Give me a break!!!!

[Loki]

So I was playing around with all the new units (new to the factions since MTW1). Just doing simple 1 on 1 on grassy plain battles, checking various strengths and weakness'.

So just for a goof I try some Aztec units. Turns out the "Jaguar Warriors" are the best infantry unit in the vanilla game. They even stomp the JHI.

Someone wake me up

[pevergreen]

Aztecs have incredible morale.

Aztecs own in melee. To beat them you need gunpowder. That how it happened in real life.

(I have not gotten to the point of having the new world open up, so dont take that as a stratagey, ive heard it, thats all.)

[Booga]

The Aztecs are fanatic. You need something to reach out and touch them with, while keeping them at arm's length. Gunpowder and pikes are useful, in that regard.

People don't always realize how touch Aztecs actually were. If taking over the New World had been a strictly military affair then Cortez wouldn't have stood a chance. Before Tenochtitlan was taken and destroyed the Spanish lost as many battles as they won. Aztec equipment was pretty good too, their armor was surprisingly resistant to blades and there was documentation of macanas - obsidian-lined clubs - decapitating a horse in one blow:

"Pedro de Moron, was a very good horseman, and as he charged with three other horsemen into the ranks of the enemy the Indians seized hold of his lance and he was not able to drag it away, and others gave him cuts with their broadswords, and wounded him badly, and then they slashed at the mare, and cut her head off at the neck so that it hung by the skin, and she fell dead."

From the memoirs of Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a soldier under Cortez. So yes, don't underestimate the Aztecs :P

[akodo]

Saying that it was like that in real life is a bit much... I mean, they didn't even have steel! they would fight practicaly naked, with clubs of flint! That would mean that they could own in melee a bunch if lightly armored spaniards, but armored knights? no way... they could hack at them for a year, but no stone club or spear could punch through layers of plate, mail and padded armor...

[pevergreen]

Obsidian club.

Harder than some steel.

They were uber.

Anything different is just WIFOM.

[Blademun]

just a quick FYI, Properly chipped obsidian produces one of the sharpest edges known to man. However, it does not keep that edge for more then a couple blows against anything harder then flesh.

[Musashi]

Without smallpox Cortez would have been massacred. The one pitched battle he actually fought he lost and badly.

[pike master]

give it up guys they were cannon fodder ive used pikes on em and if you get them to work right they do a good job but i also used forlorn hope, two handers and some swiss guard i created to see how they worked. they all did all right but the fun i really had was that the whole army was bunched up in a little ball in a city street so im looking at it and my soldiers are just a short distance away and they aint attacking me so i wheeled a grand bombard up set it on solid shot and ripped loose on em several times at point blank.lol

i also had some created elephants and sent them in from another direction and man i really think that they started from scratch on these elephants as far as mechanics. in rome they had to tusk you up in the air to kill you but now all they have to do is step on you lol.

[IrishArmenian]

But I do have a problem with their obsidian weapons. How are they better than steel?

[Empirate]

Their weapons are not better than steel. But for a few blows, they're also not much worse than steel. Jaguar Guards are not "practically naked", but wearing very sophisticated armor that protects well against all edged and blunt weapons. JHI are a specialist unit in that they're not as heavily armored as some others. Both units have superior training, but Jaguars fight as if on psychoactive substances... which they may well have been. They weren't expected to reach old age, after all. Also, pitting JHI against Jaguars is one ahistorical battle to start with, so don't worry about this too much, OK?

[MilesGregarius]

But I do have a problem with their obsidian weapons. How are they better than steel?

As Empirate said, not better, but not altogether worse. Obsidian holds one off the sharpest edges imaginable (think broken glass) and is therefore devestating against bare flesh. Even though the obsidian edges would shatter against any hardened armor, the underlying wood club would remain an effective concussive weapon. With heavy armor, it's concussion, not cutting that is your best chance to inflict damage. Even Europeans used mauls and maces to crack heavy plate, not bladed weapons - steel, stone, or otherwise.

[Orda Khan]

I suspect the test was done unit v unit and not unit v heavily outnumbered unit. In a situation like that any Aztec unit should suffer badly

.......Orda

[dopp]

Aztecs I think were deliberately made quite tough to increase the challenge for the player and also to emphasize that people who can carve out an empire of 20 million people through conquest are usually pretty good fighters.

Jaguar warriors can take on and defeat 'fixed' pikemen if they kill enough in the initial charge. They will destroy the first rank or two of any unit they charge instantly. JHI don't even stand a chance against them.

There are various explanations as to why the Spaniards could beat them even when outnumbered (of course, the Spaniards had lots of native allies themselves). Steel armor, swords, pikes, horses, guns, discipline, better commanders, better military tradition. One other possibility is that 'civilized' Europeans are actually pretty formidable warriors themselves, especially mercenaries and professionals like Cortez and his drinking buddies.

[Rollon]

As someone already mentioned before, current engine just cannot handle tens or even hundreds of thousands warriors Aztec empire could deploy at the time. So even if they are overpowered it should be ok, that's just to simulate their numbers.
BTW, Aztec were keen to capture their foes alive (clubs are a good choice for that) so they could be sacrificed later. Nice moral boost for them.

[Stlaind]

So give them low(er) stats and multiple hitpoints.

[Carl]

This makes them even worse as they can break up your formation more that way, that kills far more than crazy stats/animations ever will.

[Stlaind]

Ah, ok nevermind then (I've never tested it myself)

[dopp]

It's not easy portraying their advantage of numbers. Armies are capped at 20 units, the logistics of supplying an army across the Atlantic is not a factor, plus players more or less know what to expect and will drop several full stacks of elite troops in the New World, so you get Old Worlders taking on Aztecs in roughly equal numbers rather than tiny mercenary expeditions vastly outnumbered by native warriors. My first Spanish expedition to the New World actually outnumbered the Aztec armies it faced, not including the 20 or so units of native warriors I hired on arrival and the constant stream of mounted and foot Conquistadores pouring out of the captured settlements. Besides which, having too many Aztecs on screen will hurt framerates.

[Carl]

Ah, ok nevermind then (I've never tested it myself)

I've never tested it to the degree you suggested but I have noticed 2HP units do better against pikes as those that make it through the first 2 rows of pikes survive longer.

[Varyar]

Without smallpox Cortez would have been massacred. The one pitched battle he actually fought he lost and badly.

While true, it might have less to do with comparable quality of arms rather than number of troops.

[Booga]

I think in the largest field battle Cortez fought, at Otumba, he mainly won through the power of his cavalry. The Aztecs had never seen a good ol' fashioned cavalry charge at full tilt before and when Cortez went gunning for the Aztec leaders the entire native army began to rout - all ten thousands of them. I believe Pizarro pulled something similar in the same battle where he captured the Sapa Inca.

[Ulstan]

Aztecs have incredible morale.

Aztecs own in melee. To beat them you need gunpowder. That how it happened in real life.

What happened in real life was an extremely complicated affair, and we can be 100% positive that it is not in anyway accurately modelled in MTW. Therefore, I see no real reason in complaining about the unit balance.

You are not going to see a field battle in MTW where 300 spaniards route tens of thousands of Aztecs who run away mostly unscathed into the jungle.

One other possibility is that 'civilized' Europeans are actually pretty formidable warriors themselves, especially mercenaries and professionals like Cortez and his drinking buddies.

Europeans are probably the most murderously effective and utterly brutal warriors history has seen. There is almost no other comparison to how tiny bands of European mercenaries and professional soldiers would just go out into Africa, South America, the middle east, etc, and just annhilate entire cultures, all while being horrendously outnumbered. The breathtaking arrogance of such enterprises is only matched by how often they succeeded. It's really truly amazing, and makes for far more interesting reading than most Fantasy Series :)

[dismal]

What happened in real life was an extremely complicated affair, and we can be 100% positive that it is not in anyway accurately modelled in MTW. Therefore, I see no real reason in complaining about the unit balance.

I agree with that.

The new world is basically a fantasy scenario in the game -- and perhaps more importantly one that is almost guaranteed to never make much of a difference in terms of the outcome of a campaign.

The concept that the Aztec had enormous morale seems a bit inconsistent with the fact they lost some of their largest cities to remarkably few men.

[Booga]

The Aztecs Empire was based on fear, spread partially through human sacrifice, and attrition through constant low-intensity warfare. In that sort of situation you find many people willing to switch sides for the promise of protection from the authorities.

As for remarkably few men - the Spanish usually had plenty of men, but the vast majority were native auxiliaries. They often could field as many soldiers as the Aztecs could while only having several hundred actual conquistadores.

[dismal]

The Aztecs Empire was based on fear, spread partially through human sacrifice, and attrition through constant low-intensity warfare. In that sort of situation you find many people willing to switch sides for the promise of protection from the authorities.

As for remarkably few men - the Spanish usually had plenty of men, but the vast majority were native auxiliaries. They often could field as many soldiers as the Aztecs could while only having several hundred actual conquistadores.

Well, yes and no.

Cortez landed with about 500 men. The Tlaxcala fought him at first, but eventually allied with him.

Cortez plus 3000 Tlaxcala massacred the second largest Aztec city (Cholula).

As things went on, Cortez gained a bigger and bigger native army, but in some of the early campaigns he had a very small force. And, as someone mentioned at the battle of Otumba he routed hundreds of thousands of Aztecs with a single cavalry charge of less than 100 men.

And we talk about cav being over-powered!

[Snoil The Mighty]

I'm about as sure as I could be that the Aztecs are buffed to make the "side-mission" of the new world at least a bit of a challenge. As has been said before, this is a game with with historical basis and flavor. It is not a trip in Professor Peabody's Wayback Machine. If it was, all you'd have to do is land, watch as smallpox ravages the New World settlements until they are around 10-20% of their initial strength and take the area over due to the ensuing power vaccuum. So the idea of Aztecs being fairly heavily buffed instead of historically spot on is not too worrisome to me. It makes stealing their chocolate more rewarding

[dopp]

I know very little about Aztec armies in military history but I think they are usually considered to be similar to feudal armies in terms of troop quality; ie only a small fraction of the 10,000 men or so in a typical army are serious warriors, usually equal to or maybe slightly outnumbering the Spaniards they faced. The rest may carry spears and look intimidating, but they won't stand against the likes of European soldiers, so you get entire armies distintegrating almost instantly when their leaders are attacked, just like Alexander against Darius, with only a few die-hard elites sticking around for the stabbing part. It was like that wherever the European conquerors went; they defeated enormous native armies that were a lot less formidable than they appeared to be. European armies were by this time homogenous, disciplined and hardened to the most bitter styles of face-to-face fighting in history. Their weapons and armor, if a little crude and erm, blunt, were extremely effective and technologically advanced. They usually went through the enemy like a hot knife through butter, until they engaged the enemy elite head-on in roughly equal numbers. Once those elites were beaten, the huge amounts of lesser warriors were reduced to so much chaff in the wind. Small, disciplined elite forces trump larger, unwieldly and mediocore forces throughout history. The Aztecs had warriors that could match the Spaniards in bravery and combat prowess, but these were in small enough numbers that the Spanish were not as badly outnumbered as may first appear. The rest that comprised the bulk of the Aztecs forces were basically useless against disciplined, effective troops like the Conquistadores.

This observation is not to demean European soldiers or their achievements, but it seems to be part of the explanation for their stunning victories.

Edit: There were some other civilizations that relied on large numbers of disciplined professional or semi-professional soldiers. The Ottomans, I think (but not the Mamluks), the Chinese (who invented the concept in the first place), and some of the better African nations spring to mind here.

[Yun Dog]

I was playing a LAN battle the other day against a mate - I went the mongols and he the aztecs. I saw his masses of infantry swarming across at me and charged them from several sides with my mongol heavy cav......[edit] DOWNHILL


I took some numbers but my cav evaporated in amongst the throng - BS

those lightly armored men shouldve been mush under the cavalrys hooves - no formation - no sheild or spear wall - GAH!

[Musashi]

Aztecs didn't fight naked. You're applying your ignorant stereotypes of native people to a situation you don't have any information about.

They had very effective armor, as has been pointed out more than once on this thread.

[Snoil The Mighty]

I was playing a LAN battle the other day against a mate - I went the mongols and he the aztecs. I saw his masses of infantry swarming across at me and charged them from several sides with my mongol heavy cav......[edit] DOWNHILL


I took some numbers but my cav evaporated in amongst the throng - BS

those lightly armored men shouldve been mush under the cavalrys hooves - no formation - no sheild or spear wall - GAH!

All well and good but this IS the Citadel-a singleplayer forum.