Different Weapondamages in dom 3 ?

[bone_daddy]

I wonder if it would be possible to add a Brace for Charge command that would only apply to pikemen?

[Kuritza_Dru]

First, wasn't the barding limiting mount's field of view so that the horse does not see the pikes ahead?
Second, are you sure heavy cavalry could stop all of a sudden? It wasn't very maneuverable, you know. It's possible when 3-4 riders are charging, but what if there are more coming from behind? You stop, and they just run into you.

[Arralen]

Kuritza, no, you can't limit a horses view in the direction it is supposed to walk, or it will not walk at all. And you woulnd't want it to, as it would stumble and fall over within very few meters. And that's something that you definitly do not want if you're atop on it in heavy armor ... .
Neither do you want to crash head on into a wall of pikes, as you (and horse) would be very very dead in short time.

The cavalry wouldn't stop all of a sudden. The horses would start to balk as soon as they see where the ride is going, they would slow down and turn away to the side.

Yes, if the front would stop those behind would be in trouble. Yes, all of them (infantry included) where in big trouble when they literally run into each other all of s sudden without any room for the horses to evade.

I wrote about all this here already ...

[FrankTrollman]

OK, I'm going to call shenanigans on Arralen. It is difficult to train a warhorse to charge a forest of spears. It is not impossible. Horsemen traditionally do extremly poorly against close pike formations, but not only because horse are unwilling to charge in - also because when they do charge in they have a tendency to get thrashed.

If horses couldn't be made to charge pikemen, how would the knights have been slaughtered at Laupen after having charged the pikemen?

Making blanket statements like "horses won't charge spear formations" or "horses will panic in the presence of elephants" is only true of the untrained horse, not of the warhorses that knight units presumably ride. While there are many many examples of armies which had not trained their mounts to stay firm in the presence of spears or elephants (heck, the Khmer never bothered to train their horses to not freak at the sight of their own elephants, and just kept them on different sides of the battle), there are many other examples of armies that did.

Sometimes that worked out. Sometimes it didn't.

But it is possible. You are short changing horses. A lot.

-Frank

[Edi]

There is a very interesting web site here that discusses various weapons and their applicability at length, and it also happens to focus on game design and game design principles in other sections. An invaluable read before people start spouting various alternative systems to implement how they think things should work. I heartily recommend taking a good, long look.

Edi

[Arralen]

They're on the right way, but they still do fall into some traps ...