Heavy infantry losing against light cavalry

[Sagara Sousuke]

Why does my Praetorian Cohort lose against light cavalry on standing melee combat?

Front vs front on standing combat, not a charge, they lose.

[hoonii]

Which light cavalry unit you're fighting against?

[Sagara Sousuke]

The one from Egypt, the ones that dont wear shirts and use spears.
It doesnt matter which cavalry it is, if its a light cavalry, and you have a giant shield, just hold your shield up and cut the horse's legs.

[Vora]

Few days ago I was fight vs rebels playing for Greece. My squad of Armoured Hoplites with 3 silver exp and bronze armor+weapon are lose fighting with stock Militia Hoplites 1vs1 in field :) My men killed 10-15 enemies, lose 120-130 and run :) SHOCK ^^

[Sagara Sousuke]

yeah, i think it's the fault of the battle difficulty method, it probably destroys the units stats because they couldn't be bothered to work on the AI

[Foulsplay]

Originally posted by Sagara Sousuke:

yeah, i think it's the fault of the battle difficulty method, it probably destroys the units stats because they couldn't be bothered to work on the AI

Truly you have to use every trick in your arsenal, flank, killing commanders, using your own to get a chance

[Aux|CTG]

It depends on the charge of the unit, if the unit has about 9 charge, that is highly powerful. Light Lancers from Macedon are an example, they are light cav but have the same charge as the companions, 9 charge. Also depends on the upgrades on that unit, if it has some exp or smth it will be even more powerful. Also, if that unit stays in combat, your infantry should be able to beat it, the charge only kills a lot, but once that cav stays in melee it is going to lose.

[Sagara Sousuke]

Try to read the whole post next time

[George]

What is the difficulty? Your reasoning strikes me as funny, expecting that kind of realism from a video game published in the early 2000s. You said it's probably the difficulty, and it would be if you're playing on Very Hard. Hard and below shouldn't cause praetorians to lose to egyptian spear cavalry. It might cause them to lose to axe cavalry, but even then that's unlikely. There might be other factors involved. Maybe morale?

[Sagara Sousuke]

most of older games are better programmed than new ones, being old is not an excuse to say it's faulty because of that. In fact, i rather play Rome 1 than Rome 2.

[George]

Agreed about Rome 1 being better than Rome 2, but expecting the degree of realism you propose is absurd. You can say that heavy cavalry should win against light cavalry, but you can't reason your way to that by listing all the real world reasons that it might be so. In the game there are stats, and that's the way to display what we would call realism. If you want more "realism" you should try one of the mods. I enjoyed extended cultures and europa barbarorum. There are other more realistic mods than that out there. I'm sure you'll have a blast.

[Sagara Sousuke]

I didn't expect anything crazy or "realism" but just relying on what the game is showing me. The description of Praetorians say that they are good at melee and the description of light cavalry says that they shouldn't stay in melee or attack infantry from the front.

Like i said, the cavalry was fighting front vs front the Praetorians WITHOUT charging into them, and they weren't surrounded either.

Yeah, i have been trying Barbarorum and i really don't like how they made combat slower and how they slashed the units stamina

[George]

Ah, that sounds very strange. Almost like the game was glitched or something. That shouldn't have happened.

[Aristoxenus]

A funny thing about cavalry charge is that when im playing darthmod and i use any type of Cavalry and i charge into the back of Pikemen (from noobish germanic pikemen to the specialized Ptolemaic Garrison) most of my cavalry dies in the charge (i repeat charging their flanks or back)

[Monteizo]

Doge, you are wrong about difficulty not altering combat stats (did a few quick tests to make sure it was the case, iberian infantry vs iberian infantry, even fight on normal, my guys slaughtered on very hard).

Anyway from what I recall from what was said back in the day the only stat changed (aside from morale) is attack, and it was said to be +4 in hard, +7 in very hard.

[George]

That's also my experience. By the way OP originally made it sound like it was praetorian cav vs Nubian cav (?) so that just did not make sense regardless of the difficulty. Since we now know it was infantry it's much more plausible.