I'll say first that what I read about multiplayer balance sounded pretty good, and that the physics of the GIF look fantastic, and that the infantry formation held well (you see the ones who had been knocked over and pushed back immediately walk back to the line)- and now I'll get onto the contentious stuff. I have different ideas to a lot of posters here about what is right and what is wrong in this GIF.
Terco_Viejo said:
Nitpicking: It seems that the charge "tends" to converge in a central point...I don't know if that's what you want to achieve. Personally I think that the charge "should" force a horizontality since it seems that the cavalry unit is charging in line formation.
If you focus on the end of the GIF, you can see that they are not all converging to a central point. There are plenty of knights far further down the line who are maintaining their position in the formation (in line with the red lines you drew), not converging towards the near-camera group. It is merely that the "camera" is close to where one of the most successful breakthroughs happened, and a clump of knights have made it rapidly through the enemy infantry, giving the impression of a wedge at this point. The converging impression may be also due to the knights closest to our end of the line (the left, where the camera is) coming from a wider position; it seems the cavalry line was a bit wider than the infantry one.
I was wowed by the GIF at first, it looks great, but there are a few problems to examine. As cool as the GIF looks, like other people I am frustrated to see that very few infantrymen appear to be using their spears. I thinks some
are using their spears, and though it is hard to tell (frustrating that we cannot pause GIFs or have a full screen version to pore over) I think what they are doing is holding an attack poised to unleash when the cavalry reaches them. It is hard to say what most are wielding, but I think at least some are using javelins and yet I cannot see any thrown, certainly not near our end of the line before the charge hits, when it would be most useful to throw them. I think at least one soldier is using a javelin in melee mode, which is nonsensical really; the only advantage of that would be to
possibly get a single jab in as the knights get slowed down in the middle of the pack, when a spear would be too long. One might argue that waiting for the charge to pass through before throwing javelins at the horsemens' backs would be effective because they cannot block with their shields from rearward attacks, but I personally cannot see any javelins thrown (I will take the word of it that one poster saw some thrown).
Perhaps this weapon choice behaviour would work better against attacking infantry? Even then, you would hope that more soldiers were using their spears, and javelins would need to be thrown as the enemy approached. That said, some spears certainly
are being used, and in places where only a few knights hit the infantry in the first contact, some of them do get stopped dead and I see at least one rearing. I think many of the first contact cavalry get pushed through by the sheer momentum of their comrades bundling them onwards, which is great.
I disagree with the infantry needing pikes; first of all, it isn't really appropriate for the already broad sweep of history that this warfare is based on, and secondly it would make the game hard to balance. Having pikes would render a lot of cavalry almost useless against infantry (it wasn't in real life, not at all), and you then have the question of how that pike infantry performs against other infantry, not to mention missile troops. The answer to missiles would be dress them all in full plate armour; another anachronism, and more importantly probably not much fun.
Also, I don't have a problem with the lack of casualties in the charge. Firstly, we can see that the defending troops had their shields up; secondly that, in any case, neither side had very long lances/spears held in a braced or couched pose for the enemy to be impaled upon; and thirdly that most infantry seemed to be bowled over by the horses which, though obviously injurious and terrifying, probably wouldn't be fatal in many cases.
From the few sources I've read describing cavalry charges of this time, it was common for the cavalry to charge again and again (I specifically remember descriptions of this happening in a Norman battle in France and also a Byzantine battle against Slavic infantry), and that they would disrupt the infantry in this way rather than kill lots of them. I know this flies in the face of the often repeated idea that cavalry had to attack spear infantry in the rear or flanks, or wait for them to rout, to be effective. I've read history books and watched documentaries by proper historians (I remember one involving Normans in Italy) where this happens, it was very common; this is why heavy cavalry was so dominant for most of the medieval period- their tactics
worked.
Another thing I
don't like though is the amount of horse barding. I know this was a customised battle, but for aesthetic, immersive and balance reasons I dislike seeing so much uniformity and heavily armoured troops. I'd noticed a lot of the cavalry has horse barding in earlier videos. Presumably these are the top tier of Vlandian knights, but if they are based roughly on the Normans then I think horse barding in general is a bit inappropriate. I don't know of evidence for it having been used in Western Europe by migration era or early medieval armies. Moreover, it doesn't look great to me, it makes the horses look less real with them all clad in grey metal, and if I was to repeatedly come across them in battle I would be wondering where these Vlandians are finding so many smiths to make these large pieces of armour (not to mention the money)- for both these reasons it harms my immersion. Aesthetically though I think the effect in this GIF is worse because the knights themselves also seem to be wearing very similar items (helmets particularly) to one another. I would expect (and hope) that there is far more variety in equipment that a single troop-type uses in the actual game.
If horse armour is effective, then it will also make the knights very hard to dismount as well, so even if you do stab them when they charge at full speed, might they not die? Alternatively, if it is
not very effective (possible, from what we have seen in some videos, though it could largely depend on damage settings) then it breaks the immersion a bit and so pointlessly looks less interesting than seeing the variety of horse colours would.
In summary then, I would have liked to see the infantry mostly using spears, and with the remainder throwing a javelin before the cavalry hits. It would also be nice if horse barding was only common amongst the cataphracts of the Empire; I would rather see it be in the minority amongst most heavy cavalry, even though it would mean some Vlandian knights would be easier to dismount than others. It would represent a few of the knights having exceptional wealth or the luck of coming across a horse bard via looting or a lord's gift.