Recent content by Kaozak

VBMeireles said:

In regards to that, I think the rock-paper-scissors element (cavalry-spears-swords), though not very realistic or true to history as @hruza has interestingly pointed out, is essential and needs to be there IMO because of how much it adds to the complexity of tactics and allows for a party composition game beyond mass heavy cavalry.

EDIT: You do have a point where medieval combat and warfare is fun on its own without added fictional elements, but without a rock-paper-scissors element the party composition game would be simplified to the point of everybody having the same goal of massing the same "best" troop.

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The main reason games use the rock-paper-scissor approach isn't because it works better, but because it's generally easier to implement than any sort of realistic battle logic. No need for clever tactics, when you have swords and the enemy has spears.

The rock-paper-scissor element at the moment does the opposite of "balancing". Spearmen are worthless, as even cavalry beats spearmen at the moment. Cav is simply unstoppable. Massing either cav or archers is just the way at the moment to win every battle, as archer sidearm weapons are as good as any infantry weapon, since almost no one uses any main weapons. As for infantry: the only use at the moment are shield + sword/axe/mace units, as they are basically only for blocking arrows / distracting enemies and shield + spear units just die too easily.

Basically the history teaches us, that weaponry reflects the armor usage, and vice versa. When someone wears poor armor, they will probably want a shield and a onehanded weapon. If a someone wears good armor, they will probably want a better weapon to be more effective on the offense.

If your opponent wears mail or thick linen armor, you want something that can penetrate that. And you will have difficulties doing that with slashing. To defeat those types of armor, you would either go for unprotected places, or use a piercing weapon (which are highly effective against those types of armor) or a blunt weapon. Since spears are much easier to use and much more effective in general, spears were the main choice of weapon in that period of time.

The true balance element that games should try to implement is: archers-cavalry-infantry. Archers beat anything while well protected. Cavalry beats anything unprotected (unprotected archers or flanks of infantry) while infantry beats cavalry and archers in a head on fight. A full cav party should be easily taken care of by a mix of infantry / archers. And friendly fire should definitely be a thing for any ranged combat.

And as for melee combat: weaponry should match armor usage, nothing else should be considered for "balancing" reasons. Any rebalancing just completly messes up how battles work, as they aren't 1vs1. A spearwall should beat most infantry compositions charging head on, which it absolutly doesn't at the moment. You can easily run down a spearwall with a bunch of archers in melee with their onehanded swords and no shield.

And while horse archers were one of the most effective type of warfare, they weren't in the way games portrait them, as you would attack and retreat with a horse archer army, and not attack and fight to the death, like in Bannerlord. Currently I'm thinking about removing horse archers entirely from the game, as they completely mess up the AI, as 5 horse archers can completely turn around an army and distract all archers, while the foot archers destroy the army from behind.

King Yngvar said:

Agree. I've increased damage factors for spears myself as well, the only problem is that it is in crafting pieces and the same spear blades used by the spears are used by javelins so they become one hit kills no matter what armor they are up against. In addition, cavalry also uses spears with the same spear blades and they get a speed bonus and become even more deadly.

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I don't really see a problem with those two side effects. If charging cavalry hits you with a spear, you just should be dead. Same for throwing spears hitting you almost anywhere on a somewhat decent throw. Both are too weak in my opinion. On vanilla it's far more efficient to use any swing weapon on horse, than to use spears.

The problem with horses at the moment is still, that there is basically nothing that counters them. Spearmen don't know how to use spears against cavalry (neither moving nor still standing) and most of the time the cav just slowly stumbles through multiple lines of spearmen and then runs off again. The other potential counter are ranged attacks, but the AI fires too accurate, which leads to entire volleys missing because the cav slightly moved.

Update:
I've made a new thread in the singleplayer forum for the discussion about singleplayer balancing, as I don't really care about the multiplayer anymore and the discussion currently is a bit split between singleplayer and multiplayer.

Updated the mod.

I've added a script to automatically modify the base crafting items. Currently I am modifying all items with BladeData to recieve a x2 buff, if their only damage type is thrust, or an x1.25 buff to thrust, if they also have swing damage.

My experience so far:
Always build the ram. Even if you plan on using ladders/siege tower, the ram leads to a lot of defenders standing behind the door instead of on the walls. And the gate AI is so bad, that they are basically non existent for the fight.

If the defenders are < 200 and you have at least 200, just rush the ladders. Shoot the defenders with your bow if possible. Once you get like 5 guys on the wall at the same time, you most likely won the siege. The defenders often seem to just defend one of the ladders. Never go up the ladder yourself too early, you might get trapped by your own guys. Try to go up with shield and push yourself to the side once you reach the top. The defenders will then ignore you, while you can kill them from behind.

if the defenders are > 200:
Wait for the ram to reach the gate and attack through the gate. If your ram gets destroyed, retreat. You can't really win the ladders/tower. With that many defenders, while the ram is destroyed.

And I still would say, don't bother with any other siege equipment other than the ram. Towers are too slow, as climbing the walls seems only viable to me, if you rush it. When you ride up to the wall and put up one of the ladders, your infantry will change to "Using siege equipment" immediatly, instead of waiting for the archers.

Ballista/catapult/trebuchet didn't really do anything as far as I have noticed. They basically do less damage, than if the people manning them would use a bow.

So yeah, siege equipment definitively needs a huge buff for attackers (defenders with 4 catapults are most of the time unbeatable, since they destroy rams, but otherwise they are useless). AI also needs to learn how to use siege equipment, and where to stand. Shield users should be in front of the ram, for example, instead of behind it. There also needs to be far more cover for archers. It's a siege, the attacks prepared for it, but they apperantly only built enough cover for a fraction of their archers... More ladders/tower spots would be nice as well, to give the attacker more out of their number advantage.

Namakan said:

That's because this is the Multiplayer board. Of course discussion will go there, even if the thread wasn't meant for it. I don't care about spears in Singleplayer, but for Multiplayer they are too strong against infantry and too weak against cavalry.

That is, once again, talking about spears that can be used with shields, not menavlions or the like.

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Not sure if we are talking about the same game, or if only some spears have that bug you're talking about, but I'm not able to reproduce that. I'm currently playing on the beta branch.

Made a new SP character and tested a bit on the training grounds. With both one and two handed swords I was able to completely stun lock the trainer by chaining attacks, with the spear I could get at most 2 hits in, before the trainer broke my chain by hitting me faster with the two handed sword, than I could. Also didn't have anywhere instant damage on the hits. In the spear I got in the arena I coudn't even deal any damage when directly in front of the enemy. And with good hits from a distance I still dealt significantly less damage than with a sword.

From my experience so far, the spear is slower, deals less damage, is easier to block and harder to hit, when compared with most two handed weapons. So I don't really get how the 20-30 dmg hit from a spear is OP compared to 100+ damage from two handed swing weapons with almost any hits.

Edit:
And just to make a point, setting 100 spearmen vs 100 cav in a custom battle just resulted in 3 dead cav and 100 dead spearmen.

Tork789 said:

What do you propose? That a single mistake by cav is going to lead to it's death? I mean it's still the case if you get stopped near a team, it shouldn't be a death sentence if you get stopped by a single dude. The main if not only advantage of cav is it's ability to engage on it's terms, having just one shot at it will make it near useless.

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If cav can oneshot me, and I pick a spear to counter cav, then yes, I should be able to oneshot a horse that charges full speed into a spear.

I guess the current problem is, that the main requirements for smithing currently are having a ton of money and time. Early game, you won't have enough money for smithing (buying all that hardwood), late game you won't have the time (since you're always at war with someone). And when you manage to craft that level 4 or 5 weapon finally, it's just a couple of points better, on a weapon, that was OP already before that.

Maybe as alternative:

• Stamina only for crafting weapons, not for refining/smelting
• Crafting more expensive (more resource/stamina), but much much more XP (at least one point in smithing per weapon crafted)
• More XP for "good quality" weapons (correct difficulty range, etc.)
• Completely remove the unlocking, instead more debuffs for difficulty
• Maybe buffed stats for crafted, especially selling price

Tork789 said:

If you think cav is op now, imagine what happens when we get a spear damage buff. With the headshot buffs that is already on the way we're just gonna insta-kill everyone with simple stabs, couch lance will be a thing of the past. Lances will become obsolete since spears will be superior in every way. Btw that was the case once in Beta already.

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Wasn't that a thing before? I don't use the couch mode, as I'm bad with it. But at higher speeds the cav deals enough damage anyways, so I never bothered to learn the couch mode. I have much more trouble defeating cav, while using spears on foot, as I stop them, and then they ride off, before I can kill them. And in my expierience not a lot of people online know how to deal with cav.

The only thing dangerous to cav at the moment are ranged weapons, in my opinion. Spears are more to discourage cav from engaging, than to fight cav.

But I guess you could just buff the spears you can't use on horseback?

Namakan said:

Balancing this game around TDM or Siege would be the biggest mistake TW ever made.
Skirmish is your competitive mode, that's what you balance around. Adjustments to price and things like that can then be made for individual gamemodes if need be.

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Ok, didn't know that. Haven't tried that mode yet, as everyone told me it's boring.

Namakan said:

As for spears: They STILL deal instant damage when you stab someone (meaning you can be practically hugging them and still instant hit for full damage) - this needs to be fixed. Spears also just got a buff in the beta branch as their damage to the head multiplier is increased from 1.7 to 2.0. They don't need a damage increase.

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How do you do that? Everytime I use the spear, I deal 0 - 2 damage up close, as I'm too close for a hit. And when the enemy turn my way, I'm just dead, as I'm much slower and easy too block. In siege and TDM everyone switches from spear to some other melee weapon when I aproach, so apperantly not a lot of people know how to use a spear in melee at all.

Namakan said:

Also if this is a suggestion for Singleplayer, post it in the Singleplayer board, not the Multiplayer one...

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My bad, didn't know the board were split. On my earlier posts I could use a tag, for SP or MP, didn't really figure out why it was gone.

Gragnok said:

Spears are artificially low in damage as they are incredibly powerful if used well. I find getting kills with a spear and shield on siege or TDM extremely easy as people are distracted and i can poke them in the face. Spear damage is fine as it is i think.

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So are all two handed weapons. I can easily achieve a 5:1 KD ratio online by just using classes with on-hit two handed weapons. It's far more difficult to do any significant amount of damage with a spear, as most kills are either one hits or arrows anyways.

But as I said, my concern is mostly for single player. Spears are basically worthless, as they deal little damage and almost always get blocked. You don't even need a spear for cavalry, since two handed weapons are more efficient on horse back and you don't need the range advantage in SP.