Where's the diversity between French And English troops?

[SillyEnglishKnigget]

Aside from French troops being superior on all fronts, I'm talking about the faction descriptions:

English: superb longbowmen, strong infantry, poor variety of cavalry.

French: best cavalry in West, good infantry in late period, weak infantry in early period

These are such misleading statements about their troop types. The only accurate description is of the French and English cavalry. As the French player, you don't ever need crusader knights in order to field dominant cavalry troops. For the English, I'd even take the Norse War cleric over the pitiful English Knight.

French armored sergeants are excellent early period infantry. With a decent general they almost never rout and they hold their own against cavalry and other infantry - even dismounted knights in my experience. Ordinary sergeant spearmen are also very fine troops to fill out your ranks with and they only have a few less armor points when fully upgraded.

What do the English have in the early period? Levy spearmen. And Billmen. That's it. Oh, and the French have Voulgiers. I'd like to watch a single Voulgier soldier fight a Billman. They'd both rout.

Late period troops? Both get dismounted English/Noble Knights with poleaxes which are supposed to be powerful offensive troops, but neither seem to outperform Dismounted Feudal Knights. Speaking of which, Armored Swordsmen are just a slightly cheaper version of Dismounted Chivalric Knights. When it comes to battle tactics, Dismounted Feudal Knights do a perfectly good job despite having one less armor point. So the sword infantry of both sides are about equal. Yes, the English have Heavy Billmen but they end up losing as many men as they're able to kill.

What about archers? The English have the feared Retinue Longbowmen who have their famous bodkin armor piercing arrow that.. erm... is one point weaker than the armor piercing arrow of the Scots Guard. The English longbowmen have a slight advantage in defense against enemy archers, where the Scots Guard have melee strength approaching Feudal Knights, and eleven morale points, where longbowmen only have five. Longbowmen are practically peasants with strong hands to string a bow and weak bladders for when that fails.

I also forgot to mention Aventuriers with their effective volley damage, nine points of morale and good melee strength. I think both these units make up for the lack of sharpened stakes, don't you?

England really got the short end of the stick when it comes to their so-called advantages. Are there any mods out there to rectify this?

[Iavorios]

Basically you are right, but the stakes are important. You can do terrible thighs with them to the enemy's cavalry. If it charges. But then again i do like to use a lot of cavalrly and four or less units of archers in my stacks. And the stakes are useless if you move your archers, or if the enemy goes around them. Or if you meat the elephants of the timurids ho totaly ignore them. I prefer the armored sergeants or mercs do fight the cav. because they are far more tactically flecsablle, and way more effective. On the other hand armored swordsmen are very good unit, the only one i really like in the hole english army. I am basically more of a french fan (ONLY in TW games) but i thing that it is rediciluos the Danes or the Venetians to have cheaper and faster acses to heavy cav. than the english. So yes i do thing they need some reenforcement.

[Rhyfelwyr]

French definetely have superior cavalry and slightly better melee infantry, but the English will always win comfortably in a archer battle. OK French get the Scots Guard, but not until they have a Huge City, and even then Scots Guard take forever to replenish their recruitment pool. Aventuriers also take an age to get.

England however gets longbowmen with just a bower, and their AP and long range makes them far superior to the French equivalents.

Plus English archer stakes can make French cavalry pretty useless. Just stick a few Dismounted English Knights behind the stakes and let the carnage ensue...

[Ramses II CP]

The early period infantry comment refers to Armored Swordsmen, which the English get quickly and which will dominate any of the French early infantry.

As far as the bowmen, stakes are so useful against the AI it's almost an exploit, whereas against a human player stakes would be nearly useless. Don't forget the Woodsmen's guild of the English, which gives them a universal experience bonus for their longbowmen. English archers might not win 1 vs 1 but they don't have to fight that way as they can be trained sooner, at higher experience, and in far greater volume.

[SillyEnglishKnigget]

Basically you are right, but the stakes are important. You can do terrible thighs with them to the enemy's cavalry. If it charges. But then again i do like to use a lot of cavalrly and four or less units of archers in my stacks. And the stakes are useless if you move your archers, or if the enemy goes around them. Or if you meat the elephants of the timurids ho totaly ignore them. I prefer the armored sergeants or mercs do fight the cav. because they are far more tactically flecsablle, and way more effective. On the other hand armored swordsmen are very good unit, the only one i really like in the hole english army. I am basically more of a french fan (ONLY in TW games) but i thing that it is rediciluos the Danes or the Venetians to have cheaper and faster acses to heavy cav. than the english. So yes i do thing they need some reenforcement.

Armored swords can only be trained once you upgrade a castle to a fortress, just like feudal knights. Aside from the reduced maintenance cost and increased numbers that can be trained, their effectiveness in combat are the same.

I agree English archers are also avaialble in large numbers, but their best longbowmen need a decent citadel upgrade to train anyway, just like cities with huge stone walls are needed for scots guard. I never have trouble fully upgrading my cities that way, and they have the added benefit of being able to train scots guard almost everywhere in your kingdom.

[Cheetah]

Still the English can get LBs en masse early on which is huge advantage. The LBs are far more superior than any of the archers/XBs the french has early.

But I agree that the later scott guard/ aventurier combo is just as good if not better (though LBs still have the stake advantage), and also agree that the early french infantry is not weak at all (as it is the standard western inf.)

Though have to add that the 150 upkeep of armoured swordsmen is a huge advantage compared to the 225 of DFK.

[SillyEnglishKnigget]

Which is offset by England's relatively small starting position. France can expand rather easily and rapidly into its traditional territories like Bordeaux, Marseilles, Rennes, etc. I have a good French campaign going right now where I've recently annihilated Milan(those pasta-eating Italian bankers are always trying to muscle in on Europe). I started out by loading three merchants in a fleet with a general and sent it off to the holy land to trade sugar. I was making a decent income right off the bat which has consistently ensured a generous cashflow up until now.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Well England gets the British Isles to turn into an economic base, always very useful.

[Daveybaby]

The major differences between the factions are their starting locations: the english get a pretty secure base of operations (once the scots are taken care of) while the french have got it pretty tough, potentially having the HRE, milan, denmark and spain as adversaries on top of the english.

As has been noted, the longbow's stakes make a lot of difference - effectively neutering the french cavalry advantage in a defensive battle. And english get longbows practically from the word go, so the two factions actually play very differently in the field, and complement each other really nicely.

And i just want to agree with the comment about the armoured swordsmen upkeep. It really makes a very big difference to the size of the standing army you can field when their support costs are 2/3 that of DFK/DCKs.

Having said that, if as the french you manage to push the english off of the mainland early on, the AI will find it very hard to regain a foothold there.

[Point_Blank]

There are many, many mods available. Most popular at TWC is probably Stainless Steel. It uses the Real Combat mod which addresses many of your complaints.

[SillyEnglishKnigget]

There are many, many mods available. Most popular at TWC is probably Stainless Steel. It uses the Real Combat mod which addresses many of your complaints.

I noticed there's a Templar faction in that mod. Are crusader chapter houses now removed if I install it?

[rvg]

...For the English, I'd even take the Norse War cleric over the pitiful English Knight...

English Knights have axes as secondary weapons and tend to slaughter their sword-wielding counterparts quite nicely in a melee after a lance charge.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I'm playng French and so far I have never seen the english longbowmen to use stakes in battles ... Doesn't the AI know how to use them??

I like playng against the english but this little AI thing is making them pretty weak oponents .. also they tend to recruit just some militia spearmen and hobilars

When I played english I used longbows a lot to get a missile superiority .. AI just won't do that

Playng french h/h v1.2

[Ramses II CP]

The AI does not use stakes. Probably rightly afraid of running it's own cavalry into them.

Oh, and Norse War Clerics use maces, not swords, which I believe have AP like axes.