City Fighting with Cavalry....unrealistic?

[Fireright]

Any players regard invading cities/towns and fighting in the town centre with cavalry as unrealistic and silly?

The first thing a threatened town would do historically was throw up earthworks/barricades and sling ropes and chains across town streets to keep horsey stuff out. Horse archers in city streets in particular looks extremely unrealistic and very silly.

House rule here is only invade/assault cities with infantry and siegy stuff, and leave the cavalry for fighting open field battles.

[HanatielHawk]

So what's your point?

[roam]

*cough*Parthia*cough*

Look here Parthia cannot win a battle without its cav, it may be unrealistic but so is screeching women, mass wardogs etc. Its is simply for gameplay purposes.

Maybe what you said is true but if that happens and you need to take a city quickly as Parthia, your screwed. You try sending easters and hillmen and against even militia hops and levy pike=slaughter.

[Fireright]

So what's your point?

Heheheh..yer cheeky rascal

I kinda regard horse archers mincing around town and city streets as unrealistic...firing off arrows when there's stuff like buildings and walls around is...silly.

Wondering if other players feel the same and have their own 'house rule' of infantry only for city fighting?

[Chris Death]

Besieging till the end as option a
and for the case roam described, besieging it with a single
unit and placing the main stack right beside as reinforcement.

Might not work always and anytime, but sometimes does work.

And as an option c there are those mercenaries. Building up
a "take the town" army with mercenaries and everything else
with the partian themselves.

~S~ CD

[Fireright]

And as an option c there are those mercenaries. Building up
a "take the town" army with mercenaries and everything else
with the partian themselves.

That would be the most 'realistic' option in my opinion if playing with horsey factions Construct a purpose-built infantry army with plenty of mercs and get stuck in on foot.

Horsey factions tend to be a doddle on campaign anyway, and its easy peasy to exploit the AI in field battles with cowardly horse archers.

[Ciisar]

This is not unrealistic. Cavalry fight on the streets by hunting the enemy on street.

[SirDestroyer]

I find them useful in sieges for chasing the routers before they get to the center.

[Chris Death]

Ciisar and SirDestroyer - i think the OP didn't mean that for cavalry in general but for
factions which has their main power in cavalry and not in infantry.

To be able to chase the routers you need to make them rout somehow before.

~S~ CD

[Hakomar]

Street battles are generally unrealistic.
You would either be able to obliterate or obliterated any field armies, and starve them to death or surrender.

[Fireright]

Street battles are generally unrealistic.
You would either be able to obliterate or obliterated any field armies, and starve them to death or surrender.

Aye, kinda have similar thoughts..clobber the field army and they surrender/agree peace terms and accept their feeble life as vanquished scum.

As a gameplay mechanic though, I guess it 'has to be done'.

Shedload of horse archers whizzing around towns firing arrows off though looks ridiculous.

[roam]

As we are discussing realism, i think it is a good time to point out that this is a game in the end it was made for profit so it needs to appeal to the crowds.

Furthermore i have several other 'unrealistic' things in RTW i would like to point out.

-Wardogs, you would never get massed forces of these in rl.
-Rome&factions, rome was never split into 4 factions as it is in the game, and it was not families but rather one person who would be vying for power. You hear about Julius Caesar and Emperor Caligula and Cornelius Sulla....not the Laevinius's, the Brutii's etc.
-Druids, I have been told that these guys did not join the armies and go chanting and fighting like that...something i don't find so hard to believe
-Screeching women, same as above
-Artillery, onagers were not towering creations that obliterated everything, as in RTW. This was somehting else i was told about, again makes sense.
-Roman Cav, was not the best in the world. There is a reason why the Romans relied on allied cav, because theres was quite frankly poor...and yet here we have them portrayed as the best! In RL the best cav in the west was that of Carthage....
-Scythians, they were not scythians they were Sarmations.
-Barbarian walls...why can't the barbarian factions build stone walls? They could in rl, you hear of stone forts in Brittania and i was led to believe Gergovia(might be wrong here) had a stone wall.
-Head Hurlers, not sure about this but come on...
-Carthaginian missile support, i don't have to relate this to rl to pick whole in this-they an mount on archers on eles but can't put them on the ground-ridiculous.
-Simply the names of units-heavy peltasts were actually Thureophoroi(spelt right?)...Bronze shields-chalkaspides(spelling?)...pikemen as a whole-phalangites...Cataphracts-i'm sure its spelt Kataphractoi
-I don't think you can annilate whole armies in one battles when in reality they would ttake say 30% casulaties, perhaps more or less..not sure on this one, and this might be because of the fat that putting 20000 troops in the field is ridiculous

Some of this maybe be wrong and some of this you can argue about, but i think i've made my point.

We are argueing over something here that isn't exactly unrealistic. HA roaming around cities shooting over buildings is unrealisti-shooting at targets in the same street-realistic. Overall, what i am saying is, yeah perhaps cav in streets as you say is unrealistic but to be honest, when you look at the game as a whole it is filled with things that are comepletely unrealistic. We are all so shallow minded that we miss the big picture, when we look at the game from my perspetive, this isn't really that bad and furthermore, it is a game, it is meant to be fun. CA made it so it appealed to the masses and this they accomplished. If you want a more realistic game i suggest downloading a mod, and i recommend RTR or RTR FoE.

In conclusion, perhpas we should stop argueing over something so completely irrelevant. After all, what is the point? Even if we continue, and we everntually come to a conclusion that the majority agree with, nothing is going to change. Therefore i have concluded this is a completely irrelevant discussion, you are merely deciding in your minds not to enjoy RTW as much as you could.

My typing&spelling isn't always brilliant, so i apolgise for any spelling mistakes lol.

[|Sith| Max]

its campaign. unlike MP you can do incredibly low things and get away with it.

[|Sith| Max]

well i feel that if you weaken any faction by taking away its cav even in a city you are being ignorant of the fact that some factions do everything with cav. for campaign u can just get mercs so i understand a bit. its still a teenie weenie bit retarded but not like doing that online. i completely understand dthat people did a no art/ele setup on every ruleset to prevent new ppl from wasting their money, but saying no cav for sieges doesnt rly make sense

[|Sith| Max]

not to mention you have Cataphracts and can thus pretty much wipe out an army with six units.

[|Sith| Max]

Roam i have to agree with you on most things, but i have to correct you on something.
Onagers dont obliterate everything in RTW, they are very inaccurate when it comes to units and generally dont do unless you're lucky.
Roman cav in vanilla is far from the best. Cataphracts, Head hunting maidens, chazzies et cetera easily take them down. still i disagree with the game defining chariots as cav. they are a clear class apart. In truth the Praetorian cavalry is thus the 3rd best cav. Cavalrymen like the Cappadocians, Gothics and the SB follow closely behind. still the kind of cavalry you prefer is largely based on how you use them. some tactics require a high charge damage, others a good melee ability.
Scythia did exist, so did Sarmatia. they are two different things though.
The names were translated to english because most people do not speak ancient greek.

[Hakomar]

That is correct Max, I am surprised people do not know the difference between the Scythians and Samartians, The Scythians were the height of power in the days of Persia, but in R:TW's time-frame they were declining in power and the Sarmatians were rising.
Alot of the inaccuracies are smply laziness in CA, there is a Carthaginian Archer and Model that could make a perfectly good archer with five minutes of modding knowledge (Do not use it in MP)
30% is innacurate. Hoplites would of been pretty useless in all that armour at pursuing, but others were not. Often, cavalry has killed the most, the pursuing causes the most damage.
Onagers, whilst good against settlements are innacurate. They are also a bit tall, and the animation is awkward.
Artillery was still useful however, Ballistae and Scorpions are slightly useless in this game.

Anyway, those are some of the innacuracies of the game. I am happy they gave it some modding oppurtunity (Not the crappy AI unfortunately), so the majority of the players could be content with the Egyptians, Hoplites and stereotypical 'Gladiator' barbarians. It works to an extent, apart from hardcoded things, such as the AI.

[|Sith| Max]

I have to say in the long distant past when i was a noobie i used to play other noobs, and i usually used 1 unit of repeating ballistas to target their general.. worked a lot. pissed off a lot of folks heheh. Those where good times.

[Chris Death]

I guess about the Sarmatians/Scythians controversion that CA meant something like this:

The name "Scythian" has also been used to refer to various peoples seen as similar to the Scythians, or who lived anywhere in a vast area covering present-day Ukraine, Russia and Central Asia—known until medieval times as Scythia.

~S~ CD

[roam]

As i said some of those were based on what i have been told. I didn't do any research of my own into it, i assumed they were correct.

On the cav point, i disagree with chariots being near the top. They are very uncontrollable and tbh i would rather have cav ramming into the back of nearby infrantry than chariots. Also i have oriven that if you mass av against them you can destroy them using say prae. However the point was roman cav is overpowered. Scythian cav....i would go for not my favourite-good charge and attack but there defence is what i find lacking.

Onagers-true inacurate but i only ever use them(very occassionally) in a bridge battle, or when i know exact;ly what my opponent is bringing to counteract something(say ele). However against a pure pike army they are murderous. But here your probably right in general.

I'm not really interested in the history of the Steppes, and i was basing it on RTR, where they have Sarmations(i was 1/2 right) not the scythians.

I was guessing at the numbers.