Twist to cav gameplay, any dev want to comment?

[Aljo]

Tor no randomness involved.

If you hit with the pike, it goes down.

Thing is that cav should more easily go down TO THE RIGHT WEAPONS, But since there are usually limited amount of pikes, usually 1 in a group, several cav charging in concentrated shape should make sure most of them survive. Making a train with time for the piker to make several hits won't do it. They would have to hit group at almost the same moment.

Of course, nerf maneuverability to balance out the buff.

One big blablabla. So you get the pikes OP in that way, gj.

You want pikes to make some super extra damage to horses, make em a breakable item. Like ingame breakable.
Want it bit more realistic, here you go. That's as real as it gets if you hit a horse. Pike breaks.

(click to show/hide)

IMO cav "rapetrains" shouldn't be easy to stop. Just like a group of archers camping together and watching each other's ass is hard to attack. Besides, they are called "charges" and not "rapetrains".


Currently, all the horses, from light to heavy, are sort of the same. Everything is about catching people unaware, even with a tank horse. I'd like to keep it that way with light horses, but change the role of heavy horses.

Heavy horses should be made for charges. But because in the game we deal with extremely small scale skirmishes, there is little point in charging the back or flanks of a "formation" because there usually are no formations. So every charge translates into a front charge, with the enemy aware and probably ready. Here's where the horse rearing destroys the gameplay. A charge should mean chaos in the enemy blob. But if the horses make a dead stop in front of it, no chaos is going to happen.

So I'd like horses not to stop, even if they are catched by a pike. If we could mod it, the best would be making the rider drop from the horse because of the inertia, suffering heavy damage and let the horse continue without rider at a slower pace, through the enemy group.

Of course, most light horses should die instantly when crashing into a pike. To balance it out, their maneuver (and maybe speed) should be upped. Buffing light horses maneuver will also help increasing their anti-cav strengths and make up for the general lack of any inertia or realistic "maneuver" applied to humans, especially with the current agi trend. Heavy horses, on the other hand, shouldn't die to a single pike hit. However, they are not made for killing the unaware or the lonely pixie, so their maneuver should be lower than now.

So basically, increase the differences between horses.

+1

[Glyph]

One big blablabla. So you get the pikes OP in that way, gj.

You want pikes to make some super extra damage to horses, make em a breakable item. Like ingame breakable.
Want it bit more realistic, here you go. That's as real as it gets if you hit a horse. Pike breaks.

(click to show/hide)

+1

pikes would be buffed like that yes, but with their 3 slots they are still not viable for most people. not breakable, then you'd lose 3 of your 4 slots if your pike breaks

[dodnet]

I'm cav and I wouldn't mind some change on how cav is handled. Which bugs me most at the moment is that a lot of 2h outreaches me easily and a polearm from the side which I almost passed rears my horse which is totally annoying and unrealistic. It has to be balanced out ofc to prevent cav be more powered than now.

So I'd like horses not to stop, even if they are catched by a pike. If we could mod it, the best would be making the rider drop from the horse because of the inertia, suffering heavy damage and let the horse continue without rider at a slower pace, through the enemy group.

But keep in mind that with that change you are definitely dead as cav is your horse gets down because at the moment almost every time a rider gets dehorsed he catches 1-x hits until even getting up.

[Ujin]

I don't like this idea but i'm too lazy to explain why, so i'm just gonna go through this topic later and +1 people whom i agree with. Thank god for +1s.

[BADPLAYERold]

I kinda like the idea of horses not being reared and instead just taking more more damage from melee. However you seem to only want this to buff heavy cav, which currently is the most easy no skill class in the game and out of every class it is the one that least needs a buff.

[Torben]

I kinda like the idea of horses not being reared and instead just taking more more damage from melee. However you seem to only want this to buff heavy cav, which currently is the most easy no skill class in the game and out of every class it is the one that least needs a buff.

i never ride heavy horses so that is not my intention.  i want to change the gameplay a bit.  make frontal cavcharges possible without the second row being stopped by the first rows reared horses.  make light cav more of an anti-cav weapon.  give the possibility of being a true formation breaker whilst increasing the chance of being dehorsed and dieing

[Lorenzo_of_Iberia]

I think torben is arguing is that there is no random chance with horses, its just with the heavier you need to just make a hit that shouldnt normally glance to bring it down. There is no 'random' chance, its more of a case of whether you can have the skill to hit the horse dead centre and killing it rather than getting a vague, weak hit that rears the horse.

The advantage of using a heavy horse would be its increased hp to arrows etc. You'd have to find a way to make polearms better vs horses than any other weapon, my suggestion is the ability to couch a polearm on the ground. This would be quite good for spear walls, could mean just a few lined pikes could down a large amount of horses. I dont find heavy horses particularly op atm anyway, I fear an intelligent cav player on a courser or arabian far more than on a cataphract. Heavy horses are just not cost effective if you can play a strong light horseman game...

[Joelturuz]

I think this would be quite nice addition to Strategus, as horses are something that's quite expensive. But for normal matches, well, I'm not so sure. Perhaps it could be tested out.

[Aljo]

I kinda like the idea of horses not being reared and instead just taking more more damage from melee. However you seem to only want this to buff heavy cav, which currently is the most easy no skill class in the game and out of every class it is the one that least needs a buff.

Heavy cav= LOTS OF REPAIRS
You dont get the money by being useless 

On a side note, light and heavy cav need to be more different. Their roles should be completely different, so some balancing should be done.

[Tomas]

I think the aims of the idea are good although on its own the idea is unbalanced.

To balance it out i think it needs a few extras
1) People holding their pikes ready should suffer reduced movement & turning speeds.   This is so that individual pikeman don't get buffed too much, only pike formations.  This is fair since the aim of the idea is to buff cav formations/charges and not individual cav.
2) Armoured horses need a slight manueverability nerf.  I'm only talking 1 - 3 points here but again this is to make sure individual cav are not overly buffed and it also makes sure the movement impared pikeman still have a chance.  It also gives light cav a greater advantage over heavy cav allowing them to better perform their new role as anti cav.
3) Finally a 50% chance that if you deal over 50 damage with a piercing weapon you will be disarmed and get stunned for a second.  Think of it as your weapon getting stuck in whatever you hit but in game it means your weapon ends up on the floor at your feet.  It can be picked up again but you get delayed a second.  This will just buy dismounted cav an extra second to get up if their horse gets killed and it will mean pike formations will need to have other infantry in them to kill off the disounted Cav.  Cav need to think they have a chance if they get downed otherwise the charges will turn into a competition as to who doesn't end up at the front.  It will also stop all cav endlessly lancing unaware enemies so it works both ways and is realistic.

[Dehitay]

So what some people want is an end to rearing for heavy cav, and in exchange they would be willing to accept slower speed for their horses. If that one post was correct about heavy cav at slow speeds not getting reared, wouldn't this all be solved if we just changed the speed on heavy cav to 15? Or better yet, just don't go at full speed so no extra work is involved. Can anybody actually verify that heavy armored horses don't rear at low speeds when hit with pointy sticks?

[Kafein]

So what some people want is an end to rearing for heavy cav, and in exchange they would be willing to accept slower speed for their horses. If that one post was correct about heavy cav at slow speeds not getting reared, wouldn't this all be solved if we just changed the speed on heavy cav to 15? Or better yet, just don't go at full speed so no extra work is involved. Can anybody actually verify that heavy armored horses don't rear at low speeds when hit with pointy sticks?

If the pointy stick glances, I don't think the horse rears. So for most uber armored horses, going very slowly helpls preventing that. But anyway there is no point in going slowly if the problem is being gangbanged by inf when you are immobilised. If you go slowly enough to avoid horse rearing, then you go slowly enough for all the inf guys to land a hit on you.

[KaMiKaZe_JoE]

Sounds like a good idea.

What better way to NERF CAV than by making their horses unstoppable? I also agree with other suggestions regarding boosting maneuverability, HP, and/or speed for lighter horses.