light spear balance (vs. swords) in 1.2

[Drewski]

For a week or so, this thread has been developing in the main forum. The main point: it seems, that the EB developers have added +4 attack to all spear units to compensate for the -4 defense the light spear units suffer when fighting infantry; and -4 attack that spear units (not light spear) suffer when fighting other infantry.

No conclusive response from the development team has been expressed yet though.

My main concerns:

1. Why was such stat compensation designed in the first place? Weren't spears supposed to 'suffer' when fighting sword units for example? With the current balance, medium swords lose in one on one fight with the lower tier spear units.

2. Could it be that this compensation (+4 attack for light spear units) is a bug?

This post is quite a coincidence , as I was just about to post a mini mod :)...

It is absolutely a bug. The values were adjusted when all the Spear Units were classes as "spear", and received -4 attack vs Infantry. When all the "Spear" units were changed to "Light_Spear", nobody bothered removing the +4 bonus. Hence now, Skirmishers (with a 2nd weapon light_spear) often have a better attack than Medium and even in some cases Heavy Infantry with Axes and Swords.

Its not just the traditional Spearman either. You'll find all the Phalanx Units have attr "Long_Pike AND Light_Spear" and thus have 4 higher attack than they should. This completely unbalances all Phalanx Units, (just check the EDU yourself, you'll find Levy Phalanxes have a better attack than Elite Swordsmen ). Its like they all start out with a Silver Chevron in attack...

Anyways:-

Mini Mod To Balance All Spear and Phalanx Units

All I've done is remove the erroneous +4 attack from Spears and Pikes.

Copy over the EDU in C:.....\EB\sp game edu backup to make it work for your current Campaign NOT the EDU in EB\DATA as the game reads from the backup file.

EDU zip