Question - Cav vs. Inf - This seems wrong

[Joram]

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

How about this as a proposed tweak:

Cavalry + HvCavalry charges vs formed infantry in open terrain get increased flanking damage... 3x current rate? 5x? With the 50% total strength cap remaining in effect... Also give them a higher chance to break the formation of the unit they charge in this situation.


Also: Coordinating AI use of cavalry with its other units is one the list of AI tweaks I'm planning to make. And there may be a bug in the code that tells the AI not to charge formed infantry in rough terrain / fortresses as I noticed that AI cavalry sometimes hurls itself at the fortresses for no good reason.


Eric

My take on this topic and from my historical gaming and reading ...

(The argument that to remember that the defender is a division, is good however they didn't point out that the attacker is a division too so his argument doesn't really hold.)

It's my understanding that Napoleonic Cavalry performed two main combat purposes (I'm not talking about scouting and such, just once engaged already, or afterwards capturing POWs or what not). That was to rout disordered troops and disorder troops in good order. Under the latter, which the original poster was complaining about, I think the casualties on both sides are much too high though I would concede that it probably makes sense that the attacker takes more. Because the main affect is that the defender is now disordered which carries a significant combat penalty. I think too many Hollywood movies have your cavalry riding into the enemy, and just standing around chopping them up. That's foolhardy against infantry in good order no matter what there formation. What they would do is ride through there enemy inflicting as many casualties as they could but if they were charging an infantry in good order, they would more than likely keep on going! Especially lancers who relied completely on shock!

With that in mind, I would think that casualties would be low on both sides but the affect would be that the infantry (and probably the cav too) would be disordered, leaving the infantry more vulnerable to follow up attacks. Too often I see the infantry shrug it off unreasonably.

And attacking the sides and flanks should have a significant effect on casualties and probabilities of disorder (mainly for light cav) since yes, while conceptually it's easy to do an about face, you probably wouldn't be doing it as you were marching toward the enemy battlelines. What would stop the enemy from then attacking your newly exposed flank. I suppose it might make sense to reflect that by changing the facing of the unit as a special "reaction" one time during the phase?

Now against disordered troops, I think the system as it works is fine.

Reg, Hvy, and Lancers charging a good order infantry unit from any direction, should disorder it in all but rarest of circumstances. Light and irregulars are much more iffy, maybe 50/50 if even that good. Light were used more as screening, scouting and running down disordered or routed troops.

[Malagant]

I agree with Joram 100%.

[Ralegh]

I strongly agree that it is common in the game for AI cavalry to charge my formed infantry and get slaughtered without us forming a square. It is the main reason I don't use my cavalry to charge formed enemy very often. I had assumed that this reflected my high morale forces destroying a poorly considered charge using firepower. Common results are 900-1200 to the defending infanty, 1700-2500 to the cavalry. It might not have come up often in a particular test - want me to save a battle for you?

In my view the "situation" of a formed division attempting to form a square and failing, and hence suffering horrible losses is ONLY reflected in the game in the context of a division that loses the last bit of its morale - a formed unit with a morale of 0 or 2 can take serious losses from a charge. Cavalry charging formed infantry who are not close to being "out of morale" either force the inf into a square (and no one suffers much), or get beaten up.

I AGREE that we should increase the chance for a charge to put an enemy unit into disorder - especailly from the flanks.
I DISAGREE that we should change the casulties done by/inflicted on cavalry: if anything I would go the other way - cavalry are only about casulties when they are hitting a disorganised enemy. Against an organised enemy (or with a fire attack) I would always expect the cav to have less fire power than infantry, and to be easier to hit. What they have is enough momentum to break formations... [Please note: to put an infantry man out of action you have a small target, compared to a man on a horse - particularly from the side. Secondly, people with muskets vs people with sabers. Etc.]

I agree that we could create a new dynamic in the game whereby units get disordered by moving through rough terrain. I think at the moment this is abstracted out. I believe the people proposing this think that the battle lines should be more static, while I think ericbabe is of the view that this was the begining of fire-and-maneovre warfare, and hence that shouldn't be too discouraged. In my view, we currently have a sensible compromise on this issue. Where we have an issue is that the AI is too likely to adopt fire-and-manoeurve tactics when it shouldn't.

[donkuchi19]

OK, had a major battle in Podolia fighting as the Russians against the French. They attacked with about 250,000 men and I defended with about 200,000. (BTW this is testing the latest beta patch and there have been no CTDs in detailed combat)

At one point, the French 87th cavalry div attacked my Russian 5th Infantry div. 5th was in line formation. French attacked head on and the 5th stayed in line. Results: French 87th lost 2788 men and the Russian 5th lost 203. This is what I would expect. My attacks on French rears and flanks and on disordered units had the expected results with low cavalry casuaties and high defender casualties.

BTW: The battle turned out very well for my Russians:





There was a follow up battle that turned out even worse for the French and they went on to surrendur to me and went from 1200 glory to about 480 during the war. (Made the goal 5000 to make the game last longer)

[ahauschild]

The point about cav against formed is kinda becoming mute anyway. You dont need Infantry to fight and win against the AI. Just use Cav and Horse Artillery, or normal Artillery if you cannot afford it. Then find the most unlikley place to defend, a open area. line them up with cav, gun, cav, gun, cav, gun...and so on. No infantry will make it close to you, no cav will be able to force you into square and you fire with cav in line at short range better then with infantry. Your Artillery will disorder anything that comes close in one or two volleys and then once the enemy breaks you mop them up with your highly mobile cav.

Maybe I have played to many battles by now, maybe I burned myself out because I really really love Napoleanics Period Battles. But once you played a bunch of battles, you know the AI is so poor in the tactical game, and in the stratetic one, that it does not reflect anything Napoleanic in the end.

Every AI cav is leed by Ney, charging unsupported into battle, Every Infantry feels they can break a line of formed troops by them self and every cav unit thinks actuly that you have to be 2 hexes away to fire.
The enemy never once has managed to create a battle line of any type in tons of games, the computer insiste on repeatedly throwing his cav away hopping from one unit to the next forcing square or sacrifycing themself against the inf if they dont force square. The computer does not try to flank or exploid when you do present the flank.

As for the Strategic part, AI countries continiusly declare unwinnable wars, lossing more and more of their provinces, even if they dont have an army to start out with. The AI will send if he does have armys relentlessly to the home province he is at war with, totaly neglecting the defense of his own home province. Once enganged over there he will repeately throw his army against the home province, untill every single man in that army is dead. It does not matter that he may only have 1 division left in his glorias grand army, he will throw it with glee at the 300000 men defending their home province.

I did initialy enjoy the game allot, but as I actuly got familiar with it my disapointments started to set in. There is no challenge, unless you of course set the difficulty as high as possible and get wiped out at the start before you may have a half way decent army.
I think the basic game mechanics are sound, some tweaking here and there. I think the graphics and such are also fine.
What really needs to have allot of work invested is the Campain and Tactical AI engine.

Sorry for sounding a bit negative now, but I really want to play a challenging, accurate simulation of the Nap Time Campains and Battles.

[Reiryc]

Given this:

Sorry for sounding a bit negative now, but I really want to play a challenging, accurate simulation of the Nap Time Campains and Battles.

and this:

Maybe I have played to many battles by now...

then I don't think you'll find much challenge with an AI no matter how much tweaking is done. I generally find that AI's are good for training a person on the mechanics of a game but that's about it, no matter what that game is. Once someone gets to that point, then it's time to move to playing a human for challenge and entertainment.

I realize not everyone has time for this but I think it's the reality of what's available with computer game artificial opponents especially when a human has played enough to intuitively beat any non-cheating AI.

[ahauschild]

That is true, almost no computer AI stacks against any somewhat competent human. There are execptions though. I do believe that certain Chess AI's out there are pretty much unbeatable by most humans for instance. Also certain games, when looking back did "seem" to play pretty challenging. I remember the old Panzer General game. Darn computer always seemed to have the right units in the right place and I remember being challenged by it for a long long time. Sid also managed to come up with some pretty god computer AI's.

But I certanly think the AI in the game currently can be improved by allot. Take for instance such a simple thing as disordered troops. They seem to be moving around randomly, often ending up closer to danger rather then farther away. This should be a simple fix, with the unit targeting a hex furthest away from enemy units, possibly behind cover, meaning Hexes that are not visible from current visible units.

Night turns, let the computer use them to form a battleline based on the last known position of the enemy, rather then advancing till they stumple onto the enemy.

In the strategic AI, if a Country has no offensive forces to speak of, then have it not constandly declare ware on other nations, but rather have it try to improve relations while rebuilding.

Have it not move the beat up armies, that are now out of supply again and again againt the unbeatable larger army of the enemy, but try to return to the motherland to recover strength.

Have it by nature build a home defense army, that does not move from the home province.

Have it keep always one diplomat on expell as most humans do. Enemy diplomats never stay long in my homelands to create havoc.

I am actulay confident that allot of the AI weakneses will be solved in the future, as this game seems to be supported well by its programmers, taking pride in improving it. I for one will try most likley after each patch. I still am very happy the game was made, and that I have had the pleasure of so many hours of gameplay before feeling a bit dampend by the AI issiues. Knowadays computer games seem to have often no more then 5 to 10 hours of game play before they are chucked in the corner, and I have had past 150 hours of game play easy. That by itself is allready a good value.

I know I have some disagreements with certain balance aspect for the game on divisional level, but those are overall not a big problem, as I understand that this area is highly controversy in regards to how people interpid history. But those are not overall a big problem, and to be expected. It is the AI that could and should be improved after the most glaring feature/bug issiues are fixed.

Please dont take this critisim badly, as mentioned before, the game is a GREAT value, giving many hours of fun gameplay. If given the choice I would purchase it again and would recomend all fans of Napeolanic times to do the same.