Dck/dfk ?

[Foz]

It's been pointed out in quite a few threads that DFKs are rather problematic in the vanilla game. The upgrades from them are not better, or not better enough.

But also, DFK are also arguably too dramatic an improvement over what comes before for some factions. If you are England, or HRE, getting DFKs is the biggest technological improvement in your fighting ability. The leap up from relying on spears & militia to DFK is massive.

Maybe there should be some lower grade, less armoured sword available earlier in the tech tree? A dismounted man-at-arms or something? I suspect that name's already taken, but something that is to DFK what mounted sergeants are to mailed knights. MTW had something like that distinction, although the foot knights proper were not recruitable in SP.

I have not tried Lusted's mod yet, so maybe he has covered this. But perhaps CA could consider it for kingdoms? It would be great if that expansion adds some units to the core campaign, as VI did.

AFAIK Lusted primarily addresses it by improving the lower level units, in particular spears. Thus the leap up to DFKs is much less of one, and things are more smoothed out. It would likely be best to bump spears up some and likewise bring DFKs down a bit from vanilla levels in order to bridge the gap and differentiate DFKs from other better knights a bit more as well. I am unsure whether or not Lusted has done that, though. DFKs and other sword and shield units generally have killer animations (i.e. very fast) as well, so they will outperform their attack stat typically. So you could actually drop them to the same attack level as other lower-level units and they would still significantly outperform them. OTOH I'm not sure the moderate extra cost incurred for better knight units really warrants a much bigger difference than there already is, so it seems debatable at best.

[hoetje]

sorry for being noob,but what is dck/dfk?

[Lusted]

AFAIK Lusted primarily addresses it by improving the lower level units, in particular spears.

Well spears are still meh against infantry, but against cav they're better.

Thus the leap up to DFKs is much less of one, and things are more smoothed out.

Yeah, and generally all unit stats have been changed so thee is now a noticeable difference between DCK and DFk with DCK being the better.

[CMcMahon]

sorry for being noob,but what is dck/dfk?

Dismounted Chivalric Knights
Dismounted Feudal Knights

[TosaInu]

Hello,

Sorry, the thread title had to be edited, and so all posts (just re: topictitle).

[Slaists]

Not exactly a solution for balance betwen DCK/DFK, but IMHO DFK's should have higher upkeep cost to differentiate them (as elite knights) more from armored swordsmen (professional army) for example. A simple solution would be up raise the upkeep cost to match the per-man upkeep cost of horsed knight units. Currently, in the vanilla, 60 men DFK's cost 250 florins in upkeep, while 40 men horsed FK's cost the same. Raise the upkeep of the dismounted knights by half, to match the per-man cost of FK's: that's a 375 florins per turn. Keeping DFK armies would all of a sudden become much more problematic.

[Guru]

Not exactly a solution for balance betwen DCK/DFK, but IMHO DFK's should have higher upkeep cost to differentiate them (as elite knights) more from armored swordsmen (professional army) for example. A simple solution would be up raise the upkeep cost to match the per-man upkeep cost of horsed knight units. Currently, in the vanilla, 60 men DFK's cost 250 florins in upkeep, while 40 men horsed FK's cost the same. Raise the upkeep of the dismounted knights by half, to match the per-man cost of FK's: that's a 375 florins per turn. Keeping DFK armies would all of a sudden become much more problematic.

DFK do have higher upkeep than armored swordsmen. As far as I know DFK's upkeep is 225 while the upkeep of (English) armored swordsmen is 150. Raising upkeep costs would probably cripple the AI more than the player since the AI likes to use DFK extensively... At least after it gets bored of militia-only armies.

Guru out

[hoetje]

Dismounted Chivalric Knights
Dismounted Feudal Knights

thanks for pointing that out :)

[andrewt]

Just nerfing dfk by a lot would solve the problem. Make them a good improvement from the militia units but not good enough against the higher tech/more specialized units. Armored swordsmen, dck, etc. are better than them but not by much.