Dismountables for cavalry armies?

[MVP7]

When dismountable units were added in the Age of Belisarius the capability was limited to the units of that DLC with known historical examples of them fighting dismounted. However, there are several armies in the game that have little to no infantry like Alan, early Avars, Bretons, Huns, Vandals, Turkish etc.

Armies like the Byzantines are obviously far better documented than your average nomad tribes so there's obviously going to be more "proof" of their cavalry fighting dismounted. As a result the ability to dismount is pretty much limited to army lists that really don't need it (at least for now).

Wouldn't it make sense to give these (almost) pure cavalry armies at least some dismountable units to give them a bit more tactical flexibility? Even if there are no documented cases of the peoples in question fighting dismounted it's still possible, even likely, that they did or that they would have if they needed to. I find it hard to believe that these armies would be completely incapable (culturally and/or practically) to fight on foot if a very specific situation demanded that.

Balance- and authenticity-wise I don't think that would results in people using the Vandals as an infantry army since dismounted units are only "half size" and definitely not great value for points in that role. Dismounting would still give the extremely terrain sensitive cavalry list a small added ability to work with unfavorable terrain.

[rbodleyscott]

We are following the tabletop FOG policy to only allow dismounting of troops that are historically recorded as dismounting. There will be a lot more dismountable units in the Dark Ages and Medieval periods.

[MVP7]

That's a policy but the big flaw with it is that the ability to dismount will mainly correlate with how significant and well documented the factions were rather than whether they actually fought dismounted or if that's ability that the army lists would need tactically.

The least documented armies might be based an a few painted pots and inspirational poems written hundreds of years after the fact. There's naturally going to me more recorded occasions of dismounting for civilizations that wrote and stored detailed after actions reports of all their campaigns.

[rbodleyscott]

You are of course correct, but once we start going down the route of allowing everything that "might" have happened, we go further and further from history - and erode the individual flavour of the different factions. We learned the inadvisability of doing this through various iterations of WRG rules, DBx and FOG tabletop rules. It just led to totally unrealistic tactics in the game. Reverting to a "free and easy" approach would be a retrograde step.

That aside, there are some existing units that are documented as dismounting - e.g. Republican Roman cavalry - but some of the models were not designed to allow the men to fight on foot, and those that are will require new animations. It is on the wish list, but not currently top priority, especially as there are few circumstances when it would be a good option to pick in the game.

Also, as I say, dismounting to fight on foot was more of "a thing" in the Dark Ages and Medieval eras, and will help to bring out the flavour of those eras. Armies that habitually dismounted some or all of their cavalry/knights will also get the option to pick full-sized units of pre-dismounted men. (As will the 551-578 AD Byzantine list in the forthcoming patch).

[MVP7]

I fully agree that letting everyone do and have everything would only reduce the real choice and variety in the game. However I don't believe that giving e.g. the Vandals a part of their Armoured Nobles as the dismountable variant would destroy their unique character or result in un-immersive tactics, as the dismounted cavalry is still very price ineffective and quite rarely necessary.

I know dismounting will become more of a thing with the medieval times but looking at the armies that are currently in the game, the records based dismounting policy really puts the dismountable units into lists that really don't need them and for reasons that frankly seem very arbitrary. That Roman cavalry you mentioned is a good example. Since there are no sieges in the game and the Romans really don't need more high quality infantry so why would they need dismountable cavalry? It doesn't strike me as important characteristic/flavor feature of the Roman cavalry either. There's obviously going to be records of Roman cavalry dismounting due to the huge historical footprint of the Roman civilization so giving them the ability just for the sake of that would seem extremely bureaucratic (or almost French!).

...

Speaking of medieval times, those "full sized" chronically dismounted units sound like a tricky unit to balance. Would they still be priced as two cavalry units, which would make them very expensive in comparison to normal infantry, or are they going to be less expensive, which could make actually dismounting knights (which I presume are still going to be the predominant form of top tier warriors in a lot of Europe) relatively price inefficient or even redundant at worst? Are the full size dismounted units going to be rebalanced a bit like the massed light infantry units so that they aren't just double the same capability (as in there are more squires, men-at-arms etc int the formation)?

[rbodleyscott]

Speaking of medieval times, those "full sized" chronically dismounted units sound like a tricky unit to balance. Would they still be priced as two cavalry units, which would make them very expensive in comparison to normal infantry, or are they going to be less expensive, which could make actually dismounting knights (which I presume are still going to be the predominant form of top tier warriors in a lot of Europe) relatively price inefficient or even redundant at worst? Are the full size dismounted units going to be rebalanced a bit like the massed light infantry units so that they aren't just double the same capability (as in there are more squires, men-at-arms etc int the formation)?

Although it isn't published anywhere, the game has a specified points system, from which the points cost of individual units are calculated, rather than an arbitrary points system based on subjective estimates of each unit-type's efficacy. If we need (after play experience) to adjust the points of some unit-types, we adjust the points system rather than tweaking the cost of individual unit-types. The pre-dismounted units will be costed as infantry of equivalent classification, which means that they should (if the points system is correctly balanced) be correctly costed for their effectiveness. That will still leave them more expensive than a unit of mounted knights, and hence an army using them will have less units.

However, they are not twice as effective as the optionally dismounted version. This is because, although they are shown in game as having half as many men, the optionally dismounted variety are actually rated, in terms of the internal UnitSize variable (from which combat strength is calculated) as 2/3 as strong as the full sized units. This is justified on the basis of the moral advantage that such perceived elites would have in contemporary battles.

The armies that don't get the pre-dismounted units are armies that sometimes but infrequently dismounted their knights, and hence doing so will be a very situational thing where for matchup or terrain reasons the advantages outweigh the effective "loss" of the extra points paid.

The pre-dismounted knights will obviously be superior to any other infantry type (with the exception of Swiss pikes) in combat, but won't be hugely advantaged in the open vs mounted knights.

I fully agree that letting everyone do and have everything would only reduce the real choice and variety in the game. However I don't believe that giving e.g. the Vandals a part of their Armoured Nobles as the dismountable variant would destroy their unique character or result in un-immersive tactics, as the dismounted cavalry is still very price ineffective and quite rarely necessary.

The Vandals are a special case, because obviously when they raided by sea they would probably be mostly dismounted when they arrived at their destinations, as they are unlikely to have had enough horse transports to mount all their men. And obviously, in sieges, all nations' cavalry would mostly dismount - but the game does not cover sieges. The army that fought Belisarius in the field fought entirely mounted, so allowing them to dismount would produce battles that are certainly unhistorical.

What we could do, however, is add a separate "Vandal (Fleet)" list to cover situations where much of the army was (probably) dismounted.

[MVP7]

Hopefully there's documented occasions of dismounting even for some of the smaller factions of medieval times.

I do like the idea of a new Vandal fleet army list . Would they have some full-size pre-dismounted lancers for infantry?

[rbodleyscott]

Hopefully there's documented occasions of dismounting even for some of the smaller factions of medieval times.

We will simply allow most knight units to dismount by default, regardless of faction. But only the factions who regularly dismounted would get the pre-dismounted units.

I do like the idea of a new Vandal fleet army list . Would they have some full-size pre-dismounted lancers for infantry?

We would have to decide whether the units would be diluted by oarsmen etc. In which case the conglomerate units might be warbands.

[MVP7]

I do like the idea of a new Vandal fleet army list . Would they have some full-size pre-dismounted lancers for infantry?

We would have to decide whether the units would be diluted by oarsmen etc. In which case the conglomerate units might be warbands.

Yeah, I guess in the standard FoG2 scale warbands would probably be most accurate interpretation unless vandals had some strong social limits that would have discouraged mixing the demographics.

How do the vandals manage to field such massive proportion of well equipped nobles in the African lists? You'd imagine that such a massive cavalry force would require a massive amount of camp followers which usually would double (at least partially) as light/medium infantry. From what I have gathered the Vandals don't seem as nomadic in nature as some other cavalry heavy cultures like the Huns. I doubt an army consisting of nobles would be as professionally self sufficient as Romans or Macedonians either.