Musketeers and general unit balancing....

[DoCToR]

Jeesus those Musketeers really pack a punch...

This evening i had my whole h4 army routed by 4 h0 musketeers....quite astonished by that! And not particularly impressed.

THe only unit that stayed were my ninjas concealed in the bushes which nailed his YS leader unit... ;o)

I guess we need to speak now or be forever silent, but i personally reckon those muskets on a flat map are too powerful for their currently low 250 koku price! And if h0 Musketeers can rout an entire army we are in for some real problems..!

Other particular strong units include the Skirmishers and the Mongol Cavalry....particularly surprised to witness a unit of JHC massacred by MLC?!!?

Just a few thoughts,

DrJ

[MagyarKhans Cham]

musketeers are way too strong even with the new price

the fact that they shoot thru hills and in the heaviest of rain makes them strong.

5 muskets 9 monks and 2 spears can beat many armies

for me someting must be changed in the troopstats. i knwo tosa had great ideas about this. let me track him.....


gallopgallopgallopgallop

[MIZILUS]

Muskets definitely too strong. Those mongol light cav really are somethin arent they Men seem to rout a bit easier too. Just a tad more balance in these areas is in order I believe.

[BSM_Skkzarg]

I gotta disagree - the whole point of muskets is to scare the bejeezus outta the attacker. They do that well. The key to beating muskets is to hit em from a flank or rear so they cant shoot - yes it may cost a unit to lock their focus - but if you can get your units hitting them up close they still rout easy.


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BSM_Skkzarg
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."

[theforce]

Easy to say...
Many defenders camp on a high hill having lots of guns other projectile units. I liked the way that muskeets used to be. A realistic way of tweaking them is to enable them to shoot in nice weather, light rain and snow but they can't shoot while it's raining.

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Don't use only honour, use theforce, too.
http://lod.fateback.com

[Pachinko]

I agree with you..BSM_Skkzarg

[Leon]

How are you supposed to attack muskets from the flank when you have 5-6 of them up front? Muskets are too powerful. It's too easy to sit back and defend with them. The way it is now, where you can fire them in the rain, needs to be changed. Before I would take like 2-3 muskets plus 2-3 archers just in case it rains. Now why not take 5-7 muskets?

If you take 7 guns you would just even more kill the game.

Tera

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Honour to Clan Torîi Aku.

Visit my resource centre here!
Evil is within us...

[ragedevil]

Muskets are deffinately too powerfull now, it was the case in old STW that yeah, u could hit them from a flank with say a Cav Arch unit and decimate them. But not any more. People just take 7 guns now, I find this an incredibly boring way of fighting and would rather not play the game at all than have a line of musks doing all the work for me. The reason you cant just attack them on a flank now is that you would need a massive amount of missiles to do this. Say for example the enemy took 7 muskets...you would need 7 units to draw their fire before thinking of hitting one unit on the flank, my normal army missile wise has quite a few missiles though is not capable of killing 7 muskets due to the fact my cav arch would need to go head to head with a musket unit, and get shot to bits. So what do you do to beat 7 musks? At the same koku worth a musket kills a sam archer and a cav archer now, so the only ways are to match musket for musket and rely on clever use of terrain, take a ludicrous amount of muskets...say 9 or 10 to outshoot the enemy, take the same amount of musks at a higher honnour resulting in not enough koku for a good hand to hand attack, or finnaly rush with all hand to hand, which in my tests so far does not work with Mongol Invasion Muskets as they are too powerfull. 7 muskets would die in a rush by a strong hand to hand army in old shogun, or die to archers. The old game is where the balance seemed to be at, maybe not totally but certainly a lot more than MI even after this patch. I hope that when the patch is finished it will lower the accuracy of these super guns significantly.

[Puzz3D]

The answer is to increase the range of the samurai archer unit and give them a few more arrows. The SA is supposed to have greater range than the musket. Either that or shorten the range of the muskett. The archer could then beat the muskett at long range, so you would see players start using a combination of archers and musketts. You cannot go too far with this archer imrovement or else the archer will dominate the battle. This idea does put a lot of emphasis on ranged units, and, if you don't like fighting battles with ranged units, I guess you won't like this idea.

Since it appears that the only unit balancing adjustments we will see with this patch are cost adjustments, the guns should probably be made more expensive, but by how much? What koku level are we taking about to make it not viable to take 7 guns? We did ask for unit limits, but that feature was not incorporated into the patch, so I guess that's out as a way to handle this.

By the nature of gun unit, you will get shot to pieces if you are not in a position to rush or flank them, and you don't have enough guns of your own to challenge them. If you have fewer ranged units, then you should have an advantage in melee units, but, if you don't act decisively, your strength will be reduced with each volley. It's partly map related, because maps with a lot of trees are not well suited for lots of guns, so a 7 gun army should be easy to beat on some maps.

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

[Zone]

Perhaps they could have a slower rate of fire so that you have a chance to charge them while only losing a few units. Then they'd be forced to have plenty of other units aswell to protect them and then they wouldn't be able to fire because they'd hit their own side.

This might make them good for taking the brunt of a main charge then retreating to allow the rest of the units to have a good fight.

What does anyone rekon?

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Fight first, ask questions later.

[Krasturak]

Krast likes the idea of adjusting the rate of fire.

Krast hasn't learned much about rates of fire ... is it that in old Shoggy the arqs fired once per seven cycles and the muskets once per 5? Is that right?

And how is it now? Did it change?

[Whitey]

I tested this whole guns thing (in a rather un scientific way) by playing 3 online battles with 12 H0 musks and 4 H5 Yari Sam...I won all three, that shouldn't happen in a medi-evil Japanese game, I expected to be slaughtered by Yari Cavalry but I simply mowed down half before they contacted and the rest fled...guns need to be powerful yes...but THAT powerful just makes other units irrelevent.

[tootee]

If I'm not wrong, charging any cav straight into a line of musk normally with route them off, even in old STW? Probably you should try vs a monkrush..

--tootee aka goldfish shimazu

[BSM_Skkzarg]

The key to taking out a load of muskets is to get them shooting. It WILL cost you men - so take a slow, heavy armored, high moral unit - like naginata. Split that with high speed, high punch units like WM, No-Dachi - or my preference against muskets - Yari Cav. Take 2 or 3 nagi's in WIDE to minimize casualties - and have your fast movers circled around to hit the enemy from the rear.
The trick is to confuse your enemy - to where they dont know which way to face. Move your hard hitters close but not within range - the enemy will face em - then start to advance with the Naginata - the enemy will see a group of slow tanks approaching - and they are stuck between 2 forces - their best hope - face the tanks and rout em. Once they do - and they start to volley off - charge the rear. If you time it right - they may get one volly at most off at your chargers - and by the time they attempt to recover - you have got them pinched between slow tanks and horses with spears... Not a good place to be if your a musketeer.

The other thing you have to do is use a coupld of naginata to tie up their melee monsters - it doesnt matter if those guys end up routing - cuz by the time they do all the muskets will be gone - and you have more than enough units to surround and pound. 8-)
Qapla!

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BSM_Skkzarg
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."

[Puzz3D]

Whitey,

You can not successfully frontally charge guns with cav. The game is designed to prevent that from working by giving the cav a big morale reduction when fired on. You can rush them with infantry, but the high speed of the gun units makes it very hard to catch them.

If you field a single SA unit vs a single musk unit, the SA unit can defeat the musk unit on flat ground, by shooting at near maximum range and then charging once out of arrows. You can probably even win by charging and not shooting at all. You do have to chase the musk a long way. The problem is if your unit gets hung up on another unit then they get shot to pieces because the musk shoots through friendly units without causing very many friendly casualties.

If there are many gun units around, then trying to engage them all hth is a big management problem. The player with the guns doesn't have a management problem because the guns fall back on their own, and sit and shoot if not being actively pursued. In a battle with lots of units, you pretty much have to engage guns with guns. I tried for months to effectively use archers against guns, and I never came up with any ranged tactic really effective. The archers run out of arrows a little too soon. I have seen these gun heavy armies loose to a strong infantry rush. If you have some cav, I would run it around behind the enemy, and attack in coordination with a frontal infantry assault. Also, don't underestimate the value of loose formation when facing ranged units

Regarding firing in the rain: tests Kraellin and I ran online showed that firing rate and effectiveness was greatly reduced in heavy rain making the gun unit almost useless. This reduced effectiveness might also be occuring in moderate rain to a lesser degree. Has anyone else observed this?

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~