MP balance mod suggestion

[Vladimir]

I really don’t think the Eastern factions in MTW/VI were weaker per say but they did demand more attention from the player. While the European style units had a fire and forget style the fast, mobile, ranged units of the East demand more attention. These attributes demand greater skill on the part of the “general” and also serve to enhance his ability.

When playing as the Turks I’m able to take down the Byzantine using ~80% Turcoman Horse Archers. Now, I don’t recommend that you try that on multiplayer but there are a cheap and effective way of defeating your enemy.

It’s less about balance and more about tactics. If you can assign certain units to certain people you can fight European armies like Saladin did, and not like an armchair general.

[Puzz3D]

When playing as the Turks I’m able to take down the Byzantine using ~80% Turcoman Horse Archers.

That's the very thing you don't want to be repeatedly effective in multiplayer. Taking 80% of one unit type should leave you vulnerable to the counterunit which your opponent will start to utilize. Every unit must have a counterunit otherwise you don't have a combined arms game, and the army type used will eventually converge to the army that has no counter.

If you can assign certain units to certain people you can fight European armies like Saladin did, and not like an armchair general.

In multiplayer, people pick their armies. They aren't assigned armies. This is why balanced units within a faction and balanced factions are so critical. With the large number of units and factions in the game now, the task of balancing is enormous. In STWmod which only has 14 unit types and all factions using the same unit set, it took several months of work and hundreds of tests to balance, and we are still finding things that need adjustment a year later.

[Geoffrey S]

That's the very thing you don't want to be repeatedly effective in multiplayer. Taking 80% of one unit type should leave you vulnerable to the counterunit which your opponent will start to utilize. Every unit must have a counterunit otherwise you don't have a combined arms game, and the army type used will eventually converge to the army that has no counter.

This is one of the major issues I encountered when playing RTW in multiplayer at last. There wasn't nearly enough of a sharp divide between units qualities, as in spears beating cavalry headon, or sword armed units eventually beating spears. And cavalry was simply too powerful. Experience modifiers only made this imbalance worse.

Even in MTW, I could rely on low-grade spearmen beating high level cavalry, of there being some kind of logic. This was absent in RTW, with too much emphasis on elite units, and more noticeable in MP than in SP to me.