Sturgia's unplayable

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this makes much more sense now as to why you are so mindlessly aggressive, basing all your information off of vacuum sealed youtube videos and emotional instability
kinda agree, i have seen his videos and they are far from my results. i am not saying they are inaccurate or biased but i think they are far from simulating an actual game scenario.
Strangely enough a lot of this units testing videos came out after i made my post on this forums... i wonder why...
 
I am fairly certain sturgia is the strongest in terms of infantry. Why not try and lure all your fights into villages where you no longer have that disadvantage from the archers.
Sturgia doesn't have the strongest infantry units. I'll test for you later if you want, but from memory:

Heavy Spearman is just a pathetic joke that doesn't even use its spear unless facing cav, and instead uses its sidearm (and swords aren't that fantastic for infantry fighting either). I put 50 of them up against 50 Empire Legionaries and they barely got a handful of kills.
Heavy Axeman is their best melee unit but is outclassed by Empire's Legionary.
Heroic Line Breaker is outclassed by Battanian Veteran Falxman and Empire Menavliaton.
Sturgia has two polar opposite infatries the Axeman is the 2nd best infantry in the game

Sturgian archers although terrible are still archers and if used correctly (not a massive line behind the infantry basically, but actually splitting formation and flanking while our infantry tanks) will still destroy most infantry units (and others). Do i think they are the worst standard archer? almost, but they are vikings what did you expect?
If you agree Sturgia has mediocre cav, the second best infantry - in a game where infantry is weak - and the worst archer by a significant margin - in a game where archers win battles - it's safe to say their troop tree needs a serious looking at (in addition to armor mechanics).

Of course the game is beatable as Sturgia, hell you could beat the game with Hired Blades only if you played for long enough, but the poor old Nord-Slav chimera faction still sucks and needs a rework.

OP has a point he just needs to calm down and stop exaggerating.
 
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If you agree Sturgia has mediocre cav, the second best infantry - in a game where infantry is weak - and the worst archer by a significant margin - in a game where archers win battles - it's safe to say their troop tree needs a serious looking at (in addition to armor mechanics).
although i agree that Sturgia may need some love i still think that Battania if any is by far the weakest. we like to complain about the Sturgian Spearman but the Wildling is not far better.

As soon as the throwing, cav & spear AI is improved Sturgia will no longer have this many issues (who even others have btw, let's not be selective here).

As far as the archer goes there needs to be a faction taking on the weight of having a poor bowman, and if any that should be Sturgia. I am pretty sure we never heard of the great vikings, the best bowmans of history, instead we always looked at them as terrific warriors with axes.

Infantry is not week, it's like stating that the human body doesn't need a spine to stay up right. infantry is what makes archers work better and is what you want to absorb damage to allow your skilled warriors to thrive (and not die) on the field. They are the only one who can reliably get kills in confusing forest fights or when things go south.
Anyway i don't agree with that statement especially on high end infantry units.

Only thing seriusly wrong about the sturgian infantry line is the T4, that sidearm is abysmal. I see the Spearman as a tech choice like a shock trooper, pick them if you are going against some cav, but even then, not too many.

My Gameplan and style is all about limiting casualties while using poor troops, cause noble ones make the game not enjoyable to me, if i weren't using infantry i would lose most of my men instead of ending battles with a few casualties when things go right. you just need to use them in a smart way like squaring up and allow the archers to pick the enemies from the sides once the enemy infantry gets close.
Using poor troops really makes you understand more what works and why it does.

At the end of the day i had less troubles taking over the map as Sturgia then i did with the Aserai. All Factions have their weaknesses, some more than others sure. but that is part of what makes them feel different.

This guy sure love to exaggerate and most of his posts are just rants over the game feeling unbalanced to him, while all it takes is some getting good or lowering the difficulty. otherwise why does he have a Chad avatar if all he does is acting like a little "Baratheon" kid
 
although i agree that Sturgia may need some love i still think that Battania if any is by far the weakest. we like to complain about the Sturgian Spearman but the Wildling is not far better.
I agree Battania, and basically every faction, need a troop tree tweak or rehaul.
In Battania's case it's because their mainline units are weak, their high proportion of cavalry doesn't fit their lore/inspiration, their lack of a greataxe unit doesn't match their culture description, and the Wildling and Oathsworn are too similar.
As soon as the throwing, cav & spear AI is improved Sturgia will no longer have this many issues (who even others have btw, let's not be selective here).
That will help a lot. But armor also needs to be fixed. Even still after that Sturgia's troop tree will still need help since they don't do anything "best", they don't have the best infantry, or the best archers (not by a long shot - ha ha), or the best cavalry, or horse archers full stop, and they are worse at being generalists than the existing generalist faction (Empire) who outclasses their infantry and archers and cavalry.

Sturgia should have the most effective T5 shielded infantry in the game, and good shock infantry too. Whether that means nerfing Empire's options in their troop tree, or buffing Sturgia's.
As far as the archer goes there needs to be a faction taking on the weight of having a poor bowman, and if any that should be Sturgia. I am pretty sure we never heard of the great vikings, the best bowmans of history, instead we always looked at them as terrific warriors with axes.
I actually agree. I've suggested in the past that every faction should have a unique weakness, and Sturgia's unique weakness should be its bowmen; I'd like to see a troop tree where they don't have T5 bowmen at all, instead getting horse archers.
Though it's worth pointing out that Scandinavians are only half of Sturgia's inspiration, they are also Slavic, but moot point since I read a bit into the Kievan Rus and their thing was noble horsemen/militia spearmen/border horse archers, with not much mention of bowmen either.
Infantry is not week, it's like stating that the human body doesn't need a spine to stay up right. infantry is what makes archers work better and is what you want to absorb damage to allow your skilled warriors to thrive (and not die) on the field. They are the only one who can reliably get kills in confusing forest fights or when things go south.
Infantry is definitely weak. They kill in roughly the same amount of hits as archers (2-5 hits), but only at close range. The only thing stopping archers from being a straight upgrade is that shields exist. You only need a small amount of infantry to sit in front of your archers so that enemies drop their shields and allow your archers to slaughter more. That's the only reason you would recruit them at all, and the fact you have a single reason to recruit something doesn't make them not a weak option.

You can't live without a spine. You can live without infantry. If you're using all horse archers, or the (now reasonably easy-to-get) Fians or Khan's Guard, you don't need infantry at all, because horse archers can escape from anyone trying to fight them in melee, Fians are competent melee units (assuming anything ever gets in melee range), and Khan's Guard can outrun anyone trying to fight them in melee and are the best melee fighters in the game. When you look at all of this, you cannot say infantry are not weak.

However, if armor's protection against ranged damage was to be fixed, infantry would not be weak.
My Gameplan and style is all about limiting casualties while using poor troops, cause noble ones make the game not enjoyable to me, if i weren't using infantry i would lose most of my men instead of ending battles with a few casualties when things go right. you just need to use them in a smart way like squaring up and allow the archers to pick the enemies from the sides once the enemy infantry gets close.
Using poor troops really makes you understand more what works and why it does.
So you're saying infantry aren't weak if you don't use everything in the game that makes them weak. Do you see how that might be not relevant to a balance discussion though? I'd prefer to be able to use everything in the game without artificially limiting myself, since the AI isn't going to stop using noble units.
This guy sure love to exaggerate and most of his posts are just rants over the game feeling unbalanced to him, while all it takes is some getting good or lowering the difficulty
Yes, he does love to exaggerate, and a Chad wouldn't be here discussing balance with us nerds lmao.
However, getting good or lowering the difficulty does not change the fact that the game is imbalanced. Balance exists so you can use all the options in a singleplayer game without having to remember to artificially limit yourself (because that's annoying+immersion breaking+means you get to enjoy less content).
 
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So you're saying infantry aren't weak if you don't use everything in the game that makes them weak. Do you see how that might be not relevant to a balance discussion though? I'd prefer to be able to use everything in the game without artificially limiting myself, since the AI isn't going to stop using noble units.
by the way army works i would still bring a balanced army myself to a fight, the only unit i stay artificially away from is cavalry, and we all know why.

The AI will sure bring noble troops to a fight but even then the most i have seen was 70 whatever elite troops by a stacked army, very far away from what the player can bring.
that's why i limiti myself and why i find that the player has way too much power in fights against a struggling Ai. (this is not necessarily bad. although on challenging you expect a challenge)

Yes infantry makes everyone around them better thanks to the not so good enemy AI, but even then i would steel consider them an essential part of most fights. When told to push at the right time they can do more damage than any other unit in the game. you will have a few casualties that's for sure but archers can't win by themselves in most big fights and you would rather lose a few infantryman than dozens of archers.
 
Yes infantry makes everyone around them better thanks to the not so good enemy AI, but even then i would steel consider them an essential part of most fights
Let me put it this way then, they're not essential if you're using noble troops or horse archers. If you aren't using noble troops or horse archers, they're highly important, sure.
But even then, they are still weak in the sense you don't get the same killing power out of them as you do archers, and you don't need as many of them as you do archers, because a small number of infantry can fill the role of tarpitting for a large number of archers. And you're also more likely to lose infantry in the process of levelling them up than you are likely to lose archers.
When told to push at the right time they can do more damage than any other unit in the game
They do the same damage, but they have to walk right up to people to do it.
archers can't win by themselves in most big fights and you would rather lose a few infantryman than dozens of archers.
True.
 
this makes much more sense now as to why you are so mindlessly aggressive
it doesn't. and if you take this kind of video as something of worth, then you are no better than a topic starter.
and let me explain. these videos are F1-F3 art of war videos. If we take custom battle 100 SHA will beat 100 Legioneers if I control SHA. But then again, if I control Legineers they will beat SHA.
these videos are in no shape or form can serve as an indication of anything.
 
You put a lot of weight on body armor when judging effectiveness, especially for a game where body armor doesn't really do that much because of all the overheads.

stats for 200 vs 200 custom battle infantry clash (imperial default unit)

WfE299I.png


half of the hits are using helmet (head+neck, head @ 27% where neck is marginal @ 1.3%)
half of the hits are using body (torso+shoulders, shoulder @ 23% and torso @ 5.5%)
it amounts for ~60% of the hits, the remaining 40% are blocked and very marginally hiting the arms and legs

head is still more important than body, but body is very close behind.
 
Let me put it this way then, they're not essential if you're using noble troops or horse archers. If you aren't using noble troops or horse archers, they're highly important, sure.
But even then, they are still weak in the sense you don't get the same killing power out of them as you do archers, and you don't need as many of them as you do archers, because a small number of infantry can fill the role of tarpitting for a large number of archers. And you're also more likely to lose infantry in the process of levelling them up than you are likely to lose archers.
well you are right.
but i feel like this is just a case of ranged Vs melee units. by the way the game is balanced we would expect a much higher K/D ratio from a ranged unit than a melee one. while a Melee unit would be good already if said ratio was a 2 to 1. levelling infantry is harder but we can use the garrisons + governor for that and run around with 80+ T5 units all the times eliminating the problem, as long as we don't lose the army straight away we should not have problems keeping the ranks high.

Infantry does the dirty work in most cases, and when depleted in quality it can defiantly feel underperfoming. but going back to the original topic a well built infantry formation of Sturgians is far from the weakest in the game, in my opinion.
Major problem is the surrounding cast not being too good, especially the cavalry.
 
Well, hopefully fixing cav stab attack timing, horse knockdown, and armour should be enough to fix up the Druzhinik, and fixing spear troop AI and armour should help the Heavy Spearman.

Then I would redo their normal troop tree so that at T5, it has the Line Breaker and the Heavy Axeman, the Heavy Spearman (with a more Slavic-looking teardrop shield to differentiate them a bit more from the Nordic Axeman,) a Pikeman replacing the cavalry unit, and a horse archer of normal strength replacing their terrible archer (so their weakness would be no foot archers at T5).

I'd buff the Axeman and Spearman's equipment slightly or nerf the Legionary so that they could roughly evenly compete, since making one unit from each faction tree very OP or UP limits player choice, so strength or weakness can be better expressed by what units a faction can have more options of/less options of.
 
Hello,
I will give my opinion on this subject, I am a 100% Sturgian player. I never take a unit from any other faction, except the Tavern Mercenary. I always play on realistic difficulty and it is stupid to reduce the difficulty, it is a false solution.
For the Sturgiens, they are not as efficient statically as their neighbor. But the real problem is always the same, the AI does not know how to play with sturgien who are dependent on their formation. The Sturgans lose troops en masse as soon as the AI orders to charge.
I love playing sturgia because it's hard ... because of losing a battle 1000 sturgians against 800 batanians or empire, it's really painful. Against the Khuzait, 1000 sturgians vs 600 khuzait, the sturgians are tied or lose.

To win you have to use the land as much as possible and do plenty of micromanagement.
After the Sturgians are a mixture of the Nords and vaegirs and the vaegirs had the best warband archers.
 
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stats for 200 vs 200 custom battle infantry clash (imperial default unit)

WfE299I.png


half of the hits are using helmet (head+neck, head @ 27% where neck is marginal @ 1.3%)
half of the hits are using body (torso+shoulders, shoulder @ 23% and torso @ 5.5%)
it amounts for ~60% of the hits, the remaining 40% are blocked and very marginally hiting the arms and legs

head is still more important than body, but body is very close behind.
very interesting.
 
Sturgian top tear armor is grossly underpowered. There really isnt any excuse for their most expensive stuff that costs 60000 having less body armor than the Lamellar I accidentally won in a tournament. While their main problem is still just logistical due to their geography, having actual gear that matched the other factions would help a lot.
 
stats for 200 vs 200 custom battle infantry clash (imperial default unit)

WfE299I.png


half of the hits are using helmet (head+neck, head @ 27% where neck is marginal @ 1.3%)
half of the hits are using body (torso+shoulders, shoulder @ 23% and torso @ 5.5%)
it amounts for ~60% of the hits, the remaining 40% are blocked and very marginally hiting the arms and legs

head is still more important than body, but body is very close behind.
Nice.

Did you apply any weighting for the damage bonus from headshots or is it just the number of hots per location?
 
head is still more important than body, but body is very close behind
My comment has been proven wrong, but i will change the table to better show the correct setting. the parts in between " " are from the original comment so people can still see how it went.

"Pretty sure body is marginal in infantry clashes as most hits will be split between head and shoulders the latter useing arm armor instead of body.
this leaves us with a 5% to 6% body shots".

"Basically the only way an infantrymen can be hit in the body in a clash is by another infantryman missing his target and landing the shots on another enemy close to him or by a Thrust attack. the same concept can be applied to legs.
This makes infantry extremely reliant on the Arm, Head, Swing Speed trinity.
The Table below can prove it"

A = Arm --- B = Body --- H = Head --- S = Swing Speed (fastest weapon taken)

UNIT A B H B+H S
B+H+S
TESTING RANKS
LEGIONARY 42 61 47 109 101* 210 1st
AXEMAN 33 66 53 119 94 213 2nd
DARKHAN 41 58 51 109 86 195 3th
SERGEANT 39 50 46 96 92 188 4th
OATHSOWRN 37 61 46 107 84 191 5th
ASERAI VET 43 64 52 116 79 195 6th
WILDLING 15 69 25 94 94 188 7th
STURGIAN SPEARMAN 29* 48 54 102 100 202
8th

The Legionary gets a mace 66% of the times and during testing is this 66% that kills most of the units.
For the Sturgian Spearman they get a 33% to get a scarf. and this is what kills the unit, especially because they already have pretty low arm armor to begin with.

This are taken form the XML files

Well it made more sense before, now it's a little more all over the place but it's still somehow works

"If we value the Body armor argument we can kinda prove it to be false as the Wildling would not be ranked 2nd last and the Aserai Vet should be classified in the top 3".

Morale of the story: don't trust the encyclopedia and have a look at what your units get. also Bannerlord is a great game at explaining mechanics to it's players...
 
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Nice.

Did you apply any weighting for the damage bonus from headshots or is it just the number of hots per location?
only hits per location. It's simply an accumulator of hits overtime (ticks are 16ms). It's a ratio for every hit "so far". So it changes overtime and shows the initial clash, the melee and the way it evolves as it conclude. also found out that 44.4% unblocked hits are on the left side vs 55.5% hitting right because shield is on the left hand for those empire dude.
Pretty sure body is marginal in infantry clashes as most hits will be split between head and shoulders the latter useing arm armor instead of body.
this leaves us with a 5% to 6% body shots.

Basically the only way an infantrymen can be hit in the body in a clash is by another infantryman missing his target and landing the shots on another enemy close to him or by a Thrust attack. the same concept can be applied to legs.
This makes infantry extremely reliant on the Arm, Head, Swing Speed trinity.
[...]

Torso counts for 5.5% overall. It's the head then the shoulders that gets hits the most, I wrote it in my previous post.
the game uses the BODY armor for shoulders hits. That's why my plot shows "TorsoAndShoulders" on the upper right.

Arms are only hits around 2.5% of the time during the melee and climbs to 4% total once it is done (meaning, it is more than 4% outside "melee clashes" but over the course of a fight where 2 regiments clashes in, it ends up counting for 4%.

h4WQZW0.png
 
Arms are only hits around 2.5% of the time during the melee and climbs to 4% total once it is done (meaning, it is more than 4% outside "melee clashes" but over the course of a fight where 2 regiments clashes in, it ends up counting for 4%.
i din't trust so i went and tested it. turn out you are right. the shoulder counts as body instead of arm, so the most important things should be body head and swing speed.
 
i din't trust so i went and tested it. turn out you are right. the shoulder counts as body instead of arm, so the most important things should be body head and swing speed.
yep. It still is consistent with your table : wildling have worst head armor which amounts for 50% of the hit received (and more than 50% of the damage because there is a 20% bonus for headshots (blunt/cut) and a 100% bonus for piercing.)

comparison between units "who wins" when they are using very different weapons doesn't bring much more infos : it only leaves to hypothesis about why's.
 
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