Mounted=Animal attribute?

[Psientist]

Shouldn't all mounted units, especially knights, have the "animal" attribute, and thus be subject to the "animal awe" ability?

I was reading one of my favorite authors, Glenn Cook, who described a battle mage who disrupted a charge of armored cavalry by projecting phantasms of giant bears. The illusions terrified the horses - who were trained for combat, but still had horsey instincts - and the horses would not obey or charge forward.

Seems to make sense to me.

Heck, even units like elephants (description: "...the largest animals known to man, are trained in Arcoscephale...") don't have the animal attribute.

Thus, the animal awe attribute is made somewhat worthless.

[lch]

A problem is that the animal tag doesn't only only appeal to the animal awe ability. AFAIK there's a spell specifically for charming animals, too, unless I'm being mistaken.

[Psientist]

Hmmm, that does present a problem. In which case, you should charm the mount, and the commander goes to their #secondshape ... but there's no solution if there's no #secondshape for that unit.

Ah well.

[darloth]

Mounted is certainly an ability/tag that units have though - mounted units get a defense bonus, AND they don't suffer armour encumbrance.

Thus, one of the developers could maybe change Animal Awe to work on Mounted units as well, if they felt that it was a good idea.

[llamabeast]

I don't know that spell lch. It certainly isn't a common one.

This would also be a great solution to the pike problem. If you gave pikes animal awe and made all cavalry animals, that would work nicely. Actually I think that's been suggested before. I wonder what the downside was. Obviously cavalry would become less good at sieging, but I don't think that's terribly bad news.

[JimMorrison]

You mean, at defending. There is no penalty to siege damage for Animals, only a penalty to rebuilding. And that would indeed be a significant problem.

Second Shape won't work either, no mounted units have the rider as a second shape, they have the mount.

With Johan's recent enthusiasm, I bet he could be cajoled into taking a look into applying Animal Awe to units flagged as Mounted.

[Fantomen]

Or adding a new ability that only affects mounted units. Or a secondary effect to the pike weapon, like cause lesser fear if opponent is mounted or such.

Or a reversed charge bonus to damage? Automatic conterattack doing X damage where X is pike damage + opponents AP.

[Endoperez]

There's one BIG problem with making pikeneers have animal awe. Monkeys. If pikes have a chance against cavalry (usually morale 11 or so), the monkeys would be completely negated by Ulm, Marignon and... hmm, Tien Chi? Who else has pikes?

[Sombre]

Well the monkey nations do generally use their missile weapons to attack. But you're right that it would throw up problems.

[Aezeal]

well you could argue that the riders would negate the animalawe effect somewhat (or completely)

I'd say leave as is