Note on whinging

[caravel]

Actually a generals Kata unit should be an exception. Just as a pike isn't going to the same if weilded by a conscripted peasant or elite bodyguards. Your examples are both flawed. Kataphraktoi and pikes are mean't to brute force your way through with valour and upgrades. And when used this way they tend to excel. Sword units also tend to be good at that, provided they have armour.

Maybe you've misunderstood me. My example of a 15th century pikeman vs 11th century obsolete Byzantine Kataphraktoi was chosen to illustrate some of the imbalances already present in MTW even. When Pikes are in formation and braced to take a cavalry charge the effect should be devastating on the cavalry as it would be historically. They are there to stop cavalry, and stop it they did. A warhorse would be very reluctant to charge into a row of gleaming spikes. Armouring up the horses makes little difference, horse armour is mainly frontal, it slows animal down significantly and the underside is still exposed.

And that's a bad model. It always has been. It means that a spear unit has 10 points of defense for spear attack. But only 5 for sword attack. It would also mean that in terms of damage calculations melee cavalry is all the same. Lance or sword makes no differnece. No RPS systems mean that every faction has to have at least one of every type of unit in the RPS wheel. Without regard to history. It worked in STW because every faction used the same army. Save the Mongols but they were given a tone of Korean and Chinese subject infantry to compensate.

Not a bad model because it's not absolute. Spearmen are not invulnerable to knights, swordsmen are not invulnerable to spearmen. Spearman though should lose vs swordsmen most of the time, unless the spearmen are of a particularly elite type. Even then it would be close, because at the end of the day horses can't just charge head first into a wall of spears. This is realistic, if it wasn't the evolution of the spear into the pike, into the square formation, wouldn't have occurred.

Not as many as you think. They are optimal. The lack of an RPS system means that if your lacking a certain kind of unit you can still win many kinds of battles. The faster movement speeds mean that battles only take 10 minutes. Rather than 30, which is far far far too long.

There is no lack of rps in RTW, it's just not as obvious. There will be the same sort of system in M2TW also. If you didn't need specialist units for specialist roles there would be no point in training spear type troops and one may as well deploy all swords or all cav and just bumrush. If you're lacking a balanced force and the enemy isn't, then the enemy should gain the upper hand. My goal is not to simply win a battle, but to play it well. Historically battles didn't last ten minutes. I've often played defensive battles against the Mongols as the Turks lasting over 1 hour, where the enemy sent wave after wave of reinforcements. The mongol's strength, and weakness, is their cavalry. When deploying an army against them one knows to field an army that is heavy on spears, missiles (preferably arbalests) and anti-cav/anti armour units. Swordsmen would be simply outflanked and butchered by the charging cav. Sounds wrong? Well think about it. A man with a sword and shield standing on the ground is pretty much defensless against a cavalry charge, there's not alot he can do but wait and hope that he doesn't get his head split open in the first passage, once the melee starts he has a slight chance to unhorse the riders though the still have the height advantage, which is critical. For me this makes for an interesting tactical battle. Without this aspect I could simply bumrush my upgraded and teched up swordsmen at the enemy cav and not bother with any kind of unit selection or strategising.