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hruza 说:

Proper syntax of what? That's a pseudo code, it's not supposed to be syntax of anything.

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You don't use language-specific operators in pseudocode, moreover the "pseudocode" you attempted to use wasn't even internally consistent. You attempted to show that you have knowledge in an area where you have none and made a fool out of yourself.

hruza 说:

That's just your opinion.

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An opinion backed up by video evidence. Unless you seriously believe archers should be able to fight an equal number of cavalry on flat terrain and win handily. Because there are plenty of videos of that happening in this thread.

hruza 说:

Things other people say or write are not becoming pointless just because you decide to misquote them.

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I didn't misquote you. You are disingenuously trying to backpedal on what you said. Calling archers "almost harmless" makes the point you are arguing quite clear... just because I left out the "almost" in my rebuttal does not mean I am misrepresenting what you are saying. Especially when you said this a few posts earlier:

hruza 说:

It's painfully obvious how harmless archers are against the player. Degrading them further would only make things worst.

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That is taken direct from you and not paraphrased or edited in any way. Notice there is no "almost".

hruza 说:

1.1 Trolling, Flaming, and Harassment
This is an open, friendly community, that is the central point for those seeking information or assistance for our games. We will not tolerate any forms of flaming, trolling, or harassment. This includes, but is not limited to, deliberately trying to provoke an argument (flame-baiting), personal insults, and verbal attacks.

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?help/forum-rules/

Should we ask mods if this statement is personal insult or not?:

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Go ahead. Pretty sure your strawmanning, symantics based arguments, needless contrarianism, and claiming you didn't say things you did actually say fall into the definition of "trolling".

kweassa 说:

Pretty much sounds like you simply want an arrow-immune infantry that doesn't suffer any negative impact from the use of formation.

You simply want the infantry to flick shield up every time an arrow comes in, and then set it down when there are now arrows in the air, and thus, suffer no penalty from a defensive formation, move at regular speeds, fight at regular capacity, and yet still be impervious to arrow fire.

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No, and that isn't what I'm advocating. I am just saying we shouldn't balance archers around the AI using shieldwall because it can't and probably never will, and if you have read my other posts in this thread you can see I have been disagreeing with people who think low tier archers should be useless against heavy infantry.

Archers are overperforming right now, but I'm not saying they should be nerfed into uselessness.

Way to jump into this thread and totally misrepresent the argument that I am trying to make...

Which is: That archers are so dominant right now because cavalry (the counter to archers) sucks at the moment (at least in relation to what they should be), and armor across the board doesn't do enough to mitigate damage (including in melee).

hruza 说:

So AI does know to shieldwall after all.

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No, the game knows how to deploy the unit in shield wall at the start of the battle and leave them there... or are you too stupid to see the difference?

hruza 说:

F3-F2 ...vuala, shieldwall. Or do you think that AI on your soldiers is different then that of the enemies?

If getPlayerArmy()->haveRanged() == true then
self->getInfantry()->setShieldwall() = true
else
self->getInfantry()->setShieldwall() = false
endif;

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Apart from your mangling of anything remotely resembling proper syntax... (lol using assignment operator for boolean operation, no semicolons at the end of statements, no scope control, and calling an object like a function and then using a pointer access operator).

Simply turning on shield wall if archers are present in the enemy army is not "using shield wall properly" it's mindless, and allows players to potentially exploit the mechanic... It also reduces the effectiveness of infantry in melee, and their speed. There are going to be times when the AI will need to not be in shield wall even if the enemy force has archers. A player is capable of toggling when needed, the AI can't.

hruza 说:

If my assumption is true, then devs turned shieldwall off for AI because they thought archers are undepowered. Which is exact opposite of what you think.

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And now they are overpowered.

hruza 说:

flavior flavius 说:

Archers are most certainly NOT "harmless" against player armies.

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I said almost harmless.

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Pointless distinction. You are using semantics and strawmanning to troll, I don't know why you haven't gotten a ban yet.

hruza 说:

Which ...at the risk of sounding like a damn parrot: SHOWS THAT PROBLEM YOU THINK YOU HAVE IS IN AI AND NOT THE ARCHERS.
lol

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The AI will likely never be able to use shield wall up to the standards of a human. More then that, it may even be an intentional design choice that the AI CAN'T. To balance archers around assuming it will happen at some point is idiotic.

hruza 说:

flavior flavius 说:

If I know anything about software development (and I assume I do because I went to university for it) I know that as a general rule developing AI systems is the most time consuming and complicated part of ANY project, sometimes even by ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE. It is not as simple as changing a 0 to a 1 within the code, and all of a sudden the AI use shield wall intelligently.

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Actually yes, it may as well be as simple as that or close enough, because AI already knows to shieldwall, therefore all that is needed is to trigger it. Which may as well be as simple as changing 0 to a 1. Or couple of them.

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The AI does not know how to shieldwall. The only time a shieldwall is ever used by the AI in the game is behind the gate in the siege, and that is only because the troops start there when the map is generated and never move. The AI may not even have a system in place to recognize when a good time to use shieldwall would be, or how to react to archers on one side and flanking troops on another, or any other myriad of scenarios. All of that would have to be coded from scratch if they do not have the necessary systems in place. Frankly, your assumption that the developers could just change one line of code and the AI will suddenly start using shield wall intelligently in combat shows how little you know about software development and coding in general.

hruza 说:

Well, assuming you would manage to convince devs that there is a balance issue to begin with and archers are overpowered, then it would be solution. And much better then reducing damage or raising armor.

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Which would be ignoring why the devs took it out in the first place, if they indeed did. Overperforming archers is better than useless archers.

hruza 说:

When I was talking about "player" I was talking about both, player and his armies. As he obviously commands them. And as I said, archers are almost harmless against player -and his armies.

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Archers are most certainly NOT "harmless" against player armies. And... at the risk of sounding like a damn parrot: THIS DISCUSSION ISN'T ABOUT HOW WELL ARCHERS PERFORM AGAINST THE PLAYER, IT IS ABOUT HOW WELL ARCHERS PERFORM AGAINST THE AI, EVEN IN SCENARIOS WHERE THEY SHOULDN'T BE PERFORMING WELL.

I put the last part in bold because you seem to keep ignoring it.

hruza 说:

Do you realize that all code is just a set of formulas ...

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lol

hruza 说:

It is as possible to improve AI as it is to degrade archers or upgrade armor.

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No it isn't. Changing damage resistance granted by armor is as easy as changing the formula within the code. Changing archer shoot speed may perhaps be a little more complicated depending on how the animation system works, but is likewise relatively straightforward. Both changes may not be "one line code changes" but they are certainly less work than rewriting a portion of the combat AI.

If I know anything about software development (and I assume I do because I went to university for it) I know that as a general rule developing AI systems is the most time consuming and complicated part of ANY project, sometimes even by ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE. It is not as simple as changing a 0 to a 1 within the code, and all of a sudden the AI use shield wall intelligently.

hruza 说:

Besides, I have a feeling that devs didn't made AI use shield wall -or otherwise hold their shield up like they did in Warband to make player archers viable to begin with.

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You may very well be correct, in which case "just let the AI use shieldwall" is not the solution to the balance issue because it is intended NOT to be that way by the devs.

hruza 说:

It's painfully obvious how harmless archers are against the player. Degrading them further would only make things worst.

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You are wrong. Archers (especially archers that can hold their own in melee) are the most dangerous units against the player outside of getting swarmed by infantry in melee. Furthermore, we aren't talking about how well archers do against the player. We are talking about how well archers perform as a part of player army composition against the AI armies, where they outperform every other type of army composition regardless of situation, opponent, or sometimes even tactics.

Tercero 说:

It is not constructive because you are not hearing what you want to hear.

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I'm hearing "The solution to archers overperforming is the AI being better in general, and being able to use shieldwall specifically." That statement isn't constructive to this discussion because it renders this entire discussion moot. It is pointless to talk about combat balance at this juncture if such a major change will be implemented, and it is not clear if it ever will be.

An analogy: If a man asks how to become wealthy, "Win the lottery" is not a constructive response...

Is it possible that the AI might be improved? Sure, but certainly the opposite may be true and the AI might never be improved. Either way it isn't germane to the discussion about DEFINITIVELY ACHIEVABLE ways to improve the combat balance. Once again, we are discussing obviously achievable ways to balance the game we have RIGHT NOW, not the game we want to have, or MIGHT have at some point.

hruza 说:

Proportionally raising damage resistance of armor will disproportionately favor player armies, because they have disproportionately larger number of units with high armor ratings. The effect it will have and you ignore is that it will drastically decrease damage that AI armies can inflict on player units, reducing their casualties. But will have little effect on damage player armies do to AI units with next o no armor anyway. More alive/un-wounded player units will just slaughter AI units faster. Battles will be even more one sided then they already are.

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The solution to that is to make AI armies level better so that they aren't bringing stacks of low tier troops to battle (totally doable through tweaks to the AI experience formula). A high tier army SHOULD wipe the floor with a low tier army. Combat should not be balanced around the need for a low tier army to compete with a high tier one in order to create artificial challenge for the player.

Tercero 说:

I dont think it is a great or reasonable assumption that a game in Early Access/testing/beta phase is not going to change. I think at this stage we should ask for mechanics to change or features to be introduced for better not just quick fix to fit our desired outcome (I think)

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I have already explained that saying "well the AI should be better" is a cop-out that makes the discussion moot because such a thing is totally out of our hands. We are discussing concrete ways in order to fix the imbalances in the game the way it works currently, not in a theoretical future iteration of the game. These fixes will involve much less work then rewriting the combat AI. If you have anything constructive to add, please do. If you do not, please stop pushing a solution that will possibly never happen, and renders the discussion of combat balance pointless until it does.

hruza 说:

flavior flavius 说:

Also, "farmers aren't peasants" was pretty laughable too, especially when we are talking about the middle ages.

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Especially when we talk about middle ages. Because there was huge difference between serf or slave bound to and working on a land that he did not own for a landlord and unable to leave and free farmer that owned or rented his own land and owed no service to anybody and was free to move or do what he wanted.

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There you go strawmanning again. I am aware of the differences between a peasants/serf and a freeman. That is totally beside the point. A large amount of the farmers in the middle ages WERE peasants/serfs.

hruza 说:

Show me part where I said "Lowering DPS would make battles even more quick paced", will you or not?

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Right here.

hruza 说:

Field battles consist of player armies full of t4-t6 units facing AI armies made mostly of t1-t2 units. Raising armor resistance would make those battles even more quick paced and one sided.

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"Raising armor resistance" is functionally equivalent to lowering DPS across the board, because even t1-t2 units wear armor (crappy armor but still armor). If damage resistance is raised on a per armor point basis, the proportionality of damage resistance between low tier toops and high tier troops will be maintained. The only effect will be to slow combat down. It may have the effect of making heavily armored troops stronger then they are currently, but I think that is a good thing: There isn't enough of a performance difference between a t2 unit and a t5 one right now.

Apocal 说:

It shouldn't require a rewrite to at least get troops to use shieldwalls...

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You don't know how the AI is coded, it very well could. I also seem to remember the devs talking about the AI being able to use shieldwall at one point but they purposely took it out because it made archers useless against shielded infantry... I do not have a direct quote though. It may very well be that the AI not being able to use shieldwall is an intentional design decision. If that is true, the solution to archers overperforming is never going to involve the AI using shieldwall. What then?

If Taleworlds does intend to give the AI the ability to use shieldwall then this entire discussion is moot because it will shake up balance so badly everything will need to be re-evaluated. However, we do not know when this will happen, or even IF it will happen. Thus, I proceed in this discussion making the assumption that it never will happen because to do otherwise renders the discussion moot. Is that not reasonable?

Bronze Beast in the Dark 说:

flavior flavius 说:

Don't need to be a chef to know when food tastes like sh*t.

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But why are you still eating it?

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Because I like the restaurant and want the food to be better.

Tork789 说:

You seem to be an expert on how to run a 90+ people gamedev company, offer them your consulting services.

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Don't need to be a chef to know when food tastes like sh*t.

Tercero 说:

But I do believe you nail the issue which is that the AI is not capable of countering an all archer army because they dont know how to play against it effectively, so I still think the key is improving AI responses to certain unit spams

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That is part of the problem. The other part of the problem is that cavalry are so hilariously bad. I've seen a cavalry charge of 25+ horsemen get zero kills on LOOTERS.

But, most likely, the AI is NOT going to change in any appreciable way at any point in the future. What do you do now? How do you balance the game without being able to rely on the crutch of simply saying "just fix the AI"?

The answer is playing with the weapons and armor numbers until you start getting desirable behavior in battles. IMO this means buffs to thrusting spears and armor in general, among other things. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see formation cavalry charges, cavalry not missing their hits, and infantry that use shield wall correctly. It would be a whole different game then! But, it's most likely a pipe dream because I highly doubt Taleworlds wants to rewrite large portions of their AI code at this stage in development.

hruza 说:

Deliberate misquoting someone is not just unethical, it's against rules of this forum.

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As opposed to disingenuously strawmanning peoples' arguments like how you do it? I've read all your comments, especially your conversations with Sheepify and Alescor... you're a contrarian troll.

Seriously... Arguing that impoverished woods people aren't the functional equivalent of peasants simply because "hey, you don't know if they owned land or not" was pretty rich. Also, "farmers aren't peasants" was pretty laughable too, especially when we are talking about the middle ages.

Tercero 说:

I never found appealing the argument that if others have been doing it incorrectly, we should just keep doing it this way because it is the way it has always been. Having said that, I think the debate is more complex than that.

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True. But the whole archers>spearmen>cavalry>archers isn't exactly "wrong". Sure, it is WAY overexaggerated compared to IRL, and perhaps even tiresome for some. But, the fact remains that different unit types need niches and uses within the game in order to have a place, otherwise players will just find the mathematically most efficient unit and spam them. The combat system in the game is far too simplistic to model the true-to-life uses for these actual units, and so reality must make a few concessions. This usually means units have strengths, but also "counters". Game design 101.

Arguments of realism aside, this is a GAME. Cavalry charging an equal number of archers on flat, open terrain should win the fight 99 times out of 100 (it isn't happening at the moment). Anyone who believes otherwise needs to just leave this thread, because their opinions are so far divorced from the collective mean that there is no common ground on which to have a discussion.

hruza 说:

Now if you put your archers and archers only against combined force of the enemy that matches your in size and their, your archer army will likely get mauled. And that's not even taking in to account that AI does not use shield wall on their infantry. Archer only army against competent player is
dead.

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Archers will absolutely still win in this scenario. Where have you been this entire thread? People have posted VIDEOS of this happening, with no strategic trickery and on flat terrain no less. This is the entire basis of the argument that archers are overperforming.

hruza 说:

flavior flavius 说:

Um... This IS a computer game. I do not understand why you are so consistently opposed to the rock/paper/scissors concept of spearmen>cavalry>archers>spearmen. Is it (slightly) inaccurate? Yes. But, it is a concession for fun gameplay and an expected trope in the genre.

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What's funny about it? And it's trope in the genre of strategic-tactical games ala Total War, not first person RPGs like Bannerlord.

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It's a trope of almost all games featuring medieval era combat, strategic or otherwise. A good example that is very close to Mount and Blade (albeit with fantasy elements and a hack and slash combat model) would be Kingdom Under Fire: Crusaders. Your strange notion that only "strategic" medieval games play to this trope and that this somehow "separates" Mount and Blade from the genre (and the tropes that go along with it) is both ridiculous and perplexing. There is also the fact that Mount and Blade on some level IS a "strategic-tactical" game, with mechanics that include: mustering armies, army upkeep, and commanding forces in battle.

Rektasaurus 说:

Yeah so front face of head = no armor value if wearing helm without visor. It’s literally not that difficult to apply the “abstraction” you’re talking about to faces of a box... the game already has the hit detection and I’m pretty sure already does it god it’s just such a simple concept. You must be trolling me. Why on earth would I advocate that Bannerlord simulate each ring of chain mail?

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You misunderstand him.

The way the game works now there is only 6-7 hitboxes on a soldier model (unsure if the neck is a separate hitbox). These are the arms, legs, torso, head, and maybe neck. When armor is worn, it applies its armor value to the entirety of the hitbox. Armor that only goes down to the elbow on the player model in actuality protects the entire arm, from shoulder to finger. Likewise, even if it does not look like a piece of armor covers a part of a body, it does... this is noticable on helmets because as far as I understand it, every single helmet in the game protects the whole head including the face, visors on certain helmets are just for show. There are no "unique" hitboxes for individual armor pieces, and no system currently in place to support this. This is to simplify collision calculations.

If I got this wrong someone please correct me.

In order to do what you want, Taleworlds would need to program unique soldier model hitboxes for every possible permutation of armor in the game, which is literally impossible. There MAY (depends on the game engine) be a way to alter a soldier model's hitboxes locationally on the fly based on worn equipment, but even if that were true it would require unique, custom designed hitbox systems (collection of hitboxes) for every single individual armor piece in the game, and that is still an insane amount of work not to mention computationally expensive while playing the game.

HalfMetalJacket 说:

Just like how cavalry can defeat spear blocks by hitting flanks, archers should be capable of fighting back against cavalry as well, if used smartly. Things like better terrain, frontline protection or just difference in quality should allow archers a chance to fight back.

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Of course... putting archers on rocky, uneven terrain, or unreachable high ground should definitely change the dynamic. I am not advocating cavalry beat archers 100% of the time in every conceivable scenario just because of the fact that they are cavalry. But, no way in hell should archers be beating equal numbers of cavalry on flat terrain in a head to head fight. The fact that they are doing so in almost all cases (Apocal's tests withstanding) speaks to a fundamental imbalance in the combat system.

Sheepify 说:

We'll never reach an agreement, because I think we expect different things from the game.

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Agreed. I wouldn't want to play bannerlord if low-tier archers were "effectively useless" vs heavy infantry. I mean, they are overperforming now but that would be too much of a nerf. Though, I'm glad we seem to agree on the fact that archers are indeed overperforming, rather then debating whether the problem even exists like some denialists in the thread.

Sheepify 说:

Gelimer 说:

However from a gameplay perspective ( for people playing on max difficulty ) i would like archers to remain strong because of how the game plays out, the player being almost always outnumbered

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I strongly disagree that this should be a driving balancing consideration in any form. If anything, the player and AI should play by the same rules as much as possible - at least as far as my personal preferences are concerned.

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Absolutely 100% agreed. Overpowered archers should not be a crutch just so that players can defeat AI forces of greater strength.

KingEroc1st 说:

are you saying that one of the best tactical counter to archers in both history and in game is irrelevant in the discussion of whether archers are over powered because the AI is not programmed to use it in an early release game yet? because it sure seems like that's what you are saying.

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Yes. Straight up. You have to balance for the game you have, not the game you want. Unless the developers have stated otherwise, I do not see the battle AI changing at any point going forward in development. AI systems are, as a general rule, the most time-intensive and complicated part of software development, and messing with it at this point MAY be too much of a risk vs reward for Taleworlds. Archers need to be balanced around the fact that the AI cannot use shieldwall. If the AI somehow gain that ability later we can re-evaluate.

KingEroc1st 说:

Cavalry is not the hard counters to archers, at least not historically. since archers were used in ambushes, with high ground advantage or volleying behind infantry, they almost never face cavalry in direct combat. when they did, it was more of a tactical mistake/outplay rather than troop counter.

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Absolute bull. You are wrong from an IRL perspective (Apocal already explained things adequately so I'm not going to harp on about it). You are also wrong from a videogame perspective. Cavalry has always been the traditional counter to archers in medieval strategy games, and I do not see why they shouldn't be considered so here.

hruza 说:

There is no such thing as a "counter unit" in real life. Archers were not counter to cavalry and cavalry was not counter to archers. That's a computer game stuff.

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Um... This IS a computer game. I do not understand why you are so consistently opposed to the rock/paper/scissors concept of spearmen>cavalry>archers>spearmen. Is it (slightly) inaccurate? Yes. But, it is a concession for fun gameplay and an expected trope in the genre.

Rektasaurus 说:

Love the cutting arrow idea. Broad head arrow? Great for unarmored soldiers and horses. Bonus damage to unarmored mounts.

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And absolutely useless vs armor. No way to switch between arrows, and no way to tell your troops which arrows to use. No thanks.

HalfMetalJacket 说:

Please no. People **** on them, but two handers are horrifyingly powerful. They **** up anything and everything within reach. Unless they're nerfed, making two handers 'REALLY' better is not a good idea.

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Buffing damage reduction from armor would also fix this problem.

KingEroc1st 说:

i've literally ran this experiment in custom battles, many many times:
enemy has 100 or 150 or 200 archers, and i have the same number of infantry. all i did was make a shield wall and afk. the archers closed in, shot all their arrows, charged in 1 at a time and all died while i lost less than half the infantry. all i did was afk.

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Completely irrelevant. The AI cannot utilize shieldwall formation.

You could argue that "well maybe the AI should be able to", but then I could equally argue that shieldwall shouldn't be as effective as it is. Either way, we aren't balancing around how the AI "should" be, we are balancing for how the AI works currently. There is no guarantee that the AI will ever be changed from its current state.

I don't think people are complaining that they are getting stomped by AI armies composed entirely of archers. People are complaining that PLAYER CONTROLLED pure archer armies (or armies with a large amount of archers, like >50%) are way too powerful currently and outperform every other composition under pretty much every circumstance to a ridiculous degree, even in situations where they should be at a disadvantage. This is pretty much undeniable (except for anomalies like Apocal's experiments). This debate entails the CAUSE and possible solutions to that cause.

As stated in my other posts, I believe the cause lies in the massive ineffectiveness of the hard counter to archers (cavalry) coupled with the general undertuning of armor across the board (including against melee weapons). My solution is simple. Buff the effect armor rating has on damage mitigation, buff thrusting spear damage across the board, and buff the damage bonus to thrusting damage that being on a fast moving mount gives. Obviously the numbers would have to be tweaked, and there are other things that need to be looked at (axe damage, heavy infantry having spears and making dedicated spearmen redundant, etc.) but I believe these changes will yield positive results towards a better combat experience.

Sheepify 说:

That's a cop-out of an argument. "Layman" will accept the game working as it is and is unlikely to analyse it for any kind of historicy. Though they might at least be bothered to learn the difference between "cutting" and "piercing" damage types within the game, information that will serve them well with other weapon types (why isn't it a problem that "thrust" values of polearms are distinctly lower than "swing" to you?)

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And that is a cop-out of a response. "Histotricity" doesn't matter past being immersive. Thrust damage being lower than swing damage is fine for laymen, since you SHOULD be swinging in 95% of situations anyway. However, an arrow that does 50 pierce damage is better in 95% of situations than an arrow that does 60 cutting damage, and that is simply counter-intuitive.

Sheepify 说:

Uh... what? You just flip a damage tag from "piercing" to "cutting," and the existing code handles the rest. No idea what you're talking about here. "Blunt" arrows and bolts are already in, work, and don't need any special handling or coding.

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You completely ignored my response to this in my previous post so I will re-iterate. To my understanding there is no way to change between arrow types, they are lumped into one stack and used from the top down. What about a player that takes half cutting arrows and half piercing arrows in an effort to be useful against lightly armored troops and heavily armored troop?. Are they just supposed to be SOL? What you are asking for would REQUIRE extra developer time to be implemented correctly. Whereas blunt damage is similar in armor penetration qualities to piercing damage so this matters less.

Sheepify 说:

"Potentially." If it turns out whatever initial implementation damage values are are too high, you just tone it down.

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I assume you are using my example of a "low tier" archer with cutting arrows doing too much damage vs lightly armored troops and not enough damage vs heavily armored troops. "Turning down" the cutting damage would make their already abysmal damage vs heavy armor even worse and is not a solution. Unless you mean turn down the amount of cutting damage that is blocked by heavy armor which would also affect every melee weapon in the game and is even worse from a balancing perspective.

Sheepify 说:

Is't that kind of the whole point of this discussion? Yes, your low-tier archers SHOULD be, perhaps not "utterly," but very much effectively useless against heavily-armored enemies.

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No. Archers are overperforming against every level of enemy, both armored and unarmored. Making a distinction between "light archers" and "heavy archers" is unnecessary. Low-level archers should NOT be "effectively useless" against heavily armored troops, that is a terrible balancing decision.

Sheepify 说:

I really don't understand how you can think addressing a specific issue is done best by overhauling entire combat balance instead of addressing the area that needs attention specifically.

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You aren't listening. Archers being so dominant is simply a symptom of a larger problem: Which is that armor simply does not do enough to protect the wearer. You are attempting to argue that curing the symptom is curing the disease, it isn't. There are far deeper balance issues in the combat model at present than simply archer dominance.

Sheepify 说:

The change you propose is more likely to result in elite two-hander troops needing several hits to drop the same heavily armored enemy. Goodbye balance.

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Yes. Two handers should not be a one-hit kill on heavily armored enemies. The entire point of this is to slow combat down. Nobody should be getting one-shot unless it is an unarmored peasant taking a head hit from a two-hander or something along those lines.

Sheepify 说:

That's how you end up with untouchable Elite Cataphracts, Bucellari, Palatine guards, Legionairies... see the trend here?

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Not untouchable, but they should be better vs unarmored recruits than they are currently. A small force of high tier soldiers should be able to defeat a force of recruits many times its size.

Sheepify 说:

You mean the way a broadhead will work differenty compared to a bodkin arrowhead?

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Both arrowheads pierce. The bodkin just has a smaller surface area to concentrate the force of the impact and reduce friction.

Introducing a mechanic that makes some arrowheads do cutting damage and some do piercing damage is problematic for many reasons:

1. It is potentially confusing to the layman. The average player is not going to understand how much better piercing damage is vs cutting damage. It is counter-intuitive because it would often be better to take arrows with lower amounts of piercing vs than higher amounts of cutting damage.

2. Taleworlds would have to implement a system that deals with multiple arrowhead types (IE switching between them), which is additional developer time. (We do "technically" have different types of arrows in the game right now, but they are for all intents and purposes identical. The only difference between them is like 1-3 extra damage, and arrows are lumped into one stack, with no way to change order or switch between stacks).

3. It potentially makes cutting arrows too strong vs lightly armored troops while simultaneously being too weak vs heavily armored troops. Cutting damage is mitigated strongly by armor, whereas piercing damage tends to ignore a certain amount of armor. Having all arrows do piercing damage makes the damage curve between low armor and high armor targets less diametric and easier to balance. Making arrows from low tier archers do cutting damage may make weird balance situations arise where these archers dominate in battles with lightly armored troops (even more than now) and are utterly useless in battles with heavily armored troops. I do think that armor should mitigate arrow damage, but not to the extent that it makes them a nonissue.

4. Simply increasing the damage mitigation of all armors across the board would solve this issue adequately IMO, as well as solves a host of other battle issues. A simpler change that solves multiple issues is infinitely more preferable to a more convoluted change that only solves a narrow subset of issues.

Sheepify 说:

Though I'd rather avoid ending up with Elite Caraphracts or Legionairies being neigh invulnerable because most weapons that troops carry would just chip one or two hit points on hit due to excessive armor damage mitigation.

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This would be overbuffing armor. However, I would like to see a peasant whacking a fully armored knight over the head with a cheap sword do like 7-10 damage out of 100 HP, that is about where it should be IMO. As it stands now it's more like 20-25 damage.

Sheepify 说:

Also, it's much easier to tweak arrow damage type on all units for testing purpose than overhaul troop loadout for all the factions. It would also allow exceptional unit types (Fian Champions) to retain their "pew pew" prestige.

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You wouldn't have to touch troop loadouts, just... oh say roughly double the amount of damage mitigation that each point of armor value gives. Perhaps that is a bit hamfisted and it would need to ultimately be tweaked, but that is a good starting point.

Sheepify 说:

Switch lower-tier arrows to cutting damage, see what happens.

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It doesn't make sense for some arrows to arbitrarily do cutting damage and some to arbitrarily do piercing damage. Armors' affects being increased across the board achieves ROUGHLY the same affect as switching arrows to cutting damage. It also solves the problem of infantry fights not lasting long enough, so that is a better change IMO.

Sheepify 说:

Of course, in case of cavalry, the fact that they currently are about as good with their melee weapons as in the training scene from Men in Tights exaberates the issue.

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I personally think this is a big part of the issue. Archer forces should be getting wrecked by cavalry charges without screening infantry to protect them and they really just aren't at the moment. Archers can even sometimes beat cavalry in melee.

Alescor 说:

First of all you have to be more objective in general, I explain here it seems that there are two sides and I find it a bit silly. An example: lion and a gazelle there are people who have favored the gacella trying to remove the claws and tusks from the lion, which seems strange to me at least...

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To use your analogy, the lion SHOULD be winning the fight with the gazelle 99 times out of 100. Right now the gazelle is somehow winning and that means the gazelle is too strong or the lion is too weak.