Right, I see. In that instance, the actual face was quite a small target. You could be hit on the top of your head on the helmet, or on the side of your head on the coif. Bannerlord deals with this by abstraction, counting the protected and unprotected areas of the head as the same and giving armour bonus for head area but also giving a damage bonus for headshots. Most shots land on the body, I'd say about 1 in 6 shots (that don't miss entirely) are headshots at T5-T6 accuracy.
Its the further away you are, but when you start getting closer and closer the odds get worse. And well, I'd be pretty damn sad if an arrow punched right through my mouth. So yeah it probably won't happen as much as you'd think, but I don't think anyone is going to be happy to run into volleys without a shield or visor. All in all, a bad time for your given early medieval warrior without their shield.
I'd be happy enough reducing the number of elite recruit-giving notables in castle villages.
Yeah, too many damn noble troops around, its stupid. Never understood the complaints about not having enough of them. Now they're everywhere and they end up becoming mainstay troops as opposed to an elite reserve.
But to me that's not even enough. I want to go as far as to make Imperial Legionaries rare. If I had my way, the majority of the average player's army would be T3, and they will weep at the loss of even a single T5.
Reading your sources and they do mention that 'peltasts' did run around with
shorter versions of 2.4m kontarion spears. Emphasis on shorter though, so I'm not seeing pikemen but rather your dime in a dozen javelineer. Longer spears than usual maybe, but not pikes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_army_(Komnenian_era)#Peltasts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_of_pike Pikemen were used offensively to great effect. They could charge enemy infantry with pikes leveled. And kill them. Even in very close quarters one could use one's sidearm, which Bannerlord pikemen have. William Wallace used the
pike schiltron offensively, sometimes to great effect against English cavalry.
Particularly notable was the Swiss pike square, which defeated competent combined arms forces in an offensive role, despite being
only made up of pikemen who were
only armed with pikes, with no archer support.
Well there are exceptions of course, the majority of the time, pikes did not really operate that way. But I'll tell you what, I would be amused to see charging pikemen be a thing for troops with enough athletics now lol. Especially for Battania.
In addition, you can look at Alexander the Great's army, who had no gunners or arbalests. Although they were supported by cavalry and peltasts, the main fighting unit was the phalangite, who used the long sarissa pike in phalanx formation, definitely for killing and attacking.
Not the way I understood it. Phalanx guys can kill dudes, but that wasn't their job at all. Their job was to pin the enemy formation down and keep them in place for Alexander's cavalry, the real killers. Hence the 'hammer and anvil' expression. Pikes were the anvil, cavalry the hammer.
Even if you aren't convinced by all this, at the very least it should be reasonable to say that pikemen should have better armour and melee fighting skills than ranged infantry, and so have a good advantage there.
I'll admit this much yes, unless the archers are uniquely capable of melee combat due to shields, skills or armour.
Well, after this productive discussion and thinking about it more, you're beginning to change my mind. It takes a lot to justify archers not dying when charged by cav without someone to defend them, if we work under the assumption that Taleworlds fixes cavalry AI, and makes the speed bonus not defy physics. I guess melee cavalry could be a soft counter to ranged infantry
in addition to shock infantry, and ranged cavalry could be a soft counter to shock infantry
in addition to pike infantry.
After all, both types of cavalry are rarer and more expensive than other troop types, which means that ranged/pike/shock infantry will not face them *too* often, so being countered twice is not as bad; and their higher cost justifies countering two different things where other troop types only counter one.
I'll be content with this much, so long as its not absolute (which tbf you don't want it to be). Again, shock/pikes will not have much fun going after archers, melee cav can absolutely get splattered if they get tied up in one place and hit by shock troops and etc etc. Good chart though otherwise.
I suppose more troop types can be fitted in. Not too sure which. And it gets messier when you talk about hybrid troops too.