What does armor do?

[Del Arroyo]

For me in SP (which is all I've played so far) Heavy Cavalry is definitely very scary. Like seriously frightening. I never go in against a stack of all Medium or HC without a hefty numbers advantage-- even if I've got spears.

The weakness of spears actually does tick me off, though. I mean, these guys are basically used to absorb punishment and never kill anything on their own, and are always defeated easily by sword infantry. As if somehow by taking AWAY a soldier's big-ass spear and forcing him to fight only with his sword, you are giving him a huge combat ADVANTAGE.

And spears have a lower attack value than pikes-- again, as if a 7-foot thrusting spear is going to be more defensively-skewed than a honking 20-foot wobbly-ass one.

Common sense seems to have been lost somewhere in here. "Spears" (meaning hoplite/Fyrd-style spear-and-shield-and-sword-armed infantry) seem to have been put in their current role purely as the result of a game-balancing technique.

..

But anyway, please do continue with the inside story

DA

[econ21]

Yes, I never liked the spears vs swords distinction in the first place. I think the distinction - at least among the Catholics - is ahistorical in this period and introduced solely to add another rock-paper-scissors dimension to the gameplay. In doing this, they also conflated weapon type with troop quality, so that the Catholic spears are lower quality troops whereas the men-at-arms and knights are better quality. In reality, I suspect the men-at-arms and knights when dismounted used spears (or lances) as well as swords and other secondary weapons. At least that's my reading of Agincourt and other engagements involving English troops in the period.

But I'm not sure it matters too much - if we regard the Sergeants as lower quality troops, maybe the game reflects their capabilities fairly enough - providing bulk to the army and being good at holding off cavalry. The sword armed men-at-arms could be regarded as the more aggressive skilled troops who are better at killing. The only substantive difference would be that the men-at-arms should be even better than the sergeants against cavalry. There was a time when I was thinking of modding this in, but I did not follow through partly as it introduces tricky game balance issue (making men-at-arms better than sergeants at everthing).