Observations about Medmod

After getting VI and immediatlöey getting medmod 3.14 too I did a lot of gaming. This are my observations:

General stuff: Some whackiness ensues with playing the Wiking campaign, I wonder why the Viks get chinese Infantry:P

There are 2 very important and 2 important and a lot of minor changes in medmod:
The really important ones are the new "homelands" and the fact that each faction has their own set of units.
The not so important are the way more intense see battles and the size of Rebbellions.

The homeland feautres affects different factions in a different way.
For Example, the Polish game is enchanced by it. As far as I know noone has Poland or Silesia as a homeland (which is kinda whacky as the HRE should have Silesia), however they have acces to the steppes where everyone and their granddaddy can build heaps of Cavalry.
The HRE on the other hand has a problem.
It initially posseses a lot of lands which are also homelands to other faction, which increases their aggression. However, apart from Pommerania /Prussia no province they could capture is a Homeland to them.
Another Paradoxon is the outremer thing.
All Crusading faction can build units in the middle east.
Of course, the Muslims can do this to, but another highly involved faction, the Byzantines cant.
Well, in early the Byzantines are not someone whom I am goign to pity but this is kinda annyoning in the High and late stages where Byz is constantly fightin for survival.
I think that some rebalncing should be done in this repsect, especially in regards to the HRE.
Next, unit "decks". I have to confess that they are simply imbalanced.
HRE early is about as bad as it could possibly get, just make a cross comparison to the French: They basically get the same (in some regards even better) stuff + bigger Knights. However even the french kinda pale agaisnt the Italian one.
Take their "light infatry" I mean, these guys are supposed to be Spears... So they should die when charged by Swabian Swordsman in a wood. However they simply maul the swordies and proceed to laugh their ass off.
I wont even go into what happens when they only get flank charged by meager Heerbanns.

Dont get me startet about Pavisiers....
As HRE I have to resort to masses of mtd. X-bows...

However, the Italians are not the only "overpowered" blokes...
Two other Candidates are the Byzantines, who essentially get 100 man units of good Swordsmen who happen to have spears too (Vesteritare) backep up by great axes (Paramonai) good Cav, even better spears (Kontaroi) excellent Hybrids (Mourtatoi) and the usual very heavy Cav culprits.
The only saving grace is the fact that they only get fire galleys while other faction can drool around with War galleys in high.
My last fractiona non grate is the golden horde.
I simply feel that their Hybrids (Archers + Horse Archers) are a bit too armoured.
I would advocate for dumping their stats, in exchange their morale and speed could go further up.
I also think that Mongol heavy Cav needs a small boost, as they tend to be the least dangerous thing in their lineup.
I think that they should be reliable and difficult to catch, but their horse archers should not be stronger than most no bow light Cav in close combat.

accepted but i find medmods balance perfectly fine.

Having played most factions, starting in most ages I would agree that the Italians are just a tiny bit over powered. However, if the Burgundians get on track they can be even worse. The Danes or Swedes can kick butt too. Then of course, there are the French, Spanish, Byz, Horde, Turks and Eggies that can kill you.

I guess my point is that some factions are a real pain if they are your neighbor, but in general there are many factions that can challenge you in a game. Since this challenge is what I wanted out of Medmod I would say that Wes has succeeded admirably

hmm I think the italians dominate south-central europe every single time until they get gangbanged by every other faction. Other than that I think the balance is fine.

Balance shmalance.

Okay, you can have a game where every faction is balanced, and is exactly the same level of difficulty to play.

Or you can have a game where some factions are much harder to play with than others, at different periods, thus providing lots of varied gameplay whatever your skill level.

Personally i prefer the variety.

hmm - what is the variety in having to fight huge italian armies every time you play the game (unless you play as the italians offcourse)?

Variety is assured through balance.

My experience with the Italians? Well, as the Byz it was a piece of cake.
Its seem that Vestirare, Kontaroi and Paramonai were at least equal to the Pavisiers, so the Byz variety kicked in and assured victory.
The only problem with Byz troops is their upkeep, but thats not so harsh if you manage to get the Georiga Byz Egypt triangle.

As the Germans you are heavily outclassed.
Neither Saxon men at arms nor Swabian Swordsman seem to do the job, your own spears are inferior in all aspects and dont get me started about Heerbanns, they simply bounce off.
I have to employ a lot of mounted X-Bows to lure some of their units away, if there are 2 vs1 instances for my Swabians/Saxons they can actually win.
The only problem is that popolo Cav is slightly better than mtd. X-bows to.....

Hungarians can get a good laugh as the slow pavisiers try to cath their horse archers.
If the AI could actually use horse archers the Hungs might actually be able to stall the Italians.

French are not to shiney but better of than Germany.
in contrast nto the Germans they at least get bigger Knight units.
Which can counter the Pavisiers if used correctly.

Sicily can fight fire with fire or simply grab some of their own horse archers.

The thing is: Apart form Sicily who have Pavisers on their own and Byzanz who have comparable troops who cost significantly more everyone has to (more or less) rely on Cavalry multicharges and horse archers to defeat the Italians.
The Ai cannot pull of Cav multicharges at all and is pretty bad with hore archers, so the Italians nearly always win this in AIvsAI matchups.

Judging from what I've seen in my campaigns I think the Italians are indeed overpowered, considering the fact that they've taken over western Europe (and a good portion of central Europe too) in every single game. The Germans are usually killed off before 1100, so beefing them up would seem prudent. The French get powerful early on, but are then attacked by the Italians and the Scandinavians (Danes and Swedes). Either the Danes or the Swedes build up a nothern maritime empire, often ending up owning every coastal province from Portugal to Livonia. The English are kicked of the mainland by the French and spend the remainder of the game on their islands, until one of the Scandinavians takes mercy upon them and delivers the killing blow. For the rest I'd say the factions are balanced, though the Byzantines spend too much time building up crappy armies of slav infantry and spearmen, ignoring their good units like Vestiaritae and Paramonai, so their empire is usually big before it falls before a foe with good troops (usually the Italians).

Ooo...

Was playing as the Russians in High last night.

Assembled an army of mostly foot soldiers, like the Rogatina inf, Russian Huscarles and Pavise Crossbows. These army combo was largely because i'm not too familiar with the Russian Cav.

Golden Horde came. Found my Infantry unwieldy and had to throw my Prince into most of the battles. Now, i say...

Boyars and Russian Retainers ROCK

Only thing is i'll still prob take another 10-15 years to sort the rest of the GH out.

In all my games, the Italians wipe out central europe and italy, then get destroyed in civil wars around 1140. The french take other some of these provinces and the danes also win. Whoever wins the iberian conflict sits still. The egyptians dominate the south. Turkish get wiped out. Byzantines either go on a crazy sprint to get to the baltic or sit still. That is why I stopped playing Medmod.