Cavalry are Rubbish

[KillerMongoose]

As a cavalry enthusiast I feel your pain bro. And I understand where you are coming from. I think the speed of heavy cavalry can afford to be boosted a bit because their current speed is more reminiscent to an old mule. Not so much a thoroughbred war horse. And please remove the crap where friendly infantry can stall your horse if you run into them, I hate it when a stray infantryman gets in my way and stalls my horse which stalls any horses behind me and so on. And cavalry can devastate an infantry regiment, it just depends on their skill, your cavalry's skill, what units you are, and the terrain. Lancers honestly aren't the best against infantry in a straight on charge, their better for taking out enemy cavalry. Heavy cavalry and Hussars are some of the more damaging cavalry to infantry, skirmishers and artillery. Heavies because of the weight of their charge and hussars because their speed is unmatched.

 

[Zor]

I play cav in Battle Commander and Team Deathmatch. In commander battle you are commanding a squad of bots who litteraly sucks as playing cav. They just ram into the first guy crossing their road, holding a bayonet or not they dont even care. One they got stuck in melee they stay in melee. Of course you can try to give a lot of order to charge, get outa but to be honest its not wonderfull.

 

[ell_geezy]

Spoiler

Also, I feel I the need to brag as I sworded 20 people to death that match.

You should have died less then you can brag

 

[Rhonerin]

Most boring part with cav is that whatever cav you play you must fight with light cav tactics to be succesfull wether you are heavy cav, lancer or dragoon.

 

[jros83]

yes, this is definitely true. it's like there's no point to heavy cav since to survive and prosper they have to do the same crap light cav has to do.

i beg to differ for dragoons though. hit and run at a distance for them. until you decide to use your sabre, in which case, refer to your original point lol.

 

[TWking]

I did a few tests of polish 50 lances vs 50 line infantry. Got totally rapped each time.

I have killed a cav regiement and 3/4s of a line regiment with polish lancers, when i cav charge i usally win

 

[WilsonMG]

I can't emphasize enough that player cavalry and AI cavalry are two different matters all together.  Players playing as cavalry have much more advantage.  People in this thread are carrying on two separate arguments simultaneously like a bad episode of Seinfeld where everyone is wrapped up in their own conversation ignoring the others.

Many of us no longer play Battle mode much, but rather have made Commander mode our focus, and thus we'd like to see our AI cavalry able to survive a little better against infantry in 2 rank lines hit from the flank or rear.  Player cavalry seems rather balanced.  The stats for the two modes are completely different.

Heavy horses need a slight speed boost.  That's certain.  The slightest uphill climb and all horses grind to a slow walk, especially the heavies.

Increase the ability for horses to bump/push though infantry in Commander mode.  Something needs to be done to balance out the slaughter that it currently is for AI cavalry, even competently led and employed, against infantry in poor position/formation.  I'm not asking for a huge boost to cavalry, just a very slight one to make it more viable against infantry commanders who don't tighten their formations.

I'm tired of watching heavy cavalry get slaughtered by loosely-formed rifles/jaegers wielding their rifles like clubs.

 

[Evelyn]

Never forget- the cuirassier charge against the unguarded [save the Arty rankers] Austrian artillery... No cavalrymen made it out alive.

 

[Helixrider]

AI cav, just fails, I still think player cav is ok.

 

[Leberecht Reinhold]

Player cav is fine. AI Bots....


They can be buffed separately, and I think they need it.

 

[Larken]

Commander battle cavalry definitely need a boost, bayonetted infantry can kill off a cavalry charge that outnumbers them 2-1 which means even artillery guards can defend against polish lancers. Something needs to be done to Dragoons too, I've seen them be massacred by line infantry and cavalry alike with literally no kills. Their aim is awful and their melee weapons are awful too.

 

[Leesin]

My only personal gripe is how weak horses feel themselves, i.e they don't feel like they have any mass or strength, bumping one guy shouldn't even make the horse flinch and you should certainly easily bump through an infantry line.

It's also the reason why AI cavalry get so owned in Commander Battle, they bump a couple of guys and the resistance is so strong to the bump that they end up stopping or slowing during the fight to the point that the friendly cavalry behind them crashes into their back, then all your cav end up immobile, bunched up and get bayoneted hard, because the horses aren't strong enough to push through, which is a joke. My cav regiment got owned hard even though I hit an unaware infantry line from the back, all dead, only half the enemy Infantry died and I was responsible for nearly half of those kills.

If you haven't played cRPG as cav you should go and feel how the horses bump through people, that's how horses should be.

 

[rejenorst]

Horses do have a tremendous force when running into people/things. The damage done to a human being will vary on speed and where exactly their bodies impact and if the damage is of the crushing kind then what surface their being trampled on. There are some cases where people have been fine, knocked unconscious, received broken bones or have been in critical condition if not killed. Just to give an idea of the damage:

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/124838009.html

If said horse charges into a sharp object I dare say the force may help to impale the horse even further but mostly if the rifle is leaning against a sturdy surface.

And an idea of the force in motion on a human being: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHZ5YpTeoIQ
Mind you that's just a pony or a small race horse and not a stallion or war horse.

In terms of the game however I am not sure if further increasing bump damage for horses will add to the gameplay since I'd hate to just see trolololo pub games of cav killing people in one hit by running over them without bothering to even swing swords or anything. It would be interesting to test but I think it would probably become rather unfair/annoying. Not sure.

In terms of lowering resistance (ie: less chance of horse rearing up ) I wouldn't mind that. But only for heavy to medium cav and not light cav. Since the horses are bred and its riders trained for different purposes and horses often attempt to avoid running over someone or hitting someone unless panicked or trained in some way to act as such, in which case the rider generally has a hard time staying on the horse if it does so out of panic.)


In any case I've been playing the last 2 days on Aussie servers and when Cavalry groups start moving in, they are lethal.

I've created a topic with cav tips that include some of my observations:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,227456.0.html

 

[Boarlady]

Warhorses were almost always trained to trample, any horse that shied away from stepping on bodies is relatively useless in a battle situation. A normal probably wouldn't want to, but horses are battle are encouraged and/or desensitized to it.

 

[Duke Daniel Milutin]

They could bite enemy horses as well. Too bad it isn't included in Warband. Cavalry isn't rubbish at all though, I have no problems with killing 3-4 infantrymen in a charge as a hussar.

 

[Horsa]

They could bite enemy horses as well. Too bad it isn't included in Warband. Cavalry isn't rubbish at all though, I have no problems with killing 3-4 infantrymen in a charge as a hussar.

You meant backstab probably, you can't kill infantry if they are aware of you.

 

[rejenorst]

Warhorses were almost always trained to trample, any horse that shied away from stepping on bodies is relatively useless in a battle situation. A normal probably wouldn't want to, but horses are battle are encouraged and/or desensitized to it.

In medieval times yes and apparently trained to kick and bite on command, I can find very little about the training methods in Napoleonic times though. I assume they must have done the same at least for heavy cavalry but heavy cavalry was specifically bred for their role while light and medium cavalry I think were not unless the privatized horse husbandry farms specifically catered to military needs which some or many did (So am not sure but you have to factor in cost. Napoleon believed his heavy cav not always to have any major benefits over the other cavalry arms at the high cost of training/creating them). In any case training to trample is not the same as training to run into a large formation of men which horses rarely did, which is why square formations became so popular. In game we don't really see large formations of men at the best of times.
 

 

[Oposum]

They could bite enemy horses as well. Too bad it isn't included in Warband. Cavalry isn't rubbish at all though, I have no problems with killing 3-4 infantrymen in a charge as a hussar.

You meant backstab probably, you can't kill infantry if they are aware of you.

Killing inf which is aware if you is only a bit harder than backstabbing, only without the risk of getting spinstabbed by supposedly unaware enemy.
If you can't kill aware inf 1 on 1 as sword cav you still have a lot to learn about playing cav, so please refrain yourself from acting like an expert on cav combat.

 

[rejenorst]

An interesting article on the debated issue of whether cavalry in history commonly did full frontal cavalry charges:
http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/141888.html Also mentions that at times cavalry tore through infantry lines without doing much damage at all.

 

[Horsa]

They could bite enemy horses as well. Too bad it isn't included in Warband. Cavalry isn't rubbish at all though, I have no problems with killing 3-4 infantrymen in a charge as a hussar.

You meant backstab probably, you can't kill infantry if they are aware of you.

Killing inf which is aware if you is only a bit harder than backstabbing, only without the risk of getting spinstabbed by supposedly unaware enemy.
If you can't kill aware inf 1 on 1 as sword cav you still have a lot to learn about playing cav, so please refrain yourself from acting like an expert on cav combat.

Assuming the inf isn't a noob and can spinstab you can't win 1v1 by superior skill, no matter how good you're on cav. If you wanna test it I am available when you want.