Fire-capable cavalry and charges

[jackx]

This is something I noticed while testing Prinz Heinrich's Reichenberg scenario.

There appears to be some inconsistency as to when fire-capable cavalry can, and cannot, fire.

That is, when flank-charging other cavalry, I've sometimes been able to fire, and sometimes not.

When charging frontally with multiple fc units, only one seems to be able to fire.


Also, defensive fire against charging cavalry does not occur. Since Soor is modelled without fc cavalry anyways, it's not a big deal, but the option to receive a charge with fire should be there for fc cavalry, though obviously at the cost of penalties for the subsequent melee.

[PrinzHenrich]

Now I see that my scenarios are usefull for something[:D]

[Magnus]

Hmm you guys gave me an idea, actually I started before on firing animations for cavalry. Is this something maybe we should include into the next game? I´ll see what Tim says. There was a debate before where we excluded firing cavalry due to conflicting theories about they fired or not from horse back.

[PrinzHenrich]

It will look funny when hussars will go out from horse to made fire and them go into to counter-charge another cav. unit.

[jackx]

Depends on what periods you want to cover, really. From mid-century onward it became increasingly rare outside of perhaps skirmish action off the battlefield, the last prominent instance that I can think of is actually Soor, where the success of the Prussian uphill cavalry charge is attributed due to the Austrian horse remaining stationary and receiving them with fire.
If you go for earlier battles as well, i.e. Spanish succession/GNW or maybe even 1680's and 90's, then it should definitely be included, as it was still a fairly common practice.

Firing animations (from horseback) would be great, however it's probably not worth the effort if it's not going to be used in the stock game much/at all, and the mention of assault columns and possible napoleonics by Tim leads me to believe that that'll be the case.

One other thing I'd like to see with regard to cavalry is the option to set charge disruption modifier per unit instead of per side. Depending on the conflict, a "side" could be a fairly large alliance, with varied cavalry doctrines for its component armies.

Dismounted cavalry was recently mentioned in another thread, but that'd be more of a gimmick than a really useful feature, as it didn't exactly happen very often during battle, at least I can't think of any instances of it right now...

[Magnus]

Yes that´s what I thought for SYW they didn´t fire much from horseback, this was the debate earlier to that made we excluded the animations for the older SYW games. However napoleonic is another story.

[jackx]

It appears that cavalry in skirmish formation cannot use defensive fire when charged. Seems a bit odd, since technically, cavalry in skirmish formation cannot (counter-)charge, so unlike with cavalry in line, which can and will do so, what's keeping them from firing?

[Sertorius1]

The cavalry should be doing little if any, firing mounted. A horse isn't exactly the most stable weapons platform and the weapons being carbines would be even less accurate in this use. If you did allow them to fire the number of hits should be greatly reduced compare to those of an infantry unit. I suspect that their ammunition load was probably much smaller than that of their infantry counterparts as well. Marborough allowed his cavalry to have only three rounds according to one source I read and these rounds were to be used primarily to chase off foragers.

Cavalry's main weapons are the sabre and shock effect. Fire arms in the case of melee were used as weapons of last resort.

There are historical reasons for allowing dragoons to dismount. At Blenheim the French had a number of dragoon squadrons dismounted on their right flank. Frederick on a couple of occasions dismounted dragoons as well as an emergency measure. One was at Kolin when most of the infantry had abandon the battlefield and he had to dismount a dragoon regiment. I think the other occasion was in the aftermath of Kunersdorf. I know of no instance where cuirassiers were used in a dismounted role.

For the game itself, one of the reasons I'd like to see this is the case where a remnant of a cavalry unit is holed up in a town. Instead of having to pull an infantry battalion away from doing some action more important it would be nice to simply dismount some dragoons to run them out of there.

One other thing I'd like to see with regard to cavalry is the option to set charge disruption modifier per unit instead of per side. Depending on the conflict, a "side" could be a fairly large alliance, with varied cavalry doctrines for its component armies.

This is a capital idea and would be particularly useful for the French, considering their obsolete cavalry doctrine at Blenheim, for example.

[jackx]

I can see the appeal of dismounting cavalry, but that'd basically require a double set of stats for the unit...

PH set the fire modifier for fc cavalry to 5% in his scenario, and since they get to fire before charging, too, also lowered their charge value.
That works well, but I think it could be improved by giving a fc cavalry unit two charge values. One with, one without firing. That'd be another step towards recreating differences in cavalry doctrine...

As far as history goes, I'm not sure where the idea of using fire from horseback as a means to combat cavalry comes from, probably just a side-effect of a general enthusiasm for firearms, and maybe due to the fact that it actually wasn't such a bad idea against large formations of pikemen. Why it stubbornly persisted long after it'd proven utterly ineffective on the battlefield, I don't know.

[Sertorius1]

jackx,

As far as history goes, I'm not sure where the idea of using fire from horseback as a means to combat cavalry comes from, probably just a side-effect of a general enthusiasm for firearms, and maybe due to the fact that it actually wasn't such a bad idea against large formations of pikemen. Why it stubbornly persisted long after it'd proven utterly ineffective on the battlefield, I don't know.

Neither do I.

For me allowing the dragoons to dismount would be primarily for the use I have for it above about the cav unit in the town. As far as firing goes other than someone discharging a pistol at close range in a melee the only time I see it being used is when dismounted, a formation I would expect to rarely to be used.

Something that is going to be changed to my knowledge is the double firing of an infantry unit in square to be reduced to one fire only. As things stand it makes overrunning a square almost impossible with the defender being able to fire twice. That and modifying the values in the combat modifiers table I believe, in the editor for shock effect will make the cavalry arm much more effective in certain scenarios as it was historically. The charge of the Bayreuth Dragoons at Hohenfriedeberg comes to mind for doing this.

[jackx]

Yes, that'd indeed be the main purpose for dismounted troops. I can even see a use for the new assault formation here - that could be given to dismountable, non-close-order cavalry (Hussars, Croats) that could still be expected to actually assault an enemy and drive them out of build-up terrain or dense vegetation.

The alternative, if formations can be made dependant on terrain type/features (as was planned for defensive) would be to allow units in skirmish formation to initiate assault combat in terrain where fighting would not take place in close order anyways.


Squares aren't really too hard to break, what is ridiculous though is the current ability of any and all infantry units eligible to do so to virtually always form square, which means you cannot roll up an enemy line with a cavalry charge, no matter how shaken and disrupted it is. :/

Against squares, numbers are key.  Hit a single square with as many squadrons as you can, and it should crumble quickly due to morale loss. A square's firepower isn't that great, usually not enough to actually stop a charge, so the morale loss (and casualties) will start to add up, and the infantry will be caught in a downward spiral.

 I fooled around a bit with Mollwitz earlier today (which included taking out 3/4 of the Prussian artillery with the Württemberg dragoons in a mad, but spectacularly successful charge), and ended up wiping out a grenadier battalion in two turns, using 4 squadrons of cuirassiers. ~240 KiA/WiA and 210 captured, for a loss of maybe 150 cavalry over two turns.
It still felt pointless, because afterwards I couldn't fall on the rear of the advancing Prussian infantry (which nevertheless never managed to take Mollwitz), but that is a problem with infantry forming square, not the relative strength of squares.

[Sertorius1]

Jack,

Good point about the grenzer units being able to attack in certain situations.
Your experience with squares is different from mine as that is what I tried to do, but then again, my experience is based on the beta version. Due to a recent computer rebuild I had to load up the CD version, so I'll give this a shot again.

On the ability to form squares almost automatically I agree with you that it should that it seems on the high side. What I noted was that a unit has to be in really bad shape not to go into square. Whether this is hard wired into the application or can be adjusted in the editor I don't know. Maybe Tim can enlighten us here. This is one of the reasons I brought up the combat modifiers table for shock as a means to compensate. People can adjust this according to what they think is the correct value.