Which Total War game handles cavalry best?

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

This is really just an excuse to see if I can get polling to work, but while we're at it, I'll just ask the question and let the discussion be the focus - which game has the most accurate portrayal of cavalry units, and/or the most satisfying for your unit handling?

The poll should have said game(s) as I did quite a bit of option bundling. As it is, don't take that part too seriously as there's no one metric to use here.

[HigoChumbo]

I'm probably extremely biased, nostalgic and forgetful about this, but without doing a proper test, the answer that comes to my mind is Medieval 2.

In Empire I seem to recall cavalry feeling so weightless they could be made of paper, in Rome 1 charges were satisfying but extremely arcade, in Rome 2 I was to focused on game-breaking bugs the whole time to pay attention to that, but I have no specific memory about it (though it might also be intentional given cavalry was not yet such a massive shock force in the setting) and in Warhammer my cavalry has so far been skeleton horses, velociraptors, bats and oversized zombies... so hard to assess.

When Medieval 2 came out though (well, half a year after it came out, when they got rid of the huge game-breaking bugs and I could finally play the game...), I did notice a huge improvement over Rome 1 and I specifically recall the sense of weight cavalry had in that game. That could be either nostalgia, or the different engine, or the fact that of course CA would make medieval knights feel heavier than macedonian companions with tiny horses, no armor and no saddle.

[Axalon]

None of the above!

STW & MTW for the win! Seriously, none of the other TW-games do battles, tactics and field-
command as well as the first two TW-games (on general terms). This includes cavalry-stuff!

- A

[Leonardo]

None of the above!

STW & MTW for the win! Seriously, none of the other TW-games do battles, tactics and field-
command as well as the first two TW-games (on general terms). This includes cavalry-stuff!

- A

I agree. MTW has the best cavalry and that was one thing I notice when I started to play RTW.

In RTW, when charging cavalry into a position on the battlefield didn't reset the running mode, instead cavalry were always running until the player manually reverted it back to normal. The result was that the cavalry tired too quickly and became less effective when the player wanted to use them in a battle.

That never happen in MTW and that also allowed the player to use the sway point flags to mark a route for a cavalry or any uint on battlefield when revealing the current order for a unit.

As for STW, I don't remember how it was, because I haven't played STW for over 10 years now.

[AnthoniusII]

None of the above!

STW & MTW for the win! Seriously, none of the other TW-games do battles, tactics and field-
command as well as the first two TW-games (on general terms). This includes cavalry-stuff!

- A

I agree 100% I remember i used Shogun I cavalry to "test" byzantine tactics with huge success!
But MTW -1 was a real boost in the cavalry usage! No unit was exactly same as another one ingame.!!!

[herne_the _hunter]

I didn't really like how horse archers handled in the first two games. Though these two games are still excellent though. Special mention for the ability to choose to dismount cavalry before battles in Med 1 which was lacking in Rome 1 and Med 2.

What really bugged me in Med 2 was the fact you had to recruit mounted and dismounted cavalry seperately.

I definately prefer how cavalry handles in Shogun 2 and Rome 2