Non-lancer cavalry tactics

[Blastom1016]

I'm tried to use sword and light spear cavalry to surround the enemy flank and make chain route by flank/rear charges.
But I've found they never keep contact with a steady cohort and always retreated after the clash. The only scenario, in which they didn't retreat was against a already disrupted cohort. But disrupt a cohort could take turns of arrow bath.
So they just couldn't keep in melee long enough to provide free cohesion drops.

I'm wondering if there's any trick to make them less likely to retreat? Or this behavior is intended for balance?

[jomni]

Same problem with bow cavalry armies. Behaviour happens because it is estimated that they do not do well in melee. It’s a self preservation tactic.

Infantry should be the one pinning the target then the cavalry can cause cohesion drops when they execute a flank attack. Depends on how many infantry you have. Otherwise you live with the hit and run tactics until the impact phase causes a cohesion drop. They will most likely stay in melee afterwards. You can do something gamey by putting a unit behind them (block their withdrawal path) to make them stay engaged in melee.

[Blastom1016]

You can do something gamey by putting a unit behind them (block their withdrawal path) to make them stay engaged in melee.

Will definately try this.

[wzfcns]

In other hand,Cavalry have higher combat value in impact phase than melee.In some time keep charge and retreat may have better result than keep in melee.

[Karvon]

Light spear cavalry is very unpredictable and probably safest to think of them as heavy skirmishers. They can block and delay better than lights as they can't be ignored. They are pretty good vs disrupted units, but best if used vs flanks whenever possible.

You can never really be sure how they will react to a charge, especially if by other cavalry. Sometimes they will stand, sometimes they decide to evade. The AI for seems rather stupid from what I've seen, and other opponents I've discussed this with as we've observed such situations mostly concur.

Bow armed cavalry is even worse. They will flee even light horse at times. Yet they will maddingly decide to stand when least expected, or desired. In one of my current games, I moved one of my Persian horse archers up to skirmish range, a couple of squares, with an opposing lancer, and moved a few light horse archers off to the flanks to ring the enemy with fire. So of course he decides to be a hero and stand when charged the following turn

One important lesson from all this, cavalry is more effective when used actively rather than passively. If you leave your horse to respond to your opponent's move, you can never be sure exactly what it will do.

[PDiFolco]

And what do you do with that sh#ty Roman cav?
Too heavy for light use, too light to fight heavies, at best average morale.. I can't find a use to them!

[Geffalrus]

Light spear cavalry is very unpredictable and probably safest to think of them as heavy skirmishers. They can block and delay better than lights as they can't be ignored. They are pretty good vs disrupted units, but best if used vs flanks whenever possible.

You can never really be sure how they will react to a charge, especially if by other cavalry. Sometimes they will stand, sometimes they decide to evade. The AI for seems rather stupid from what I've seen, and other opponents I've discussed this with as we've observed such situations mostly concur.

Bow armed cavalry is even worse. They will flee even light horse at times. Yet they will maddingly decide to stand when least expected, or desired. In one of my current games, I moved one of my Persian horse archers up to skirmish range, a couple of squares, with an opposing lancer, and moved a few light horse archers off to the flanks to ring the enemy with fire. So of course he decides to be a hero and stand when charged the following turn

One important lesson from all this, cavalry is more effective when used actively rather than passively. If you leave your horse to respond to your opponent's move, you can never be sure exactly what it will do.

Agree with all of this. Since I'm the guy who charged you with the lancer vs. your bow cav, the only thing I have to add is that from my perspective, I had a 30% chance of winning the impact, but then the odds flipped on the predicted next round of melee. So I don't know if the AI evaluated that plus your light horse support and decided to risk the impact since the expected melee was in your favor? You had a general as well, so it was not unreasonable to expect that you'd pass the cohesion check even if you lost the impact. Now that one of my other lancers has ridden over to rear charge that bow cav, however, we can both say that the AI did make a rather poor choice.

[Blastom1016]

It's just hard to encourage them to stay in melee, even I've surrounded an enemy cohort with 4 cavalry units, the flanker will still try to retreat.
As the infantry is slower, while cavalry can more easily sneak around and get to the flank, even with infantry support, to get the free cohesion drop, it still requires an infantry unit to charge frontally and get the "unfavored" impact especially against impact foot or pike.

But guess, this is some sort of balance stuff, as it's too easy to make a squad change facing with flank charge.

[Geffalrus]

And what do you do with that sh#ty Roman cav?
Too heavy for light use, too light to fight heavies, at best average morale.. I can't find a use to them!

Roman cav has three virtues:

- At 40 points, they're cheap for heavy cavalry.

- The can move up to 4 spaces in the open and evade more powerful foes. This is something Roman infantry can't do. And evasion is something Lancers desperately wish they had when elephants charge them. Additionally, their mobility allows them to more easily charge down a line after a unit breaks and cause more cohesion drops.

- They are one of the few Roman units that can flank charge heavy cavalry and cause an automatic cohesion drop. This can come in handy if your infantry is getting held up by enemy heavy lancers. The threat of this is often more than enough to force lancers to be more cautious.

[Geffalrus]

It's just hard to encourage them to stay in melee, even I've surrounded an enemy cohort with 4 cavalry units, the flanker will still try to retreat.
As the infantry is slower, while cavalry can more easily sneak around and get to the flank, even with infantry support, to get the free cohesion drop, it still requires an infantry unit to charge frontally and get the "unfavored" impact especially against impact foot or pike.

But guess, this is some sort of balance stuff, as it's too easy to make a squad change facing with flank charge.

If there's a general in the unit, they might have enough POA advantage on impact - and - melee for them to stick around. Reliable? No. But I've had more success sticking these sorts of cavalry into a fight so long as they have a general in them.

Otherwise, you will have a hard time breaking infantry if you don't also have:

- lancers
- infantry
- elephants
- ranged units to disrupt them

If you're at the point in the battle where you're facing a few infantry with lots of light spear cav, your only hope is to rear/flank charge and stick in melee/cause a cohesion drop. But that's not a great situation to be in.

[choppinlt]

Infantry should be the one pinning the target then the cavalry can cause cohesion drops when they execute a flank attack. Depends on how many infantry you have. Otherwise you live with the hit and run tactics until the impact phase causes a cohesion drop. They will most likely stay in melee afterwards. You can do something gamey by putting a unit behind them (block their withdrawal path) to make them stay engaged in melee.

It's funny I found this post today because I just experienced some of the gamey tactics that jomni mentions in his post. In an effort to expose an infantry flank he parked one of his units behind his cav unit and charged my spearmen. Even though the cav got beaten that first round and would have otherwise broken off, they stayed in contact. I know this was intentional because he ended up doing this on a few occasions, because it was effective! If this is intentional design then I will learn to adapt, but it does feel gamey and beyond the intent of what is supposed to be.

I have a potential solution : break offs occur in every single case (as dictated by the appropriate combat result). Example: if an infantry unit is attacked by cav a normal break off results in a break off. i.e. the combat ends. If there is room, the cav will break off (as normal). If there is no room behind to execute a full break off, then the unit goes as far as it can and takes a cohesion test.

PLEASE help alleviate this gamey tactic!

[MVP7]

I would like the cavalry to have a bit more predictable behavior and give them a little bit more staying power in melee against infantry. I'm not the greatest fan of the still extremely rock-paper-scissors like nature of cavalry-vs-spearmen combat that overemphasizes the "stickiness" of the cavalry by making the impact and melee so one-sided that both cavalry and infantry heavy forces must rely on very gamey tactics to come out on top when facing each other.

If lancers always stayed for at least one round of melee, after initiating an impact and either winning or drawing, there would be less need for tricks like blocking the break-off. The breaking behavior could then be changed so that the cavalry either breaks off backwards or (if blocked) back the way it came.

[Paul59]

I wonder if it is possible to change the scripts so that cavalry can break off from combat, but stay in the current tile if there is no clear tile to fall back into. That would stop any gamey tactics.

[choppinlt]

I wonder if it is possible to change the scripts so that cavalry can break off from combat, but stay in the current tile if there is no clear tile to fall back into. That would stop any gamey tactics.

PRECISELY what I am suggesting at a minimum. I'm not sure it is needed, BUT I was suggesting further potential penalty (the cohesion test) to prevent the gaming of break off distances. Additional penalty seems reasonable if a real cav unit was breaking off only to find a lack of space.

Regarding modding the scripts, THAT is a REALLY good idea! Not sure if we can do it, but great suggestion!

[Paul59]

I wonder if it is possible to change the scripts so that cavalry can break off from combat, but stay in the current tile if there is no clear tile to fall back into. That would stop any gamey tactics.

PRECISELY what I am suggesting at a minimum. I'm not sure it is needed, BUT I was suggesting further potential penalty (the cohesion test) to prevent the gaming of break off distances. Additional penalty seems reasonable if a real cav unit was breaking off only to find a lack of space.

Regarding modding the scripts, THAT is a REALLY good idea! Not sure if we can do it, but great suggestion!

I was thinking a change to the official game, rather than a mod. It would need a lot of testing of course, but that could be done as part of the next beta test. I don't know Richard's view on this, there might well be good reasons why it is not possible or desirable, but it would be very interesting to have his opinion.

[AlexDetrojan]

RBS will likely correct me, but it is my understanding that FOG2 is based upon the P&S engine, yet cavalry behave differently in FOG2. As far as I'm concerned, the different types of cavalry in P&S behave exactly as I would expect them to(from what I've read). In FOG2 there is some curious behaviors(as noted above)of cavalry...not sure if this is due to gunpowder units(available in P&S) or tactical doctrine(in FOG2) or both. In P&S I know exactly what Light Lancers for example are good for and what their not good for. The same with the other cavalry types. In FOG2, not so much, as I suspect there are permutation calculations at the time of combat we are not privy to, that the devs are.
Cheers
Alex

[SnuggleBunnies]

RBS will likely correct me, but it is my understanding that FOG2 is based upon the P&S engine, yet cavalry behave differently in FOG2. As far as I'm concerned, the different types of cavalry in P&S behave exactly as I would expect them to(from what I've read). In FOG2 there is some curious behaviors(as noted above)of cavalry...not sure if this is due to gunpowder units(available in P&S) or tactical doctrine(in FOG2) or both. In P&S I know exactly what Light Lancers for example are good for and what their not good for. The same with the other cavalry types. In FOG2, not so much, as I suspect there are permutation calculations at the time of combat we are not privy to, that the devs are.
Cheers
Alex

The Fall Back behavior for cavalry is similarly calculated in FOG2 and Pike and Shot. The difference is that cavalry don't evade in PnS, while they do evade in both FOG2 and Sengoku Jidai (depending on classification of course). There aren't any more hidden calculations in FOG2 than in PnS, and in fact FoG2 offers more detail in terms of its cohesion reports.

As for the Fall Back blocked problem - I agree that this is too gamey and is a problem, but addressing it would not be simple. A few possibilities come to mind -

1) A unit Falling Back physically pushes back friendly units behind it. This might look mildly ridiculous, and would actually be an advantage to many sorts of units breaking contact. Perhaps this Fall Back pushing units behind would apply only to lights, with formed troops blocking Fall Backs.

2) Fall Back in place. A unit could Fall Back without actually physically moving a square. Yet this could allow evady cavalry to Fall Back in place, and then be able to evade away from enemy troops closing in from behind - seems a bit much. It would also somewhat disadvantage non-shock infantry, who would be subjected to more missile fire - if they charged a unit of archers and it Fell Back in place, it could fire again before they could reengage, whereas right now they remain locked in melee.

3) My current thinking - if a unit Falls Back, and its rear is blocked by non-light troops, it Falls Back in place but takes a cohesion test. If its rear is blocked by light troops, the light troops get pushed out of the way and the unit Falls Back without an additional cohesion test. This would prevent players locking either their own or enemy units into place to set up flank attacks with light troops. It would make it extra risky to set up flank attacks by blocking your own units Fall Back path - losing one round of combat could lead to a disruption, and the Fall Back in place cohesion check could subsequently lead to Fragmentation or Rout. The downside is that you would be able to cause extra cohesion checks on enemy units just by parking, say, a 32 point unit of Indian Cavalry behind them. It would also open up the question of what would happen if a unit couldn't be pushed back due to similar circumstances (a blocking non-light unit - with friendlies potentially supporting, so not causing a cohesion check?)- does it all get too complicated? Is the current situation the least bad one? It would require extensive testing to figure out.

[jomni]

RBS will likely correct me, but it is my understanding that FOG2 is based upon the P&S engine, yet cavalry behave differently in FOG2. As far as I'm concerned, the different types of cavalry in P&S behave exactly as I would expect them to(from what I've read). In FOG2 there is some curious behaviors(as noted above)of cavalry...not sure if this is due to gunpowder units(available in P&S) or tactical doctrine(in FOG2) or both. In P&S I know exactly what Light Lancers for example are good for and what their not good for. The same with the other cavalry types. In FOG2, not so much, as I suspect there are permutation calculations at the time of combat we are not privy to, that the devs are.
Cheers
Alex

In P&S, Cavalry can’t be attacked by most infantry. this kind of secures their flanks. In FOG2, cavalry sticking around in melee actually makes them more prone to flank attack and become less resilient. I’ve played a lot of lancer armies in FOG2 and their biggest problem is getting flanked while in melee. So not sticking around for melee actually makes them survive better as seen with horse archers.

[Blastom1016]

So not sticking around for melee actually makes them survive better as seen with horse archers.

I'm accurately thinking the lancers are the best defender against infantry charge. They neglect most of the impact poa from infantry and break off before melee phase.
I can simply keep move them back and zoc the infantry (without charging). Sometimes, the charger will chase them and get flank exposed.

[jomni]

So not sticking around for melee actually makes them survive better as seen with horse archers.

I'm accurately thinking the lancers are the best defender against infantry charge. They neglect most of the impact poa from infantry and break off before melee phase.
I can simply keep move them back and zoc the infantry (without charging). Sometimes, the charger will chase them and get flank exposed.

Thanks for the tips. The break off behaviour is really needed for called. Sticking with melee just makes them die faster.