#lumsel

"Knowest thee... of the Infinite Juggle Chain?"

you know what all artists say, there is nothing better than grabbing a slick, simple, iconic design and stuff it to the brim woth pointless details, its called the medrano technique

not really! i'm pretty open about being a revolutionary communist -- 'abolish capital' is the implicit context for all my political positions.

& while i agree that totally abolishing IP law while leaving capitalism unchanged would not be all that much better, i do place a lot of value on the original creators being able to create things -- i find it difficult to believe that, for example, no game publisher or comic publisher would not see the obvious marketing value of distributing kurvitz' disco elysium 2 or publishing alan moore doing his own watchmen stuff, or that barring that that either of those projects would fail to explode on kickstarter.

oh? in what respect?

so okay apparently-- according to ACOUP/Bret Devereaux-- good cavalry tactics entirely rely on fucking with your opponents’ heads. 

a cavalry charge is designed to freak your opponent out and get them to run away so you can do whatever it is you’re trying to do. after that, assuming your opponent doesn’t freak out when they’ve got eleventy tonnes of horse charging at them and they stand their ground, you feint- you pretend to retreat and pull your horses back. since this is also what you do if you charge and It All Goes Wrong, and since people are pursuit hunters and you want to chase an enemy that’s running away... you count on your opponent following you, to some extent, and breaking formation to do it. you’re trying to wear your opponent down- whittle their numbers down while trying to trick their infantry into breaking formation, either from fear, from the hopes that you’re retreating, or just in an attempt to avoid SO MUCH HORSE. 

so cavalry combat is pretty much a series of “cavalry charges forward/cavalry darts back, cavalry charges forward/cavalry darts back”, repeat until either you’ve gotten your enemy to fuck off and/or die, or they’ve done the same to you

and the thing is... fire emblem represents this kinda... rhythm of combat weirdly well?

since they’re small-scale tactics games- you’re likely to have maybe three mounted units on the field at any given time- you’re not doing 100+ Rider Cavalry Charges. but in Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn, at least, the best thing you can do is keep two or three of your cavalry units together (supported by an archer or a mage), have them form a diagonal wall, and on each turn have them move out, attack, and then feint-retreat back to formation.