Cutting down skirmishers and routers

[Veridious]

Why do my cavalry (It doesn't matter what kind, Mailed Knights, General Bodyguard, Hobilars...) I tell them to charge a group of archers (who have not yet routed), and they obey my order. They charge, lances down, ready for impact, but it seems that there is an invisible barrier behind the skirmishers that prevents me from charging through. My horsemen just stop dead in their tracks as if the enemy just disappeared.

I thought "What the... hell", and told my cavalry to charge to a point ahead of the skirmishers, they tried, but failed. They couldn't seem to 'get around' the skirmishers, they just... swarmed around behind them, trying to get ahead. Almost like... almost like a swarm of bees attracted to an object with a scent of honey, swarming everywhere behind, but... but never swarming around them.

Any trained horsemen (especially general bodyguards) with half a brain knows to surround the the enemy, then close in the gap. The horsemen I command seem to lack such basic logic.

I also notice this when chasing routers too, by the way.

Testing it further, I went to Custom Battle, giving my team a group of General Body guards, and the enemy a group of Hobilars (light cavalry, much, much faster.) I ordered my men to charge at the opposite end of the map. The enemy hobilars, who are much faster, were easily able to catch up to my General but... but the same thing happened. They swarmed behind, and did nothing else.

10 minutes of continuous chasing, we were both exhausted (so it's still relative) and none of us had lost a man. The hobilars, in 10 minutes, should have killed my bodyguards to the last man, since I was docile. But no, we walked out of there with even numbers.

What... the... hell?

[morble]

Yeah, it's an annoying bug in the game. I've tried both switching back and forth between tight and loose formation, and also double-clicking on a spot ahead of the routers, then clicking to attack them from the front. Both work marginally better than nothing, but not well enough to say problem solved.

[Veridious]

Sometimes charging to a point ahead of the routers will make your horses 'mesh' in between the units, and then if you double-click on the unit at that point, the horses will slaughter the units since they're packed together. This does not always happen though, sometimes they still trail behind.

So anyway, it's not something I'm doing wrong, it's a universal bug with the game?

[Shazz]

It's a very annoying problem, but, it does make the SUCCESFULL charges all the more sweet.

As have been said, I find it better to charge at a point behind the enemies, but mind you that the cavalry will focus on moving than killing, and might not fight to their fullest whilst running through the enemy.

[mikeon]

The successfully charges do look nice when it happens. You see the enemy infantry fly up into the air as your cavalry cut through 2-3 ranks and then switch to melee at which point you have to draw them back out again for the next charge.