IMO it's much better to decrease the mass of mounts than to increase the mass of infantry.
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IMO it's much better to decrease the mass of mounts than to increase the mass of infantry.
How do you do it? I never seem to fight many at all. The AI seems more than happy to just let me march up to lay siege to its settlements most of the time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lusted
Yeah, it turns out it wasn't the problem. You didn't mention that you also nerfed the lance and sword attack values and charge bonuses for cavalry. The mailed knights do nothing because they've suffered what amounts to a 9 point loss to their charge value, between spear defense buffs & losses to knight primary attack and charge bonuses.Quote:
It's the collision mass number:
This is still much less than the 4 mass for pikemen.
So... it's fair for a spear unit that costs 290 to chew up knights costing 540 and up? Cuz the way it is w/ the 2.3 files, I'm sure you could lose at least 4 units of knights to a single crappy spear unit, which is way beyond wrong IMO. "Stand up" to cav charges does not equate to "completely erase with hardly a scratch" which is more what I'd describe the current situation as - and that's without any armor upgrades to the spears, which will simply make things that much worse. Even if it expended an entire spear unit to stop a charging cavalry unit and kill it, you'd still be making nearly double your investment every single time it happened, which seems more than fair. There are more than enough spear units around in the early part of the game to counter cavalry if they're even close to okay against them, so I fail to see how the argument that such drastic over-balancing is required can hold any water. It seems especially important to NOT let crappy spears turn into cavalry meat grinders precisely because of their insane proliferation in the early game.Quote:
There needs to be an early anti-cav unit that can stand up to cav charges, because pikes are late game, and having other heavy cav as a counter just doesn't work well for balance, as all cav armies would dominate.
I also question why you suggest it's necessary that spearmen be able to do this. Is there a unit in the game that completely slaughters all the sword and shield units without a scratch? Monetarily, those two unit types are largely equal, but you'd never know it from the harsh treatment you're giving to the cavalry.
That part, at least, works for me! Missiles did seem weak-ish in vanilla. :2thumbsup:Quote:
Bingo, improved accuracy of arrows/crossbows, reduced accuracy of bullets to tone gunpwoder units down a notch.
I guess I just don't like that take on things. It feels rather like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. The game has plenty of dynamics without forcing even crap spears to stomp all over every sort of cavalry. They could've used a modest boost to be sure, but the RPS dynamic you're trying to make spears vs. cav conform to is so heavy-handed in comparison to the others the game employs that it's a deal-breaker for me.Quote:
Basically im going for a MTW balance with cav v spears, where all spears can halt any cav unit frontally, though low levels ones will lose quiite a few men against high level cav. But spears remain very vulnerable to flanking, and can be almost wiped out in a single charge to the rear. This imitates the MTW balance, encourages flanking charges with cav whilst enemy spearmen are tied down by your infantry, and reduces cav spam as they can be countered better.
Okay, only from the front do spears chew up cav, from the flank or rear the spears get chewed up, and cav are still really effective against non-spear infantry.Quote:
I also question why you suggest it's necessary that spearmen be able to do this. Is there a unit in the game that completely slaughters all the sword and shield units without a scratch? Monetarily, those two unit types are largely equal, but you'd never know it from the harsh treatment you're giving to the cavalry.
It's only if you charge spears from the front that it works like that, use the cavs great assets - speed and ability to flank, as well as devestating rear charge, to beat early spears. No spear unit can withstand a proper rear charge.Quote:
I guess I just don't like that take on things. It feels rather like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. The game has plenty of dynamics without forcing even crap spears to stomp all over every sort of cavalry. They could've used a modest boost to be sure, but the RPS dynamic you're trying to make spears vs. cav conform to is so heavy-handed in comparison to the others the game employs that it's a deal-breaker for me.
even spear and shield infantry should not be worthless versus swordsmen in my opinion. the spear was an effective weapon in infantry combat.
also units like the papal guard and various dismounted noble units should be able to match swordsmen fairly well. there should not be a penalty against spears versus swordsmen. however this is a minou issue and i can live with it.
its the pike issue that im more cocerned with.
But you see the spear isnt giving any area effect to keep the enemy away from you...Only shieldwall/classical phalanx has a chance against swordsmen...Quote:
Originally Posted by mad cat mech
This is because the sword is more expensive and takes more skill to use than the spear...
also I cant understand how spearmen are supposed to stop a heavy cav charge of armored knights the pike makes sense due to its length and the butt end of it stuck in the ground but plain 2 meters spear logically would have a tough task to stop it...
True. Stopping a cavalry charge is much more about bracing when it comes to spears than the actual weapon by itself.Quote:
Originally Posted by hellenes
I think to be fair their is an eras thing at work here...Quote:
Originally Posted by hellenes
Certainly your Gothic Knight is not going to be bothered too much by charging a bunch of guys in chainmail welding spears and shields, at least not much more than the same men with swords and shields. However the early Feudal Knight in his chainmail and chainmail barding is certainly going to have a lot more problems charging onto those 2 meter spears with their bases set...
I think the assumption is that Town Militia have light spears and are not particularly effective against cavalry. Spear Militia (for instance) have heavier spears that are effective against cavalry but are less so against other infantry.
You know after some test runs it is not that fact that S&S beat pikes that bother me, it is that they do it so very fast... I mean the pikes are abandoned almost immediately on impact rather than waiting until the S&S have significately inflitrated the ranks of the pikemen. I would not really expect to see the pike men cutting a swath through everyone, but I would have thought they could have held the S&S men at bay a little longer even if they would eventually loose...
I guess one question I have is: Are pikes the late era successors to spears or another unit type altogether?
Not sure if CA have taken notes from this thread or related issue??
It will be great if we could have some official respond on this! :yes:
(The great discussion/debaten here shouldn't be wasted)
INDEED!:yes:
After conducting some rather extensive testing using the 3 different Scottish pike units vs DFKs I reckon I've found the best compromise! Until, that is, CA sort it themselves.
Removing their secondary weapon is an unfortunate must I'm afraid, and this is really more for the benefit of the AI than anything else. Although having said that, even I find pikes irritatingly unreliable in my own hands. We all know this can make pikes a bit uber, but there's a clever way round this without completely crippling their stats! What I did was reduce their main attack by 1 and also reduce their mass by 0.2. This reduction in mass gives them some much needed vulnerability particularly if attacked from directions other than from the front.
Try it out and see for yourself. It works quite nicely. :)
Bring back Feudal Sergeants! They stopped cavalry and were available early.
Not sure if this is a good news or not....sounds like the pike issue was not addressed in patch 1.02. :juggle2:Quote:
Hi guys, sorry I haven't been around much today... been up at SEGA HQ with Alex. I will look into the Pike issue and see what I can find out.
Mark O'Connell
(aka SenseiTW)
mark does the intercedin for people on the .com.
he is trying to find out what the devs have done specifically to address the pikes and their intentions.
hopefully once he can get an answer or get them to answer the community it will put the issue to rest.
Well that would certainly be a welcome development. Their intentions (and reluctance/inability to express them) have been the source of much debate and anxiety, I'm sure...Quote:
Originally Posted by mad cat mech
It will be interesting to hear...
Do we think this could be more of an issue with the Shield wall formation/special ability than the unit itself... I have been having issues with Halberd Militia in my HRE campaign. Enabling Shield wall does not appear to have an disernable effect (other than prevent the men from running) when facing either infantry or cavalry...
To continue my question from above, are Halberd militia a replacement for Town Militia or do they serve a difference purpose?
Am I intorducing the new troops too soon? Should I wait unit the enemy armies have a large proportion of AP (specifcally gun powder) missiles before introducing the use of pikes and halberds myself...
I staged a custom battle, 10000 point each side... Pike and muskets, plus a few S&S and knights on one side (Spainish) against a spear and knight, both mounted and foot and a few crossbows (French) on the other side.
It was an open field battle (grassy plain) and a victory for the Spainish (played by me). I would have to say the units that played the biggest role in this were the gunpowder ones. The morale hit from the gunpowder volleys breaks up the enemies attacks making it pretty simple to take on individual units rather than a whole army. My knights and gunpowder units did the most work with the pikes forming a line to base the action around.
I will have to try it the other way around to see how that goes...
I don't just think it's the spearwall that's the problem, since removing the secondary sword weapon of the pikemen units make them function very well. The problem with vanilla pikemen is they change to their swords too quickly rendering them fairly useless.
I too have issues with western halberd units. Not only do they move excruciatingly slowly, they also function poorly much like the vanilla pikemen. However, if you replace their primary weapon (long_pike) with their secondary weapon, and remove the phalanx (spearwall) ability they function much better overall, much like the ME Halberd Militia and Janissary HI.
Carl do you plan on releasing a fixer for 1.20 with rebalanced stats ? 1.13 was perfect and actually I still have'nt uninstalled it.
@Sinan: Yep, I've only just come online and noticed the patch is out though, it's at 44% downloading. I'll need 24-48 hours depending on how my Rebuild-ProblemFixer compatibility testing goes. Thats pretty much ready to go and i need to check it's fine under officio 1.2, then i'm gonna get onto V1.14 of PromlemFixer-Pure, thats ready for compatibility testing too, but I need to make a few checks on that with regards to the new 2-hander animations.
Great news !
By the way could you please see if chasing routers is ok in 1.20, then don't change it. Just a suggestion as that was the only aspect where I felt 1.13 could have been better.