The Power and Use of Chariots (solved)

[bunny32794]

EDIT: I found the use for chariots: they're anti-cavalry units, able to massacre horsemen just by moving past them.


Call me unempathetic, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about when they say chariots are overpowered.

Forum after forum I see players dreading chariots and yet whenever they appear in combat they go down pretty quickly. Keep in mind I'm playing on Very Hard, so enemy chariots hit with +7 more attack than normal. If anything, I should be the one complaining about this the most, and yet every time a chariot charges my formations it gets absorbed and cut down rapidly.

I have to admit the number of hitpoints they have is pretty intimidating (it's a trait you normally associate with things like Spartans and general units) but ultimately their defense (often 1) makes this a non-issue; even Town Militia with an attack of 3 can mow chariots down.

I've tried to use chariots myself, but compared to conventional cavaslry I find they're harder to use, slower, and they find it more difficult to escape melee with terrible defense to boot.

One forum suggested I charge "through" formations instead of "into" them, that I click beyond the enemy unit and have the chariots just run through rather than get bogged down in melee. However, this sentiment seems more semantic than anything; I tested this in a 1 vs. 1 custom battle against Iberian infantry with an Egyptian chariot on my side and it took 10 charges to finally rout the enemy unit. My chartios would charge through and knock down half of all the enemy soldiers, but only 2 or 3 would actually die and the rest would get up.

It was just pathetic.

[Myrmidon]

The game mechanics doesn't really portray chariots particularly realistically even in Rome II.

[bunny32794]

Originally posted by Myrmidon:

The game mechanics doesn't really portray chariots particularly realistically even in Rome II.

In your opinion, what would a realistic portrayal of them be like?

Also, I've done my research on chariots and it seems that they're pretty overrated in real life. I haven't been able to nail down any specific tactics for melee chariots to try and replicate in-game but the success of chariots definitely seems to be very mixed, historically speaking. People think they're like the "tanks of the ancient era", but I find these are hilariously overblown; historical success of chariots seems mixed at best, even on flat terrain.

Also, and this is both funny and insulting to the idea of chariots, it turns out that the reason why chariots were used wasn't because of any sort of tactical advantage over conventional cavalry but because in ancient times horses hadn't been breed as large and strong enough to carry a man and all his equipment. In short, chariots are a consolation prize when your horses are weak.

From my research it seems that once it was possible for one man to ride a single horse and cut down/shoot whomever he liked, chariots became redundant at best and obsolete at worst.

Seriously, how often do you see chariots in an age and culture where conventional cavalry is widespread? Is there such a thing as medieval chariots? What about early modern chariots in the Thirty Years War? Is there some obscure battle where Napoleon had to deal with enemy chariots charging his musketeers? I ask this because cavalry was used in all these conflicts (even sword and lance-wielding cavalry) and survived all the way up until the first days of World War One, yet chariots as a common presence on the battlefield (let alone a decisive one) seems to basically not even make it to the early middle ages.

All in all, it seems conventional cavalry is historically speaking (if not gameplay wise to some people) a direct upgrade of chariots. Observe:

Conventional Cavalry:
One soldier who both fights and rides from one horse when both he and horse can be armored from attack.

Chariots:
two soldiers, only one of whom fights, on a fragile platform pulled by two horses.

[DeliriousTiberius]

I mean I can agree to the way chariots are portrayed in the game is a little of of REAl ancient warfare, but I guess it will have to do. Just imagine standing in your line ready for a charge and a what I would consider and ancient "car ram through you throwing dust up into your face and blowing you back.
In the game they have their uses, but their honestly more annoying then effective or deadly. Their inital charge can be a good way to mix up formatioons and opens a spot for a good charge with cav or infantry. Though they absolutly suck at actually killing armoured infantry. Even the Egyptian General can get wrecked in a few units of Eastern Infantry. Sure you can try to break moral, but thats beyond the point. They just don't deliver like a proper cav charge. Here is my quick sight in things. I'm sure someone has gone more in depth with this (Or at least I hope)

British Light Chariots- Good range attack, basically horse archer chariots pretty weak in melee.
British Heavy Chariots A good chariot to mix up the enemy and attract attention.
British/Egyptian General- Has much better moral for many reasons and can hold longer. Still not reliable to rip through any infantry unit.
Scythed Chariots- Personally I don't have enough experience with them to say much , but they get wrecked on a fight longer than a few seconds. Good for an initial charge but you have basically thrown them away once they get deep.

Anyways correct me if I'm wrong on any of this but I can confidently say chariots are unreliable and very situational. Not to mention if you charge them directly into any phalanx they basically got the death touch. They have such a statistical weakness to them them they just fall over when they hit the tip of the spear.

[Sicilias]

Chariots mostly annoy me because certain of them couple a strong ranged attack with very high damage to cavalry. Playing as Carthage, I had to deal with both British and Egyptian ranged chariots. The main ranged troops available to me were slingers, which lacked the range to engage the chariots, and cavalry units, even once they could catch the chariots, would take 50-70 casualties engaging the chariots in melee. A substantial number of the casualties were taken after routing the chariots, which was particularly exasperating.

[bunny32794]

Originally posted by DeliriousTiberius:

Anyways correct me if I'm wrong on any of this but I can confidently say chariots are unreliable and very situational. Not to mention if you charge them directly into any phalanx they basically got the death touch. They have such a statistical weakness to them them they just fall over when they hit the tip of the spear.

That seems about right. I find chariots far more useful as archer platforms than what we're supposed to do for melee. Egyptian chariot archers are a cavalryman's worst nightmare, but then again that's because long range weapon + ability to run away from anything has always been powerful.

Also worth noting is how the in-game description for one of the melee chariot units was that they were "worth sacrificing" to break an enemy formation. This almost seems to imply that we're supposed to use melee chariots as a quasi-suicide unit, and I have to admit it's an interesting idea; it's worth noting that during my test wherein only two soldiers would die each charge that the enemy formation never truly recovered and reformed. A second unit could have easily charged the loosened formation.

[piper.spirit]

Chariots if used properly are devastating and far superior to cavalry. They are also cheap, fast, and cause fear amongst the enemy.

On normal scale, the chariot archer/melee chariot combo basically owns all. In the campaign, the less damage you take compounds your advantage over time. The chariot factions especially Egypt/Britannia are very powerful.

[Myrmidon]

Originally posted by bunny32794:

Originally posted by Myrmidon:

The game mechanics doesn't really portray chariots particularly realistically even in Rome II.

In your opinion, what would a realistic portrayal of them be like?

Also, I've done my research on chariots and it seems that they're pretty overrated in real life. I haven't been able to nail down any specific tactics for melee chariots to try and replicate in-game but the success of chariots definitely seems to be very mixed, historically speaking. People think they're like the "tanks of the ancient era", but I find these are hilariously overblown; historical success of chariots seems mixed at best, even on flat terrain.

Also, and this is both funny and insulting to the idea of chariots, it turns out that the reason why chariots were used wasn't because of any sort of tactical advantage over conventional cavalry but because in ancient times horses hadn't been breed as large and strong enough to carry a man and all his equipment. In short, chariots are a consolation prize when your horses are weak.

From my research it seems that once it was possible for one man to ride a single horse and cut down/shoot whomever he liked, chariots became redundant at best and obsolete at worst.

Seriously, how often do you see chariots in an age and culture where conventional cavalry is widespread? Is there such a thing as medieval chariots? What about early modern chariots in the Thirty Years War? Is there some obscure battle where Napoleon had to deal with enemy chariots charging his musketeers? I ask this because cavalry was used in all these conflicts (even sword and lance-wielding cavalry) and survived all the way up until the first days of World War One, yet chariots as a common presence on the battlefield (let alone a decisive one) seems to basically not even make it to the early middle ages.

All in all, it seems conventional cavalry is historically speaking (if not gameplay wise to some people) a direct upgrade of chariots. Observe:

Conventional Cavalry:
One soldier who both fights and rides from one horse when both he and horse can be armored from attack.

Chariots:
two soldiers, only one of whom fights, on a fragile platform pulled by two horses.

Your indepth analysis and discussion of understanding in this subject (which is actually rather accurate) makes me believe a little bit that you're just being confrontational for the sake of it. I wasn't sure before but I am sure now after reading the above that you *must* know how errornously they move in Rome 1 especially with regards to scythed chariots (which lets face is whats being alluded to in the thread) they deal damage by shaving flanks.

It's very hard to get them to operate this way in game compared to cavalry which can attack head on with a 90 degree cone of coverage from the head of their horse. The attack points on the unit models are completely different not just to horses but all other units in the game.

[piper.spirit]

Another thing, people are saying chariots are harder to use than cavalry. Yes they are to an extent, but the damage they do is enormous.

The only way for cavalry to beat chariots is to blob. Once the chariots slow down and stop moving they become vulnerable. A group of 4-5 cavalry will stop a chariot, maybes 3 might work; 1 or 2 single cavalry will get absolutely annihilated.

Chariots are also extremely vulnerable to pike. Even the very worst pike unit merely has to touch a chariot with a spear and they will take it down. However a hammer and anvil with chariots pretty much causes an instant rout. Non pike units have little defence vs chariots.

[Xautos]

Originally posted by bunny32794:

Call me unempathetic, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about when they say chariots are overpowered.

Forum after forum I see players dreading chariots and yet whenever they appear in combat they go down pretty quickly. Keep in mind I'm playing on Very Hard, so enemy chariots hit with +7 more attack than normal. If anything, I should be the one complaining about this the most, and yet every time a chariot charges my formations it gets absorbed and cut down rapidly.

I have to admit the number of hitpoints they have is pretty intimidating (it's a trait you normally associate with things like Spartans and general units) but ultimately their defense (often 1) makes this a non-issue; even Town Militia with an attack of 3 can mow chariots down.

I've tried to use chariots myself, but compared to conventional cavaslry I find they're harder to use, slower, and they find it more difficult to escape melee with terrible defense to boot.

One forum suggested I charge "through" formations instead of "into" them, that I click beyond the enemy unit and have the chariots just run through rather than get bogged down in melee. However, this sentiment seems more semantic than anything; I tested this in a 1 vs. 1 custom battle against Iberian infantry with an Egyptian chariot on my side and it took 10 charges to finally rout the enemy unit. My chartios would charge through and knock down half of all the enemy soldiers, but only 2 or 3 would actually die and the rest would get up.

It was just pathetic.

i've never liked chariots in this game, you should never have cav near chariots and their effect on infantry lines is usually nothing more than a distraction to keep them out of the fight or moving your own units in to kill them. against ranged units and hoplites, chariots are a joke.

they don't manouver well in close quarters and their effectiveness in the open is heavily reliant on the enemy they are up against.

[bunny32794]

Originally posted by Xautos:

Originally posted by bunny32794:

i've never liked chariots in this game, you should never have cav near chariots and their effect on infantry lines is usually nothing more than a distraction to keep them out of the fight or moving your own units in to kill them. against ranged units and hoplites, chariots are a joke.

they don't manouver well in close quarters and their effectiveness in the open is heavily reliant on the enemy they are up against.

I completely agree. The first time I went up against chariots in battle I was utterly terrified. One guide glibly says the best way to use chariots is to just click on ana enemy unit and wait until they rout, then repeat. Post after post had complained about their overwhelming power and the TV Tropes "Game Breaker" article on Total War obnoxiously declares in ALL CAPS that "MUTHA ****ING CHARIOTS!!!" are overpowered.

But then it turns out that even Town Militia mow them down.

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

I find that Chariots go down really quickly once they get into melee.

Of course, you have to get them in melee first. Chariots that just run through your lines will tend to slaughter the unit they run over. Providing there are no more units behind them, they can then run wild and free, turn around, and run over that same unit again.

But as soon as they get bogged down in melee, something that happens more on larger unit scales, they get slaughtered.

Also archers will deal quite nice damage to them, until you run over the archers.



I would like to say that the one good thing modern TWs do is a healthbar, so you can actually see how close those chariots are to dying :|

[cantab314]

The big thing is chariots are infamously overpowered in autoresolve. Great if you have them and want to skip battles, annoying if you're fighting against them and have to waste your time fighting everything yourself.

When you're actually fighting the battles chariots are pretty similar to cavalry. Chariots v cavalry is usually advantage chariots, but cavalry are arguably better than chariots against infantry, and chariots really struggle in towns. Chariot archers can still shoot any non-missile infantry until they are dead the same way cavalry archers do.

[Sad but Packin']

Originally posted by bunny32794:

EDIT: I found the use for chariots: they're anti-cavalry units, able to massacre horsemen just by moving past them.

Originally posted by cantab314:

cavalry are arguably better than chariots against infantry

Cav is certainly much better than chariots against pikes since, as mentioned above, they die to pikes in contact, but not against other types of infantry. There is one very significant aspect of chariots that you're not taking into account, their ability to scare infantry. Of course, this ability will do nothing if the chariot charges straight into a fresh enemy infantry unit, but it can cause very nasty routs on enemies who's morale is already being pressured. So chariot's are most effective against infantry that is flanked, depleted, tired, has friendly units routing nearby and/or has been shot recently with flaming arrows.

But keep in mind that, in order to attack or defend themselves, the chariots got to keep moving, if they stop they're sitting ducks, so it's advisable to not make multiple units of chariots charge into a single enemy unit, as they will obstruct eachother's movement sabotaging themselves. They're also obstructed by rough terrain, trees, buildings during sieges, etc. And they're especially weakened when they get tired.

Originally posted by cantab314:

The big thing is chariots are infamously overpowered in autoresolve

Actually, they also hapen to be infamously OP in cwb, wich is the main competitive multiplayer format.