I don't think that Sturgia has a real cav disatvantage as of the latest version of the game. It's Khuzaits vs everyone else now really. Sturgia and Aserai were at a disatvantage due to cav bonuses when lords respawned with more units and the composition of those troops was different for different factions. Sturgia would get almost no cav at all while Vlandia they start the game at war with would get loads of cav. With a significant amount of troops often being those initial parties lords spawned with, Sturgian were set up for failure in the long run.
It's still 30% advantage applied to the dying chance (which is kind of backwards since you would expect survival but whatever). Infantry is 30% more likely to die than cav. How large that is depends on how high the damage is in the first place.
You know you can check the files in the game folder without third party links, right? These values aren't in the game NPC files. Units have appearance, upgrade paths, skills and equipment sets. They don't have armor values. I guess the guy running the site pulls the values for armor from spitems.xml and adds them to the json file for your convinience. They could be hardcoded somewhere outside the xml files but then you wouldn't be able to add new units to the game just by editing the files, which you can do.
If that was the case then changing armor in the equipment sets would do nothing. It very much does.
I did some tests in custom battles and as far as shock infantry fighting other shock infantry goes it's Menavliatons > Shock Troops = Voulgiers.
Forming a bulwark against the enemy is their main function. Infantry simply can not do as much damage as ranged units, at least the way the game currently is. Staying power allows them to kill more enemies in bigger battles if you really care about that.
Sergeants have a chance to spawn with a 2h billhook, some of them are closer to shock infantry than to heavy infantry. That gives them an advantage in melee. They win both against Legionaries and Veteran Warriors if the latter don't have a particularly good javelin volley. In a shield wall they are not great though. If units in formations hid units without shields behind the ones with shields they would work a lot better but then you would be able to mix heavy inf and shock inf in a single formation and they still would be the odd unit with blurred specialization.
If you have them in your party you can fight them in spear and shield duel rounds in Khuzait and Sturgian towns. Joy.
Sturgian and Vlandian armors are already mostly the same.
It's not that they dismounted for battle. Much like other historic heavy cavalry, they were expected to fulfill whatever role was required from them as the men with the best training and equipment available. E.g. Rus' princes often lead river and sea expeditions that did not present a lot of opportunities for cavalry charges. That didn't mean their retinue got to stay home because they couldn't bring horses. They were also (and at times mostly) expected to be proficient in horse archery as Rus' had conflicts with steppe tribes ever since its foundation.
You are technically right, the main word being technically. +2 to missile speed isn't going to change things in a noticable way. I was addressing you saying that you need high tier archers to use bows with fairly impressive stats. Only fians and mamelukes use those, other archers use mid tier bows even at the highest tiers. Imperials get the same bow at the tier 3 they and Sturgians will have until tier 5 and the bow used by high tier Khuzaits is 5% better at best. Imperial trained archer is a fairly low tier unit, you see tons of those in campaign.
11%. It's +0.11% damage and 0.09% accuracy per skill level. Skill should also improve AI according to developers.
No, that's the case with all of them except fians and mamelukes. Evolution from first tier to the next is great but from mid tier to high tier it's mostly cosmetic for anyone but fians.
High tier archers use the same bows as mid tier ones. Consider Imperials (tier 2 hunting bow => tier 3 composite bow => tier 3 composite bow => tier 3 composite bow), Khuzaits (tier 2 steppe bow => tier 3 steppe heavy bow => tier 3 composite steppe bow), Sturgians (tier 2 mountain hunting bow => tier 3 nordic shortbow => tier 3 composite bow) and Aserai (tier 3 composite bow => tier 3 composite steppe bow). Even Khuzait noble line doesn't seem to progress at all (tier 2 steppe bow => tier 2 steppe bow => tier 3 steppe heavy bow => tier 3 composite steppe bow => tier 3 composite steppe bow). Composite steppe bow is better than the rest but only slightly. Only fians, mameluke heavy cavalry, minor factions and forest bandits get tier 4 and 5 bows at the moment.
Druzhinniks used to have higher one handed skill but that was fixed in 1.3.0. Now they are just knights with worse equipment. I did some tests in custom battles and they are way worse on horses, most likely due to short lances and swords, and are about equal on foot. Elite cataphracts destroy both knights and druzhinniks dismounted. All dismounted T6 heavy cav is significantly worse than T5 heavy infantry (tested against legionaries, veteran warriors and sergeants).
Could it be related to the reduced effects of goods on prosperity? Sturgia has a lot of fur villages that don't seem to be much of boon in 1.3.0. Almost every town in Sturgia also seem to have a brewery that turns local grain into beer which isn't counted as food for towns. If I understand correctly, those good are supposed to be traded and trade should have a positive effect on prosperity but that doesn't seem to be the case in the game.
Last time I checked 25 + 5 still wasn't 12.
They have one in three chance to spawn with a tiny cavalry shield and mid tier Khuzait helmet on top of that. Changelogs mentioned that all Sturgian units should get round shields but I guess not.