The Real Cav Problem

[Skomatth]

I was cruising through the org while trying to write my research paper (opps) and came upon this:

Morale Penalties
Unit is Very tired: -3
Unit is Exhausted: -6
Unit is Completely Exhausted: -8
10% of unit is KIA (killed in action): -2
50% of unit is KIA: -8
80% of the unit is KIA: -12
Disordered or loose formation: -2
One Flank threatened: -2
Two flanks threatened: -6
One flank and rear threatened: -6
Charged by previously concealed enemy: -8
*Infantry charged, by cavalry, in the flank or when in loose/disordered: -6*
Taking Enemy Fire (Missile): -2
Taking Enemy Fire (Artillery/Gunpowder/weapons that cause fear): -6
Losing the fight(depending on how bad): upto –8
*Infantry losing the fight to cavalry: upto -14*
Out of ammo while Skirmishing: -6
Pursued by enemy of equal speed, when skirmishing: -6
Outnumbered/Outclassed 2 to 1: -4
*Outnumbered/Outclassed more than 3 to 1: upto –12 depending on enemy numbers and enemy units class (Elite etc.)*
Routing Friendlies: upto –12 when 2 or more friendlies routing, depending on the relative quality/class of routers.
General’s Death (first few seconds): -8
General’s Death (for the rest of the battle): -2

I asterixed the important ones.

I think here we see the real problem with cav, and the reason it is able to rout the units that obviously outmatch it.

Undoubtedly cavalry are already effective fighting units and that their fighting stats don't need modifying. The effect of cavalry charging into disordered ranks for example is enough to decrease the numbers but the morale effect is large enough that the cav numbers don't matter at all. In fact, riding a horse seems to scare the enemy. Is there a morale penalty to horse for seeing troops with spears or halbreds. No... there should be? It seems with this trend there should be a morale penalty to spears facing swords. Maybe ronin should receive a penalty for facing clans?

Another problems which makes all cav too effective is the bonus elite troops get. All cav=all elite.

Well I wasn't exactly sure how to say all that, but maybe u smarter folk can get something from it or maybe I'm just beating a dead horse. (not that you see many of those)

-Skomatth Not Good With Words
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/flirt.gif

[Magyar Khan]

skip feature of units gaining valour during combat

add morale sliders

play with higher morale

lower florin to 5000

buy an 5 k army and a lot of teh problems are solved


sigh, where are those GilJay replacements?

[Puzz3D]

I think the cav was given this ability to rout larger infantry units as compensation for their smaller size. Those penalties don't look unreasonable to me. There are few inf units these small cav can actually defeat by slugging it out. They don't rout inf based on having large numbers of riders, but the penalty of inf being charged by cav is apparently of a fixed size independent of the number of cav in the unit. Thus, a 3 man cav imparts as much penalty when it charges inf as a 40 man cav. You can try to give plausable explanations for why this might be realistic, but I think it's just a consequence of a simplification in the way these penalties were implemented. If you want to see how ineffective the cav becomes at high morale, try playing with morale turned off (adds +12 morale to all units).

One thing that does seem problematic is that even Order Foot are not elite units. If spears and pikes had somewhat better morale they would be more of a menace to cav.

[bosdur]

Yes, I agree with Yuuki, beign charged by cavalry from the rear is clearly much more terrifying than ifantry charge, even from the front.

[Major Robert Dump]

I suppose I can deal with them all except 'skirmishers out of ammo -6.' Hell, if they're gonna do that then at least make them move faster http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

[AMPage]

Yes, if you make moral to high, you can say bye bye to cav and hello to the 100 unit size unbeatable byz inf.

I liked it better in stw/mi cav was used for flanking or breaking weak units, but this is mtw and things have changed. Now you have all these different unit sizes and units, which makes balancing even harder. It's sad to see so many units never used, cause they aren't balanced. You have units that are to weak or are strong, but there unit size is to small. So the units that get most of the attention are the ones people like to use the most.

I don't see it as cav being to strong, i see it as there counters not being strong enough. You have the lancers, which have more combat points for its cost and the muslim cav, which most are weak for there cost. So if you balance the cav out making them all equal, you have all cav units worth picking. Now you need to make sure they have counters. Spears and pikes beat cav, but if they are flanked, they rout, the way it should be. Since moral on spears and pikes seems to low, have them kill cav faster before they get flanked and routed. Problay won't happen, since spears and pikes are considered defensive units. If you boost moral to much it will be like before the patch. I could attack some spears head on and rear attack at the sametime with lancers and they don't rout.

Everyone has there own views on how things should be balanced out, so i doubt we'll ever get a good balance with all these units...

[Kocmoc]

well, i agree with the most points of AMP.

we wont see any balancing nether a good patch http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif
imo we can forget it at all, that we see a good support from CA, the next patch we have to pay for.

so we can speak about it but we cant change it.

to make spears more effectiv vs cav is pretty easy just higher the combat abilitys vs cav....it dont effect the normal stats vs the h2h units. i would also reduce some penaltys for this spears if a cav attack them in the rear or on the flank....so all together u have to fear this unit as a cav

now its very easy to rout a whole fresh 100men spear jsut by flanking him, this show the problems in this game
we have just too many bonusses wich in some situation do very fine but mostly are pretty stupid, like in the later staged of a game.

koc

[CBR]

Yes I think the morale modifiers for cavalry are fine as they are now.

The amount of florins we use is the main problem:

Its in most cases better to buy a good expensive unit instead of a cheaper unit with upgrades, as it should be otherwise we will only see alans and basic spears with loads of upgrades. But when you have too much money you will end up buying only good units.

By using only the good expensive units means that a lot of units are never or rarely used and also means the threat of all heavy cav armies.

Lots of florins also means lots of upgrades and that currently changes the balance between the units as some units are getting more upgrades than other. I see loads of V3 cmaa but not many V3 heavy cav or V3 spears (in 15k games)

Looking at unitcost alone most balanced armies are in the 6-7k range and up to 8k with 8 heavy cav but the 16 heavy cav army is more like 12k.


So we need the money to buy some valour so units dont run that easy. That has created some new problems: all cav armies filled with elite units that gives big morale penalties and we never use the weaker units as we have all the money we need for super units only..

Im not worried that much when I see 4 Lancers charging in thin lines but I do start to worry when they come with another 12 Knights of Santiago/Chivalric Knights.

Better morale for all units, I think +6 is what we need, means we can play with 5k instead and it will bring out a lot of the weaker units as well as stopping the all cav army. Yes we also need a few cost changes to some units but the morale increase is the most important one.

CBR

[LittleGrizzly]

cbr i like ur idea but however you look at it spears r overpriced at the moment

[Puzz3D]

So for Viking Invasion how about asking for the second settings on Ammo, Fatigue and Morale to be:

1) Ammo 2x
2) Fatigue 1/2 rate
3) Morale +6

I know arbs will benefit too much with 2x ammo, but you might get a better early era game where arbs are not present. I'd like to see arbs moved to late era only, but don't know what the impact that would have on SP.

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (LittleGrizzly @ Jan. 24 2003,14:03)]cbr i like ur idea but however you look at it spears r overpriced at the moment
Hm yes they might be overpriced. Im not 100% sure if they are that bad if we get +6 morale and play at 5k, as that itself will change a lot compared to what we are see in 15k+

With the patch spears got a bit more expensive,cavalry got cheaper, cavalry can now pushback spears and we play with higher florins. All small changes themselves but combined they made a huge difference. It can be difficult to predict the effect of several changes. Thats why I would like to play some +6 morale battles and see how it feels.

CBR

[Magyar Khan]

puzz ur closest to the devs that all of us combined and u have my greencard of all teh wolves to get that done....

[baz]

Yuuki,

i see what your saying puzz, because at present early is not a good game you dont have enough ammo in the archers to even effect the enemy ranged units let alone anything else, dont wee need a good give and take balance with archery and arbs like STW/MI had? However if this balance will not be acheived then you are right yuuki 2x for when we can take archery units and default for when we can take arbs

as we dont know what changes will be involved for VI, i would suggest the morale slider we talked about? maybe with say 4 different options just in case http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

When we talk about fatique what do we mean here are we talking the tiring from battles or the tiring from marching? either way fatique is a problem

CBR,

im not sure if ive got this right but anyway ... Its like the situation with swiss armoured pikemen and pikemen, the pikemen would be used because there was simply not enough money to pick all elite units with your set florins, but ofcourse it would have to be marginal that for the same cost the elite was only slightly better than the normal unit
ie
swiss armoured at V0 was virtually the same as a pikemen V4 at same cost, but you would have to take say feud maa elsewhere because you couldn't afford chiv maa, obviously this is would cause no end of problems because using different set amounts of florins (because of morale issues etc ..) would upset the balance and thats unfortunately what we have today. i guess the ability to use either the more expensive units or the cheaper base units to the same effectiveness is a long way off. we would need CA to heavily invest in patching and MP feedback, i dont think that will happen soon, if at all.

[baz]

Magy is right Puzz, we wont get what we dream of but lets get what we can in the mean time http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Swoosh So]

Why do we all complain about so many cav and then take 7 or eight in our armies Im guilty of this too

[Puzz3D]

Magyar,

Certainly, if we could have a separate stat for MP, that would be the best. Then issues like archer/arb balance could be addressed without altering the SP balance. I don't really know if that's something CA is willing to do. My suggestions for the second settings is just something minimal that wouldn't affect SP at all, that I think LJ might be willing to do if we can present good arguments for why this would make the game better, and not just for longtime vets but for the majority of players. First get a consensus here on what to ask for and then develop the arguments with some replays, and the ones you have already posted showed some issues nicely. I'll be playing some +6 morale 5k battles with CBR to see how that goes. I already tried several battles using all v0 units with morale turned off (+12 morale) with Tosa, and they don't play well since cav is not effective with such a big boost.


Baz,

I think CA has more or less rejected the idea of sliders on morale, fatigue and ammo because LJ said vets would use it to confuse newbies. Maybe they'll reconsider that, but my tendency, and you might consider it a weakness, is not to keep asking people to do something thay have declined to do. I don't have any better contact with CA than anyone else here. I think the best chance is to present well thought out suggestions accompanied by good supporting arguments. Unfortunatly, a lot of good suggestions go beyond what CA is willing or able to implement.

The foyer issues shouldn't be neglected. There are still problems with playerlist not updating when you come back from a battle and also while you are waiting for players to join your hosted game, disconnect after hosting, some kind of initialization problem where you have a big chance of crashing if you host a second time without restarting MTW, many account details incorrect or logon error when trying to log into the GameSpy server, scroll lock, hard to read (meaning mostly too small) font and your credit card number getting displayed after your name if you crash out of a game isn't a great feature either.

[Magyar Khan]

well i think the current moralsystem, once mastered by the vet is mmuch more confusing for a noob when his army starts routing without a real obvious reason.

[Dionysus9]

Quote[/b] (Puzz3D @ Jan. 24 2003,09:36)]So for Viking Invasion how about asking for the second settings on Ammo, Fatigue and Morale to be:

1) Ammo 2x
2) Fatigue 1/2 rate
3) Morale +6

I know arbs will benefit too much with 2x ammo, but you might get a better early era game where arbs are not present. I'd like to see arbs moved to late era only, but don't know what the impact that would have on SP.
I agree 100% with this formula. We are not asking for much and it would be (relatively) easy to implement. It would drastically increase playability and would still give people who dont like the idea a chance to keep what they've got.

[Dionysus9]

Quote[/b] (Swoosh So @ Jan. 24 2003,10:08)]Why do we all complain about so many cav and then take 7 or eight in our armies Im guilty of this too
heh, I practice what I preach.

2 v3 alans, 2 v1 TeutKnights, and maybe some v2 Mtd.Xbows for me.

And I dont use lines either.

[baz]

of course puzz i agree http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif thats why i posted get whatever we can, i am sorry i was not aware that CA has rejected sliders http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

[Cheetah]

I do not think that cavs are too strong by default. Of course, there are several factors that favours them in late game, such as the valour gain and the less severe fatigue; but the biggest problem IMHO that folks do not know how to defend vs cav armies. Watch the custers_last_stand game provided by NC and you will see that 1 amry handled properly was able to defeat 4 ( ) cav armies (tough the cav armies were somewhat depleted and tired). Well, Weilan was defeated at the end, but only because he was over-confident (IMHO) and started to chase depleated cav units with CMAA and orderfoot.

All in all, valour gain should be disabled but the rest is fine IMHO

[longjohn2]

There's no need for a morale slider, even if I thought one was a good idea. Just all agree to increase unit valor by a certain amount. All the attack and defence bonuses cancel out, and you're left with higher morale all round.

As for in battle valour upgrades, I think for SP its a nice reward feature for mainstream gamers. However, I'm tending to agree with you all that it might be better removed from MP. I'll talk to the project director about it.

I'm hoping we can make some other tweaks for MP in VI, but I'm still negotiating with the project director. I'll let you know when it's been decided.

[Magyar Khan]

Sun Tzu is clear how to handle people u cant convince to listen to u.

well if sliders are not an option, try checkboxes

or better upload 2 patches, ahem viking invasions, SP and MP.

its teh best way to seperate the men from teh boyz http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wacko.gif

[Dionysus9]

Quote[/b] (longjohn2 @ Jan. 24 2003,19:45)]There's no need for a morale slider, even if I thought one was a good idea. Just all agree to increase unit valor by a certain amount. All the attack and defence bonuses cancel out, and you're left with higher morale all round.

As for in battle valour upgrades, I think for SP its a nice reward feature for mainstream gamers. However, I'm tending to agree with you all that it might be better removed from MP. I'll talk to the project director about it.

I'm hoping we can make some other tweaks for MP in VI, but I'm still negotiating with the project director. I'll let you know when it's been decided.
Thank you for your attention and concern for our plight.

*bows*

Please do what you can.

[Shahed]

Longjohn I'll be contrarian here. I think the MP should go closer to resembling Sp rather than diverging from it.

[Magyar Khan]

seljuk they are 2 difefrent things

sp u win battles with ratios 10:1
mp u loose battles with ratios 10:1

we need these adjustments, so plz dont interfere here if u liek sp more.

[baz]

longjohn thanks for coming, i appreciate you come here on your own time and i think its a great idea as ideally we can all help eachother out here .. we get upto date information to a certain extent and you get our invaluable feedback http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

i fully realise that you guys have schedules, guidelines and deadlines to meet so hopefully we can save some of this time, if you got some plans, im not asking to reveal anything, regarding an aspect of the game surely getting our feedback would be of great help, anyway im sure you read most of the things in here but just letting us know you do would be reassuring http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif