Just thought I'd get the ball rolling since we're in a bit of a quieter time with no clan tournament happening right now. Would be good to see some tweaks to balance gameplay for the competitive scene. I have three main thoughts but good to hear what people think. Oh, and if anyone says "wait for Bannerlord" when I was trawling through old posts on this topic I see people saying it back in 2015 so don't bother.
1) Azan's serverside stat changes - use them.
From here, Azan proposed some changes to the core stats of troop types. This occurs serverside and wouldn't need a mod. Some people may not know but these stats were used in a lesser fashion in ECS3 here. I don't think anyone had any complaints and changes were considered a minor quality of life improvement. I think the main reason they didn't get used in future tournaments is because everyone forgot.
Obviously, the changes don't need to be exactly the same, but some of it is common sense such as improving the shield skill of Vaegir and Sarranid inf.
2) Remove awlpikes from cavalry.
Again a serverside mod by Azan as posted here, I think this change as a balance addition makes sense. Awlpike cav are obviously much stronger than lance cav (faster hits, more damage). It also removes diversity of tactics for swadia, as why bother with going for tank tactics with round 1 armour, or doing complicated great lance drops, when by far the best move is to just give long awlpikes to your cav for, essentially, free (a shield drop). Removing this would go some way to balancing Swadia who currently are by far the best all round faction.
3) My personal pet bug, remove javelins from nord infantry.
HEAR ME OUT. Factions are supposed to be dominant in some regards but have weaknesses in others, correct? Currently the Nord weakness is ranged, with the weaker archers, but strength in melee and decent cav (though vulnerable). However, the abundance of javs for free (simple cav drops) coupled with high power throw and throwing skill on Nords means that any short to medium range fight e.g. 90% of fights in competitive warband nords actually have a range advantage. On a closed map for example, typically you'll see 4 packs dropped for inf plus 1 pack each per cav, so you're looking at 30 javelins on round 1 minimum. Yes they're not accurate, but they don't need to be as they can be thrown with little risk. In effect that's 30 chances for free damage. What this looks like in practice is teams have to hide from Nords unless they are very, very far away (only maps like Field by the River create this situation really), and since you can't pressure them moving they end up in close engagements quickly...where they also have the advantage with high melee damage and axes. Most recently we saw this with Nords vs Vaegirs on Sandiboush, where not only did Vaegirs typically lose the melee fight due to Nords being Nords, but Vaegirs also lost any ranged skirmish despite having the stronger archers, simply due to the amount of projectiles being rained down on them in the open.
Removing javs from inf would retain Nords having a close range advantage but make them more vulnerable on the move. Keeping them on the cav would retain their speciality of skirmish cav and since Nords are not OP on open maps I don't see a reason to remove this.
This would be done in a server side mod similar to the other 2 options.
what u think
1) Azan's serverside stat changes - use them.
From here, Azan proposed some changes to the core stats of troop types. This occurs serverside and wouldn't need a mod. Some people may not know but these stats were used in a lesser fashion in ECS3 here. I don't think anyone had any complaints and changes were considered a minor quality of life improvement. I think the main reason they didn't get used in future tournaments is because everyone forgot.
Obviously, the changes don't need to be exactly the same, but some of it is common sense such as improving the shield skill of Vaegir and Sarranid inf.
2) Remove awlpikes from cavalry.
Again a serverside mod by Azan as posted here, I think this change as a balance addition makes sense. Awlpike cav are obviously much stronger than lance cav (faster hits, more damage). It also removes diversity of tactics for swadia, as why bother with going for tank tactics with round 1 armour, or doing complicated great lance drops, when by far the best move is to just give long awlpikes to your cav for, essentially, free (a shield drop). Removing this would go some way to balancing Swadia who currently are by far the best all round faction.
3) My personal pet bug, remove javelins from nord infantry.
HEAR ME OUT. Factions are supposed to be dominant in some regards but have weaknesses in others, correct? Currently the Nord weakness is ranged, with the weaker archers, but strength in melee and decent cav (though vulnerable). However, the abundance of javs for free (simple cav drops) coupled with high power throw and throwing skill on Nords means that any short to medium range fight e.g. 90% of fights in competitive warband nords actually have a range advantage. On a closed map for example, typically you'll see 4 packs dropped for inf plus 1 pack each per cav, so you're looking at 30 javelins on round 1 minimum. Yes they're not accurate, but they don't need to be as they can be thrown with little risk. In effect that's 30 chances for free damage. What this looks like in practice is teams have to hide from Nords unless they are very, very far away (only maps like Field by the River create this situation really), and since you can't pressure them moving they end up in close engagements quickly...where they also have the advantage with high melee damage and axes. Most recently we saw this with Nords vs Vaegirs on Sandiboush, where not only did Vaegirs typically lose the melee fight due to Nords being Nords, but Vaegirs also lost any ranged skirmish despite having the stronger archers, simply due to the amount of projectiles being rained down on them in the open.
Removing javs from inf would retain Nords having a close range advantage but make them more vulnerable on the move. Keeping them on the cav would retain their speciality of skirmish cav and since Nords are not OP on open maps I don't see a reason to remove this.
This would be done in a server side mod similar to the other 2 options.
what u think
