Different Weapondamages in dom 3 ?

[Boron]

Arralen said:
Doesn't work normally. Horses don't do that. And Riders won't try at all.
Only exception: by accident. But this would be a single occurance, which is covered by a triple-6 roll on the open ended roll...

The whole point of pikes etc. is to break up the carge of the mounted troops, and than either A) counter-charge the disorganized riders from the side or B) have other troops attack them while they try to draw away. or c) have bowmen decimate them.

So, basically, any very long weapon should give a big bonus to defense against riders, not to damage.

But if we look at very large monsters, things are quite different. Those could very well try to crash to the wall of spear points - but they should have adequate natural protection.
Berserked or mindless work as well, but they wouldn't get additional damage - the foot soldier simply wouldn't be able to keep the pike/spear etc straight. 1 point repell damage is to few, though.

So you can't train a horse well enough to try that ?
Didn't heavy armed mounted troops like parthian cataphracts or medieval knights try this occasionally ?

In RTW a few horses jump occasionally straight into the phalanx over the first few lines . To me this looked realistic but i have no experience how well you can drill a horse .
Is this in theory possible ?

[Tuidjy]

Even historians cannot agree on whether horses have ever been trained to do this.
I am sure it can be done, but I do not see the point. Charging pikes from the
front is suicidal and probably inneffective. Going through the trouble and
taking the time to train a horse so that it is more afraid of its rider than from
a wall of spikes will result into a very expensive horse that is likely
unstable, twitchy, and not good for much but charging into pikes. Once.

Lets not confuse charging into a wall of pikes and a wall of thrusting spears.
A cavalry lance is a quite a bit shorter than the former, but significantly
longer than the latter. The horse may shy from the spears as well, but the
spearman would be a lot more likely to run much earlier.

Back to Dominions. In the perfect world, this could be modeled as combination
of defense and repelling damage. But I think that the effort necessary for
getting it right would be better spent elsewhere.

[Arralen]

.. there are times when I thoroughly hate these forums .. it just ate my lengthy post ..

Ok, I'll try again:

No, I'm pretty shure you can't train horse to do that. And as it would be suicidal, noone would even try.

That doesn't mean it couldn't happen by accident. Horse and rider may get confused and/or panicked, and just turn into the wrong direction. And most likely end up dead.

It may even happen that a whole "squad" of knights e.g. comes over a hill and runs into some foot soldiers at full speed. There wouldn't be enough room for the knights to stop or evade, and maybe the horses wouldn't realize fast enough what is happening, especially if they are pressed by their riders. But it would result in a bloody mess.

Especially, if the foot soldiers are prepared and realize that their only chance is to hold the line.

That's what 80% of ancient/mediaval combat is about: holding the formation. As long as the shield wall holds, the pikes/spears are kept straight, not much could happen. As soon as a formation is broken up, it's overrun by the enemy and slaughtered. (This could happen because of failing morale, a danger which is unexpected or comes from an unexpected direction, obstacles or exhaustion)
Example: Hastings

So the charge of heavy knights was directed at either A) disorganized troops or b) other cavallery, which couldn't hold a tight formation as inf does.

The longer couched lance (which wasn't available at Hastings, and for some hundred years afterwards) was a bigger thread to foot soldiers armed with the usual trusting spears. But the real danger came not from it being an ultimate weapon, but from it's psychological impact. If the very first line of soldiers in the shield wall believed the knights could charge them succesfully, turned and ran, the shield wall was actually broken and the knights could have their day.
It was only logical to give longer spears to the infantry as well, discard their shields as they had to handle the long poles 2-handed. To give them more offensive punch (you couldn't really trust with something 4-5m long), it developed into the pike etc. With those, the foot soldiers could counter-attack the knights if they pulled away from the hegde of spear points and had to move "alongside".

Often the knights dismounted to fight in the line on foot, simply because horses where too expensive and tatctical possibilites too small.

Something to read up you can find here http://www.dicksonc.act.edu.au/Showc...2/stirrup.html