05. Battle of Ordal Cross - 5th July 1808

Yes I was thinking that too Palmer, not only a 'hot gates' situation which we luckily didn't lose but a rare Spanish victory. Only in KS do you see these kind of dynamic battles work out to be a near run thing which adds to the fun as you never know what will happen. Well, the Spanish boys were looking for some action and they sure got it  

At several points I was tempted to yell "SPAAAAARRTAAAAAA!!!!!!" in teamspeak.

Digby wrote:At several points I was tempted to yell "SPAAAAARRTAAAAAA!!!!!!" in teamspeak.

Well my banditos tried their best to slit your throat, but you managed to stay out of reach.

I don't purchase the fastest horses in France for nothing.

Digby wrote:I was wondering about that Mitra - the cuirassiers would advance on an enemy, halt and then fall back. I thought we had modded out this behaviour. Kevin, can you comment?

The behavior of "false charges" cannot be completely modded out as it is a hardcoded "feature". The AI looks at total numbers involved in the fight. If the AI thinks it has a chance, the cavalry will charge. If it thinks it is suicide, it will abort the charge. In other words, it is a result of large battalions and small squadrons. This is an ACW AI, not a Napoleonic one, so what the AI believes is a poor match up may not really be the case. This behavior does have an advantage. A human will quickly try to put his unit in square. It is best if the cavalry avoids colliding with one. So an aborted charge is just what the AI should do much of the time. It is only poor behavior is the infantry is caught in line or skirmish formation and the AI aborts the charge. C'est la guerre.

Should we adopt a policy of smaller battalions and/or bigger squadrons? Is there some factor such as cavalry experience and/or weapon/combat skills we can tweak to lessen this tendency?

I am all for bending the factors around somewhat (even to unexpected degrees) if it gets us a more Napoleonic game.

The behavior of "false charges" cannot be completely modded out as it is a hardcoded "feature". The AI looks at total numbers involved in the fight. If the AI thinks it has a chance, the cavalry will charge. If it thinks it is suicide, it will abort the charge. In other words, it is a result of large battalions and small squadrons. This is an ACW AI, not a Napoleonic one, so what the AI believes is a poor match up may not really be the case. This behavior does have an advantage. A human will quickly try to put his unit in square. It is best if the cavalry avoids colliding with one. So an aborted charge is just what the AI should do much of the time. It is only poor behavior is the infantry is caught in line or skirmish formation and the AI aborts the charge. C'est la guerre.

No in this case is different, they fallback like skirmishers also also without the charge orders; I saw the same thing happen a lot of times with road to wagram (if I remember well always with the french cavalry). They act like when dismounted.

Kevin, is this related to the style of the cavalry commander? Mitra was using them in AI mode in this battle and I know you said to me the mod works best with their style set at 2 or 3. Bessieres and Schwartz were a 4 and a 5.

My opinion is that when they enter in the weapon range and stop they start they switched in fire mode like they were dismounted and so, also if graphically they remained mounted, they change they formation to DRIL_Lvl6_Cav_SingleLine which should be that used by the dismounted troopers. This formation has the minenemy value set so they fallback for very enemy in a range of 120 yards. Being the cavalry weapon range 90, if they switch of status they will fallback always. Why this happen only for some units it can really related to officer AI or style or the number of troopers inside the units, but I think we can do a test deleting the 120 yards from DRIL_Lvl6_Cav_SingleLine.

Wouldn't it be more helpful to try and stop them forming DRIL_Lvl6_Cav_SingleLine and shooting?

What if we delete cavalry firearms completely? Cavalry never used them much, if at all, in full battle, only on skirmishing and picquet duty which our games don't represent (mostly).

Davide may be right about the cavalry using the single line formation at a certain distance. If so, we can easily change that and test it. When and where the AI decides to use that formation is a hardcoded decision as far as I know. So we can't just get rid of it.

AI controlled cavalry works best with the commander's style set at 1-3. Otherwise they just rampage around the battlefield attacking everything in sight. If there is a human as cavalry brigade commander, then that value is not important.

Weapon range cannot be deleted, because if I remember well it is also the max distance to which the charge button work.

Additionally, if the weapon range determines the auto-charge distance if set to less than 100yd.

So what can be done to correct this unwanted behaviour by cavalry?

I tried changing the single line formation as mentioned above. From limited testing, it did not make any difference in the cavalry behavior. The remaining cavalry problems are the result of program coding. It's nothing we can fix.

I was playing an SP game in MP mode yesterday using the Ordal Cross OOBs. I commanded the 2 Neapolitan chasseur squadrons and had no problem getting them to charge. I then replayed the game commanding the cuirassiers and twice they refused to charge, stopping and retiring.

Could it be something related to the weapon category in the mod Kevin?

All cav units use the same weapon. Were the cuirassier squadrons the same size as the chasseur's?

No they were smaller - 120 to 140 men vs 170.

I was wondering if your unitattributes changes had resulted in something unexpected.

In earlier versions of SOW, there were two classes of cavalry, one which would charge home and one which would not. That was set via one of the columns in the cavalry OOB's ... perhaps that was changed somewhere along the way and perhaps I'm simply mistaken, but it would be worth a look to see.

Yes, Kevin changed that a little while ago, Ike, all cavalry are the 'can charge' type now.

I think I have found the problem and Kevin was on the right track. Its a calculation the AI does between it's own headcount (and morale level presumably) and the target unit headcount. If the ratio is too low it refuses to charge... which makes complete sense if you stop to consider what is being asked of these soldiers. I suspect my earlier tests and the Ordal Cross incidents were asking the cuirassiers to charge some of the big 700-800 man Spanish volunteer units.

I just set up a small test battle with the same cuirassiers facing the Reserve Division of Palacio's army that has 1 hussar sqn, 3 very small but elite infantry units and a battery.

My 3 sqdns of cuirassiers vapourised the whole lot in a few minutes No hesitation in charging those units at all.

Boy that was fun   

It sounds like you've figured out the difficulty. Larger cavalry squadrons, smaller infantry battalions, or some combination thereof. My suggestion is to try larger cavalry squadrons first.  

I'd be inclined to do a bit of both. I don't think there were many 800-man battalions in the Peninsular War.

Martin (J)

In the campaign I don't intend to change either! I think its fine that 110 man cav sqdns refuse to charge 700+ man inf battalions! The combination doesn't come up that often and as the campaign goes on, it'll occur less frequently as infantry btns shrink but cav sqdns always stay at a minimum of 100 men (otherwise I disband them because below that number they really do become useless).

Martin - you would be surprised. The Spanish volunteer units were huge, many topping 800 men, but they quickly reduced in size after a couple of battles. Likewise when Wellesley landed he had some ginormous battalions as well, some over 1,000 strong. I suppose I could split these into left and right wings.

Or, you could converge the grenadier and light flank companies.