Regular Camel Riders, and both Mameluk units are not dealing bonus damage to Cataphracts. (Regular or Elite)
Heavy and Imperial Camels seem to be doing just fine and it seems to be just Cataphracts.
Ran into in the Saladin campaigns and further tested in the scenario editor.
Not a bug as far as I know. Just Cataphract things
Than why do heavy camels work?
In game, The descriptions of Camel riders and Mamelukes is that they are strong verses cav. And Cataphract’s that they are strong verses infantry. Based off of how other strong verses work, I would from this conclude that Cataphract’s are weak verses these units because they don’t haev anything about being strong verses camels or cav.
Cataphracts have extra armor against anti Cavalry attacks, which means they completely nullifies non heavy camels, mamelukes, and leaves heavy camels with only +2 extra damage. It also halves the bonus damage from halbs, from +32 to +16.
If that is intended, It is horrible design.
Saracen’s were historically destroying the Byzantines. They actually where what caused the crusades to start. The Turks did not appear on the scene until well after that
Gameplay wise, it makes the Saracen’s a horrible choice to fight the Byzantines with. Making they units that they actually have combat bonuses with useless against them and forcing the use of Pikemen.
It is said nowhere in game itself.
First of all, history ≠ game design.
Second, your claim that Saracens “destroyed” Byzantines is dubious at best.
While it’s true that the Arabic rapid expansion throughout the 7-8th centuries was in part at the expense of the Byzantine empire, in Syria, or Southern Europe like Italy or Sicily.
However the following centuries saw a stabilization of the conflict, with Byzantine securing their positions in mainland Italy and on the Anatolian plateau.
Following that, until the 11th century the Byzantine empire was able to gradually push back and retake some of its possessions in Armenia and Syria.
Past the 11th century, conflicts between the two dwindle as each fought its own new enemies, Seljuk Turks for Byzantine and Crusader Kingdoms and Mongols for Arabs.
And finally, in terms of game balance, Saracens have all the tools to deal with cataphracts. Since cataphracts only have 1 base pierce armor that makes them vulnerable to archers, which Saracens can field plenty with fully upgraded arbalests and heavy cavalry archers.
Tried that. Got mowed by the siege he brought. Playing the 5th Saladin campaign on hardest and have not been able to come up with a defense against Tyre much less the ability to take down the wonder started less than 10 minutes into the match.
Edit: The cataphracts i am fighting have 5 melee and 5 pierce armor. that doesn’t sound like a week pierce armor. at least compared to their melee armor.
5 pierce armor is not a lot for a cavalry unit. A group of heavy cavalry archer should have no problem microing down cataphracts and avoiding siege. Add some light cav in front for a meatshield if you’re not confident enough with your micro.
I don’t have time to get that. I am under attack before i can even advance to Imp. Please, Play through the campaign Jihad! on hard and tell me what you use to fight off the combo of cataphracts and siege from tyre and knights and siege from tiberias. I don’t have enough time to gather the resources for 2 different types of troops and no 1 troops is proving good enough to deal with both sides of attacks. Also, Cav archers can’t outrun other cav. The best i could hope for was equal speed and was still losing to the knights.