Billmen Vs Halbardiers ???????????????

[Procrustes]

hey,

well I went home and tried a few custom battles. I couldn't find swiss halbs in the custom battle OOB's, but I was able to crash some halbs and billmen into each other. Bottom line - vanilla billmen beat vanilla halbs every time. The low moral of the halbs really hurts them - they start waivering after loosing a dozen men and things go down hill fter that. Billmen will loose up to half their men by the time the last 10 or 15 halbs flee. Halbs will win if you give them a couple more moral points - so build those churches! I think that billmen would benefit most from an armorer. Another thing I noticed is that the halbs do better if you start charging them a little before they would have on their own. Seems they don't get up enough speed otherwise.

Both halbs and billmen ate CMAA like candy.

[Ironside]

Both halbs and billmen ate CMAA like candy.

Oddly enough is Militia sergs the best counter, cost-wise to regular halbs (they loose 1 vs 1 but are much cheaper), thanks to the ap bonus.

[Procrustes]

Oddly enough is Militia sergs the best counter, cost-wise to regular halbs (they loose 1 vs 1 but are much cheaper), thanks to the ap bonus.

Wow - thanks! I tested this a bit before work this morning and the results were suprising. Vanilla militia sgts can almost match vanilla halbs. Actually, the halbs loose a lot more men for most of the fight, but after they loose about a dozen men the MS will suddenly start to waver and then the tide turns. (The effects of lower moral, I guess.) This ought to be a really cheap way to deal w/ halbs - set some MS on them to chew them up while you get anything else to charge their flank - should break them pretty quickly.

As an aside, I also paired halbs and billmen up against vikings, and got a great demonstration of the value of valor. Vanilla vikings get chewed up, but add one valor point and they will take halbs or billmen each time.

[Zarax]

MS are so cost effective that they are almost a cheat, now after some modding i made them a very reasonable unit by changing their availability.
BTW, try v1 MS and they will beat any v0 halb except JHI for less money.

[Ironside]

MS are so cost effective that they are almost a cheat, now after some modding i made them a very reasonable unit by changing their availability.
BTW, try v1 MS and they will beat any v0 halb except JHI for less money.

They should actually, considering that they aren't as good vs cav. But they truely are a great unit cost-wise.

Ran some quick tests (does anyone know a really, really flat test map? some results are probably affected by this).
CMAA are better than billmen but slighly worse than halbs and much better than MS.
MS do better against halbs than towards CMMA, but still loose clearly ( half the price though).
Swiss halbs beats billmen, that in return beats halbs.
I think the halbs odd results (better than billmen vs CMAA, but loses to billmen) is because vs the CMAA they got a lot of staying power. When the staying power gets too strong, odd results occur. MS do better vs golden lancers than CS because the CS can't kill them, while the MS can due to better attack.

Swiss pikes and SAP:s are killers vs billmen took around 35 resp 18 losses for victory (out of 96).
CS are good vs halbs, billmen wins clearly with average around 50 men in losses.
All spear/pike units do great at the beginning and takes most losses in the middle of the battle when the formation looses it's effectivness somewhat.

So the conclution is that vs halbs, use ap units and vs polearms are spears quite good. Someone can run some better tests if they want to confirm this.

[Zarax]

Why don't you just use the unit comparison tool?
It gives quite reliable results to me.

[Ironside]

Why don't you just use the unit comparison tool?
It gives quite reliable results to me.

Does the billmen perform worse against CMAA, than the regular halb do with that tool? That one I'm 100% certain on. Field testing is needed for the most reliable results.

But to be honest, didn't thought about the unit comparison tool. But it's still too static for some things.

[Procrustes]

(does anyone know a really, really flat test map? some results are probably affected by this).

Hi,

I've been using "plains inland 02" - it's in the 300's. Pick "temparate", "summer". There are some woods around, but the AI will set up on a big, flat open field across from you.

HTH,