five bucks
Knight at Arms
Well the answer's simple. The problem is not the AI. The AI contributes to the issue. However even if you made the AI perfect, archers would still be capable of mowing down shieldless infantry before they reach melee range, and still capable of mowing down shielded infantry as soon as they have to engage in melee combat. Even when the AI performs perfectly, ranged troops still outperform other troops by a big margin.What if archers are not op? What if the problem was/is and will always be the AI?
Cataphracts pull out their 2 handed polearm and sit in an arrow volley. Infantry puts shields up but then starts running left and right and expose flanks and back. You can see this in every battle.
This is for a simple reason: archers do comparable damage to melee troops, but at a distance. This will always give them a huge advantage.
As soon as a shield wall enters melee combat, it has to drop its shields to fight, which means the archers in the back will absolutely **** them up, since they can attack over the heads of their allies.Put up a shieldwall that holds the line and all of a sudden Archers do nothing.
This happens often and means archers regularly rack up the most casualties, since:
A- they are an obvious hard counter to anyone without a shield and will slaughter them 2:1.
B - they can easily kill anyone with a shield who is distracted.
C - ranged troops are the only troop type who can reliably kill cavalry when they are moving.
D- they are the only troop who can attack all the time without needing to get in melee range first.
E- they cannot be blocked by melee weapons by the AI like melee troops can.
Three things.I don´t say this is the only solution, but you can see what happens when you increase the armor a lot with the RBM mod. It turns noble cavalrie units into immortal tanks. If that´s what you want, go ahead. But i wouldn´t consider that balanced
1: I am not asking for armour to be as powerful as it is in RBM. I am asking for it to be inbetween how it is now, and how it was in Warband.
2: The player has to invest significant sums of money and time and warhorses to get noble cavalry. For that reason, they are meant to be better than regular line infantry units. Not "immortal" better, but there should certainly be an advantage for a T6 Druzhina Champion over a T5 Heavy Axeman.
3: Bannerlord already has a tool for balancing cavalry: braced polearms. Pikes can shut down heavy cavalry. This would lead to some actual tactical gameplay in Bannerlord. The only problem is that not enough troop trees use braced pikes. Changing the troop trees to have more braced pikes in that way would keep tanky cavalry balanced, and have the added benefit of making factions feel more distinct.
4: Making armour more effective against arrows/bolts specifically, without reducing the damage of anything else, will not make infantry less effective vs cavalry than they are now. It will only make archers and crossbowmen weaker against cavalry.
You just told us you don't play "laboratory settings". So in an actual battle it wouldn't be 20 legionaries vs 100 vet archers, it would be, say:If I don't harrass their edges, shielded infantry can always reach melee. Always. Twenty legionaires will reach 100 Vet archers, every time.
Player doing "infantry playthrough": 50 infantry of assorted ranks, mostly with shields.
AI lord with "archer focus" recruiting: 40 archers of assorted ranks, 10 random trash infantry.
The AI will most likely camp on a hill. You send troops to attack in shieldwall formation. They fight the trash infantry and have to drop their shields while fighting; this leaves them open for the AI archers to begin filling them with arrows.
Alternately, if you have horse archers, they ride around the shield infantry in circles and will inevitably land some shots on their backs.
The AI being stupid should be fixed, not used as an excuse for balance problems.They really aren't. Skill issue. Take a handful of cavalry around your left flank, strafe through the archers. They will not be able to focus while your infantry approach. Six horsemen are capable of neutralizing 50 archers.
Bannerlord should be an immersive, challenging game where you use simple realistic tactics, plus your own combat skill, to win with the lowest casualties possible.
Not a game where archers are unrealistic machine gunners and the only way to beat them with acceptable casualties is to exploit their AI's stupidity.
It's your job to make your argument, not mine. If you come in and say nonsense then refuse to elaborate, that simply isn't an argument.Maybe you should learn how armor works better if you don't understand.
"Not unbeatable" and "balanced" aren't the same ****ing thing. Archers are heavily imbalanced. Ranged troops are by far the best strategy used to the point I see no reason in ever upgrading to infantry because they're only good as a trash distraction in small numbers and you pick those up anyway. Or you just go all Khan's Guard, move around the map at lightspeed and defeat everything with almost no casualties.I'm absolutely NOT against changing armor in vacuu. But after all the prerelease tweaks I've seen, used, and made, the armor change that TW did for release, which you already praise, is working fine. Archers are DANGEROUS. Not unbeatable.
This creates great problems with the challenge, variety, and immersion of the game. This is why games try and be balanced.
This is why blunt damage was changed and, as you agree, improved the game. Therefore, changing pierce damage in a similar way will improve the game further.
It worked in Warband just fine. Anyone who played that game should be able to see there is no reason to be irrationally afraid of armour working slightly better against arrows.
You can pull that semantic bull**** on anything. I could say black being white is someone's opinion because everyone perceives colour differently. Your post is an opinion too. "Well that's just, like, your opinion, man" adds nothing to the argument.You act like you're not just stating an opinion, when you are.