Hiding Behind a Pavise Shield.

[Wraith_Magus]

While I don't have the sort of background in historical recreation you obviously do, I would still argue that a notion of a "deployable pavise" would have some merit, given the way the game is currently set up...

I would have mentioned this in the whole "archers wear armor" thread, if it hadn't been sleeping quietly for so long, but a rather big reason for having a lot of the unrealisms we see in the game currently is that the game has an arbitrary head count on the battlefield due to hardware limitations that forces some rather unrealistic responses the player has to make in their play strategy. 

Namely, everybody's an elite.  ("... and all the children are above-average.") Because you only get 50 or so soldiers per side on the field at a time, and you have an arbitrary limit to the number of soldiers that can be in a warband, regardless of unit quality, the fact that a recruit with cheap sticks costs about 1/50th of the amount a knight costs never really becomes a factor unless you are at the very beginning of the game and literally can't afford anything better.  All units have functionally negligible costs in the long term, and all units have the same penalties to your morale and movement based solely upon the number of soldiers you have, rather than soldier quality, so there is no reason to carry along anything less than an elite.  If players were actually forced to choose between having 30 lightly-armored archers or having 1 more knight, you might actually see players choosing cheaper archers.

So then, the problem with a mantletier is that you're basically trying to ask for having paired up soldier combat teams in a game where we can only barely even field enough troops to make unit formations have any meaning at all.  The control system for the game is not at all made for precise orders (although there is perhaps some realism in that regard), and largely involves players only being able to command "all infantry" to "stand somewhere in this general area" or else "screw it, just rush into the enemy as a massive, disorganized mob".

Such a thing as mantletiers might have worked in Total War, they can generally get something like a combat team to work according to a scripted sequence of motions, and something like the way that dragoons from Empire worked where you could order dismounting from horseback and reforming the unit behind a low wall for cover could have worked for making a Genoese Crossbowman and Mantletier mixed unit. 

The controls for this sort of thing, absent making a two-man unit that can never separate from one another that has scripted protocol for how to move and fight, however, are just not in Mount & Blade.  Trying to make the AI smart enough to carry a shield and know when to deploy and retrieve it (and where to make it face) for the purposes of portable cover with just one unit already requires more sophistication than the current M&B AI already has.  Just look at how well horse archers handle the concept of, "You are archers on fast horses, stay away from melee, and use your bows, morons!"  For that matter, how well archers handle enemies on horseback moving away from them, when they still try to charge mounted units with a dagger rather than pulling out their bow again.  Archer's don't even try to sidestep or duck, much less take cover, when you are firing arrows back at them (between sidestepping or taking cover).

For that matter, if Total War wanted to be even more realistic, they could have introduced more complex fatigue mechanics, and had those Roman legionaries shift off who was in the front of the line so that soldiers could take a breather as a part of the Roman formation tactics and discipline model.  Crossbowmen weren't the only units that worked in teams, after all, and you could just as easily demand that squires and men-at-arms accompany nobles or knights onto the battlefield, with fatigue mechanics where individual soldiers need to relieved by their companions after a few minutes of intense melee, as opposed to having every soldier engaged in constant meatgrinding until one side runs out of soldiers, especially in protracted battles.

This is a suggestion forum, and suggesting "better AI" is a perfectly valid suggestion, after all, but at some point there has to be a trade-off between the realism and the hardware or interface limitations (or developer manpower) of the game.

 

[Blackthorn]

Hrmm. The problem with the logic you've thrown out is that there's a basic misunderstanding of medieval warfare spawned mainly by medieval games... namely that most warbands -wouldn't- be 50 ish in size, and be fighting relatively small skirmishes- because that's how the majority of medieval warfare was actually fought- small-scale raids and chevauches were far more common than pitched battles- which only make up maybe a tenth of medieval engagements- we're talking in a rising scale- raids/skirmishes, sieges, battles.
The major thing I forgot though, to be fair, is that I've been playing with the Battle Sizer since it first appeared... because 200 on the field makes it far more fun.

But if we look at the small skirmishes- why would crossbowmen deploy a shield that would limit their mobility, encumber them to carry in the first instance, and would be less effective than a tree? Overall, yes- in sieges. Any other instance- it doesn't justify it's marching weight.

 

[Wraith_Magus]

Looking back, there's something I realize I should be more clear about - in a game where we only get 50 soldiers on the field at a time (mods notwithstanding), then choosing to have a two-man team means that we are not choosing whether we want to have one more crossbowman or one more melee infantry or knight, we would then have to choose between having a single crossbowman and his functional shield caddy or else having two melee infantry or knights. 

As to the topic about why someone would want to stop and set up a pavise at all, I'd have to say that usually, I keep my crossbowmen buried at the bottom of my party list so that they don't join combat until I'm going into a siege, anyway.  Just steamrolling enemies with 40 cavalry units is far faster and simpler than trying to worry about setting up archers behind infantry. Most bandit parties are little more than target practice, anyway, if you can ride into battle at the head of 50 knights or mamlukes.  Crossbows are generally only useful in a relatively static engagement simply because of the low rate of fire. 

Put down the "marching weight" concerns along with why the crossbowmen even carry shields now, or why everyone needs to carry four different kinds of weapons or shields, just because an inventory slot not used is an inventory slot wasted by game logic.

===

Since we are on the topic of Total War, in that game, we could have up to 1000 soldiers on a battlefield at once, but that was only because there were really only 40 independently movable units, each with something like 80 soldiers moved and controlled as a single unit. 

Speaking about how units are controlled in Empire: Total War reminds me about something relevant to this topic, however. 

Whenever people talked about the American Revolutionary War, people would always talk about how the British "redcoat" soldiers would form up in a solid line, while many American militia units would fight as independent irregular soldiers, and as children, we were expected to laugh at the stupid redcoats for wearing a bright red uniform and standing up in a line in the open when people were shooting at them.  The obvious question, "if it's so stupid, why did they ever do it in the first place?" was apparently not to be asked. 

They actually have this same kind of note if you read the unit descriptions in Empire, where they talk about how Rangers or Minutemen would fight differently from the line infantry... and then you have to control them as line infantry, anyway, because that's how you control every unit in Total War.  There isn't much choice - you just can't effectively order around 400 individual soldiers in a real-time battle, and the game doesn't support simulating hundreds of independently-thinking soldiers operating on their own individual initiative.

That's the big reason why armies throughout history marched in those large, cohesive formations, (well, one of them, alongside that whole "protection from cavalry charges" thing, or the "concentration of firepower" thing,) because without modern communications and military doctrine, if generals wanted any control over the battlefield, the only way to order thousands of troops at once was to put them into giant groups and use only the most basic of coordinated tactics.  (I.E. the flanking maneuver, or "You guys charge the enemy, but YOU guys be all sneaky, and go over to the right, and THEN charge the enemy from over there!")

Essentially, you're not going to fix the "problem" of having relatively small armies engaged in what are basically just "skirmishes" or "skirmishes with walls" unless you rewrite the game to be something more like a Total War type of game.  You're not going to introduce into the game the real-life factors as to why real Medieval armies weren't constantly on the march or engaging in what is the equivalent of a large-scale battle or siege type of troop number engagement even when they are just raiding a hardly-defended village without introducing a far more serious version of logistics and upkeep of an army on the march.  Something like that is just beyond the scope of a question of whether or not crossbowmen should get to plant pavise shields.

 

[Blackthorn]

It depends- the concept of armies forming into 'large cohesive formations' is relatively rare in the period we're talking- usually more the Total War concept of 'bands'- 40 militiamen from a town will stick together and follow their standard, etc. etc. Only really in the Classical period and then the rise of Imperial states do you see the massive functional marching formations- and yes, it's to allow some greater control of the battle to the 'lead' general. A medieval battlefield, with conroi of 20 or so knights looking to their immediate captain or banneret, allows far more tactical control, but means the decisions are scattered across a wide range of people with no final strategic overview. Essentially a system that is good for exploiting local weaknesses/advantages, but bad for making an overall strategy work. It's one of the reasons reenactors are quick to train Serjeant types who muster with the rank and file, and are told the overall strategy of the day- they're usually veteran enough to know how to keep their bit in line, and can make a decent (ish) call on when the plan is FUBAR.

The marching weight is simply the concept of the SIZE of the shield- a backslung kite is carry-able... a backslung mantlet... not so much. Given the form of warfare you're highlighting, crossbowmen wouldn't be wandering around with huge deployable mantlets... because they're useful only in sieges and pitched battles. As you yourself said, these guys are fighting small-scale skirmishes. Personally, I have ridden around with a company of just top-level archers, but I always pick my terrain as forrest or broken ground, and scatter a line of heavies out front to break up the charge. The shields and swords they carry do justify their marching weight- these guys are proffessional mercenary archer types, and as such, are back-up light infantry and know they'll be going toe-to-toe.

I get it would restrict tactical choice... but that's strategic reality versus strategic fiction. Every choice restricts your abilities- and it's only really through a mixed-arms army you can try and form a reactionary strategy to meet your needs. Arguably, if the Pavisiers were programmed right, they'd make the Crossbow unit -more- effective... a unit with plate, a decent sword, and the ability to knock back most other infantry to allow the crossbows to keep shooting. But the problem obviously still comes from the anachronism of the crossbow/pavise itself- it belongs in a mixed formation of early pikes, in an Italian or Flemish force... not really suited to the strategic layout of the game as is- I do believe it would be a balance-tipper in the wrong direction. What you're encountering, as a complaint, is a medieval reality. The crossbow is the king of the siege- the longbow the king of the battlefield, the recurve the king of mounted.

The highlighted problems with the ''cavalry steamroller'' is a big problem with the game -anyway-, and easily fixed with more crossbow and spear bonus damage to horses, a ''couched'' infantry spear ability (kneeling and bracing) that would prevent a tank-rush auto-succeeding, and a more realistic acceleration model for horses surrounded by marauding infantry. But then again, I'm repeatedly highlighted as a realism nut- personally I believe that the more that is added, the better the game. In reality, heavy cavalry companies make the best shock-skirmish units (hence the nature of 12th century warfare)- but they are turned by a decent core of infantry who know their trade.

Total War: Well. The biggest downside to that game is the way they've chosen to present your strategic interface- essentially, like a lot of RTS- you are God. You order, they obey- you look down from on high and instinctively ''know'' everything. *shrug*- they've had to modify their troop interface to fit the very unrealistic format, but that's their lookout. Personally, if you want the award-winning RTS that a lot of people will hate, take LEGION's pre-battle strategy system, add the concept of AI-controlled units who are following a rough approximation of your strategy based on their loyalty/competence, and then have the battle played out in a M+B engine type, where you can ride around, seizing direct control when needs must, and getting stuck in, with a forced first-person view. As I say, a lot of people will complain because it won't allow the unrealistic strategies and tactics that have developed in Gaming circles- it will require far more planning, scouting, forethought and such... but it would be the closest simulator to a 'real' strategists' challenge.

 

[Wraith_Magus]

Spoiler: Rambling section on combat scale

Well, with regards to the whole problem of battle scale, it's one of those classic gaming problems that never really gets solved unless you specifically go out of your way to address it: Never split the party.

Much like how characters in this game would wear their plate mail armor to bed, (if they ever went to bed at all...) there is no in-game reason to split up your warband, and leave most of your marching army in town garrisons or at their day jobs if they are some sort of militia.  Sure, there's a speed bonus to a smaller band and a price cut on the upkeep, but the costs of maintaining an army is negligible in this game.  (Something Medieval 2: Total War actually did nicely - armies are really expensive to upkeep, so it's cheaper to just start levying troops when you need them, then dismiss them when the need is over.)

The only times you are split from your warband, it's actually rather ham-handed and arbitrary in the other direction.  (My character is a mercenary captain/noble/monarch who is constantly beset by brigands and possibly also assassins... why does my character walk through dark alleyways with no bodyguards the instant he/she hits every town or village? What king that knows assassins are out for his head goes ANYWHERE without a bodyguard, much less just strolling through town?)

So then, the problem is that if you have a raid on a village, mountain bandits show up with a warband 60 troops of mixed unit type.  If you fight a noble lord's full warband, you fight something between 30 and 120 troops of mixed unit type.  Even the full mustered armed forces of an entire kingdom tends to be about the same battle size as a bandit unit trying to raid a village they thought was undefended. 

So, yes, the real-life warfare of the Middle Ages was a sliding scale of conflict intensity, but Mount and Blade, as well as Total War, really just focus on their limited preferred scope of conflict scale (although I suppose you could say Mount and Blade has two conflict scales if you count the solo battle types). 

As much as you might complain about being able to know everything on the field in Total War, or how units respond immediately to orders (and the game truly would benefit from simply having more independent units and orders that have to be conveyed by runner from your general unit, possibly with some fog of war due to general line-of-sight deal... I get tingles...), this game is no better in that regards, it's just that the game doesn't pause for you, and the mini-map has no terrain features on it, and the interface is not as precise.  You can still demand "Cavalry, Hear Me!" and they do, even with a small mountain between you and some of the cavalry, and your mini-map tells you the location of every unit on the field in real time. 

This game really and truly would benefit from the ability to issue standing orders, and having nothing more than a pre-set number orders you can give based upon your ability to communicate with your troops (red flag means charge, yellow flag means hold ground, etc...), and having players rely upon some sort of pre-planned battle strategies and tactics that convey the messy fog of war.

As for scale, I honestly think of Dynasty Warriors, whose sole claim to fame (other than making RotTK more popular while positively desecrating any historical accuracy that might have remained) was the ability to manage very large-scale conflicts behind the scenes while the player ran around in the third person.  Similarly to Total War, they had a hierarchical unit structure where individual soldiers only became simulated when the player was looking at them, and then faded into just the sergeants and troop numbers from further away, then officer locations and simple mechanics for handling the conflict based upon morale and troop strengths when the player wasn't looking. 

Basically, it's possible to work with sliding scales of combat sizes, but you need to work with reasons to make the player actually want to leave his/her army behind.  Players without a fief can't even choose to split their party if they wanted to, much less have an incentive to try.  Marching an army hardly costs anything, and there is no significant reason not to keep your full-sized army of knights tromping around the whole length and bredth of the land doing trading caravan runs.

All of these things, however, require far more dramatic changes to the way in which the game is handled than merely deciding whether or not making freestanding pavises make sense, however.

===

When we are talking about marching weight, however, I go back to the fact that these guys are still carrying a pretty large tower shield on their backs, already.  The mantlets I look up that involve, essentially, a small wooden wall on wheels, would certainly be too much for anything short of a siege. 

Now, I'm not even going to pretend that I can go toe-to-toe in specialized historical knowledge on specific weapons and armor, but I do think you can boil this thing down to something that is at least realistic, if not perfectly historically accurate.  (Calradia being ultimately fictional and everything...)  The tower shields that they already carry are large enough for protecting at least most of the body while reloading a crossbow, and only really require that spike on a swing arm to have it stand upright on its own. 

Even if they had a smaller shield that couldn't provide perfect cover, having any sort of portable cover for fighting in open fields would be the sort of sensible thing those crossbowmen could carry into battle, especially if it was still something they could carry on their arm if they had to get into melee, the way that many of these people posting in the suggestion would like to see. 

Having a mechanic where these things are fairly flimsy, and could be easily knocked over, even by enemy missile fire, much less cavalry charge, and would require soldiers set them back up or go without cover could also be included. 

It's not perfect historical accuracy, which won't satisfy a decent number of players who really enjoy the simulationist aspects of this game, I know, but it would be at least a decent shot at realism, and the closest thing you can get without having to go the extra mile of mixed-arms units with precise combat routines that would require major reworkings of the game.

===

Regarding "LEGION", that's actually a game I haven't seen before, and that does sound interesting.  I'm actually not much of a fan of RTS, preferring turn-based games, generally, although genre mash-ups do appeal to me.  I once played a long time ago a computer game called Legions, which was basically a relatively old style of ancient Greek/Roman/Persian era strategy game played by pushing numbered tokens over hexes, and thought that was what people were referring to when they had said something about a Legion game when I read it earlier.

 

[Night Ninja]

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,117391.0.html

 

[Caendur]

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,117391.0.html

Well, there you go then...

Personally, if you want the award-winning RTS that a lot of people will hate, take LEGION's pre-battle strategy system, add the concept of AI-controlled units who are following a rough approximation of your strategy based on their loyalty/competence, and then have the battle played out in a M+B engine type, where you can ride around, seizing direct control when needs must, and getting stuck in, with a forced first-person view. As I say, a lot of people will complain because it won't allow the unrealistic strategies and tactics that have developed in Gaming circles- it will require far more planning, scouting, forethought and such... but it would be the closest simulator to a 'real' strategists' challenge.

You know, that sounds like a game I'd enjoy. Except the first-person bit; I prefer third-person. 'Cause, y'know... That way I get some level of the kinesthetic sense data and can avoid falling down from walls 'cause I can't see my feet :p

(Sorry for being off-topic, but what I started to say was invalidated during my writing, so... Opted to leave this )

 

[Blackthorn]

Yeah- apologies for my own final ''off topic'', because, frankly, the thread kinda petered with the shot of the actual discussed item.

1) Yeah- I suppose... not fond still, but it's not an entirely tit-for-tat breaking concept (like introducing gunpowder or similar would be).

2) And LEGION is pretty old... but the Slitherine setup was to issue orders pre-battle, based on a basic screen which showed you what you knew about their army. If you travelled with a huge number of scouts, you basically saw it all, knew it all, and well... could work out a ''these guys flank here, these guys do this'' strategy. If you had no scouts, well, the enemy could be 10 times your number and mounted on tanks and you wouldn't know. I liked that system for helping explain WHY people have scouts.
If I had the SKILLZ I would mod M+B to test the water for my idea- it wouldn't be (that) hard, I think, if you've got a computer genius on hand. It'd just require you to be able to put units under AI command who follow the script you laid out in a ''command screen'' pre-battle. But in a lot of ways M+B represents a better RTS for teaching people about medieval warfare than MTW- because you'll notice people on M+B don't go in for too much ''clever'' strategy, because it requires complicated orders in a confused and messy battlefield, and that kind of stuff gets you killed. That is, at the heart of it, the secret to Medieval strategy... if you want proper command of a unit, hold it in reserve. Otherwise, pulling a unit out of melee, turning it, pushing it along behind a formation and redeploying it? ... Good luck...

 

[RF Nigth]

I don't see a problem crossbows need more cover!
but it's a nice add on.

I think the CS play style with crossbows is a more problem, jumping and head shots.
I don't know if the medieval crossbow can be held up side down, without the bolt dropping!
Or runing with it, Crossbows is very easy to misfire. So you would not run with a loaded crossbow.

Actual it would be pretty fun if they misfire in a hasty movement!
Or just dropping out.

 

[gugabalog]

This should be done. Period. Rhodoks, as you can tell, are my favourite faction, I might seem liek a newb, but as it is, rhodoks do fine in the battle simulator give a hill, jsut place infantry slighltly below them on the hill and anyone who charges will be cut down by bolt fire, and those who aren't will be knocked down the hill by seargeants.

Back on topic though, implementing pavises correctly would only enhance the turtleishness of the rhodoks (IMHO a good thing).

On a off topic note I just realized the romanesqueness of the italian states strategy. About cohesion and endurance.

I support this getting king's courted. Also, this is on par with WFaS's swede infantry glitch where they won't use their pikes.

 

[Sir William Felton]

This was my first dissapointment in M&B...seeing my crossbowmen dying in the sieges without using that wonderful, big pavise

 

[Dante.]

Just come across this and as much as I hate xbowmen already, I still think this would add something good to the game, big thumbs up!

 

[Brandis]

note deployable pavises exist in the mod mercenaries

 

[ThorofAsgard]

Thumbs up, M&B really needs this system, along with spear bracing for more fun game play.

 

[Swadius 2.0]

Thumbs up, M&B really needs this system, along with spear bracing for more fun game play.

Turtling like no one's business >:U!

On the other hand, it's be quite astonishing to see the AI form up into a protective formation with pikes in from braced, pavises set up, and crossbow bolts raining down from behind their ranks.

 

[ThorofAsgard]

Turtling?
Also, it would need more advanced AI

 

[Swadius 2.0]

Turtling?

Turtling

With a moderate number of pikes, and a good number of crossbowmen, no cavalry can touch you, archers are more or less useless, nor can any blob of infantry reach your without incurring loses from all the bolts. It counters basically everything.

 

[ThorofAsgard]

Rhodoks would be the only ones that could effectively use this, and the Rhodoks are considered underpowered for the most part, so instead of having more powerful units they would have better tactics.

 

[Swadius 2.0]

I don't think they're under powered all that much. In comparison to the other factions, their units holds up well. Their sergeant is one of the strongest melee troops available, their crossbowmen are like marines. Their range is fantastic, and in a pinch can make excellent melee troops.

They don't seem to do so well on the map's autocalc though, and players often utilize a method of fighting that works best against the cavalry desperate Rhodok and Nords. Their bolts are still quite lethal though, especially when full damage is turned on.

 

[ThorofAsgard]

I don't consider them underpowered, I use them all the time and they are my favourite faction, but some polls put them as the second worst in the game (behind the Khergit of course).