Damage/protection conception: the elephant in the room

[Roy1012]

Where this journey takes us, and whether Taleworlds makes a slight change of course to our satisfaction, we shall see ? ?.


Quite right... for many players, Talewordls' failure to fix this means crippling their own foundation, which is only shaking as we get closer to the "supposed end of EA". Clearly there are modders who have lost/ are losing interest in the game as critical problems with the native are not fixed by default.

I can’t wait to see what goal post moving and mental gymnastics the simps will come up with to defend TW after EA “ends”. They hide behind that shield as if it’s going to mean anything when they release it “officially” and it’s still a complete and total mess.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I can’t wait to see what goal post moving and mental gymnastics the simps will come up with to defend TW after EA “ends”. They hide behind that shield as if it’s going to mean anything when they release it “officially” and it’s still a complete and total mess.

Well look at this, I start up the game and I have a horse and a sword, there you go : mount and blade. yikes soy gamerwords and so on would you download a Metallica, my gf's son died that way, entitled privilege try landscaping

 

[世界知名伟人]

The issue is that high tier melee troops are already expensive (Tier 5 troops cost 6 times more wages than a recruit) but are not powerful to match that cost (I have tested it, and 10 Tier 5 melee troops cannot defeat even 17 Tier 1 melee troops).

So, despite costing 6x more than a recruit, T5 melee troops are not even 2x as powerful.

This is due to the weakness of armor allowing low tier troops to easily kill high tier troops. This is a big reason why armour needs to be fixed - blunt damage against armor needs to be reduced a bit, and arrow damage to armor needs to be reduced a lot.

Low tier troops would still be useful because they are cheaper than top tier troops, and because when top tier troops die you must train up low tier troops to get back to them.

What is currently not good for variety is that all melee troops are weak, so if you want to use a viable army, you have to use archers or Khan's Guard. Fixing armour will help fix this.

It is important to note that multiplayer mode and singleplayer mode are balanced separately by Taleworlds. Multiplayer mode already has different damage, movement speed, weapon stats, etc., from Singleplayer mode.

Armour is certainly the main issue here, as many experienced Singleplayer veterans agree.

We are only asking for armour to change in singleplayer.

High tier troops slaughtering more recruits is a good thing. Since I pay 6x more money for a T5 Legionary, he should be able to take on 5 enemies.

In Mount & Blade Warband, a Swadian Knight could kill more than 10 Recruits by himself. In the current version of the game, a Khuzait Khan's Guard can also kill 10 Recruits by himself. So it's not too far out of the question that 1 guy should be able to kill 5 guys.

High tier troop have so many other benefits that I don't think they should be any cheaper. Rich players can use them as a way to increase their strength, even if seems not worthy enough. They take less food and capacity, they are less likely to die. A party of 100 tier5 troops can be a lord hunter in campaign map, while 600 recruits can do nothing except being garrison(very slow movement, or you can't bring them all out) So many benifits that it's enough to make people to prefer to use them. I think it's ok to make it expensive, so that the player would try to explore some low tier troops instead of only use the most elite ones no matter how rich or poor he is.

In Mount & Blade Warband, a Swadian Knight could kill more than 10 Recruits by himself. In the current version of the game, a Khuzait Khan's Guard can also kill 10 Recruits by himself. So it's not too far out of the question that 1 guy should be able to kill 5 guys.

Warband is not a well-balanced game, If some troop can take on 10 recuits(20 denars) alone in melee, I think it should take 40 denars. Expensive though, player would still be likely to use them for their competence as long as they can afford it, but not fill them all in castle as garrison, instead, some cheap and useful middle tier troops come into play. If it only takes 20 or 25 denars, player would surely only use the most elite troops if possible.

It is important to note that multiplayer mode and singleplayer mode are balanced separately by Taleworlds. Multiplayer mode already has different damage, movement speed, weapon stats, etc., from Singleplayer mode.

Armour is certainly the main issue here, as many experienced Singleplayer veterans agree.

But the armor and damage calculation are the same I guess? So it might be solved in a similar way?

What is currently not good for variety is that all melee troops are weak, so if you want to use a viable army, you have to use archers or Khan's Guard. Fixing armour will help fix this.

I doubt if it's that serious, ranged troops may struggle in some terrain where infantry would never. Infantry can take advantage of terrain easily to hide from enemy archers safely, when defend of course. I had some playthrough not using archers, not bad, though not as powerful as fian

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

After going through the latest RBM ****, I must say that I have f*cking blast, holy sh*t its fun once you get used to it.

Still not feeling the wacky looking javelins, but otherwise damn. They made swords feel hilarious. Feels like a real weapon of finesse now and you just butcher peasants- and you can eventually chop down a mailed knight eventually too.

Archers don't feel great anymore sure, but its not like they do nothing. Being able to cut down less armoured/shieldless troops is useful, and since shields will actually more it makes quite an impact to soften them up.

Love the cavalry most of all though, they feel strong in a good way and not in the stupid way of vanilla.

Glad I donated to those guys in the first place.

High tier troop have so many other benefits that I don't think they should be any cheaper. Rich players can use them as a way to increase their strength, even if seems not worthy enough. They take less food and capacity, they are less likely to die. A party of 100 tier5 troops can be a lord hunter in campaign map, while 600 recruits can do nothing except being garrison(very slow movement, or you can't bring them all out) So many benifits that it's enough to make people to prefer to use them. I think it's ok to make it expensive, so that the player would try to explore some low tier troops instead of only use the most elite ones no matter how rich or poor he is.


Warband is not a well-balanced game, If some troop can take on 10 recuits(20 denars) alone in melee, I think it should take 40 denars. Expensive though, player would still be likely to use them for their competence as long as they can afford it, but not fill them all in castle as garrison, instead, some cheap and useful middle tier troops come into play. If it only takes 20 or 25 denars, player would surely only use the most elite troops if possible.

But the armor and damage calculation are the same I guess? So it might be solved in a similar way?



I doubt if it's that serious, ranged troops may struggle in some terrain where infantry would never. Infantry can take advantage of terrain easily to hide from enemy archers safely, when defend of course. I had some playthrough not using archers, not bad, though not as powerful as fian

I mean, most M&B games are all about getting the best possible troops to fill up your slots in the end, lower tier troops don't factor into **** more often than not. Only game I can think of where they did was Viking Conquest, and that's because it takes forever to train troops.

Seriously, no one gives a **** about the Swadian Man-at-arms. Its about them Swadian Knights. Same thing for Nord Veteran Warriors and etc.

Also RBM has a rebalance for troops too, so you don't have to worry about them being weaker. They all get different setups to make them work in the RBM paradigm.

 

[世界知名伟人]

After going through the latest RBM ****, I must say that I have f*cking blast, holy sh*t its fun once you get used to it.

Still not feeling the wacky looking javelins, but otherwise damn. They made swords feel hilarious. Feels like a real weapon of finesse now and you just butcher peasants- and you can eventually chop down a mailed knight eventually too.

Archers don't feel great anymore sure, but its not like they do nothing. Being able to cut down less armoured/shieldless troops is useful, and since shields will actually more it makes quite an impact to soften them up.

Love the cavalry most of all though, they feel strong in a good way and not in the stupid way of vanilla.

Glad I donated to those guys in the first place.


I mean, most M&B games are all about getting the best possible troops to fill up your slots in the end, lower tier troops don't factor into **** more often than not. Only game I can think of where they did was Viking Conquest, and that's because it takes forever to train troops.

Seriously, no one gives a **** about the Swadian Man-at-arms. Its about them Swadian Knights. Same thing for Nord Veteran Warriors and etc.

Also RBM has a rebalance for troops too, so you don't have to worry about them being weaker. They all get different setups to make them work in the RBM paradigm.

No mean to downvote this mod. Haven't tried yet. Just express some of my concerns. In Fire & Sword there is even no troop tree. Players can choose strong or weak units as their wish. which makes me start conern low tier troops.

 

[madnessario]

No mean to downvote this mod. Haven't tried yet. Just express some of my concerns. In Fire & Sword there is even no troop tree. Players can choose strong or weak units as their wish. which makes me start conern low tier troops.

You should try it. After playing a few hours with it recently I dont know if I can go back to vanilla (not that I play bannerlord a lot anymore; just wanted to check the mod).

 

[Helerek]

If they make armour more powerful, the whole game would need to be rebalanced, which is why I don't use any mod to change it, which might thoroughly break the balance, in both singleplayer and multiplayer. In singleplayer mode, Faris is arguably the worst noble troop in game for their poorest armor. Will they become even weaker? Also in online game, Aserai is featured with light armor. I can't imagine they thoroughly rebalance the game.

Yes, that is true. Problem is the game is not balanced as it is now. Simple example are crossbow vs bow.
T5 Bows are doing about 2150 damage with 30 arrows vs 2000 dmg or 20 bolts T5 Crossbow. Now let's not forget bows (fians have 64 arrows and even more dmg) and shoot faster making them simply superior. Reason why crossbow in Warband were great was armor calculation. Example below:
Meaning maximum (more or less) armor of 60 on T5 bannerlord troop reduces damage from archers/xbow by 37.5%. Meaning a 100 dmg crossbow hits for 62 damage and bow for 47. Meaning crossbow does 32% more damage.
In Warband this would turn into 100 vs let's assume 60 armor aswell. Which gives us 39 armor reduction. So crossbow hits 61 vs 36. Meaning crossbow would do 70% more damage. That's twice as much as compared to bannerlord.
Simple change of making armor stronger, would make crossbow actually vialbe. Right now there's no point in going for crossbows as they are simply downgrade. No advantage at all. Only advantage is Empire archer has 3 slots of items filled instead of 4, because ????? Yeah, no idea why...

Right now, all melee attacking units are much weaker than ranged units, especially melee attacking units without shields. Look at this, archers can easily murder infantry who outnumber them more than 2x.

Yes, send archers who counter shield breakers against shield breakers and be suprised they do well. Come on man. Archers are a counter to shield breakers/shock troops. They are meant to do that and I am happy with above results.That's archers jobs, destroy shieldless infantry.

allowing your archers at the back to shoot into melee.

It's more of an AI issue where infantry/cavalry ignores archers. In my playthrough infantry wasn't always enough to stop enemy infantry with my archers in the back due to enemy cav/infantry killing my infantry. Unless you cheese it.

Right now noble troop tiers are something like this:

This is actually depressing to look at. It's problem with how Khan's guard is designed (never used them, yet). I don't think armor changes will fix it. However it just shows how much damage/armor calculations is scuffed, because by simply giving 1 unit a 2 handed polearm on horse, we made it strongest cavalry. If we took recruits and put them on horses and gave them polearm with swing attack? I am afraid they might achieve similar results of beating toppest tier units. Because armor matters that little, with how much damage units do. In Warband this was less of issue 1. armor 2. skills. Power strike increased our damage by 8-80% + weapon proficiency. If we remove it off the table, we remove 1 balancing tool of units and we end up with the video five bucks linked. Damage > all.

What you said is exactly what concerns me. I think if armor is made stronger, the maintenance of higher tier troops should be greatly increased. In valina game, low tier troops have their place. I kind of enjoy choosing between power but expensive high tier troops, and weak but cheap low tier troops. If maintenance not change, many interesting low-tier troops would become meaningless, not good for variety.

In vanilla, I just recruit any melee troops I can, because they will die anyway in army x army. I tried to make some kind of composition, but they just die too easily. They get smashed by sheer quantity > quality. I stopped caring sadly and lost that aspect of fun of the RPG.

Ranged troops might be a little op in singleplayer mode, but I doubt if it's armour's sake, as in multiplayer mode ranged troops are kind of weak. If armor is powered against arrows, I can't see any use of ranged troops in multiplayer mode. I also concern some other things like the maintenance and the strength in simulation battles. From simulation battle, we can figure out that 1 high tier troop is equivalent to 2 or 3 low tier troops. If armor is buffed, then high tier troops are buffed, which means high tier troops may slaughter more recruits. I don't know if you see it ok, but they need to be reworked, or maybe only buff armour against arrows? Then why not just keep nerf archers.

Ranged troops are OP for few reasons. 1. they do lot of damage 2. cavalry AI. 3. weak cavalry. If we buff armor we fix 2 out of 3 aspects, balancing the archers (and bringing crossbows back into being useful).
Simulation battles are based of weird calculations. If we followed their results we would come up to conclusion that 20 loots will always throw a rock at our Battanian Fian and kill it . I think buffing armor won't hurt low tier troops, but actually make them more important. Right now low tier troops are cannon fodder, because they are squishy. If we buff armor we also buff all T1-T4 units aswell. Making them stronger against enemies. Each upgrade of tier would feel more significant, because our units would either get shield or good armor and make them harder to kill against some looters/archers. You would literally see difference between T1 and T3 unit, which is hard to tell sometimes in Bannerlord.

High tier troop have so many other benefits that I don't think they should be any cheaper. Rich players can use them as a way to increase their strength, even if seems not worthy enough. They take less food and capacity, they are less likely to die. A party of 100 tier5 troops can be a lord hunter in campaign map, while 600 recruits can do nothing except being garrison(very slow movement, or you can't bring them all out) So many benifits that it's enough to make people to prefer to use them. I think it's ok to make it expensive, so that the player would try to explore some low tier troops instead of only use the most elite ones no matter how rich or poor he is.

You are right. We can balance it out by increasing wages for higher tier units, same for cavalry. No one will mind it. Gold right now is not an issue and yes 100T5 units vs 600 recruits sounds better. However if you get caught with 100T5 recruits vs 200 enemy random troops they just recruited. Will you be sure to come out victorious from that fight? In Warband I would be 100% sure, in bannerlord... not really. Problem with lower troop tier is they shouldn't ever be your goal. You should always want to upgrade them and have higher tier troops. You pay gold for them and wages, so they can pay you back with their efficiency. I think it would be better to just add more variety to troops, rather than making T2-T4 units more appealing.

Warband is not a well-balanced game, If some troop can take on 10 recuits(20 denars) alone in melee, I think it should take 40 denars. Expensive though, player would still be likely to use them for their competence as long as they can afford it, but not fill them all in castle as garrison, instead, some cheap and useful middle tier troops come into play. If it only takes 20 or 25 denars, player would surely only use the most elite troops if possible.

I agree, but as it was said we would be happy to see them kill atleast 5 of them. Right now it's hard to tell if they would kill 2 or 3. I would rather have a well rounded unit with thrown weapon, good shield and good melee weapon or spear to brace. So I can use them in creative ways than just a guy with stick and shield that stands still and dies after 1/2 kills.

But the armor and damage calculation are the same I guess? So it might be solved in a similar way?

Yes and no. Multiplayer has a different module. It can be divided in SP and MP (or already is). It's not a big deal.

I doubt if it's that serious, ranged troops may struggle in some terrain where infantry would never. Infantry can take advantage of terrain easily to hide from enemy archers safely, when defend of course. I had some playthrough not using archers, not bad, though not as powerful as fian

Well, enemy AI can't think and hide behind obstacles. Also you can always reposition archers. Worse terrain = slower cav/infantry = > stronger ranged units . Problem is you speaking of a player perspective and we as players want some kind of challenge from enemy AI. I want to be afraid of that 1 party with 40 elite cataphracts, while I have 120 T1 units.

Love the cavalry most of all though, they feel strong in a good way and not in the stupid way of vanilla.

I hate cavalry in that game. Main issue is charge/knock down effect and spear bracing doesn't really work (tried it and got terrible results of 3-5 damage).

I mean, most M&B games are all about getting the best possible troops to fill up your slots in the end, lower tier troops don't factor into **** more often than not. Only game I can think of where they did was Viking Conquest, and that's because it takes forever to train troops.

True, but the thing we players want is to feel some kind of accomplishment and reward for geting a perfect 300 army man composition and not see those units get obliterated, by random 600 army of enemy with recruits and T1-T5 mixup, just because they have archers/cavalry.

 

[five bucks]

Yes, that is true. Problem is the game is not balanced as it is now.

This.

Yes, send archers who counter shield breakers against shield breakers and be suprised they do well. Come on man. Archers are a counter to shield breakers/shock troops. They are meant to do that and I am happy with above results.That's archers jobs, destroy shieldless infantry.

I don't think archers should counter shock troops, I think melee cavalry should.
Melee cav > shock troops > shield troops > archers > horse archers > pike troops > melee cav.
A sensible counter cycle that represents real life, where every troop type has a role to fill.

Also, keep in mind there are two archetypes of shieldless troop in the game; shock troops and pikemen.

If archers can counter two types of troops just because they don't have shields, they are going to be stupidly powerful.

In real life, armour alone was enough to protect you well enough from archers to get in close to fight them. Shields just completed that protection.

This is actually depressing to look at. It's problem with how Khan's guard is designed (never used them, yet). I don't think armor changes will fix it. However it just shows how much damage/armor calculations is scuffed, because by simply giving 1 unit a 2 handed polearm on horse, we made it strongest cavalry. If we took recruits and put them on horses and gave them polearm with swing attack? I am afraid they might achieve similar results of beating toppest tier units. Because armor matters that little, with how much damage units do. In Warband this was less of issue 1. armor 2. skills. Power strike increased our damage by 8-80% + weapon proficiency. If we remove it off the table, we remove 1 balancing tool of units and we end up with the video five bucks linked. Damage > all.

You're probably right; but if they could fix armour and fix the glaive I think that would at least fix the problem on the surface.

High tier troop have so many other benefits that I don't think they should be any cheaper. They take less food and capacity, they are less likely to die. A party of 100 tier5 troops can be a lord hunter in campaign map, while 600 recruits can do nothing except being garrison(very slow movement, or you can't bring them all out) So many benifits that it's enough to make people to prefer to use them. I think it's ok to make it expensive, so that the player would try to explore some low tier troops instead of only use the most elite ones no matter how rich or poor he is.

Look at it this way. In the early game, the player is forced to use only low tier troops, because they cannot recruit/afford/have enough XP to upgrade to high tier troops yet.

So the early game is all about low tier troops, while the late game is mostly about high tier troops. But even in the late game you still have to use low tier troops when your high tier ones die.

Therefore, I think the usefulness of low and high tier troops is good, and not a reason not to fix armour (because armour not being fixed is seriously bad for the usefulness of melee troops, which is more important than the usefulness of low tier troops).

In addition, there is plenty of variety in high tier troops - there are 6 different troop types in T5 to choose from.

I doubt if it's that serious, ranged troops may struggle in some terrain where infantry would never. Infantry can take advantage of terrain easily to hide from enemy archers safely, when defend of course.

But you are rarely defending in Bannerlord, you are usually attacking. In order to win the game you must do hundreds of sieges as the attacker. And in field battles you are usually the attacker too, and it is usually in an open field.

I had some playthrough not using archers, not bad, though not as powerful as fian

If you do playthroughs without using archers, you are putting yourself at a pretty objective disadvantage. Especially Fians.

There is a huge difference in effectiveness between an army of Khan's Guard and an army of Banner Knights.

 

[LuciusDomitiusAurelianus]

@Terco_Viejo always enjoy reading your threads and input from @five bucks, @MostBlunted, @Philozoraptor et al.

I haven't played in a few months now, but always figured that even if armor values were modified and TW put interns or devs on proper categorizing and tweaking of armor values based on the asset itself much more work would need to be done. Like how base damage is calculated, the % band that armor value negates a point of damage, modifiers to armor, modifiers to weapon damage, etc.

[Bear with me, going to be a lot of BS to get to the point, TL;DR is it's an all or nothing total rescale of weapons, perks, skill influence, armor values, troop make up, etc. So this is more than just changing armor calcs for damage resistance/negation]

A good analogy on how to absolutely **** this is up is Dungeons & Dragons Online - it's an MMO from Turbine/Standing Stone Games more or less based on the 3.5e rules of D&D. However, it turns out that casual players don't give a ****, the old model was every weapon had a stat that added chance to hit and extra damage and had a base "dice" to start from. So if you had a Longbow it does 1D10 - anywhere from 1 to 10 base damage +1 damage and +1 hit-chance for every single point in the weapon's mainstat you had. The to-hit was rolled against an "armor class" and if you rolled below you'd just "miss".

In an effort to change the power-band they started adding abilities to add extra "dice" and obviously feats/enhancements/skills/spells helped which is more-or-less akin to how Perks work in Bannerlord with flat +X%.to-hit or to-damage. Then they added the concept of "Ranged Power" and "Melee Power" which was an extra +1% to damage for every point of that "Power" value. They added a **** ton of it to loot tables and skills, then scaled it back, since it either meant people were hilariously overpowered and there was all sorts of whining. So they were forced to nerf a thing they created to fix another problem of **too little** damage.

To counter-weight it they added "Physical Resistance Rating" which more or less is 1% damage incoming negated per 3 or 4 points of it. Then a similar thing happened, they had to modify feats/perks/loot tables and then same outcome: now everyone is too tanky even spellcasters and more nerfs came.

This is what happens when you fix one small part of a system - and it's been touched on here - but given all of the optimization, code refactors, major features, and the small amount of devs they have per "system" I am not sure it makes sense for a product perspective to do this rehaul. Because they'd need to stop everything else and redo a **** ton of stuff: economy, troop load outs, code for skill/armor/perk influence, armor values, DPS, etc.

--------------------
Anyway...all that said, I'd kind of dig if weapons were moved to D&D dice lol and there was a flat % of damage reduced per armor value or however it was done in Warband where you could legit hit for like 1 damage. It make battles longer and add that to the slightly better UI & deployment control of Bannerlord could make the actual combat more involved which is ultimately what I want.

Right now you just shoot everyone to **** with HA and then send in cav to smush them.

 

[JunKeteer]

This.

I don't think archers should counter shock troops, I think melee cavalry should.
Melee cav > shock troops > shield troops > archers > horse archers > pike troops > melee cav.
A sensible counter cycle that represents real life, where every troop type has a role to fill.

Also, keep in mind there are two archetypes of shieldless troop in the game; shock troops and pikemen.

If archers can counter two types of troops just because they don't have shields, they are going to be stupidly powerful.

Partially agree that for games like these (ie Total War), it's good to have that rock>paper>scissors element; as long as the NPC party templates become more varied than just the same 'maintained ratio' we see often (and TBD each location/culture). That way, even if you get a full party of the OP Khan's Guards, you still receive casualties (such as from those forest mercenaries with heavy focus on archers) vs what it is right now which is just steamrolling through battles little to no casualties.

But on the point with the archers being OP, besides upcoming tweaks most of us desire, the fact that they have a finite amount of arrows should balance that out? Archers should be OP to unarmored horses and all shield-less troops, few solutions to counter balance is:

• TBD damage/armor protection improvements;
• quantity of arrows adjusted;
• and/or accuracy toned down slightly (even just 3 or 4 points vs 100 acc. on noble bows - a la Fians and AI computing 'aim' accuracy)

As of now, using Fians as an example, they have 64 arrows (?); say it takes them ~3 hits to kill even top tier troops = potentially ~21 kills/ea (not accounting misses, but not that common against shield-less AI, etc...). Just toning that potential down slightly can rebalance it without the fear of making them too OP; as with longer battles, they run out of arrows and must join melee where they 'should' lose to their 'melee' Tiered equivalents.

But using RBM mod as reference (based on others' anecdotes), archers are 'underpowered' as it's just straightforward combat that is being considered. Realistically, they were used to harrow or 'CC' enemies as well but that is hard to implement in the game

 

[Reiksmarshal]

Armor needs to be more resistant, it still feels too weak.

 

[CrazyElf]

If they make armour more powerful, the whole game would need to be rebalanced, which is why I don't use any mod to change it, which might thoroughly break the balance, in both singleplayer and multiplayer. In singleplayer mode, Faris is arguably the worst noble troop in game for their poorest armor. Will they become even weaker? Also in online game, Aserai is featured with light armor. I can't imagine they thoroughly rebalance the game.

The balance is not reflective of real world combat right now nor is the balance in favor of a "mixed use army" of melee with ranged at a 1:1 ratio - archers right now are very powerful and armies can be stacked in their favor. Fian Champions and Khan's Guard are reputed to be powerful because archers are much more powerful than they are in real life.

Currently the base game is imbalanced enough that I don't see much use for melee troops - I mass archers 2:1 at times.

 

[CrazyElf]

What you said is exactly what concerns me. I think if armor is made stronger, the maintenance of higher tier troops should be greatly increased. In valina game, low tier troops have their place. I kind of enjoy choosing between power but expensive high tier troops, and weak but cheap low tier troops. If maintenance not change, many interesting low-tier troops would become meaningless, not good for variety.

As it stands higher tier troops cost a lot more - 12 denars for a tier 5 vs 2 for a tier 1 - that's 6x as much.

Plus tier 5 are harder to get - if you want "balance" in a sense, 6x tier 1 should roughly balance 1x tier 5. They don't in the base game.

Low tier troops would not be obsolete. You must recruit low tier troops, unless you plan to mod your game so that settlements spawn tier 5 troops. In that regard, low tier troops would always exist and it would be desirable to level them. Right now there is a case against levelling them.

Right now we have a situation where melee troops are far less viable than ranged troops. That I would argue is what is not good for the game.

If you want costs increased further, then the tier 5 has to be that much better (ex: if you want 10x the cost, then the troops have to be 10x as good to justify the money and effort to level them).

Ranged troops might be a little op in singleplayer mode, but I doubt if it's armour's sake, as in multiplayer mode ranged troops are kind of weak. If armor is powered against arrows, I can't see any use of ranged troops in multiplayer mode. I also concern some other things like the maintenance and the strength in simulation battles. From simulation battle, we can figure out that 1 high tier troop is equivalent to 2 or 3 low tier troops. If armor is buffed, then high tier troops are buffed, which means high tier troops may slaughter more recruits. I don't know if you see it ok, but they need to be reworked, or maybe only buff armour against arrows? Then why not just keep nerf archers.

While it's true archers in single player do need a nerf, it's not just that.

Some melee weapons are OP. I should not be able to kill an enemy with good armor with a slashing weapon in 1 hit. That is happening in the base game.

Warband is not a well-balanced game, If some troop can take on 10 recuits(20 denars) alone in melee, I think it should take 40 denars. Expensive though, player would still be likely to use them for their competence as long as they can afford it, but not fill them all in castle as garrison, instead, some cheap and useful middle tier troops come into play. If it only takes 20 or 25 denars, player would surely only use the most elite troops if possible.

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me - right now we have a situation where Khan's Guards can easily kill 10x enemies - which is a reflection of how overpowered archers are, but you are saying in effect that OP Khan's guard is fine, but OP Swadian Knight is not balanced.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

This.

I don't think archers should counter shock troops, I think melee cavalry should.
Melee cav > shock troops > shield troops > archers > horse archers > pike troops > melee cav.
A sensible counter cycle that represents real life, where every troop type has a role to fill.

I get what you're going for, but I think its way too simplistic to boil it down to that.

I don't see why archers can't counter shock troops and pikemen both. You don't think melee cavalry end up being their hardest counter? That would mean shield troops and melee cavalry counter archers, which evens it out.

Still, I don't think that sort of rock paper scissors represents combat best. But I do agree that every soldier should have a purpose.

 

[black_bulldog]

I get what you're going for, but I think its way too simplistic to boil it down to that.

I don't see why archers can't counter shock troops and pikemen both. You don't think melee cavalry end up being their hardest counter? That would mean shield troops and melee cavalry counter archers, which evens it out.

Still, I don't think that sort of rock paper scissors represents combat best. But I do agree that every soldier should have a purpose.

Imo anything more than such a simple mechanism is beyond Taleworlds capability to implement and probably too complicated for casual players to grasp.

 

[0tto]

RBM does damage/armour pretty well

combat skills in both are still negligible though
difference between a 50 peasant and a 150 soldier is like 5-10%

 

[five bucks]

I get what you're going for, but I think its way too simplistic to boil it down to that.

So long as all the major aspects are represented, simplification is something that is okay for the purposes of a video game, no?
Real life was not perfectly clear cut, but there were definitely types of troop that had advantages against others, given equal training, terrain, equipment quality, morale, etc - everyone can agree that pikemen have an advantage against cavalry, or shielded troops against archers, for example.

I don't see why archers can't counter shock troops and pikemen both. You don't think melee cavalry end up being their hardest counter? That would mean shield troops and melee cavalry counter archers, which evens it out.

Because archers also counter horse archers in real life. Being on foot allows you to use more powerful bows, nock, aim and draw faster, and fire much more accurately when you're not firing from the back of a galloping horse. All these things combined - half of which Bannerlord already simulates - make crossbowmen and archers the real-life counter to horse archers, and the Bannerlord counter as well. If you match 50 Khan's Guard against 50 Fian Champions, the Fians win.

This means you would have archers countering three archetypes of troop; shock troops, pikemen, and horse archers. While everyone else counters one type of troop, or at the most two.

So that's the balance argument, then the realism argument: IRL, good-quality armour was good enough protection against similar-quality bows to at least usually have enough time to charge into melee range without dying, as we see from stories of the mail-armoured Crusaders advancing under arrow fire without taking injury. Shields simply took that a step further and made you functionally arrow-proof.

If we can accept that armour keeps you alive long enough to charge into melee, then naturally, with their better melee weapons and better armour, shock troops or pikemen should have a very realistic chance of beating archers in melee despite being wounded on the approach. Therefore, it isn't a counter.

So if we want to take a realistic perspective, archers should not be countering shock troops and pikemen in a normal situation (charge on open ground), unless they are doing something stupid like standing still and waiting for the archers to shoot them to death.

Still, I don't think that sort of rock paper scissors represents combat best. But I do agree that every soldier should have a purpose.

You're not wrong - from a realism perspective, it's not exactly that simple; but from a game perspective I think we want all troops to have a purpose as you said, and counter systems that are an abstraction of real life "counters" can do that well. They also introduce tactical depth/skill by creating right and wrong decisions for players to make.

I do want to clarify that I'm not exactly advocating rock paper scissors. I want to see soft counters rather than hard counters. With soft counters, a cavalryman can still defeat a pikeman (his intended counter) if he is a couple of tiers higher (representing better training/equipment), or hits him from the flank, or uses terrain to his advantage, etc.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Rich players can use them as a way to increase their strength, even if seems not worthy enough. They take less food and capacity, they are less likely to die. A party of 100 tier5 troops can be a lord hunter in campaign map, while 600 recruits can do nothing except being garrison(very slow movement, or you can't bring them all out) So many benifits that it's enough to make people to prefer to use them.

Okay but we don't want the t5 and t6 units to DIE TO RECRUITS the ai brings, it happens a lot and it's annoying and Picard face palm! It's mostly do to silly speed boosted damage making a week weapon do 300% damage to a heavy armored units. We also want to see a significant difference between close tiers too. They're all too similar now and it stinks. We don't like it and it can be easily changed and so it should be. Simple as.

That said they should diversify the costs of units. Infantry should be cheapest then archers and Cav and horse archer should cost the most. Warband made Cav more expensive and this gave a good reason to also use huscarls, Sharpshooters and such, even if you "could" siege with swadian knights.

 

[five bucks]

But on the point with the archers being OP, besides upcoming tweaks most of us desire, the fact that they have a finite amount of arrows should balance that out? Archers should be OP to all shield-less troops

But should they really? In real life good quality armour, even just mail and not plate, was certainly good enough to get you across a field under arrow fire without dying, or even necessarily being seriously injured.

Just because troops don't have a shield doesn't mean archers should be OP to them. It should just mean that archers can wound them as they charge into melee range, and once they get into melee, the full-health archer who is worse at close combat can have a roughly even chance of winning the fight against the injured soldier who is better at close combat.

My stance is that archers should be powerful during sieges, when positioned on a hard to reach area like a cliff, when properly protected by infantry, or having an advantage fighting against horse archers; but they should otherwise go 50/50 with most other troop types in a straight fight (usually wounding them enough to have a good chance to beat them in melee), and be weak against shield infantry.

few solutions to counter balance is:

• TBD damage/armor protection improvements;
• quantity of arrows adjusted;
• and/or accuracy toned down slightly (even just 3 or 4 points vs 100 acc. on noble bows - a la Fians and AI computing 'aim' accuracy)

Hmm, I like the first one obviously, the second one might not be necessary except on troops who have 2 quivers, and the third one I would disagree. Accuracy is already in a decent place, some horse archers and lower tier archers can be ridiculously inaccurate (unable to hit a stationary target at 30 meters in many shots). Hop into custom battle yourself against a low tier archer and see. When I was testing hits to kill it could be annoying waiting for militia archers to roll good enough RNG to actually kill me. Accuracy doesn't need to be lower, otherwise militia archers would never hit anything.

However, fire rate could stand to be lower and more realistic, as some have said in this thread.

 

[AngryPanCake]

by the way, what is the file that lists the armor values in the game?