Why won't they charge?

**^Gr8^Xander** · July 05, 2007, 02:35 AM

Hi there,

yet again I'm stuck with a new problem...
Sometimes, when I'm fighting a major battle, I let my cavalry charge the enemy's archers/skirmishers. Since horses have a very good charge bonus in SPQRmod [around 50-60] they will make a very lot of casualties when charging the enemy line of skirmishers.
But they won't! Sometimes they do put their spears down and run into the line only causing a low amount of charge-damage.
And in other cases they just run into enemies, not even with their spears down.

Has it something to do with the distance they need for charging?
Like when they have just charged a unit, and then have to charge another unit, closer then their charge-distance?

Grtz, Xander

**Primvs Sextvs Loverlord** · July 05, 2007, 05:12 AM

It's one of the bugs of the Total War engine. While sometimes they charge, get right next to the enemy and then slow down and go into melee, during other times, they just stand there if they're too close.

I'd recommend pulling your cavalry well away from a target before charging it.

**unfortunate crow** · July 05, 2007, 11:09 AM

Even light cav shouldn't need to charge to rout skirmishers...

The cav need to be in formation before they charge in order to get a proper charge bonus.

**micromegas** · July 06, 2007, 09:58 AM

This is a related question and instead of starting a new thread I thought I would ask here.
Is there any way to get your melee units to charge instead of firing their arrows. For example I want my Armenian cataphract archers to charge, before they empty their arrows, but I just can't get them to do this?

Thanks in advance for any help.