Cavalry Part 2: Reserves

In the example of the last tutorial, we have seen that shock cavalry can very smash through a battle line and then attack it from the rear. One way to prevent this scenario would be to keep troops in reserve that engage the cavalry as it makes its initial breakthrough.

Of course, the troops have to be able to actually get there in time. Even after a small confusion after ploughing through a line, cavalry can move quite fast, so if the reserves are infantry, they have to be kept close. This is not so for cavalry - light cavalry can move even faster than heavy shock cavalry and hence a few units of light cavalry in the rear can be really quickly deployed to plug gaps in a battle line.

In the following, we're nevertheless first going to take a look at infantry reserves - in fact the very same setup as in the last tutorial, except this time with changed tactics - to see what differences reserves make.

Reserves

Try example10.cfg to see the deployment of reserves. The event manager

event_trigger
id B06_10_destroyed
logic OR
unit_destroyed_fraction 0.5
unit_destroyed B06
unit_destroyed_2 B07
unit_destroyed_3 B08
unit_destroyed_4 B09
unit_destroyed_5 B10

event_trigger
id B11_15_destroyed
logic OR
unit_destroyed_fraction 0.5
unit_destroyed B11
unit_destroyed_2 B12
unit_destroyed_3 B13
unit_destroyed_4 B14
unit_destroyed_5 B15

event_logic
id line_broken
type OR
input_1 B06_10_destroyed
input_2 B11_15_destroyed

event_result
trigger_id line_broken
command_formation br
order seek_enemy

event_result
trigger_id line_broken
command_formation bi
order rush

investigates the central battle line of army B, and if significant losses are detected there, commands the reserves to seek out the enemy and the main line to advance faster to gain some distance to the horsemen in their back.

While the initial setup is the same as in example09.cfg, the outcome is now that army B wins about 70% of the encounters - so using the extra infantry as reserves rather than to outflank the enemy pays off.

New keywords

The file contains also a few new keywords and configuration options. For instance auto_report_units results in an expanded battle summary in which also the numbers of units still active and of the soldiers that remain after the battle ends (or the battlefield is plotted in interactive mode) are displayed as

Army ArmyA:
4 out of 24 units remain active.
174 out of 2400 soldiers remain active, 0 have fled or surrendered.
Army ArmyB:
0 out of 32 units remain active.
0 out of 3200 soldiers remain active, 508 have fled or surrendered.

Especially useful for placing larger amounts of units is the unit_line keyword. This places a larger number of units (specified by num_units in a row, with spacings between units determined by spacing_x and spacing_y. The name and tag keywords inside a unit line serve as prefixes to which the number of the unit inside the line is appended. For tags, the numbering is filled with leading zeroes if the tag length requires this. Here is an example of such a declaration (the rest of the keywords apply as for individual units):

unit_line
num_units 20
name B_
tag B
type PersianInfantry
army 2
morale 6
assign_to bi
pos_x 250.0
pos_y 350.0
spacing_x 20.0
spacing_y 0.0
dir_x 0.0
dir_y 1.0

Cavalry reserves

For the sake of completeness, example11.cfg illustrates the use of light cavalry as reserves. This isn't quite as instructive as letting additional infantry either act as reserves or out-flank the enemy, as here the relative value of heavy vs. light cavalry is an issue and it is harder to see whether using the cavalry as reserves really is the most desirable tactic.

Nevertheless, it is quite apparent that cavalry reserves can be placed quite far from the battle line where they are safe from ranged attacks and nevertheless act quickly if the need arises.

Continue with Terrain Elevation.

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