All ranged units can blast defenders at the ladder area, not just KG and Fians. It's because of how the defender AI tries to send reinforcements from one side to another and exposes itself faster, causing a loop of defenders turning to move and getting shot, then the opens on the other side being "told" to go reinforce that side and so on. Somewhere it was asked to "name 10 strategy games..." I'm gonna say ALL OF EM because every game has better units, most just have a opportunity or recourse expense to compensate, for instance You CAN defeat all units with only knights in a AOE type game it's just more expensive and wasteful. Khans guards also have required resources and opportunity over other units but I think we all agree to ignore this for Bannerlord because as a single player game against the AI we have all the opportunity and recourse gathering we need. That said, there are always players who can't manage to pay for their basic 50 man parties too.
I occasionally employ fian tactics even with full RBM - it isn't simply a matter of AI, but the overall effectiveness of a relatively cheap troop.
For a "manual" speedruns (where "auto-resolve" isn't allowed) most if not all agree that fians are better. If you look at strat's videos where he does power-runs for like "under a month in-game kingdom" or stuff like that (where he speedruns not real time but rather in-game time) - fians are always the choice due to how the overall mechanics work and end up favoring it.
With 1.9, now, KGs are exceptionally expensive (and in RBM too) due to horse pricing and needing multiple horses on their upgrade path - fians skip all of that - that means you'll economize hundreds of thousands of denars on both wages + upgrades to reach a Fian doomstack, whereas with KG you might not even have enough buck to field them - delaying it and also expanding the amount of grind needed to achieve a very similar level of results.
I agree that KGs are broken (they should have weaknesses, and they do not) - Fians are somewhat balanced but the lack of t6 infantry makes them slightly OP because both KG and Fians will do a better job on foot as shock-troops than all of the available top shock troops (Line breakers, menavilons and mameluke palace guards) - Vlandian shock troops are strong as they are durable, but their Voulge's not good at all, so they are the least desirable on that regard.
Than comes the cavalry issues - in which swingable polearms are particularly good for AI, whereas spears and lances are not - My supposition as to the reasons are plenty, and they do not limit upon dmg&speed - It's also a matter of how AI calculates distance for attacks (which's bad for anything above 150 length) + the offset hitboxes for all spears on horseback, I did a comparative run to make sure that was what was going on and I was right - I tested the same reticle placement for lances on Warband and Bannerlord, in WB it's dead center, while in BL it's off-set and you'll miss bullseye hits.
This leads to a sum of factiors that make lance/spear cav so bad in BL:
- Spear/Lances attack speed
- Spear/Lances length
- Spear/Lances dmg
- Spear/Lances off-set hitbox on horseback
- Push-away effect from cavalry over foot troops (moving them even further out of the attack)
- AI not maneuvering to reposition their stab to land (they only go for straight lines)
Again, fixing it is tricky as long as TW refuses to adjust all factors on a single strike, that because,in example, if they fix speed and later down the line fix the hitbox, spears will automatically become OP on horseback calling for further adjustments that will potentially create new issues and it becomes an endless domino effect.
My personal take on it is that they should fix the hit-boxes first - test, than adjust the AI. After that if it's still too weak or too OP, adjust the easier to modify things until hitting a sweet-spot (like length speed and dmg)
So it's entirely possible that by fixing cavalry issues in general, KG's will automatically become less OP too - which means nerfing them would be nonsensical.
As for spears on foot it's easy: reduce the length of spears meant to be used on foot, add more pikes - create specialized units for each role. From their system that governs weapons alone, reducing the length of spears will automatically make them faster with more dmg - meaning there's no need to fine tune anything at all. - from my testing spears with up to 160 length work fine for AI, anything above that screws them. If on top of that they add more swingable spears for foot troops, I believe it'll make for spot-on balance. Also by having pike specialists under the pike weapon class, it's easier to call AI to switch weapons under certain distance or when facing foot troops, all while without screwing polearm troops in the process and allowing foot troops to also have long weapons for anti-cav tactics.
Lastly, the lack of t6 infantry unit's also hurting the game - I already said once and will insist on it: Make the druzhina into foot troops.... Bam, problem solved. - or at bare minimum make AI often use dismount command on them.... (try that for yourself and you'll see that they are already built for infantry roles, it's crazy)
