Infantry and cavalry ideas

[Alex]

My ideas:

Cavalry: make a horse and cavalier as separate units, with their own HP and experience, and let the soldier dismount from horse and fight on foot (for example, when horse is wounded) or mount the other horse.

For infantry: tell the archer to 'holster' his bow and use the short sword, to make him a little weaker light footman (but anyway more efficient in close combat than regular archer), also this could work for pikeman, when he has to deal with non-mounted enemies.

What do you think about it?

[TheCobra1]

Hmmm, not bad.... I would be cool to have a farm to raise horses if you don't want to buy them. AOE 2 Expansion had horses but they didn't have any use for them.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Regarding the archer and the useage of more than one type of weapon, such a feature is already spec'd for the game, but only to be used for each civilisation's "Super Units" (analogous to "Unique Units" in AOK). For instance, the Persian Immortal super unit will use both the short bow and spear, the bow at range and the spear when in hand-to-hand combat. Such a feature is not only cool, but in this instance historically accurate as well. Your average standard bowman, however, will only utilize his bow throughout the game.

[Alex]

And what about the separation of horse and its rider?

[Paal_101]

At this point there are no plans to have a horseman intentionally dismount and fight. Although Celts and Germans were particularly well known for this, it was not a common practice among other nations. Nor are we going to have them switch horses when the mount happens to be wounded. The added level of complexity is more then is necessary atm in this stage of development. As it stands, when your cavalryman gets capped, so does the horse.

It may happen in the future, but not for Part I certainly