Ultimate CKO infantry?

How would you arm your CKO foot knights? What equipment do you find best for foot knights and sergeants? I planned to arm my knights with shields, runed bastard swords (range and speed mostly), siege crossbow and a pack of bolts (well, pretty much Ebony Gauntlet Knights). And sergeants armed with empire haleberd, shields and shield braking javellins to throw stuff at enemy in close distance.

How would you do it? I also thought that maybe some block crushing weapon would be better than runed bastards, and also it would have been cheaper. I still can't decide what to do with my knights. I think making them cavarly would be a waste of potential as the front cavarly charge is dirty work for normal knights (on the other side we can mount them on Netherworld Chargers...), so I decided to make them ultimate foot murderers. Their purpose is to obliterate incoming cavarly as well as infantry and work rather defensively than ofensively (I am knight myself and always lure enemy to my position).

Since they need to soak a lot of damage you want them heavily armored so:

- Full Plate Armor
- Helmet (your choice)
- Mettenheim Steel Mittens
- Heavy Plate Greaves

- Fierdsvain War Axe (Bonus against shields + they can only swing it so more attacks) / Morning Star is also decent
- Ancient Engraved Shield
- Thrown weapon (your choice)
- Pendor Great Sword (2h weapons are better to deal with Cavalry or enemies in general)

Well, not counting the armor this equipment is rather very cheap (I already gave them Heraldic Plate, houndskulls, heavy greaves and mettenheim steel mittens, in future maybe I will give them Folrorn Hope armors). Why do they need two melee weapons? Isn't it better to give them one good weapon like morningstar + shield and give them extra ranged weapon?

So you think too, that some block crusher would do better than sword? Even top tier?

I gave mine:
Noldor Rune armor
Noldor leather boots
Mattenheim gauntlets
Noldor ancient shield
Eventide cape
Noldor composite bow
Noldor arrows
Runed bastard sword
Spirit horse

They have the same equipment as my knights. But then again I'm on day 2300 so probably not very practical!

They are not a foot type knights

Two handed mace to capture $prisoners$ bow & 2x arrows, nethersteed charger.

My CKO sergeants are:

Noldor Composite Bow
Blunt Steel Polehammer
Two sets of Noldor arrows

Blue Cross Helmet
Heraldic Plate Armour
Mettenheim Steel Gauntlets
Whichever was the nicest looking steel greaves

I imagine proper CKO foot knights is mostly just making a Fierdsvain Berserker or Empire Gladiator but with the armour.

I tend to go Slaver mode with my CKO Foot troops Because cha ching. Plus Blunt Damage penetrates armor about as well if no better then piercing damage so they are then great against heavily armored units.

Sergeants: Mace and shield with 2x throwing weapons if you want to deal damage before a charge, also makes them great for siege work in the first wave.

Doom Mace
Knightly Heater Shield
Broadhead Throwing Spearsx2

Heavy armor is a must, as good as can fit usually. I think I usually went with Crusader Great Helm, Polished Steel Guantlets, Polished Plate Boots, and whatever armor they could wear.

Knights: Step one: Shred enemies with the best bow avaialble. Step two: Knock out the survivors and sell them all. Step 3: Enlist more Knights, Step 4: Repeat Step 1

Doom Mace
Engraved Shield (That silver kite shield that takes 6 Shield)
Noldor Composite Bow (Long Composite Bow until they hit 6 PD)
Noldor Arrows

These guys I gave the best helm they could get which I think was Full Helm, then Forlorn Hope Breastplate, Mettenheim Gauntlets, And whatever greaves were the best. I haven't played inawhile due to computer issues thus why I can't remember exactly. Everytime I get into a battle after 5 minutes my Graphics card overheats and it crashes >.<

Foot knights? When do you want them to come online?

Other than bow+arrows,

Best equipment for foot knights is pretty much always going to be S&B+ 2x throwing weapon(in terms of raw power and ability to take on just about every scenario).

At near max stats (10 PD/PT, 500+ stats) throwing weapons (especially the empire pilae line of weapons) pretty much always one shot any troop in the game(or at least shatter their shields), sword and board takes care of the rest.

It de-horses cavalry, nails two handed infantry(one shots all of them, including immortals), breaks shield of S&B infantry and has a plank to hide behind against archers. The only thing it doesn't work well against are horse archers (read: noldor knights, other cav archers can't break their shields) on a large map because the throwing weapon's range limitations.

Your sergeants should make up for this one limitation by picking up a long ranged weapon - maiden crossbows for early game, noldor/meltine bows for late game.

Note: never give them bastard swords. They are ass. -35% to attack speed and damage sucks. You are better off with a 'arming sword' than a rune bastard sword in terms of attack speed and damage.

Apologies if this has been discussed before, but will the troops actually make use of the second bag of thrown weapons? Alternatively, if you give them a sword+shield, thrown weapon AND a polearm or 2 hander, will they spawn with and pull out the polearm/2 hander at the appropriate time?

Note: never give them bastard swords. They are ass. -35% to attack speed and damage sucks. You are better off with a 'arming sword' than a rune bastard sword in terms of attack speed and damage.

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Penalty doesnt apply to rune bastards, have you ever tried to use it?

Flingit said:

Apologies if this has been discussed before, but will the troops actually make use of the second bag of thrown weapons?

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yes, they will. Esp. if the battle is long enough/they keep enough distance.

Flingit said:

Alternatively, if you give them a sword+shield, thrown weapon AND a polearm or 2 hander, will they spawn with and pull out the polearm/2 hander at the appropriate time?

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most times, yes, again if the battle is long enough, 'cause the AI needs time to switch. or you can give them 1/2 h + shield and if the shield gets busted they automatically switch to 2h

some give morning stars + shield and 2x thrown or polearm + 3x thrown.

besides, 3x thrown is a leathal dose against pretty much any kind of enemy. with enough skill 15-20 of them will dehorse cav, smash shields, kill and then kill again (20 javeliners x 3 thrown x 10/12 ammo => 600 ammo per rank.) super effective if placed on hill and if you drive the enemy into them. with some manouvering they will handle mounted archers, except the Noldor...

serol said:

Note: never give them bastard swords. They are ass. -35% to attack speed and damage sucks. You are better off with a 'arming sword' than a rune bastard sword in terms of attack speed and damage.

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Penalty doesnt apply to rune bastards, have you ever tried to use it?

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Is this a bug?

serol said:

Penalty doesnt apply to rune bastards

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item_kinds1.txt says otherwise.

bobknight said:

Is this a bug?

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No, it's a feature.

Dusk Voyager said:

serol said:

Penalty doesnt apply to rune bastards

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item_kinds1.txt says otherwise.

bobknight said:

Is this a bug?

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No, it's a feature.

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Suuuure. 

It is a feature indeed. Just look at the troops using the weapon. They need to be deadly. 

Some weapons haven´t got the penalties they used to have in native, like the warspear and the regular spear which can be used with a shield without getting the polearm penalty. Which makes them pretty deadly for infantry,  the more if it wasn´t that easily blocked.

So then the penalty does not apply?

Seems a contradiction to this reply.

Dusk Voyager said:

serol said:

Penalty doesnt apply to rune bastards

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item_kinds1.txt says otherwise.

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Depends on the item flag(s). I think serol only said that because the runed bastard sword is too powerful for the penalty to let it down. It actually does apply in this particular case as that weapon has the exact same flags as the regular vanilla bastard sword.

Well, i'm sure i've seen this somewhere on forums before, so i'm sorry for spreading lies then. It still is incredibly fast even with shield though.

well, it starts with 118 Speed rating, so even with a big penalty it is still faster than most swords.

Having never used the bastard sword, I prefer to put Ebony knight sword on my non-blunt troops, it has the best mix of speed, damage, reach and cost of any other weapon. If my units have ridiculously high WPF (400+), I would switch to the noldor runesword to take advantage of the insane attack speed my units have. With 125 base speed and 400 WPF (or even 300), your troops can attack faster than the enemy can block, which is very important in dog fights.