The most unappreciated unit...

[PaulTa]

The peasant. I'm pretty sure, that pound for pound, the peasant is the most efficient unit in the game.

For a measly 110 florins (?) you get a unit that can take out almost all spear units in the game, kill cavalry once they are entangled, and fill a variety of other purposes.

God forbid you try and fight peasants with mercenary spearmen if the peasants have one chevron of experience. I couldn't even imagine the slaughter.

[Whacker]

The peasant. I'm pretty sure, that pound for pound, the peasant is the most efficient unit in the game.

For a measly 110 florins (?) you get a unit that can take out almost all spear units in the game, kill cavalry once they are entangled, and fill a variety of other purposes.

God forbid you try and fight peasants with mercenary spearmen if the peasants have one chevron of experience. I couldn't even imagine the slaughter.

Erm... If I'm to correctly gauge the overall reaction/opinion about peasants right now in M2TW, the view seems to be (which I agree with) that peasants in general are far more powerful than they should be. Peasants are thrown in the game as filler/fodder and shouldn't really be able to stand up to anything at all except other peasants, they're essentially untrained farmers given a pitchfork and forced into service. When a single unit of peasants, after undergoing 5-10 min of bombardment from trebuchets including tasty cow chunks and flaming ammo (not taking any casualties though, as they were hiding behind a building), can kill ****25**** dismounted chivalric knights (on huge settings) on medium difficulty while being outnumbered 4 to 1, something is just plain wrong. Maybe, maybe, 1 or 2 knights dead on the outside is ok, given those conditiions, but 25 is just plain wrong.

[metatron]

What have you been smoking? O_o

[PaulTa]

What have you been smoking? O_o

unfiltered Lucky Strikes.


I had a sally against my besieging force on Ragusa. Venice had four units of peasants for infantry. I charged my merc spearmen into the peasants, hoping that I could at least hold them still while I moved my cavalry around to flank.

Unfortunately, the blinky red numbers on my spears were dropping so fast that my merc spearmen routed, I repeat routed, before the enemy peasants had hit 40 (normal unit sizes). I then proceeded to plunge my cavalry in their backs, and not only did they hold instead of route, but they killed about half of my bodyguard in a melee.

This, my friends, is freaking ridiculous.

[Shahed]

I love Lucky Strike. The best..

It's funny I tend to pwn all peasants from all different colors, sex (the female peasants get trampled underhoof twice :P), religions, races etc. Turcomen Horse kills them without issue. Actually everything I use against them has worked, so much that I routinely train stuff against peasants.

Wonder what I'm doing wrong. Maybe it's the fact that I'm not using any infantry... oh doh !

My most despised units are everything Crusader (charging wihout MY orders!), followed by ... horse archers and cavalry. Yes..

Why ? because it attempts to negate your own mobility advantage as an all cavalry army.

[katank]

Peasants are the budget infantry pwnerers. JHI is the next step up (able to kill swords as well as spears).

However, both die to cav. Catholic peasants are the most OP things next to random (light) cav charges. Which is simple ridiculous. BTW, I find it funny that archer militia/peasant archers can beat spear militias in melee. Spears are virtually useless except as fodder.

[Shahed]

Yeah it is a big issue. There's no point having any spears, all they do is take up space and then die off to the freaking last man, so can't even resurect the unit. You HAVE TO train it from scratch. &^%#

And I'm beginning to agree that cavalry is ridiculous too. And post patch it's just gotten easier to launch a full charge.

The polearm units, like JHI, IMO that's ridiculous too. JHI should be at par with most elite infantry (not for historical reasons though there are many) to give an equal unit capable of an equal account. Now however polearms once that bug is fixed will be the next BIIIG thing (unless EVERYTHING is rebalanced).

Whole swarms of peasant farmer billmen marching across the universe crushing to smithereens all the men who were born and trained to fight i.e knights, katanks, JHI etc.

I just tried one of the 2H fixes and Billmen beat virtually everything I tested against, including Barbarian Chosen Bringers of Light and Darkness Swordsmen (which was EXTREMELY disturbing to observe).

The balancing and unit classification is beyond repair, at least at this particular point in time.

[katank]

Barbarian Chosen Bringers of Light and Darkness Swordsmen

Ooooooh, where do I get some of those? Do I have to tech up to a Citadel with the rebels?

[Shahed]

Nah I would'nt bother with them... just get yourself some Tabardiya (sp?) and they ALSO pwned almost everything !.

[BigTex]

The peasant. I'm pretty sure, that pound for pound, the peasant is the most efficient unit in the game.

For a measly 110 florins (?) you get a unit that can take out almost all spear units in the game, kill cavalry once they are entangled, and fill a variety of other purposes.

God forbid you try and fight peasants with mercenary spearmen if the peasants have one chevron of experience. I couldn't even imagine the slaughter.

Depends on your faction. They all rout pretty quickly after the patch, but still usefull all around. For the most part they all have horrible stats, even in descr_unit file. But the western europe peasants are simply incredibly overpowered. Not only do they have the highest "stats", they also have one of the faster kill animations of any unit. Its the animation that determines effectiveness for the most part so far in M2TW. Not only that but the western peasants have a skeletal factor of 1.8, the highest of any unit. They can reach further then a bloody danish axemen.

I think the best bet to making them more reasonable is knocking that skeletal factor down to at least .8, maybe 1.

As for fixing the 2hd axemen, you can try using Zweihander animations. Granted they will be powerful in the moments of the charge and shortly after. But they have some of the worst defensive values in the game, it will cost you if you try to use then as supermen.

[Shahed]

That could be an idea. I'm just going to pass on doing anything with the 2Hs. This is something that has to come from CA. If there is a complete fix to it in the meantime, I'll use that.

Now that you mentioned the reach, I have a screenshot somewhere of a peasant right after killing a cavalryman which looked pretty far away from him. I took the screen a second too late, but I already had a title for it "By the power of my pointy little dagger !!!". This was oneof those rare engagements pre patch where I had a unit of peasants in the army. I only used 2 units of peasants to completely annihilate 4 Spear Militia and 1 Cavalry unit probably Mamulks I don;t remember. One of my peasants was down to about 12 men the other still have about 45 at the end of the battle.

[Skott]

I would agree that peasants in M2TW are far better than their counterparts were in RTW. Not that I'm complaining. Not sure if I feel they are overpowered or not. Kinda undecided on the subject.

[sapi]

I don't care how powerful they are - they make excellent pincushions :P

If you're using horse archers, just cut them down to ~%20 numbers and they'll die in the charge.

If you're using foot archers, just turn on fire arrows and stand your ground - they'll break before contact.

If you're using cavalry, just charge them and flank with another unit.

If you're using infantry, just stomach the losses and move on ;)

[gino23]

Spear militia/Town miltia

you have no idea how valuable these guys are when fending off surprise invasion stacks

[PaulTa]

I've got a strange idea for a fix.

What about changing their weapons to spears, but not giving them a bonus vs cavalry? That way, their weapons are on par with the spear units that they take apart right now, but their stats suck.

[Kobal2fr]

Has anyone tried changing all of the blaggard's stats to 1 (as per muslim peasants/highland rabble, who are not as overpowered as their occidental counterparts) ?

[Barry Fitzgerald]

Peasants are a bit too good. And as others have pointed out...just how bad spear units are..it doesn't make a lot of sense really.

I hope they look at this with patch 1.2

I don't want them to make em 100% useless..but pretty much they should get hammered by everything else..unless sheer weight of numbers is an advantage...