Quote Originally Posted by Puzz3D
The overall nerfing of the spears came as a result of a couple of long threads where some people argued that historically spears were not highly effective vs cav knights. This nerfing of spears hurt the multiplayer game a lot since a whole component of the RPS system was no longer useful.
Puzz3D, we're going a little off-topic here, but can you explain how spears were nerfed overall? I know at some stage during the patch swords got a implicit +1 against spears and cavalry got a greater ability to penetrate infantry formations. And I seem to remember you saying something about unit cost, but I am vague on the details.

I've never done MP and find the spears vs cav knights balance in SP pretty close to what "feels" plausible/historical. In MTW v1.0, spears seemed a little too strong. After patching/VI, knights are dangerous in the hands of the AI and can often prevail against vanilla spears through superior morale. But they still can be easily contained by better spears. Swords, even AUM, can't be relied up to contain them nearly as well. If anything, I think knights are a little too secondary to infantry in SP (at least as I play it) and would prefer them to have a little more of the clout heavy cavalry acquired in RTW. I wonder how/why MP is so different.