Um...
...as an evil warlord, things that "are terrific to have" and " good at killing everything" are synonymous.
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Custom battle tests (1.5.6): Horse archers are insanely OP & Infantry is pointless
- Thread starter Yertyl
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Um...
...as an evil warlord, things that "are terrific to have" and " good at killing everything" are synonymous.
That was Crecy, not Agincourt. At Agincourt, they didn't bring levies: the French forces had been semi-professionalized by that point. But as to my point in bringing it up -- if arrows were anything like bullets, there would not have been a melee lasting more than two hours.
JOINT HURTBOXES and ARMOR HURTBOXES: an armor system that provide a way to balance factions warfare and make more deep the combat system(suggestions)
These tests confirm what I write in my thread in relation to the relationship between bullets and armor.
The "NOT REALISTIC" armor system.
A plate armor tends to completely protect the part it covers from damage of any kind (except when impacts tend to accelerate the affected body part to create trauma).
If a warrior is covered in plate armor for 90% of his body area, then out of 100 arrows that cover that area, only 10 should hit him.
Therefore a plate armor should give very high protection in the covered areas of the body.
But clearly the hurtboxes of the armor system consist of: head, neck, shoulders, arms, torso, legs ...
6 in all!
And when you wear armor that fits into one of these slots, that armor PERFECTLY COVERS THE WHOLE HURTBOX.
But since you can't make an enemy invincible, you can't make it 100% protect it and therefore you are forced to reduce the armor value.
If instead of continuing on this path, the number of hurtboxes were increased and NOT ALL WERE COVERABLE by a piece of armor, then even if heavily covered, a soldier would still have points where he is vulnerable.
And if in the points where the protection is covered was a function of the type of armor and was increased by a lot and vice versa where it is discovered (partially or totally) the armor value was 0, then it would completely change our approach to combat both hand-to-hand. body than at a distance.
- Body to hand should hit the hurtboxes discovered and therefore the lunge would not be a "farce" and would have a purpose to exist.
You also wouldn't need to introduce that delay after releasing the attack button, which paradoxically makes the lunge slower than the slash ... which is ridiculous.
Spam attacks would become counterproductive and therefore a tactical and precise approach would be more favorable against well-protected enemies.
- ranged combat: it would become a statistical question.
If before the arrows hit the whole area of the soldier's body and all inflicted damage (albeit reduced where the protection was greater) and the soldier died anyway, now on a large number of arrows that hit you, 90% deals damage ( on a given part of the body) like:
0 if you have plate armor
1 if it is lamellar
20 if it is chain mail
25 if leather
qualitative examples.
If you are hit in an uncovered hurtbox instead you take the maximum damage that body part can take.
But you understand that someone covered 95% by plates you do out only if you "aim well in those points" or you take him with a club.
In the thread whose link is at the top of this comment I better express the concept and give many examples.
These tests confirm what I write in my thread in relation to the relationship between bullets and armor.
The "NOT REALISTIC" armor system.
A plate armor tends to completely protect the part it covers from damage of any kind (except when impacts tend to accelerate the affected body part to create trauma).
If a warrior is covered in plate armor for 90% of his body area, then out of 100 arrows that cover that area, only 10 should hit him.
Therefore a plate armor should give very high protection in the covered areas of the body.
But clearly the hurtboxes of the armor system consist of: head, neck, shoulders, arms, torso, legs ...
6 in all!
And when you wear armor that fits into one of these slots, that armor PERFECTLY COVERS THE WHOLE HURTBOX.
But since you can't make an enemy invincible, you can't make it 100% protect it and therefore you are forced to reduce the armor value.
If instead of continuing on this path, the number of hurtboxes were increased and NOT ALL WERE COVERABLE by a piece of armor, then even if heavily covered, a soldier would still have points where he is vulnerable.
And if in the points where the protection is covered was a function of the type of armor and was increased by a lot and vice versa where it is discovered (partially or totally) the armor value was 0, then it would completely change our approach to combat both hand-to-hand. body than at a distance.
- Body to hand should hit the hurtboxes discovered and therefore the lunge would not be a "farce" and would have a purpose to exist.
You also wouldn't need to introduce that delay after releasing the attack button, which paradoxically makes the lunge slower than the slash ... which is ridiculous.
Spam attacks would become counterproductive and therefore a tactical and precise approach would be more favorable against well-protected enemies.
- ranged combat: it would become a statistical question.
If before the arrows hit the whole area of the soldier's body and all inflicted damage (albeit reduced where the protection was greater) and the soldier died anyway, now on a large number of arrows that hit you, 90% deals damage ( on a given part of the body) like:
0 if you have plate armor
1 if it is lamellar
20 if it is chain mail
25 if leather
qualitative examples.
If you are hit in an uncovered hurtbox instead you take the maximum damage that body part can take.
But you understand that someone covered 95% by plates you do out only if you "aim well in those points" or you take him with a club.
In the thread whose link is at the top of this comment I better express the concept and give many examples.
HalfMetalJacket
Knight
Not really.
Archers and the ilk have a lot of tactical applications that go beyond just killing power. They were not murdering heavy infantry as the game suggests.
To be fair, historically most armies did not fair well against Mongol Horse Archers. I mean the Mongols did probably conquer more of the known world than any other nation during the time they were active. The reason Horse Archers weren't used by other armies more quite literally came down to training. A Mongol was practically born with a bow in his hand and a horse for a mount where as the vast majority of the people they fought never even through to use a bow from the back of a horse. I mean first of all you have to be an excellent rider to use a bow from a horse and your average Mongol warrior probably owned 3-6 horses while in every other nation, horses were something only the elite owned. Then even if you owned a mount you had to practice using a bow from the horse. Then lets face it, Mongol bow technology was in my opinion very advanced compared to most other cultures and due to the availability of horses, specialized as a mounted weapon as opposed to a foot weapon.
Long story short is that it shouldn't surprise anyone that Horse Archers based on those used by the Mongol culture are the superior unit because they were in real life too. I don't think there is any way to make them otherwise except perhaps by reducing the effectiveness of archery. I mean good riveted chainmail over a thick padded gambeson could often prevent fatal penetration from arrows and the various plated type of armor in the game such as Lamellar or a Coat of Plates and such used in the game period, especially over said riveted mail would be even more effective than that. That being the case you could make the case that a bow doing 50+ damage to an armored target is a tad unrealistic and why Horse Archers feel very OP in game.
Of course you can just download a mod that makes this change if you feel Archery is OP and test it out yourself. I think there are at least 2-3 mods that modifies armor and archery power available on Nexus Mods.
Bro, horses are not dumb, they know how to walk through a forest, they would still be faster than humans going on foot. Also, most forests have some pathways through them...
To be fair though, cavalry movement is still massively disrupted by forests. The game also doesn't go a good job of simulating the type of underbrush you would have in most forested environments either. The vast majority of forests I have been in and I have quite literally spent a good chunk of my life in actual forests, are unpassable by horse or if passible, sure wouldn't be done so at a gallop or even a trot or canter. You might be able to walk a horse through it and do so faster than a person could walk through it but your not attacking as a large formation on horseback in that type of terrain.
Also, archers aren't going to be supper effective either as your going to have very narrow lane of fire and tree limbs will prevent you from firing at anything at any sort of range. I mean you aren't going to be angling your bows up to get any range, instead your going to be firing low and straight to avoid tree branches. Figure bows especially from horseback since you would already be elevated to the height of many lower hanging branches would be effective maybe 50-100 feet on average.
I guess if you want to get right down to it, there is a reason why infantry exists and it is because they can fight anywhere. In a heavy forest, Infantry should be godlike while Cavalry, Archers and Horse Archers would be avoiding forests like the plague.
Those are already problems in forest scenes (ie. cavalry charge is ineffective and archers miss many shots) - but im not sure how much a forest matters when doing simulated battles.
Not simple. I have played some mods that just buff armor or reduce damage and so far this seems to result in a worse gameplay experience rather than a better one so just buffing armor isn't by itself enough to improve the game.
Arkyll
Recruit
I can say the opposite. The game is more fun with armor that functions.
Because
Sergeant
While Armour should be tweaked I think applying terrain effects to simulated battles would be a better move as the current cavalry always better doesn't reflect the times that they would have issues. As a player I always try to fight on the appropriate terrain for my force it would be great if the AI did the same and in auto-calc battles it actually made a difference.
I think it would also be good to have nations traits apply a slight benefit in auto calc battles based on the terrain that they predominantly fight in as it would slightly help factions hold to their territory. So give Sturgia a benefit in snow, Aserai a benefit in desserts etc.
I think it would also be good to have nations traits apply a slight benefit in auto calc battles based on the terrain that they predominantly fight in as it would slightly help factions hold to their territory. So give Sturgia a benefit in snow, Aserai a benefit in desserts etc.
Yertyl
Veteran
I would say armor sucks specifically against ranged weapons -- or, in other words, ranged weapons do too much damage.
ATM, ranged weapon damage seems roughly on par with one-handed weapons -- but it is much, much easier it is to land many consecutive ranged attacks without endangering yourself. Combine this with the fact that ranged troops are not noticeably more vulnerable than melee troops even in melee, this makes ranged troops much more powerful than their melee counterpart.
Spear thrusts in particular seem to do consistently far less damage than arrows, which is just insane from both a realism and gameplay perspective.
And then horse troops are also much less vulnerable than they should be -- as long as they ride, they are practically immune to arrows, but are also not effectively stopped by spears and pikes. And they can come to a stop in the middle of an enemy infantry formation and survive, which, again, both overpowered and unrealistic.
Combine those two and horse archers -- which are both mounted and ranged -- beat everything else easily.
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JOINT HURTBOXES and ARMOR HURTBOXES: an armor system that provide a way to balance factions warfare and make more deep the combat system(suggestions)
I notice that, as for a year, there are those who continue to say that you have to buff the armor, those who ask that the weapons be nerfed, and those who say that these solutions are not correct because in their game they have applied them and they simply do not work.
And since the time of the beta I have been writing on the forum a solution that is not limited to buffing and nerfing.
Since starting early access I have written several suggestion threads that tend to improve the game by ADDING NEW MECHANICS and new ways of thinking about others that don't work as well or as hoped in game.
One of these is described in the thread whose link is written in red.
in summary it is written that by increasing the number of hurtboxes of the character (ie the blocks of the body that can be hit) to at least 25, and to make a part of these blocks "coverable" by the pieces of armor and will be defined "armor slots" , on the other hand, the remaining blocks that cannot be covered with armor parts will be the "joint blocks".
Those joints are: elbow, knee, armpit and a few others that you can see within the thread as I have included quite a few images showing how they should be arranged and distributed.
Along with this, the armor value of armor should be significantly increased.
What would the result of this be?
I bring two examples taken from the thread.
QUALITATIVE ESTIMATE ON ARMORES VS ARCHERS, OLD SYSTEM:
If we consider the entire surface of the body with a value of 1 with the system currently in play, it means that, without a shield, 100% of the body is vulnerable to bullets.
If we had a plate armor, two-handed broadsword and each arrow would take away ABOUT 10 life points in the different points of the body, 10 arrows would be enough to knock us down and if there are 20 archers in front of us, EVEN while we are on horseback, not it is so unlikely to be hit by 10 arrows along the way as we load them.
Certainly, if the arrows come to cover the entire area occupied by the front part of our body (therefore the archers are accurate but not precise), 100% of the bullets that hit us will still do us a not negligible amount of damage.
If out of a group of 30 archers 10 hit us and the damage of each arrow is 10, we are dead.
And an arrow only subtracts 10 if the armor value is very high.
Generally an arrow removes more than 30 at realistic difficulty, therefore a volley of arrows fired by 30 archers can eliminate 6-7 knights, who with the single charge certainly do not kill 6-7 archers and if they do not fight hand to hand and decide to turn around to charge further, they end up being hit from behind by arrows and then head-on again, losing the fight.
QUALITATIVE ESTIMATE ON ARCHERS VS ARCHERS, NEW SYSTEM (after introducing everything):
Let's assume that our system is introduced and that our plate armor protects us so well that the arrows that hit the armor deal 1 damage, while those that hit the uncovered hurtboxes come to cover damage that depends on the hitbox, suppose 15-20 damage on uncovered hurtboxes.
We can estimate that a good 85% of the body is well covered by armor and this means that the same archers as before have a 15% chance of inflicting significant damage on us.
So only about 1 out of 6 arrows will hit us doing 15-20 damage and this means that to kill us it will take at least 30 arrows (in case of 20 damage on hurtbox uncovered).
If instead we assume that the arrows on covered areas inflict 0 damage and that our character is on horseback and therefore our legs are quite covered together with the hurtboxes of the pelvis (covered), then we would only have a 10% or less chance of being hit. .
With 20 damage on exposed joints it would take 50 arrows to take us down.
And if we consider that the joints may not all have the same damage (because some are more vital and others less), then the number of arrows needed to kill us increases.
Thus 3 problems are partially solved:
1) cavalry which during a frontal charge is cut down by archers
2) infantryman with a 2-handed weapon (falxman or berserker) who finds himself against an archer risks being killed easily.
If, before, the archer simply aimed at any part of the infantryman's body to be sure to hit him, now he will have to aim well at an exposed part or he will not be able to kill him before resorting to the melee weapon to defend himself.
This situation has such dynamic in "1vs1".
Considering instead the case of 20 archers and 20 infantry men advancing in non-wide two-line formation, then the archer has a greater chance of hitting an enemy, since if the one in the front line is missing, perhaps the arrow could hit the one in second line.
3) it is not necessary to make the shield hurtbox larger than the 3d model of the shield, as the armor probably covers that part of the body.
NOTE:In case you have doubts about a possible imbalance between footed infantry with shields and archers, I suggest this other thread of mine that would introduce a further balance.
From the link’s title you should guess what it is.
[POLL] SHIELD + STUCKED PROJECTILE = ENCUMBRANCE
In addition to all this, the hand-to-hand combat becomes much deeper, as the spam of the attacks is discouraged.
In fact, spamming attacks are more likely to hit an armor slot than a joint slot because spam is not very precise.
Conversely, a more cautious, careful and precise fighting style is rewarded.
The only flaw of this solution is to put a little more pressure on the CPU.
At the moment there are 6 hurtboxes in the game, but if they are increased to 25 the load related to the recording of contacts between the weapon's hitbox and hurtbox is equal to the product between the number of hurtbox and hitbox.
Currently with a weapon with 3 hitboxes you generally have 18 pairs to control, which with 25 hurtboxes would become 75, so you would have a load 3-4 times the initial one.
Sure, you could find ways to optimize and in case remove somewhere else.
Here I have not only made a summary, but I have omitted many details and mechanics introduced, so read the thread please.
This solution is not in its own right, but is part of an overview made up of all the other threads that I wrote and that you find below my profile where it says "megathread" .
ClickForFreeBeer
Recruit
From what I've seen, a lot of historians doubt the popular notion that the success of the mongols hinged upon their horse archery, rather their mobility and the social organisation of the horde relative to the feudal societies they were conquering. (I think the history Youtuber Metatron has a video which touches this subject).
For the dude talking about how Agincourt shows archers are OP IRL, there are so many other factors than just the English having high archer stacks, like the boggy, narrow terrain, stakes, etc. Sources also suggest knights weren't wiped out by arrow volleys, rather pressured and softened. I'd like to see some sort of status effect of being hit by arrows to reflect this, especially morale, which shield formations will still perform better against. (at the moment the only issue is getting stunlocked by an arrow in the back while engaging in melee).
The point about archers being rarer because they're harder to train is kind of moot as Calradia is a continent of war and character creation points out that most youngsters train for war at some point. The English could field such quantities of longbowmen because of the assize of arms, after all (would be interesting to see a similar kingdom policy though which increases the number/tier of ranged recruits).
I do like your suggestion but am worried about the performance hit... I mean I already hate the spawn in mechanic when armies are too big (you ever been circling the back of the infantry only for a fresh wave of troops to spawn directly on top of you and unhorse you? Goddamn the worst, they could at least walk in from the red zone. I would like to see the armour interact with hitboxes better though, such as "is the face covered" being the difference between life and death when hit by an arrow (cough Harold Godwinson cough).
Tier 5 archers typically have the same one-handed skill of 130 as T5 infantry. Making my own custom units I really noticed that the only weakness the archers suffered in melee is the slightly lower armour values and sometimes they lack shields. Even then the extra armour doesn't even give the infantry much more longevity.
I made a post a while ago about wanting more diversity between similar role troops of different cultures, and one of my suggestions was some of the archers be bad at ranged role in comparison to other archers but hold up better in the melee to make up for it (I was thinking Sturgians), and to make that work the one-handed and athletics of archers should really be lowered (lowering their athletics will also help making kiting infantry harder to pull off, except for the Battanians as their specialty is ambush tactics on foot and so their athletics would reflect that).
Agreed. Not only do arrows do too much damage against armour, spears are too slow to thrust and do the lowest damage apart from daggers, even held in two hands. They're only really useful with the speed bonus on horseback, but even then a swinging polearm will probably serve you better. I found spears got a lot more useful once I picked up the perk that gave me a chance to get a knockdown with them... made me realise my main issue with the spears is they are useless for keeping the enemy at bay because the thrusts are too slow and don't prevent the enemy from moving forward, so they just recover from being stabbed and close in before the spear can thrust again.
Maces as well are pretty useless as they do similar damage but have shorter reach than big 1 handed swords. I want to need to carry a mace to deal with heavy armour but I just don't need to. At the moment, heavy armour is a joke because the armour scales aren't steep enough: a peasant might take 1-2 swings, even though he's wearing thin cloth, then the legionary in full plate lamellar dies in 3-4 hits of my spatha. I wanna have to switch to my heavy weapons whenever I see a heavily armoured veteran approach, not just "oh i need to hit him a little more".
Buff high-end armour, buff blunt damage against armour, and make spear thrusts quicker and able to consistently stop the target advancing momentarily. I find foot archers (especially Vlandian xbowmen) perform well against the HA, which is what in-game dialogue suggests should be the counter (I think it's Unthery who says this about the Battle of Pendraic), provided you can protect them from the lancers. Veteran infantry in multiple squares should have the protection to soak up HA fire and protect foot archers from melee cavalry. In general, though cavalry need more ways to get unhorsed, and maybe a surplus of ranged bombardment can provide this, especially if the horse is unarmoured/low-tier (i.e. not a warhorse)?
I also don't understand why they make them appear in the middle of the field rather than letting them enter from the edge of the map.
Going back to performance, in reality the choice is between "big battles (2000 units) with few hurtboxes (6) or small battles (700 units) with many hurtboxes (25)".
In these cases, the same performance is achieved.
I guess you read the part with the "helmet fly away" mechanic in the thread
Maximum997
Squire
Melee infantry is useless garbage for another reason too:
Reinforcment system:
If you play infantry heavy army then enemy will:
1) kite you with ranged troops
2) will spawn reinforcment from your back
3) surround and kill you
Reinforcment system:
If you play infantry heavy army then enemy will:
1) kite you with ranged troops
2) will spawn reinforcment from your back
3) surround and kill you
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There is nothing forcing you to stay on their side of the map. Just draw their aggro (killing a few with arrows generally does the trick) then pull back to your own side.
Maximum997
Squire
They dont want to go on you if you have no archer superiority. Thats why archers are good and melee infantry is a garbage.
