Why is the Khan's Guard so much stronger than the Vanguard Faris?

[five bucks]

porque para atingir objetivos táticos desafiadores e interessantes, antes seria necessário que a contos mundos concertasse a porra da AI deles.
Simple isn't it?
Però, se può anche parlare così per fare il scem' - por que no cabron?

Yes that needs to happen as well AND Khan's Guard needs to be nerfed. They aren't mutually exclusive, considering I think the troop balance person is different from the AI coding person.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

You can both nerf the strongest (Khan's Guard, ranged in general) AND buff the weakest (spearmen, pikemen, infantry in general) while leaving all the balanced units' equipment/skills the same.

That would create an actually balanced, tactically interesting game where all units have specialties and weaknesses. It would make the game balanced in the least amount of changes.

You can do both, but I'm more concerned with buffs and would like to see them come first (along with native group targeting)so I know there will some troops that are worth using (for more then garrison fillers) before they mess with the beautiful and talented Khans Guards.

I dunno if I'm being dunked on or some trolling but...

Well I mean what would you honestly suggest to bring everything else to the Khan's Guard power level? Glaives are better weapons than everything else, their armour is very thick and we already know how bows. Coupled with horses, they've basically got the build meant for racking up kills.

All t5 and t6 should be built for racking up kills. If you have a high tier force it should be a massive one sided victory regardless against the trash pile the AI brings in armies. I mean the trash armies are a problem too, one that needs to be solved by the AI SPENDING TIME raising troops. It's very bad to have endless trash armies (who can still take fiefs) every other day because of the AI having too many recruitment cheats and also being able to count recruit as army power. I would make recruit not count as army power/capacity so they can't join an army with 60% capacity of recruits.

Well I mean what would you honestly suggest to bring everything else to the Khan's Guard power level?

TBH I do like the idea of having other HA, but for bringing other things up it's not just about raw power but utility and purpose: Why are they on the battle field? In addition to increased survival of t4-6 I think Infantry needs something to do. I wonder if something like effecting the amount of loot gained after battle would be good? Mounted units are busy with mounts, archers are re-arming their arrows, but infantry could be salvaging the battle field! There could be other stuff too but that would require new mechanics, like capturing a banner in battle or such, or capturing lords by surrounding them, something for them to do that other troops can't do. If the only purpose is killing enemies.... well then there's very little reason to use them (other then convenience/opportunity) over ranged units. For now I would be satisfied with Infantry (and heavy cav) having more armor and survival (chance to be ko) so I can ram them into enemies with less material loss then if I do so with another unit type. they MUST expose themselves to kill enemies, so the NEED significantly more damage reduction and survivability to be worth it.

we already know how bows

The thing with ranged is so much more about enemy AI pretty much letting you shoot them to death more often then not, then just the damage it's self. I used RTS command to play as a KG and was kind of surprised by how average the bow damage was shot for shot. But that barely matter when you have blobs of AI just taking it till they drop.

Glaives are better weapons than everything else

They are and they may need some damage reduction, but before being removed or changed what I want is for other weapons troops have to function equally well at landing hits constantly! It's not just damage but the fact the AI knows how to use them and struggles (albeit better in 1.9) with other weapons. And also related: How are the troops so bad at using shields against them? Cav all have shields yet they seem unable to defend themselves again glaives, why?

Buffing everything else, while nerfing them too is what's needed.

Maybe, I just fear TW nerfing and buffing will be ending up with the grand effect of: battles take a little longer (more arrows lol) and a few more of your troops die and that's it.

 

[Apocal]

If you have a high tier force it should be a massive one sided victory regardless against the trash pile the AI brings in armies.

That's pretty much the case right now.

You just get way more angry about minor losses than most people.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

That's pretty much the case right now.

You just get way more angry about minor losses than most people.

I get incredibly angry and petty about it. Not being sarcastic at all, it's 100% true. I will do a battle 10 times to get it perfect. I will spend all day witling down a massive army with minimal (by my standards) losses. But you're right, you can do very well with T5 units, my point is that people saying "X is too good" when x is a t6 units: well it's supposed to be really good, the other t6 units should be as good too. And also I think because of the reputation of fians and KG people forget that packs of heavy HA or marksmen/masters and what not is also nearly as effective in most situations.

 

[five bucks]

But you're right, you can do very well with T5 units, my point is that people saying "X is too good" when x is a t6 units: well it's supposed to be really good

But what metric do we get "supposed to" from?

Realism? Immersion? Khan's Guard are unrealistically, immersion breakingly good.
Progression? Gameplay challenge? Khan's Guard do give a sense of progression which is good, but they are so strong that when you stack them it becomes way too easy to stomp every AI army with no effort. Not good.
Faction balance? Well they obviously fly in the face of that.

So yes T6 units should be really good, but that doesn't mean they should be able to win battles 1v20 like they're all isekai anime characters. That creates negative rather than positive outcomes for gameplay and immersion.

the other t6 units should be as good too

Cataphracts and Banner Knights are good units - they can defeat over 6x their number of low tier enemies, they are specialized and do one thing very well, they reward progression, they function somewhat realistically. They could be a little bit better, but they're very close to where they should be.

And also I think because of the reputation of fians and KG people forget that packs of heavy HA or marksmen/masters and what not is also nearly as effective in most situations.

Yes. Well I don't know about you, but I haven't stopped calling for armour to be buffed against arrows.

 

[xdj1nn]

at this point I'm getting the urges to be given access to their workspace and start messing with these myself. Sure I ain't be able to fix their AI, but I could successfully bring a bandaid to make the entirety of the battle system better just by tweaking it, provided I knew where to find all of the files that govern it.

Say - perks and skills must have their effects changed. It'd be good to attach meaningful effects to attributes. Than messing with troop gear and stats (i'd 100% turn the druhzina into infantry). Lastly I'd create cracks on all troops, including Krueger Guavas by keeping them OP but removing survivability, or removing dps and adding extra-survivability; Lastly I'd try to reverse their dmg calc change from WB to make momentum play the biggest part of it as it should be, and than crank up all armor to 50% more defense all over the place and make them be logical (best gauntlets and boots should be Imperial Lamellar considering the protection coverage and the fact that it's layered with both plate + mail - instead they are less protective than a leather boot with straps of metal, ?!?!?!) --- To me that's as balanced as we can make the game without taking flavor or changing the AI.

The only thing I'd go for "experimental" though, would be to bring more variety of BiS weapons - that because I strongly believe we lack those severely. Some types of weapons are only really available if we craft them due to questionable weapon part effects...

talking about it also reminded me, who tf defined the armor values in TW? That person must be very out-of-order... I mean, most of the equipment protection values don't reflect their appearance. We literally have leather armor more protective than mail... The entire table is wrong and immersion breaking.

 

[five bucks]

Say - perks and skills must have their effects changed. It'd be good to attach meaningful effects to attributes. Than messing with troop gear and stats (i'd 100% turn the druhzina into infantry). Lastly I'd create cracks on all troops, including Krueger Guavas by keeping them OP but removing survivability, or removing dps and adding extra-survivability

Hell, I wouldn't mind if Koopa Goombas kept their lightsaber glaives as long as they weren't also such a well armoured unit. If they were a glass cannon, at least they would have a weakness.

Gotta agree as well that there's still many issues to be resolved with armour - but I'm going to be happy enough if the biggest problems are resolved in vanilla, like arrow damage.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

Hell, I wouldn't mind if Koopa Goombas kept their lightsaber glaives as long as they weren't also such a well armoured unit. If they were a glass cannon, at least they would have a weakness.

Gotta agree as well that there's still many issues to be resolved with armour - but I'm going to be happy enough if the biggest problems are resolved in vanilla, like arrow damage.

So something like this then?

Spoiler: Knerfed

 

[five bucks]

So something like this then?

Spoiler: Knerfed

Good stuff. Reducing the polearm/bow skill makes sense. I like them only having one quiver too. As you said, that keeps them from stepping on the toes of the regular Khuzait HA too much.

 

[JunKeteer]

If they want KG to be able to 1v20, have their wages reflect that. If an EC/BK can supposedly handle 1v5 (and that is considered 'fair'), arguably, KG's cost should be like ~2x times wage. Accounting for 'tactical' situations between them, as EC/BK tend to die more since they are in the fray more often. This is more about gameplay balance than realism - at the same time, even if a player chooses to field 100 KGs, they have to really plan/minmax all the other aspects of the game to be able to maintain an army of that 'OP' tier (outside of fixing broken money generating issues - ie smithing).

 

[Apocal]

Good stuff. Reducing the polearm/bow skill makes sense. I like them only having one quiver too. As you said, that keeps them from stepping on the toes of the regular Khuzait HA too much.

KG getting two quivers was one of the single most requested troop changes of all of BL's time. I doubt they are going to revert it considering the hell they went through back when someone decided that giving KGs a mace was a good idea.

 

[Bluko88]

Hell, I wouldn't mind if Koopa Goombas kept their lightsaber glaives as long as they weren't also such a well armoured unit. If they were a glass cannon, at least they would have a weakness.

Gotta agree as well that there's still many issues to be resolved with armour - but I'm going to be happy enough if the biggest problems are resolved in vanilla, like arrow damage.

"Lightsaber" is a good description of the glaive

Here's the Tier 1 Khuzait Nomad (whopping 20 Polearm Skill) armed with all glaives

Here's 100 Nomads (with the Glaive) against 100 Legionaries; they lose but inflict pretty heavy casualties (this is 1 vs 1, T1 vs T5 mind you)

Now here's 200 glaive armed Nomads against 100 Legionaries

Sorry, the Glaive is a broken weapon.

Doesn't matter what unit you give it to, how low their armor is, how low their skill is with it - it will still dominate in all melee. Actually the Billhook is a bit silly too, but it has shorter range and does less damage as I recall, so it's not as infamous.

Until the Glaive's mechanical crazyness is sorted out, giving it to ANY unit, Khan's Guard or otherwise, is just gonna create balance problems. To be fair most swinging two handed weapons are pretty strong, but that's usually balanced by the fact it's carried by FOOT shock troops with no shield.


I mean it get it, it'd be nice if the very Mongol inspired Khuzait could carry a weapon they historically used. But as is in this game, it's just out of control. And I'm pretty sure the Glaive is not why the Mongol Empire was as successful as it was, even if it was a pretty good melee weapon.

 

[xdj1nn]

"Lightsaber" is a good description of the glaive

Here's the Tier 1 Khuzait Nomad (whopping 20 Polearm Skill) armed with all glaives

Here's 100 Nomads (with the Glaive) against 100 Legionaries; they lose but inflict pretty heavy casualties (this is 1 vs 1, T1 vs T5 mind you)

Now here's 200 glaive armed Nomads against 100 Legionaries

Sorry, the Glaive is a broken weapon.

Doesn't matter what unit you give it to, how low their armor is, how low their skill is with it - it will still dominate in all melee. Actually the Billhook is a bit silly too, but it has shorter range and does less damage as I recall, so it's not as infamous.

Until the Glaive's mechanical crazyness is sorted out, giving it to ANY unit, Khan's Guard or otherwise, is just gonna create balance problems. To be fair most swinging two handed weapons are pretty strong, but that's usually balanced by the fact it's carried by FOOT shock troops with no shield.


I mean it get it, it'd be nice if the very Mongol inspired Khuzait could carry a weapon they historically used. But as is in this game, it's just out of control. And I'm pretty sure the Glaive is not why the Mongol Empire was as successful as it was, even if it was a pretty good melee weapon.

back to the same thing I've repeated since forever: armor effectiveness / AI does better with swingable polearms

Want to bring more interesting results to the table? Do the same test against sturgian line breakers (t5) / again against vlandian volges (t5) and one last time against Palace Guards (t5) - than I believe you'll see entirely different results.
What legionaires have in strength (armor + shiled - meaning increased durability) these other 3 have in dps and range - there's a reason inf units are meant to be mixed. I also have a tickling suspicion that the nomads would be decimated even with glaives against specialized skirmishers like the Wildlings.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

KG getting two quivers was one of the single most requested troop changes of all of BL's time. I doubt they are going to revert it considering the hell they went through back when someone decided that giving KGs a mace was a good idea.

Eh, might as well revert it and give them a hand weapon again. Or at least the other changes.

But then again the loss of a quiver doesn’t really work against them thanks to their glaive.

 

[JunKeteer]

"Lightsaber" is a good description of the glaive

Sorry, the Glaive is a broken weapon.

Doesn't matter what unit you give it to, how low their armor is, how low their skill is with it - it will still dominate in all melee. Actually the Billhook is a bit silly too, but it has shorter range and does less damage as I recall, so it's not as infamous.

Until the Glaive's mechanical crazyness is sorted out, giving it to ANY unit, Khan's Guard or otherwise, is just gonna create balance problems. To be fair most swinging two handed weapons are pretty strong, but that's usually balanced by the fact it's carried by FOOT shock troops with no shield.

They just have to adjust the swing factor number, it scales way to easily for added damage - considering the glaive is still relatively short with a quick swing speed. Test the other long-glaive with same rulesets, or the menavlion, or polesword, or the billhook, or other swinging polearms to see where it all lies.

 

[xdj1nn]

They just have to adjust the swing factor number, it scales way to easily for added damage - considering the glaive is still relatively short with a quick swing speed. Test the other long-glaive with same rulesets, or the menavlion, or polesword, or the billhook, or other swinging polearms to see where it all lies.

this, this is a "nerf" I could get behind...
Still, the best solution would be to bring back the equation for dmg that we had in Warband and increasing armor effectiveness a little. The result would be that if you hit a peasant you'd do 500 dmg, but if hitting the guy in armor it would do 50 or something of the sorts.

I'll insist on advocating that TW implements the exact dmg calc that 1257ad mod for Warband used - to me that's the best compromise between "realistic" and "balance" we have in the genre so far - and than adjust from there. - if not, than BL should get their entire battle system scrapped and simply copy&paste the closest possible system dmg calc for less intricate combat that we have in KCD (less intricate because we won't have comboes or locks, nor perfect counters - so basing it upon KCD taking into consideration these limitations would work fine), than with some fine adjusting it would be pristine (god-sent really).

Now a reality bomb: they won't do anything of the sorts and we'll still have the delusional hollywoodian arcade we already have with some odd tweaking overtime. Why do I say this? Because if they didn't reverse flat dmg and momentum order in the calc so far (as it should've been from the beginning to work like Warband) I doubt they'd even bother looking up anything that could bring the game closer to a simulation. Than there's the constant crying from delusional arcade fans who refuse to accept that swords aren't meant for battle-fields as primary weapons, which any of these changes would basically enforce.

 

[Bluko88]

back to the same thing I've repeated since forever: armor effectiveness / AI does better with swingable polearms

Want to bring more interesting results to the table? Do the same test against sturgian line breakers (t5) / again against vlandian volges (t5) and one last time against Palace Guards (t5) - than I believe you'll see entirely different results.
What legionaires have in strength (armor + shiled - meaning increased durability) these other 3 have in dps and range - there's a reason inf units are meant to be mixed. I also have a tickling suspicion that the nomads would be decimated even with glaives against specialized skirmishers like the Wildlings.

Not going to bother with 100 vs 100 since I more or less know they'll lose while getting a fair number of kills.

But can any 100 Tier 5 Melee unit defeat 200 peasants armed with cool sticks?

Spoiler: One by one they fell to the power of the glaive

Equipment is always the most important aspect of any unit.

Skill in Melee Skills mostly effects how well the A.I. blocks and how quickly it can swing, so DPS. High Melee Skills really doesn't effect "to-hit" chance. It might boost damage, but it's very negligible AFAIK.

Ranged Skills (go figure) actually do provide much more tangible benefits such as increasing range, accuracy, and DPS. And the effects of Riding and Athletics is pretty explanatory.


I don't think there's any way to "fix" the glaive without making it useless. Slow the swing speed down too much it'll just be super easy to block and not do enough damage, maybe 20-30 something swing speed would do? IDK, someone truly knowledgeable would have to go tinker with such things.

And that's the thing about Fians too, even if you brought their Two-Handed Skill down 0, they'd still kill stuff with their two-hand swords. They just wouldn't be able to block for **** and would swing pretty slowly.


Eh should just arm all Looters with glaives that way the early game is as fun as the late game!

 

[LyonExodus]

I don't think there's any way to "fix" the glaive without making it useless.

First, great work.
Second. i think there is a way.
On paper the Voulge is a very good weapon, likely even better than the Glaive. yet the Voulgiers are not even close to the performance of a Linebreaker, let alone a KG.
The only thing i know about the Voulgier is that they have crappy armor. just an hint at what also might work.

 

[five bucks]

Not going to bother with 100 vs 100 since I more or less know they'll lose while getting a fair number of kills.

Good work on the testing, really shows how stupidly strong the weapon is.

I don't think there's any way to "fix" the glaive without making it useless.

Reduce the base damage. I'm sure there's a number inbetween 145 and 1 which is balanced.

Alternately, if it's going to be so powerful just take it away from the Khan's Guard and only give it to infantry units.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

The only thing i know about the Voulgier is that they have crappy armor. just an hint at what also might work.

Spoiler: Hmmm...