1.5.1 - Cavarly is pretty weak while archers are still the way to go.

[Dionaea]

Yes, it is me again opening threads about this. Sorry for that but I think we have a really important balancing issue here which should be fixed. The problem is that archers are much more effective than cavalry and infantry units in the game and there is not really a reason to recruit other kind of unit but archers. The AI is not able to effectively protect against player's archers, while cavalry AI is especially bad in 1.5.0. Here you can two videos to compare, both battles against the same :





I know that I have just charged with my cav units and did not managed them at all but it is what actually happens in most of the battles and you simply cannot baby sit cavalry units. Anyway If you think that the only problem here is that I am a totally noob and you are able to perfectly manage your cavalry units, here you have both save games where you can play these battles. If you think that I am wrong and archers are not 5 times better than cavalry units in this game, please show your point.

sfd1.sav and 1 more file

2 files sent via WeTransfer, the simplest way to send your files around the world

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BTW, Player having 50 Imperial Legionaries/Vlandian Sergeatns also lose this battle. I can provide a video or save game if you want to check it.

EDIT: for clarity.

You are using your cavalry wrong, and archers aren't that overpowered, infantry when used correctly are still the masters of the battlefield. You have to remember that your cavalry is a support unit

Since 1.5 I've had great fun with my current playstyle of mostly infantry, and some cavalry and neglecting archers. until maybe later.

What you do is as you stay with your infantry who you place in a deep shieldwall (I like to hire my soldiers in groups of 8 and try to maintain a front line that takes this into account, so when I had my first 16 soldiers and 1 hero I'd make a shieldwall of 4 men in the front and 4 rows deep with the unshielded "Centurion" (the hero) in the back making up the 5th row, and I kept doing this as my army grow until you have 80 men and thus a centuria unit (10 contibernia of 8 men each) at which point you deploy them in a shieldwall of 10 men wide and 8 rows deep. This small block can withstand a lot of punishment (only done this with Empire and sturgians thus far)

As you are forming and commanding your shieldwall (best stay on foot for all of this, don't be on a horse) you can overlook the field and place your cavalry as far away on the flank as you can once they marched there you can either give them a charge order so they will flank the enemy's cavalry, or you can make them gor forward a bit and then give the charge order either making them charge the enemy archers, or charge the enemy infantry int he rear as it is trying to penetrate your cohort.

I've had great successes this way especially now that the AI takes some time forming up unless it has overwhelming forces (which are battles you shouldn't be fighting unless you are helping someone and you can use their forces to buy you time to set up your battle lines even against the dreaded Khuzait I've had successes this way.

later you can start recruiting archers but if you go for 80 legionaries or 80 Sturgian veterans you won't have much room for archers and cavalry, the highest clan tier I reached thus far only let me recruit 104 troops in my army

 

[Stromming]

the highest clan tier I reached thus far only let me recruit 104 troops in my army

104?!

That is extremely little. You must barely be playing through a campaign

 

[paganizer]

Heavy cavalry charge damage just needs a massive damage boost.
A 2 row infantry shield wall should be completely leveled by a heavy cavalry charge. If AI can "abuse" this, I don't see any other glaring issues.

Light cavalry you want for chasing down deserters or mounted archers.

 

[Stromming]

Heavy cavalry charge damage just needs a massive damage boost.
A 2 row infantry shield wall should be completely leveled by a heavy cavalry charge. If AI can "abuse" this, I don't see any other glaring issues.

Light cavalry you want for chasing down deserters or mounted archers.

+1*

* Maybe not completely leveled. Charge damage should be increased though

 

[Dionaea]

104?!

That is extremely little. You must barely be playing through a campaign

I play slowly, I don't join factions unless as a mercenary so I can't use the recruit army from followers exploit to quickly gain leadership xp. I fight some I trade some, I court some ladies, I fight bandits to level up my recruits and gain some personal fighting skills and perks that help my formations, I fight as a mercenary until I decide to go do something else etc....

Heavy cavalry charge damage just needs a massive damage boost.
A 2 row infantry shield wall should be completely leveled by a heavy cavalry charge. If AI can "abuse" this, I don't see any other glaring issues.

Light cavalry you want for chasing down deserters or mounted archers.

2 row shieldwalls are already super easy to overwhelm with cavalry what are you talking about?

 

[Stromming]

2 row shieldwalls are already super easy to overwhelm with cavalry what are you talking about?

You can break the formation and then kill them with weapons, but I think he is referring to actually doing real damage with a charge (impact from having a horse run straight into you)

 

[paganizer]

You can break the formation and then kill them with weapons, but I think he is referring to actually doing real damage with a charge (impact from having a horse run straight into you)

Yes, correct. I meant boosting the charge damage (a lot) would help heavy cavalry. Infantry should be sent flying - and land as corpses
I imagine that was the strength of heavy cavalry back in those days

 

[Dionaea]

If he wants the orgasm from watching insta death from cavalry charges he should go play medieval total war II stainless steel.

Infantry should be sent flying

Correction: Warhammer II


Serious answer: cavalry shouldn't be that overpowered, it didn't become the true dominant factor on the battlefield yet in this time period, that is for the warband period where Swadian knights can wreck you. In this era it's a support unit.

Side note, once spear and pike bracing become truly implemented (as many people ask for) how hard are the horse cock suckers going to cry and whine then about cavalry being underpowered? considering we as mount & blade players know the effectiveness of the pike block that basically killed the role of the heavily armoured knight on the battlefield

 

[Stromming]

If he wants the orgasm from watching insta death from cavalry charges he should go play medieval total war II stainless steel.



Correction: Warhammer II


Serious answer: cavalry shouldn't be that overpowered, it didn't become the true dominant factor on the battlefield yet in this time period, that is for the warband period where Swadian knights can wreck you. In this era it's a support unit.

Side note, once spear and pike bracing become truly implemented (as many people ask for) how hard are the horse c*** suckers going to cry and whine then about cavalry being underpowered? considering we as mount & blade players know the effectiveness of the pike block that basically killed the role of the heavily armoured knight on the battlefield

Obviously they should not be able to kill everyone in a line formation, but damage should be boosted for sure.
And for spear and pike bracing, if that ever becomes implemented in SP, then you just need to engage them with infantry and charge in on the enemy from behind.

Heard of tactics before?

 

[Dionaea]

Obviously they should not be able to kill everyone in a line formation, but damage should be boosted for sure.
And for spear and pike bracing, if that ever becomes implemented in SP, then you just need to engage them with infantry and charge in on the enemy from behind.

Heard of tactics before?

Are you trolling?

I had an entire post about how I aproach battle and you picked out 1 detail there to "attack" and now you do it again and ignore that post...

 

[Stromming]

Are you trolling?

I had an entire post about how I aproach battle and you picked out 1 detail there to "attack" and now you do it again and ignore that post...

Your previous post is irrelevant.

You make a very specific statement, and I respond to that specific statement.

 

[geala]

Cavalry should not be able to destroy a shieldwall from the front if the units had spears.

Generally, Bannerlord combat has a lot of problems. For example, that speed has such a huge influence on damage and not penetration (which is absent), that spears are a joke while they should be king, that cavalry does not keep formation (which was the only way in real history cavalry could do something), that cavalry can bump frontally into infantry formations physically at full speed (nearly never happened), that cavalry cannot kill dispersed infantry at once, that cavalry cannot destroy infantry formations from the back, that archers shoot too fast and accurate, that use of shield against archers was/is lacking, that melee is not based on blocking or parrying but simply hacking at the body till hp is gone, that twohanded player can murder stupid AI from behind at will, that armor is overabundant on the units, that high quality armor is too weak, that armor has no severe penalties, that battlefields are too small, that anything moves and happens too fast and distances don't matter, and so on.

Playing with mods to make spears and armor better, make the AI use shields better a lot, and tone down archers by slower and less accurate shooting and partly using cut damage, made the experience a bit better. That's till 1.4.2 where I stopped playing. There were still the formation problems and AI rules which made fighting a bit of a pain.

 

[Dabos37]

Cavalry should not be able to destroy a shieldwall from the front if the units had spears.

Generally, Bannerlord combat has a lot of problems. For example, that speed has such a huge influence on damage and not penetration (which is absent), that spears are a joke while they should be king, that cavalry does not keep formation (which was the only way in real history cavalry could do something), that cavalry can bump frontally into infantry formations physically at full speed (nearly never happened), that cavalry cannot kill dispersed infantry at once, that cavalry cannot destroy infantry formations from the back, that archers shoot too fast and accurate, that use of shield against archers was/is lacking, that melee is not based on blocking or parrying but simply hacking at the body till hp is gone, that twohanded player can murder stupid AI from behind at will, that armor is overabundant on the units, that high quality armor is too weak, that armor has no severe penalties, that battlefields are too small, that anything moves and happens too fast and distances don't matter, and so on.

Playing with mods to make spears and armor better, make the AI use shields better a lot, and tone down archers by slower and less accurate shooting and partly using cut damage, made the experience a bit better. That's till 1.4.3 where I stopped playing. There were still the formation problems and AI rules which made fighting a bit of a pain.

This is actually pretty arguable. Banner Knights should be definetivelly able to wreck a T2 shieldwall, while have a hard time against T5 units shieldwall with spears and supported with two handed units.

Main problem with cavalry is the AI, cavalry units miss a lot of hits and are not using cuching lance effectively since 1.5.0. I like the 1.5.0 changes in terms of making hard for cav units to push through infantry formations but I just hate how useless cavalry units are now. Getting high tier cav units is by far the hardest thing to get in terms of recruiting. Cavalry is hard to level up and expensive due to horses, they should be at least useful but currently you really do not need any cav unit in your army at all. All that we need are archers, they will be able to win every battle with easy without getting almost any losses.

 

[Apocal]

Heavy cavalry charge damage just needs a massive damage boost.
A 2 row infantry shield wall should be completely leveled by a heavy cavalry charge. If AI can "abuse" this, I don't see any other glaring issues.

This will lead to player stacks of heavy cavalry literally trampling everything. There is no equal and opposite reaction applied to the horse or its rider currently in BL, so you wind up with a distortion of tactics. In real life, if you smack into someone full force, yeah it will level them, but there is an good chance of falling from the saddle or injuring your horse in exchange. That's why they let their lances do the colliding for them and didn't just use their horse like the battlefield was a demolition derby.

The goal is balance between troop types, not making cavalry ascendant over everything including their counters.

Edit: if I sound confident in this prediction, it is because various charge damage boost mods lead to exactly this, sometimes even at surprisingly modest boosts.

 

[geala]

I'm not a fan of relating fundamental combat rules to unit tiers. Maybe that's because I don't like the tier structure of units in general. Horses don't enter massive infantry formations with speed, wether the soldiers are good or bad or armored or not. What happens if the infantry does not break from the morale shock you can read in cavalry manuals of the 18th or 19th century AD and battle descriptions from this time or see when looking at how Polish hussars as special anti-infantry cavalry fought against infantry formations in the 16th and 17th c. AD.

On the other hand, as we don't have strong morale effects (impossible to simulate on TW mini-hyperspeed battlefields) maybe cavalry effectiveness against formations from the front could indeed be based on low tier - high tier units. I have no idea however how you could implement this in the code because the tiers don't differ so much in defense. In Total War games you have charge defense expertise or anti-cavalry performance which you can give to certain units. What do you have in Bannerlord?

 

[black_bulldog]

While this is true I still expect some progress. M&B is "some" years old. Why do the same "mistakes"?

I'd have to agree, with a larger team than WB and more experience I would've thought the core game would deliver more than WB or the original ever did.

 

[Dionaea]

This will lead to player stacks of heavy cavalry literally trampling everything. There is no equal and opposite reaction applied to the horse or its rider currently in BL, so you wind up with a distortion of tactics. In real life, if you smack into someone full force, yeah it will level them, but there is an good chance of falling from the saddle or injuring your horse in exchange. That's why they let their lances do the colliding for them and didn't just use their horse like the battlefield was a demolition derby.

The goal is balance between troop types, not making cavalry ascendant over everything including their counters.

Edit: if I sound confident in this prediction, it is because various charge damage boost mods lead to exactly this, sometimes even at surprisingly modest boosts.

spot on

 

[black_bulldog]

This will lead to player stacks of heavy cavalry literally trampling everything. There is no equal and opposite reaction applied to the horse or its rider currently in BL, so you wind up with a distortion of tactics. In real life, if you smack into someone full force, yeah it will level them, but there is an good chance of falling from the saddle or injuring your horse in exchange. That's why they let their lances do the colliding for them and didn't just use their horse like the battlefield was a demolition derby.

The goal is balance between troop types, not making cavalry ascendant over everything including their counters.

Edit: if I sound confident in this prediction, it is because various charge damage boost mods lead to exactly this, sometimes even at surprisingly modest boosts.

Yeah this is the problem with giving cavalry too much of a damage boost. I personally don't want to see cavalry become so ascendant like it was in WB days. Being a foot solider against heavy cav in that game was not fun at some points you felt like a pin ball getting tossed around till you finally died.

 

[hruza]

Heavy cavalry charge damage just needs a massive damage boost.
A 2 row infantry shield wall should be completely leveled by a heavy cavalry charge. If AI can "abuse" this, I don't see any other glaring issues.

Not this Hollywood nonsense again.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Newton's Third Law of Motion

 

[Dabos37]

Increasing charge damage is not really a good solution IMO, at least it should not be the whole solution. Despite of some complains, I liked cavalry in 1.4.3, but then some things changed. For some reason cavalry units do not use couched lances anymore in 1.5.0. Cavalry used to be effective with couched lance but now they are just using lance in regular way and missing a lot of attacks.

Plus cavalry units do not try to fight when they are stuck and immobilized in infantry formation, they just try to go out, but this issue has been present since release tough.

And yes, bringing back warband OP cavalry is a bad idea, same reason because I think that something should be done with archers in Bannerlord, they are just a win button currently.