Obligatory background: This is my first Mount and Blade game, and I have got to say, I'm really buying the vision of the game as a whole, warts and all. I'm coming from primarily war strategy games like Total War, so I will be approaching my critique primarily through the lens of unit balance. That being said, let's get into it:
1. Faction Specialization
From the perspective of a newcomer, it's clear that every faction has a unique specialization, often expressed through the lore of the game itself. Vlandia with it's banner knights and crossbowmen, the Empire with it's heavily armored legionaries and cataphracts, Battanians with their elite noble archers and falxman, Khuzait and their heavily armored archer cavalry. Each of these has it's own iconic personality and a roster that highlights each of their respective strengths. Now, where does that leave Sturgia?
From the lore perspective they are a hardy and proud northern people whose iconic shielded infantry were able to best and repel the Empire's legionaries, which would imply a focus on elite melee infantry. This is what drew me to them in the first place, I personally am a sucker for the elite melee infantry archetype. In a game where typically cavalry and missiles tend to be the star players, having an army that puts the focus on the rank and file infantry is somewhat charming. A shield wall that blocks all projectiles, braces against all cavalry charges, and marches ever forward, cutting down any infantry foolhardy enough to stand in their way. This is the vision that the Sturgians seem to be selling and the vision that the Sturgian roster fails to live up to.
2. A Closer Look at Sturgian Units
Looking at the Sturgian roster alone, it's pretty diverse. You have all your infantry archetypes, a light missile cav unit, and an archer unit. Let's address the last tier of each of these units in reverse order:
The Sturgian Veteran Bowsman: Quite possibly the worst t5 basic tree archer in the game. Barbed arrows are the lowest tier arrow for a t5 troop and their leather armor makes them relatively fragile compared to their Empire, Aserai or Khuzait counterparts. Only the Empire Palatine Guard has fewer arrows due to only having one quiver, but makes up for it with incredibly high quality armor and t4 melee weapon. Sturgia being a melee infantry focused faction, I see absolutely no problem with them having the worst archer in the game, but it is worth mentioning here. It also should be said that bows are probably the best ranged weapon in the game, so even the worst bow unit in the game can still fulfill it's role adequately.
Sturgian Horse Raider: The lone missile cavalry unit on the roster, from a stat/gear perspective, there isn't anything particularly wrong with this unit. Relatively well armored, solid t4 1h sword, the biggest problem with this unit is that it uses throwing weapons. Throwing weapon missile cavalry is just not very good, but just like the archer, it can perform it's role well enough. Once again, not an issue in itself for a melee infantry focused faction.
Sturgian Ulfhednar: This is the unit where the red flags begin to appear. One of the very few units in the game that is demonstrably worse than the unit preceding it, the Sturgian Berserker. Two handed weapons units are already a very weak archetype in the current metagame. They are fodder in sieges, they get picked apart by missile units, and they die if a looter even looks at them the wrong way. The Sturgian Ulfhednar takes all these weaknesses, and dials them up to 11. When you "upgrade" this unit from the berserker you exchange a set of very decent mail armor for basically no armor at all, you
lose 20 two-handed skill, and all you get in return is a bit more athletics and a set of t1 throwing axes. This is a terrible unit in a terrible archetype. I don't know how to fix this unit, but a start would be to fix their 2h skill. If they are set on committing to the unarmored berserker archetype, they need at least 200 athletics, because if I've learned anything from playing this game, it's that armor is king.
Sturgian Veteran Warrior: The single shining beacon of the entire Sturgian roster that carries the entire faction on it's back. It's a good axe/shield infantry unit with throwing javelins. In the beta 1.1.0, they are tentatively being given a set of brass lamellar where they previously had nothing in the cape slot, which will make them relatively durable, compared to live 1.0.10, where they had relatively low armor. My only complaint is that even this unit, the best Sturgia has to offer, is only about on-par with the Empire's legionary, whereas pretty much every other empire unit is superior to the Sturgian role equivalent.
Sturgian Shock Troop: The awkward and less popular younger brother of the veteran warrior. It also gains the same shoulder upgrade as the veteran in the beta, but still trades a full tier of stats, significantly worse armor and throwing weapons in exchange for a t5 spear, making it the only max rank spear unit on the basic roster. If all that wasn't enough, it faces the biggest problem of them all: spear units just kind of suck, and issue we will revisit later. For the time being, there is basically no reason to ever take this unit over the veterans.
Sturgian Spearmen: <rant> I was only going to look at t5 units for this, but the spearmen is just too egregious to ignore. This unit is so bad. It's the precursor to the veteran and the shock troops, but for some unknown reason it trades it's large shield that it has in t3 and t5 for a pathetic tiny cavalry shield that has never blocked a projectile in the history of the world. They also have leather armor, which, for your main frontline t4 infantry, is absolutely pathetic. The t3 soldiers are usually preferable to these disgraces, because as least they have usable shields. Someone ran an 80 v 80 battle of Sturgian Spearmen vs Sturgian
Bowmen who were ordered not to fire their bows, and the bowmen won. The t4 Sturgian bowmen is literally a better melee infantry unit than the dedicated sturgian t4 melee infantry unit. </rant>
Looking at the basic roster overall, we are left with a very solid melee t5 unit... and not a whole lot else. Aside from the Veteran, the best that a base Sturgian unit can hope for is: "Can perform it's role only slightly worse than the alternatives."
3. Spears Kind of Suck
The biggest problem with a faction that specialized in melee infantry is the fact that spear units just aren't very good at their job. Some testing has been done, and it turns out that Vladian Voulgier's are more effective anti-cavalry tools than Vladian Pikeman. Apparently Sturgian
Berserkers are better anti-cavalry units than Sturgian Spearmen, although they are both generally pretty poor at it. 2H units in general are more effective at taking down cavalry units than spears, at least when it comes to AI. Cavalry in this game are already the answer to pretty much every problem. They mow down ranged units, chase down fleeing units, slam into the flanks of engaged melee infantry, they are the solution to most problems that the game can throw at them. But charging cavalry into a line of braced spearmen should be pretty much suicide, and mechanically, that is just not the case. This makes spear units almost always a worse option over sword and board alternatives, who are much better against infantry.
4. Noble Lines
This, in my opinion, is by far the most egregious injustice done against the Sturgian roster. Noble lines should be the hallmark of a faction that embody it's strengths. Think Battanian Fian Champions, Imperial Elite Cataphracts, Vlandian Banner Knights, Khuzait Khan's Guards: each the epitome of their respective factions. The Sturgian Noble line starts as a shielded spear unit with throwing axes, that was shaping up to be an analog to the veteran and then half way through the tree changes it's mind and becomes the Druzhinnik. 220 Bow skill on a unit that doesn't even have a ranged weapon. 60 Polearm skill, when it's primary weapon is a spear. A heavy cavalry unit that is never mentioned or referenced anywhere in the lore or perceived play-style that Sturgia embodies. The saddest part is the Varyag Veterans, the 3rd level of this unit, is actually a better spearmen than the Sturgian Spearmen, due to the better armor and throwing axes, even if it only has 15(
!!!) in the throwing skill.
This entire line needs to be reexamined from the ground up. Sturgia doesn't need a bargain bin cataphract with a broken skill allocation. You know what I'd want to see for the noble line? An upgraded Skolder Veteran Brotva. This is the unique line of troops that the lake-rat Sturgian subfaction has. Spear + Axe + Throwing Javelins with the iconic big shield and a sane stat lineup. Slap the veteran armor on this bad-boy and you have the most the most elite melee infantry unit in the game. A unit worthy of being called a t6 noble unit that embodies Sturgia's strengths rather than this broken and disappointing compromise.
Edit: Here are the calculated armor values for t3 and t4 spear/shield infantry. The more I dig into the numbers, the more outraged I become...
T3 Spearmen:
- Empire: 29/32/24/23 - 108 (Total)
- Khuzait: 28/33/17/18 - 96
- Battania: 28/23/13/22 - 86
- Vlandia: 18/15/18/14 - 65
- Aserai: 21/14/10/16 - 61
- Sturgia 35/12/2/12 - 61
T4 Spearmen:
- Empire: 32/56/45/28 - 161 (Total)
- Aserai: 28/26/32/10 - 119
- Battania: 32/44/17/22 - 115
- Sturgia: 26/26/24/29 - 105
- Khuzait: 26/22/33/19 - 100
- Vlandia: (n/a, no spear/shield variant, only Billmen
Note Sturgia barely edge out Khuzait here, but their armor is weighted toward their
legs, and the Khuzait Spearmen get Javelins in t4, both of which far outweigh any extra leg armor.
Edit 2: I limited my focus in this post purely to the units and how they are balanced, another user made a good post outlining the economic/AI issues Sturgia faces:
https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...p-tree-liege-ai-economy-and-geography.414479/
Big Edit 3:
I manually modified the game data files so that custom battles would contain each of the desired units for testing. After these modifications, I started a 250 v 250 battle of Sturgian Units vs each of other factions equivalent units. I then recorded these tests, which are linked below. For your convenience, I have compiled a chart showing whether the Sturgian unit won or lost the battle. I replicated this design across many of the later tier troops and types:
| Empire | Aserai | Vlandia | Battania | Khuzait |
|---|
| T5 Ranged | Lose | Lose | Lose | Lose* | Lose |
| T5 Missile Cav | Lose | Lose | n/a | (Lose) | Lose |
| T3 Infantry | (Lose) | (Lose) | Win | (Lose) | Lose |
| T4 Infantry | Lose | Lose | Lose | Lose | Lose |
| T5 2H Infantry | Win** | Lose | (Lose) | Lose | n/a |
| T6 Heavy Cav | Lose | Lose | Lose | n/a | n/a |
| T5 Infantry (Veterans) | Tie | Win | Win | Win*** | (Win) |
| T5 Infantry (Shock Troop) | Win | Win | Win | Win | Win |
- Win = Sturgia Wins
- Lose = Sturgia Loses
- () = Close Match (~50 or less remaining)
- * = Used Battanian Heroes, the t4 noble line. Fians or Fian Champions would be a slaughter
- ** = Imperial Elite Menavliaton are technically polearm units, so are probably more of an anti-cavalry unit than an anti-infantry one.
- *** = Used Wildlings instead of Oathsworn since it is a closer analog
While these results were roughly in line with my expectations and for the most part speak for themselves, there were a couple of unexpected results:
- Different units of the same type can have different gear. Each unit has up to 3 different gear sets, and each unit is randomly given one of these sets. There can be quite a variation between these gear sets, for example, Shock Troops have 3 different possible shields and 2 different cape slot items. They can have lamellar plate shoulders or a 2 armor scarf. They can also have the typical round shield, a kite shield, or the ****ty t4 spearman shield. Another interesting example is the Vlandian Sergeant, who can have a mace, a sword or a 2h axe as a backup weapon.
- Sturgia has the worst t4 infantry of any faction. The Sturgian Spearmen lost overwhelmingly to every other factions t4 equivalent. It wasn't even close.
- Sturgia has the worst ranged unit of any faction*. As long as you count the battanian noble line, which I think is fair. They get crushed by the third tier of the noble Battanian line, and there are two upgrades above that.
- Sturgia has the second worst t3 infantry in the game. The only unit that lost to the Sturgian Soldier was the Vlandian Infantry and Vlandian Spearmen. Although, I must say they over performed compared to my expectations. Even their losses were quite close. I think the Sturgian Soldiers "Success" can be attributed to their head armor. They have the best helmet of the entire t3 roster, and when you get in mosh-pit fights, AI often spams overhead attacks aimed at the head, so having good head armor really makes a difference here.
- Sturgia has the second worst 2h infantry in the game. Throwing axes help a little bit here, but the ulfhedhar really are bottom of the barrel. 2H units are already a questionable niche, and this is one of the worst units of that niche. If you want a dedicated 2H unit, take the Aserai Mameluke Palace Guards. They are absolute tanks and were carving through Ulfhednar like they were nothing.
- Sturgia, predictably, has the worst heavy cavalry noble line. Part of this can be written off to mismatched stats. Another small thing to note, is that they are quite slow for heavy cav.
- Veterans are pretty great infantry. Not much to say here, the only unit that could beat them head-to-head was the Imperial Legionaries. Their stats and gear really do speak for themselves.
- Shock Troops are actually amazing? This was completely unexpected. On paper, they are inferior to the veterans in every way. Lower armor, lower stats, worse shields and chance of having a ****ty tiny shield. The dark horse here was their secondary weapon: a tier 5 war-razor and some advantageous AI. When the shock troops approach, they approach with their shields in front of them and axe drawn, which keeps them alive from projectiles, but once they get in melee range, they switch to their 2h war-razor. Remember when I said AI spam overheads once they get into a very tight lined battle? Well they start swinging these crazy 2h pole-arms overhead, which will easily 1 shot heavy infantry. They absolutely melt even the heaviest of infantry. The downside of this, of course, being that they swap their weapons when they reach the enemy line. This often means they take a fair number of losses before they get a chance to start carving through enemy infantry.
Links:
T5 Ranged:
T5 Missile Cav:
T3 Infantry:
T4 Infantry:
T5 2H Infantry:
T6 Noble Cav:
https://youtu.be/r1HOV58oRB0
T5 Infantry (Veterans):
https://youtu.be/lTIByzhtbFI
T5 Infantry (Shock):
https://youtu.be/7a3WGDTP9Pg
Shock Troops vs Imperial Elite Cataphracts:
https://youtu.be/LVXL-NccUIk
It turns out, Shock Troops can beat Imperial Elite Cataphracts in a 1 to 1 ratio.
These units are absolute monsters, now I know why they have such low armor and stats. The t5 war-razor is just insane. This changes things.
(But still please fix the Spearmen, Ulfhednar and Druzhinniks, they really are atrocious).
