Balancing in the leaked 1.2

**Husar** · 05-04-2007, 10:48

So after trying the leaked 1.2 patch, I was very happy to see the twohander animations and the shieldbug fixed.
Until I discovered that my english armoured swordsmen were almost immune to zweihanders. And my armoured billmen were seemingly useless as well(so were the normal billmen, but I thought that was because they're early units).
Now that got me wondering since twohanders were supposedly fixed, the shield bug obviously was fixed, since my spear and sword units had a lot more survivability. And then I realized that the fixed shield bug simply annihilates the effectiveness of all twohanded units as they were. They simply cannot cope with the high defense of other units anymore, exceptions being those with really high attack ratings like dismounted english knights who have 21 attack and armour piercing. But twohanders for example, who were supposedly veterans back then, have an attack rating of 14, compared to dismounted feudal knights with 13. Now the feudals have 21 defense while the twohanders have IIRC just 11. What that means is that the dismounted feudal knights will inflict a lot of damage to the badly defended twohanders while the twohanders will have problems to get through the big defense of the dismounted knights. In a test I ran, the dismounted knights won and had more than 60 men left, of 120. Now I do understand that they are knights etc, but people who wielded twohanded swords weren't peasants either, they were, from what I read, usually veteran soldiers and pretty good fighters, plus their weapon should do a bit more damge than a sword used with only one hand. I also wouldn't agree that their defense stat is as low as that of twohanded axe units, since deflecting blows with a balanced sword made of steel should be easier than with a wooden shaft and a big weight on one end.

I ended up modding most twohanded units to higher attack values, I gave wohanders 19 attack and 9 defense(plus 7 armour makes 16 defense overall) while giving most axe units above 20 attack(up to 24 for varangian guards) and defense around 3 to 5. Same for halberds and pikes, whose attack I also increased a bit(JHI would lose against dismounted feudal knights as well...).
Now most of them seem to be quite ok, teohanders win against dismounted feudal knights, but still lose a big amount of men themselves, against other twohanders they are a bit even but lose against varangians for example(who I considered elite and who can now also beat feudal foot knights).

Now, I opened this thread for several reasons:
1. I haven't seen anyone mention this before
2. I'm interested in opinions on relative unit strengths etc.
3. I really hope CA did some similar rebalancing in the official patch, it just can't be that noone noticed how useless twohanders are now, even though their animations were fixed(some weren't even useless before, but now they are), or are they all supposed to beat peasants and archers only?

**crpcarrot** · 05-04-2007, 11:30

i havent played 1.2 yet but from your good explanantion i think i prefer the new setup. its seems right to me. 2 handers are specialist troops to be used for specific tasks. i wont send a unit with no sheilds on a frontal assault on uits with sheilds and swords/spears. and i'm sure the more high end 2H units do enough damage.

**Lusted** · 05-04-2007, 12:18

3. I really hope CA did some similar rebalancing in the official patch

Doubt it, the major rebalance the game needs with the 2 handed and shield bugs fixed would add months to the testing time for the patch.

**Jambo** · 05-04-2007, 12:48

I added +2 to the defence and attack of all 2-handed sword units. That pretty much does the trick. At one point I also had them with the "ap" attribute but I think leaving it off gives them more flavour.

**Gaius Terentius Varro** · 05-04-2007, 12:50

Aren't they supposed to be (zweihanders) a flanking unit and why would they defeat a knight with a shield? I mean the whole front row of the unit on the receiving end goes down when the zweihanders (due to high charge bonus) charge into it. Are they meant to be able to be shock infantry and hold the line at the same time? I charge them in then bring in support troops to so they are not standing there getting owned .