Khuzaits aren't OP, everyone else just sucks (culture perks, troop trees, & equipment)

[emo_edjiboye]

there are a lot of people calling to nerf the Khuzaits, calling them unbalanced. however, if we calm down we can see that the Khuzaits are mostly balanced. I know, I know, hate me all you want, but hear me out first. there are three thing that make the a faction weak or strong: culture perks, troop trees, & equipment. let's discus them in that order

culture perks
the Khuzaits get a 10% bonus speed for mounted units. when I was just bought the game and was doing my first game that perk didn't stand out to me, so I chose a different culture. once I started playing a bit I realized how good the perk was. Khuzait armies zoomed across the map picking apart smaller armies and running away from larger ones. "But it's only 10%," I thought as my vassals were getting slaughtered left to right. "how could 10% make such a difference?" then I looked a the Khuzait's armies and saw a their compotation had a lot more cavalry then any other faction. that means even without the perk, they are already faster than any other army. the "problem" with the perk is not that it's OP, it's that it works so well with the Khuzait's troop tree; both the khuzait's culture perk and troops stack into a perfect and deadly combo. this wouldn't be a bad thing; after all, shouldn't the culture perk work with the faction? shouldn't it highlight the strength of the faction's culture? the problem is that the Khuzaits are the only-and I mean the only faction whose culture perk pairs with the faction. the Khuzaits were crafted with love and care, but when it was the other factions turn it seemed like Taleworlds didn't know what to do, so they just added seemingly random perk to the other factions. it seem like when the devs were making other culture perks the conversation went like

"hey, the Stugians are a faction known for their infantry. maybe we can give a culture perk that helps with that, perhaps-"
"nah, make them a little faster in snowy terrain."
"oh, but snow only covers half the map at most"
"you heard me! and put them right next to the Kuzaits so that the speed buff in snow does help actually them"
"oh, okay. what about the Valandians. their known for their cavalry. can we make them have a shock cav kind of perk? if we make them do more moral damage against enemies then a good cavalry change could rout an army 2-3 times their size. that could-"
"20% more experience."
"uh, why"
*shrugs*
"and Britania?"
"they're green, right?"
"yeah"
"I don't know. something about forests"

troop trees
now I talk about the Khuzaits troop tree working well with the culture perk, but there is something else about the troop tree that is interesting: the variety. you see, in most faction the regular troop tree generally lack a kind of unit: Aseria and the Imperial faction have no cav except at at tier 4 and 5 respectfully when they can get a horse archer. Valandia and Sturgia can't get Horse archer at all. Britannia gets a skirmish cav that is in between but nether heavy cav or horse archer. the elite troop tree can sometimes adds the missing unit, but not always. but for the Khuzaits they can get horse archer, cavalry, footmen, and foot archer by tier 3! that means if you were to start from the the Khuzait nomad you can have a diverse and well balanced army in a few in-game days. as I said before i will say again, this is NOT a problem. the problem is that no other faction has access to such diversity and certainly not so early on. the devs should either increase low tier troop variety for other faction (I prefer this) or decrease low tier troop for Khuzaits.

equipment
to keep it short and to the point, armor sucks and because of that archers rule. you need a shield in Bannerlord or else you can die in 2-3 shots, even in the best armor in the game. Khuzaits have a lot of range options having both horse archer and foot archers., so they are powerful just on that principle. if armor was buffed, it would indirectly nerf horse archer making them less annoying.

in conclusion, the khuzait dont need to be nerfed, everyone else needs to be buffed

 

[darksoulshin]

This is for the "paper armor problem" and for the relation between the projectiles and the armors
JOINT HURTBOXES and ARMOR HURTBOXES: an armor system that provide a way to balance factions warfare and make more deep the combat system(suggestions)

This is for the khuzait problem: i suggest to implement these list of suggestione rather than nerf the khuzait.
ECONOMY , LOGISTICS and WARFARE SUGGESTION LIST

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

It's the t2 horse archer tbh. They just always have little more speed and auto-calc power because of it.
The Khan's Guard might be the best unit in the game, but the rest of their troops are just good and well balanced.
Their location of course is pretty sweet compared to most other factions.

But I agree 100% the problem of other factions sucking in various ways is more the problem then the khuzaits being too good.
This applies to a lot of problems in Bannerlord as well, it's not that ______ is too good it's ____, ______ and _______ are basically useless.

 

[Apocal]

Even if you disable their culture bonus, Khuzaits have much faster parties in general. I don't disagree with the general thrust of your post but I think the Aserai troop tree is basically fine as well. People would hate Battania's troop tree a lot more if Fians weren't a part of it.

"hey, the Stugians are a faction known for their infantry. maybe we can give a culture perk that helps with that, perhaps-"

Infantry are literally expendable trash in this game. Giving them a bonus is like embroidering toilet paper.

now I talk about the Khuzaits troop tree working well with the culture perk, but there is something else about the troop tree that is interesting: the variety. you see, in most faction the regular troop tree generally lack a kind of unit: Aseria and the Imperial faction have no cav except at at tier 4 and 5 respectfully when they can get a horse archer.

You know the Aserai get cavalry at tier 3, right? Mameluke Regular.

 

[Midnitewolf]

I have already mentioned the issue with campaign map speed a couple times now. The reality is that only the Khuzaits get the advantage of dictating their engagements. If they are a smaller party being chased, they can ALWAYS out run the ones chasing them. If they are trying to chase an enemy party, unless that part is much, much smaller, they can ALWAYS catch the fleeing army, many times even if the fleeing army is much smaller. This is always going to lead the Khuzaits to have a larger amount of favorable outcomes than any other faction in the game because of their campaign map speed, ALWAYS.

The Tier 2 horse archers don't help but I blame poor balancing in simulation battles for that. I mean they could and probably should always gimmick the numbers behind the scenes in simulation battles so that no faction find themselves disadvantage just because they don't get Tier 2 horse archers.

"hey, the Stugians are a faction known for their infantry. maybe we can give a culture perk that helps with that, perhaps-"

I am actually pretty upset about how Taleworlds butchered the Sturgian faction. My Ancestors were Slavic and Sturiga is mostly based on the Kievan Rus/Novgorod Slavic culture with a little bit of Viking thrown in. It is a well known fact that the Druzhina were Heavy Mounted Archers during the period of Mongol invasion i.e. the period that Bannerlord is currently set in. They are as much an iconic unit for any Kievan Rus/Novgorod army as Huscarls were for the Vikings yet Sturgia has zero horse archers in its roster.

 

[Pensaci]

Agree with the notion 'Khuzaits aren't OP, this is not the problem.'

In my opinion, the dilemma of nerf and buff isn't the right way, and missed the real parts. I believe there are more factors in a singleplayer and multi-layer game. There are more about cause and effect.

 

[Moton]

Khuzait is only OP because they have the most cav and cav is the only thing that matters in AI to AI battle. Also having cav makes you army speed higher wich results in Khuzait running down every other faction or being able to run away from them only taking fights they win wich are many.

Debuff cav in different biomes like snow and forest. Remake the autocalc.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

Stripping the Khuzait's troop tree of their overt abundance of cavalry would help a lot. Combined with AI horse upgrade hacks and you get issues.

I'd like to see autocalc changed to factor more variables too, at least enough that more cavalry doesn't always mean more winning.

 

[Arkyll]

Infantry are literally expendable trash in this game. Giving them a bonus is like embroidering toilet paper.

Not sure where this comes from. Infantry are the core of most faction armies and often a determining factor in a victory.

They are naturally going to be 'more expendable' - there are more of them to die, but they are far from trash.

I think a problem with the game as a whole that trickles down to many other factors is that armor isnt good enough, and low poundage cavalry bows are probably doing more damage to elite troops per shot than they should, making horse archers more effective than they ought to be.

 

[emo_edjiboye]

Infantry are literally expendable trash in this game. Giving them a bonus is like embroidering toilet paper.

I agree with the expendable part, but trash? The thing about cav is that, although better, they are more expensive than infantry. You have to buy a horse then a warhorse for most cav. This mean the price for cav is 700-1000 dennars more than infantry. (I understand that as of now the AI doesn't pay extra for cav, but the devs said they are changing this soon) This means in battles, even in autoresolves, cav doesn't trade well moneywise. that is the strength of infantry is their cost efficiency. The strength of cav is to be able to pick favorable engagements, which gain favor from the player's aggressive form of playstyle.

 

[Apocal]

Not sure where this comes from. Infantry are the core of most faction armies and often a determining factor in a victory.

They are naturally going to be 'more expendable' - there are more of them to die, but they are far from trash.

I think a problem with the game as a whole that trickles down to many other factors is that armor isnt good enough, and low poundage cavalry bows are probably doing more damage to elite troops per shot than they should, making horse archers more effective than they ought to be.

It comes from testing, both types and specific troops to see their effectiveness. It also comes from playing multiple Sturgian playthroughs (none to completion) and seeing which units perform better in the 'real' thing. It comes from maining Khuzait and Aserai and realizing that infantry's downsides (slower campaign map speed, constant trickle casualties even against bandits, ineffectiveness compared to ranged and wild divergence between unit types) outweigh their benefits (uh? some of them look nice?).

Past the very early game, you'll do better just kicking every single one of them out of your party in favor of more archers or horse archers, with one very specific exception: because every faction's tier 1 troop is infantry, you can get a lot of them for cheap in cases where you need (quite literal) meat shields for your archers when launching a siege assault. Just put them under the wall and occasionally order them up the ladder so your archers get lots of free-money shots on the defenders atop of the wall until the garrison is wiped out.

(Yes, this is vaguely cheesy because the AI scripting for sieges is dumb.)

Low-tier bows aren't doing that much damage to them, especially against heavier armored types but that just means your tier 5 infantry won't get styled on by Khuzait Tribal Warriors, Imperial Archers or militia archers; every other archer uses a very powerful bow or crossbow in the game. And yes, it is the problem. High-tier armor should be flat-out no-selling arrows entirely.

The situation now, without 0-damage arrow hits, just means stacking ranged is forever the best solution to every tactical problem in the game. Not necessarily unbeatable, but the closest thing to it.

I agree with the expendable part, but trash? The thing about cav is that, although better, they are more expensive than infantry. You have to buy a horse then a warhorse for most cav. This mean the price for cav is 700-1000 dennars more than infantry. (I understand that as of now the AI doesn't pay extra for cav, but the devs said they are changing this soon) This means in battles, even in autoresolves, cav doesn't trade well moneywise. that is the strength of infantry is their cost efficiency. The strength of cav is to be able to pick favorable engagements, which gain favor from the player's aggressive form of playstyle.

Mounted units aren't meaningfully more expensive when:

• a) you can loot or steal warhorses
• b) a normal player economy can pull down upwards of 2000 denars a day after party costs
• c) there is no time pressure in the game.

Also, if your playstyle does tend to find buying horses an expense worth mentioning, you can just use pure-archer compositions to most of the same effect.

 

[Midnitewolf]

Not sure where this comes from. Infantry are the core of most faction armies and often a determining factor in a victory.

They are naturally going to be 'more expendable' - there are more of them to die, but they are far from trash.

I think a problem with the game as a whole that trickles down to many other factors is that armor isnt good enough, and low poundage cavalry bows are probably doing more damage to elite troops per shot than they should, making horse archers more effective than they ought to be.

Actually from a historical perspective, infantry were more numerous because they generally cost less than other kinds of troops and required less training.

You could basically go grab a bunch of farmers, give them a spear and a shield and stick them out in the front of your army. Obviously you could better equip some of them and give them a little training but the "Bulk" of infantry would be these poorly or relatively poorly trained and equipped force backed up by a rather small number of better armed and armored, professionally trained troops.

So Infantry was the most numerous because of training and cost and they were the most effective type of troop through sheer numbers, but they were absolutely not the most effective troop type period. I mean lets take the Russian Druzhina horse archers as was common after the Mongol invasions. They were very heavily armored and in addition to horse bows, carried lances, shields and close combat melee weapons. They could literally perform every role possible. They could be Horse Archers or function as Heavy Cavalry. If cavalry or horse archers weren't needed or couldn't be used due to the tactical situation such as talking the walls of a fortification, they could dismount and function as either archers, infantry or both. I would be willing to bet that they would be more effective than your average infantryman or hell even your more heavy infantryman. However horses cost money, leaning to perform as a horse archer, heavy cavalry, infantryman and foot archer took intensive training, arming and armoring these men cost significant sums of money and every one lost in battle represented a significant loss to the army because of these things.

As far as Horsebows, it is estimated that a Mongol Horse Bow had a draw weight of 120 lbs with the actual range being between 100-160 lbs depending on the bow. I was reading that the energy output is between 100-140 joules on impact which is enough to penetrate 1-1.5mm of steel plate. I have also seen demonstrations where replica arrows with hardened armor piercing tips as you would see in the Middle Ages penetrating through replica steel plates up to 2 inches into the "flesh" of the dummy behind the plate when fired at a range of about 15m. The best armor in the game is Lamellar over chain and these Horsebows could actually penetrate and achieve lethal hits through the thickest armor of this time period and no lamellar of this time had 100% coverage. Your necks, armpits, Legs and many other areas would at most be covered in chain and these bows could easily pen those areas.

Now that is not to say that you wouldn't have a lot of deflections when and shallow penetrations when the arrows hit on a bad angle especially as the range increased but the point is, they could do significant damage to those wearing the armors that exist in game. As much damage as they can do to the heavily armored units in the game at the ranges they do that damage?? No probably not but horse bows aren't "Low poundage" by any means.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

This mean the price for cav is 700-1000 dennars more than infantry.

When you win a battle you get loot/money, you don't get campaign time to recruit and train more troops. This in mind, it's much better to spend money on troops capable of killing without trading, so that you can continue to fight over and over without spending campaign time recruiting and re-training troops.
ANd TBC I mean HA not melee Cav, Melee Cav will also trade too much to be worth horses.

 

[Makai]

I agree with you OP.

Sturgian noble units could either elite infantry or elite archer cavalry (like the lords [bow, quiver, 2h axe, polearm]). Give their infantry a bonus to morale at X rank or when outnumber by X type of troops to help them stay in the fight longer.

Vlandian noble units should definitely get some sort of "shock cav" effect when they commit. Maybe lower enemy infantry/archers morale by X.

I would like to see more baseline buffs to each faction as well. Rework the faction effects and then add a faction noble unit perk and some sort of faction town or castle perk, if your castle or town are owned by someone of the same faction.

 

[ratschbumm]

the Khuzaits were crafted with love and care, but when it was the other factions turn it seemed like Taleworlds didn't know what to do, so they just added seemingly random perk to the other factions. it seem like when the devs were making other culture perks the conversation went like

"hey, the Stugians are a faction known for their infantry. maybe we can give a culture perk that helps with that, perhaps-"
"nah, make them a little faster in snowy terrain."
"oh, but snow only covers half the map at most"
"you heard me! and put them right next to the Kuzaits so that the speed buff in snow does help actually them"

Had the same thoughts from the very beginning, especially about the love and care. Root problem is there was no system in mind at all. Second problem is devs need show. How to make different factions, if they cannot do it for weapons, if even f-ng axe is just a poor man's sword, no difference between sword and sabre, sod the fact that half of the world used curved and differently balanced blades (and not without reason, surprise), and no way to make spear to fight on par. What will form these differences? Appearance, I guess... two or three strategic bonuses which could be designed on that level of development already implemented. Different formation set for every faction? No, impossible. Unique weapons - nope. Different sieging and counter-sieging abilities? No-no.

 

[Midnitewolf]

I agree with you OP.

Sturgian noble units could either elite infantry or elite archer cavalry (like the lords [bow, quiver, 2h axe, polearm]). Give their infantry a bonus to morale at X rank or when outnumber by X type of troops to help them stay in the fight longer.

Vlandian noble units should definitely get some sort of "shock cav" effect when they commit. Maybe lower enemy infantry/archers morale by X.

I would like to see more baseline buffs to each faction as well. Rework the faction effects and then add a faction noble unit perk and some sort of faction town or castle perk, if your castle or town are owned by someone of the same faction.

Well keep in mind that where Horse Archers weren't used all that much i.e. England and France, Heavy Shock Cavalry was the go to unit of choice. I forget but if I recall correctly, there was a point in time where Heavy Cavalry was considered unstoppable by virtually any amount of Infantry. That being the case, Heavy Cavalry in Bannerlord is pretty lackluster because there is no "Shock" in their attacks.

I agree with adding a horse archer unit to Sturgia. Horse archers were a very iconic unit in the Rus/Novogrod cultures Sturgia is based off of.

 

[Ba18070]

Its amusing that in the early middle ages they had this exact "Nerf archers" conversation when they tried to get the pope to ban crossbows lol

 

[KingEroc1st]

the Khuzaits get a 10% bonus speed for mounted units.

with a decent sized cavalry army i had +1.5 speed from cavalry, and +0.15 speed from that 10% bonus. even with a pure cavalry army the 10% won't be noticeable enough to make a difference.
the Khuzaits zoom around fast because they just have more horsemen. which adds that +1.5 making them almost 1 speed faster than others with a +0.5 cavalry speed bonus. if you had the number of cavs you'd be fast as well. the 10% is nothing.