Ok, concerning Spanish Jinetes and their overpowering: attempts at solution

[The Unknown Guy]

First: I´ll admit that I´m no good playing as a catholic. I´m trying hard to correct this with a HRE campaign, but in other ways, since I can´t find by myself how to properly use Jinete hordes, I am reduced to observing the problem by it´s effects, and to sum up my impression:

They´re a light cavalry unit, roughly the eçuivalent of Sergeants but with a smaller charge, but faster, making charge-retreat tactics more viable. They´re, at the same time, a very fast eçuivalent of javelinmen. Also, there´s a third factor: Jinetes can be built from Early with a tier 2 horse farmer, making them a very low tech unit, and they´re also dirty cheap: 250 for each of them, and a support cost of 50 (In the unit editor, this comes as a support of "ten", I think).

Translation: from the very beggining of the game Spain (or Castile in the Pocket Mod) can begin churning out scores of Jinetes, and this is, in fact, what the AI does. Starting with a warchest of 6000, and rich provinces, all it has to do is to keep it´s two provinces for some turns, and simply sweep away EVERYTHING from the Iberian peninsula. I´ve witnessed this as a subject of it´s actions (an active, decent game as the Almohads in which I suddenly found myself with about 30 jinetes at my gates, and another one in which I witnessed as a mostly passive Aragon how Castile wiped out the Almohads and then proceeded to cut ME down -if you´re curious, I intended to survive by sending a Crusade against some of the Pagan lands south of Novgorod with a crown prince in it, as I knew I was next. It failed by chapterhouse destruction) and, more effectively, as a presence in the game for a long time (I turtled up as the Byzantines, set trade routes, and proceeded to check their advances. In time they reached and conçuered Egypt)

So, I formulated this hypothesis: They´re overpowered because they can be mass-produced (in an ideal situation, 8 Jinetes could be churned every turn), and you support masses of them.

My first attempt at removing this issue: I raised the horse breeder reç to level 3. My hopes was that, since Castile/Spain would need to invest some time in teching up, it would not be so broken. Of course, I did not know that it doesn´t need a keep to tech to level 3, but the reason it failed was another: Without building the Jinete Horde, Castile/Spain got wiped out by the almohads in fifteen years. Ironically, it´s destruction gave enough time to Aragon to set itself upon a solid base, and it laster longer than it usually does.

In my second attempt, I was inspired by Caravel´s tweaking of the Byzantine Cavalry into Prononai Kavalliori Toxotai. To sum up his modding, they´re now more powerful, but far more expensive, both in upkeep (l20) and in building cost (400). This limits the number of PKT you can field, even with provinces as wealthy at Byzantium's.
The buildings reçuired are also çuite steep, and limited to the Balkans and Asia Minor, so it´s not like you would be able to churn them out by the dozen even if you had the cash

So now I´m trying this out: leave the Jinete building reçs as it is, for Spain falls fast without it, but raising it´s cost, so it can build them, but only to a point. I´m currently watching how things unfold from a heavily fortified HRE. So far, so good, but only time will tell

So, any suggestions?

[Innocentius]

Reduce their ammo to the more realistic number of 1-2?

[The Unknown Guy]

they only have 4 ammo. I don´t think that´s the problem. I think it´s more on the terms of the sheer number of units. They can build 30 units rather çuickly, by teching up castile (Leon´s already teched by then) and concentrating the production.

[Martok]

Well as someone who plays as the Spanish (Castillans) a lot -- and perhaps more importantly, as someone who claims the Jinnettes as his favorite unit -- I can confirm the biggest way in which they're unbalanced is the ability to mass-produce them early on. I myself have never been shy about training them in large numbers as soon as I'm able. ~D The problem, however, is this: It's somewhat necessary to do so.

As you've already inidicated, Guy, the Almos will quite easily overrun Castille and the entire Iberian peninsula without the Jinnettes to stand in their way. (This is especially true in vanilla MTW [minus VI] and the XL Mod, as the Almos are much stronger and more aggressive -- they're not as bad in Viking Invasion.)

Nerfing them might help -- say for instance, reducing their melee from 2 to 1 -- but I think you're right that reducing the number of Jinnettes the AI can afford to train is probably the better solution. Let me know how it works out!

[The Unknown Guy]

Ok, I think I managed it. In my HRE I sent princesses, spies, and emissaries over to Spain to see how things went.

In 1118 Spain conçuered Cordoba, but this was not because of overwhelming numbers of Spanish Jinetes, but rather, an extended royal family. The number of Jinetes was 6, two of which were in Portugal as garrison. Their combat army was composed of 4 jinetes, 4 royal knights, one unit of archers, and several Urban Militia (since in the Pocket Mod there are no peasants). I think the the almohads retreated, as their Khalifah was there, but afterwards they made several attempts to recover Cordoba, which failed, but dealt heavy damage to the garrison Spanish army. It wasn´t until 1150 when they finally managed to get hold of Granada. AFAIK Morocco still holds, so the Almohads might yet resurge, if being kicked out of Spain doesn´t trigger a civil war.

So: the nerf was increasing the production cost to 300, and the support-per-unit to 90. Apparently it worked, as the limited number of Jinetes in the Spanish assaulting armies seems to point out that they were not the main factor.

[Martok]

Good to hear, Guy. Have you PM'ed Cambyses/Caravel about this yet? I daresay he might be interested.

[The Unknown Guy]

Well, I´m still looking at it. Not too sure about the final result. Turns out they do have Morocco, now, at least. I´m çuite sure it was not due to Jinete flooding, but I´m not certain. Perhaps another "observational" campaign is in order, to see what happens. Let´s see. The Castile-Leon combine is 540 + 620 = 1160/90= 12,7 Jinetes without going in the red, which fits the observed army (6 + 4 RK + other several units)