Cavalry wage

[Seafoodking]

Did a simple test a week or so ago with the players brother during the tutorial. I gave him the best imperial armor I could find (cheat menu ofc) as well as a pureblood and the full scale cataphract armor. He also had a 1h sword (forget which one) the heavy knights shield and a cataphract lance. Set all of his perks to be as melee cavalry focused as possible and sent him off to fight the groups of 6 raiders while I watched from the sidelines. All 3 times, he managed to charge at best, 4 times before being de-horsed and taken out. He did score some kills, however, with the best being 3/6 raiders dead. Now I'm not going to get into the ridiculousness of how all that armor failed so quickly (that particular horse has been beat to death so many times already, no pun intended) but you're telling me, that a "super heavy" cavalry unit cannot take out 6 guys wearing rags and wielding wooden clubs?

The point I am trying to make with this is that, with the micro management required to keep cavalry alive and the costs of the horses to upgrade them balances out their cheap daily wage. Currently, their only real purpose is to chase off horse archers (which requires even more direct micro management on top of what is already necessary to keep them alive) is balanced by them being so cheap. Until armor gets a drastic balancing pass and heavy cavalry becomes the devastating force that it should be when used properly, they are not worth more than they currently are.

The vanilla cavalries needs a buff, especially in their offensive ability. To prevent cavalries from being too imbalance, they should buff the spear dismounting ability, and increase the wage of cavalries, but cavalries charges are suppose to be devastating.

For those that believe a shield wall of infantries can stop a full charge from cavalries is simply brainwashed from the movies. Just think about an animal that sprints at 3 times of a human speed, and 6-7 times the weight charging at you. I doubt 10 adult male can withstand 1 horsemen charge, let alone a formation of them. The only way to stop a cavalry charge with infantries is a braced pike wall, and I mean pikes that are 4m+ long.

 

[MakinTorf]

just a small reminder

in warband huscarls and the swadian knights had nearly the same wage.
so if the cav should have a higher wage, do you also propose that high tier inf also have to get higher wage?

in this scenario an army wont cost "just" 2-4k, but 10k or more. depends on the wage and the only way to compensate that is war.

 

[CrazyElf]

Cavalry should cost more to have to feed the horses, except where there are steppe plains - then the horses can survive on grazing.

 

[Kyias]

I am paying 1300 per cavalryman in up front cost...each. If one dies, I need to spend another 1300 to get a new one (plus track down horses in Azeris to do it that cheaply.)

In large battles, I lose 3-4 cavalry per fight with lots of micro....So losing 4-5k per pitched battle seems reasonable cost to me...this doesn’t include the random losses from auto resolving a fight either.
The high upfront cost validates the current upkeep for a vanilla game.

 

[Kingofmetal]

I am paying 1300 per cavalryman in up front cost...each. If one dies, I need to spend another 1300 to get a new one (plus track down horses in Azeris to do it that cheaply.)

In large battles, I lose 3-4 cavalry per fight with lots of micro....So losing 4-5k per pitched battle seems reasonable cost to me...this doesn’t include the random losses from auto resolving a fight either.
The high upfront cost validates the current upkeep for a vanilla game.

Great point.

 

[Apocal]

because aserai horses are the best in mass horses available and that makes your cav much more efficient.

It doesn't do anything to make your cav more efficient. The horses non-hero troops ride is dictated by their equipment in spnpccharacters.xml not by whatever horse was burned to upgrade them. Using Aserais for that is crazy because they are the most expensive warhorses available. Imperial Chargers are the best because they are tier 2 -- the worst in terms of stats (unless you place a premium on your horse being a tank) but the cheapest by a wide margin.

 

[Yertyl]

Making cavalry, especially horse archers, much more powerful than infantry and balancing that out only by an initial cost for horses is IMO bad mainly for two reasons:

1. For the player, this initial upgrade cost can vary to a huge degree. E.g. you can have a bucellarii (buccellarius?) for the cost of a single imperial charger, usually 400-500 gold.
   On the other hand, if you use a desert and asari horse to upgrade to a marmeluke heavy cavalry, you can easily spend 3-4 times that amount.
   The effect is that you have a large incentive to spend a lot of time on the campaign map revisiting the same few spots where you can buy the cheapest horses/warhorses (namely Battian ponies/imperial chargers) for basically any faction or playstyle, which is not fun in my book.
2. The AI does not need horses to upgrade its troops, which means that either all factions field the same percentage of cavalry, or some factions have inherently stronger troops than others. Again, both options are pretty suboptimal.

So I would not only increase cavalry wages, but also their contribution to the troop limit (as stated in this thread) to create at least some situations in which infantry is the better choice.

 

[Seafoodking]

Making cavalry, especially horse archers, much more powerful than infantry and balancing that out only by an initial cost for horses is IMO bad mainly for two reasons:

1. For the player, this initial upgrade cost can vary to a huge degree. E.g. you can have a bucellarii (buccellarius?) for the cost of a single imperial charger, usually 400-500 gold.
   On the other hand, if you use a desert and asari horse to upgrade to a marmeluke heavy cavalry, you can easily spend 3-4 times that amount.
   The effect is that you have a large incentive to spend a lot of time on the campaign map revisiting the same few spots where you can buy the cheapest horses/warhorses (namely Battian ponies/imperial chargers) for basically any faction or playstyle, which is not fun in my book.
2. The AI does not need horses to upgrade its troops, which means that either all factions field the same percentage of cavalry, or some factions have inherently stronger troops than others. Again, both options are pretty suboptimal.

So I would not only increase cavalry wages, but also their contribution to the troop limit (as stated in this thread) to create at least some situations in which infantry is the better choice.

Yes, true but we should counter balance it by making dismount ability from infantries a lot higher (perhaps even low percentage from an bolts & arrows?). If cavalries charge doesn't have a great impact, it just feels wrong.