Chariots should be nerfed

[fogman]

dude your presumption is laughable.

I have an idea, challenge me in a game where you use a bunch of chariots, say indians, and i'll use the macedonians. we'll laugh.

EDIT:
forget it, looks like you have zero experience. not worth the time.

[Brindlebane]

I'll be honest i've only been playing the game for a few months but i've had a lot of games on the go.Hardly anyone ever uses them from what i've seen.I've come up against them maybe twice when i first started playing and even i managed to deal with them.I've used them once in a quick game and not through choice and they totally sucked.I'd rather use someone on a bicycle with a wooden stick than a chariot ingame.Not worth the cost,or the bother in my opinion.

[Sabratha]

I'll be honest i've only been playing the game for a few months but i've had a lot of games on the go.Hardly anyone ever uses them from what i've seen.I've come up against them maybe twice when i first started playing and even i managed to deal with them.I've used them once in a quick game and not through choice and they totally sucked.I'd rather use someone on a bicycle with a wooden stick than a chariot ingame.Not worth the cost,or the bother in my opinion.

I use chariots from time to time, but they are usefull in specific occasions. First of all, heavy spear chariots are a good weapon against impact foot, like Romans. However, in most cases chariots aren't really that good. Light chariots will get trumped by most types of cavalry and infantry. In gneral chariots are good in open terrain used against archers, impact foot and at ligth spearmen type of foot. Everything else is not a good target for them, especially on bad terrain.

[Morbio]

I'll be honest i've only been playing the game for a few months but i've had a lot of games on the go.Hardly anyone ever uses them from what i've seen.I've come up against them maybe twice when i first started playing and even i managed to deal with them.I've used them once in a quick game and not through choice and they totally sucked.I'd rather use someone on a bicycle with a wooden stick than a chariot ingame.Not worth the cost,or the bother in my opinion.

I'm a low to middling Division A player and I can say that players I respect have used Chariots in competitions. IIRC both EricDoman and IanIOW (both elite players) have used them recently against me, both times they were scythed chariots.

I'm sure that in the right situations Chariots are great units, whilst equally I'm sure that in the wrong situations they are useless.

Common sense tells me that these would not have been used at different points in history, by different races if they were useless all the time.

[Legatvs020]

I think chariots are balanced just fine. Fact that they (counting 20 units) can take hits from skirmishers easily, makes them a battlefield nuisance that can be dealt with.

[Tiavals]

The concept of balance is interesting in relation to FOG and history.

That Alexander the Great could defeat chariots with ease doesn't mean that the average commander could. If pantherboy can defeat anything in the game with anything, that says nothing about the quality of any units in question. Pantherboy is the Alexander of FOG(recently arguable, I guess ). Does that mean that anyone playing FOG will be capable of the same feats, even if they read how he did them? Surely not. Just because you know how something should be done, doesn't mean you can accomplish it, especially on the real field of battle.(as compared to the "take as much time as you want" turns of FOG) Your troops need to follow your complex orders precisely and so on.
(Not to mention that game mechanically chariots are HORRIBLY disadvantaged vs pikemen. Against Legions they're really great, though, the best unit when charging in fact.)

That Romans feel the need to belittle chariots implies to me, that they need to bolster the morale of the troops, who fear the chariots. Thus, the chariot is a fearsome weapon, since they especially need to convince the troops that it isn't. "See how your fathers laughed and clapped hands when a chariot came? You're losers compared to your fathers, now stay in formation as the chariots charge at you."

The strongest argument for chariots is that they were used. Once the tank arrived on the modern battlefield, all nations adopted it's use, that could afford it. Chariots were very expensive, so it seems obvious they were used willfully. The same armies used horsemen as well, so why would they use the chariot if it were inferior in every possible way? Being a status symbol hardly matters if the users are killed in battle. Cuirassiers and the like quickly fell out of favor when WW1 came, despite being a big deal before it. No one started using them after the war was over. Why would chariots be decimated on the field, yet be used after proven pointless? An army using them would be at a disadvantage, and thus it's natural that they'd be removed from the field very quickly after proven pointless.

Let's suppose that chariots were indeed useless against Romans and Greeks. They weren't the only armies in the ancient world, and if the others hadn't thought of or implemented such counters, chariots were quite possibly worthwhile. The flow of information was lesser back then, so obviously even if someone thought of something, it took a long time for others to get the same information. And during that time, chariots might have been as useful as they had for a thousand years. One can easily imagine how a scythed chariots wreaks havoc against a peasant uprising. That they were used against Romans seems more like an issue of "Throw everything we have against them, we're going to lose otherwise" rather than "these chariots sure will devastate their ranks".

As for the caltrops, why would caltrops work against chariots but not against cavalry? Seems to me nothing implies that chariots are any more vulnerable to them than horsemen. I suppose you can argue that a horseman is more manouverable, where as a chariot charges in a straight line.

In the end, so many people could save their anger if FOG got rid of the ridiculous numbers in the unit sizes. Just force the percentages on everyone and all will be well. No one will say that 20 chariots can't beat thousands of troops, when the number isn't given, just the % of losses.
I want chariots in my FOG, because chariots are so darned rare in computer games, so I'll take any scraps I can. If only they made the bronze age army book so I could have my dozens of chariot armies.

[voskarp]

...
In the end, so many people could save their anger if FOG got rid of the ridiculous numbers in the unit sizes. Just force the percentages on everyone and all will be well. No one will say that 20 chariots can't beat thousands of troops, when the number isn't given, just the % of losses.
...

I agree with what you say, especially this. Please remove the numbers for the new version.

[fogman]

numbers are essential for historical scenarios, in terms of flavour, accuracy, and certain design decisions.

the people complaining about chariots are new players who just got beat by the computer chariots. if you get beat by the computer you still have a long way to go understanding the game's mechanics. you can't criticize something you don't understand. although obviously most people complain because they don't understand or don't bother to understand.

[Yuknoom]

Wow.

[Legatvs020]

...
In the end, so many people could save their anger if FOG got rid of the ridiculous numbers in the unit sizes. Just force the percentages on everyone and all will be well. No one will say that 20 chariots can't beat thousands of troops, when the number isn't given, just the % of losses.
...

I agree with what you say, especially this. Please remove the numbers for the new version.

Lol, no, numbers are important. I wan't to know how big is the battle i'm fighting, and how big were the losses, and what size are my units, it's that sweet part of all battle strategies.

[voskarp]

But in DAG they are all (except chariots, elephants, war-wagons and artillery) 300. How can 300 medium foot take up the same space as 300 heavy foot? I should be able to pack in about twice as many HF in that place. And 300 cavalry?

[Legatvs020]

Obviously, the problem is not in numbers themselves, but rather in the unit count which should be adjusted. Nevertheless, i think point of hex grid is not to represent space as much as orientation, so you know whether your unit is flanked or not, ultimately, you worry about forming the line with units adjacent to each other. So 300 HF maybe take less space than 300 MF, put point is, MF will still get bonus for impact, meaning that they are sort of outflanking/overwhelming HF for a brief moment of charge.

[TheGrayMouser]

Obviously, the problem is not in numbers themselves, but rather in the unit count which should be adjusted. Nevertheless, i think point of hex grid is not to represent space as much as orientation, so you know whether your unit is flanked or not, ultimately, you worry about forming the line with units adjacent to each other. So 300 HF maybe take less space than 300 MF, put point is, MF will still get bonus for impact, meaning that they are sort of outflanking/overwhelming HF for a brief moment of charge.

The problem I think is that new players (and old) forget and or dont realize the game engine does not account for the # of men, its all 100% abstract and its there for flavour only

The original game actually had 1500 men per HI, 1000 for MI and cavalry and 500 for Lights.... then players began to complain that the scale was out of sync based on the presumption that each hex was about 50 yards across (not unreasonbale considering the range of missle weapons) So Hexwar changed it to 300 across the boards

You make a great point on what hexes actually represent. I always felt any hex game is based on some presumption of SOME abstraction, especially when coupled w ZOC's. A unit(BG) has "presence", not only in the hex it occupies but sometime in the hexes around it. Thus it can sometimes be within the confines of a hex, sometimes possibly spread over several hexes....

I see no reason why the game developers should take away a feature that can add flavour when players that dont like it can just toggle off the # of men reported and view causalties as a %
Cheers!

[Heraclius]

“Another attempt to offset the decline in cavalry and find a new way of breaking open the phalanx was the war chariot, often with scythed wheels, which reappeared on Greek battlefields in the late fourth century. To judge by Herodotus (7.40.4) and Xenophon (Cyr. 8.3.15-18), scythed chariots never fell out among the Persians. After Alexander they were mostly found in the Seleucid army... And like elephants they were similarly unsuccessful at these tasks, and suffered from many of the same deficiencies, being large, unwieldy, and exposed. As a result, each could fall victim to missile fire and chariots in particular were no match for Tarentine cavalry or horse archers. Even if a chariot did succeed in creating the desired gap, the vehicle needed such a running s art that it often found itself far ahead of friendly infantry, and thus any advantage gained might prove unsustainable. Defensive tactics were also similar to those used with elephants to pass through harmlessly. The gaps would then be closed and the infantry would take advantage of the vehicle's wide turning circle to shower the horses and charioteers with missiles. Chariots proved utterly disastrous at Magnesia in 190, as Eumenes forced them back into their own lines, where they destroyed Antiochus' left wing. After this their use in warfare was rare, and by the first century they were seen as something of a joke: their revival in 86 by Mithridates IV at Chaeronea was greeted with laughter from Sulla's legionaries, who easily dispatched them (Magnesia: Livy 37.41.6-42.4, including the best description of a Hellenistic war-chariot; Chaeronea: Plut. Sull. 18.1-3).”

The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World by
Brian Campbell and Lawrence A. Tritle
pg 192

“Two or four horse chariots continued to serve alongside cavalry in Indian, Punic and Gallic armies, but we have nothing comparable to Caesar's eye witness account of British chariot tactics (B Gall. 4.33).... It appears that these traditional forms of war chariots added little to the combined arms mix once true cavalry were available, and it is hardly surprising tat they died out over time. Slightly more enduring were the specialist four-horse scythed chariots employed on occasion by the Achaemenid Persia, the Seleucids and later the Kingdom of Pontus... However they were almost universally unsuccessful, being defeated (as at Cunaxa and Arbela) by a combination of missile fire and opening of lanes to allow them to pass harmlessly through the line. Had the chariots been followed up immediately by more conventional troops then it might have been possible to exploit the temporary disruption, but as it was, any troops deployed in the vicinity were themselves vulnerable to these double-edged weapons getting out of hand. This happened at Magnesia, where the panic of the scythed chariots under a hail of missiles were instrumental in routing the entire Seleucid left (Livy 37.41-2). The final indignity came at Second Chaeronea, where Plutarch tells us (Sull. 18) that Sulla's men not only saw the vehicles off in short order but then laughed and clapped as if they were at the races, exhorting the enemy to 'Bring more!'.”

The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare (Volume 1) by Phillip Sabin, Hans van Wees and Michael Whitby

pg 417-418

Fogman

“dude your presumption is laughable.”

Said the man who presumes to know better than Cambridge and Oxford experts. So I guess you know more than Oxford and Cambridge scholars too? That's a good laugh.


“the people complaining about chariots are new players who just got beat by the computer chariots. if you get beat by the computer you still have a long way to go understanding the game's mechanics. you can't criticize something you don't understand. although obviously most people complain because they don't understand or don't bother to understand.”

If claiming that chariots were useless anachronisms in the classical era is the result of someone being a sore looser at Fog, then I guess Phillip Sabin, Hans van Wees, Michael Whitby Brian Campbell and Lawrence A. Tritle are losers at FoG.

Grow up man.

Classical Greek and Roman sources claim chariots were anachronisms, contemporary modern scholarship considers them anachronisms and yet you know better than them all. There is a word for that Chutzpa.

Again your lack of maturity seems to be connected with your inability to lose gracefully.

[fogman]

You just came out of hibernation?

[Vargas78]

I cant really see them being any good against the large spears of the phalangites but the hellenistics kept them around for a reason. Depending on terrain they may have been good at chasing off skirmishers if it was good flat ground but at the same time potentially prone to their fire. They may have been good at being impacted against disordered or badly disciplined troop formations. Levys, hastily trained phalanx which were probably common in hellenistic warfare which saw many big battles may not have braced for impact or lost their nerve at their sight. I thought they were weaker in the great battles series than in FOG however.