The Khergits and Nords are stomping of everyone. [RANT]

[JeezboozDX]

The Nords are bull****. They have ****ing Cavalry now, What the ****. Now they can pressure my own Cavalry off their superior Infantry.
The Khergits are for reason now amazing at taking and defending castles, isn't that supposed to be their weakness? They use Throwing weapons now which makes shield ****ing useless, and their heavy Cavalry is tanky as ****.
Swadian Cavalry and the Lords themselves only their lances even on foot so they get stomped by any unit, and Veigers get **** on my anyone.
I had fun playing fun with mod, but not anymore.

Disclaimer: This is just releasing my frustrations.

 

[soulmata]

Are you using the latest version?

Regarding the nords: The Nords should have very little cavalry, and do not receive any polearms. The Lithman branch and the Valkyries are the only ones, so about 90% of their troops are on foot.

Khergits: When I picked NE back up, I noticed that some changes to items resulted in "Light" armors getting insanely high defense values. I curbed those pretty substantially, so the Khergit non-Tarkhan lines should feel like glass cannons most of the time.

Swadians: As far as .623b, all Swadian cavalry should now ALSO spawn with a sidearm that is a 1 or 2 handed non-polearm weapon of some kind. However, I have noticed the AI still refuses to use it at times - I don't know if that's fixable, it's just the AI being dumb. I sometimes see the Paladins using their swords, and sometimes they use their lance + shield while on foot, even though I know they have a sword.

 

[JeezboozDX]

Thanks for replying soulmata.

I'm playing on the latest version. So this is my situation:

In my game, the Khergits and Nords are obliterating everyone.

The Nords have nearly conquered Vaegirs (my former faction), and Khergits have taken over Dhirim and its surrounding castles (my current faction), whilst taking over Sarranid Territory at the same time. The Rhodoks were nearly taken over at the beginning of the game by the Swadians, so they're pretty much useless,

The Nord lords I fought always spawned their cavalry after their initial wave. So after my army began winning (with heavy heavy losses) against the infantry we would immediately get mowed down by their Heavy cavalry. And If your chasing them on horseback they just javelin my shield, my horse and me to death.

Also whenever, I'm defending against Khergits siege, my archers and defenders get immediately sniped. So their is literal row red text after a few minutes into the siege, and the Khergits just breakthrough. They're heavy cavalry is stupidly tanky and use sabres and shield, so they absorb the brunt of the damage from my units and then slice them up.

 

[soulmata]

When it comes to autocalc battles and kingdom expansion, there's going to be a LOT of randommess. Every Kingdom starts with "claims" to certain lands owned by other Kingdoms, which is the primary motivation for all of the initial wars in the game. However, Kingdoms decide to go to war based on many factors, including their strength, enemy strength, number of ongoing wars, disposition of the monarch, et cetera.

This means in some games, the Nords will clear out Swadia with little effort. In others, Swadia and Vaegir will team up on the Nords and steamroll them. However, when it comes to determining winners and losers, since all kingdoms draw from similar-size recruitment pools initially and all troop strength is equal over a range, it's impossible to say who is going to come out on top at first. So, my point is, don't take just one or two games as indicative of how the AI is doing in its autocalc battles. It really only takes a little push in one direction for a steamroll to happen - say in your case, if the Sarranids were distracted by something else (say another war), it's entirely possible the Khergits began taking city after city without the Sarranids being able to respond, and with every city they captured, they had more territory to recruit from, thus snowballing out faster.

Regarding Khergit sieges: I have noticed the Khergits are very powerful in sieges when the siege map starts you in range of Javelins. However, on maps where the siege starts out further away, and I have a lot of Crossbows at my disposal, they are completely ineffective, because I can kill hundreds of them while taking virtually no losses myself.

I did recall their heavy cav and their archer cav being way too tough a few versions back, and I tried to mellow them out a bit without making them useless.

One tactic you might try that I found very useful: Bring a lot of archers, and then bring a lot of units with large shields. When the siege starts, spread your archers in a line and put the shield-holding units in a line just a tiny bit in front of them, and command them to hold. I've found that the javelins are then mostly caught up on the shields, and meanwhile my archers are thinning the defenders out. Once the javelins and arrows are done flying, I can command my heavy infantry up to fight without losing so many to javelins to the brain.