy will stay and fight longer.