zhoumu said:
Which horse did you use? I tried this tactic when I was wearing down the enemy spear throwers, and I still got speared down. Maybe I was too close to the lines. My riding skill was 5, so probably that made the difference. My other char had 10 in riding, but still theres no bulletproof way of gunning down the leader. Success rate was around 50%-60% for my warrior char, and less than 30% for my female char.
Usually heavy, sometimes champion. There definitely is a critical distance at which spears become much less dangerous.
With leaders, I rush him early, while he is still parading in front of his men giving speeches and leading them in cheers, or whatever it is their taunts and war cries consist of. I usually throw a javilin or spear as I go, then to a sword and cut him down as I pass. Generally coming in parallel to his battle lines, but several feet further along to create more distance, then turning closer at a slight diagnal just in time to get the lord, then again creating some distance. Always cutting along the side further from his men, so he stands between me and them. Not 100% success by any means--as soon as he gets spooked he generally runs into his men for cover.
Your 50% success rate about matches my own with this--because you can't try too hard, you have to abort when it looks too dangerous. The important thing is to make that 50% of the time it fails, be an abort, rather than your horse going down.
There is a downside to doing this I think--if you cut him down you turn off his surgery skill, so less wounded guys to capture, unless I misunderstand something.
kalarhan said:
IIRC that is still a issue with vanilla VC, as most armies have little to no cavalry units, and that makes the crazy lord commit suicide by charging alone
No, not from what I've seen. VC lords generally seem to hang back, whether they have horsemen in their army or not. Generally their horsemen charge, but they stay with their men.
When you charge them, they stop their parading and go among their men for cover. When you engage normally, they either fight alongside their men near the shieldwall, or they pick a spot on the battlefield and kind of watch from there. Only real exception is sometimes if the battle moves a bit, they end up being sticky in their choice of spot and end up a bit separated from their men, not too often though.
I can't guarantee it isn't something about my behavior causing this--it is possible a highly defensive player might provoke different behavior, or if a player turned on the cheat option "make enemy always charge" then the lords would probably be suicidal, I don't know. It is also possible it has something to do with their shield taunts or war cries--but whatever the origin, the suicidial lord so familiar from other mods isn't what I see in VC.
In sum, on Good AI settings and full difficulty, in general VC lords behave pretty intelligently to protect themselves, making it a fun and worthy challenge to kill them.