Recent content by geala

Stones thrown by hand were surely often used in combat, however more as an improvised weapon or weapon of the poorest. There are several ancient depictions showing it's use (like a hoplite with a stone in hand throwing at people in a sieged city, or a psiloi with stones), as well as short notices in ancient texts. That are usually stones of the size of the fist or only slightly bigger, as big brick-like stones would be awkward to handle and throw (except throwing them down in sieges or town battles, as poor Pyrrhus had to suffer from).

The average player of the US top baseball league (so "average" means very well trained) allegedly throws the fast balls with about 40 m/sec which results in an energy of 116 Joules (taking an average ball weight of 145 g). That's about the energy level of a weaker .22 lr bullet. Of course the baseball (or an equally sized stone) cannot penetrate the human skin. One study of the US Army refers as follows to non-penetrating projectiles: 40 to 120 Joules can result in "dangerous" injuries, like concussions, broken rips, blindness, while with more than 120 Joules there are "severe damages" possible, like broken skulls, wounds from ripped skin, damage to organs near the body surface.

That's on the unprotected body however. Rigid armor with padding (like a metal helmet) can greatly reduce the energy transfered to the body. As someone who experienced some bigger blunt damage to the head while it was (luckily) helmeted, I can say that helmets do a wonderful job in mitigating such energy.

Putting a curve on a blade changes cutting abilities considerably, wether the edge is outside or inside. That's the reason why curved blades exist. It does no increase anti-armor capabilities, that's true.

However spikes are very effective for armor piercing, and the end of a falx could perhaps act as a kind of spike. I remember tests made by a museum in Zurich, Switzerland, with a 16th c. AD halberd against a 16th c. AD armor and helmet, where the spike at the back of the halberd head penetrated the plate armor with ease while cuts with the axe blade were not very effective.

BTW the theory that the long falxes found were agricultural tools is kind of ... hilarious.

sifis172 said:

i think that the whole issue of cavalry charging has to be
re-adressed in the historical community.
f.e(1), a medieval horse would charge a shieldwall of spearmen,
and it is said and re-said by historians, that they actualy were.
but on a 2nd example it is well dommented that in the napoleonic era,
no horse no matter what, would never charge a square of infantry with bayonnets.
that is well researched and confirmed by historians.

this seems obscure to me, and i haven't reached anything that seems conclusive.
why would a horse charge a wall of spears, with spears 2, or 3 metters?
and not a relatively small range of sticks 1.5 meters?
if anybody knows something about that please share it.

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Who said this? There cannot be mathematic rules, for neither time. Quite often ancient and medieval battles are very badly documented, most often we do not know how a cavalry charge succeeded. There were battles where seemingly frontal charges into infantry formations had success, and there were battles where they obviously had not, Hastings 1066 AD for example.

Infantry squares of the Napoleonic era could be broken by cavalry, and they were broken, under certain circumstances. So your basic thesis, cavalry could break infantry in the medieval times and could not in Napoleonic times, is not true.

In 18th/19th century military training manuals the general rule is however that cavalry usually cannot break determined infantry in a static formation as long as the moral of the infantry did not drop before. So it was a huge difference wether cavalry attacked a formation of fresh troops, compared to troops who had been under infantry and/or artillery fire for a prolonged time.

Not true for glaives however cause they had kind of special hardening (allegedly dark magic was involved), you could cut even hardened steel armor with it, easy-peasy. The tech was unfortunately lost when the inventor fell from a horse and died while demonstrating his latest models in 1092.

Earnestly, the problem of armor in games is that there are usually no gaps included (only Kenshi I know as an exception). We know of the many cases in which well armored people were killed through these gaps. In addition usually some drawbacks of armor, mainly heat exhaustion, are not simulated.

So armor cannot be made as strong as in a test against a weapon. It's difficult to balance. I'm playing with Realistic Battle Mod, and I like it more than vanilla, but it's still debatable.

There is a different explanation: who raids poor villagers or peaceful caravans must be a nasty person. Companions and followers of such persons are also nasty persons. Those villains simply put all the loot they found into their own pockets and give only a bit to the boss. So it's a kind of higher justice that the nasty player cannot live at costs of innocent people.

I find it much more annoying that my foot archers don't shoot at cavalry most of the time (1.5.6). Especially problematic against horse archers.

How horse archers perform depends on their stats, I bet. I never use them myself and did not fight Khuzaits lately, so I cannot judge, but I have some high tier bandit horse archers in my game from mods and they can absolutely wreck my much bigger party.

I can understand a lot of what you wrote. Although I usually enjoy the starting phase the most, but only because I have Calradia at War and Scum and Villainy installed which give you a plentitude of early adversaries. I really like the fights, especially when the enemy has cavalry and all is a chaotic chase, not so much the bigger battles however.

My bigger problems come when I enter the mercenary stage. To deal with the stupid own AI and the repeating gameplay wears me down, also the sad siege mechanics. And the prospect of more repetition after repetition usually makes me stop shortly after becoming a vassal and losing the first fief over and over again. A big reason for my quits may however be the personal bias and fact that I don't like any of the factions and don't want to bind on one, and that I don't have so much interest in creating a dynasty or big empire.

Would like to know, too. Bug or balancing feature? Maybe it's a kind of smart money you have to pay to him/her for him/her lacking your's godly companionship in a single party?

I'm usually armed with spear/lance, javelins, mace/axe and shield. I actually never used bow or crossbow, except in the arena. I'm playing without reticle and am currently using Realistic Battle Mod, so it's difficult to judge about vanilla.

With RBM (in 1.5.6), throwing weapons are mostly ok. For my taste shields break too quickly in RBM and I increased shield hp of the better ones, the rest is acceptable.

I would opt, like the OP, that the movement penalty for throwing weapons should go or at least be greatly reduced. It has it's place for bows and crossbows but it does not make so much sense for a more or less instinctive aiming move like with throwing stuff.

Great. After the hotfix I get a crash in 1.5.6 at the end of any battle, when clicking "Done" in the results window.

Edit: I'm very thankful for the mod "Better Exception Window" which allowed me to identify the problem. As expected it was a mod I used (Kill Bandits Raises Relations) which suddenly did not work any longer after the hotfix.

ZZZ9WWW said:

...

However, The troop tree needs to rebalance anyway, there are countless mistakes for me to spend weeks fixing like Sturgian heavy spearman will randomly spawn "Nordic hauberk" instead of their "Sturgian cavalry armor" that shows in the troop tree. The Khuzait raider has a better bow than its horse archer, low tire soldiers like Sturgian woodsman and Battanian skirmishes randomly spawn their noble bracer and plated gloves. mercenary cavalry lost their shield because the shield is in the same slot with their spear so they can not spawn their shields and more.....

The troop tree looks and functions poorly than many nexus troop mods. TW should do something to improve the game experience, not the other way around.

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For me those are mostly not mistakes but variety. I find it terrible if all units have uniform equipment, it's a medieval and not 19th c. AD setting. I give my custom troops (from ATC) all different equipment as much as possible. If not all in a tier have the best armor, that's life.

There are several mistakes in the troop tree (like having a onehanded sword as sidearm, but twohanded stats) but it's not that bad.

Old-Bull said:

I dont think the game does a good job of reflecting the cost of raising, supplying, and keeping a large army in the field. An army shouldn't just cost influence. It should cost denars.

In real life you have to keep an open supply line for an army. The army can't just re-supply itself.

This game doesn't account for the time and money it takes to supply the army with equipment, food, horse feed, lodging, and the economic impact of a country losing the majority of its work force.....

If you put a monetary cost on raising and keeping an army in the field, it would allow small defensive kingdoms to bank money while they aren't at war.

If you made that cost smaller for countries defending than countries deep in enemy territory, since its easier for them to re-supply and find lodging, it would naturally reflect the expense and difficulty of rapid expansion.

To me, armies are making too much money from war. Historically, armies at war bankrupted countries. In Bannerlord, its the easiest way to get rich aside from exploiting the broken smithing mechanic.

Raising armies should cost denars and influence. The larger the army, the more it should cost. The deeper you are in enemy territory, the more it should cost.

Right now the game tries to make up for the expense of raising armies by artificially inflating fief income and nerfing loot income. It isn't the loot or the fiefs that's the problem. The problem is armies aren't an expense, they're a limitless supply of money.

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I don't think that such a radical change of the mechanics would be a good idea. Supply lines were mostly problems of later warfare. Ancient and medieval armies did not need a lot of special supply, unlike modern armies which are toast without fuel and ammunition. So ancient and medieval armies usually lived from the country (and quite often early modern armies too, up to the 19th century; an interesting read to start for example here is "Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton" by Martin van Crefeld). Warfare was in fact often cheaper and easier to sustain when they were in enemy country and could plunder and forage there. This system of supporting the armies also explains a lot the way armies in the old times moved and why and where battles were fought.

The problems of this kind of "living of the land" was that sooner or later regions were empty of supply and the armies had to move. However with the small scale warfare we have and the relatively small armies, it would not have been such a huge aspect. Finally, I just imagine that the constant foraging is done by all parties and included in the movement speed.

From the gameplay aspect, making war too complicated may hurt more than help, I see this similar as Apocal. In the end it might promote snowballing more than hindering it.

veronicaaltoids said:

yeah exactly, its very long range , like 200 range, it swing and cut enemy lancer before they can poke me
I find lancer very difficult to use , in tornaments, I rarely wins with lancer.

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You can develop a feeling for lance or spear by using it, as always. My main weapon is the spear or lance, if you get a long one, no glaive swinger is a fundamental problem (except they ride from behind and cut you in two by surprise). However I'm using mods, so maybe it's different in vanilla.

The mods make spears/lances more effective on the one hand and NPCs block a lot more on the other hand, so frequently the glaive boys simply block my thrusts. They always block for 100% if they see me coming, so you have to use distraction to nail them.

I'm also playing without the reticle for my javelins, as my preferred HUD in games is "nothing on the screen". Sadly I still did not find such an option to remove the hit markers, I'm interested wether there's possibly some simple edit to files, or wether there's an HUD mod available.

veronicaaltoids said:

dont you find long glaive is far far better than long lance?? I almost never use lance in battle

lance is very easy to miss target, you only poke on one spot, if the target is moving little , you are missing it
while swing a long glaive can barely miss it, even target is moving. one big swing, and KIA 80-90% chance, if you use lance, you probably on hit 30-40% chance

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It is better by far. I never use glaives or similar weapons (like menavlions) because they are not balanced and I feel ridiculous swinging them. I only experience them in the hand of enemies or when my char is incapacitated and I play further as a NPC with a glaive (I try to avoid them as my troops but sometimes that's not possible), and even these few occasions showed me the might of them.