[Mentalist]

so, this weekend, I finally had time to play around with my new lappy, getting it about halfway to the condition I want it to be in.
and, among other things, i went and installed my copy of Heroes of Annihilated Empires, an RTS/RPG hybrid from the makers of Cossacks.

whilst i'm not too far inot it, and the game's allegedly crap, it is the prettiest game I have ever played. the graphics simply rule. It feels a lot liek Spellforce, tbh.

Hmmm, I think this long weekend I may dig up my DVD of Spellforce 2...

[cerveza_fiesta]

well the moors are nearly vanquished now. Beat their asses back to africa and closing in on their current capital.

Spreading the good catholic word too.

For the spaniards at least, cavalry is freakin awesome. Having played mostly factions with good foot units until now, I never looked a lot at the horse-option. I've been using it for Everything with the spain faction so far with zero issues...for the main reason that spain lacks spearmen in the early times. Enemy has spearmen? Feint and flank. Enemy is in a castle? Ballista the shit out of the walls, swarm with cavalry. Enemy blocks wall holes with spearmen? Ballista them and swarm with calvalry.

Plus you can move them halfway across your territory inside of a turn.

Its fun!

[General King]

Ah playing as the scots in medieval 2 Total war The Long Road.

It is seriously one of the best mods for the game, having some great fun and now the rebels are a bloody challenge.

[Macros]

i think we should campaign for a china 3kingdoms period total war. that would be the shnit.

[Mentalist]

Managed to get Spellforce 2 to run on new lappy (although the installer wasn't 64-bit compatible--wtf?)

This game has killed my long weekend.

[Gothos]

Somehow the musket era doesn't appeal to me. I didn't like AoE3 one bit, and I'm totally not thrilled about Empire. Not even bothered to download it, let alone buy it.

I guess the death of the cavalry charge gets to me. Token infantry unit to draw the enemy line, charge from flanks, charge home, victory! That's disturbingly close to what got my country's ass kicked severely in that peroid. Sigh. I'm a slave to my bloodline.

Anyway, since I have Company of Heroes lying around for about a year (I got it along with my GF 8800GT), is it any good? Good enough to siphon time from Mass Effect 2 maxing, FFX maxing, FFXII and watching X-files, which is my free time plan for the next few months?



PS. About horse units in Total War games... they're severely overpowered I'd say, at least in Rome they were (hah charge with no stirrup, grow up). Medieval, less so - it was the dominant weapon of the medieval peroid. Since flanking charges give additional hits to morale, as does encirclement and heavy casualties from the charge, and TW games are more about morale and less about casualties per se, you can pretty much go with an all-cavalry army. With, perhaps, some foot units to chew through spearmen, but they can be destroyed by overwhelming cavalry forces too (flank, flank, FLANK!). It's amazing what you can achieve with a mounted army in those games (wut's casualties?)

This post has been edited by Gothos: 17 February 2010 - 08:14 AM

[beru]

who said anything about the death of the cavalry in empire?

poland got Winged Hussars wich is more or less unstopable if you get a flanking attack, wich is btw easyer now than in medieval beacuse the foolish musket men always move in formation...

[Gothos]

They really pushed hussars into the 18th century? The last decent engagement of that type of unit was at Vienna in 1683. I don't recall us being much succesful at anything after that (maybe because a whole lot of our best warriors got killed off there). We should get a tee with "I stopped the Ottoman onslaught and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. And partitions." on it for free at birth.

18th century firearms would blast hussars to oblivion, and they did just that.

[Tapper]

Gothos, on 17 February 2010 - 10:13 AM, said:

They really pushed hussars into the 18th century? The last decent engagement of that type of unit was at Vienna in 1683. I don't recall us being much succesful at anything after that (maybe because a whole lot of our best warriors got killed off there). We should get a tee with "I stopped the Ottoman onslaught and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. And partitions." on it for free at birth.

18th century firearms would blast hussars to oblivion, and they did just that.

Hussars were in use for quite a long while, definately during the Napoleonic era.
The years afterward, up until the Crimean war, saw a conservative military reaction to the Napoleonic age - the return of small scale regiments instead of mass charges, for one - an emphasis on cavalry would be expected, too. For evidence: if I'm not mistaken, Prince Andrei in Tolstoy's War and Peace served in a hussar regiment. The famous Charge of the Light Brigade that died to a man in the Crimean war consisted of light dragoons and 2 hussar regiments, and that's in 1854.

The fact that a light horse regiment has no place in a straight charge does not mean it doesn't have its uses - forward scouting in force, raiding of supply lines, charging artillery emplacements that can't change the directions of their guns at a whim, relieving/attacking tied down infantry regiments, et cetera.

[Gothos]

Don't mistake the hungarian style light hussars, which are/were light cavalry, with the P-LC's heavy winged hussars. These were the mailed fist, heavy charging lancers. They didn't last.

[Tapper]

Gothos, on 17 February 2010 - 11:39 AM, said:

Don't mistake the hungarian style light hussars, which are/were light cavalry, with the P-LC's heavy winged hussars. These were the mailed fist, heavy charging lancers. They didn't last.

Hungarian style hussars are THE hussars, winged hussars are a misnamed oddity

[beru]

well they are still in the game...

alltho if they charge a cannon at the wrong time they (or any other unit that does this mistake) dies with grape shot bullets inside them...

[Gothos]

winged hussars = husaria (name comes from the serbian "uzar" meaning roughly "mounted knight"; these guys are the origins of husaria)
hussars = huzarzy (from hungarian word "huszár", meaining "brigand" or "marauder"; deeper probably from the latin "cursarius" - corsair)

[beru]

well... they have wings and are named winged hussars...

and they are fast moving with a charge bonus and melee skill to die for...

and clearly not historicaly acurrate...

[Mentalist]

Actually, they are.

they ere always considered the elite of the Polish army, and were composed almost entirely of landed gentry. The very name "winged" comes from their tradition to attach eagle wings behind their backs, which were already covered with furs of exotic animals, to underline their status.

They were THE heavy hitters of the commonwealth, but their ranks were thinnned severely over the decades of fighting with Ukrainian cossacks... with various degrees of success.

[Jusentantaka]

Mentalist, on 17 February 2010 - 03:05 PM, said:

Actually, they are.

But also not, too, cause the polish hussars also carried guns, unless they ditched that by the 1700s, (can't imagine why though) I can't read polish so I could have (probably) missed out on a lot of information about them, but previously, their SOP seemed to be 'charge pikemen head to head with lances longer than pikes' against the russians, or the maneuver that starts with a C and I can't remember how to spell, where they'd charge up in the same formation and wheel and shoot with carbines or pistols.

And the Met in NYC had (maybe still has) a full set of hussaria armor from the late 17th/early 18th C, and it definitely qualifies as heavy armor (even if was probably on the low end of 20 kilos), and even up to and past Napoleon, europe thought the world of polish lancers whether they were all sexy in wings and stuff or just dudes riding horses around for some cash.

On the note of awesome cavalry: Spent the night playing as Persia with the new version of Imperial Splendor. Ghulams in plate armor with lances and carbines, Jezails, crazy afgan hill folk with swords and artillery from india AND turkey... whats not to love? Delicious mod.

[Gothos]

For armament, P-LC hussars used long lances of special build (reinforced with leather, these didn't bend down when levelled; also, the weight at the handle was significant enough that it's centre of mass was pretty much behind the wielder's hand, adding a lot of maneuverability to the weapon; in addition, they sported steel feathers at the tip as to make it harder to cut or break the weapon like a spear), various pieces of armor, short bows (later replaced by twin pistols), in later peroids a koncerz (a pretty long - up to 160 cm - sword designed for piercing damage from horseback), and of course the traditional sabre. Tactics involved a link between the eastern maneuvarability and impact and the western formation, along with aspects unique to the unit - like the ability to loosen and tighten the formation during a charge. A hussar unit could keep loose (up to 3 meters apart) formation for most of the approach and tighten the ranks to a wall of steel, wood, man and horse right before impact, granting it both great resistance to ranged fire (especially the early mustkets) and at the same time tremendous force of impact. This let hussars achieve great success on the battlefield with minimal casualties. It demands mentioning that the horses were probably even more badass than the riders - trained in conditions that are supposed to scare other animals shitless, they were a tall, strong and courageous breed of incredible stamina. Home-bred, selling one of these abroad was punishable by death. No wonder.

Here we have the scared shitless part. As for the wings, their largest role was probably that of indimidation and psychological warfare, exceptionally so against other mounted units. Along with huge, colourful banners dancing all around the levelled lances during a charge, there were these wings - eagle, sometimes, but mostly falcon, hawk, sometimes even crow or goose. The noise they made could probably be hardly hearable in battle, but it surely added to the appearance of the unit in an enemy soldier's, or even more - horse's - eyes. Also, the common mistake is placing the wings on the rider's back - they were usually mounted in the back of the saddle, and after the rider mounted. They were also not an obligatory piece of apparel.

The major problem with these guys was that fielding a well trained one, with equipment and 5-6 horses and support staff, cost about as much as an entire village. When we were at our best, it wasn't that much of a problem, but with the manic wars of the 17th century, the country got pretty much devastated, reducing the 8000 strong pulverizer into a meagre 1300-ish force of survivors. In later years, military culture and doctrine loosened severely, leading to a neglect of training and morale, making the force pretty much useless by the 18th century. With an ongoing decline in the usefulness of the unit, their high cost, and advancements in gunpowder weaponry, hussars became parade and ritual soldiers (most notably, when a nobleman died without an heir, a hussar would enter the church during the funeral and break his lance on the catafalque).

This post has been edited by Gothos: 17 February 2010 - 06:19 PM

[Jusentantaka]

Gothos, on 17 February 2010 - 06:18 PM, said:

koncerz (a pretty long - up to 160 cm - sword designed for piercing damage from horseback),

Isn't that just a french estoc? I have one measuring about 55 inches (140cm about) Or was that a genuinely different blade? Nitpick aside that's some knowledgy stuff + rep.

[Gothos]

Well, I did try to reference for different name through wiki but the english page just named it Koncerz... but these are slightly different weapons. The main difference visible at first glance is that your usualy koncerz sports a basket hilt and a one-handed grip, while the estoc tended to have have a more open hilt with sometimes deviations towards a bastard sword or two-hander grip type. They are, however, indeed similar weapons, fulfilling pretty much the same role - piercing through armor.

[cerveza_fiesta]

holy shit.

Nice history lesson. Rep to gothos.

Back to the games.

Started getting my ass handed to me by my french "allies" in my spanish campaign. I need to get better at defending my borders.

Maybe I'll start up a new game with the Englishmen or something.