Cavalry is too powerful

Now there's a statement to open up a good discussion.

In some recent games we have had some significant imbalances of cavalry and in every case the side with fewer - or no - cavalry has been decisively defeated.

I do not think this is correct. Cavalry destroys infantry too often; it should be used to pin infantry but not wipe it out. Cavalry more often was employed to combat opposing cavalry. It was most commonly unleashed against enemy infantry only as a decision to end a battle once an enemy's resolve was weakened and there was a good chance he could not stand. If it was unleashed against lines of guns or well-formed confident infantry it was usually wrecked and such tactics were employed only through desperation, error or to achieve some aim elsewhere in a battle by pinning down one element of an enemy force.

In the Napoleonic wars infantry had many options against enemy cavalry and could advance against them in squares with some ease provided there was good drill and training.

I think our games would become more realistic if we instituted some changes.

1) Infantry should form square MUCH faster; at least half the time, maybe 1/3rd of the time. I would even be in favour of the infantry getting the "in square" bonus the moment the battalion received an order to form square.

2) Infantry square firepower needs to be increased. While this is not actually realistic at all (squares had almost no firepower), we need to use the tools and mechanics we are limited to in the game to achieve the most realistic results that we can, and increased infantry square firepower will cause cavalry hovering near them more losses as well as inflict more losses on attacking infantry - the infantry attacks will most likely still defeat the square but it won't be quite so one-sided.

3) When cavalry melee a square and break it I'd like to see them break off pursuit much sooner, or inflict casualties at a slower rate. The "snail trail" of wiped-out battalions to me does not feel right. The game has so any limitations in this. In reality pockets of men would form clumps and hold out, units might widely disperse and become a very hard target to hunt down, and men would run towards cover or friends for protection; all factors that would lower losses.

4) I'd like to see infantry be more aggressive towards cavalry, moving at them faster and more frequently. Cavalry should NOT be able to pin down an infantry force. Once again we have such poor tools at our disposal within the game mechanisms. One cavalry squadron can hold up an entire division of infantry using our present mechanisms. This is obviously not correct.

5) I'd like to see our cavalry tire more rapidly. Especially heavy cavalry. They seem once again to have attained superhero powers of stamina.

6) Our artillery is still too weak vs cavalry. We still see too many games where a player will grab a regiment or brigade of cavalry and "do an Andrew" trolling enemy artillery behind his main line. This really needs to stop. Perhaps our guns could have a wider arc of fire (or we reintroduce the pivot), perhaps cavalry could be made more vulnerable to canister, perhaps some kind of higher morale penalty could be applied if a regiment/brigade is far away from the closest friends. Possibly even adding a huge morale penalty if a player commander is close by. I know that sounds illogical but it is the player taking a regiment and going off on a personal mission tactic that needs addressing here, not a cavalry brigade used correctly and sent on an attack under AI control. Perhaps inflicting a higher disorder rate on cavalry that run/gallop would help. As I said earlier, we have to use the tools we have to achieve an overall more correct result - the actual process to attain that result need not be logical or correct.

I look forward to your comments.

1) I agree to faster forming squares, but I disagree about instant Square bonus - this would lead to cavalry being demolished by invisible force field like in Total War game.

2) I don't agree about significant increase of square firepower - at the moment they can stand for ages against infantry in line shooting volley after volley at them. I wonder if there's possibility to make cavalry more likely to suffer casualties/morale drop from any kind of fire (artillery or musket)... so I agree to make cavalry to suffer more from Square fire.. but not with increasing square firepower overall...

3) This one is tough call... in general what you suggest might lower total casualties and thus bring the % of casualties closer to the real ones... on the other hand you'd expect that if unit is caught in line or its square had been broken it should suffer badly or even surrender.

4) now here I totally agree - but is this not hard-coded within battalion level AI? definitely if Kevin can change this it would be great... we'd expect depending on brigade stance that battalions would move towards cavalry forming square, let's say every 25 yards...
last 15 minutes of yesterday game I spent on trying to rout or at least push away Austrian Dragoons that Vince have left on northern flank... it's amazing how tough these bastards were... I didn't count but they charged my squares more than usual 3-4 times... it was more like 8-10.. and they still remained on field and wouldn't run away...
I wonder is it possible to implement reverse effect on cavalry - if it sees infantry (even not formed in square) it would try to keep distance, depending on stance... and only with aggressive stance (probe or higher) it would be possible to try getting closer to infantry?

5) partly agree - seems like cavalry doesn't tire that much when running but tires rapidly when charging - so experienced player would run cavalry to the desired target and then do the charge... often this fails when cavalry start charging another target on its own - then it wastes its stamina on this and makes the player frustrated and angry
so my proposal maybe make charging less exhausting but lower the recovery rate? - this would possibly bring cavalry closer to "one shoot weapon"

6) I'm afraid artillery is already OP... and I'd be very careful when tweaking it further... but in general shouldn't cavalry just flee off the field when they receive 2-3 timely canister shots?

Interesting discussion.

Another factor worth considering is that we use cavalry out of any operational context. It matters a lot in my opinion.
Getting full strenght regiments in campaign, taking out the horses foraging variable from the equation and not being forced to reserve fresh bodies of troops to consolidate/exploit the win or to mitigate the defeat, are two situations that seldomly any general could have the luck to face and tell to posterity, I think.
Just the tell the first two ideas coming to mind...
I'd appreciate seeing some advance guard cavalry entering in the battle already wore out or defining VP multipliers to account for the likely following persuit/disengage phase too, if possible.

I also guess the overwhelming power of cavalry could have been made worst by the fact it's faced by reactive AIs.
It's a threat you've to tackle seriously in anticipation, by opposing other cavalry or keeping formed reserves at hand to cover friendly units retreating for example, otherwise the reaction times becomes fairly short with devastating consequences.
The same goes for its capabilities to deny enemy's freedom of movement.
How many times did we saw AI mounting up spectacular, massive, with favourable odds, attacks just to end up stuck blobbed and in square in front of the enemy artillery?
I cry when their choreographic skills don't pay off. More often then not they'd deserved to smash the entire battleline and nothing less, sigh.

P.S. Can't be of much help here sadly because after a short agony, my old gaming PC finally died of wounds received during the Vitoria's slaughter...

We could represent that quite easily by just lowering the head count of our cavalry units. Most of our OOBs are set near the campaign start so all units are at/near full strength. However one could argue this affects infantry as well as cavalry. If one were to remove 20% off all units headcounts which is the fairest way to do it our cavalry would proportionally be just as strong. Horse and cuirassiers would not be reduced much on the field by reason of detachments however light cavalry could be. If you consider the attacks of both D'Erlon and Reille at Waterloo the light cavalry divisions attached to those two corps did not fight in their initial attacks at all, as both Pire on the left and Jacquinot on the right were effectively detached watching the flanks of the army. So there could be an argument for removing all or part of light cavalry divisions, but our games are hardly realistic representations of Napoleonic battles anyway so I am not sure that deleting cavalry units achieves much; if one side has 2 regts and the other side has 0 the side with just a handful still gains a significant advantage.

Yes, that's a perfectly fair point Martin. Like the other 6 are, after all (except the TW style form-square button).
Ideally I'd prefer seeing a part of the light cavalry to start in a kind of long-term fatigued state instead.
Especially in encounter battles, which are the most common type of engagement we play in SOW MP (by far), they should have quite a lot of work to do before.
It follows that if you assign VP multipliers for keeping light cavalry reserves, their commitment might be considered unprofitable (by human player and possibly AI too).
Just my 2 cents.

As R59 mentioned, it is really about the context of the battle.  All our battles are one-offs.  Why not attack infantry with cavalry early in the battle when the destruction of the cavalry arm has no bearing on the next battle?  Additionally, our battles are usually fought to nearly the last man.  Casualties are typically higher than in any but the most bloody battles of the period, (e.g. Borodino).

Yesterday was a fair example, I think.  French overall casualties, 6,543, (17.6%), Austrian, 14,377, (34.5%).  In total there were 99 infantry battalions on the field and 53 routed, (~53%).  Of those 53, 15 routed at an overall average of ~25% casualties, (a dll decision).  The rest routed at a higher percentage, (~50-60%), a game engine decision.

Cavalry casualties for the French, 1,121, (23.5%), for the Austrians, 1,653, (54.6%). Waterloo comes to mind here.

I can rout more units at a lower average percentage if people want to try that. I can make entire player controlled brigades declare themselves combat ineffective and march off the field. This happens to the AI controlled side in PvsAI battles. I can make the player controlled battalions automatically advance against the cavalry as the AI side does. This was removed by player request.

What do you think of my points Kevin? Do you agree? Disagree? Something else? It would be good to have others thoughts.

I am sure there's lots you are able to tweak now that you're familiar with the game's guts. The question is, do we want to?

1. Speeding up square formation would be difficult.  It is based on the formation the unit is in before it tries to form square.  All those men have to march into their pre-assign position.  The game engine demands all the men are in position before it declares the square is formed.
2.  Firepower can be increased but that will also be true for any other type of unit in range, such as infantry or guns.  Seeing a large square blast apart another battalion in line doesn't seem right.
3. Historically, when cavalry caught an infantry unit out of square or they broke a square, the casualties were horrendous.  There are a number of accounts of such a hapless battalion being virtually destroyed.
4. If the squares can move, they can drive off unsupported cavalry.
5. We had this at one point, but players thought it wasn't realistic and wanted to be able to use the cavalry more frequently.  The loss of cohesion and recovery time can both be changed.
6. I don't think the guns are nearly as vulnerable now that there are guard battalions.  The best weapon against a battery is an infantry battalion attacking the flank.
   All units suffer a large morale penalty if they are unsupported and alone.  That is a game engine mechanic.
   Part of the problem with players taking the cavalry on a ride around the flanks is that the flank is usually the only place that cavalry can advance.  They cannot move through all the infantry lines.  They have to go around.  Players and the AI mass their troops in densities that are completely unrealistic.  A cavalry attack in keeping with the times is impossible given the number of friendly troops in the way.  If we want realistic cavalry attacks, keep a realistic space of 50-80 yd. between brigades.  The AI won't do this, however.
7. You forgot this one.  Don't allow the cavalry to be TC'd.  Make it completely dependent on the AI.  The player is only allowed to give an attack point and it is up to the AI cavalry commander to do the rest.

Certainly an interesting discussion.

1.) Would it be possible to make the infantry run into square with a click of the square button? Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly, but I think there's been a few times where I clicked the Square button and then the Run button but they didn't run and instead walked. Of course forcing a run into square has the down side of not being able to walk into square but I don't think it's too much stamina really. Then again if they were going in and out of square like the AI likes to do they would probably exhaust themselves.

2.) Is there no way to make only cavalry take more losses from fire? Like some sort of modifier to the incoming firepower that makes it more effective at cavalry. They're big targets after all. Maybe if they were more of a glass cannon the player would have to be much more careful with them. This might double down and solve the issue of artillery being somewhat ineffective at them too if there's a way to make it so everything's firepower is increased against cavalry?

5.) I don't think I'd be against having them tire a little more, but I can foresee annoyances. The AI might do one of those wacky things it does sometimes and totally tire out your cavalry for the rest of the match. Though dealing with the mistakes of others is certainly historical. Maybe they could get tired easier, but also recover well if they're babysat by an officer. That way they might go out do some charges come back rest and then do it again instead of being active the whole battle.

6.) I can see both sides of this. Sometimes it seems really easy for cavalry to just run right up to guns and push them away. Sometimes the guns can be in line with the infantry and you can still trot right up and pester them. I did this to Martin in the recent game. In that instance I was purely sacrificing the cavalry to try and disrupt his position in time for the infantry attack that Mike was following up with. I botched the timing, but had he been right there with the infantry once my cavalry made the guns retreat they might have had a hard time deploying again with all the infantry coming at them. I'm not sure there would be a solution though, other than Kevin's listed 7th option of not controlling cavalry directly at all.

If there are no satisfying methods of changing the game available, there's always ways to influence players outside of the game. Perhaps we could develop a more advanced way of determining the outcome of battles. For example perhaps in a given battle the main objective is worth 4 victory points. There might be other minor objectives worth less points. If you go over 40% casualties on cavalry you lose, or perhaps conceded to the other team, 2 victory points for failing to consider the further campaign.

And of course it would be more work for the scenario creator but there's the option of instead of playing one-off battles the scenarios might be planned as a small batch of 3 connected battles that carries over the casualties from one to the other. This of course would be quite tricky to balance and plan as it takes a lot of variables into account, but it would presumably make people less hasty to sacrifice their cavalry, and other units, in an already lost battle. I have a friend who used to play the ACW Scourge of War and he played with a group that used some tool that carried over the loses from one battle to the next. I'm not sure exactly how it worked or what it did, but he was telling me how after a hard battle he'd only have a very small core left of his brigade while other people who saw less action would still be fine.

1. Infantry walking into square after pressing the run button means they are too tired to run. This is a game engine function.
2. Hasn't anyone told you, size doesn't matter? In SOW it is a canonical law.
6. Of course the gunners can be driven into a square and kept there so long as the cavalry is about. However, if another square is near by, it can be advanced to drive away the pest.
I wrote a carryover program a long time ago, so the losses can be deducted, the winning and losing sides can get back a certain percentage of routed and lightly wounded men, etc. As you said, it is just a matter of someone making a series of linked battles.

I'd be up for increasing cohesion loss (exhaustion) a small amount. Perhaps we can increase the rate at which in incurs and well as recovers. A mid ground between what we had in the early days and what we have now would be something we can test.

I only TC cavalry now extremely rarely when it wants to attack because I've placed it too close to the action. Placing it further back will remove that need but I am not sure non-TC-able cavalry would change much, they refuse to move into combat TC'd now already.

I still think we ought to be addressing the speed at which units can form square and increase their firepower a certain amount. I realise that isn't realistic but I have explained already why I think it will help.

I think the core of the problem is how absolutely dominant cavalry is because it forces the AI to form square so far away. Perhaps we can dial that response back a bit. If the AI can form squares later on (closer) and form them quicker that may make enough of a change.

As to the speed at which squares are formed surely its possible to just increase the speed at which the sprites move? Our gun crews flee into squares extremely quickly, is it possible to apply a similar process to battalions forming square?

In addition rather than tackling the points I raise, has anyone got fresh ones? Here's a few, some picking up others good ideas.

1) From Kevin - a good point about our overcrowded battlefields. Can we have more widely spaced formations and can we in any way absolutely prevent units merging or going close to other (friendly) units?

2) From Ehey - linked scenarios is a good idea, perhaps in a set of three. The problem that adds is a consistent player team which is hard to achieve. I think the ACW set-up you're referring to Ehey is the GCM. I have toyed with the idea of something similar for Naps although I feel something more cohesive and story-line based might be better for us. I have no idea how to write the code for a GCM clone, but I do have a shed load of design ideas for a discussion about it. Could we get a copy off Palmer or one of the other players and take a look at it? I am sure there is a basic design that will be useful that we can build on.

4) Cavalry and woods. A real problem for us and totally irrelevant for the ACW game the code was designed for. Kevin, you managed to stop artillery killing troops in woods by assigning a certain bmp value to the underlying map. Is there any way at all we can do this for cavalry? I am thinking of something like the impassable river boundaries so that when the AI cavalry hits a wood edge it just turns and moves along it although it won't of course incur exhaustion like the paddlers in rivers do. Then however we need the AI to be told its inside a terrain type where cavalry cannot go and need not form square. Something tells me this might be achievable but it would probably mean changing the bmp maps of all our maps

I wrote a carryover program a long time ago, so the losses can be deducted, the winning and losing sides can get back a certain percentage of routed and lightly wounded men, etc. As you said, it is just a matter of someone making a series of linked battles.

Is this carry over program available on the forums? Does it interact with the scenario generator in any way or would one still have to edit OOBs manually to get the correct troops and number of men plugged in for each scenario?

Just Briefly back to Cavalry points:

1) So provided that battalion is not exhausted is it possible to automatically force run when forming square?
I know it does make difference (running vs walking) not only when moving battalion but changing formations, too.

2) Skirmishers take less casualties than infantry in line - how is this implemented? is there something like "formation density"?
But anyway, if Kevin says it can't be done then we need to live with that.

3) I'd leave it as it is for now. I know it doesn't look realistic but it's because for some reason broken squares don't surrender quickly enough.

4) Can players now agree about moving squares? I mean situation when Brigade commander is TC-d but battalions under him are not... and when coming into proximity of enemy cavalry they do form square but keep moving in direction given to brigade commander.

5) That's where some fine tuning could be applied. maybe:
- more exhaustion when running
- less exhaustion when charging
- exhaustion recovery slower
- I can see problem with light cavalry here - is it possible to have their speed higher than heavies but tiring at the same rate? we don't want situation that light cav rules the field by outrunning heavies and then slaughtering them due to big bonus they get due to not being exhausted. This could vary by troops quality of course - so there would be variance in recovery rate anyway?

6) This is connected to point 2... I'd advise not to mess with it just now... as point 5 requires careful consideration.

In my scenario Both sides had 6 regiments but French cav had overall advantage both in number and quality... so 6 regiments is not a lot.. but also ratio of quality and light/heavy ratio should be looked at... and in battles like 4 v 4 divisions maybe heavy cavalry should be rarity...

Yesterday was a fair example, I think.  French overall casualties, 6,543, (17.6%), Austrian, 14,377, (34.5%).  In total there were 99 infantry battalions on the field and 53 routed, (~53%).  Of those 53, 15 routed at an overall average of ~25% casualties, (a dll decision).  The rest routed at a higher percentage, (~50-60%), a game engine decision.

Cavalry casualties for the French, 1,121, (23.5%), for the Austrians, 1,653, (54.6%). Waterloo comes to mind here.

I can rout more units at a lower average percentage if people want to try that. I can make entire player controlled brigades declare themselves combat ineffective and march off the field. This happens to the AI controlled side in PvsAI battles. I can make the player controlled battalions automatically advance against the cavalry as the AI side does. This was removed by player request.

_

I agree with this. It could be interesting to allow brigades or regiments to retreat with lower casualties for player as well as AI. It could make the battle more dynamic I guess. currently there is no real way to make the ennemy move quickly expect destroy all his battalions one by one. And sometimes one or two remaining regiments need 15/20 min more to be routed event if they are the only survivors. It is acceptable for guard units, but not for standard line infantry I suppose.

For cavalry, I agree with Martin that infantry has currently no option against cavalry. It would be great to find some tricks to improve that. The square moving idea could maybe work. Currently it works sometimes but at very high risk to be caught by a charge.

4) Can players now agree about moving squares? I mean situation when Brigade commander is TC-d but battalions under him are not... and when coming into proximity of enemy cavalry they do form square but keep moving in direction given to brigade commander.

I don't think this will help and I do not think its important. Even if AI brigade commanders do shift their squares that is not the issue I think we have. I think our main problem is the AI forms squares too far away from enemy cavalry and does too little once in square. I think we need the squares to form later so the AI can move much closer to enemy cavalry before it forms square. Then once AI infantry are in squares these need to be more mobile, they need to form faster, they need to move quicker and they need to move more often. One problem is the formation change from square to a column of fours to move which is completely wrong and is why so many battalions get caught by cavalry. A battalion would move in square. Can we introduce such a formation? If we could, then the sprites would have to march less far to get to their designated square positions and would be caught changing formation less often. This is why I think the formation change into square should be faster and if we could designate it as a square sooner even better, because forming into square was the most rapid formation change battalions practiced as it was so critical.

One weakness is the sprite positions calculation. We see one sprite moving from one side of a formation to the other because that's where the code says it needs to go. In reality this would never happen which is why I am arguing for a return to almost instant square formation - the game is just a bit broken in this regard since it was originally never designed to handle it.

I don't think this will help and I do not think its important.

wow.. okay.. but this is not in contradiction to what you're saying - actually, I agree with your detailed analysis on this and extend my invitation for players to agree about this. I understand Kevin said players previously opposed battalions moving once their formed square? - was it too easy for the cavalry to catch battalions when they "decided" to move?

I didn't know it's possible to create another moving formation - if so then square-like formation that has the closest assignment of sprite positions to these in actual formed square would be great to have... so even if it doesn't have square defence bonus while moving it would form square almost instantly when stopped... but is this quite a lot of work in logistics? (or wherever formations are defined)...

The distance from cavalry for battalion's AI to form square - yes, could this be decreased? (what is the current distance btw?)

What I meant was reintroducing the AI advancing its squares will not fix the problem. We turned it off because it was a pain for players, but giving it back to the AI isn't going to fix the fact that the AI infantry goes into square too far away from enemy cavalry and then doesn't do enough to push the cavalry aside once its in square, those are the problems as I see them.

Okay... so ideally we would have:
- moving formation that is as close to square as possible
- possibly automatic instant stop of this formation when the cavalry is very close (100 yards?) and forming real square
- maybe cavalry fearing squares? (at least the light one)... so cavalry would try to stay away 500 yards from squares or something - this way infantry would be able to push away cavalry?

I've increased the disorganization of cavalry charging and meleeing by 10%. I've increased the recovery time by 10%.
Infantry will go into square at a maximum distance of 450 yd. It varies by unit experience and whether the infantry is facing the cavalry or not. At 450 yd. the battalion has just enough time to successfully form a square if light cavalry is running towards them.
Squares should now move while in square formation. They won't have to reorganize when they stop. I also doubled their firepower output.

https://youtu.be/sDTkRvvzYyk?t=5452

Still I'm wondering what's going to happen in the case of an infantry brigade launching a frontal assault, likely decisive for the outcomes of the battle.
BUT being threatened on a flank, only in theory or marginally, by a few cav sqns within the new 450yds range.
Say these enemies are checked by a buffer of friendly forces with broken or restricted terrain inbetween...
Human player would probably take the risk and avoid forming squares altogether.
What constitutes a cavalry threat, in space, time and intensity, is probably just a too "blended" consideration for being caught by behaviour trees or a binary/instantaneous "enemy list".
Again a simple influence map might perform slightly better here I think, condensing more dynamically the informations.
AI would probably "see" that projected threat obstructed by the interposing elements and, why not, decaying a bit too due to their potential inactivity (stalemate).
Page 11: http://www.gameaipro.com/GameAIPro2/GameAIPro2_Chapter31_Spatial_Reasoning_for_Strategic_Decision_Making.pdf
Let's hope for the best anyway, so please give public feedbacks about the changes after the next few games.
I suggest assigning cavalry commands to our best and well-known raiders of others' prizes.
So when I come back with a new PC, they're full and I can get my slice of glory the hell alone and entirely reassured about these new game mechanics.

Nice work Kevin, lets see if this helps. I suggest one side has 4 cavalry divisions and the other has 4 infantry, PvP

Feedback from yesterdays game. Things seemed to work well, I noticed the cavalry tiring a little more. The moving square formation might need a bit more work. It was incredibly slow. This wouldn't be a problem if, when it halted, it was ready for defence quickly, but mine were not. I still found that annoying "sprite X must be in position Y right across the other side of the battalion" issue and had several squares broken that I thought were formed in time. I think that could be because the unit took hits from artillery on the move so when it halted the program needed its sprites in a different order to when it set out on the move. I expect that squares moving that don't take losses will be formed more quickly - did anyone notice that?

There's no fix to this as far as I can see so could we make the squares move quicker Kevin? I think they could maybe move at line speed,or very very slightly less than that.

I also seemed to have a lot of issues with units trapping each other in place. This wasn't so much because I was stacking them too close together but that the AI wants to do that, maybe that's a problem exacerbated by the big Austrian units. The massive classic skirmisher battalions especially. Maybe a higher sprite ratio would work?

Is there any way to enlarge the "zone of control" around units so the AI keeps them further apart? Its okay if a human player spaces out his battalions but if the AI hurls several at you in an attack all closer together its a problem.

My impressions - the changes worked kind of... but I'm afraid that Light cavalry again becomes queen of battlefield which shouldn't happen...
Is it possible to apply harsher organisation penalties while in combat for light cav only? or is is it just global change for all cavalry or nothing?

moving squares - there's been some delay to forming stationary square, but minimal in my case. I wonder, since we've got moving square formation is it possible to simply apply the same defensive - anti cavalry bonus like for the stationary one?
If not , then yes - improving its speed could help, but I wouldn't go as far as line speed... also AI on both human and AI side should stop moving squares when cavalry is very close. Actually I haven't tested that as I was TC-ing them and when moving they would be slaughtered the same way like if they were in column...

Had an issue with units being trapped too... not sure if there is solution to it.. on one hand we want units not to get too close to each other, on the other we would like to be able to move units around without need of having 100 yards spacing...