Lancers!

[AMPage]

Of course naptha throwers are a devastating unit, but only when used right. Remmeber that they do hit your own troops too and they are only 12man unit size, so your setting yourself at a disadvantage there. Rain also makes them not usable. So, really i don't see how you could make them any weaker.

I don't think byzanite are weak against cavalry. The byzantine infantry eat away cavalry if you can keep there moral up. I use the spearmen as blockers from the cavalry charges then send in the byz inf to eat them up little by little. I had someone play me a few 1v1 games where he used all cav and i used byz, i lost the 1st match, but i changed my tatics 2nd match and won. It's not that hard you just gotta know how to ajust to what's coming at you.

I would like to see spears stronger vs cavalry only, cause i don't wanna see them beating any h2h units that are suppose to take them out.

[ElmarkOFear]

Kocmoc, you misunderstand . . . we are focusing on the small problems because we have come to the conclusion that CA will NOT make any more changes to the big problems. The small problems can be taken care of by US without worrying about CA. Therefor it is useless to discuss such things. I agree with your points about the problems, but those will not be changed. The reasons for my conclusion about the overpowering all cav army is that if you select a few factions, Almohads, Byzantine then you will most likely lose against the all cav army.

Yuuki: AMP does not buy all lancers, but has a few of the other units there as well, I have never really looked in the logfiles to see how many of each he chooses. But what the game comes down to now, is if you do not choose amongst the few factions that have supposed counters to cav then you will lose, unless you get very very lucky. It is not the skill level of your opponent that decides, it is the choice of faction and since the host has to pick his army and is stuck with it when he hits ready, the non-hosts can pick the counter army to his faction. So, if I pick Almos, then the enemy can wait til i hit ready and then choose the all cav army and know that he will win.
And the difference of the handgunner units compared to the power of the Lancers is a much different matter. Handgunners are weak against cav, they also cannot shoot very far, they are not as fast, and there is not a substitute for them to build an all gunner army that would be near as effective as the all cav army, and also they do not get the in-battle increases in valour that the cav knight units do . . . . this makes them less of an overpowering unit, also now that most people are aware of them they can counter them very easy, with many units, spear, non-spear, cav. Plus, with them you can't just charge into an army and expect to rout them, you actually have to plan your line of attack and maneuver them into good positions. Sure they are overpowered for the cost, but they also are harder to manage them effectively. Personally, I don't use them much any more because I am bored with them. I am experimenting with the less used units now, and lose quite often with them. But it is more fun for me to do that, than pick an army I know is overpowering. I like the surprise counter attack, and not mowing other players down in a big rush.

[ElmarkOFear]

One thing that would be nice as well, which I have not seen discussed or mentioned, is a units effect on the morale of an enemy unit should be diminished as the unit loses men/horses. So a lancer unit that started out at val 0, went to val 2, but lost 1/2 of its men should have its charge value reduced by 1/2. This would end the problem of a unit of 5 lancers chasing away 3 almost full units of byz infantry. When the byz infantry would have the lancers outnumbered and would stand their ground and fight until flanked or hit by more enemy units. I am off to bed. Continue in the morning

[shingenmitch2]

Elm
the Charge reduction doesn't take into account the problem with proximity morale hit which doesn't slide either. The 3 Lancers "seem as scary" as a full 20 to other units.---- This is one bitch I've always had and was one of the major problems with Kensai.

Naptha -- they are really very slow to fire, need dry weather, kill own troops and have only 12 guys so I think they are only slightly imballanced ---- the problem that occurs with them is like that for most specialty units, if you can use them "en masse" they start to create game imballances not intended by the designers -- see Kensai and Ninja.

Handgunners are stupid as they are - no way should they be more effective a unit than an Arque. or a knight equiv in h2h

Desert solves the lancer problem, but could they use a tone down? perhaps. Biggest problem are the factions that have 2 kinds of lancers--- buy 4 of each and you have half a lancer army without Florin penalty.

Personally I think a custom limit on each type of unit would be better -- if we could set it so that only 2 lancers could be bought or 2 naptha etc. Would force more diversity in units and not have to rely on people "agreeing"

[Crandaeolon]

I agree with Koc, Lancers or Byz inf are not too overpowered to be a true problem. People pick them because they have heard they are good and because others pick them. This in turn leads to more people picking the Spanish and the Byz. It's a circle.

IMHO the all-cav army doesn't even need a "specific" counter-army, a normal balanced setup or even a 5 cav, 4 arb, 5 sword, 2 spear -setup will do just fine. The battle line _must_ be solid (that is, without gaps that the thin lines of cav could "lap" into) and the swords need to be in a deep enough formation to withstand the cav charge, thin lines of MAA are a disaster against cav. I also usually boost the valour of my Arbs if I suspect the opponent may have all-cav. (I'm speaking about duels here. Team games are a different beast; all-cav is so good in team games just because the army is so mobile.)

Of course truly skilled players probably will avoid a frontal charge even against a mostly-sword army, but most all-cav players usually just charge recklessly when they see they're against a spear-light army. Of course that's just in my experience, I haven't battled against an all-cav army led by a truly skilled general yet. Anyone willing to give me a lesson? And, someone said it's a matter of army selection more than skill. I disagree somewhat; IMO even the all-cav player needs skill to succeed.
EDIT: Boss, this was not intended as a barb in yer direction Sorry about the poor choice of words... It's just that the muslim cav is weaker than, say, the Spanish and therefore easier to prevail against.

Kocmoc has, once again, summed up well the points about the game that most need changing. As I said in an earlier post, I've adjusted to the gamemechanics and can't offer useful opinions on how to change them, but I can comment about the unit balance.

AMP said he'd like to see spears to be stronger against cav only, and I agree. How about increasing the bonuses against cav? +1 attack and +1 defense? This would also make cav "weaker", but perhaps some little fine-tuning (speed?) would be useful for cav as well.

Missile units. I think we'd want a situation where, in near-optimal conditions (like defending on Crecy) an all-missile army (and no, I'm not meaning an Elmo Special Setup ™ here... ) would be consistently able to rout a balanced army, but the balanced army would usually win in other situations. It might come as a surprise to some, but the 1.1 balance is pretty close to this. There are a lot of mods that have made missile units more powerful, but all of them have made missiles _too_ powerful. Kocmoc's stats are the best so far, but even they give bows too much power.

Wow. Long post. I hope this was at least a bit useful.

[baz]

koc,
Can you be more specific here?

fatique need to change

no more needs to said, i think what we all want is that marching across a map doesn't effect your mens fatique so much...and also should we really have to sit there and wait for our men to recover while out ally gets beat?

missles need more power

this is no great secret missiles are terrible, in previous tw editions it was possible to have some nice missile fights, we saw enough in MI, but now it seems a missile fight isn't worth the effort, for one you dont get much advantage for winning and 2 they take tooo long....

stronger spears
a bit weaker cav

can you clarify that you mean spears to be better against cav? we dont want super spears again...do we?

hillbonusses

personally i dont think this is a massive issue as we as a community seem to play on flatish maps anyway totomi to flatter....how you see this helping?

reducing of some supportbonusses

i dont think this has been talked about in great depth, if it has i missed it, you talking about one unit beong able to give support bonuss to many other units?

maybe change of speed of diff units

you think the cavs need changing around a little? or you mean any other units?

anyway just so i can get a better picture - barry

[ElmarkOFear]

Crandon: You have not seen AMP do a frontal charge against a full line of Byzantine infantry and spears (side-by-side, deep formation) and rout them in less then 10 seconds. I wish I had the replay of that one to show. You all really do not understand that in most player's hands an all cav army is useless, but in some it is almost impossible to beat,because they exploit the morale hit to the enemy units, by spreading them out single line and in loose formation. I remember in STW if you used loose formation and attacked hand 2 hand you died quickly, wonder why this is not so in MTW?
If you listen to Kocmoc, he stated a cav army will beat the byz army because their lack of good spear units. If that is truly the case, you have just elminated half of the factions from ever being selected. And people don't see this as a problem? hmmmm
Sure all cav can be beat with a very few specific armies and not a balanced army. If get anything but spears and cav yourself, you will lose. Seems we may have more units to choose from, but in reality we actually have less units to play with then STW, because of these armies.
As for Byz armies, they too can be beaten, but once again you have to have specific armies to do this, and if 4 players get byz armies, you can believe that they will win 7 out of 10 times. Byz don't bother me as much as the all cav army, because the byz armies cant run over your army in 10 seconds like the all cav army can. Also the byz army has many counter units that can rout them because the byz infantry's morale is not very high. Naptha, guns, murabitin, arrows, all of these work, but against the all cav army, your missile units are worthless, and it has nothing to do with the speed of cav. It has to do with your army not being able to hold them long enough (due to the big hit on morale cav give). To get more than maybe one shot off if you are lucky.

[Kocmoc]

sure i can,


spears stronger vs cav, its easy to make spears stronger just vs cav, imo they do fine now vs other h2h units...i wouldnt change it.

hillbonusses, yes ofcourse most maps are flat.
but if u want to have some other maps with some small hills, this is useless as this hills are near useless and not many nice small-hill-maps are avalaible.
but if u want to implent more tactical points and strategic moves u need points/hills in the game wich have some important defensiv positions. now its useless....i think in the future if we want to have some challanges and we are tired of this flat maps and maybe we want some ownmade campains where we realy need some good-bighill-maps...

supportbonusses
easy i made some replays where u can easy see what some supportbonusses can do. like this....
ur unit fight vs my unit, normaly u would fight some more mins and maybe u would win....i bring my cav and go behind my fighting unit in and before i even get close.... wooops ur unit is routing. sometimes i saw units routing where noone was close just the moraccircles did this effect.
if u move massiv units in 1 fighting point u create easy massrouts.... sometimes or mostly its real stupid...

koc

[baz]

you feel the support bonus would be fixed with the +2 increase in morale?
point taken with the maps, i believe your khan has found a couple of nicer maps that are available....

[Cheetah]

I have made a quick survey of my last 10 MP battles (all of them 3v3 or 4v4). Out of 74 armies there were only 12 Spanish, and the Spanish players picked 40 lancers altogether That is, out of the 1184 units which were selected in these games only 40 were lancer, less than 4% of the units. Even if you count only the spanish armies which had 296 units it is less than 15%. Moreover no one picked an all-cav army, and only one player picked 8 lancers I dare not tell his name
So what is up with the lancer? Am I playing with the wrong guys, or the lancers are not so overpowered??? Or perhaps you need skills to win with an all-cav army, and it is not just a head-on rush???

[Crandaeolon]

Quote[/b] ]they exploit the morale hit to the enemy units, by spreading them out single line and in loose formation

Elmo, how does this exploit the morale system? I vaguely recall a discussion about this some time ago, and IIRC the "morale circles" are centered on the command flag of the unit and don't depend on formation (though I'm not entirely sure about this). Again, one more point I'd like to clarify... anyone?

I've repelled several loose-single-line cavalry armies (usually Spanish) in duels with my usual setup of 5 cav, 4 arb, 5 swords and 2 spears. Actually, I've _never_ lost a duel to an all-cav army. (In the name of honesty I must say that I've played only about 10 such duels, and never against the "top" players.)

Team games are different, of course, I've witnessed AMP in action plenty of times, steamrolling 2 or even 3 armies in a row... but, I haven't seen anyone consistently (or even succesfully) duplicate it. As Cheetah noted, are we playing with the wrong guys or what gives?

[Magyar Khan]

Cran archery missiles need an upgrade. most agmes i lose is when i try to make balanced armies without teh excessive use of teh best unit available and archers.

Power rush armies, in the hands of teh skilled are imo still the strongest armies. we had them in old shog but u had a change, now trhsi chance is reduced to close to 0-5%.

well enuf words wasted, remember only whining brings a better version of teh game.

[Magyar Khan]

well cheetah there are also a group that dont play the spanish cuz they dont see the fun in uberunits, and some will save teh spanish when they join certain players they have hard time to beat with equal armies.

mayeb do a check of teh 1 vs 1 games u played where your enemy had muslims or not.

[AMPage]

I think every faction should have atleast 1 uberunit, but only be allowed to have maybe 2 max of that unit.

Cavalry aren't over powered, they are only 40 unit size. If you play at higher florins above 15k, then mass routs are much harder to create with them. You can upgrade spears more, which cavalry becomes more expensive to upgrade. Units will fight longer, so those other smaller anit-cav units won't rout as easy and stand up to there charges better.

If you don't like mass routs just play at higher florins, that will fix it.

[ElmarkOFear]

AMP: Elmo adjusts his florins to 20k . . .

Crandon & Cheetah: Yes you are playing the wrong people.
As for the ZONE OF INFLUENCE for morale. I believe it has changed for MTW and does not play out like STW or MI.

Kocmoc: I said that yes a few factions have spear units that can beat an all cav army. But now you are limited to a few factions. Play the Almohad faction and see if you can still beat this type of all cav army. I am like you guys, in that I like to play underpowered armies and try to win as the underdog. Also, Kocmoc, your "support bonus" problem is what I have been referring to as my "Zone of Influence" problem. We both agree on that point. I never noticed it pre-patch, but I am sure it was there, as you say.

AMP: Bad horsies Bad And yes they are overpowered :P If the zone of influence is made smaller this might take care of that problem. Unfortunately, that is for the developers to make and not us.

[Magyar Khan]

a slider for the range perhaps?

lol the devs have selective ears as ever. what we want guys we wont get

[Cheetah]

Quote[/b] (ElmarkOFear @ Dec. 20 2002,23:35)]AMP: Elmo adjusts his florins to 20k . . .

too bad, Elmo too bad. IMHO 12000 florin is fine ...

Quote[/b] ]Crandon & Cheetah: Yes you are playing the wrong people.

ah, I should have guessed it not a single lancer-heavy-all-cav-rush-army

Quote[/b] ]I said that yes a few factions have spear units that can beat an all cav army. But now you are limited to a few factions. Play the Almohad faction and see if you can still beat this type of all cav army.

IMHO there are only two factions lacking the proper anti-cav units: the russians and the almohads. All the other factions have decent units with which one can beat an all-cav rush army. Of course, some of them better equiped than the other, mostly the crusader factions and especially the English. But, IMHO even the Polish or the Egyptians have the necessary anti-cav units. That is, you are not limited to a few factions And if you dont like cav-rush armies then join my games it seems that the cav rush folks avoid my games

[ElmarkOFear]

Maybe you missed my post earlier, played as the byzantines, spears and byz inf. (Most powerful army some say). They got run over in about 10 seconds. Thus, even with those other factions who might be able to stop them, German, Italian, Spanish, Saracen inf. is not good against the cav army so that gets rid of a few more factions. You could always play as the italians, camp on the side of map and hope for the best . . woohoooo what fun
You really need to see someone who knows how to exploit the cav army such as GlassHeart aka UglyPolar, and AMP. Everyone says they can stop it, but any game I have been in that I have seen it used by these 2 players, it always comes out on top. That is unless those 2 screw up and dont use the loose formation single line exploit.

[Magyar Khan]

and so end another fine game, thorn between noobs knowing no shite and vets exploiting every corner. for most things si a solution but we are consumers and not teh producers of teh game. we can always show good manners and not exploit everything, but exploiting is part of the nature of man.

well its time to start whining again... who knows what it might bring, my smessenger is dead already and wolves start leaving the game.

give us several sliders
give us better archery
give us a improved morale balance
perhaps limited unitwidth if things cant solve properly

or face a new whining campaign and even obstruct teh new game release a bit more than we planned to do.

fair isnt it?

ps i played 2 MI games to check soem differnces, at least teh graphicxs and speed is better now, 2 steps forward one step back.

[Kocmoc]

i just ask me, where is the fun in playing this way or even play this guys?

if i face 16 cav, there is just no fun
With this strong cav and no balance in the setup its clear what will happen, the all cav guy has to rush u.
there is no tactic nether any great skill to control this units

i always use a balanced setup to train and its more challanging if u have to think about, where to move wich unit, so i play with 6 or 8 different kind of units.

the unbalance comes if u see guys wich use just 2 kinds of units as they have no great choice for tactical moves.
and yes ,there was always players who did this and want easy victs, to make people speak about them. I think some egopushing is nice .....

this game got boring for me, as i see this wonderful game got reduced to the bonusses and some strong units. i miss some great moves or playing for traps.... all this is gone.

im not sure if whining helps here....but i see it already, how the games goes and how it changed, i respekt the most players, but players who play so often unbalanced games dont improve the gameplay they jsut show the noobs what to take to win easyer.

whatever, we all agree this game lost....and everytime i go online and play some games, i leave and say to me...it lose more everytime i go online.

koc

[Nobunaga0611]

I don't think Lancers are an unstoppable unit in say a 1v1 battle, or even a 2v2. When you start getting into larger battles, and bigger maps, they do start to take over though. I've been in games against 4 good players w/all cav armies . That's fine, not a problem, if they want to do that, then I've got 11 anti-cav units for them the next game. But the problem comes when you're in a 4v4....the person on your side will simply go to the other side, and someone over there will get double or triple teamed. Then what, you chase 4 all cav armies with nothing but defensive units? Nah, you all need to be on the same page for that to work, just like the other side is. So is there a solution? You can't really expect someone thats relatively new to, on a regular basis, beat someone who's played for years. They're at the disadvantage, and thats kind of how its going to stay. People who've played long enough can overcome the unfairness at least a good portion of the time. There's always going to be a level of 'cheap' play in any game though.

[Crandaeolon]

Dear comrade Elmark, just how widespread is this "unstoppable lancer-heavy all-cav army"? As in, how many players ya have seen use it with consistent success?

(Edited away the rest of the post as it was just some long-winded yapping about things.)

[ElmarkOFear]

Unfortunately Cran it seems that I must have all of the best all cav army players in my time frame. The only ones that can exploit the cav units on a regular basis are AMP and GlassHeart (aka UglyPolar). Polar stopped playing them because they were not fun. He likes to play the less used units now to have a challenge. Other than those 2, I can handle most of the all cav armies, but as time goes on everyone will be able to use this army to great effect. I don't mind getting double/triple teamed by cav (thats part of the game and means they were using good teamwork), but when 1 player can literally run over your army with all cav by himself, then it becomes a problem.

[Crandaeolon]

Quote[/b] ]Unfortunately Cran it seems that I must have all of the best all cav army players in my time frame.

The grand total of two so far, thank goodness...

I've never seen this Polar gentleman in action, but Amp plays in my time frame too... hmm does the fellow ever sleep? Anyways, I have a couple of (greatly treasured) replays where Amp's all-cav is beaten by near-4x4 forces. Those give me hope.

I truly don't think we should get all jazzed because of a couple of players who have "perfected" the exploitation of cavalry. Of course if they can do it, others may be able to as well... but only time will tell if it will become a problem. And, if it does, there are simple fixes for that like politely asking people not to bring all-cav. Might just work.

It might help the Battle for Balance™ if there were a sort of consensus on what the balance should be. I don't mean the actual stats here, just an agreement on what the different types of units should be able to do. Different players have different 'feels', so if someone says "archers should be boosted" he/she might mean anything between a slight nudge upwards to a radical redefining of the unit's role. It could be more useful to explain exactly what the archer (or any other unit, for that matter) should be able to do, in plain language not stats-speak, and work from that basis. Of course this kind of method alone won't bring balance, but it might be a useful "opposite" approach from stats-wrangling.

2 more florins into the cup...

[Cheetah]

I have seen Polar and he is very good. But that is exactly that weakens Elmo's position. I mean both AMP and Polar can beat the average guy with any army. With your reasoning Elmo you could ban any army that was used by AMP or Polar. Of course, they can beat the average guy with a cav rush as well. So what? Does it mean that the cav rush army is unbalanced? No. They are just skillful players who can use this special army to a great effect. But you need skill to succeed otherwise everyone would pick cav rush armies and this is clearly not the case.
BTW, if anyone thinks that you dont need skills for a cav rush, then please do a head-on charge vs a good player with a decent army.

[ElmarkOFear]

I think that is a great idea Cheetah Ban AMP and POLAR from getting any units. PS. I beat them all the time, that is not the problem. The problem is, it takes less skill to use the all cav army, if you use it the way they do. You still think it can be stopped. You are wrong. AMP screws up and loses with it every now and then, but not often. Until you all stop bragging about how YOU can stop the cav rush, the game will continue to have problems. I can stop it to every now and then, but that does NOT mean it isn't an overpowered army. Oh well, you will find out soon enough once everyone learns how to exploit it.

[Major Robert Dump]

I know how to do it and I've never even used it

Once you get beaten by a PARTICULAR all-cav strategy enough times you realize why it is too powerful, especially when you compare it to the all-cav strategies that you have beat.

It's not just units, gents. It's formations and placement on the map. The ones who figured this out earlier are just smarter than the rest of us

[Swoosh So]

My origonal post wasent about an all cav army although i can see the point peeps are making, All i was saying is that the lancer is the best florin-stat unit in the game, In my opinion they should be slower I only play custom battles but when i can beat 3 ai armies with 3 rushes in the 1 battle all of them with 12500 florins as well and still have enough units to hold a christmas dance afterwords then i think there may be problems here



SwoooooOOoooOoOooosh

Custom battle army:

4 chiv seargents
4 arbalisters
4 lancers h0
4 knights santiago h0

The arbs and spears are just there for show i hardly use them

[CaPeFeAr]

i like the idea of opening up all units to all factions....yes the cav and spears need a small tweek...but it would be nice if i could choose any 16 units i wanted instead of being limited to those available to each faction... lancers for everyone~ possibly an option to choose all units on or off...

b4 lancers were the problem it was the alan cav.... after lancers are fixed like amp said their will be another top cav unit... the problem isnt so much in the cav as the spears.... increases the bonus vs cav for spear units.... i think its correct for a heavy cav to mow over a fudal maa... but not a pike unit or spearmen... a spearmen should beat up and rout a cav just as quick as a cav can rout a fmma...

[AMPage]

NC, that's a good idea, but not likely to happen of course.

Swoosh, i think lancers and byzantine infantry are about tied in best florin-stat, maybe the byz inf are a bit better. The only thing that really hurts byz inf is that they tire fast when fighting/marching fast and low moral. Byz inf have 100 unit size, are a pain to fight head on, can fight in trees and have pretty good attack/defense. The lancers are 40 unit size, some units have bounses vs cav, they don't fight well in trees. So, i would like to see lancers stay just the way they are, cause it's nice to have factions having atleast 1 powerful unit. I think it would be a bit silly to lower the speed of them, since there main purpose is for charging and getting around flanks fast. It would be best to have units with cav bounes to be increased a good amount.

I don't see what the big deal is about lancers, if you don't like them routing units so easly play at higher florins, it's that simple.

Some people call me names and such online for using all cavalry armies, saying it's cheap and really over powered, yet i offer to prove them wrong in some 1v1 matches and they decline. I'm not saying it's easy for me to beat an all cavalry army, just that it can be done, as some say to me it's impossible. People say it can only be done if you're expecting it, that's not true also, i've stopped cavalry armies when i wasn't expecting it and people have stopped my all cavalry army when they weren't expecting it.

I don't see much fun in playing with balanced armies all the time, i like surprises. Some people say to me it requires no skill to play with unbalanced armies, yet if you're expecting it and still lose what dose that say about your skill? Unbalanced armies are beatable just as easly as a balanced army, you just gotta know what you're doing, it's that simple.

BTW, someone said to me it's impossible to use all cavalry in early era playing as germans. He say it's only possible to use spanish for cavalry armies. He did not even know that spanish don't have lancers in early era. At the end of that game i got 1750kills. Since the word of lancers is being spread so much, you have people saying things of which they haven't the slighest clue about.

I would like to see units which have a bouns vs cavalry to be increased, mostly spears. That would call for more manovering tatics, which the cavalry must aviod getting eatin up by spears head on.