why is archery so broken in this mod and everything else just pales at its side?

[Oldtimer]

That's no fun...
...and inconsiderate person.

Haha, it happens everywhere. You see the same familiar topics appear on almost every forum where mods are concerned. And majority of the time it revolves around what a person considers to be balance.

Perhaps I'm just a person who likes to do things themselves. Learn by doing, is such a great way to become familiar with mods (especially WB mods), as most aspects can be altered without too much effort. In my last PoP game, I completely re-worked the Pendor faction into my own Kernow (Cornwall) faction in a matter of days, merely using some basic knowledge of mentioned programs. Then used Paint.net to create custom banners and a couple of fancy Saint Piran shields for my CKO. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy.

Altering damage on weapons isn't too different. But it will obviously screw with the standard balancing, and every aspect will need looking into. You can't just go "make bows weaker" and expect there to be no repercussions later on lol.

Leonion has been great to us.

Yeah, Leon really went all-out with making his presence known here, for quite some time. Especially when it came to customising the older versions. Worth his weight in gold, that's for sure.

Hi,

you wouldn`t perchance mind to release your mod as a submod? Provided the devs accept that?

Rgds, Oldtimer

 

[kevinflemming]

you wouldn`t perchance mind to release your mod as a submod?

Sorry, mate. I recently formatted my HDD and re-installed Win10 (just felt like it needed to be done, after four years of constant abuse), and didn't back up anything. Clean slate protocol. That game had been long-finished, so I felt no desire to keep the altered mod or save files.

It was fairly easy to create the custom troop tree. The most time was spent going back and forth between Morgh's and the cheatmenu looking for equipment that created the custom Celtic/Anglo-Saxon look for each troop. A little bit of embellishment was used of course, with certain aspects, such as names and weaponry.

I might feel the desire to meddle with the Occult at some point in the future. To which I'll gladly pass on any conversions to others, should they wish to use them. But for now, I'm having a rather large break from most games in general (it's been a few months already). Feeling rather burned-out, and I now have a girlfriend to focus my efforts in life towards. So realistically, in the time spent waiting, it's probably quicker to grab a couple of programs and have a bash yourself. You're more than welcome to message me for help, or if you'd like me to knock-up a custom shield or something should you feel that your Paint skills aren't worthy. 

 

[Oldtimer]

@kevinflemming

THX for your attn. The chances for mine to begin modding are slim but if the improbable happens I might use your kind offer.

Rgds, Oldtimer

 

[Veolfen]

Oldtimer try downloading Morgh's editor.

It's really easy to use, you will be able to tweak stuff yourself just with this.

It could initiate you to modding and maybe you'll investigate further

 

[kevinflemming]

@kevinflemming

THX for your attn. The chances for mine to begin modding are slim but if the improbable happens I might use your kind offer.

Rgds, Oldtimer

No problem. If you ever do get around to it, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to do. Looks quite daunting at first, but once you know one or two basic things and familiarise yourself with the UI, the rest just falls into place and you'll be knocking-out overhauls with ease.

Oldtimer try downloading Morgh's editor.

It's really easy to use, you will be able to tweak stuff yourself just with this.

It could initiate you to modding and maybe you'll investigate further

That's how I got started with Occult meddling. Just arsing around with Morgh's, then branched into editing banners and such. No idea about the code-side of WB, though. Looking at it hurts my poor brain. Did a few tweaks on older versions with Leon's tweak topics, but that's it.

Converting a faction is dead simple, just like altering values on equipment to make a mod more to your own personal tastes. Probably learn it in an hour or so.

 

[MrGrendel]

i feel that i must speak my opinion about the overall "balance" in this mod, because it feels really off

First off, to be fair, the underlying problem is probably with the relative simplicity of the base game as well as design choices there. I am not an expert on PoP either.

Considering that, however, it sounds like it fits perfectly with typical hollywood (or longbow/english-prejudiced) perception of how armor (speak: "cardboard") and ranged worked. It's one of the most widespread misconceptions in modern times about the medieval era, right up there with 20 pound swords and "knights couldn't get up," despite there being quite a lot of contemporary evidence that was to the contrary. I am thinking, for example, of the saracen chronicler's description of the "terrible" sight of european warriors walking around looking like pincushions because their arrows did nothing to harm them, or the recorded note of purchase from one european king who ordered hundreds of layered gambesons, because they made warriors, according to him, impervious to missile fire.

This is reinforced by gaming developers who intentionally nerf the historical usefulness of armor quite a lot for "balance" reasons, and simply because a generation of twitch gamers wants quick resolutions, which does not lend itself to long duels and battles where men line up and bombard each other before engagement, which is exactly what makes attrition via ranged useful. Look, for example, to the now abandoned game War of the Roses, where initially armor was quite historical, but the developers caved to some minor but vocal complaints that it was "too good" and made combat take too long. (Despite this, armor remained quite good at deflecting light cutting attacks.)

Anyway, rambling aside, my recommendation is to adjust the values yourself, it's not too difficult, I routinely do it with some mods. Off the bat, I would first make sure all ranged weapons do cutting instead of piercing, because from everything I have learned about the topic, that is the best representation in Warband.* I might also tweak armor soak and redux values up a few points, no more than 10. After that I would compare bows and xbows etc to vanilla and bring the values back down if they exceed them by a lot.

The soak and reduction values are super easy to change, they are global and in a single file, I think module.ini. I would first check if PoP reduces these values from vanilla. They should be at least as high as in vanilla, imo, but not too much higher, either. This is assuming PoP doesn't radically change values overall, but I can't think of a good reason that it should. Changing weapon damage types requires checking each one, but will be much easier if you get one of the troop editors for Warband.

*That would not be true if it were possible to make different armor categories have different soak/reduction values per damage type. Then you could have maille that stopped cuts cold but did less for piercing and nothing for blunt attacks, layered gambeson that stops piercing attacks cold, but does less for cutting and blunt, and so on. Naturally this explains why armor was always layered. Warriors would wear a padding with maille armor for just this sort of reason, plus it takes the force out of the attacks on the maille - there's a reason smiths work things against an anvil. The common weakness in all these armors was one thing: system shock and trauma from sheer force and impact. That explains with perfect logic the arms race that favored longer or heavier weapons with serious impact followed by pin-point thrusting accuracy to the less-armored joints that your disorienting attack hopefully exposed... until gunpowder weaponry improved and literally blew it all away, a feat that none of it's ranged predecessors even remotely managed.

As a side note, one thing that reinforces, in my mind, the fact that vanilla Warband is broken in terms of how good archery works, is the need for making the shield skill a virtual force-field against arrows. This starkly contrasts the reality of this period where shields were on the decline, because good armor was common. This fact only makes sense if you assume that common armor was so good against ranged that shields were not needed.

 

[Stavros]

Well, yeah, I agree that archers are a tad OP and infantry is less important in this mod. What would I do to balance this out is make archers useless in melee. IMO right now they have pretty ok weapons and I don't see any reason to why would you want to use a pure infantry unit when u can have a hybrid of an infantry-archer type of troop.

 

[Veolfen]

Well, yeah, I agree that archers are a tad OP and infantry is less important in this mod. What would I do to balance this out is make archers useless in melee. IMO right now they have pretty ok weapons and I don't see any reason to why would you want to use a pure infantry unit when u can have a hybrid of an infantry-archer type of troop.

No that would be an even worse balancing for archery and it wouldn't fix the main problem at all.

-IRL Archers weren't turrets that couldn't defend themselves when engaged, that's a good point to give them tools to protect themselves. But even if they can defend themselves from plebs and base infantry, most of the archers (except clarion call/ ebony gauntlet & noldors) get crushed once cavalry &/or heavy infantry reach them which is pretty normal.

-Even tho, the value of archers is wayy more worth than any other type. 1 clarion call ranger is as least 5 times more effective than a mettenheim forlorn hope.
Range damages are too high, archery should be about DPS, pressure and should only be able to kill fast lowly armored units. A full plated guy like a mettenheim greatsword should be able to wistand a lof of arrows shot : Right now a 2 handed infantry is bad since archers do everything better. Flanking ? Heavy cav is here for this ? Killing heavily armored troops ? Archers do it way better while being safer.


The best thing to balance it out is to reduce the effectiveness of archery vs high armors. That's why i personally reduced arrow&bow damages by a few points and improved armors by a few points. But it's still not enough and heavily armored troops take hugh casualties in a few seconds.

 

[Stavros]

Well, yeah, I agree that archers are a tad OP and infantry is less important in this mod. What would I do to balance this out is make archers useless in melee. IMO right now they have pretty ok weapons and I don't see any reason to why would you want to use a pure infantry unit when u can have a hybrid of an infantry-archer type of troop.

No that would be an even worse balancing for archery and it wouldn't fix the main problem at all.

-IRL Archers weren't turrets that couldn't defend themselves when engaged, that's a good point to give them tools to protect themselves. But even if they can defend themselves from plebs and base infantry, most of the archers (except clarion call/ ebony gauntlet & noldors) get crushed once cavalry &/or heavy infantry reach them which is pretty normal.

-Even tho, the value of archers is wayy more worth than any other type. 1 clarion call ranger is as least 5 times more effective than a mettenheim forlorn hope.
Range damages are too high, archery should be about DPS, pressure and should only be able to kill fast lowly armored units. A full plated guy like a mettenheim greatsword should be able to wistand a lof of arrows shot : Right now a 2 handed infantry is bad since archers do everything better. Flanking ? Heavy cav is here for this ? Killing heavily armored troops ? Archers do it way better while being safer.


The best thing to balance it out is to reduce the effectiveness of archery vs high armors. That's why i personally reduced arrow&bow damages by a few points and improved armors by a few points. But it's still not enough and heavily armored troops take hugh casualties in a few seconds.

IDK how would that make it worse. Archers being able to defend themselves against infantry through melee is pretty OP tbh. I mean look at their weaponry, its pretty much the same if not better than the infantry(the same case is for shields too, some archers have better shields than the infantry..ok). The stats are the same in power strike proef. being the only thing that is slightly worse in melee compared to the infantry. Sure, KOs should be the exception here, but common archers  being pretty much on par with common infantry? thats a bit bad IMO. I am ok with archery doing so much damage, actually I think thats the main reason I play PoP, but if devs want to do something about it to make it more fair for the infantry I think that would be the main problem to solve here. After all its just my opinion, I didn't came here hoping it will change something, just giving my feedback.

 

[Veolfen]

That would make it worse because it would be dumb to not give an archer something to defend himself if someone reaches him. They aren't turrets lol, they're supposed to be humans.

Also it's not a better way of balancing because it's easier to level up an empire legionnary than an armored crossbowman or a ravenstern ranger but the result is the same :
-The range units will annihilate legionnaries by dozen before the legionnary reach them.
-Once reached, even tho they can defend themselves, legionnaries will take them out very fast. So archers aren't better than melee units in melee.

So no, they aren't OP by being able to defend themselves, they don't do much once reached most of the time, they just kill brigands, peasants & militia in melee. Everything else kick their asses (not speaking of KO troops who are knights with bows, they are very problematic there, but KO are overkill compared to the kingdoms troops).

In any case, in common troop trees or with KOs units, archers are the best unit simply by the fact each archer will kill 3 to 10 units before infantry reach them. Even more if your line hold for long enough. (the reason why Huscarls & Kraken are the best infantry, thanks to their big shields). And let's not speak of clarion call, silvermists & noldor who OS (or at least 2 shot) anything with insane accuracy.

It's not just "my opinion", it's an opinion a lot of people have, and it's how medieval war worked. Archers weren't butchers that would annihilate the whole battlefield, but also they weren't disarmed ladies in distress once attacked in melee.


Have you tried doing a single pure melee playthrough (or even cavalry) without using range with normal damages parameters ?

But even tho I like to point out it's a problem, i don't think it's a reason to be enraged by this problem like the author and that's why i suggest to people to balance things themselves.

In the current state of balance, tell me the point of picking 2 handed wielding troops instead of more archers for example ^^

 

[Stavros]

That would make it worse because it would be dumb to not give an archer something to defend himself if someone reaches him. They aren't turrets lol, they're supposed to be humans.

Also it's not a better way of balancing because it's easier to level up an empire legionnary than an armored crossbowman or a ravenstern ranger but the result is the same :
-The range units will annihilate legionnaries by dozen before the legionnary reach them.
-Once reached, even tho they can defend themselves, legionnaries will take them out very fast. So archers aren't better than melee units in melee.

So no, they aren't OP by being able to defend themselves, they don't do much once reached most of the time, they just kill brigands, peasants & militia in melee. Everything else kick their asses (not speaking of KO troops who are knights with bows, they are very problematic there, but KO are overkill compared to the kingdoms troops.

In any case, in common troop trees or with KOs units, archers are the best unit simply by the fact each archer will kill 3 to 10 units before infantry reach them. Even more if your line hold for long enough. (the reason why Huscarls & Kraken are the best infantry, thanks to their big shields).

It's not just "my opinion", it's an opinion a lot of people have, and it's how medieval war worked. Archers weren't butchers that would annihilate the whole battlefield.
Have you tried doing a single pure melee playthrough (or even cavalry) without using range with normal damages parameters ?

But even tho I like to point out it's a problem, i don't think it's a reason to be enraged by this problem by the author and that's why i suggest to people to balance things themselves.

In the current state of balance, tell me the point of picking 2 handed wielding troops instead of more archers for example ^^

Your main problem is you are comparing real life situations to a mod where Elves are literally The Superior Race. Its a game, not real life. Its pretty clear the devs want to keep archery as it is. I don't have anything against it. Its their mod. I know what you are talking about, I know that archery is OP. And yes, I have tried using infantry and they are pretty much useless against archers. I think one of the main reasons is the thing I mentioned above, another being the fact that archery does ton of damage. But in the end the AI will never have archery only armies(at least from what I have seen). So the player is the one that can abuse the OP archery or the Noldor which should be the master race anyway and its pretty much the endgame part of the mod and it can be avoided anyway by being friendly with them. 2 handed troops are even more useless than the ones that have shields but from what I know they are supposed to be used more in auto-calc.

 

[RumbleBee]

MrGrendel, to your point of Pendor inheriting issues from vanilla Warband, which is certainly fair to say, I just want to add that vanilla loosely models up the high middle ages before full plate armor existed. The most advanced armor in native is a coat of plates which offers excellent protection from but not immunity to missiles in gameplay. Native's armor system is not designed to model the degree of armor found in Pendor.

Side note, archers in Pendor are not just capable of defending themselves in melee but in some cases are actually a little stronger man-for-man in melee than their direct melee infantry counterparts. Coming back to the native issues, in my mind this exacerbates the issue of the AI generally performing better as cavalry and archers than as melee, largely due to the relatively poor control the player has over their troops which isn't improved too much in Pendor.

 

[Veolfen]

We both have different visions of how this should be balanced out, but it's not how the pendor dev team wants it anyway !

The main point is : Archery is far stronger than the other type of troops, how it should be balanced differ between us but one thing is sure :

If people are unhappy with the balancing, they should just do the balancing themselves 



Also it's a bit sad for 2 handed troops to be only reliable on autoresolve !

 

[sher]

Before "balancing something out" one should learn how to play game first. Otherwise he'll be "balancing out" his own inability to play and nothing else. If you can't use melee infantry properly - it's your own issue and mod has nothing to do with it.

 

[Veolfen]

Before "balancing something out" one should learn how to play game first. Otherwise he'll be "balancing out" his own inability to play and nothing else. If you can't use melee infantry properly - it's your own issue and mod has nothing to do with it.

You really should calm down that agressivity, you won't go far and that doesn't make your statement more legit then other people statements. 

I know pretty well how to use melee infantry, but that doesn't change the fact that ranged troops are the bread & butter of pendor 

It's a solo game, and if people don't like the balance, they're kind of free to balance it like they want. If they want to give 10K hps to melee troops, they can, they won't bother anyone.

Also, if you directly point at me with your intervention, don't worry, i have almost a thousand hour on warband (and mainly pendor & warsword conquest) and hundred of thousand hours on RPGs in general, i'm pretty good at balancing stuff without ruining anything, especially since i do it AFTER learning how to play (i guess 1000 hours is enough).  I wonder if you did anything else but horse archers on Pendor. After having 5-to 6 playthrough i noticed i ended up only doing horse + range to help my troop and not expose myself (so I can keep giving orders). I'm challenging myself by doing melee only in my recent playthroughs, and it points out very fast the problems non shielded infantry may encounter.

Anyway, I did my balancing and i suggest people to do the same if they're unhappy with pendor balance. Not saying it's bad, Pendor is the most popular and my favorite too for a reason, but people tastes are differents and i wanted to tweak it a bit. 
The only suggestion i would make for the balancing purpose is to not give too much stats on stuff so they don't make things too OP to avoid ruining the game experience 

 

[sher]

I know pretty well how to use melee infantry, but that doesn't change the fact that ranged troops are the bread & butter of pendor 

Doubtful, since what you're calling a "fact" is not a fact but your (wrong) opinion. Even 1 million hours will not make false statements true and another possible reason no one is arguing with adepts of this POV is just they're so wrong that it doesn't make sense to reason with them at all. Your false assumptions about me just prove whole take on this theme where people are ranting in silence. It's especially amusing since it's not a mystery how I play this game - it's written in plain text along with methods of proper troops applications but who cares?

 

[Veolfen]

You're still agressive and looking down on others, you have a serious problem of ego, i won't waste my time with you and your inability to discuss.

Also you're the first one who made false assumptions about me 

 

[sher]

You're still agressive and looking down on others, you have a serious problem of ego, i won't waste my time with you and your inability to discuss.

Also you're the first one who made false assumptions about me 

I wasn't talking to you in first place - there's no quotation of your posts or addressing you personally.
I don't mind though - perfectly in sync with other statements.

 

[Kentai]

I think archery's as strong as it needs to be. Usually the archers are lightly armored so it makes sense that it should be offset by a strong offensive capability. That offensive power is also reliant on LoS so with tactics employed they can be dealt with.

 

[ttl]

What would I do to balance this out is make archers useless in melee. IMO right now they have pretty ok weapons and I don't see any reason to why would you want to use a pure infantry unit when u can have a hybrid of an infantry-archer type of troop.

The main problem here is that it would be big time asymmetric between the human and the AI. It would make archers only barely worse for the human, but a lot worse for the AI. Since obviously the human can press melee on enemy archers a lot better than the AI can. It's fair enough if you wish to do this to your game, it "makes battlefield tactics more important", which in itself can be considered a good thing. But I think it is more than counterbalanced by making the AI challenge less overall.