Effect of weapons upgrades

[Miracle]

Two reputable folks have recently made statements which I find quite disturbing:

pikes are at their best if given the weapon upgrade. this adds 6 attack and gives them the chance to inflict massive casualties at start of melee before an enemy bust through the spearwall.

Weapon upgrades give a +6 bonus to attack despite only shwing +1 in the unit stats.

Armour upgrades give a +2/2.5 bonus to armour despite only showing +1 in the unit stats.

References:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...1&postcount=12
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showp...15&postcount=3

If they are both correct (and it's safe to say they are), then factions with fortress or large city-level swordsmen would get a HUGE advantage over the other factions.

For starters, let's compare Mailed Knights with Mamluks. Their stats are fairly similar except that Mamluks have an AP secondary attack. Thus, with no upgrades Mamluks are superior to Mailed Knights.

But imagine what happens when Mailed Knights get a weapons upgrade. Their charge is now a whopping 22. Their attack is at an astounding 16. All it took was ~30 turns of getting a fortress and ~15 turns of building DFK's. And now Mailed Knights are head-over-shoulders better than Mamluks.

How can the Egyptians possibly compensate? They can't.

They can get a Horsebreeder's Master's Guild very early in Cairo, but one measly experience point can't beat +6 attack. They can upgrade Mamluks to heavy splint, but that requires a Citadel-level smithy and still can't compare to +6 attack.

Basically my point is that +6 attack for a weapons upgrade is ridiculous. Either some CA developer was inebriated when he chose the bonus, or there is some extreme favoritism towards swordsmen.

[Kobal2fr]

Horse Breeder HQ gives +2 to horse XP factionwide doesn't it ? And +1 locally for a total of 3 chevron from the get go, which is +2 (displayed) attack, +2 (displayed) defense, and morale+stamina bonus.

It's certainly not negligible.

But if it bugs you that much, it's pretty easy to change what gives points towards the Swords guild and make it so that, say, Tabardariyya or Saracen Inf. give points to it. Or you can just build/destroy a Leather Tanner over and over for 5 points per 2 turn.

[Miracle]

Kobal, it's not enough.

The HB's HQ is a level 3 guild that takes longer to get than a SS's guild. Most cavalry are built in castles so they can't get the extra 1 exp from the get-go. The two exp they do get from an HQ gives them only +1 att/def (not 2). They do get extra morale/stamina but it's probably not much.

In any case a +6 attack bonus completely overshadows the benefits from a +1-3 exp bonus.

It's true that I could change the name to "Weaponsmith's Guild" and make a ton of units eligible for points. But since every unit has a weapon, it makes the guild criteria far too broad and flavourless. It's true that I could also build/destroy tanners, but frankly it's an exploit that neither I nor the AI will do.

I guess I'm ranting too much so I'll make a constructive suggestion. The bonus should be +1 or +2 instead of +6 and should apply only to swords. After all, what business does a swordsmith have making spear points and pollaxes?

[Foz]

Kobal, it's not enough.

The HB's HQ is a level 3 guild that takes longer to get than a SS's guild. Most cavalry are built in castles so they can't get the extra 1 exp from the get-go. The two exp they do get from an HQ gives them only +1 att/def (not 2). They do get extra morale/stamina but it's probably not much.

In any case a +6 attack bonus completely overshadows the benefits from a +1-3 exp bonus.

It's true that I could change the name to "Weaponsmith's Guild" and make a ton of units eligible for points. But since every unit has a weapon, it makes the guild criteria far too broad and flavourless. It's true that I could also build/destroy tanners, but frankly it's an exploit that neither I nor the AI will do.

I guess I'm ranting too much so I'll make a constructive suggestion. The bonus should be +1 or +2 instead of +6 and should apply only to swords. After all, what business does a swordsmith have making spear points and pollaxes?

I had a potential solution to this brewing in another thread. We were discussing horsebreeders guild and how it is inexplicably limited to cities, though the vast majority of cavalry are in castles. I actually proposed a complete shift of the guild layouts, to make the guilds promote general strategies instead of specific units (at least where woodsmens, swordsmiths, and horse breeders are concerned). The idea was to use M2's built in class and type checking of units in order to grant points to each settlement by unit classifications instead of by the very selective means in the file in vanilla. Since all units can gain the melee upgrade, not just the ones that can actually give swordsmith points in vanilla, I opted to make swordsmiths a heavy infantry specialized guild instead since the melee bonuses are most consistent IMO with a heavy infantry strategy. This opens up the potential for any faction to be able to get it (I think, I haven't checked all rosters), and would help remove the unbalance that is being noted here.

Also you'll have to pardon me for saying it, but Swordsmiths Guild was already pretty broad and flavorless. It's honestly more interesting to think that if you produce a lot of heavy infantry, your smiths will get better at producing good equipment for them to use, whatever that may be, instead of this arbitrary and ridiculous focus on only swords.

Along with that I had also suggested woodsmens guild be allowed to every faction, and was then a general archery-favoring guild, granted points by any archer infantry recruited. Similarly Horse Breeders was allowed in castles, and gains points from any cavalry recruited. That actually seemed pretty fair to me, and likewise actually gives you the ability to specialize a castle for a given kind of production, something that is sorely lacking in the base game since most factions can only really hope for a swordsmiths guild or maybe a knight chapter house in a castle, since most potentially useful castle guilds were either far too faction-limited or simply setup in counter-intuitive ways (i.e. horsebreeders).

[Kobal2fr]

Kobal, it's not enough.

The HB's HQ is a level 3 guild that takes longer to get than a SS's guild. Most cavalry are built in castles so they can't get the extra 1 exp from the get-go. The two exp they do get from an HQ gives them only +1 att/def (not 2). They do get extra morale/stamina but it's probably not much.

In any case a +6 attack bonus completely overshadows the benefits from a +1-3 exp bonus.

+6 attack won't help them when they rout
Plus, the Horse guild gives bonus factionwide, while even with a sword HQ you *have* to train or retrain your units from that precise castle, which can be a drag, and certainly slows down your conquests if you want to wait for 30 turns of building and disbanding DFKs to get it in every castle you take.

It's true that I could change the name to "Weaponsmith's Guild" and make a ton of units eligible for points. But since every unit has a weapon, it makes the guild criteria far too broad and flavourless.

How about "Mastersmith guild" and only make elite units eligible ? Or maybe only faction specific ones ?
EDIT : gah, ninja'd by Foz.

I guess I'm ranting too much so I'll make a constructive suggestion. The bonus should be +1 or +2 instead of +6 and should apply only to swords. After all, what business does a swordsmith have making spear points and pollaxes?

It makes the spear points and poleaxes look purdy . Plus a sword blade is kind of a smithing feat, the hardest thing one can "get right" (before the invention of cannons at least), by comparison a spear point or an axe blade is child's work - those don't need to be hard yet soft at the same time, don't need to have perfect balance etc...

But kidding and semantics aside, I don't really see what your problem is.

If you're playing a western faction, you're on the bonus side and shouldn't complain. But if you think it makes the game too easy/your guys too powerfull, well, "don't do dat den".

And if you're playing an eastern faction, then it's the crummy AI that's on the bonus side and it won't take advantage of nor exploit it, if it even *gets* the guild in the first place instead of, say, 10.000 thieves guilds.

[Miracle]

@Foz:

That's nice and all, but what will you call it? "Heavy Infantryman's Guild" doesn't sound very appealing.

Also, what bonuses will you give for each class-based guild? Both weapon upgrade and exp? Exp only? Weapon upgrade only?

And don't you think +6 attack is still too much, even if other classes get to have weapons upgrades?

@Kobal:

Given the choice between +6 attack and +1-3 exp, most folks will pick +6 attack every time. Think about how much faster you will kill your enemy. Morale won't be even an issue because you're easily winning.

It's really not hard to get a SS's guild in every starting castle after ~50 turns. DFK's are comparatively powerful in 1.2 and you'll need all you can get (no point in disbanding). Heck, even the AI builds a fair number of them and gets SS's guilds with reasonable frequency. Not to mention that the SS's Master's Guild also gives +1 exp for melee cavalry as well.

Yeah I've also heard of, "if it hurts when you do that, don't do it." But most players including the AI will build SS's guilds naturally so this is pretty important to address.

[Husar]

I couldn't say that the bonus feels like a 6 point difference from my experience. I always got the feeling that my troops behaved rather similar with or without the weapons upgrade, so the +1 sounded about right to me.
I'm quite surprised now, maybe I should test this.

edit: Done and wow, never noticed such a grave difference before!
I did notice some difference in unit strength and killing speed before but it never ocurred to me that weapon upgrades could be responsible, after seeing some weapon-upgraded DFKs beat another group of DFKs easily with around 70 men left, I guess I'm converted.

[crpcarrot]

er before we compare exp upgrades with weapons upgrades wouldnt it be good to igure out the actual imapct of the upgrade first.

what i mean is if a 1 point weapon upgrade actually gives +6 attack then wouldnt an exp increase showing a 1 point increase also be giving a bigger increase than displayed? has anyone tested this out?

[Fußball]

@Foz:That's nice and all, but what will you call it? "Heavy Infantryman's Guild" doesn't sound very appealing.

I believe what Foz meant was to consider it more of a Blacksmith's guild. One which specializes in making better weapons such as maces, warhammers and of course swords. But instead we have this guild that only is achieved by building sword units.

Tschüß!
Erich