I stand corrected, wasn't actually thinking about medieval Japan and its resources. So rest of the discussion doesn't belong here and I admit you've made the fool out of me (as much as I did) with that biting.
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WoodyRex
Regular
Do not look here said:
It's ok, certain Medieval European warhorses were bred to bite etc, but these were pretty rare and not the easiest thing to get along with. Bringing Mount and Blade into the discussion, I must say that I rarely ever charge the front ranks unless they are very thin.
Always hit the butt.
Tcherski said:
they were superhorses for the time, but less so in size, and rather that they could actually be ridden reliably. that's why so many people in the pre-roman world rode chariots, because one horse was too weak and small to carry a single man.
also interesting enough the smallest horses around at the time were ridden by the mongols. i've seen one of them and they're so small that your feet barely leave the ground when you ride them.
Talinoth
Knight
It's true that you wouldn't send a group of very valuable heavy cavalry crashing straight into a column of enemy pikemen.
That'd be stupid. Your limited number of well equipped and highly trained noble horsemen are not expendable. But foot soldiers, while not completely expendable, are considerably more so.
So you send a group of heavy infantry as a vanguard to disrupt their front line. Then, once their formation is in disarray, THAT'S when you lead a charge into their flanks and the heavy cavalry crush everything in their way.
Tbh, you probably could just send your heavy cavalry straight through the enemy spearmen front line without prep work in a real life battle without TOO much trouble. It'd be pointless though, because you'd lose far more than you'd gain, realistically, but it'd work. A heavy cavalry unit in a wedge formation really would rip straight through one or two 5-deep formations of spearmen.
Never underestimate the sheer momentum of a cavalry unit.
At the same time though, you would suffer large casualties from enemy spearmen peeling off the skin of your human + horse wedge, so unless I was achieving some mighty goal like the head of the enemy general, I'd send my infantry in first.
Heavy cavalry can hit above their already considerable weight because of their momentum. A man, his horse, his armour, and his horse's armour weigh a damn heap. And they're going fast. And they have their own spears. And there'd be nothing more demoralising than a column of mounted badasses screaming how they're going to kill you charging down upon your position.
There's a large probability of a formation breaking even BEFORE the charge. Or the soldiers routing.
It's really the vast numbers and comparative cheapness of foot soldiers that allow them to stay relevant, tbh. Spearmen can effectively slow heavy cavalry down, but stopping them to a dead halt requires quite a few of them to say the least.
----
Also, about your idea of restricting some long weapons to foot -
ABSOLUTELY NO.
Unless it's a 3 metre long thick two-handed Swedish pike like the kind in With Fire & Sword, absolutely no.
You do realise, you can use very long weapons from horseback, often more effectively than you could from foot, due to your increased elevation and movement, right? That 1.4m, awkwardly long Naginata you struggle to use effectively on foot due to all the people around you? You have plenty of space to swing from a horse. That 1m-1.1m Nodachi? Awkwardly long and slow compared to a normal katana for a footsoldier in a full melee, but perfect for a mounted samurai.
Remember that you don't need the reins to drive a horse. Use your hips to control the direction of the horse - that way, you can devote both your hands to the slaughter of your enemies. Whenever I see any mod needlessly restricting the usage of two handed weapons to footsoldiers only, a part of me dies inside.
That'd be stupid. Your limited number of well equipped and highly trained noble horsemen are not expendable. But foot soldiers, while not completely expendable, are considerably more so.
So you send a group of heavy infantry as a vanguard to disrupt their front line. Then, once their formation is in disarray, THAT'S when you lead a charge into their flanks and the heavy cavalry crush everything in their way.
Tbh, you probably could just send your heavy cavalry straight through the enemy spearmen front line without prep work in a real life battle without TOO much trouble. It'd be pointless though, because you'd lose far more than you'd gain, realistically, but it'd work. A heavy cavalry unit in a wedge formation really would rip straight through one or two 5-deep formations of spearmen.
Never underestimate the sheer momentum of a cavalry unit.
At the same time though, you would suffer large casualties from enemy spearmen peeling off the skin of your human + horse wedge, so unless I was achieving some mighty goal like the head of the enemy general, I'd send my infantry in first.
Heavy cavalry can hit above their already considerable weight because of their momentum. A man, his horse, his armour, and his horse's armour weigh a damn heap. And they're going fast. And they have their own spears. And there'd be nothing more demoralising than a column of mounted badasses screaming how they're going to kill you charging down upon your position.
There's a large probability of a formation breaking even BEFORE the charge. Or the soldiers routing.
It's really the vast numbers and comparative cheapness of foot soldiers that allow them to stay relevant, tbh. Spearmen can effectively slow heavy cavalry down, but stopping them to a dead halt requires quite a few of them to say the least.
----
Also, about your idea of restricting some long weapons to foot -
ABSOLUTELY NO.
Unless it's a 3 metre long thick two-handed Swedish pike like the kind in With Fire & Sword, absolutely no.
You do realise, you can use very long weapons from horseback, often more effectively than you could from foot, due to your increased elevation and movement, right? That 1.4m, awkwardly long Naginata you struggle to use effectively on foot due to all the people around you? You have plenty of space to swing from a horse. That 1m-1.1m Nodachi? Awkwardly long and slow compared to a normal katana for a footsoldier in a full melee, but perfect for a mounted samurai.
Remember that you don't need the reins to drive a horse. Use your hips to control the direction of the horse - that way, you can devote both your hands to the slaughter of your enemies. Whenever I see any mod needlessly restricting the usage of two handed weapons to footsoldiers only, a part of me dies inside.
a formation of horses has zero momentum. an individual horse is just as likely to smash through a formation as a large cluster of them. the guys behind can't magically push the front line with more force than they can muster under their own strength. and can you imagine if they did? the horses of the front line would die the fastest, being crushed by tonnes of horseflesh in the back and tonnes of man-meat in the front. as a woman called margaret thatcher once said, "there is no such thing as a formation - only individuals and their horses" 
humans aren't dummies, and horses in the past and nowadays are only a few times stronger than a human being; probably a factor of something like 3 or 4. a horse galloping is pretty scary, but if they hit a crowd of men, all that energy is going to dissipate almost instantly because of how many bodies are in the way. hence the need to charge again and again against even weakened opponents. if you stick around you're just a foot-taller-than-average man with a sword.
also wedge formations weren't inherently more powerful or more deadly than a line of cavalry. the main reasons for deploying like that is so that you can have more men on the front rank than usual, and not have to hit the entire enemy formation.
also consider how few heavy cavalry there actually were. I study the crusades and was shocked to discover that your average campaign army consisted of 10,000 or so light infantry, and 100 or so knights, not including squires etc. obviously it varied quite a bit but heavily armoured mounted knights, and mounted samurai i suspect, existed as support troops and weren't exactly relied upon, see also artillery during the 1500s. some smaller armies didn't even have mounted knights in them.
you're very probably right about this, i've never thought about it that way. the devs probably nerfed 2h on horseback for balance or something. although i'm not sure you get the penalty if you get the slash 2h animation.
humans aren't dummies, and horses in the past and nowadays are only a few times stronger than a human being; probably a factor of something like 3 or 4. a horse galloping is pretty scary, but if they hit a crowd of men, all that energy is going to dissipate almost instantly because of how many bodies are in the way. hence the need to charge again and again against even weakened opponents. if you stick around you're just a foot-taller-than-average man with a sword.
also wedge formations weren't inherently more powerful or more deadly than a line of cavalry. the main reasons for deploying like that is so that you can have more men on the front rank than usual, and not have to hit the entire enemy formation.
also consider how few heavy cavalry there actually were. I study the crusades and was shocked to discover that your average campaign army consisted of 10,000 or so light infantry, and 100 or so knights, not including squires etc. obviously it varied quite a bit but heavily armoured mounted knights, and mounted samurai i suspect, existed as support troops and weren't exactly relied upon, see also artillery during the 1500s. some smaller armies didn't even have mounted knights in them.
you're very probably right about this, i've never thought about it that way. the devs probably nerfed 2h on horseback for balance or something. although i'm not sure you get the penalty if you get the slash 2h animation.
Sirion
Recruit
[quote author=Talinoth]
Unless it's a 3 metre long thick two-handed Swedish pike like the kind in With Fire & Sword, absolutely no.[/quote]
Unless it's nagae yari long of 4.5 to 6.5 m (15 to 20 feet)?
There are some interesting materials: http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-042612-111812/unrestricted/Samurai-Evolution-of-Arms-Armors.pdf Note the lenght of Ashigaru spears.
Naginata been used mostly (mostly, not exclusively, ok?) by foot soldiers too.
I do agree with regular cavalry armed with Yari, Yumi and Tachi. In Sengoku period Naginata was dropped in favor of Yari anyways.
Heavy cavalry equivalent can have Ō-dachi; I have no problem with that. It is still open question however, is that Ō-dachi and No-dachi the same thing or not.
Unless it's a 3 metre long thick two-handed Swedish pike like the kind in With Fire & Sword, absolutely no.[/quote]
Unless it's nagae yari long of 4.5 to 6.5 m (15 to 20 feet)?
There are some interesting materials: http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-042612-111812/unrestricted/Samurai-Evolution-of-Arms-Armors.pdf Note the lenght of Ashigaru spears.
Naginata been used mostly (mostly, not exclusively, ok?) by foot soldiers too.
I do agree with regular cavalry armed with Yari, Yumi and Tachi. In Sengoku period Naginata was dropped in favor of Yari anyways.
Heavy cavalry equivalent can have Ō-dachi; I have no problem with that. It is still open question however, is that Ō-dachi and No-dachi the same thing or not.
those sitting animations are pretty cool, it's amazing how much good stuff is hiding over there on the repository.
I am planning to do heavy work for gekokujo in the week before and after new years, so that I can release something in early JanuaryWoodyRex said:
It won't be the 3.0 I had originally planned for, unfortunately. I am culling back some incomplete features that i have half-implemented (but adding some unplanned features). There will probably not be any multiplayer, for example, and I am rolling back the factional elements (ashikaga shogun, kanto kubo, emperor's court and such).
I will continue adding those features in a future version but I feel like I need to release a new version as soon as possible instead of torturing you all with a longer wait. The reason I am rolling back some features is because I want this release to be solid that you can play by itself without trouble, and not an obvious work-in-progress
el xabeo de la cova
Squire
what new features in nex version?
Talinoth
Knight
TL;DR at end
---
In terms of the map strength of the factions, I can definitely say that the very weakest factions are (in order of increasing lameness)
Takeda Clan, at 3rd lamest, getting swallowed by the Oda and Uesugi quite quickly.
Ryuzoji Clan, at 2nd lamest- every time I see them lose Nagasaki in the first 100 days I cry inside.
Satomi Clan, claiming the dubious honour of Weakest Clan - they get ripped apart by the Hojo and the Satake so quickly it's not even funny, often before even two months of game time. Getting these guys to win would probably be as hard as conquering Japan yourself!
"Strongest clan" is a harder question though. I'd say that the Date, Oda, Uesugi, Hojo, Chosokabe, Miyoshi and Otomo, and... there's a lot of top tier clans that are actually fairly well matched.
---
In terms of UNIT strength, the samurai clans are more or less completely equal. They all have almost identical unit trees (works really well as a balance mechanism) except for their elite tier "Hatamoto" units, who are like Knights, Huscarls, or Sharpshooters in Native but 10x more kickass.
There are Hatamoto Gunners, Hatamoto Archers, Hatamoto Infanty, and Hatamoto Cavalry. Each clan can have two of these four unit types. For example, the Uesugi have Hatamoto Cavalry and Hatamoto Gunners, while the Satomi have Hatamoto Infantry and Hatamoto Archers.
So when recruiting samurai (not ashigaru - the peasant troops - but samurai from towns and castles), pick a faction that can train the kind of Hatamotos you want. It'd be a waste of time, party space and a surprisingly large amount of money to train Satomi Master Gunners when you could be training Satomi Hatamoto Archers instead.
---
To complicate this though, the samurai clans aren't the only factions in Gekokujo.
There's also a monk faction, with a completely different unit tree. Unlike with the samurai clans, where you can either recruit cheap but inferior peasant troops from villages or superior but horribly expensive samurai from towns and castles (which means two troop trees) the monks only have one troop tree, which is much more reminiscent of Native.
The monks are quite different to the samurai. Their basic spearmen and gunners are on par with the ashigaru troops of the samurai clans, but they have no cavalry or elite-tier gunners/archers.
But instead, they have ELITE NAGINATA MONKS.
I swear, Elite Naginata Monks are the scariest infantry units in the entire game. They're fast, they're tough, they're the highest level normal troops in the game, they're stronger than Hatamoto infantry, they have high Polearms proficiency which means they swing fast and hit hard with a weapon that has already high base damage and almost absurd reach, a tight formation of them eats cavalry for breakfast, and most of all, training large numbers of them isn't as expensive as training large numbers of Hatamotos.
They don't beat Hatamoto Cavalry in field battles, but hey, sieges are the most important battles in the game.
---
But really, if you're smart, you wouldn't recruit units from just one faction.
Use the Naginata Monks as your elite infantry, and a mix of samurai clans for archers/gunners (whichever you prefer) and your cavalry.
---
TLR: All samurai clans have nearly identical unit trees, with specialised elite units. Mix and match the elite units.
The monks have best elite infantry with Naginata Monks.
Mix and match to win baby.
---
In terms of the map strength of the factions, I can definitely say that the very weakest factions are (in order of increasing lameness)
Takeda Clan, at 3rd lamest, getting swallowed by the Oda and Uesugi quite quickly.
Ryuzoji Clan, at 2nd lamest- every time I see them lose Nagasaki in the first 100 days I cry inside.
Satomi Clan, claiming the dubious honour of Weakest Clan - they get ripped apart by the Hojo and the Satake so quickly it's not even funny, often before even two months of game time. Getting these guys to win would probably be as hard as conquering Japan yourself!
"Strongest clan" is a harder question though. I'd say that the Date, Oda, Uesugi, Hojo, Chosokabe, Miyoshi and Otomo, and... there's a lot of top tier clans that are actually fairly well matched.
---
In terms of UNIT strength, the samurai clans are more or less completely equal. They all have almost identical unit trees (works really well as a balance mechanism) except for their elite tier "Hatamoto" units, who are like Knights, Huscarls, or Sharpshooters in Native but 10x more kickass.
There are Hatamoto Gunners, Hatamoto Archers, Hatamoto Infanty, and Hatamoto Cavalry. Each clan can have two of these four unit types. For example, the Uesugi have Hatamoto Cavalry and Hatamoto Gunners, while the Satomi have Hatamoto Infantry and Hatamoto Archers.
So when recruiting samurai (not ashigaru - the peasant troops - but samurai from towns and castles), pick a faction that can train the kind of Hatamotos you want. It'd be a waste of time, party space and a surprisingly large amount of money to train Satomi Master Gunners when you could be training Satomi Hatamoto Archers instead.
---
To complicate this though, the samurai clans aren't the only factions in Gekokujo.
There's also a monk faction, with a completely different unit tree. Unlike with the samurai clans, where you can either recruit cheap but inferior peasant troops from villages or superior but horribly expensive samurai from towns and castles (which means two troop trees) the monks only have one troop tree, which is much more reminiscent of Native.
The monks are quite different to the samurai. Their basic spearmen and gunners are on par with the ashigaru troops of the samurai clans, but they have no cavalry or elite-tier gunners/archers.
But instead, they have ELITE NAGINATA MONKS.
I swear, Elite Naginata Monks are the scariest infantry units in the entire game. They're fast, they're tough, they're the highest level normal troops in the game, they're stronger than Hatamoto infantry, they have high Polearms proficiency which means they swing fast and hit hard with a weapon that has already high base damage and almost absurd reach, a tight formation of them eats cavalry for breakfast, and most of all, training large numbers of them isn't as expensive as training large numbers of Hatamotos.
They don't beat Hatamoto Cavalry in field battles, but hey, sieges are the most important battles in the game.
---
But really, if you're smart, you wouldn't recruit units from just one faction.
Use the Naginata Monks as your elite infantry, and a mix of samurai clans for archers/gunners (whichever you prefer) and your cavalry.
---
TL
R: All samurai clans have nearly identical unit trees, with specialised elite units. Mix and match the elite units.The monks have best elite infantry with Naginata Monks.
Mix and match to win baby.
Excellent write up by Talinoth, I would add only one thing, do not forget to use the Ronin (Farmer upgrades) and the Onnabushi (Peasant woman)...
The Elite Naginata Monks are the Veteran Huskarls (or whatever the name is) from the vanilla, just excellent in siege battles.
The Elite Naginata Monks are the Veteran Huskarls (or whatever the name is) from the vanilla, just excellent in siege battles.
Talinoth pretty much summed it up. When the kaga ikki appear in the DoW screen i always crap myself, because they're even harder to fight in village raid battles and that's how i always end up facing them. In another field battle the ai decided to sit in a river, my allies charged, and were slaughtered. Those naginata
