Okay, so, I am kind of a fan of Gengis Khan strategy of "all cavalry" and have made my army accordingly.
I have so far about 300 hundred units where over 250 of those are cavalry, with over 170-180 being melee cavalry.
I noticed a few things by playing with that.
One is that cavalry is indeed very strong against infantry, as it should be, in real war it was something that usually mowed down infantry units, specially archers, yet, I started to notice a few weird behaviors of cavalry.
I usually separate my melee cavalry in 2 to 3 units in the formation.Usually the 3, 5 and 6 key, with 6 or 7 being my companions.
I order all cavalry melee units to follow me and use F6 for infantry, archers and mounted archers so that I don't have to worry about commanding them very much and only give orders if strictly needed.
I then go towards the enemy cavalry and give the charge order to biggest of the melee cavalry formations, about over 110 to 120 cavalry units, as soon as we engage.
I then keep about 40 to 60 units with me and go towards the archers, that by this point, have been exposed by the bigger cavalry unit, and give the second charge command to the smaller elite unit, as it is mostly formed by elite cataphracts and banner knights and only keep my companions following me until the end of the fight.
As I do that a lot and have a lot of cavalry fighting at all times, I started to notice some weird behavior in the cavalry AI.
One is that they behave kind of half cavalry, half infantry.
In what I mean is, they will walk around a bit like actual horseman, but they engage enemies as if they were infantry, as in, they stick to the enemy they are fighting until they die and then go to the next one instead of using hit&run tactics, most of the time.
Its also not unusual to see a LOT of cavalry units forming a circle keeping an enemy on the inside in a way that no one can actually hit anyone.
They also don't seem to mind allies or even the player's position and direction at all, so it is not uncommon to have an allied knight suddenly passing or stopping in front of you and completely killing your momentum.
With so many horses it is a given it would happen from time to time, but that happens ALL THE TIME, even when you have very little people together with you, so they have no care of position, direction and speed to avoid crashing with you or other units like actual horse riders would.
I also noticed how very little damage crashing on an infantry unit with a horse does. It is usually only from 1 to 4 blunt damage only.
Do you have any idea how strong a horse running you over is? Like, people die at the first crash, at times.
Armor or no armor, you are going to the ground. At least it should have a mechanic where the person falls to the ground flat or gets sent flying for a meter or two, because, it HURTS BAD.
This guy in the video above was sent to the hospital.
Of course there are infantry tactics against horses that are needed as well, such as crouching and holding a lance pointing at a 20 to 45 degrees angle with its "pommel" touching the ground and that should also be implemented in the game by crouching and holding RMB with a lance, just as also a strategy employed by AI, which increases damage to the horse relative to the horse's own speed.
and there was also "Cheval de Frise", which is also lacking in the game.
An armor or a shield is nothing against a horse's charge, but any sort of pike at an angle was deadly for them.
I also noticed how little cavalry NPCs tend to employ in their armies, which makes my strategy almost too effective.
The only time I faced an army with close to my numbers of cavalry units was when I did a 400 versus 750 battle against the Khuzait where I still had almost 2 fold their numbers in cavalry and it was still a massacre.
Summing it up:
-There needs to be slight alterations to the AI of melee units on horse back, as at times they behave as if they were infantry.
-Cavalry units need to be aware of allies speed and direction in their surroundings, as real world riders would avoid crashing with allies at all costs.
-Cavalry charge needs to give WAY more damage when crashing with an infantry.
-Just as the cavalry should be buffed, there also needs to be more anti-cavalry tactics employable by the AI.
-NPC parties should employ WAY more cavalry units than they currently do.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
deGoucan Scrolls Index
I have so far about 300 hundred units where over 250 of those are cavalry, with over 170-180 being melee cavalry.
I noticed a few things by playing with that.
One is that cavalry is indeed very strong against infantry, as it should be, in real war it was something that usually mowed down infantry units, specially archers, yet, I started to notice a few weird behaviors of cavalry.
I usually separate my melee cavalry in 2 to 3 units in the formation.Usually the 3, 5 and 6 key, with 6 or 7 being my companions.
I order all cavalry melee units to follow me and use F6 for infantry, archers and mounted archers so that I don't have to worry about commanding them very much and only give orders if strictly needed.
I then go towards the enemy cavalry and give the charge order to biggest of the melee cavalry formations, about over 110 to 120 cavalry units, as soon as we engage.
I then keep about 40 to 60 units with me and go towards the archers, that by this point, have been exposed by the bigger cavalry unit, and give the second charge command to the smaller elite unit, as it is mostly formed by elite cataphracts and banner knights and only keep my companions following me until the end of the fight.
As I do that a lot and have a lot of cavalry fighting at all times, I started to notice some weird behavior in the cavalry AI.
One is that they behave kind of half cavalry, half infantry.
In what I mean is, they will walk around a bit like actual horseman, but they engage enemies as if they were infantry, as in, they stick to the enemy they are fighting until they die and then go to the next one instead of using hit&run tactics, most of the time.
Its also not unusual to see a LOT of cavalry units forming a circle keeping an enemy on the inside in a way that no one can actually hit anyone.
They also don't seem to mind allies or even the player's position and direction at all, so it is not uncommon to have an allied knight suddenly passing or stopping in front of you and completely killing your momentum.
With so many horses it is a given it would happen from time to time, but that happens ALL THE TIME, even when you have very little people together with you, so they have no care of position, direction and speed to avoid crashing with you or other units like actual horse riders would.
I also noticed how very little damage crashing on an infantry unit with a horse does. It is usually only from 1 to 4 blunt damage only.
Do you have any idea how strong a horse running you over is? Like, people die at the first crash, at times.
Armor or no armor, you are going to the ground. At least it should have a mechanic where the person falls to the ground flat or gets sent flying for a meter or two, because, it HURTS BAD.
This guy in the video above was sent to the hospital.
Of course there are infantry tactics against horses that are needed as well, such as crouching and holding a lance pointing at a 20 to 45 degrees angle with its "pommel" touching the ground and that should also be implemented in the game by crouching and holding RMB with a lance, just as also a strategy employed by AI, which increases damage to the horse relative to the horse's own speed.
and there was also "Cheval de Frise", which is also lacking in the game.
An armor or a shield is nothing against a horse's charge, but any sort of pike at an angle was deadly for them.
I also noticed how little cavalry NPCs tend to employ in their armies, which makes my strategy almost too effective.
The only time I faced an army with close to my numbers of cavalry units was when I did a 400 versus 750 battle against the Khuzait where I still had almost 2 fold their numbers in cavalry and it was still a massacre.
Summing it up:
-There needs to be slight alterations to the AI of melee units on horse back, as at times they behave as if they were infantry.
-Cavalry units need to be aware of allies speed and direction in their surroundings, as real world riders would avoid crashing with allies at all costs.
-Cavalry charge needs to give WAY more damage when crashing with an infantry.
-Just as the cavalry should be buffed, there also needs to be more anti-cavalry tactics employable by the AI.
-NPC parties should employ WAY more cavalry units than they currently do.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
deGoucan Scrolls Index
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