Have you ever had a situation where your cavalry seems to get a clean charge into an enemy skirmisher only for its damage to be kind of...pathetic? There is a bug in the game where under the right conditions units will not activate charge and will just normally run into combat.
So, how does this bug happen?
There are three conditions that need to happen:
1. The unit is running away from the attacking unit.
2. The attacker initiates an attack order against the unit only after it has already started running away.
3. The fleeing unit continues to run away all the way up until the attacker catches up.https://youtu.be/2RXOKrjsKZkSo basically if you move toward a unit without initiating an attack order, it starts running away, then you click attack, and it continues running away until you catch it, you will
not get your charge bonus. This is why you see this bug most often against things like archers. You break into the backline with cavalry, archers start fleeing because they have skirmish mode on and you click attack on one of the runners. However it works for every unit type.
This results in some ridiculous scenarios like 950 gold Orc Boar Chariots losing to 450 gold Free Company Militia when their charge bugs out, but completely demolishing them when they get their charge in. It also proves that this isn't just some display bug.
Charge bugs out
Charge worksIf you want to avoid having your cavalry bug out make sure you click attack
BEFORE they start running away. If you really want to attack something that is already running from you, you can usually turn your cavalry around for a second, wait for the fleeing unit to also turn around, and then click attack. An easy way to tell if a unit got a charge in or not is to just hover over the leadership. It will give a line-item breakdown including +15 leadership for charging.
Alarmingly, this bug appears to happen across different Total War games. I was able to replicate the same bug in Three Kingdom as well.
I hope someone from Creative Assembly sees this and does something because it's a significant bug. The AI in particular seems to struggle because it issues attack orders fairly late.