Spears are weak.

[chiconspiracy]

This is a feedback towards both Single and Multiplayer.

Spears in the game are currently all considerable short to at most medium spears, both due to their lengths and improper way of holding and placement on the characters hand.
They also possess too little damage and besides than on horseback, they aren't really as effective as they should actually be.

At times, when fighting someone with a sword, it feels like you both have about the same reach, when even a short spear should outreach a long sword most of the time.
That is precisely why spearmen footwork is entirely directed to keeping a distance and swordsmen footwork is directed to closing in.

A true long spear should be about twice the size of the current longest spear in the game. (Image examples)

You can see that a long spear, at times, can be almost twice the size of a person.

And cavalry trained to be able to hold with one hand at between the half mark to 3/4 mark to the back of the pole, which would leave almost 1 to 1 and a half human bodies of length remaining.

Even for ground melee infantry, spears were mostly held closer to the back.

And lastly, comes the matter of couch lancing, which mostly was held even closer to the back of the pole, leaving almost the whole of the spear's length to the front.
You can clearly see this through jousting and how a joust lance looks like.

Their damage also needs to be upped quite a bit. Even with an armor or a helmet, the minimum damage that should be registered should be about 10 or so, as spears easily penetrated or at least dented armor and shield.
As it currently is, at times, you can strike with a lance and see it cause 3 or even 1 of damage, so not only are we losing length through improper technique, its damage is too low.

I ask the dev team to truly consider taking the time to fix the current state of spears and couch lancing in the game.


______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

deGoucan Scrolls Index

Thankfully there are some mods out addressing issues of damage and the inability of AI to use them without clipping into each other. https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/887

I'm actually working on a pike and halberd mod with 6m long pikes and 2.5m long halberds, which thanks to the author of the above, actually works somewhat well.

 

[TheChewieShow]

Unrealistic

Yea it's very unrealistic but killing 5 guys at once with one charge on my horse is fun as heck! Plus let's be honest... the game isn't realistic in the current state... A horse charging at you alone would do way more than 5 damage even without the rider equipped with a spear. Being stomped by a horse will kill a man, nevermind being stomped by a battalion of horses equipped with some heavy armor

 

[dealman]

I made a little mod for testing purposes, in very early stage as I'm not too sure how I want to balance it. But currently it only deals bonus damage to horses and horse-riders(while mounted only). Based on the speed modifiers.

In both scenarios I put 500 Sturgian Spearmen versus 250 Imperial Heavy Horsemen.

Without Mod:

428 Dead Spearmen

72 Spearmen Retreated

47 Dead Horsemen	0 Horsemen Retreated
Imperial Victorious

With Mod:

222 Dead Spearmen	0 Spearmen Retreated
246 Dead Horsemen	4 Horsemen Retreated
Sturgians Victorious

Scenario and tactics were the same. The spearmen would form up in a square in a fairly open area and once the cavalry had made their 2nd charge I ordered them all to charge the cavalry.

I did not partake in the battle myself as then my skill - or lack thereof would affect the end result and I would also take attention away from the spearmen.

While examples like these are extreme and would rarely occur in campaign or multiplayer, I do think it does highlight just how poorly spearmen perform against what they should counter to some extent.

I think cavalry should be overpowered, a cavalry charge should hurt whether you have a spear or not. But these spears should also hurt cavalry. Thus the spearmen ended up winning albeit with almost losing half their manpower.

Again I'm no expert in balancing stuff, as I'm not entirely sure what tier these units are since the CustomBattle module is fairly lackluster.

Conclusion

My own personal conclusion from watching custom battles and experimenting with these damage values, I think spear damage vs cavalry need to be increased. They're fine in terms of damage vs infantry.

I agree with others that realism or historical accuracy shouldn't be the one biggest deciding factor as to how things are balanced. Gameplay needs to be balanced and can be inspired to some extent by realistic results.

"Hidden" damage bonuses make the units feel a bit more unique and special at no real detriment to the player.

Suggested Changes

The speed modifier already works both ways but it very heavily favors the cavalry. Spears and Pikes should receive a pretty juicy bonus to the speed modifier if their weapons hit a horse.

Spearmen and Pikemen thrusting their weapon frequently results in their thrust being blocked by friendly troops behind them, this hinders their ability to perform massively.

Increasing their damage towards cavalry and making them a bit less retarded when thrusting their weapons could help make them feel like an actual counter to horsemen instead of being absolutely and utterly steamrolled.

Being able to brace spears and pikes could also go a long way.



Would like to hear your thoughts on this. Can also share the mod if anyone wants to experiment, but it's a very early prototype but has the ability to discern what weapon was used into either Spear, Pike, Lance, Throwing Spear or Javelin. It also only works for infantry versus horses and horse-riders - not the other way around(like some other spear buff mods work).

Damage can also be tweaked separately for damage versus horses and horse-riders.

 

[sjblack2014]

My own personal conclusion from watching custom battles and experimenting with these damage values, I think spear damage vs cavalry need to be increased. They're fine in terms of damage vs infantry.

I have drawn the exact opposite conclusion with my own changes. I've buffed the speed (decreased weight on spear poles and thrust-only spearheads), the reach (spears are held further back). I'm also using version 1.3 of this mod https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/887? (makes it so that you have no "minimum range" when using a spear, as well as fixing the issue of thrusts blocked by friendly shields from behind. I realize that eliminating minimum range is unrealistic, but without a zoning/keep-away mechanic for long spears, it's the only way to compensate). I've made NO direct damage increases. With these changes I have found that a shield wall with spearmen deals very well with cavalry, if not too well.

Problem: they still suck against infantry though! Even with all these changes, they're still subpar to swords against infantry! Now I'm trying to find a way to make the spears in my game good against infantry, but simply buffing their damage would make them OP against cav (it would also make couching pointless, since with increased damage, an active spear stab from cavalry would almost always result in a 1hk anyways, so no need for the cav to couch).

I'd very much like to know how you tweak the damage against horse and horse-riders, since I'd like to increase spear damage while decreasing that modifier.
In fact, the only damage increase I need is "spear used by infantry against infantry", nothing else. Is this possible to do?

Thanks for all the work you've put in so far!!

 

[dealman]

That's rather peculiar because I tried his spear mod and also got the supposed dependency, some troop collision mod. For me they really didn't improve too much against cavalry, they still got absolutely steamrolled. Maybe using square formation isn't the best tactic - how did you fight 'em?

Personally I dunno if I agree that they should be more effective against infantry. Sure I think their minimum distance should be reduced, or even removed entirely. Damage I think it's fine as even a T3 spear deals a nice chunk of damage if you stab them in the face.

I quite like the concept of units countering one another instead of attempting to rely entirely on realism or historical accuracy.

I'm not really sure why you want to decrease damage towards cavalry? Cavalry is already vastly overpowered(rightfully so) and reducing spearmen's effectiveness against horses would make them far, far more powerful.

The way I modify the damage is by making my own MissionBehaviour which inherits from MissionLogic class. Then I just override OnScoreHit to track whenever an agent was hit and I can get all kinds of juicy data from there.

The better way would probably be to make your own damage model, though. Since my damage is hidden, for example it may say you did 27 damage to a horse but in fact did like 40 or 50 or so.

But it's solely for testing purposes at the moment so will switch to a damage model later. But yes, that is very much possible to do.

 

[mr_nifty]

The really important perks are:

- Push Back (125): enemy is pushed back when blocking with shield
- Keep at Bay (225): enemy is pushed back upon hit

I've never got the polearm high enough to test these two perks, but if they do what the description implies, these two perks should actually be a DEFAULT characteristic of spears. Conversely, it also means that unless your polearm skill is at least 225, all spear-type polearms are basically a dud weapon, only useful on horseback.

Frankly speaking, even if these two perks work, the "Push Back" should be "enemy is pushed back upon block of any type." Realistically speaking, assuming multiplayer, how often will you be actually able to land a hit with a spear with only two variations of attack that is telegraphed from a mile away, with default thrust speed hardly ever going above 90 in a decent weapon? A crafted 124 length super short spear that's hardly a tick longer than a two-handed sword (actually, considering the position of the grip, actual reach is shorter than two-handed sword) barely comes around 90 thrust speed. In contrast, decent two-handed swords are around 110~115 reach with over 110 swing speed.

Thrusting a spear that short and light, is supposed to be slower than an all-metal two handed sword with most of it's weight at the blades??? I mean, come on...!


Another good example, is testing spears out in 1-vs-many combat, for example maybe 4~5 looters. Considering the advantage of the spear, you'd imagine the spear would be capable of keeping multiple enemies at bay, poking and pushing enemies from far away, whereas other weapons would be soon overwhelmed. Well, in actual practice, swords can put up a fight but swarmed easily, two-handed swords have a slightly better chance since it can take out enemies more quickluy, 2h-axes are the best option with it's multi-hit swings... and spears are absolutely the worst.

This situation turns around when you level up your athletics so high, that your back pedaling is fast enough to match enemy advancement. Then things become significantly easier. This means, because the spear cannot hold the distance advantage it's supposed to have, you need to have athletics to substitute the missing function of the spear. Situational, but still ample evidence, I must say.

+1

 

[kweassa]

...which brings everything back to the two perks of "Keep at Bay" and "Push Back," which should be, the default characteristic of all spear-type, non-swinging polearms ... as well as, optionally, "Horse-killer" as well.

If those three perks are given as default, then I'd wager even the AI would do pretty well as a group.

 

[sjblack2014]

Maybe using square formation isn't the best tactic - how did you fight 'em?

I put a line or two of spear-shield in shield wall formation, have another line of vlandian voulgiers behind them, and have the cav charge in from the front while the infantry stays stationary. His mod combined with speed/reach buffs make spearmen shred cavalry for me.

I quite like the concept of units countering one another instead of attempting to rely entirely on realism or historical accuracy.

Well, they do. Close order infantry (spear/pike-armed of course) counters infantry and cavalry from the front, which counters the flanks of spearmen, loose order infantry, and archers, which counters horse archers and infantry with no shields etc, you get my gist. Close order spearmen/pikemen get countered by its own lack of tactical flexibility and mobility.

The simplistic sword inf>spear inf>cav>sword inf "rock-paper-scissor" is a tired-old trope that's not reflective of reality nor conducive to good gameplay IMO.

The way I modify the damage is by making my own MissionBehaviour which inherits from MissionLogic class. Then I just override OnScoreHit to track whenever an agent was hit and I can get all kinds of juicy data from there.

I guess I'd have to finally learn dll modding then. Would you share your mod perhaps so I can see an example? Thanks in advance

 

[dealman]

I guess I'd have to finally learn dll modding then. Would you share your mod perhaps so I can see an example? Thanks in advance

Sure! It's an early prototype just for playing around, but should be enough for what you want to do. I've gone ahead and added an if statement to check if the hit agent was just a normal infantry for you.

I'll probably be leaving this as-is for a while since I've got some other experimenting I want to do now, so don't expect any frequent updates to it.

Source Code

 

[brotherbernie]

I totally support the OP. I'm a long time war history fan. And the spear was the most important weapon from the Bronze Age, until the advent of firearms. Of course there are some notable exceptions.

But as per OP, both in warband and in this game, the spears are really weak also because you cannot block with shield and stab. With all shields you can defend AND attack. This is why they were so powerful. It is a pet peeve of mine that Taleworlds never got this right in warband. I hope now they will.

Many players are against this though I think. They know no history, and only movies. In movies it only swords and big weapons. So if they make polearms more realistic, there will be loud complainst on the forums. Still I think it is possible in a good way. After all, we always have a secondary weapon.

Also: spears are much faster in real life than any swing weapon. Shortest distance between two points is a straight line. That is another reason why polearms where usually the primary weapon. Any swing is much slower. Like a hook is slower than a jab in boxing. Warband always got this wrong too.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

I totally support the OP. I'm a long time war history fan. And the spear was the most important weapon from the Bronze Age, until the advent of firearms. Of course there are some notable exceptions.

But as per OP, both in warband and in this game, the spears are really weak also because you cannot block with shield and stab. With all shields you can defend AND attack. This is why they were so powerful. It is a pet peeve of mine that Taleworlds never got this right in warband. I hope now they will.

Many players are against this though I think. They know no history, and only movies. In movies it only swords and big weapons. So if they make polearms more realistic, there will be loud complainst on the forums. Still I think it is possible in a good way. After all, we always have a secondary weapon.

It has nothing to do with history. You have to have the shield drop when attacking or there'd never be any openings. Fights would devolve to blockfests with noone being able to get a strike in. Its still a game first and foremost so there are going to be gamey elements to the fighting.

Personally, all I think spears need is better thrust damage. Right now, the best crafted 1-H swords do better thrust damage than the best crafted spears or pikes, which is ridiculous. Spears should reign supreme in thrust damage. That's all they do and they don't do it very well. You've got 2H polearms that can do over 200 swing damage, but the best that a thrusting spear can currently do is 46P. If a 1H sword can do up to 50 thrust damage and a 2H sword can get up to 60 thrust, then the best spears should be doing at least 75-80 thrust damage, if not more.

 

[Mastigos]

ashes can affect all the people that are in the way of the swing, not just one... the mod is great

I made a little mod for testing purposes, in very early stage as I'm not too sure how I want to balance it. But currently it only deals bonus damage to horses and horse-riders(while mounted only). Based on the speed modifiers.

In both scenarios I put 500 Sturgian Spearmen versus 250 Imperial Heavy Horsemen.

Without Mod:

428 Dead Spearmen

72 Spearmen Retreated

47 Dead Horsemen	0 Horsemen Retreated
Imperial Victorious

With Mod:

222 Dead Spearmen	0 Spearmen Retreated
246 Dead Horsemen	4 Horsemen Retreated
Sturgians Victorious

Scenario and tactics were the same. The spearmen would form up in a square in a fairly open area and once the cavalry had made their 2nd charge I ordered them all to charge the cavalry.

I did not partake in the battle myself as then my skill - or lack thereof would affect the end result and I would also take attention away from the spearmen.

While examples like these are extreme and would rarely occur in campaign or multiplayer, I do think it does highlight just how poorly spearmen perform against what they should counter to some extent.

I think cavalry should be overpowered, a cavalry charge should hurt whether you have a spear or not. But these spears should also hurt cavalry. Thus the spearmen ended up winning albeit with almost losing half their manpower.

Again I'm no expert in balancing stuff, as I'm not entirely sure what tier these units are since the CustomBattle module is fairly lackluster.

Conclusion

My own personal conclusion from watching custom battles and experimenting with these damage values, I think spear damage vs cavalry need to be increased. They're fine in terms of damage vs infantry.

I agree with others that realism or historical accuracy shouldn't be the one biggest deciding factor as to how things are balanced. Gameplay needs to be balanced and can be inspired to some extent by realistic results.

"Hidden" damage bonuses make the units feel a bit more unique and special at no real detriment to the player.

Suggested Changes

The speed modifier already works both ways but it very heavily favors the cavalry. Spears and Pikes should receive a pretty juicy bonus to the speed modifier if their weapons hit a horse.

Spearmen and Pikemen thrusting their weapon frequently results in their thrust being blocked by friendly troops behind them, this hinders their ability to perform massively.

Increasing their damage towards cavalry and making them a bit less retarded when thrusting their weapons could help make them feel like an actual counter to horsemen instead of being absolutely and utterly steamrolled.

Being able to brace spears and pikes could also go a long way.



Would like to hear your thoughts on this. Can also share the mod if anyone wants to experiment, but it's a very early prototype but has the ability to discern what weapon was used into either Spear, Pike, Lance, Throwing Spear or Javelin. It also only works for infantry versus horses and horse-riders - not the other way around(like some other spear buff mods work).

Damage can also be tweaked separately for damage versus horses and horse-riders.

I used 500 Sturgian Spearmen and 250 Imperial Heavy Horsemen and got two results.

Scenario #1: Told infantry to charge, got killed by NPCs about 20 seconds later. Results: steamroll for horsemen. I think they may have lost like 50 total.

Scenario #2: Told infantry to charge, stayed alive throughout most of the fight. Results: Spearmen won with maybe 100 remaining. It was a tough battle, but we did it.

It's important to note two things.
A) I stayed alive. I did NOT participate in the battle with my weapon.
B) After the initial attack-move order, I did not control my spearmen. It would have been greatly beneficial to them if I could.

The end result is that you, as the general, are super important. Staying alive somehow improves your units morale massively. If you die, it's essentially lights out for your army.

However, the results are in: provided you don't go and get yourself offed within the opening moments of combat, 500 Spearmen will beat *250 heavy horsemen.* That's big. And in a 500 vs 200 scenario (which is much closer to actual cost and effort) the spearmen stomp, they lose like 1/3rd total and kill every horse.


If you made a mod that buffed spears so massively that they won with only 222 spearmen dead, you massively overbuffed spears. Everyone reading this thread needs to understand that heavy cav are a much better overall unit than a basic sturgian spearman.

So to reiterate: spears are fine.

 

[brotherbernie]

It has nothing to do with history. You have to have the shield drop when attacking or there'd never be any openings. Fights would devolve to blockfests with noone being able to get a strike in. Its still a game first and foremost so there are going to be gamey elements to the fighting.

Personally, all I think spears need is better thrust damage. Right now, the best crafted 1-H swords do better thrust damage than the best crafted spears or pikes, which is ridiculous. Spears should reign supreme in thrust damage. That's all they do and they don't do it very well. You've got 2H polearms that can do over 200 swing damage, but the best that a thrusting spear can currently do is 46P. If a 1H sword can do up to 50 thrust damage and a 2H sword can get up to 60 thrust, then the best spears should be doing at least 75-80 thrust damage, if not more.

Your first part is exactly why spears were the best weapon most of the time. It would not make the game any worse. People have just seen too many movies so everyone is running about doing pirouettes. Each weapon has its function. To make it more realistic would only make the game better. Most characters should have spear and a short weapon. You use the one which is best for the situation.

Just because you are used to unrealistic aspects in no way proves that making it more realistic would be less fun. Nobody has made such a game so you can't even know. I would certainly LOVE to play such a game, as would many others, but ofc not all.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

Your first part is exactly why spears were the best weapon most of the time. It would not make the game any worse. People have just seen too many movies so everyone is running about doing pirouettes. Each weapon has its function. To make it more realistic would only make the game better. Most characters should have spear and a short weapon. You use the one which is best for the situation.

Well its game mechanics, so gameplay trumps realism. You need to have these openings when you attack or no one would be able to hit anybody. Everyone would just turtle up and fight behind their shield and fights would take forever until someone's shield broke. Just like how all attacks need to be telegraphed much more obviously than they would in real life or you'd never see the hits coming at you.

 

[kreamy]

This is a feedback towards both Single and Multiplayer.

Spears in the game are currently all considerable short to at most medium spears, both due to their lengths and improper way of holding and placement on the characters hand.
They also possess too little damage and besides than on horseback, they aren't really as effective as they should actually be.

At times, when fighting someone with a sword, it feels like you both have about the same reach, when even a short spear should outreach a long sword most of the time.
That is precisely why spearmen footwork is entirely directed to keeping a distance and swordsmen footwork is directed to closing in.

A true long spear should be about twice the size of the current longest spear in the game. (Image examples)

You can see that a long spear, at times, can be almost twice the size of a person.

And cavalry trained to be able to hold with one hand at between the half mark to 3/4 mark to the back of the pole, which would leave almost 1 to 1 and a half human bodies of length remaining.

Even for ground melee infantry, spears were mostly held closer to the back.

And lastly, comes the matter of couch lancing, which mostly was held even closer to the back of the pole, leaving almost the whole of the spear's length to the front.
You can clearly see this through jousting and how a joust lance looks like.

Their damage also needs to be upped quite a bit. Even with an armor or a helmet, the minimum damage that should be registered should be about 10 or so, as spears easily penetrated or at least dented armor and shield.
As it currently is, at times, you can strike with a lance and see it cause 3 or even 1 of damage, so not only are we losing length through improper technique, its damage is too low.

I ask the dev team to truly consider taking the time to fix the current state of spears and couch lancing in the game.


______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

deGoucan Scrolls Index

well place spear should insta-kill (head, duh)

also agree.

also wtf is the diff between a long spear and a pike! (doesnt seem like there is)

 

[dealman]

If you made a mod that buffed spears so massively that they won with only 222 spearmen dead, you massively overbuffed spears. Everyone reading this thread needs to understand that heavy cav are a much better overall unit than a basic sturgian spearman.

So to reiterate: spears are fine.

I never said it was balanced or intended to be, I openly said I'm no expert at balance and it was just a mere playground for me.

My suggestions were based on their 'vanilla' performance where they consistently get steamrolled. I'd love to know what you do differently since I have still not been able to get my spearmen to win.

I do however wholeheartedly disagree that spears are fine, for campaign, sure, maybe? There's a lot of combined arms going on. For multiplayer? No way in hell they are balanced.

 

[Brandis.]

Earlier I did 110 damage to a cav's head and it didn't stop it. The rearing angle needs to be adjusted to be broader. That felt ridiculous and if the cav had swung it's lance instead of shielding I probably would have been one shot.

 

[sjblack2014]

Sure! It's an early prototype just for playing around, but should be enough for what you want to do. I've gone ahead and added an if statement to check if the hit agent was just a normal infantry for you.

I'll probably be leaving this as-is for a while since I've got some other experimenting I want to do now, so don't expect any frequent updates to it.

Source Code

Thanks! It took me a while to figure out what to even do with your files haha. It's my first time downloading and using Visual Studio. It's all good now though. Just a question, is the "damage" in your code post armor calculation, or just the raw damage of the weapon?

 

[dealman]

Thanks! It took me a while to figure out what to even do with your files haha. It's my first time downloading and using Visual Studio. It's all good now though. Just a question, is the "damage" in your code post armor calculation, or just the raw damage of the weapon?

Hmm, not sure actually. I would imagine OnScoreHit is triggered after the actual damage is dealt, thus it should be post-armor calculation. Then I just remove health like a peasant on top of that.

 

[kweassa]

...perks still not working as of 1.3.0, btw.


**sigh** so much for my hopes of seeing Push Back/Keep at Bay in action. **rolls eyes**