Cavalry promo 'Charge' is a bit weird?

[Victoria]

So it may be right to consider not all Heavy Cavalry can perform a succesful charge,

The issue is you cannot train a horse to charge into a wall of men very well, you can train the rider, sure.
The olden days spears may have been planted, but not the pikes as they were quite a different weapon, too long.
I keep making the point in posts that horsemen without stirrups just cannot do this very well at all, the companions used clever tactics to demoralise and flank and were an exception. Horse normally went horse
There is some cases where charging a huge wall of spears forced the horses in as there was nowhere else to go to the horses would halt. Dodgy stuff and often down to whether the spearmen broke before impact.
Various professional foot armies soon got the hang of the fact that if you left gaps the horses would plogh through those so it was quite dangerous for horse and when the square arrived they really had no hope without artillery to make a few holes.

The point I am making is it is more the training of the foot than the training of the cavalry, hence why scythed chariots only really worked once, Archelaus was a lucky general on the day.

 

[nzcamel]

So...you're saying I can only find radishes or Meduseld in New Zealand? What kind of tourism economy is that?? Good thing I like Meduseld...

Yeah. That's it lol. And a tonne of sheep.
Nothing to see here

Also you will always be able to find sandflies in New Zealand @Lanthar I think they were designed to keep New Zealand tourism for New Zealanders only.

Just take my mum with you - the sand flies will all zone in on her and leave everyone else alone lol

When I head to the West Coast I find that Marmite sandwiches do the trick!

 

[Pietato]

I think it refers to the fact non-fortified troops can move out of the way.

Pretty sure history has shown that heavy cavalry was a failure, in case anyone was wondering.

 

[nzcamel]

Failure...? Surely not. Over used in the wrong application might be more like it.

 

[Victoria]

Have you tried riding a horse without stirrups? It's OK and I can imagine with practice shooting a bow is possible.... but when you have to hold a shield and a lance and wear armour I really cannot imagine it, the armour is Ok it's more the shield which I s why you do not see many Ancient heavy cav with shields

 

[nzcamel]

Hence why Stirrups have been deemed worthy of their own tech now. Hard to argue with that!

 

[Lanthar]

I don't agree that Heavy Cavalry was largely unsuccessful - it was successful when the times and conditions were right throughout history (up to the mechanized era). Like any other military formation, Heavy Cavalry has its weaknesses and can be exploited, but it's great at destroying (many) massed infantry formations in the field and demoralizing the enemy. I think the biggest limiter around Heavy Cavalry throughout history is the cost - all those men and horses are very expensive (in just about every case except the Mongolians).

You don't even need stirrups for Heavy Cavalry - check out Cataphracts. Gave the Roman legions fits until they figured out how to deal with them. You do need stirrups to couch a lance, or hold a weapon and large shield.

 

[Victoria]

You are right @Lanthar in that heavy cavalry had quite a few successes. These successes in head on charges are when the target broke or was loose formation, the Teutons being good examples (nice scary wedge). If we take say the battle of Streva the opposition formation broke, game over

However the reality was, the heavy armour of the knight made them slow and with slightly boggy ground like after it rained, things got truly sticky. I remember analyzing battles and wondered why the cavalry were not used until someone pointed out it rained that day.

The other problem was you are on a horse high in the air and cannot cover from archers,Xbow,longbow. This is how the lighter mongol horsemen beat heavier knights, by dismounting in rough and peppering them with arrows.

The knight did have success for a short time but in reality trained footmen well equipped with good morale saw them off.
Equally high morale cavalry well trained like polish lancers had a reputation that was deserved for a short time.
In essence knights were damn expensive and fought in combination with foot

Not sure why I write this, I could just refer to some papers by military historians.

They were not rubbish once they had the stirrup and were armoured, just they were countered very quickly, sooo many weaknesses.
They were incredibly dangerous with a good general or well trained horse troops who knew how and when to fight.
Mobility and fear were the weapons of heavy cavalry.

In civ archers should have +7 vs them imo, some bonus.

 

[ashvin.l]

I have 2 cavalry units and I want to charge down 2 melee units with my charge promotion.

One of the target units sees me coming and fortifies for +6 but my charge bonus vs Fortified is +10 so I am at +4 vs them.

The other target was digging a shallow vegetable pit at the time and did not notice me. As they are not fortified I get no charge bonus versus them and so do not gain +4

Is that a bit weird or is there something special about digging a shallow vegetable pit?

Actually, the logic goes back to original intent of rock/scissors/papers. You MUST NOT to build 1 type of unit. If the defender doesn't fortify that that's effectively -6 on their strength. So, use any other unit to kill it. If defender fortifies, you use your charge promotion cavalry to kill them.

 

[nzcamel]

However the reality was, the heavy armour of the knight made them slow and with slightly boggy ground like after it rained, things got truly sticky. I remember analyzing battles and wondered why the cavalry were not used until someone pointed out it rained that day.

There's your using them correctly thing

The knight did have success for a short time but in reality trained footmen well equipped with good morale saw them off.
Equally high morale cavalry well trained like polish lancers had a reputation that was deserved for a short time.
In essence knights were damn expensive and fought in combination with foot

Well, that is most battles in history. When I say that 1UPT is kind of more tactical, but not really.... it is because the majority of armies fighting battles had a mix of units at different times and places. Yeah the cavalry often moved around in groups; but they were a much smaller part of most armies than foot. 1UPT as it stands at the moment does not reflect that balance well at all.

 

[Victoria]

100% @nzcamel, knights should have much higher maintenance for a start

 

[Lanthar]

@Victoria, I agree with you that often, Heavy Cavalry was more for show or not very useful in a battle. It was also best deployed in support of infantry...which screwed old school cavalry officers in WWI and WWII - they tried to use tanks the same as cavalry (in support of infantry), which doesn't work out so well.

Civilization's Rock-Paper-Scissors combat paradigm prevents more nuanced applications of specific types of military units. If you make one unit too weak compared to its peers, it won't be used and the R-P-S system breaks down.

 

[Victoria]

I love the Rock Paper Scissors and it did work in napoleonic times as probably the best time in history to look at in.
I have played a lot of tactical war games in my life including classical tabletop and it's there you learn about how much do the rules reflect reality and come to appreciate that they never will and a game needs to be engrossing rather than lining up 2 lines and crushing them together although that has its own subtleties.
Fantasy was never my thing because I love the historical aspect as you may have noticed.

I'll play anything that has a decent choice of what to do. It's why I gave up on earlier civ and love this one. At the moment it has real choices IMO

 

[Lanthar]

Rock Paper Scissors is a great mechanic! It's used a lot because it works well and is very flexible.

I love the old Avalon Hill board games, and like reading involved game rulebooks in general. It's fun to see the different approaches designers took to model reality in an engaging way (not that they always succeeded).

It's meaningful choices that make a game worth playing.

 

[nzcamel]

I love the old Avalon Hill board games, and like reading involved game rulebooks in general.

I play the new A-H games when I have time Well, most Axis & Allies.

 

[Victoria]

Axis & Allies is a classic.... I also love Brittanica
I played an entire game of war in the Pacific when it was just a board game. Now that is what you call the long haul

 

[Lanthar]

I love A&A 1940 (Global), and played War in the Pacific back in the day. Have a great copy of it. Rise & Decline 3rd Edition was also one of my favorites, and I think one of the best mid-sized hex and counter strategic games of that era. I also loved Supremacy, and spent years trying to fix the rules before just designing my own game. I might have enough time in the second half of this year to restart investigating what it would take to self-publish.

In a month or two I'll finally have a space to leave even Epic sized games up until they are done.

 

[nzcamel]

I own both A&A Pacific's (the original and 1940) and D-Day. My brother has A&A 2nd addition, and both Europe's. I really enjoy 1914 heaps too.
I'm more of a Euro gamer than a war gamer; but I've always got time for A&A.

 

[shaglio]

The closest I come to tabletop war games is a couple board games by Milton Bradley that were part of a Heritage Classic series. I have Skirmish (American Revolution) and Battle Cry (American Civil War), but they also had Broadside (War of 1812) and Dog Fight (World War 2 PTO (I think?)).

 

[Lanthar]

@nzcamel, if you ever come to Western Washington, I've got both editions of A&A 1940 also...stop by and let's have a war!

@shaglio - I have the old Battle Cry and Broadside games. Broadside is kind of a trip!