So why do calvary suck so much?

[lesterthenerd]

I remember in the orignal RTW they were very effective. But now they just can't charge up to infatry and take half of them out. In fact when i charge up to some infantry units, charging is basically usless as it only can take out like 10 soldiers....

I did a custom battle with the Roman legion calavary vs a Roman sword auxillia and my calvary got totally creamed.... In reality weren't Roman calvary units incredibly effective against infantry units like it was seen in the orignal RTW? (im not talking about spearmen)

[century x]

i don't think so. historicaly the romans were infantry based army not cavarly. That's y they always hired horsemen from whatever area they are in. There own cavarly was not very effective.

Of course if i'm wrong someone please correct me

[Plutarch]

i don't think so. historicaly the romans were infantry based army not cavarly. That's y they always hired horsemen from whatever area they are in. There own cavarly was not very effective.

Of course if i'm wrong someone please correct me

I believe youre right, even in the later imperial years, the Romans were not known for placing much emphasis on Cavalry. They did employ Cavalry but as you say, hired or forced it upon conquered peoples.

[century x]

That's why In alot of mods they scale down the roman cavarly. There good for fighting extremely light infantry and do kill routing units.

[The Walrus]

Also back then the stirrup hadn't been invented(not sure exactly about the saddle and stuff in this time period)

Without the stirrup charging isn't as effective due to many reasons

[Hoffman]

No Stirrup. No Lances.

They had spears and many rode bareback for quite some time.
Ancient Cavalry paled in comparison to Medieval Cavalry, if Ancient and Medieval Cavalry met, Ancient would flee into a corner and cry itself back to sanity.

Without the stirrups there is no stable form of translating the force of the horse's charge through the spear, therefore the horse was the principle weapon. Charge a horse through a disciplined, and thick group of people and it will die.
The spear on the other hand, will be only slightly more effective than your regular foot spearman in a charge, and useless standing still without your feet on the ground to shift your momentum and put your weight behind the blows.
Swords neither, as it was simple to pull a rider from a horse in a melee, especially without stirrups.


With the advent of stirrups it became possible to translate the full power of 1,000 pound horse moving at 20+ MPH into the spear(Lance), thus killing the man before the horse reached him, many times snapping the lance or propelling the man back into the formation and disrupting it allowing for greater effect when the horse itself hits.



I'd prefer SPQR Cavalry not to be as lame as they are (It is very annoying playing General for my Father in Vanilla R:TW, slaughtering an entire army with 2 units of Praetorian Cav, and then coming upstairs and watching Macedonians butcher my Cavalry.) but it is fairly accurate.
Remember that Alexander's Cavalry Charges were costly, and consisted of thousands of horse hitting a relatively small gap in the lines and causing a route where the speed of the horse allowed for the best butchery.

[lesterthenerd]

I see. Well are the other factions calvary any good?

[Hoffman]

Well other Factions will have stronger Cavalry than Romans. Macedonian Cavalry, Companion Cavalry, Round Shield Cavalry, Seleucid Cav, pretty much anything Pontus, Armenia, and Parthia can throw at you, I don't know about the Germans haven't fought them yet. Gaulic Cavalry seems to be on par with Roman Cavalry if you use Romans carefully.


But don't expect them to be the powerhouse lawnmowers of Medieval France.

[lesterthenerd]

Yeah i was sort of expecting that but now i guess i realise it wont be like that at all. Wish they hadn't made calvary so effective in the original RTW cause ive gotten really use to that and for that reason i always used to make up a full stack roman army with usually half or a bit less, melee calvary units....

Anyways thanks for all the info =D

[Garnier]

I use cavalry only to charge the rear of the enemy army while they are engaging my line of legionaries. I form a 2 rank line of cavalry, (using general and roman cav) and then charge straight into them, usually does some damage and routs them or makes them wavering, then I finish them off. Never leave cavalry engaged with anything for any period of time though.

[glitch]

I think cavalry is excellent, you have to hit enemy troops from the rear at an exact time to make troops route. RTW vanilla cav could charge head on into enemy troops and wipe them out, this is not the case with in SPQR and reality.

[el_dude]

yeah roman cavalry historically was never as devastating as portrayed in vanilla RTW...definitely not at all as heavy as medieval knights, so you have to use cavalry very tactically in this game...only use them to hit enemies from behind or to take down archers or artillery units that are pelting your infantry from afar

[DeeDee]

Equites and Roman cavalry ar two units that are not worth the slots that they take up. They are simply too weak and to few. 90 equites simply are of no use in feirce combat. They are to small a number to damage or even God forbid rout a unit of some 240 chosen swordsmen who are engaged in combat and are to weak even stand a chance at a unit of Gallic cavalry let alone Gothic, or Companion cavalries. The Player is forced to rely on Mercenaries for its cavalry cavalry. Barbarian horse mercenaries in Gaul and Numidians in Africa are all the player has to combat Chosen warband archers, Gothic cavalry, Cataphracts , chariots, and peltasts. Rome needs a 1/2 decent cavalry force. A super Vanilla Praetorian cavalry is not required just a serious attempt at Equites and Roman cavalry. What must be done is for the unit sizes and stats to be increased so that that they can actually at least mediocrely do its job.

1. Increase the numbers to say 120 or so.
2. Up the stats

[Garnier]

Equites and Roman cavalry ar two units that are not worth the slots that they take up. They are simply too weak and to few. 90 equites simply are of no use in feirce combat. They are to small a number to damage or even God forbid rout a unit of some 240 chosen swordsmen who are engaged in combat and are to weak even stand a chance at a unit of Gallic cavalry let alone Gothic, or Companion cavalries. The Player is forced to rely on Mercenaries for its cavalry cavalry. Barbarian horse mercenaries in Gaul and Numidians in Africa are all the player has to combat Chosen warband archers, Gothic cavalry, Cataphracts , chariots, and peltasts. Rome needs a 1/2 decent cavalry force. A super Vanilla Praetorian cavalry is not required just a serious attempt at Equites and Roman cavalry. What must be done is for the unit sizes and stats to be increased so that that they can actually at least mediocrely do its job.

1. Increase the numbers to say 120 or so.
2. Up the stats

Well, we just said how you should use the roman cavalry, charge the rear of engaged units when they are getting tired. It is a necessary thing for me in every battle almost.

[DeeDee]

Well, we just said how you should use the roman cavalry.

Firstly, I know how to use cavalry very well in order to inflict my strategic aims upon the enemy.

Secondly, I should hope that most who have a basic knowledge of history should know that the Romans did not use their own cavalry frequently. However this is not a valid argument for units which are frankly a joke.
The gross disparity in SPQR between Roman cavalry units and the players alternatives is huge. This causes the player not to even build stables because they are a waste of money with no benefits. What I propose is slightly strenghtened Roman cavalry unit which is still less than the players alternatives yet is enough to fufill the legions basic needs when mercenaries are not available. The player should not simply go on without cavalry as others have advocated when there are no mercenaries. Historically Legions always had a Cavalry force when available. So what must be done is that when Foreign cavalry not available make Roman equites an option which is worth taking.

[lesterthenerd]

So does any1 here know which file to edit so that i can use roman legionary calvary in the campaign?

[Hoffman]

Equites and Roman cavalry ar two units that are not worth the slots that they take up. They are simply too weak and to few. 90 equites simply are of no use in feirce combat. They are to small a number to damage or even God forbid rout a unit of some 240 chosen swordsmen who are engaged in combat and are to weak even stand a chance at a unit of Gallic cavalry let alone Gothic, or Companion cavalries. The Player is forced to rely on Mercenaries for its cavalry cavalry. Barbarian horse mercenaries in Gaul and Numidians in Africa are all the player has to combat Chosen warband archers, Gothic cavalry, Cataphracts , chariots, and peltasts. Rome needs a 1/2 decent cavalry force. A super Vanilla Praetorian cavalry is not required just a serious attempt at Equites and Roman cavalry. What must be done is for the unit sizes and stats to be increased so that that they can actually at least mediocrely do its job.

1. Increase the numbers to say 120 or so.
2. Up the stats

I disagree, the Equites and Roman Cavalry units are fine the way they are atm.


Like I stated earlier, Ancient Cavalry had no stirrups, they were merely swift spearmen or swordsmen with a battering ram as transport.

I play on Large Unit sizes, so for me a single Cavalry Troop would engage 120 Chosen Swordsmen in a unit.
Now, if we figure this out mathmatically, that's 48 Cavalry vs 120 Heavily Armed and armored Infantry.

If we figure the Cavalry charge head-on at full gallop, at the most that's going to hit and disable/kill 96 men maybe 100 if you're lucky, and then the horses are either stopped, surrounded, butchered, or the Cavalry unit is pulling away.

Since, however, in the game the maximum width you can have, and thus the maximum amount of horses available to deal damage, is 2 ranks and therefore 24 Cavalry.
So our figure of initial shock and casualties drops dramatically, to maybe 50 men.

Medieval Cavalry would have a farm more significant effect, being able to transmit immense force through a lance and having armored horses.

Roman Cavalry of this period, however, are considered secondary to the Legion, being used primarily for scouting and tracking the enemy as opposed to engaging them. They are lighter armored, and trained to avoid combat.
Thus were they to come against other Cavalry, or heavy infantry, their training would be to pull back to the Legion, let the Roman Infantry halt them and then if the situation dictates, attack.

[lesterthenerd]

Well ive done some custom battles with 1 unit of tiarria and 1 unit of Roman legionary calvary vs 1 unit of a much stronger infantry force. I enganged them from the front with my tiarii and attacked them from behind with my calvary and i was able to decimate them pretty easily.

So yeah as people have said, with Roman calvary you should always attack from the rear of an enemy force as they will get pwned if u charge head on.

BTW patch is coming out for M2TW very very soon. Can't wait!

[DeeDee]

Well ive done some custom battles with 1 unit of tiarria and 1 unit of Roman legionary calvary vs 1 unit of a much stronger infantry force. I enganged them from the front with my tiarii and attacked them from behind with my calvary and i was able to decimate them pretty easily.

1. Legionary cavalry are not available in the roman campaign to my knowledge so this test is not really valid when talking about the campaign as the rest of us have.

[lesterthenerd]

1. Legionary cavalry are not available in the roman campaign to my knowledge so this test is not really valid when talking about the campaign as the rest of us have.

Lol. Well why rnt they available in the campaign and is there a way to enable them so i can use them?