Knights and MAA ... few , more powerful and expensive ?

I think that MTR2 should ( lol do what you want ;) ) take care of the enormous knights and Maa units that are present in almost all the western civilization factions army... its too easy to build up an army entirely of knights ...knights ( or maa ... usually many maa were made knights before the battle ) must be the elite of an army , something very expensive to have the edge over the enemy , not the main bulk ... ( lets say no more that 1/10 , only Tannenberg and few others seems to rely on enourmous amout of heavy armored units )

plus we have to consider that the cronichles of the age tend to talk just of knights since the other were of little interest !!

Its full of battles with the initial charge of the cavalry routed ( at campaldino , and we are in 1289 were used almoste static mounted knights to counter a charge !!) and the rest of the army that flee ( Bannockburn , Campaldino , Fornovo , Peipus , Agincourt ,Nicopolis ) so i will like to see a more evident difficulty for normal infantry to stop a cavalry charge almost until 1300-1350 ... with the arrive of swiss formations , scottish schiltrons , english longbows , Hussites wagons and of course the gun powder later ....

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yeah, it will be much better to raise a cost of knights, they r very cheap and easy to buy in large amount. and you can raise theyr skills a little ...they r very vulnerable in fight with normal troops...

we all know that 2 units of green town militia can often destroy a full unit of knights expecially on the walls ...thats ridicolous

there were very few battles with large numbers of knights so can there be 20 knights in a unit instead of 80 yet, can they be more powerful then in vanilla?

Elite unit limitation.I thing that it would be better two have only an elite unit per castle.I agree that medeival armies had squiers such sergeants,cavalry or infantry by 90%.It would be more realistic to have 1 unit of knights and 1 unit of dismount knights per castle.This limitation must be in byzantine elite units too.For examble 4 units of schole or 1 unit of katafractoi per castle.
Four (4) was the number of the imperial schole units the the hardcore of the imperial profesional army.:book:

Should be the same with Mamluk/Ghulam troops for the Islamic factions, most Islamic armies were based around a tiny core of Mamluk soldiers who were very well trained and equipped. However I don't think these troops should be made insanely powerful, they should just be fairly restricted in number, by only allowing one unit per castle/city or whatever. Also you can place restrictions in MP, like Elephants are restricted to only one unit, it should be possible to do this for most elite units, to force players to rely on a small core of elite troops backed up by a large number of troops of lower quality.

That's the hole idea!!!An army full of elite units is unrealistic for any faction despites it's economical power.:book:

Yeah, I know, I agree with you.

Speaking of elite units I haven't see pronoiai unit in byzantine army list.Will they be in?How they could we reqruit them?A good idea could be when a city or castle has an irigation type of farm and even biger(pronoiai).After all they where private and profetional armies of the land owners.Ofcource they must be under limitation status as all other elite units.The equal type of units should be faris of arabs and spahis for turks.In reality all those units where extrimly expencive to keep...:book:

Faris (meaning horseman) is just a name for professional cavalryman and he could be anything from a Slave (a ghulam), a noble or a common citizen with equipment (though professionals were often issued arms from the government at the start of campaign free of charge) and military training. But you are right that they are elite and were often expensive to maintain, because until the latter half of the 12th century Islamic soldiers were generally paid in cash, except for the Saljuqs who used iqtas (a sort of fief) more thoroughly, when the Ayyubids got power in Egypt they too started using Iqtas more frequently.

Well, we are talking about a game where you will probalbly not hit the realistic sive of armies back then. So I think that for restrictions. You can only hold X amount of units for X population. Like One Knight for every 1000 people. And yes make them like tanks on foot, like excellent morale, armor, weapons, and training.

Also, wouldn't each knight also have to supply a certain number of men-at-arms as well?

I am just giving my 2 cents and I may not be correct in some of my statements but, oh well.

yes knight do supply men-at-arms. But that would require house rules such as "2 units of militia for every 1 knight unit"

Well during the Wars of the Roses, large amounts of very heavily armed and armoured men took at each other. It was a war fought almost exclusivley by well trained millitary men. I don't think the armies were that small either.

just go into export_buildings and change the recrutment pool from 5 4 to like 3 1 or something, go into export_units and change the knights hitpoints from 1 to 2 or 3. u can also lower the number of knights from 60 to 20. I totaly agree that you the armies should be mostly comprised of militia and sergeants, with less cavalry and knights. By changing the recrutement pool to 3 1, that would allow only 1 knight per (specific building). so if u have 2 castles with a barracks in each, you can now only have 2 dismounted feudal knights across your entire army.

ps. i also love when your city has no cavalry and spear/town militia as defence. When the enimy attacks with 10 units cavalry, couple militia and the rest are knights.

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so if u have 2 castles with a barracks in each, you can now only have 2 dismounted feudal knights across your entire army.

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WRONG, that just means the pool size can never be higher than 1 which means that you can never recruit more than one unit of knights per turn. Their is NO provishion anywhere in the game that prevents you building an entire army of knights. The only possibbile limitation is upkeep.

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Originally Posted by Carl

WRONG, that just means the pool size can never be higher than 1 which means that you can never recruit more than one unit of knights per turn. Their is NO provishion anywhere in the game that prevents you building an entire army of knights. The only possibbile limitation is upkeep.

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That's why we do this discation!!!!We said that in a realistic mod you couldn't have armies full of ellite troops... Unit limitation means exactly that you can recruit a knight unit cavalry and a dismount one per castle.They represant the castle's owner personal guard.Sergeants and men at arms are the main body of his army...If someone does not seek for realistic version of the game he should see other mods aveluable!!!:inquisitive:

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That's why we do this discation!!!!We said that in a realistic mod you couldn't have armies full of ellite troops... Unit limitation means exactly that you can recruit a knight unit cavalry and a dismount one per castle.They represant the castle's owner personal guard.Sergeants and men at arms are the main body of his army...If someone does not seek for realistic version of the game he should see other mods aveluable!!!

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My point is their is NO method in the code that I know of that CAN put that kind of limitation in place, the best you can do is raise upkeep really high and hope total income is high enough for you to have 1 unit per castle, but not so high you can have more than one unit per castle.

Their is no way you can code things so that if the player has 2 castles he can only have 2 units of knights. He can have as many as he can afford, the onl;y thing you can do is make more than 2 unaffordable, and that isn't really practical due to income variance from region to region. In addittion ach province also represents more than one castle so their would natruaklly be a LOT more than just 1 unit of knights per province strictly speaking. Hell even 20 units of Knights in vanillia at Huge unit size are a fraction the total number of avalibile knights in most large medivial battles.

If CA really does fix the "charges don't fail" bug against skirmishing/moving infantry, this will become MUCH less of a problem, as it will force players to adopt actual medieval tactics.

Intersting ideas, but would certainly be a challenge to implement. In addition to the recruit cost and upkeep, there is also the refresh rate for recruiting. This is were you vary how many turns until the next unit is available. We have some other ways to help influence army composition, but we will have to see how things play out as we move towards beta.

One silly thing in the vanilla M2TW is that a Boyar Sons' regiment, regardless of if they have gold chevrons, are still "Boyar Sons'", can't we see unit evolution?

There should be an option to change an inferior unit into a superior unit when it reaches a certain veterancy.

-Max

It is true that armies made of elites don't make much sense, but isn't it also true that in many (if not most) periods and places in the medieval world cavalry, and heavy cavalry at that, dominated the battle-field? Pretty much until Agincourt infantry were sneered at, looked down upon, and used only to pin the enemy in place so the cavalry could do the real fighting. At least, as I understand it.

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Originally Posted by Jobst_vonGrünungen

It is true that armies made of elites don't make much sense, but isn't it also true that in many (if not most) periods and places in the medieval world cavalry, and heavy cavalry at that, dominated the battle-field? Pretty much until Agincourt infantry were sneered at, looked down upon, and used only to pin the enemy in place so the cavalry could do the real fighting. At least, as I understand it.

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No it's not true!Even in great battles in medeival history 90% of the armies where simble bowmen,peasants and sergeants both infatry and cavalry.But historians whrote tales for nobility not peasantry.A great example is the battle of Kattin in the holly places...the historians mention the knights of the nobility and from the religous orders but the majotity of the army where reqruiters from the cities they owned.Although they had the greater losses we only know about the losses of the knigts i mentioned before...In medeival armies when a king called for a war knigths gathered not in knigth units but reegion flangs whith their soldiers...A whealhy vassal could have a garrison of 10 to 20 lesser knights but no more.:book: The rest of his army where sergeants and latter men at arms.:laugh4:

Sorry to (slightly) correct u Anthonius.
1. the place is called Hattin
2. The armies in the Latin Orient mostly were recruited out of immigrated "soldiers"; not of troops recruite out of the cities in the Holy Land as they where primary muslims.
The Nobility of the first Cruisade who managed to conquer the Holy Land was pretty mutch tolerant against the Muslims, but didn't recruit many troops out of them as they where "heretics" still.
The holy land mainly got their Military strength out of "cruisaders" (including Knights, Peasants and all those folks) and the religiouse military Orders like the Johanites and Templars.
Btw those military Orders were the only one who could support the Kingdom with larg forces of well equipped Soldiers, Sergants and Knights as they didn#t relay on the regular Feudal system.

So mutch for the Correction ;)
The latin Orient was overrun mainly cause of the Unification of the Islamic world by Salahadin, aswell as the lack of new Cruisadertroops to refill the lost troops after the Battles of Hattin and La Forbie.
As holy Wars shifted to more near Locations like Spain and the slavic East, the shifting of traidingrouts and the new ways of policy, no King of europe was that Intrested in gaining Honor in the Holyland anymore ;)

I would try to limit Troopsrecruitment for the Kingdom of Jerusalem to Christian population only ;) (can't say if it is like that in the game- i never tried to conquer that city ^^)

As for the Peasants. You're primary right for the Tradition, as it looks down on the Peasants. But as the Peasants in the early and high Middleage where not equipped by the Lords for battle, but mainly just took what they could get, they where not that important. The Knight as a higly traind and Skilled Warmachine still was the backbone of every Army.
After after the Wars against the Swiss peasant armies (starting 14th century) who introduced new Tactics for Footsoldiers and the battle of Azincourt they way of medieval Warfare slowly shifted to Mercenary Armies