MTW2 MP balance issues

[Darkarbiter]

not sure if 3/4 is too much, but i had a unit of armoured sergeants going down to 15+ men after received two cav charges (almost simultaneoulsy). the cav were probably down to 35+ each before w/drawing.



imo spear in TW (not sure about historically) isnt a cav counter, more like a cav deterrence; and to fight in h2h. I'm not familiar with history, but were the pike invented just for the cav? sounds funny to me considering they can never attack the cav. Pike looks more like a reinvention of the phalanx, a unit good at holding ground vs not only cav, but other infantry? Shouldnt they be decent vs sword/axemen?

To me, the spear needs less training than using a sword, so is cheaper, not as deadly in single h2h (unless they trained like Jet Lee).. not sure if historically can one withstand a cav charging.

So to counter cav, is to use another cav. And manoevure like Cheetah mentioned, whereby you protect against / deter the cav with spear from hitting certain spots.

But cav should not be able to rout a decent h2h unit which is not engaged, fully prepared and ready mentally for a single cav charge imo. so far for my games m2tw is realistic in this aspect.

The swiss beat every army except a spanish all infantry army of men with sword and sheilds (swashbucklers) but for the most part they were anti cavlry. Historically yes they were described as being similar to Macedonian phalanxs. The other main reason why the swiss were so successfull is because of their organisation and training. So they should be near invincible to cavlry from the front and pretty effective to unsheilded units (but unless anythings changed im pretty sure sheild is just the same as defence skill so thats impossible to program). So for example where a 2h swordsmen might be good in melee against the average person and a man with a sword and sheild is worse the man with the sword and sheild would be better agains a swiss phalanx.

P.S. The average non cavlryman in the medieval era wasnt very decent!

[Mordred]

Also agree to focus on the basic issues to get a decent multiplay.
MTW balance sorted itself out by playing, despite its imbalances.
Players just didn't use a lot of units, in the end it came down to using a variety
slighty bigger as the number of units available in STW. Which is ok.
So focus on biggest exploits, bugs and unit behavior not supposed to happen.

[Fenix7]

So focus on biggest exploits, bugs and unit behavior not supposed to happen.

Aye.

[Sephriel]

one word from me to the swiss pikes:
pike formations are rather not offensive units. its rather that the enemy wont come in 3 lines of pikes. what pikes can best is just to stand still an block a piece of field into a single direction. though slowly walking forward they'll push most of units just away, as everyone tries to avoid getting nto the pikes range. getting onto pikes frontally, theres only 2 handers and shields, but, even with a shield it is quite difficult, as most shields dont cover lower legs as well as the head.

afaik, in switzerland, the halberd was more often used as the pike (at least thats what i hear in all the museums here in switzerland :D ). a very common way of halberd formation was, not really as in the game, that the second line held their weapons vertical, ready to let their halberds crush on every enemy that had managed to come between the halberds of the first line, and, at the same time blocking high attacks of the enemies long weapons. as the first line was hacking especially on the enemies legs, this was a tacitic wich is very effective against infantry an a bit less against cavalry (but there also very effective).

one other thing that made swiss mercs famous was their loyalty; as most of them were not fighting for glory or money, but had just escaped the everlasting lack of food in switzerland, not actually beeing ambitious but rather searching for a place to survive.

narf... why did you have to mention the swiss pikes... this isnt what i wanted to write.... : /

actually, imo, balancing is great so far. there really is no overpowered unit: -ie. spears only cost 2.5 less than decent cavalry... 5 levy spears beat easily 2 feudal knights....
-musketeers have actually quite a slow rate of fire imo and cant shoot through your own unit (yes they can but my pikes only held one volley of my muskets before they ran off... *g* ;) ), whereas you can hides archers behind cheap units with shields (ie. levy spearmen ;) )
-artillery can have great impact but only hits seldom and is quite expensive
-pikes are good against h2h units but very vulnerable against ranged attacks and very slowly moving in formation,
and so on...

it's true that heavy infantry is getting less and less useful with guns and pikes, but thats just the way it was in medieval times ;) , and muskets were cheeper than bows (and faster trained), that's just how it was

what i have noticed so far:

-musketeers seem to have a really long range (this can really bug sometimes)
-musketeers have awfully long to change lines in volley fire
-an issue of ai (though its probably the wrong thread ... :P ): when commanding big groups the commands sometimes arent assigned properly or dont seem to work at all.... i have to choose the group, ungroup it, assign the command and then group them again... speaking of ai: the sieges bug is known (can get extreme lags as well as a totally crappy ai) ?

cheers :D

[JeffBag]

Spears and archers aren't that bad, use archers to disrupt the formation so you can prevent their cavalry/heavy infantry from getting a 'perfect charge', then your spears can kill all their horses. Archers aren't bad, they just aren't the uber kill all Pharoah bowmen of RTW; their purpose now is not to kill, but to disrupt enemy formations just before the clash of arms. Since infantry can kill almost 20% of an enemy formation in a perfect charge, disrupting their formation is very, very crucial.