Cavalry charges

[Seleukos I Nikator]

Riddle me this.

Sometimes when my heavy cavalry charge against infantry, they lower their lances perfectly and completely destroy and scatter all before them. All well and good.

However, other times - against infantry that is no more elite (and sometimes alot worse) - my cavalry act like they haven't got a clue, riding up to the infantry, STOPPING POLITELY, and drawing their swords! Sometimes they even just stand around in depressed submission until some peasant rocks up and kills them.



Is this a bug? Can I fix it? (I play with 1.5 or whatever kingdoms updates you to).

Or is it due to the amount of space/ direction or something?

[Korinthos Hoplites]

Always try to start a charge with a reasonable distance.

If your men stop and go with swords in the middle of a charge it's either due to lack of order in their formation, other enemy troops in the way, or a very disorganized target. At least from my experience.

[Lost Crusader]

To perform a successful charge, you have to be at some distance from the target, and the target has to be stationary or moving towards you, along your path. For best impact, keep your cavalry in 2 rows formation, paralel with the target.

The charge will not be successful if your or the AI's unit is scattered, or if the AI is running away from you.

Some people says that it is better to start the charge by walking (single mouse click), but based on my experience it doesn't really matter. I always start the charge with double click (unless ofc the target is very far away), and have cca 90% success rate.

[Old Geezer]

I have even tried to run them through enemy formations to see if this helps, but found that even conquistadors take very heavy losses and cause none. Avoid charging in a path that will make the unit run into a tree or boulder because the unit gets disrupted and may not be back in line at the time of impact.

[kelvintyk]

I have even tried to run them through enemy formations to see if this helps, but found that even conquistadors take very heavy losses and cause none. Avoid charging in a path that will make the unit run into a tree or boulder because the unit gets disrupted and may not be back in line at the time of impact.

Well, trees and rocks are almost everywhere.

[nosjo78]

1. Archers- If your being fired on by archers it will disrupt your charge about 50% of the time.
2. Rocks, trees, and other obsticles can disrupt your charge by messing up your formation.
3. Your formation- If you have just 1 Cavalry unit stuck engaged to an enemy or if its way ahead of the rest of them your charge will be disrupted.
4. Enemy Formation- If the enemy is really spread out and kind of haphazardly all over the place its hard to get a charge to work.
5. Enemy running- If the enemy takes just a few steps back (ie Archers keeping a distance) your charge will fail right when you reach them.

[Lost Crusader]

I have even tried to run them through enemy formations to see if this helps, but found that even conquistadors take very heavy losses and cause none.

They don't get the charge bonus this way, hence the poor results. This will work well against routers, as the cav will run trough the routers causing damage, instead of stopping before impact.

[TheJoker]

I sometimes feel like a sniper in a FPS game when I set up my heavy cavalry.

I generally have them in a convenient position from the start, and walk them calmly into position, faciny their target in double rows. once they stop I have them charge in a straight line directly into the exposed flank of my target. Headshot! Instant kill ;P

Hahaha, basicly, charging with cavalry takes a bit of micro management, but it's worth it, because when they're successful they obliterate their target ;P

[Kahn]

They do indeed obliterate their target.

One piece of advice I read on one of these forums is that if, say you want to charge your calvary into a line, tell them to attack the line directly behind the line you actually want to attack (assuming there is one).

Doing this tends to get your calvary to really punch through and basically obliterate whatever line was in the front. If they don't rout at that point, you must have charged a mountain because heavy calvary owns just about anything with this tactic.

[antaeus]

They do indeed obliterate their target.

One piece of advice I read on one of these forums is that if, say you want to charge your calvary into a line, tell them to attack the line directly behind the line you actually want to attack (assuming there is one).

Doing this tends to get your calvary to really punch through and basically obliterate whatever line was in the front. If they don't rout at that point, you must have charged a mountain because heavy calvary owns just about anything with this tactic.

it works!

warning though...

they have to have a target. you cant just charge them through or they wont lower their lances. it even works if they are already engaged. they will steamroll the forces they are engaged with to get to the next target.

[vonKrysiak]

I have modified my game a little bit: heavy cav 2HP and increased mass, bodyguards 3HP and mroe mass as well. this way knights (and alike) are tough as they used to be and cavalry charge are such devastating that you take heavy loses even if they dont charge the right way.
lets be honest in them times no man could withstand a charge of heavy cav no matter what weapon/armor/training he had. This way I have heavy loses on both sides but 1vs heavy cav is unbeatable!