Armor lack of effectiveness Devs should consider

[Philozoraptor]

There are certain limitations with this too, the added computational load for properly 'leading' the aim, especially with up to 1k agents would be ridiculous.

Archers are already leading every shot. You can even set it to the point where they are gonna pretty much aimbot moving targets (moving in straight line).

Infantry are there to perforate Cavalry. Cavalry are there to deny position to Archers, and to repel H.A. Ranged units are the meta; they have ranged weapons, of course they're 'strictly better.'

Is this your opinion? Or developer statement? Because it was not the case in majority of history, so if we are going for late antiquity / early / high middle age inspired gameplay why make invented rules for no reason when historical "rules" worked well back in the day for a good reason.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

Is this your opinion? Or developer statement? Because it was not the case in majority of history, so if we are going for late antiquity / early / high middle age inspired gameplay why make invented rules for no reason when historical "rules" worked well back in the day for a good reason.

In real life, sh*t really was not as simple as rock paper scissors yeah.

I mean, I don't imagine Aztec foot warriors existed because they needed someone to 'perforate cavalry' for one.

 

[mujadaddy]

Is this your opinion? Or developer statement?

An observation of how the game works, man. People ITT stating infantry are worthless, when their worth is as part of combined arms (and recruitment simulation).

why make invented rules for no reason when historical "rules" worked well back in the day

No game ever has implemented "every historical rule". They are all approximations. I hate the way RBM Combat works; but I very much appreciate that Bannerlord *allows* the tweaks, and that people who like the implementation can compare.

 

[five bucks]

Seeing as you're finally using serious, refutable arguments, this can be replied to:

People ITT stating infantry are worthless, when their worth is as part of combined arms (and recruitment simulation).

You don't need "combined arms" to win at all, that's the problem. A force of all horse archers on "follow" and circling the enemy can easily beat everything on their own with LESS casualties than putting time and effort into combined arms.

If you're using whatever troops you happen to pick up along the way then the only thing you need infantry for is as a distraction for your archers (and since archers aren't actually that terrible in melee they can even do THAT themselves if you break them up into groups), but I would never bother purposely upgrading infantry for that role when I could just have more archers who constantly **** out damage at range and can't be blocked by melee weapons and don't get in each others' way as much.

In real life armour kept you alive even under arrow fire, even men without shields in good quality padded mail could take 10+ arrows and march on. In Bannerlord just 4 arrows instantly kill you, making unshielded troops never worth upgrading to.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

@five bucks I'm not going to reply to everything because we've said all this a lot and I mostly agree and want the same types of things in general.

This would be good. Could even just remove it. I don't think it makes much sense.

Yeah, I might keep it for spears and lances, but I don't think it's needed otherwise, they can just boost the raw damage if they want more.

Speed boosted damage is not the reason that I die from 4 arrows in T4 armour against a T4 archer while both of us are standing still, though.

Fair enough but you should be punished a bit for standing in front of them and not shooting first

Buffing spears' base damage/speed and making spearmen actually use their spears will make a lot of infantry and cavalry troops more effective.

Agreed, but Cavalry has a serious issue with landing hit when mounted, fixing this would make them able to actually kill archers outright. As is they are most effective to quickly move close to archer and just sit in SW (mounted with shields up) to distract while your own ranged or other troops move in and kill them safely.

But neither of these would fix the common scenario where archers have troops in front, infantry try to attack the troops in front, and get turned into pincushions as soon as they have to drop their shields to attack.

What I do is put my infantry inside (on top of) my cavalry or horse archers then when enemy infantry meets them I move the cavalry forward (in SW with a placement command)knocking them over and turning them all as the infantry trail through like roomba a mopping them all up and the Cav goes on top of enemy archers and bothers them. Inside of HA I just swing the HA around to shoot the archers and turn/kite the enemy infantry in a similar way. Basically never let them collide 1 for 1, always make your infantry the attacker against a smaller enemy infantry by breaking them and turning them.

Otherwise just killing the archers and cavalry with your Horse archers and cavalry an ignoring the enemy infantry until they're all that's left is the best way to deal with them. Then you can flank them and use Cav(dismounted) and infantry to mop up without loosing very many because of the heavy ranged fire.

I get that you describe a scenario where you are attacking with infantry (only?) but I think it's better to just DON'T DO THAT, you will lose too many of them this way anyways.

Honestly I think battles could stand to be a bit longer, so there is time to do tactics.

Okay, for normal battles I agree. For army battles, they are already a chore, but hopefully maybe someday there won't be never ending army battles every day forever. Then perhaps even longer army fights would be okay.

even if TW does the difficult thing of fixing the AI (which I support if possible), "ranged troop spam with distraction infantry" or "horse archer spam" will still be the easiest tactics that beat everything and are too easy to use.

Ranged is superior because of the importance of tempo and mobility, being able to do damage and move without taking damage in return will always reward the player who has the ability to make use of it. So although I do think damage/armor changes should happen, I don't think this is a reason for it.

You don't need "combined arms" to win at all, that's the problem.

You don't need them but you will have them anyway before long if you play well. Taking breaks to load up on more and more HA or getting HA to put in garrisons is not a useful thing too do. This game is about using the campaign time more effectively then the AI.

A force of all horse archers on "follow" and circling the enemy can easily beat everything on their own with LESS casualties than putting time and effort into combined arms.

That's a horrible way to use HA, it's much better to position them stationary where they can do the most damage and move them as needed. You should also protect them with something you have invested less resources in to, including cavalry from prisoners or whatever infantry or archer you can pick up in rout. The only time all HA is a good idea is when you can only have 100 units or less, which is a very short part of the game. For the bulk of the game you want to constantly pick up infantry and archers to have garrison fillers after sieges, which are constant.

Anyways, this is more just commentary, I think more armor would be fine... probably.

 

[MariusTitus]

Yeah, I might keep it for spears and lances, but I don't think it's needed otherwise, they can just boost the raw damage if they want more

Literally Warband lol, where speed damage was felt most on horse and on foot it was marginal. Couldn't agree moar, like you said before in my post, too much damage on everything.

 

[AJAJP_Juan]

At the beginning of EA, lords and elite troops in tournaments were near unbeatable due to armor. This was because back then they weren't considered blunt weapons, but more importantly had a low base damage number (around 26 cut I think?). Its important to note that this was before armor effectiveness was increased.

Ananda has said it already and I will repeat it: problem is not the effectiveness of armor but the high base damage of weapons, which also negatively impacts weapon skills as they are made mostly pointless: why would you want to improve something that already deals 178 damage before any multipliers?

 

[five bucks]

Anyways, this is more just commentary, I think more armor would be fine... probably.

I'm glad we agree on the broad strokes!

At the beginning of EA, lords and elite troops in tournaments were near unbeatable due to armor. This was because back then they weren't considered blunt weapons, but more importantly had a low base damage number (around 26 cut I think?). Its important to note that this was before armor effectiveness was increased.

Ananda has said it already and I will repeat it: problem is not the effectiveness of armor but the high base damage of weapons, which also negatively impacts weapon skills as they are made mostly pointless: why would you want to improve something that already deals 178 damage before any multipliers?

No, armour calculation is a problem too, as can be determined by looking at the vast difference in protection from blunt/cutting and from pierce. Until that is changed, there will always be an imbalance among this group, even if you significantly reduce the base damage of all weapons, then ranged weapons will still come out on top, because they are in the category of weapons that penetrate armour the most, while also doing average base damage compared to other weapons and also being the only weapons capable of attacking at range.

This is why I have no specific objection to something being done to base damage as well, but the pierce damage modifier to armour absolutely needs to be changed either way.

 

[black_bulldog]

Literally Warband lol, where speed damage was felt most on horse and on foot it was marginal. Couldn't agree moar, like you said before in my post, too much damage on everything.

Double the health so double the damage output is Taleworlds logic. But in all of ea they never tried to make any adjustments to damage or armor values until people on these forums screamed about it for years. It's actually quite strange most games that are combat centric, companies tend to buff and nerf stuff all the time even after release. But Talewords seems so opposed to this and I'm not sure why.

 

[MariusTitus]

Double the health so double the damage output is Taleworlds logic. But in all of ea they never tried to make any adjustments to damage or armor values until people on these forums screamed about it for years. It's actually quite strange most games that are combat centric, companies tend to buff and nerf stuff all the time even after release. But Talewords seems so opposed to this and I'm not sure why.

Indeed, logic would dictate to *double* the armor too then. I found very strange that if you look at armors (excluding the obscure arcana of calculations that make top tier armors very protective towards cut damage etc but fail to do so against pierce), most troops have very weak armors. Maybe t5 soldiers are okay since they have top armors. T3 soldiers have (and I'm taking numbers from Sturgia, troop-centric nation) 15-25 body armor where there are swords with 60-75 cut damage, oh boy, that's like sending them to battle in their evening soiree robe. No wonder battles are over so fast..

 

[JunKeteer]

Archers are already leading every shot. You can even set it to the point where they are gonna pretty much aimbot moving targets (moving in straight line).

I get they have a 'straight'forward/linear calculation that's probably basic; there's no way they can do it for the more dynamic changes in something like a 500v500 battle without needing an exponential amount of calculations (which I understand is more of hardware limitation) calculate each bow's/arrow's velocity and arc. Can see this most highlighted by throwing weapons and cavalry melee to an extent.

An observation of how the game works, man. People ITT stating infantry are worthless, when their worth is as part of combined arms (and recruitment simulation).

I can agree infantry aren't worthless, but more cases than not, they just aren't in that same efficiency realm as archers/HAs; especially when comparing tier-to-tier, their upgrade costs are practically equivalent. As a player, it just makes sense (and easily trends due to survivability) to amass archers since there isn't really any diminishing returns either having 90% as archers.

Whatever this next major patch is, be it TW's version of group targeting, additional weapon/armor/skill tweaks, other opiniated suggestions here, or 'ignorance' - the matter is still waiting on TW to officially address it either by tweaking it or putting it to bed.

It makes no sense why a 'numbers' balance would be controversial or take this ~3.5 years+ long to figure out. They haven't really added any new systems with combat for it to be this sluggish - given the amount of EA players/feedback in the system. If armor calc plays a role in their autosim battles - they really shot themselves in the foot with that as now we have to contend with it also affecting that very delicate aspect of 'balance'.

 

[mujadaddy]

I can agree infantry aren't worthless, but more cases than not, they just aren't in that same efficiency realm as archers/HAs; especially when comparing tier-to-tier, their upgrade costs are practically equivalent.

Sure, but that's not a problem with the troops, it's a problem with recruitment & costs. Battanians always have 80% infantry because they're cannibalizing each other's noble villages; that's not a problem with infantry.

I know we've all seen the 'questionable' development strategies from TW, but some of it is actually good. Not perfect, but 'fine'. And when we start suggesting that TW change things, we should all be wary lol

You don't need "combined arms" to win at all, that's the problem. A force of all horse archers on "follow" and circling the enemy can easily beat everything on their own with LESS casualties than putting time and effort into combined arms.

You don't even need to lead them, you can F6, ***IF*** the enemy doesn't have much infantry. If the enemy has a balanced force, the infantry will give lots of casualties to HAs. And if the enemy is all HAs, my Catas will eat 2-to-1, even though it takes longer to chase them all down.

But this is related to the 'laboratory', as well: the player is smart enough to do all this stuff, but the AI isn't. When the player comes in and uses his brain to note that arrows out-range spears, and is rewarded for it, that is a GOOD thing. There are more-optimal and less-optimal troop selection strategies, but the human can choose less optimal strategies and still win, with their actions, their gameplay.

I call that 'fine'.

Now, if we want to talk about spears, double their thrust speed as a baseline; that's pretty fun. I also tried to figure out how to give spears "zero wind-up" so they are actually sharp sticks even when you're not thrusting, but I gave up

 

[AJAJP_Juan]

No, armour calculation is a problem too, as can be determined by looking at the vast difference in protection from blunt/cutting and from pierce. Until that is changed, there will always be an imbalance among this group, even if you significantly reduce the base damage of all weapons, then ranged weapons will still come out on top, because they are in the category of weapons that penetrate armour the most, while also doing average base damage compared to other weapons and also being the only weapons capable of attacking at range.

This is why I have no specific objection to something being done to base damage as well, but the pierce damage modifier to armour absolutely needs to be changed either way.

Spears and pikes also belong to the best penetration group they suck ass compared to the rest of weapons, because their low damage (I think the lowest bow has around 30ish unmarked damage while the best polearm thrust is around 2. Lowering bow damage would still accomplish your desired TTK, you could even go the (controversial) 1257 route and make bows, or arrows rather as they establish the type of damage dealt, cut, the lowest penetrator.

Besides, your main concern with armor seems more on line to nerf archers, which if you are not careful enough ends up being like Warband, useless outside of sieges.

 

[JunKeteer]

Sure, but that's not a problem with the troops, it's a problem with recruitment & costs. Battanians always have 80% infantry because they're cannibalizing each other's noble villages; that's not a problem with infantry.

Really all I want considered in the end, regardless if it's archers/HA/cav/infantry etc...if you have the same 1000denar (or whatever amount) to form a team - either team should be able to field whatever blind compositional mix they want which can win or match very close competitively. Only skewing the win in your favour if you build more counteractively against the opponent (ie rock paper scissors) or use field tactics (besides the 'ai' F6). Then the overworld gameplay is obviously obtaining whatever income/perks to 'stretch' that 1000denar to essential be 1200denar or whatever.
But right now, archers seemingly throw that balance out given how cost 'equivalent' they are to infantry - and most evident even if you just F6 your units; archers gain the most kills, die the least.

 

[mujadaddy]

if you have the same 1000denar (or whatever amount) to form a team - either team should be able to field whatever blind compositional mix they want

If money is to be the Great Leveler, sure. Unfortunately, there's not really a way to implement much besides Tier as a cost (not without a tuned lookup table for every unit's costs, which is largely dependent on equipment lists).

I think that tweaking Archers to make them less effective is backwards; archers should be more expensive by tier than infantry, for example. My Pay Raise mod only looks at Tier+Horse, because it's obnoxious to differentiate on equipment rosters.

 

[five bucks]

You don't even need to lead them, you can F6, ***IF*** the enemy doesn't have much infantry. If the enemy has a balanced force, the infantry will give lots of casualties to HAs. And if the enemy is all HAs, my Catas will eat 2-to-1, even though it takes longer to chase them all down.

Horse archers die to infantry if allowed to charge in on their own, but when given the follow order and the player circles the blob of infantry, they will not get entangled in melee.

But this is related to the 'laboratory', as well: the player is smart enough to do all this stuff, but the AI isn't. When the player comes in and uses his brain to note that arrows out-range spears, and is rewarded for it, that is a GOOD thing. There are more-optimal and less-optimal troop selection strategies, but the human can choose less optimal strategies and still win, with their actions, their gameplay. I call that fine.

Who gets a rewarding feeling from merely noting that arrows outrange spears and doing nothing else? To me, it seems incredibly obvious, and not rewarding at all.

I would like to be rewarded for needing to juggle many types of troops at once, and getting the best casualty ratio that way.

Not to be rewarded for noting that arrows outrange spears, parking my archers on a hill, and easily winning.

There's "the player outsmarting the AI and preventing lots of casualties because they are really smart at tactics" and then there's what the state of the game is now: "the player making extremely basic observations that work in nearly every single battle and preventing lots of casualties because they are able to make decisions even a preteen could understand."

That's not fine. That's repetitive and boring and immersion breaking and unchallenging. A good game is challenging and varied and immersive. That's why I want archers' easy domination of the battlefield fixed.

Now, if we want to talk about spears, double their thrust speed as a baseline; that's pretty fun.

I suggested a similar thing once (+50%) but someone pointed out that would give specific spears really high thrust speeds. Some sort of speed buff would be a good change though, spears need it.

Spears and pikes also belong to the best penetration group they suck ass compared to the rest of weapons, because their low damage (I think the lowest bow has around 30ish unmarked damage while the best polearm thrust is around 2.

I have said before in this thread quite a few times that spears can and should be buffed.

Lowering bow damage would still accomplish your desired TTK

Well you said you think all base damage is too high, right? So if you lower both bow damage and other melee weapon damage, without touching armour penetration, aren't you going to just preserve the current problem of bows being better than melee weapons because they do the same thing but at range? And aren't melee weapons like swords going to deal too low damage with the amount of cut damage reduction that currently applies?

I'd be interested in seeing your ideal proposal for how much the base damage of most melee weapons should be lowered, and how much bows should be lowered.

Cut damage

Making bows deal cut damage would fix the balance problem but in a needlessly unrealistic way since they do pierce damage in real life -- I don't think that's a good solution at all compared to just reducing pierce damage as well as base damage a bit, which is a perfectly fine solution to the problem in my eyes.

Besides, your main concern with armor seems more on line to nerf archers, which if you are not careful enough ends up being like Warband, useless outside of sieges.

1: Archers in Warband were absolutely not "useless outside of sieges", Vaegir and Sarranid high tier archers were highly effective and Rhodok Sharpshooters in particular were a deadly menace, even in field battles.
2: sieges comprise a very big part of fighting in Warband. There is also lots of fighting on uneven terrain with massive randomly generated cliffs or steep hillsides, where archers excelled - and which are still present to a lesser degree in BL.
3: Again, being the only troop who can attack from range had a huge number of other benefits. Fighting looters? Your infantry might possibly get wounded but your archers can literally kill them without a scratch. Fighting a enemy who's holding position? Your infantry have to wait for them to show up, but your archers can damage them the whole time. Etc.

4: I'm not even asking for the same amount of protection against arrows as Warband had, anyway. Warband armour gave about 2x more protection against arrows, I am asking for 1.7x more protection against arrows. So if you think BL archers are too strong and WB archers are too weak, a midpoint should result in balance.

 

[AJAJP_Juan]

I have said before in this thread quite a few times that spears can and should be buffed.

Agreed, to some extent.

Well you said you think all base damage is too high, right? So if you lower both bow damage and other melee weapon damage, without touching armour penetration, aren't you going to just preserve the current problem of bows being better than melee weapons because they do the same thing but at range? And aren't melee weapons like swords going to deal too low damage with the amount of cut damage reduction that currently applies?

I'd be interested in seeing your ideal proposal for how much the base damage of most melee weapons should be lowered, and how much bows should be lowered.

I dont have time to go and make a detailed analysis and on a per weapon basis, as I dont intend a "50% reduction across the board", but just not having any weapon deal more damage than the total amount of hit points would be a good start. Bow having spears numbers would mean a reasonable step down, compensating lowered damage for their range.

If you really need broad brush numbers without a real basis however, cut one handed shouldnt exceed 40, two handers 77, halve it for blunt and pierce

1: Archers in Warband were absolutely not "useless outside of sieges", Vaegir and Sarranid high tier archers were highly effective and Rhodok Sharpshooters in particular were a deadly menace, even in field battles.
2: sieges comprise a very big part of fighting in Warband. There is also lots of fighting on uneven terrain with massive randomly generated cliffs or steep hillsides, where archers excelled - and which are still present to a lesser degree in BL.
3: Again, being the only troop who can attack from range had a huge number of other benefits. Fighting looters? Your infantry might possibly get wounded but your archers can literally kill them without a scratch. Fighting a enemy who's holding position? Your infantry have to wait for them to show up, but your archers can damage them the whole time. Etc.

4: I'm not even asking for the same amount of protection against arrows as Warband had, anyway. Warband armour gave about 2x more protection against arrows, I am asking for 1.7x more protection against arrows. So if you think BL archers are too strong and WB archers are too weak, a midpoint should result in balance.

1. Why bring full ranged when I could bring full knights? They were a deadly menace as Imperial menavliatons are in Bannerlord, but they are redundant if Fians are an option.
2. Unless you are talking cheering the maps for those minecraft mountains, uneven terrain was as much of a boon as hinderance, blocking line of sight.
3. Recently did an improvised test both in warband and bannerlord custom battle, full range vs full infantry. In both games ranged always lost by wide margin, except when battanian heroes with their two handers mauled in melee. It's not that big of an advantage, more of an AI deficiency.
4. I dont think they are weak in Warband (unless speaking mods like VC or 1257), simply by the way game is built the killing power resides somewhere else, is not evenly distributed.

 

[five bucks]

Agreed, to some extent.

Glad we mostly agree.

I dont have time to go and make a detailed analysis and on a per weapon basis, as I dont intend a "50% reduction across the board", but just not having any weapon deal more damage than the total amount of hit points would be a good start. Bow having spears numbers would mean a reasonable step down, compensating lowered damage for their range.

That sounds reasonable.

If you really need broad brush numbers without a real basis however, cut one handed shouldnt exceed 40, two handers 77, halve it for blunt and pierce

2h weapons could also stand to have their damage go down if arrows are fixed, yeah.

1. Why bring full ranged when I could bring full knights? They were a deadly menace as Imperial menavliatons are in Bannerlord, but they are redundant if Fians are an option.

You would neither bring full ranged nor full knights, you'd bring a mix of both (and I regularly did). Even a force of full Swadian/Vaegir Knights, or Sarranid Mamlukes, becomes drastically less effective as soon as they have to walk up a hill or besiege a castle, making them unable to couch their lances. It's at that point where infantry and ranged troops became most effective and are worth having.

2. Unless you are talking cheering the maps for those minecraft mountains, uneven terrain was as much of a boon as hinderance, blocking line of sight.

Really depended on where you spawned, but I would say most of the time you had the opportunity to get your archers on a good visibility high spot before the enemy cavalry/infantry showed up.

3. Recently did an improvised test both in warband and bannerlord custom battle, full range vs full infantry. In both games ranged always lost by wide margin, except when battanian heroes with their two handers mauled in melee. It's not that big of an advantage, more of an AI deficiency.

This has already been discussed in this thread, the most effective tactic in Bannerlord (unless you go out of your way to amass Khan's Guards) is to use like 90% archers, and 10% trash distraction infantry, and sit on a hill. The trash infantry force attacking enemy infantry to drop their shields, allowing the archers to turn them into pincushions.

As a result there is no point in upgrading to infantry, since you'll pick up some as a matter of course anyway and would be better off with more archers. And there is no point in using other strategies since they usually get worse results.

This isn't an AI deficiency. The AI could be perfect and it would still be an extremely strong tactic. It's the logical end result of ranged troops being able to do the same thing as melee troops but at a distance.

 

[Rossa]

As stated many times before this game's biggest flaw is how bad the AI is, for battles as well as in the campaing map. Tweaking damage and armor values is simple to do even without much modding experience, changing the behaviour of the AI does not seem that easy. I do agree armor must be reworked, because from a gameplay perspective there is little benefit in wearing armor better than a rusty chainmail you can loot from sea raiders, so why pay a fortune for just a skin?

This isn't an AI deficiency. The AI could be perfect and it would still be an extremely strong tactic. It's the logical end result of ranged troops being able to do the same thing as melee troops but at a distance.

Archers are effective because they just need to stand and shoot stuff individually, there is no need for much tactics or planning, just park them in a hill and wait. Cav AI is notoriously bad, there is no chance of a hit an run tactic working unless you micromanage every move, and they will still miss their swings most of the time. Infantry is terrible because each soldier fights individually and not like a cohesive unit, they just stand close to each other and the ai will not divide the army acording to the enemy army, so they have no way to approach from multiple sides, they also charge you right away, so no waiting the enemy run out of arrows.
I was playing a sturgian campaing before they broke the square formation and was having a lot of success with mostly infantry and a few horsemen. Fiaans are hard because they are good at range and will hack you to pieces with thoose 2handers, but that's where cav. should play an important role, but it doesn't.
All that to say i think they should first work to make the AI more effective in using the game mechanics already implemented and just than start messing with tweaking the specific numbers.

 

[mujadaddy]

from a gameplay perspective there is little benefit in wearing armor better than a rusty chainmail

That is manifestly untrue. Heavy armor (50+) makes you nigh-invulnerable to trash mobs while on horseback. I can miscalculate and "bounce off" at almost any angle.

when given the follow order and the player circles the blob of infantry

Yeah, the player is the thing which does the thing which does well.

You're right about the 'ranged revelation' being minor stuff, of course; but I still see the issue being a One-AI-For-All-Situations problem. I'd love to see each leader have their own forces utilize separate AI in the big battles, rather than the modern-style OOB the AI uses.

Fighting looters? Your infantry might possibly get wounded but your archers can literally kill them without a scratch.

But not to infinity. 50 looters will beat 15 low-tier archers every time. Packing a bow is an advantage, as it should be, but the player can still overcome it with half-decent tactics.

I will freely admit that we're chasing tiny percentages, though, which is why I state that a mod to your vision should be made. I think you'd find you're still complaining, and about the AI