Innocent Flower said:
I feel that looters are a fair bit weaker than their native counterparts. I like the rebel factions, there's just one that has no ranged at all thus is far, far easier to kill off because they just run slowly at you with spears and provide the easiest headshots. I think variety could do with some improving (like if there were some folk with horses, were entirely ranged, or something as such, points could be scored)
I understand what you are saying. But hear me out.
The thing about the bandit factions is that as easy or hard they are to defeat individually when you actually look at them you can see a tiered progression of capability. And a very balanced one at that.
Playing up from just level 1, no companions no equipment to high level, good gear ready to join a faction you can see how each of them is designed to offer you with an appropriate challenge to let you grind up the prerequisite gold, gear and XP to advance. And they do this really well. That's why I newer play freelancer with this mod. It's just not necessary.
Now the consequence of this is of course that when you do become a lord in the end and you do get good gear and a strong army they are basically pushovers. But I feel that this is a worthwhile tradeoff.
it's not just canons. There's grenades, japan made wonderful use of fire rockets (though i've never seen anything like them in warband so I don't know how doable they are).
If at all I say do it. I mean, seriously. Although I get a sneeking suspicion they'll end up as useless as explosives are in every other mod I've tried.
As for horse archers, I recall reading something that suggested that lancers were actually something that came up during the sengoku period, now I don't know if that's when they replaced mounted archers, or if there was a significant period where people thought horse archers were for nothing, but it does raise some questions. Furthermore, I still would think that mounted ranged units would be somewhat relevant in an army, mobile missile troops are a valuable role, and they sure as **** couldn't do that with guns in this period.
1. It is my understanding that horse archers went out of favor long before the sengoku period.
2. Mounted archers need not be horse archers. You can also have mounted archers who act as dragoons. As in, they ride horses for mobility but dismount to shoot. The English famously used these during the middle ages and in particular the Hundred Years War period. And that you can do with guns.
Plus, if you've ever actually used horse archers in this game you'll know their AI sucks. And you basically have to use them as dragoons anyway.
However the question here really shouldn't be if it can be done but if the Japanese did it. And that brings us back to #1.
First off, I'm not wrong. Yes, samurai trained in gunnery and such, but the usefulness of guns was commonly debated before nobunaga showed them how to wreck enemies.
But do be aware that the mod is in fact set in the period where Nobunaga was showing everyone this. T'would be kind of stupid to not let us do it as well.
The biggest merit of the gun, other than how terrifying they were, was that they needed much less training to use. For ashigaru, this was great, since they were cheap troops (I suspect the biggest reason why ashigaru had mixed bows and guns was because of supply, or perhaps veterans getting good enough to compete with noob gunmen) For samurai, they were a warrior class with a land's income, so training time was far less of an issue. Thus they had the choice between hundreds of hours for an accurate weapon that fired several times faster, or tens of hours to work out the best matchlock you could afford, which was less accurate (guns of the time) and slow, but meant you'd have a better time taking cover or more time to learn other weapons. Also guns are exciting, look at america. But the bottom line is, if I wanted dedicated missile troops, historically I would've prefered ashigaru gunners and samurai archers, but I wouldn't scoff at samurai gunners.
To be perfectly honest I feel that the whole issue with balance in this mod is really just that there is too little incentive to use ashigaru if you can afford not to. And when you combine that with the fact that you can have a core of unkillable elite samurai grade companions that you can customize and equip it becomes too easy to just mow down large enemy armies with a small elite band.
Not sure how that would be addressed though.
I did a little myself, and I couldn't find much. I could find a good deal of stuff already in the game, and that their sword handles were often more elaborate than the samurai ones (I wouldn't hold that against the mod, warband ain't great with high polly)
Overall that's what stopped me in the end. Not enough material to really make the Ezo play unique and different from the rest of Japan. I still have the half finished project files for my plot idea which was basically to let the player kickstart an Ezo rebellion, crown him self king of the Ezo and try to conquer Japan. Maybe someone can pick up on that.