Improove cavalry

[GueulEclator]

I noticed that cavalry kinda sucks in this game and is clearly underpowered, espicially when you knows that they are supossed to be the ultimate soldier in any medieval like battle (exept against pikes). I even lost against archer on one on one combat.
I have made a lot of research but i did not found a mod or just a text of someone who made an effective improovement of cavalry stats. I did found something on cavalry charge but that does not interrest me. What i would like is cavalry that can be strong in long close combat. This mean that they would be also effective post-charge (cuz right now they charge, do some good damage during charge but then gets owned after 30s if they stay to fight). I understand how to change the stats but i'm afraid of unbalancing the game by making cavalry too strong (i don't know how many points in attack and defense to add in order to make them more effective). I someone ever did this or know someone that did modify the cavalry attack and defense stat (not the charge) please tell me.
thanks

[Pinkie Pie]

Even the best cavalry was at best average in close combat, the addition of a horse just increases the size of the target when standing still.

[GueulEclator]

Hum you should check some battle description of the medieval ages you will see that cavalry was extremly powerfull because it's really difficult to catch a horse or approach it (it took 20 men to be able to put phillipe auguste down his horse at bouvine in medieval time). It gives the knight a lot of mouvement, makes it harder to hit him (because he is higher) and the horse just don't stay passive (it's almost impossible to approach a knight when his horse is furious hand he is making sword slash in every direction,unless you got a long pike). This is why pikemen existed because you a footmen with just a sowrd cant kill a knight.
But i agree that a pikemen can kill a knight relatively easely (exept if the knight is charging because the weight of the knight and his horse is multiplied by his speed so it makes a lot of weight on youre pike and it hard to hold it still in order to impale the knight)

[Pinkie Pie]

Actualy it was difficult to kill a knight because the infantry were closer to levies in that period. 10,000 Knights would be slaughtered in hand to hand combat by 10,000 legions.

[GueulEclator]

Roman legion were actually quite weak. Their power was their organisation wich, i agree, was one of the best in the history. And Medieval time foot soldier were really well equiped and some armies like the english, entirely relied on them in opposition to the french or the spanish that relied a lot more on cavalry.
Medieval foot soldier could be really well equiped, way more than legionnaries.
Although I agree that in small conflict between small lords ( wich were more numerous than full scale war) foot soldier were not even equiped with armor and were only peasant milice.
And 10000 knights would own even 20000 legionnaries. Legionnaries were already owned by the more primitive german and gauls cavalry (the greatest fear of cesar and the other romans)
really just imagine yourself with a small roman sword (glavius i thing) trying to reach an enreaged horse that moove everywere and trample everything, mounted by an enraged elite soldier that gives sword slash everywere around him. there will be a perimeter you can't approach.
And (middle and late) medieval weapons and mastery of the steel was way more advanced than the romans (romans didn't have full body armor).

[Adjudant-Major]

And 100,000 against 100,000 ? Wouldn't you underestimate the carthagian cavalry at Cannae for example ?

I agree with GueulEclator. Untill the perfection of fire arms a good cavalry has always been the most powerful weapon in open field, due to it's maneuvrability, speed and strenght. The addition of a horse, as you like to call it, adds power to the rider's weapon, adds to his view of the situation, adds to his possibility to choose his ennemy, it adds also to the fear he causes to the tiny infantryman... of course, there are effective ways to fight the cavalry and to defeat it, but you need terrain, you need tactics, you need experience, you need luck and you need the appropriate weapons/equipment.

And we are in the Middle-earth, aren't we... the losses the riders of Rohan or knight of Dol Amorth suffer at every engagement with the most average ennemy orcs or uruks in the game are simply not correct. In my game I have risen the defensive stats of all cavalry, and it made it more effective, and they don't get slaughtered as in the vanilla game. Sure... they can't charge a spearwall, but once they charge into the ennemy flanks or rear and the melee follows, they are much more resistant. A broken infantry formation in open field cannot, with possible exceptions of very experienced heavy or special troops, withstand the combat with riders.

[GueulEclator]

And 100,000 against 100,000 ? Wouldn't you underestimate the carthagian cavalry at Cannae for example ?

I agree with GueulEclator. Untill the perfection of fire arms a good cavalry has always been the most powerful weapon in open field, due to it's maneuvrability, speed and strenght. The addition of a horse, as you like to call it, adds power to the rider's weapon, adds to his view of the situation, adds to his possibility to choose his ennemy, it adds also to the fear he causes to the tiny infantryman... of course, there are effective ways to fight the cavalry and to defeat it, but you need terrain, you need tactics, you need experience, you need luck and you need the appropriate weapons/equipment.

And we are in the Middle-earth, aren't we... the losses the riders of Rohan or knight of Dol Amorth suffer at every engagement with the most average ennemy orcs or uruks in the game are simply not correct. In my game I have risen the defensive stats of all cavalry, and it made it more effective, and they don't get slaughtered as in the vanilla game. Sure... they can't charge a spearwall, but once they charge into the ennemy flanks or rear and the melee follows, they are much more resistant. A broken infantry formation in open field cannot, with possible exceptions of very experienced heavy or special troops, withstand the combat with riders.

100 % agree with you man!
Can you tell me how you did this (how many points did you add in defense, did you applied this to every cavalry the same way, does this unbalanced the game oor does this more blance the game)
Please tell me (especially the amount of defense and other stats you added)

[Adjudant-Major]

I basically added 3 to the defensive skill factor of all cavalry units, it's in the EDU, these lines : "stat_pri_armour 4, 2, 3, metal" - changed into "stat_pri_armour 4, 5, 3, metal", respectively for all cavalry troops, with some other minor changes in case of particular cavarly units such as the knights of Dol Amroth, who, in my opinion, should be one of the best cavalry in the game.

I played with these stats for months, and I thaught this change was basically ok and it did not create any false imbalance.

[Guurt]

Be warned that if you do this and then try to play with an evil faction that uses infantry then you will get slaughtered.

I am playing the Orcs of Misty Mountains and I sent 5 orc infantry units up against a single Silvan Elf mounted noble unit and this single mounted unit pretty much annihilated me. It was insane. Their 20 cavalry against my 400+ units...

I eventually won, but could not kill their commander. And my losses were at around 70%+

So personally, it seems to me that cavalry are pretty amazing in vanilla 3.0 and making them even stronger will throw the balance way off.

If my wargs were any stronger the game would simply be too easy. The key is not allowing cavalry to be in combat... they need to be charging.

Just my two cents.

[GueulEclator]

It must depends on the infantery type because i made a lot of simulation on costum battle : Heavy cavalry always gets humiliated against heavy infantery (non spears).
I mean if you just use your cavalry to charge it's not worth paying so much cuz in the end a troops of heavy infantery (non spears) makes more kills in 5 min than a troop of cavalry in 5 min. But cavalry is still more expensive. So you better just buy heavy infantery. Also it's quite unrealistic since cavalry should be (if middle earth really existed) may stronger than infantery non spears (because it is almost impossible to reach a knight on a horse with just a sword (he's mooving everywere, his horse tramples everywere, hes higher in the air and can strike you when you can't, have a beter vision of the surrondings...), that's why spears were invented (because their long enough to kill the knight without having to be near him.

[iffi]

You can see the 'problem' one way or some other.

If you want standing cavalry to exterminate any enemy go and change their stats. Otherwise, detach the unit and re-charge. The latter works wonders.

[GueulEclator]

Also anybody knows how to enable War chariot for the rhun faction. I have seen them in some videos.

[Bungo Baggins]

You can enable them for custom battles by deleting their no_custom_battle attribute in the edu.

But there it a little problem.
They're using Sauron modells (without skin) as crew at the moment.
Replacing Sauron with Rhun archers leads to the archers floating a meter over the actual chariot.

So you have to edit the rider offset in descr_mount.txt as well.
I'm sure someone will do this eventually.

[Mhaedros]

I changed the chariot riders to dismounted vairags, but one is flying 1 meter above the chariot, and the other one I cant see the legs since theyre "inside" the chariot. Anyone has a clue what it can be?

[Bungo Baggins]

I wrote it in my previous post.

You need to go into descr_mount.txt and change the riders_offset values. Those are coordinates for the postion of the different crew members relative to the mount (chariot is defined as elephant).

But I would have to experiment, and since I personaly am not really interested in this unit (slightly unbalanced, by the way), I won't put in the effort.

[GueulEclator]

Mhaedros if you are is planing to do this maybe you could share after and make a submod

[Adjudant-Major]

Be warned that if you do this and then try to play with an evil faction that uses infantry then you will get slaughtered.

No like I said, I played with the improved cavalry stats for months and it was ok for me, it answered better to my view of the power of the cavalry. When you face Rohan with Isengard infantry, you need pikes, you need stakes, and still it is not easy... which is what it should be - be quick, do sieges, use terrain, lure your ennemy from your main body, get superiority in numbers, have reserves... and prepare to suffer heavy losses. I do play for the evil factions. But of course, the balance questions are case sensitive and the views are subjective. Anyone who wants to change the EDU stats may very easily break the entire game system and get very bad results, annoying game, etc. This was not the case for me and for the 3 points bonus for the cavalry defense

If you want standing cavalry to exterminate any enemy go and change their stats.

Well, there's not just black and white, there are many shades of grey too by adding 3 to the defense skills of the cavalry you don't make them killing machines, you simply make them last longer and suffer less casualties. You still need to maneuver, you still need to charge, you still need the proper tactics to get important results.

So you better just buy heavy infantery.

Without cavalry your victories will be mostly incomplete, many of your enemies will retreat and survive and fight you again.

[TheXand]

Cavalry was rather overpowered in Me2 and in an infantry-centric world like Middle Earth I like how the cavalry are. Though in my experience I found the cavalry to be brilliant, playing as Eriador virtually the only thing standing between you and defeat in battles was a cavalry charge by the Dunedain Bodyguard of your generals.

[muller227]

Most trained infantry didn't mess around trying to kill the knight on the back of the horse, they killed the horse, or hamstrung it, this method drops the rearquarters and the knight goes down backwards.

Horses also have one very terrible weakness, they get very tired under the weight of fully armed knights and Barding. This was the disastrous lesson of Nicopolis learned by Sire de Coucy and the rest of the French crusaders.

In other battles Heavy Horse was utterly decisive such as the siege of Vienna, or Arsuf. Yet at the Horns of Hattin they were annihilated by Saladin.

I won't go into the whole English French debate, those battles circumstances are extremely complicated.

It actually comes down the quality of the General leading the men, his preparations, his discipline and toughness. Crassus got destroyed by Heavy Horse, Trajans Legionaires destroyed Parthian Heavy Horse.

As for the game it does alright IMO but it is just that, if others differ so be it, it is their game they can do as they will with it.