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  1. AngryBaer

    Mounted unit balance: Competing design philosophies

    Apocal 说:
    If you believe this is true, why do you think horse archers beat archers on foot so easily in BL?
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    Mostly because archers are terrible shots and horses are basically tanks.
    Maybe it would work better if ranged units actually fired in volleys?
  2. AngryBaer

    In Progress Graphical bug after 1 or 2 hours ingame

    elysebluemoon 说:
    Are you still having the same problem after the latest hotfix?
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    The patch appeared to make it worse if anything, in the same save at least.
  3. AngryBaer

    Mounted unit balance: Competing design philosophies

    Midnitewolf 说:
    I was reading that massed foot archers could actually do quite well against horse archers but I don't know if I believe this or rather I guess it would depend on tactics.

    I mean when you consider the most common tactic of horse archers, the wheel formation, you have to consider that as the wheel turns only a very small amount of horse archers would actually be in your firing arc at any given time which means even if your volley firing to saturate the horse archers with arrows, your only going to catch a small amount of them with any one volley. Also they are a fast moving target and while you might think it would be easy to take out their horses, a horse is a big animal and unless you hit it just right, a horse would probably be able to take multiple arrows without falling, at least right away. Then add barding to that equation and you have a pretty hard to kill mount.

    In contrast to the horse archers though, massed foot archers would be. well, in a stationary mass, basically big, immobile blobs of targets. You really wouldn't have to do much aiming, just point at the mass of foot archers and shoot and you would be bound to hit something.

    On the other hand, not all horse archers were created equal. While the Mogols were experts at shooting on the run, The Russian Druzhina and other heavy horse archers would stand stationary and fire arrows at the enemy before charging. I would guess that if your firing into a massed, stationary formation of what might be more closely described as cavalry with bows rather than horse archers, then massed foot archers would probably be a real danger to them.
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    Agreed on this.

    The archer vs. horse archer encounters feel like they should be very similar to spearmen vs. lancers, like Tanks facing off against each other. The one getting shot in the flank first loses. A troop of crossbows firing a volley should shred through a good portion of cavalry or at least drop a few horses each time. Bows should at least be a much larger annoyance for horse archers due to their higher firing rate. Both crossbows and longbows should have a range advantage. I remember playing Warband and dreading any encounter against the Rhodoks because they'd wreak havok with my cavalry. I feel like that was actually fairly accurate.

    Moving target or not, horse archers are also bigger targets.

    Mounted cavalry can't use longbows, I would assume they should be much less effective against heavily armored units. But as the game is now even the heaviest knights will get turned into porcupines.

    Midnitewolf 说:
    Really I think you hit the nail on the head here. There is a reason the Mongols were one of the most successful conquers in the medieval world and that was because of their horse archers. After the Mongol invasions, the Kievan Rus and the Norgorod Republic modeled their army organization after the Mongols and converted much if not most of their cavalry to horse archers (Which makes me disappointed in Sturgia since their armies don't reflect this fact). Even the Byzantine Cataphract in history was armed with bows which made them a horse archer, probably due to the same experiences Rus had with the Mongol invasions.

    The thing of it is, Horse Archers were just that good in history. Infantry couldn't touch them and foot archers, while somewhat of a counter, would have a hard time hitting such fast moving targets effectively. Also if they were armored lightly, they could outrun heavy cavalry while still being able to at least match the speed of heavy cavalry even if they were heavily armored. Horse archers could basically completely dictate and dominate virtually any engagement as long as they had space to run. Additionally is there wasn't the space for them to operate freely from horseback, they could dismount and function as infantry, archer or both. Historically the only disadvantage you had with a horse archer was a logistical disadvantage. Horse archers had to have horses including lots of remounts to replace horse casualties. They also had to have lots and lots of feed to keep those horses feed.

    So when you think about it, it pretty much makes sense that the Horse Archer is the dominant unit type in the game.

    Which means you pretty much need each faction to have some type of horse archer unit. Sturgia's Kievan Rus/Norgorod flavor should absolutely have heavy horse archers as a troop type in their noble tree, I mean it is a historical fact that horse archers were one of the main components of their war machine. Then lets give Vlandia horse crossbowman. They wouldn't have the same rate of fire as horsebow users but should make up for it in damage output. Finally.....hmm don't know what to do about the Battanians. I don't think the terrain where the Celts lived favored cavalry much so I don't think there is a historical analog for a horse archer in their history. I guess maybe they should be able to hire mercenary horse archers at every town they own, maybe.
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    I so wish there were a mounted crossbow unit. To be fair those sound even more overpowered unless they only came very lightly armored. Mounted Vlandian sharpshooters sound terrifying (which is why I very often play as those with all my ranged companions). I could see them as a way to move troops around the battlefield quickly but actually dismounting before firing from some vantage point.

    The game is missing a good ambush/vantage point mechanic. The Battanians would shine with forest ambushes, just like the campaign dialog suggests.
  4. AngryBaer

    Mounted unit balance: Competing design philosophies

    Armies would remain a way to spread the cost and moral/cohesion penalties over several commanders and they would still be available as captains of their divisions during the battle. It would make joining large armies more attractive if anything (I.e smaller parties benefit from the higher quartermaster/leader perks of another). You wouldn't get those perks if you just joined a battle. The idea is that in this variant armies would be cheaper and stronger but slower than each party individually.

    I see your point about the seperate counters having different total maximum limits for sure but the horses would not be free at all in that scenario. The point of that system would be to make upgrading and maintaining units to mounted ones more expensive than just having pack horses in the inventory.
    I.e. just having horses in the inventory gives you all the perks of horses that you lose if you use them for upgrading units. So someone can have 100 infantry and 10 inventory horses cheaply and someone going for 100 infantry and 50 cavalry units might have the bigger and stronger party but those horses will consume a good double or triple or more food than soldiers and the riders will consume 1.5 or double wage compared to their equivalents on foot. You can be strong but really there wouldn't be anything in the game providing you with that much money and food for long unless you own half the map.

    This also means that you'll likely not be roaming aroung killing Looters with your elite troop constantly, garisoned cavalry could consume less and cost less while still being slightly more expensive than their dismounted equivalents.

    As of now there isn't much incentive to dismiss units, in most games we can spam upgrade any units we get at after becoming rich and dump them into some garrison if not needed. That would change if we could only maintain them for a short time. To counter people blanket upgrading their units before important battles make dismissing them after cost a portion of their wage and make them take food and other random inventory items if you don't/can't pay.
  5. AngryBaer

    Mounted unit balance: Competing design philosophies

    Yertyl 说:
    Hence my original idea: Cavalry units are better, but count as 1.5 units towards troop limit.
    It's not completely clear-cut because of clan tier, but going from the steward/quartermaster perk descriptions, troop limit represents your ability to supply your troops. So yeah, the "exceedingly difficult" part of maintaining 100 horse archers would be having to have a very skilled steward as quartermaster to increase your troop limit enough.
    I would still prefer it if they were not quite as unstoppable as they are now -- as long as horse archers decimate infantry and archers almost without losses, 1.5 units still seems too little.
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    Agreed on principle but I dislike troop limits. It doesn't seem natural to me. You go in a town an hire troops and they reply "no can do, you already got 76 and it's a tuesday..."? Or does the quartermaster say "nope, I can't count that high yet..."?

    Troop sizes come naturally with how many resources they consume and how well you can command groups, it shouldn't be restricted by an arbitrary number and allow you to go over the limit at your own risk of bankrupting yourself or losing cohesion similar to larger armies and the escaping prisoners. Perhaps parties larger than the "limit" don't listen to your commands or have much lower moral.
    This already happens to some degree but it's much too forgiving, too cheap and too easy to work around in my opinion. In Warband for example food used to spoil which adds to the urgency quite a bit. It's annoying but makes the supply chain a much larger componnent especially if the horses would consume significant amounts of grain (which they would in real life).

    The compromise could be having a separate unit counter for troops and horses and the horse counter just being lower but upgradable with perks? Convert the trooper to a dismounted version if their horse gets killed in battle unless you have replacements in the inventory? I mean, not that any of this will likely get implemented but it's still an interesting thought experiment.
  6. AngryBaer

    Still havent defended a single castle siege yet.

    Blood Gryphon 说:
    This guy gets it. I sure do miss the personal camp feature from Viking Conquest.
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    I could see a lot of cool ways to make breaking in a lot more appealing
    • Make breaking in a small unit battle like bandit camp raids. the units you pick are the ones that join you in the siege. if you're skilled enough you lose fewer troops (or none).
    • If you have good standing or pay the owner of the castle a bribe they show you the hidden entrance so you can join without your army.
    • Have a stealth feature that allows sneaking in with high enough roguery skill (but you can't bring any heavy armor or other heavy troops and cavalry).
    • If you break in theres a chance the battle starts immediately with the doors wide open.
    personal camps would be a great feature for so many reasons... essentially a stationary party (require a free party slot, a companion and food supplies) -> make this a way to set up ambushes!
  7. AngryBaer

    Mounted unit balance: Competing design philosophies

    Yertyl 说:
    I don't think I will ever get the whole "horse archers are supposed to be OP because of Mongolians" argument. I mean
    1. The historical veracity of this has I believe been debated pretty extensively (I have lately seen this short video by Lindybeige), but as far as I understood it, mongols did not only have horse archers, and their successes were not purely dependent on horse archers being unbeatable.
      I would add that lots and lots of other empires led extremely far-reaching and successful campaigns (say the greeks, persians, romans, later europeans in the crusades) without the use of horse archers. Just by that logic, legionaries and spear/shield infantry should be OP too, whereas in-game the opposite is true for basically all infantry units.
    2. Even if horse archers were historically unbeatable, would you really want a game in which some factions, recruit types and troop lines are just objectively much better than others? Where no army composed of Sturgian or Battanian troops can ever be as good as Azerai or Khuzait horse archers no matter what? Because that does not seem very fun to me.
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    I never said unbeatable in all situations. The units you describe were all effective for a certain type of warfare on a certain type of terrain for a certain amount of time... until they weren't due to development. We don't have that development and adaptation in Bannerlord. We also don't have too many tactical options when it comes to terrain. This probably bothers me the more. Where are those ambushes they keep talking about in the dialog? Where are the spies and scouts allowing us to track our enemies' movements? I also doubt the AI is smart enough to apply that effectively either.

    Looking at the historical accounts the reasons for effective armies were usually that they were backed by good logistics above having a unique secret weapon. True for Greeks/Romans/Persians/the crusades/WW2... and Mongolians. Moving and sustaining supplies is an important skill but also a tedious one. The point is though that it should be exceedingly more difficult to maintain 100 heavy horse archers (essentially each needing their own little army on foot backing them up) than 100 heavy spearmen. If you can manage doing that, then by all means it's fair to have a near-unstoppable force. And you could effectively counter them by cutting off the supply chain.

    I wouldn't hate having camp follower units, each cavalry and horse archer unit requiring squires and such, one more for each level. Or in addition to consuming a war horse you also need to consume X recruits. It would also give an incentive to protect those units even if you have a huge advantage. I.e. you can't just constantly upgrade all your units, you need to keep some low level ones for maintenance and you need a guard so the enemy cavalry doesn't just plow through them.

    Otherwise I completely agree that the Khuzait horser archers shouldn't be better on foot than their equivalents.
  8. AngryBaer

    Mounted unit balance: Competing design philosophies

    Yertyl 说:
    Well yes, but that's mostly because defenders have an advantage in siege, as they should have -- not because mounted units actually do considerably worse on foot in a direct comparison.
    Example: (all Khuzait, siege with no engines)
    Archers (attackers) vs horse archers (defenders): 5 -- 87
    Horse archers (attackers) vs archers (defenders): 3 -- 81

    Spear infantry (attackers) vs lancers (defenders): 14 -- 99
    Lancers (attackers) vs spear Infantry (defenders): 14 -- 86

    Even dismounted, mounted units will generally be almost as good or sometimes even better than their infantry counterparts (same with ranged units in melee). Which means there is zero tactical reason to choose infantry units over mounted ones, and makes the power of your army largely dependent on how many cheap imperial chargers and other horses you manage to buy.
    Which is just not a good way of balancing things in my book.

    EDIT: I just did another test on a village + trees map, on which horse archers need to stop a lot. And they actually do worse -- by which I mean they are just much, much better instead of being godlike.
    Horse archers vs archers (village+trees map): 74 -- 35
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    indeed, there isn't a really good reason not to chose the horse archers except cost. realistically mounted units are always going to be better but more expensive though. It's a good way to balance things if it's actually difficult to maintain economically. rather than just high initial buying costs for horses they should also consume more food. having food spoil like it did in Warband would also make driving huge armies with horses around much less attractive, forcing you to dismiss units after you needed them or consider promoting fewer units.

    In any case it's still realistic since the Mongolian horse archers were such an effective force for such a long time in real life as well.

    I also think arrow damage may be too high against armored targets in general. realistically heavily armored units should have arrows from anything but longbows and crossbows bouncing off without much effect while the somewhat less armored horse archers should be much more vulnerable to missiles. or perhaps at least the unarmored horses should drop much more quickly under fire... that would certainly balance things a bit. that or a better way to use the environment tactically.

    there's still a situation for everything. personally I found even the highest tier horse archers dissapointing against any of the hideouts, nothing shreds through those like a squad with crossbows.
  9. AngryBaer

    Mounted unit balance: Competing design philosophies

    Yertyl 说:
    No, but this is exactly why I proposed the original 1,5 units per mounted unit upkeep.

    So you could either have 30 infantrymen or 20 horse archers -- in which case there would at least be some situation (sieges mostly) in which you would prefer the former. 20 infantry vs 20 horse archers on the other hand is just a complete no-brainer


    Just tested this in another 100 100 and...
    Battanian Hero -- Khuzait Horse archers: 15 - 100
    Battanian Hero -- Imperial Bucellarii: 5 - 93

    Yeah, HA currently are that good. They are basically untouchable while still doing consistent damage.
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    Those are good tests and they're very true for when you're essentially testing the ideal battleground for horse archers, which is open fields, steppe and desert environments. That's exactly what they're known for historically and it's their inherant advantage. They're supposed to be untouchable and overpowered.

    Those same fights look very differently in a castle defence though.

    I just played a couple of rounds with your same setup and confirmed what you said. I also did the same with Vlandian Crossbows defending a castle and a city and the numbers were basically reversed between 90 - 10 and 60 - 40 in favor of the defenders and the latter only because the archers made it up the walls.

    Certain formations also do a lot better (even if they do end up losing). E.g. if you scatter half spears & half crossbows in a wide area the horse archers have trouble staying out of range and switch to melee. Forests are extremely helpful to break up those circles. Once the horse archers are engaged they're extremely vulnerable to lancers. I also noticed that in almost ever scenario the crossbows got the first kill. It's as much a tactical problem as a balancing problem, if you can lure the horses into the forest or other tight spots you'll always have an advantage over the AI that will almost always charge to their deaths.
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