Chivalric Sergeants

[Powermonger]

Does anyone know why CA made Chivalric Sergeants have less morale and attacking penality compared to Feudals or Gothics?

I've been perusing the the unit_prod excel spreadsheets provided by CA in the past and they have the CS classed as Missile troop type (hence why it gets a negative attack stat and less morale). There is a comment in the spreadsheet from 'Bob Smith' that they were lessened to make the transition to Gothic Sergeants more smoother.

If you look at the Feudal and Gothic Sergeant troop class setting, they are both set to NORMAL. Feudals are also classed as being unarmoured, where as Chivalric's are classed as having mail armour. It just seems strange that the Chivs would have their morale penalised for wearing armour, I would think their morale would be equal to Feudals as they'd be more confident due to actually wearing armour now.

I guess it is easy for me to modify the Chivs so they are classed as NORMAL troops, I was just curious to know why Chivs got penalised as such and if anyone have any inside knowledge of the design decision.

[ajaxfetish]

I think the change was made entirely for gameplay reasons. Without those weaknesses, Chivalric Sergeants are not significantly weaker than Gothic sergeants, and since Gothics have so many inherent limitations (only 2 factions get them, and only in late, and unless you mod them the unit has only 60 men) it isn't worth it to make the investment to get them.

Anyhow, Chivalric Sergeants still are by no means a weak unit. They're not necessarily better than the Feudal version, but they're different. They're much better for holding a defensive line and weathering storms of arrows, but much worse for anchoring a flank or marching long distances. Gothic sergeants then have the same strengths and weaknesses as the Chivalric's, but considerably magnified.

Ajax

[tigger_on_vrb]

I dont think its unreasonable to give an attck penalty to a more heavily armoured version of basically the same troop type. If a guy has the same weapon, but heavier armour and is less maneouverable it would be more difficult for him to land a blow, but clearly the heavier armoured guy is going to hold the line better, which is the way most people use spearmen.
I guess the morale value is for more balanced gameplay rather than realistic reasons.

[econ21]

It's a game balancing fudge. The stats in MTW are based mechanically on a formula for weapons, armour, troop quality etc. Chainmail is an extremely good upgrade (+3 to armour and defence, IIRC), making the step up from Feudal Sergeants to Chivalric Sergeants a little too big. So CA nerfed the CS a little by making them "low" quality (-1 attack, -2 morale, IIRC) to try to balance that.

Conversely, I think they gave the Chivalric knights a +1 attack as an explicit fudge factor to make the upgrade from Feudal knights worthwhile.

You can see all this in an excel file CA released for the MTW stats.

[Patron]

On the contrary, if you and your unit is wearing armour and you starting dropping like flies you know something has gone terribly wrong and are more likely to flee. whereas if you are an unarmoured feudal seargant you almost expect to experience horrific casualties and know there is a chance of winning regardless. Chivarlris seargants are elite so they don't care if unarmoured units suffer terrible casualties.

[Ludens]

On the contrary, if you and your unit is wearing armour and you starting dropping like flies you know something has gone terribly wrong and are more likely to flee. whereas if you are an unarmoured feudal seargant you almost expect to experience horrific casualties and know there is a chance of winning regardless. Chivarlris seargants are elite so they don't care if unarmoured units suffer terrible casualties.

I don't quite follow your logic. So feudal sergeants won't run when their comrades around them start dropping like flies because this is to be expected? By the same reasoning peasants would never run because, you know, it's only to be expected that they get slaughtered in droves. With equal casualities, it is matter of troop quality whether units will rout, not how many casualities were expected. Chivalric sergeants are of lower quality than feudal ones, despite better equipment.