Is there any reason to ever use it? I don’t understand why they do self harm, why can’t that stance just set all their armour values to 0 or something…
My experience is no but with a few small exceptions that i should pass on.
If you have a cav with a huge multiplier sometimes you can squeeze enough dps extra to justify it, especially if its against a unit that’s behind a small line of a different unit type
ie. a cannon behind some ruskets, if you have a cav with an arty multiplier the splash can hit the artillery and deal the bonus dmg. kanya are noteworthy.
Meteor hammers seem to do splash dmg at 5 range? They seem possible to abuse as above too.
The reason I ask is i was digging into the hausa shipment that gives them splash but also greatly boosts their trample area. In the editor I could not get a group of raiders/lifidi cav in trample mode to ever perform better than without it, even with the upgrade. Like, why is this whole stance still so useless
sadly the devs foresaw this abus i think, they lose the range in trample mode
of interesting note for some reason the iron flail trample has less splash area then others at 2 aoe, this seems to be athing where cav that already have splash get double their splash area, but for the iron flail this makes it worse then normal
Yeah I agree if we remove the self harm and maybe just make them take more damage from attacks that would be better
also if the units in trample mode also doesnt follow formation so they dont drag down the army and you can more easily identify the units in trample mode
From what I’ve seen in scenario editor, it’s of a very minor benefit to swarmy heavy cav (cossack, raider, etc). It lets them get through light inf just a bit quicker from what I could tell. For huss and especially cossacks its a huge loss for negligible gain.
In theory lifidis and mamelukes can use this to snare more enemies since they combination of low attack and high hp means the effect of recoil damage is minimized. It barely matters at all tho, so there’s actually no practical reason for it in its current form.
tbh i think just removing the self harm is enough even without removing the speed penalty , we can see if that leads anywhere cause the point is to atleast allow them to live long enough to deal damage
The iron flail barely lose any attack going into trample mode. From 19 to 17. Hussar goes from 30 to 20. Cuirassier down from 25 to 17. I guess thats the balance consideration.
ah ok hmm i sorta think just the slow down is enough on some level
cause if the cav is slow that means it has to commit and usually the power of cav comes in the form of being able to decide when to engage
and in that case then setting armour to 0 doesnt really change much since cav armour is mostly ranged and most unit would be dealing melee damage to it which the range armour doesnt affect in the first place.
the only unit it would kinda meaningfully affect is the lifidi which is pretty niche
the only other case i can think of where that would be meaningful is like a skirm mass but im not sure if that is meaningful enough.
i have to completely disagree here, it would make them immediately more vulnerable to ranged cavalry that is very commonly paired with artillery or ranged cavalry. You gain splash at the risk of getting taken down much quicker by ranged anticav, plus more cav has melee resist now too so that is relevant in a few cases.
sure they would be, i just think no one in their right mind would try to melee range cav or even trample units in the presence of range cav with much slower melee cav, they are slower then artillery in trample mode so even those can just pack up and move away while the range cav just kite though I could just be wrong about that.
range cav also has stagger formation by default so its not like they can take them out with the splash
the increased attack delay would also just make snaring nigh impossible so they would be just kited to death
iirc they have less than 4 speed so competent infantry would be able to get away even
most of the time ranged infantry will be in mixed compositions. My suggestion is intended to make sure trample isnt frequently used, but still an advantage to use strategically on cornered infantry, or do some extra dmg if you know you’ll lose your cav anyways
I see that makes sense though i think a bigger issue have seen in using them though is that they make your mass a lot harder to micro
if you had a mixed mass of trampling and non trampling cav it could be a good strategic option but they slow down you down too much if you control the group
another idea to me is to see if trample mode cannot slow down formations, which can make a trampling mass a lot harder to break
This would be especially harsh for units with high resistance and hardly a factor for ones with low resistance.
What if it was just a fixed resistance reduction instead of setting it to zero? Like -25% resistance that would even put them at a negative resistance value if their base resistance wasn’t high enough. That would make them take more damage without the weird self harm.
Personally, i’d be down for the suggestion in the other thread:
Unit speed and damage reduced by 35%. Rate of fire stays at 1.5 and no splash area is gained. Unit can attack while moving. Takes +20% more damage from anticavalry units (Musk, pike, halb, goons).
Basic idea is to make trample mode better at specifically running down LI blobs - constant snare and dps at the cost of taking more damage from anticav units. This should be a little more relevant early on, a little weaker later in the game, and should benefit the glass cannon (Uhlans) and beefy noodle (Lifidi Knights) types of heavy cav evenly.
Seems useful, without turning every other huss into a mini cuirassier.
Taking more damage from anti-cav units would be extremely convoluted. Bonus damage is determined by the unit dealing damage, not the unit receiving it. Negative resistance is probably the simplest way to increase damage recieved.
An attack while moving is an interesting idea, but it’s different enough to be a completely distinct attack mode. If it’s paired with slower speed then it also becomes a lot less useful for running down units.
A good compromise could be to make trample mode work like the “stampede mode” that Royal Horsemen and monster trucks have. That would make it work when moving and be different from regular splash damage cavalry.
On a side note, stampede mode makes absolutely no sense for Royal Horsemen. They’re based on bodyguards, so recklessly damaging everything nearby is the opposite of what they’re supposed to do. I really think it should be an ability for elephant units. It would be thematic and give them a distinctive feature to set them apart and offset their pathing issues.
But it’s hard to describe how to use it but i’ll give an example.
you have some skirmishers being chased by hussars in melee mode it wont be long before you can pull them back to safety. But suddenly the 3 leading hussars switch to trample mode and snare you entire group.while the remaining hussars surround your men.
Trample mode is most useful for the AOE snare it causes, the only problem is you have to switch manually at the right times because it also slows your cavalry.
You think we dont know that here? Thats a trick anyone who ever sent a mameluke shipment knows - and its really not worth much.
In your scenario, if the other guy sets the skirms to melee you have a very good chance of losing huss in that trade. Something that doesn’t occur if you just leave trample off - the extra bit of snare isnt worth taking casualties while engaging units you’re designed to counter.
see that’s the issue we’re talking about, they actually don’t take out units much faster, and end up taking more losses at the same time. Every test I’ve done i have almost identical results to not using trample
