Couched Lance Damage - Lances in Viking Conquest

[Yeyo]

Couched lance damage SHOULD kill (almost) any foe in a single hit. IMHO this is what made Warband so good and satisfying.

Organized lance usage from a horseback may have become popular and widespread in 11th century (a.k.a. medieval heavy cavalry charge), but it has been used in ancient times as well as in Alexander the Great's conquests.

Spears were used in cavalry much before the Alexander’s hetairoi. The limitation in the frontal charges during the High Middle ages was a matter of horse breeds and the diffusion of chainmal and other types of armors. The descriptions of battles from the Dark Age in Northern Europe use to be the collision of two shieldwall, cavalry seems to play a secondary role and there is not any reference to frontal charges. The warhorses from the Sassanid cataphracts and the later European destriers were very corpulent and make it possible, but the original races from Northern Europe were almost poneys. Moreover, training a war horse for not be panic in the noisy confusion of battle was hard and expensive, not all the horses could be useful for a charge.

The textual evidences suggest for the Vikings, Celts and Anglo-Saxons was very difficult to raise an army with a significant number of horsemen with full armor. For a limited force of warriors over horses of around 145 cm tall, it has to be almost impossible to break a properly formed shieldwall.

 

[Belthize]

Seems to me what you can do in game is pretty close to what somebody might have done and how cav was used at this time.

Basically ride around and rip up anybody too dumb to be within the shield wall (looking at you archers and skirmishers).

To protect yourself one of the most effective methods would be to use a long spear at speed and stick it in their face.  Which is what you do, ride by and get the timing of a jab just right to make them very unhappy.

Personally I don't think I'd like to hit a shield with a couched lance if I didn't have some stirrups to keep me from flying backwards.  The whole point of couching is to get the weight of the horse behind it which means stirrups. With a spear jab it's just arm strength.  Stirrups slowly migrated west from Hungary to the west coast of Europe around the 7th or 8th century and were used by Vikings in the mid to late 10th century and introduced to England in the very late 10th and early 11th century.  So close but not quite.

I guess one could  conceive of implementing a stirrup equipped horse, make it wicked expensive and riding it would allow couching.  They were around in this period just many hundreds of miles to the east.  The lance should be just a long spear though, no long stock M&B style lances, that's a much later invention.

At that point a couched long spear would do 2x damage of a spear jab because there's no recoil through your arm at impact, you have it 'couched' and add the horse's momentum.

Edit: or just add couching in now, and each time you hit if you do solid damage there's a risk you're thrown from your horse. 

 

[Yeyo]

Personally I don't think I'd like to hit a shield with a couched lance if I didn't have some stirrups to keep me from flying backwards.  The whole point of couching is to get the weight of the horse behind it which means stirrups. With a spear jab it's just arm strength.  Stirrups slowly migrated west from Hungary to the west coast of Europe around the 7th or 8th century and were used by Vikings in the mid to late 10th century and introduced to England in the very late 10th and early 11th century.  So close but not quite.

The importance of the stirrups in the cavalry charges has been discussed. As you say, the Avars introduced it in Europe and the Strategikon (a 7th century military treatise) is the first Western source that cited it, but it seems to be related with the steppe peoples who travel long distances on horseback. The late Roman and Persian catafractarii and clibanarii were heavy cavalry that did not ride with stirrups. On the other hand, the cavalry charges between the 11th and 13th centuries were not frontal (I mean perpendicular to the enemy’s line). Hypotheses suggest that could be done with a certain angle that allowed to turn around and charge again.

http://www.talismancoins.com/catalog/Battle_of_Hastings_Knight.jpg

 

[fysaga]

Read articles on the couched lance issue, stirrups allowed the rider to sit back more which helped, but the critical component where high built saddles to stabilize the rider. And for the Lance throwing theory, I do think spears were thrown, but on the Bayeux tapestry there is only one instance of a thrown lance by a miles.

 

[Do not look here]

About the couching lances and stirrups, here's the article that come up every now and then when it's discussed in Sage's Guild http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/shock.php

But yeah, I have to agree that frontal cavalry charges and proper lance couching aren't tactics of DLC's period and setting. What I'd like to now, is if you are planning on adding animations like on that photo, Yeyo? I'm talking about that "overhead" stabbing from horses? I guess that's a no, because weapon model has to be held upside down, but hey, it doesn't hurt to ask, right?

 

[Belthize]

Ahh, interesting bit about the stirrups.  I readily admit to simply assuming, I wasn't really aware of the long debate regarding the impact of stirrups on the use of lances.  And of course if something has ever been discussed there's a wiki page for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stirrup_Controversy

So nvm.  I really should know better than getting embroiled in these kinds of discussions.

 

[Limehill]

Couched lances seen to be a 11th century innovation that actually began to be common in the following century, closely related with the diffusion of mail and the development of a heavy cavalry in France due the feudalism. David Nicolle has studied deeply this phenomenon. The 9th century Carolingian manuscripts almost always show depictions of riders wielding the spear or lance over the head or in a side.

Codex Perizoni of Leiden University:
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/media/manuscriptminiatures.com/original/1006-5.jpg

The Utrecht Psalter:
https://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/1804/flashcards/660868/jpg/psalm-44.jpg

The Stuttgart Psalter depicts the Carolingian cavalry against the Avars horse archers:
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/media/cache/manuscriptminiatures.com/original/921-25_large.jpg
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/media/manuscriptminiatures.com/original/921-8.jpg

The only depiction in this period of a couched lance is in Golden Psalter of St. Gallen:
http://www.medievalmuseum.ru/04weapon/carolingi_warriors_st_gall_golden_psalter.jpg

This is why I love Viking Conquest...the developers do their homework.

 

[wildyracing]

Ahh, interesting bit about the stirrups.  I readily admit to simply assuming, I wasn't really aware of the long debate regarding the impact of stirrups on the use of lances.  And of course if something has ever been discussed there's a wiki page for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stirrup_Controversy

So nvm.  I really should know better than getting embroiled in these kinds of discussions.

I agree with all of you. I didn't mean to argue about historical usage of frontal coached cavalry charges, which really are out of frame in the Viking age. What I meant in fact was that if 'couching lance' option exists in VC, then it should make as realistic damage as possible to justify its presence in the game.

In a matter of facts, I consider the high saddle and stirrups to be more important for horse archery than for lance coaching, although those innovations from the East are considered supreme compared to normal saddle and no stirrups in every usage.