A long post about lances and stuff

[Maur]

I've fallen in love with lances since i bought my first saddle horse in my first M&B game. It might have to do with the fact that i really like the mounted aspect of M&B (and horsemanship in general, tbh), -

though it's not like it's all well done. I mean, for example, horses are capable of lateral movement - strafing - while in the game they feel like motorcycles or something like that


- and lances are somewhat special in that regard. IMO, they are the easiest to use when mounted - i mean couched lances, compared to other weapons or horse archery (oh god that is so hard yet so satisfying. Especially in TLS mod shooting Wargs was immensely fun). And also most effective - you can use cheapest lance on a saddle horse and skewer a armored knight anyway. -

which reminds me of the RCM submod again. It's not very widely known as it was only available for TLD and onin-no-ran mods. Basically it completely changed the way combat was done and it my opinion made it much more realistic. Basically, it revamped all armor and weapon values with aim of making good armor good, weapons either working against good armor or almost not at all. For example, very good armor had values reaching 80 while swords had values of 40 or so. So if faced with plated knight you had to use something like military pick, a big blunt weapon or an ax at least. Which was what happened in our world too. Oh, yes, it actually assigned piercing/blunt/cutting attributes according to their mechanic and not visuals, so axes/picks were piercing, swords and spears were cutting, and blunt weapons were blunt. So, basically, there were weapons aimed at defeating armor (and they were worse when facing unarmored plebs), and those geared toward defeating well-armored opponets. It worked well, and in general the effect was that combat was deadly for unarmored people, as it should be, and not a death by what is called a thousands cuts.

Oh, and arrows and bolts were cutting. Which is how it should be, tbh. And some more smaller changes.

Also shields had something like 50hp and 100 resistance so they didn't break from 50 arrows sticking in it, but especially strong blow could wreck you shield.

All in all, very good changes too bad they require huge work otherwise i would try to make it for POP. -

Anyway, to the point. Yes, actually, there was another point, it's not about RCM! I recently started to use the lance in another way. Kind of learned to, actually (it's funny how in this game you have to learn to use a weapon before having fun with it). Namely, not moving away, turning and couching again, but actually attacking with lance. Which is much faster, can be done sort of sideways, and not that hard as i thought in the beginning.

And it works! I mean, one blow with Balanced Jatu Honor Lance (yes, it's the most damaging) kills practically any opponent. And even blunt lance does this (blunt might help because it reduces armor). And it doesn't seem to be that slow anyway.

So, anyone else does it? I found the enemy archers being quite confused by it and it being much less dangerous than shooting them or trying to couch archers (which ends badly a lot of time)

 

[Lord Irontoe]

Are you talking about thrusting with a lance? Yeah, that's how they are supposed to be used. When I play a lancer build, I start out mostly couching when my stats are still very low, but once they start getting better I primarily use the thrust attack and just save the couch for targets of opportunity. That's if i even stick to lances and don't upgrade to something deadlier, like the black iron spear

 

[sher]

So, anyone else does it?

Every competent lancer does. Better later than never. Couched strikes still can be performed from time to time but better your pros and skill will become the less you will want to do this, for fun mostly.

There's some info about lancing in the begining of that section
https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,255110.msg7954797.html#msg7954797

 

[Maur]

Yep, i mean thrusting with lance. Apparently i managed to be incompetent lancer for a long, long time It's true that couching is easier to do both for a beginning character with low proficiences, but also from the player perspective.

Sher, do you mean section n. 2? The one about combat? Or 11, the practice fights?

I wonder if it would be possible to do what winged hussars supposedly did charging - charge up to the infantry line, then still at high speed rotate and at the same time strike (sideways now) at an infantryman while already speeding away. Come to think of it i started to do something like that when a group of infantry pursues me, pass by them at still safe distance yet close enough to thrust a lance at one of them, to my right.

 

[Sarin]

Yep, i mean thrusting with lance. Apparently i managed to be incompetent lancer for a long, long time It's true that couching is easier to do both for a beginning character with low proficiences, but also from the player perspective.

Sher, do you mean section n. 2? The one about combat? Or 11, the practice fights?

I wonder if it would be possible to do what winged hussars supposedly did charging - charge up to the infantry line, then still at high speed rotate and at the same time strike (sideways now) at an infantryman while already speeding away. Come to think of it i started to do something like that when a group of infantry pursues me, pass by them at still safe distance yet close enough to thrust a lance at one of them, to my right.

Yeah, that's possible. Usually at ~20-30 degrees angle when striking, but it is, at least for me, a common method of kiting the enemy to drop the cover and try to strike.

 

[sher]

Sher, do you mean section n. 2? The one about combat? Or 11, the practice fights?

I wonder if it would be possible to do what winged hussars supposedly did charging - charge up to the infantry line, then still at high speed rotate and at the same time strike (sideways now) at an infantryman while already speeding away. Come to think of it i started to do something like that when a group of infantry pursues me, pass by them at still safe distance yet close enough to thrust a lance at one of them, to my right.

11.1.

There is a lot of throwing weapons out there so such move may not end well and very quick. Otherwise poking them is quite possible but if they will be aware of you they'll just block your strikes and you'll lose time for nothing. It's better to prey on unaware infantry but main duty is to get rid of flanking cavalry ASAP to prevent scattering of troops.

 

[aaaa1]

how much reach do you gain by thrusting compared to lancing?

the jatu honor lance for example is 248 long while the longest knight lances are 253 (banner of Sarleon might be even longer)

Are you able to hit a knight lance before they hit you with the stab honor lance?

 

[Vissy]

Lances are risky - they're not really useful when dealing with large groups of enemies. When I reach the higher levels and get higher weapon profs, I find myself just naturally gravitating away from lances. Too slow.

Swords / axes are much better at taking down even groups of heavy cavalry. Only thing you need to do is to aggro a group and then let the foremost one get stopped on your horse, and proceed to destroy everyone because AI can't handle close quarters combat and they're too dumb to move around each other.

 

[Alavaria]

how much reach do you gain by thrusting compared to lancing?

the jatu honor lance for example is 248 long while the longest knight lances are 253 (banner of Sarleon might be even longer)

Are you able to hit a knight lance before they hit you with the stab honor lance?

It's really not that great of a practice to go straight at them. If you are moving at the jatu from a say 60 degree angle, then you might have a situation where neither of you can couch the other, but you can poke with a massive speed bonus that will waste them.

 

[Leonion]

so axes [...] were piercing

wat

Oh, and arrows and bolts were cutting. Which is how it should be, tbh.

waaat
Well, broadhead arrows - maybe, but bodkin arrows and bolts? Noo way.

 

[Sarin]

so axes [...] were piercing

wat

Oh, and arrows and bolts were cutting. Which is how it should be, tbh.

waaat
Well, broadhead arrows - maybe, but bodkin arrows and bolts? Noo way.

It's gravitating from actual type of attack to representation how well the actual weapon does damage against armour. Axes tend to do well against armour, because they have significant weight behind the axehead, thus the swing gathers and effectively deposits into target large amount of energy. This is why poleaxes became one of favourite melee weapons of men-at-arms during late medieval period, because it could work well against advanced plate armour, despite having rather large strike area.

 

[Leonion]

It's not how much damage they do against armors, its how much damage they do in general.

From cutting to piercing not only damage against armors increases, but damage against a naked/lightly-armored man decreases.
A sword can cut you in half damaging multiple organs/tissues/bones in one strike, a broadhead arrow will leave a small hole in your body, a bolt will leave an even smaller hole in your body (i.e. actual damage heavily depends on precision).
An axe or a poleaxe will still do a lot of damage to a naked person, even if the hit is not very precise. So I'd say it is still cutting weapon but with higher damage value than a sword.

 

[Alavaria]

What's fun is the SUPER long lances seem to be longer than the AI soldiers' danger detection range or something.

Also, sometimes it feels like they're really careful whenever the player is couching (or else they die, but not before couching your horse down first) whereas the poke can still be stupidly powerful with a combination of (1) Power Strike, (2) Profiency, (3) Fast horse -especially Noldor Spirit Horse, of course - and (4) angle of approach that increases relative speed.

I find that there's some really nice long polearms (Black Iron Spear was mentioned, yeah) which combine a great range with high piercing damage. But then using the Blunt Tip Lance is so oddly satisfying because of that crunching sound.

Obviously, the Sarleon Banner lance is probably the best one in the game, though you can't take prisoners with it. Oddly, by the time I get it, I'm already so PS/Prof-ed up that I still down people really easily with the Blunt Tip so I keep using it anyway, even if the banner is kept in reserve.

 

[sher]

But then using the Blunt Tip Lance is so oddly satisfying because of that crunching sound.

Yep. And with high (400+) pro it's fast enough to use as usual combat lance. Still slower than Long Knight Lance but situations where it would really make difference are rare. Though speed of lethal lance at higher pros is really sick if you can say goodbye to extra money. Sarleon Banner is extremely OP (actually single OP weapon in PoP) => not interesting to use.