I don't think you understood my argument at all. Any faction should have all unit types despite their focus. But having a focus means that one should have the best units for that role and an army composition that takes advantage of it.
Sturgia have best units for it's focus and composition that takes advantage of it.
Noble branches are clearly meant to be the elite units for a faction; they have higher stats and is capped at level 6 instead of 5, etc. It seems janky then that Sturgia, a faction which prides itself on its shield walls would have cavalry for its elite line while simultaneously having lackluster line infantry.
Sturgia does not have lackluster infantry and I don't see reason why noble line can't have cavalry. On contrary, cavalry was always considered elite of every army and place where nobility served. It's entirely logical that Sturgian noble line ends with cavalry. Not to mention that you get cavalry only on the last two tiers of the noble line, rest is made of very good heavy infantry. So even Sturgian noble line have a infantry focus.
Roman army was infantry focused, yet whole Roman nobility served exclusively in the cavalry, because cavalry was still the more prestigious unit then footsloggers.
You might think that this is fine, but many don't. Here's another long format post with a section about how dissapointed he is with the sturgian noble line:
The only people who are disaponted with Sturgian roster are former Nord fans that did not get Nord faction in the Bannerlord. Sturgians are not Nords, Sturgians are predecessors to Vaegirs and heavy cavalry was always elite of their army. In the Sturgian noble line we can see origin of Vaegir knights. Sturgian noble line fits Sturgian lore perfectly.
Minor factions clearly don't fufill the same role, at least not in the game's current form. Right now they usually appear as auxiliary units in armies of the faction which hired them. You will never lead an assault on a castle thinking "this faction is archer focused, i better adjust my tactics accordingly" like you might against Vaegirs in warband.
By the time you got to sieging castles in the Warband, every lord in the game have changed his allegiance at last twice and what kingdom castle you are besieging belongs to played hardly any role.
You will never start a new campaign and choose to join a faction because you want to create a culturally homogenous, archer focused army.
Plenty of players out there running around with culturally homogeneous archer armies. This forum is overflowing with comments about how armies made of Batanian champions are OP.
I just tested this out in warband with combat AI on highest. I could walk close enough that they switch to melee but they never target or hit my feet. Interestingly enough they even aim there for a second before releasing at my torso at the last moment. So I can't replicate what you're describing here.
AI in Warband does that on every difficulty.
I didn't find warband archers hopeless. Against infantry I think they're better balanced in WB than BL, which is that disorganized infantry die to it whereas organized shielded infantry can effectively advance against them.
No infantry dies to archers in the Warband. AI will hold shields up by default and shield hitboxes in Warband are so generous, that even smallest shields will effectively protect whole body.
whereas organized shielded infantry can effectively advance against them.
In Bannerlord shield infantry organized in the shield wall can advance against archers no problem. That AI does not use shield wall and that AI armies are composed or recruits without shields is not problem of overpowered archers, it's problem of AI.
As for battanian fian champions, I have 30 or so in my army, plus another 50-odd units belonging to that branch. I play on realistic recruiting and am not relying on any weird perk (at least not that I know of). All I did was mark the villages where they were available, periodically revisit to recruit and do quests. With disciplinarian perk I imagine I could easily fill my 300 unit party capacity with Fians and champions in one or two in game years. So I do think elite archer availability to players play into this problem - alot.
With disciplinarian perk, you can amass armies of banner knights as easily as armies of fians, and they are even more OP then the fian ones.
I'm saying I effectively already addressed this point in my OP. That shields have been nerfed without a parallel nerf in arrows, or in this case a buff in the throwing animation to better maintain shield coverage. I disagree that its a problem infantry are throwing javelins, I think they should be and that it should even be devastatingly effective. They did so in WB (IIRC) at increased exposure to arrows but not to the same level as is in BL.
Well then we have to agree to disagree, because unrealistic shield hit boxes in the Warband made archers near useless and making shield coverage more realistic in the Bannerlord is huge improvement that makes archers finally viable as a battlefield unit. I don't see archers been anywhere near overpowered against player armies and that player archers can be overpowered against AI armies is not problem of archers, it's problem of AI and AI army composition.
And another huge improvement over Warband that was not mentioned yet is that in the Bannerlord archers will not shoot through friendly units.
sorry, but not mixing shielded and unshielded infantry isnt remotely normal either. The AI obviously doesnt do this (which is part of the reason why archers are broken), and most players won't be doing this. I would do this except that the game resets my formation assignments everytime I load a save.
Then those players have but themselves to blame. Sending 2H units against archers is such obvious tactical mistake that there hardly can be any more obvious one. Archers are clear counter to 2H units.
You dont need to break shields. Just riding around or using your cavalry to make them turn is more than enough.
When you need cavalry or AI exploit to make archers effective, then you can also go all out cavalry force and it will be more effective in the Warband. Moreover even with enemies turning to fight cavalry Warband archers could not hit anything, because they could not lead their shoots and aiming for heads made them miss even if torso shoot could land.
Archers in the Warband were painfully ineffective in field battles.
and aiming for heads makes them generally more devastating, not less. As a archer main myself I can tell you that aiming for heads in either WB or BL is worth it up to long range, even at archery skill levels comparable to elite archers. Very, very long range if its an advancing formation with a blob of heads together. The exception to this is against very sparse formations moving over very uneven terrain that makes it very difficult to lead. For low tier archers that lack the accuracy, its not a huge difference between aiming for head or torso for them either way.
Aiming for heads made Warband archers miss most of their shoots and was introduced only because archers aiming for torso were useless in sieges -as was the case in vanilla. Player aiming for heads was something entirely different, because player could lead his shots and hit heads reliably enough.
You can just ride behind them and shoot them to make them turn around to chase you and open fire into their backs with archers.
If you need to exploit AI in such a way to make something work then it's probably not that good in the first place. In Bannerlord you don't need to ride behind enemy to make archers work and I consider it a good thing.
