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There wouldn't be any point to doing it solely for the player's party because the NPC parties would continue to have a high ratio of elite troops and stomp all over you.

The only guys that ought to require subordinates are the sergeants and higher officers.  And they shouldn't necessarily require a specific type of subordinate.

In other words, you can have as many spearmen or veteran spearmen as you want. But if you want to upgrade some to master spearmen (moving into elite/officer class), you would need 7 infantry subordinates. You can have 7 spearmen, or 7 veteran spearmen, or 4 spearmen and 3 conscripts, etc etc.  It doesn't matter, the master-spearman just have to have enough men to form a squad and justify his rank.  A captain (high officer) might require 3 master spearmen (low officer) in order to keep:  that's 1 super-elite infantry for 21 infantry of some kind and 3 elite infantry.  This seems fairly realistic to me, if all factions obey the same rules.  If the enemy is not fielding 50% elite troops, then you won't need 50% elites to put up a good fight.

ddrake said:

Eh, it's MOUNT & Blade, not Boot & Blade 

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That was my old sig, actually.  "Boot & Blade:  Horses are great (with basil)"

DamienZharkoff said:

I never said the weight of a crossbow. I said the weight of the pullback. Crossbows had more power (And therefore capability) to puncture armordue to the fact the winding motion allowed for much further pullback.

"Take away fact:  A 1000 pound crossbow is not ten times more powerful than a 100 pound handbow."

Ahhh, so scorpions were just a ****ing pointless investment then? :p

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1.) I said quite clearly at the beginning of that paragraph, "Crossbow and handbow draw weight is not even remotely comparable."

2.) Crossbows have a greater string tension, but projectile energy does not directly relate to string tension.  Crossbows have a bow that supplies energy to them, called the prod.  Any man-portable crossbow drawn by a winch will have a very short prod, made of very thick, stiff, and heavy materials.  Which means that a significant amount of energy is needed just to accelerate the tips of the prod itself, before any is given to the bolt.  Second, prods are small: in combination with their high stiffness, this means that their draw length is very short.  An arrow might be drawn upwards of 30 inches (based on the user), while a crossbow bolt is shorter, perhaps even as short as 6 or 8 inches (varies by region and weapon).  What this means is that a crossbow only has a fraction of the time to accelerate its projectile that a bow does.  Arrows and bolts don't just suddenly leap into full-speed flight from a dead standstill, there is a measurable span of time as the elastic material of the weapon straightens, overcoming inertia of both itself and the projectile.

3.) Scorpions are torsion powered, they don't operate on the same principles that crossbows do.  They are also so large and awkward that it took two men to carry the weapon, and ideally a wagon. This was much more portable than larger artillery, but it's still a crew served weapon. Different order of magnitude than something that one man is going to carry and ready by himself.  If you want a tension-powered "super crossbow", then you need to go to an older greek weapon: the oxybeles.  Which was abandoned when they realized that torsion power was just plain better for field artillery.  Here's a link to a recreation of various Roman field artillery, which should make size and complexity more apparent.

Vympel said:

No thx .

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Your terse, apunctuated, and unexplained objections were noted several pages back, when you suggested I go play on an xbox.  Which incidentally I don't own.

Thank you to those of who you agreed with my points, or at least took them seriously.

Some comments:

- It is primarily the overabundance of elite troops that causes the mod to be extravagantly difficult. A "captain" would have men under him, probably at least 20.  If you change the party compositions so that only 1 in 20 troops is an elite, and maybe 5 in 20 are veteran, the mod would make a lot more sense.  At least for the NPC parties.  How to prevent the player from forming a band of all-elite troops is left as an exercise for the module developers. Perhaps captains, khans, paladins etc will leave your party if you do not have enough troops for them to "command"?  Some troop types should only be available to the player through their factional contacts, for example the ivory archers and ivory guard.


- Since my topic got hijacked by a physics discusion:  An object can never gain more energy by falling than was invested to raise the object in the first place.  If you send an arrow up using X amount of energy in an airless environment, it will never hit the ground with more than X energy.  In an environment with air (like, earth), the arrow slows down as it plows through it, hence an object's terminal velocity, the point at which the pull of gravity is exactly counteracted by air resistance.  For an arrow, its terminal velocity is much lower than that at which it left the bow string. The arrow will use X energy to reach maximum height, and when it comes back to ground it will have less than X energy left because it is being slowed by in air resistance the whole time.

- Crossbow and handbow draw weight is not even remotely comparable. Crossbows, because of their very short limbs, are a far less efficient machine than handbows, and a great deal of their power is wasted because there is insufficient time to accelerate the bolt before it leaves the string.  Also, reality check, handbows did not have a 250 pound draw.  They didn't even have a 200 pound draw. Well preserved English longbows recovered from the sunken wreck of the "Mary Rose" are estimated as having a draw between 160 and 180 pounds, and to shoot a bow like this required a lifetime of focused practice.  More typical war bows would have been half that.  Take away fact:  A 1000 pound crossbow is not ten times more powerful than a 100 pound handbow.

1.)  Wrong forum.      http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/board,55.0.html


2.)  No longer maintained.

The most effective way I've found to run a "siege" is to get yourself a bow or crossbow (whatever your troops carry), a STRONG shield  (doesn't have to be big, just strong), and a short one-handed weapon like an axe.  Pick enemy archers off with your ranged weapon while your troops hold ground.  When you run out of heads to skewer, charge up the ramp and jump over the mob, issuing the order for everybody to charge as you're on the way up.  That way you get a whole lot of free shots at the defender's backs, and your men get on the wall faster.

Ah, I see the point of confusion:  there are two "voulges".  I am talking about the "old" one, which has a wide rusty brown blade with a curved sabre-like tip.  The "new" voulge, which you never see because nobody carries it, has a square blade with a spike tip... That one looks like it's on par with the bardiche and I have no objections toi it.

Naridill said:

The entire Nord Archer branch, from the hunter down to the vet. Reason being that they're utterly pathetic. They're the worst ranged units in the game, and worse than the worst melee units in the game. I barely let them fight the peasantry, for god's sakes, they're so underbalanced that it hurts, especially compared to Swadian and Rhodok crossbowmen, who are all devastating also in melee, and Vaegir Archers, who are... beyond devastating.

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I dunno, I think Nord veteran archers might be better than Khergit tribesmen.   You have to admit though, that the Nord archers suck because the Nord heavy infantry is a nigh-unstoppable force.

Archonsod said:

The voulge is devastating once you know how to use it

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Perhaps you'd explain the proper use of the voulge then?  I always found it a very poor weapon, as the axes and bardiche do more damage without being slow, and the two-hander swords are quicker.

If you aim for the head, a thrust with a spear from horseback is usually a one hit kill anyway due to insane speed bonus.  On the rare occasions I'm persuaded onto a horse I usually just stab everything.

The only slashing weapons that are kind of pointless, IMHO, are the one-handed cut-and-thrust swords.  The thrust takes too much fiddlyness to execute and the slash does too little damage. Sabres don't do so well on armored opponents but they are very quick and you can wade through conscripts and bandits like a chainsaw through butter. One-handed axes are very effective owing to a high base damage combined with short reach (you only do maximum damage at maximum reach, which means shorter weapons, once you can hit, are more likely to hit hard) . Two-handed anything is just brutally effective. Well, okay, maybe not the voulge and cheapest axe.

Well I don't like zip or rar, I like 7zip archives.  And sometimes it is more practical to package an archive to be self-extracting than to explain to people where to download the appropriate decompression engine.  That's assuming they even want to do that, which not all do.  So things are just ugly all over.

FrisianDude said:

...a one-handed bastard sword strike seems very easy to block.

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Because you take a massive speed penalty for using it one-handed.  The bastard sword is not a practical one-handed weapon unless you have very high proficiency.

If it was multiplayer, I'd just hide behind a big tree or a rock until you got bored and fought fair. 

Gerin said:

You had better have a board shield, because my arrows are coming for you.

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Would you please do me the honor of reading what I type, before replying to it? I didn't say a heavy on foot is the most defensible, I said they are the most lethal; they can kill the fastest.  Sword-and-board  (or more practically, mace-and-board, or axe-and-board) is more defensible than using a two handed weapon, but you can't kill as fast, thus are not as lethal.

Crossbows are very handy if used well.  I mean, they are so accurate that you can be going for headshots almost immediately. They shoot slow, but they offer a big slug of damage up front.  They are the best ranged weapon option for characters who don't want to invest skill points in ranged weapon skills, and they can highly effective if you're smart about when you reload and you show some discipline in regard to when you pull the trigger.