Change proposal to the Khuzait troop tree

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Totalgarbage

Sergeant Knight
I doubt that TW will make these changes when the game will be releasing in a month but here it is; the Khuzait t2 cav unit should be changed to a melee cavalry rather than being a ranged cav unit. Horse archers were probably some of the hardest troops to train, even though Turco-Mongol peoples apparently trained kids to hunt on horseback from childhood (I'm not a historian so I can't confirm or deny the validity of this information), having a power-spike in t2 is not healthy for the balance of the game.

My other and possibly controversial change is scrapping the non-noble horse archer troop tree (or maybe the noble tree but Aserai Faris tree already exists and we need more unique noble troops) and making them into lightly armored cav skirmishers (so cavalry with throwing weapons) AFTER nerfing throwing weapons. There is no reason for there to be 2 horse archer troop trees in the same faction especially since there is literally no upside to having the commoner horse archer variant in your party. As it is right now, recruiting noble troops is probably easier than recruiting a specific commoner troop. (It also boggles my mind that Jereeds are an Aserai culture item despite them being historically and culturally part of Turkic armies. Why give this item to the Arabic faction rather than the Turco-Mongolic (+Hunnic) faction? They are not even equipped by Mamlukes which were literally slaves with Circassian and Turkic origins. Cirit, literally Jereed, itself is an equestrian sport popular in Turkey and other Turkic countries). Just give the Khuzait horse "archers" javelins or something instead of bow & arrows ONLY IF the throwing weapon damage is nerfed, otherwise, the already OP Khuzaits would just become stronger.
 
he Khuzait t2 cav unit should be changed to a melee cavalry rather than being a ranged cav unit
I don't think the AI cares if it's a cav or HA in auto battle so it can't change the imaginary "balance of the game". Making them not mounted till t3 would however put them more in line with the amount of cav other faction get and make live battles with the player less annoying, especially re-built armies who currently have tunz of pesty t2 HA. Of course I would much rather live battle and "Balolance" be improved other ways first or concurrently.
1 Archers (foot and stationary HA) need to be better at leading/shooting circling HA, this would cut down the live annoyance significantly as the t2 HA is pretty vulnerable, it's just bad AI that lets it go around and around and around.
2 Cavalry need to be more gooder at hitting targets and not dying... they should be able to slam into circling HA and kill them, not just chasing them around conveniently dropping thier shield every few seconds for a chance to get shot in the face.
3 The amount of units AI factions can recover/recruit need to be greatly reduced as their number of fiefs goes down. It's really stupid for any faction to still have hundreds-1k of it's own faction troops when it's lost 3/4 of it's fiefs.... except Imperials I guess Lol.

FTER nerfing throwing weapons.
ONLY IF the throwing weapon damage is nerfed,
It's already been nerfed to the point of near uselessness. You might experience it seeming good if you're moving towards an AI and they throw it into your head, but that's just your own speed adding to the damage. When troops square off, they're just not very impactful.
since there is literally no upside to having the commoner horse archer variant in your party
From t3-5 The common Khuzait HA has two stacks of arrows while the noble only has 1. Until the noble unit is t6, the common unit can be an advantage because you should mostly be using ranged fire to wear down enemies. Although the noble unit gets glaives at t4 and t5, they're still pretty vulnerable so using them as melee cav is going to cost you some of them. It's a trade off of tempo over value: The Khan's Guard is the best unit for sure, but until you've got them at t6 the 2 stack common HA are an advantage.
 
I don't see the khuzait dominating anymore, so I'm guessing the auto resolve is balanced enough now. I'm not against a faction having a T2 cav unit, one thing that should hopefully be improved with the next patch is collision and your own and enemy cav units just bumping you all the time.

I agree with all your listed points. I should've detailed that the nerf to throwing weapons should only be done to high tier javelin variants (harpoon, jereed, etc.). I forgot how influential throwing perks are, so you're right. Honestly, thinking back, things like cavalry javelins may even be underpowered.

Right now, only elite cataphracts are the melee (cav) unit in the game that are better than the khan's guard (even with the ****ty AI) except the KG can of course pew pew you. The armor is really good so they're not even in that much trouble while using melee.

I guess you're technically right about the silverlining of the commoner horse archers having an extra quiver, but it's not that big of a problem in most cases for horse archers when they have an insane polearm and are much more likely to survive compared to infantry due to higher mobility. Both units still occupy the same niche except the noble troops do it for so much better albeit with a higher recruitment cost. That's why I think replacing one (most likely the commoner horse archers) with a cavalry skirmisher makes the faction more interesting.
 
Horse archers were probably some of the hardest troops to train, even though Turco-Mongol peoples apparently trained kids to hunt on horseback from childhood (I'm not a historian so I can't confirm or deny the validity of this information), having a power-spike in t2 is not healthy for the balance of the game.
They weren't difficult to train for people living on the steppes. It was basically just growing up as a healthy dude, you'd learn to ride and shoot well because it was necessary to get around and eat.

There isn't really a power spike because T2 HAs use crap bows, have one quiver and can't hit the broadside of a barn unless you field 30+ of them, while stationary.
 
I guess a power "spike" is a bit of a misnomer, they really aren't particularly strong or accurate, that's true. But they are more likely to survive, and are much better compared to basically any other t2. Most importantly, they fulfill the same role as the noble line and are worse in almost every way (except having an extra quiver in t3-t5).
 
I don't see the need for this. Much rather they just structured the Khuzait troop tree into melee troops and ranged troops, with T2 paths being archer and spearman. At T3, you can then progress to horse archers and cavalry.

At least that way there's less cavalry just swamping around without going too few of them.
 
It's not needed per se, but it would add some diversity to Khuzait armies. Right now, there are only a few "duplicate" troops in the game, 1 being the Khuzait horse archer lines, another being the Vlandian melee Cavalry lines (also both Vlandian pikemen and sergeants having pikes, but it's easy to fix by removing the braceable spear from the sergeant). The Vlandian one could be separated into heavy and light cavalry to make them different ... somehow (I don't know a light cav could have an advantage over a heavy cav in this game). We can also straight up delete the commoner horse archer troop line from the game to decrease the overall cav the Khuzait will field in the game, although I think this "solution" would be unpopular. My suggestion is to make the commoner HA line into a horse skirmisher troop line to make them useful and distinguishable. It's also historically appropriate (as much as it can be in a game with such historical amalgamations). Making noble troops harder to recruit would also be a solution (kind of a cop-out one), so that you couldn't really fill your army with them quite easily unless you chose to grind for it.

Do tell me if you have another suggestion for removing duplicate troop lines from the game. I'm especially lost in figuring out a way to make the commoner Vlandian cav line distinguishable.
 
We can also straight up delete the commoner horse archer troop line from the game to decrease the overall cav the Khuzait will field in the game, although I think this "solution" would be unpopular.
This would be, essentially, making the Khuzait troop tree into something like every other faction's troop tree.

I'm not really opposed to it, but people ***** about the factions being too similar already.
 
As I said, while it's a solution, it probably would not be liked much. I would by far prefer to have a new commoner mounted skirmisher troop tree to be added to the cavalry faction starting from tier 3. Although, I do understand people's concerns about the "traffic jam" that occurs when fighting the Khuzait. Replacing a mounted unit with another one wouldn't be helping with this issue.
 
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