joke cavalry

[diggy]

I love this mod, I'm playing Scotland on SS 6.2 on very hard/very hard and I've consolidated the Scottish Isles and northern France and they've finally begun to send stacks featuring real (heavy) cavalry once their crusaders returned from a successful sack of the Unholy Roman city. And then I ran into the only complaint that I've had against this mod.

Mailed knights charging into my Highland Nobles and killing 60 of them instantly. With regular highlanders it's more like 100 gone in a flash.

I'm well aware of the mechanics of the game, armor being very important (highlanders coming from blacksmith'd castles), highland nobles having no shields and only 5 armor, mailed knights having a "powerful charge," blah blah, but my problem is that what the charge translates into is 60 mailed knights killing 100 people in 1 attack. I play on the highest video settings and huge scale but I don't think that makes a difference. And in the charge formation not all 60 of the knights utilize their lance--I zoom in on the charge and watch the animations very closely--so really that means about 20 knights can kill 100 highlanders from a full frontal charge, meaning at the end of the charge they've got five guys skewered on their lance. This is a full frontal charge, by the way, I don't allow myself to get flanked while engaged. Luckily I try to fight with my best generals so with at least a 4-star general even highlanders won't rout after losing 2/3 of their men instantly.

Please don't give me advice on how to avoid getting my highlanders charged by mailed knights; I would just like some confirmation that this is how the mod is designed.

I've always enjoyed making full use of my infantry, probably from my love of Rome Total War. It's easy to win with cavalry, but it's more rewarding to successfully pull off infantry tactics (the Portuguese Arquebusiers are my favorite unit, basically light legionnaires!). What these ridiculous charges make me do is go back to cavalry-heavy armies with infantry to 'hold the line' while my cavalry assassinates everything troublesome. Unless my highland nobles are standing still (which they shouldn't be) they're always at risk of getting slaughtered by the most barbaric and low-brow tactic of all: the full frontal cavalry charge. There's nothing Scottish about that.

When I read what SS changed vis-a-vis the vanilla game and saw that it included "stronger cavalry" I thought "oh wow cavalry was already God" and now I see that they weren't lying. Again, that's my only beef. Overall it's a huge improvement over the original game.

Also, the for some reason the full frontal cavalry charge doesn't work the same miracles for me as it does for the AI. But that's a good thing. If that garbage did win me battles I wouldn't be writing this, but uninstalling Stainless Steel.

[Caesar Clivus]

Cavalry charges in SS are more powerful but they are weaker in melee. If cavalry get bogged down in melee, they are at a disadvantage. But if you face a charge with non-spear infantry (which you did with Highland nobles), then yes, there will be carnage.

[alwt1991]

it maybe too powerful for the mailed knights,but if it had been the gendarme or similar level knights,killing the whole unit of scot noble in a charge does make some sense
BTW,isn't scot famous for their pike?Just hold the line with pike and nobles at the back.

[JorisofHolland]

Pikes aren't available early on. The first unit is probably the a Highland Pikeman, and that takes pretty advanced buildings.

Cavalry should be powerfull, in Medieval times nothing could stand a charge of cavalry so why should it be possible in SS?

[Massive_attack]

Cav is perfect in SS. Its strong enough to dominate the field, but vulnerable enough to not only defeat, but to be dealt a stinging loss with.

As people have said, polearms such as pikes are effective against cavalry. As you playing as scotland (or ireland, i cant recall now) you will get those pike units quite early on, considerably moreso than most other factions. so use them to your advantage. Also, never have non spear troops form the front line of your forces except for the skirmisher line. Instead, keep units such as the highlanders and highland nobles back in reserve, in the second line. Spearmen, oddly enough, can absorb a good cavalry charge and fight it back provided they can take it, and there relatively low cost and ease of replacement makes them good for taking the bite out of a cavalry charge. Another solution is to give the enemy there own medicine. using cavalry troops of your own is a great way of taking out opposing horse elements. Just pick out an enemy unit, send a few heavy cavalry, and fight it out untill the opposition routs. Rinse and repeat for the remaining cavalry enemies.

I guess what im saying here is to use more of a cosmopolitan army, just take many different kinds of units, and try to make a nice balanced synthesis of spears, heavy infantry reserves, cavalry, and some archers. Combined arms tactics will win you the day !

[JorisofHolland]

As people have said, polearms such as pikes are effective against cavalry. As you playing as scotland (or ireland, i cant recall now) you will get those pike units quite early on, considerably moreso than most other factions. so use them to your advantage. Also, never have non spear troops form the front line of your forces except for the skirmisher line. Instead, keep units such as the highlanders and highland nobles back in reserve, in the second line. Spearmen, oddly enough, can absorb a good cavalry charge and fight it back provided they can take it, and there relatively low cost and ease of replacement makes them good for taking the bite out of a cavalry charge. Another solution is to give the enemy there own medicine. using cavalry troops of your own is a great way of taking out opposing horse elements. Just pick out an enemy unit, send a few heavy cavalry, and fight it out untill the opposition routs. Rinse and repeat for the remaining cavalry enemies.

Scotland has no really heavy cavalry.

I guess what im saying here is to use more of a cosmopolitan army, just take many different kinds of units, and try to make a nice balanced synthesis of spears, heavy infantry reserves, cavalry, and some archers. Combined arms tactics will win you the day !

He wasn't asking for help, actually.

[Ichon]

Yes... non spear troops will suffer devastating charges vs any heavy cavalry. Even light cavalry can mess them up but at least after the charge is over the remnants can kill the light cav which won't happen vs the heavy cavalry.

Even spear units can lose 50-80 men in the first few seconds of a charge but since they are typically larger than most other units they can still fight a bit and then the cavalry are stuck in melee and another infantry unit can run in from the rear and mostly wipe out that heavy cavalry.

Don't expect to be able to use 1 vs 1 infantry unit to defeat heavy cavalry in most situations. Only in cities or bridges can you get basic spear unit to wipe out heavy cavalry, I wish it worked like that in forests too but I think heavy cavalry are still quite powerful in forests. For a strong heavy cav you will need at least 2 v 1 until you have the pike units. The real challenge is being able to manage that and still defeat the rest of the enemies unit... I find if both armies are full stacks I can manage 4 enemy heavy cav with just infantry. That means I have 8 units dedicated vs the heavy cav and 12 units to defeat the other 16 enemy unit although my general typically switches back and forth to wherever he can do the most damage and suffer small losses.

The most frustrating battles are the ones where you have mostly infantry and the enemy stack has 6 or more heavy cavalry. It's rare you will get into a battle like that but I've had a few battles where the enemy stack was near a city and had 5 HC and inside the city were 2 generals and 1 HC... nothing you can do as 8 charging HC rout your front line almost instantly. Best I managed is waiting on high ground and managing to completely kill 3 of the HC and retreat about 50% of my army. I try not to travel without spies so I don't get into such bad situations.

[Gogolometro]

Proposal, Imagine a 300 kilos horse, plus 100 kilos man, plus 100 kilos armor, at 3 meters high, at speed of 70 km/h and a guy, waiting almost dead of fear this tank to come to him. Imagine de results.
All suggest you to use a spear unit or polearm, two handed unit to counter this ugly treat. At start of an early campaign my generals are killers of infantry. In front of my kaiser only swiss pike can hold the line.
Suggestions what probably none said to you.
-Use terain, when I say terrain not necesary high ground only, search for trences, ravines, holes in land. Forrests make cavalry charges less damage. Deploy infantry in rocky places, this affect charge hard.
-Use skirmish, missle infantry. To kill general/mailed/norman cavalry use some javelins. Even peasent xbows work. Even a poor peasent archer help you.
-Never deploy a sword unit 1v1 or similar versus cavalry, I mean any cavalry. A super ligh cavalry will crush any nonspear infantry in 1v1. Thats medieval time and mounted knight is the VIP.
-Last, upgrade to Point Blank Real Recruitment submod, were charges are very well modeled by many factors.

[bɑne]

What a nice and completly unnecessary comparison...

[StupidAlarmClockGuy]

I've always wondered why cavalry seems to die when it slams into an enemy from behind when charging, since none of the units actually get attacked doing that and crush all the enemies they hit.

But yes, cavalry during the Middle Ages was dominant, even after the wide-scale distribution of early firearms, which were often too weak or too slow to reload to be dangerous to properly coordinated heavy cavalry (and archers, should the enemy troops be organized with a tercio).

[JorisofHolland]

I've always wondered why cavalry seems to die when it slams into an enemy from behind when charging, since none of the units actually get attacked doing that and crush all the enemies they hit.

Pikemen are 'immune' to cavalry backstabs, the last line will turn around to face your cavalry and, most likely, kill them. For other units, it's probably a bug. Just like cataphracts backstabbing hoplites dying back in Rome.

[StupidAlarmClockGuy]

Pikemen are 'immune' to cavalry backstabs, the last line will turn around to face your cavalry and, most likely, kill them. For other units, it's probably a bug. Just like cataphracts backstabbing hoplites dying back in Rome.

Yeah, and it happens to most types of units, not just against pikes and other polearmed units. Like knights will backstab engaged swordsmen, and a few of them will drop instantly (not even attacked by anything). But for some reason it seems to occur more often as the enemy unit's defense increases, even when it's just defense skill and they're not wearing armor.

[vpmedia]

those weren't average horses:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destrier

[meese]

You mean they won't typically kill as many as a good heavy cavalry unit. Even highlanders are more useful than chivalric knights against a pike army, let alone swiss halberdiers.

[Gogolometro]

Any swiss army sended to chace routers sounds very wrong. Their job is to make any forced assault and frontal atack to fail. About atacking swiss with chilvaric knights, mounted ones are a foulish action, foot one are not armed well to crush armor. That why a weak but axe wielder highlanders will be effective.
I suggest versus swiss armys xbows, bows and javelins only. Keep distance. Any other system is wrong and eat hard your forces. That because the swiss rebels appear 200-300 before your pikes.
The easiest and perfect way to win versus swiss is to use a nice and well developed diplomat. A swiss unit in early era can make wonders. Sadly only France and HRE are successfull to recruit them.

[NewUser]

Why wouldn't anyone run away from a horse that you know is very heavy and the people on it heavy as well coming at you like a truck? I know I would run away, at least not really brace for it well enough to stop it from killing me. When a horse rams into formation it doesn't immediately kill people, they just get knocked on their back and probably hit their head or their helmet would do some damage to the brain, effectively ending any usefulness of them in the current battle. Also to why early spear units can be decimated by frontal charges is because of their formation; they stand not like professional troops shoulder to shoulder, but more like confined in a personal bubble, afraid to stand together because of claustrophobia or something. This gave room for the cavalry to really charge in and blow to apart, plus their spears are pretty short. I think HC is pretty balanced, except for a little more upkeep cost would end the complaints.