I just don't get TW priorities.

[stevehoos]

If following TW and several posters in this thread, we can only conclude that our ancestors were absolutely dump. When we look around to the times of plate armor for example (1250 to 1650 AD, or so), we mostly see sticks with sharp edges and pointy tips in use but rather seldomly pure blunt weapons. Mostly pure blunt weapons were used by unprofessional militias, to good effect sometimes, and sometimes not.

The idea that blunt energy magically goes though a rigid defense, nullifying it's use, has always interested and bothered me. It makes it, for example, very difficult to understand why maces and clubs greatly disappeared as weapons of war after the introduction of helmets in the Bronze Age. Anyway, our ancestors were dump, that's the explanation.

I think that blunt weapons had a very special niche in anti-armor warfare. Short maces (mostly flanged) for example were used by armored men-at-arms on horse for close quarter melee, because there was nothing better available, not because the mace was extremely effective. On foot, with more mobility in the fight, attacking unarmored parts of the body, stunning a totally armored person with heavy hits by several opponents and wrestling them down to put a dagger through armor gaps, or penetrating the armor with pointy tips, was the preferred combat method.

Anyway, mostly deaths in ancient battles occured during the disordered phase, after one formation was broken, when the chasers could use their weapons with ease. It is very different if you give a fast hit during combat, quite often not with full force, to not open yourself for other's weapons, or if you are hacking onto fleeing persons from a horse without any danger. This real life mechanic is quite absent in M+B. Some units flee and are free fodder but only after heavy losses on the battlefield itself. Quite unrealistic.

In the end for me armor cannot be seen isolated. A sword thrust could never penetrate a breastplate (lamellar or rigid) but it could penetrate a gap in the armor. Armor cannot be as good as in penetration tests because the game does not simulate gaps in the armor. Armor should be better (I use Realistic Battle Mod, for example) but not too good, and I would appreciate more than an armor buff changes in the way the soldiers act on the battlefield, formations, moral. Less total annihilation combat, and so on. Of course that will not happen, I know.

Yep, this is correct. The army that broke and retreated were cut down in vast numbers. That is why the Roman armies had such strict policies for soldiers disobeying orders, cowardice, mutiny, desertion etc. They did not mess around.

 

[Twezie]

To get back to actual point of this thread: the difference in vision between the community and the developers. This is a very real point, and one that needs to be addressed. If not, the unmodded version of this game will just be left in the dust in the years to come.

You think taleworlds or armagan give a ****? They rollin in the money they made, probs planning DLCs while having the interns do some bugfixing and adding 1 scene every 3 months

 

[five bucks]

I don't believe you've fully read the article you've linked, and I believe you skipped the previous posts. The accounts referenced in the article saying that mail was impervious do not state the range, the force produced by the bows/crossbow nor if they were shot from a straight angle or if the arrows were shot in the air, like a volley. There are also accounts referenced in the same article that contradict the idea of mail being impervious to arrows.

It's interesting that you tell me I haven't read the article/your posts properly, and then you go and say something like that; because you wouldn't have said it if you'd read my post and the article correctly.
My stance is that in Bannerlord, high quality armor should block almost all of the damage from a low quality bow and unskilled archer; and that low quality armor should block hardly any damage from a high quality bow and highly skilled archer.
But I never said that mail should be "impervious" in Bannerlord.

"During the 1st Crusade, Girard of Quiercy was killed by a Moslem arrow that punched through both his shield and his armour" and "During the Battle of Acre (1291), William de Beaujeu, Master of the Temple, was accused of cowardice when he retreated from the fighting. He lifted up his arm and replied, 'Seigneurs, I can do no more, for I am dead; see the wound.' An arrow had pierced him through the mail beneath his armpit—only the fletches were visible") , the same way arrows are shot in Bannerlord.

Again, I am not saying mail can't be pierced at all. What I am saying is it takes a powerful bow+archer to pierce good mail. And that would explain why in some accounts, archers could go right through mail, while in other accounts they had little to no effect. For example, "Every Norman foot-soldier wore a vest of thick felt and a coat of mail so dense and strong that our arrows made no impression on them... I saw some with from one to ten arrows sticking in them, and still advancing at their ordinary pace without leaving the ranks." So, why could they not be hurt in that example, but then pierced in another example? Because evidently, the quality of the mail was different, and the quality of the bows was different.
Another statement backs this up: "Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn al-Walid al-Tartushi, wrote in the 11th century that elite archers were capable of piercing mail." This would have not been a statement worth making if anyone could do that! So, evidently, it took an elite archer to pierce good mail.

I linked at least three videos of armorers, fletchers and archers testing armor effectiveness.

Let's address those.
* Video 1: In this video, Tod's high-powered crossbow penetrates medium-quality mail with no thick felt padding beneath; I already agreed that should be possible. My stance is that low-powered crossbows/bows should take many shots to kill someone wearing high-quality double linked mail with thick felt padding beneath (as the Norman Crusaders were described to wear during the 3rd Crusade). It's important to note Tod himself says his video isn't meant to be proof of anything. And even if you ignore that, it's also noteworthy that the flesh-cutter and plate-cutter bolts actually bounce right off the mail! Only the bodkin bolt can go through, and my stance is that it too would be caught if a thicker padding was worn beneath that mail.
* Video 2: There is a thin doublet beneath the mail here, but again, no thick padding, which served to catch any arrows that penetrated a short distance through mail.
* Video 3: You will note in the video that the arrows do not penetrate all the way through the shield. This is why medieval soldiers held the shield out in front of them, not right on the body (which is awkward anyway). Shields also often had bosses to protect the hand from arrows that did go through the shield.
* Video 4: Though I wasn't really making claims about lamellar, either way this kind of supports my stance. The lamellar armor resists the heavy crossbow at close range.

Now I will provide some video counter-examples, which also address your questions about the force, the angle, and the distance.


Even at the ideal range, low-powered bows can do little against mail with thick layers of padding underneath, just bouncing right off in most cases. If they do penetrate, the padding catches the head so it cannot injure. Only as the bow becomes more powerful, can it penetrate both mail and padding.

This is what I am saying should occur in Bannerlord. In gameplay terms, a low-powered bow, in the hands of an untrained archer, should only be dealing 1 blunt damage to someone wearing high-quality, double-linked mail with padding beneath. Because in real life, that untrained archer would not penetrate, just bruise. But a high tier archer against high tier armor should take, say, 10 or less shots to kill.

 

[htlaets]

It's interesting that you tell me I haven't read the article/your posts properly, and then you go and say something like that; because you wouldn't have said it if you'd read my post and the article correctly.
My stance is that in Bannerlord, high quality armor should block almost all of the damage from a low quality bow and unskilled archer; and that low quality armor should block hardly any damage from a high quality bow and highly skilled archer.
But I never said that mail should be "impervious" in Bannerlord.

Again, I am not saying mail can't be pierced at all. What I am saying is it takes a powerful bow+archer to pierce good mail. And that would explain why in some accounts, archers could go right through mail, while in other accounts they had little to no effect. For example, "Every Norman foot-soldier wore a vest of thick felt and a coat of mail so dense and strong that our arrows made no impression on them... I saw some with from one to ten arrows sticking in them, and still advancing at their ordinary pace without leaving the ranks." So, why could they not be hurt in that example, but then pierced in another example? Because evidently, the quality of the mail was different, and the quality of the bows was different.
Another statement backs this up: "Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn al-Walid al-Tartushi, wrote in the 11th century that elite archers were capable of piercing mail." This would have not been a statement worth making if anyone could do that! So, evidently, it took an elite archer to pierce good mail.

Let's address those.
* Video 1: In this video, Tod's high-powered crossbow penetrates medium-quality mail with no thick felt padding beneath; I already agreed that should be possible. My stance is that low-powered crossbows/bows should take many shots to kill someone wearing high-quality double linked mail with thick felt padding beneath (as the Norman Crusaders were described to wear during the 3rd Crusade). It's important to note Tod himself says his video isn't meant to be proof of anything. And even if you ignore that, it's also noteworthy that the flesh-cutter and plate-cutter bolts actually bounce right off the mail! Only the bodkin bolt can go through, and my stance is that it too would be caught if a thicker padding was worn beneath that mail.
* Video 2: There is a thin doublet beneath the mail here, but again, no thick padding, which served to catch any arrows that penetrated a short distance through mail.
* Video 3: You will note in the video that the arrows do not penetrate all the way through the shield. This is why medieval soldiers held the shield out in front of them, not right on the body (which is awkward anyway). Shields also often had bosses to protect the hand from arrows that did go through the shield.
* Video 4: Though I wasn't really making claims about lamellar, either way this kind of supports my stance. The lamellar armor resists the heavy crossbow at close range.

Now I will provide some video counter-examples, which also address your questions about the force, the angle, and the distance.


Even at the ideal range, low-powered bows can do little against mail with thick layers of padding underneath, just bouncing right off in most cases. If they do penetrate, the padding catches the head so it cannot injure. Only as the bow becomes more powerful, can it penetrate both mail and padding.

This is what I am saying should occur in Bannerlord. In gameplay terms, a low-powered bow, in the hands of an untrained archer, should only be dealing 1 blunt damage to someone wearing high-quality, double-linked mail with padding beneath. Because in real life, that untrained archer would not penetrate, just bruise. But a high tier archer against high tier armor should take, say, 10 or less shots to kill.

Even just gambeson armor is protecting enough against bows, seen here:



Only high powered warbows wielded by professionals like english longbowmen, genoese crossbowmen, and asiatic archer cultures could do damage against gambeson or gambeson+chainmail.

Its not authentic in the game, even low tier bows and crossbows do considerable damage vs armor, which ssould be fixed. Youtube is full of proof that even light armor like gambeson is quite resistant.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Its not authentic in the game, even low tier bows and crossbows do considerable damage vs armor, which ssould be fixed. Youtube is full of proof that even light armor like gambeson is quite resistant.

The problem is that the game doesn't really allow this. Archers historically would spend hours, days or in some cases weeks firing upwards of a million arrows at an enemy. The typical use of archers (from what I've read, mainly the Crusades, the Mongols and imperial Roman era battles) was to slow down an enemy and harrass them, not just to kill them. Being hit by arrows, even if you know they can't kill you, would prevent a portion of an army from resting or reorganising, and in the case of the crusades when one side (the Ayyubids and other Seljuk successor states) has a massive ranged advantage, they can dictate the flow of battle and the course of a campaign much better. However in those same wars we have sources where infantrymen and knights were literally covered in arrows but kept fighting. It's similar to how in modern warfare the main effect of gunfire is to suppress an enemy, not to kill him.

In bannerlord both armies appear on the battlefield together and fight for about 5 minutes. If archers were realistic, there would be no way for them to do any damage, so the game compensates by essentially making them into riflemen. I don't have much issue with this, there's no easy way to simulate the conditions of a premodern battle, but I think there are far better ways to accomplish it:

1. Archers and other light infantry could show up first, and the initial phase of a battle should be to take ground in a skirmish. Troops would be in loose order, spread out along a wide front, engaging in shooting duels rather than in a long line.

2. Then the heavy infantry and cavalry would arrive at a specific spot when called in by the player. Doing this too early would allow the enemy light infantry to harrass them and slow them down, with some kind of suppression mechanic where non-skirmishers can only walk with their shields up if an arrow has landed near them recently.

3. Cavalry would have to be relatively fragile but their mere presence should rout light infantry.

 

[Johnna4you]

You think taleworlds or armagan give a ****? They rollin in the money they made, probs planning DLCs while having the interns do some bugfixing and adding 1 scene every 3 months

You seems like a man who knows Armagan. How rude people can be. Just logged in since i enjoyed this game and all i read is insults

 

[Andrei[beast]]

You seems like a man who knows Armagan. How rude people can be. Just logged in since i enjoyed this game and all i read is insults

Well, let me be the first one saying welcome and get ready for more of those! It's gonna be a bumpy ride

 

[Highest of all Landers]

Plate and lamellar armor were designed specifically to deflect arrows. Look at the video you posted. Hits in the middle deflected with just a tiny dent.

Look at what you linked - it contradicts what you said:

Hits in the weak spot (in this case the chain mail area that was not covered by plate) penetrated the armor but hits in the middle just bounced right off. The middle of the chestpiece is not a flat spot. It's the spot where armor was the strongest. Armor was designed specifically with this deflection in mind. Hence, my assertion that hits to the middle of the chest by enemy arrows should not do that much damage. Hits to the weak spots are where the player should take more damage.

It doesn't contradict, it supports what I said. The rounded breastplate, thicker in the least rounded center, deflected arrows with minor damage when said arrows hit the angled areas and left dents in the flatter area, the first arrow missed the plate and penetrated the chainmail underneath.

The armorer that made the plate said the center was thicker because the angle was flatter then the rest of the plate. If that plate was totally flat, there would be less deflections with scratches and more dents, like the ones that hit it around the center.

There are no plates like that in game, only mails, scales and lamellar.

Blunt damage doesn't kill by penetrating. It kills by transferring blunt trauma - which is damage to the target anyways. Penetrating armor is only the means to the end in the case of cut and pierce damage - to kill the target. Blunt bypasses this whole process.

Cut was pretty much useless against armor if it hit in the strong spot and especially later medieval armor was highly resistant.

Yes, this is exactly what I said. And as I said previously, if TW went and increased effectiveness against cutting damage you would see a riot from people claiming swords were useless against armor (which they should.).

Yep - a lot of people seem to be missing this. We want the enemy's high tier units to also be able to withstand our low tier units. Armor works both ways.

This is as much a solution as placing something underneath the leg of a table that is shorter than the others. Sure, it would prevent the table from rocking with weight shifts, but it is in no way a definite solution to the problem. The combat AI needs to be reworked not to be suicidal so there is actually a difference in skill rather than armor and weapon.

It's interesting that you tell me I haven't read the article/your posts properly, and then you go and say something like that; because you wouldn't have said it if you'd read my post and the article correctly.
My stance is that in Bannerlord, high quality armor should block almost all of the damage from a low quality bow and unskilled archer; and that low quality armor should block hardly any damage from a high quality bow and highly skilled archer.
But I never said that mail should be "impervious" in Bannerlord.

Again, I am not saying mail can't be pierced at all. What I am saying is it takes a powerful bow+archer to pierce good mail. And that would explain why in some accounts, archers could go right through mail, while in other accounts they had little to no effect. For example, "Every Norman foot-soldier wore a vest of thick felt and a coat of mail so dense and strong that our arrows made no impression on them... I saw some with from one to ten arrows sticking in them, and still advancing at their ordinary pace without leaving the ranks." So, why could they not be hurt in that example, but then pierced in another example? Because evidently, the quality of the mail was different, and the quality of the bows was different.
Another statement backs this up: "Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn al-Walid al-Tartushi, wrote in the 11th century that elite archers were capable of piercing mail." This would have not been a statement worth making if anyone could do that! So, evidently, it took an elite archer to pierce good mail.

And I haven't said that you said it. I said that the article suggests that mail was impervious.

It is not evident that the quality of the mail was superior, we are missing important information, like what type of bow was used, that was the range, were the arrows shot in an arc.

And I agree, archer skill and bow should matter. I started a new game yesterday and was hitting looters in the head for 86-94 damage, not enough to kill then with a single hit, and in the body for 30-40 damage. When I faced Sea Raiders, the damage was even lower as they had better equipment, so I had to hit the in the head at least twice, with about 55 bow skill and a steppe bow.

Low tier arches won't murder everything in their path, the only way they are somewhat effective is in large numbers. But if you use Fian as the standard, then yeah, they will murder everything in their path with the volume of arrows they can output and the quality of their bows and skill.

The battle maps are small, archers will really start to grind everything into dust when both sides are interlocked in melee and nobody is holding shields anymore, or have their unprotected sides or back facing the archers. Mainly because their targets are so close and because they don't have to arc their arrows.

Let's address those.
* Video 1: In this video, Tod's high-powered crossbow penetrates medium-quality mail with no thick felt padding beneath; I already agreed that should be possible. My stance is that low-powered crossbows/bows should take many shots to kill someone wearing high-quality double linked mail with thick felt padding beneath (as the Norman Crusaders were described to wear during the 3rd Crusade). It's important to note Tod himself says his video isn't meant to be proof of anything. And even if you ignore that, it's also noteworthy that the flesh-cutter and plate-cutter bolts actually bounce right off the mail! Only the bodkin bolt can go through, and my stance is that it too would be caught if a thicker padding was worn beneath that mail.

He said that they weren't definitive proof as there isn't enough information available to determine that the piece of mail used is 100% accurate as to what was used. You can tell the piece is riveted, the rings overlap to reduce gap size, which is way better than Hollywood linked rings.

The penetration from that bodkin would be enough to puncture the lung, and when your chest cavity fills with air and your lungs can't inflate anymore, you are dead in a horrible way.

Like I said before, I agree that archer skill and bow should matter, I don't expect to go around killing chainmail troops with my Steppe Bow and 55 bow skill, but to see a Fian, Palatine Guard or Sharpshooter having to put 2-3 arrows/bolts at 15 meters, sometimes even a headshot isn't enough.

* Video 2: There is a thin doublet beneath the mail here, but again, no thick padding, which served to catch any arrows that penetrated a short distance through mail.

Yeah, only it wasn't a short distance, the full tip is in, plus a part of the shaft.

* Video 3: You will note in the video that the arrows do not penetrate all the way through the shield. This is why medieval soldiers held the shield out in front of them, not right on the body (which is awkward anyway). Shields also often had bosses to protect the hand from arrows that did go through the shield.

They do penetrate a good distance, of course they wouldn't go clean through, nor do I say that shields were held "right on the body". I added it as a "bonus" because there were posts quite sometime back talking about shield effectiveness, while some people said shields were fine as is, other said they should break more easily or that the arrows wouldn't pierce through.

* Video 4: Though I wasn't really making claims about lamellar, either way this kind of supports my stance. The lamellar armor resists the heavy crossbow at close range.

Somebody else made about plates, which are not in game, closest we have to plated armors is lamellar. And even though it didn't pierce through the armor and the padding underneath, the bolts bent the plates and hit the padding hard enough to say it would cause damage to the person wearing it, maybe cracking a rib, maybe just a really painful impact, which is represented in game by damage reduction based on armor rating.

Now I will provide some video counter-examples, which also address your questions about the force, the angle, and the distance.

Even at the ideal range, low-powered bows can do little against mail with thick layers of padding underneath, just bouncing right off in most cases. If they do penetrate, the padding catches the head so it cannot injure. Only as the bow becomes more powerful, can it penetrate both mail and padding.

This is what I am saying should occur in Bannerlord. In gameplay terms, a low-powered bow, in the hands of an untrained archer, should only be dealing 1 blunt damage to someone wearing high-quality, double-linked mail with padding beneath. Because in real life, that untrained archer would not penetrate, just bruise. But a high tier archer against high tier armor should take, say, 10 or less shots to kill.

It is not just about penetration, the game has no internal injury system, the game has no armor penetration mechanics, the best it can do is provide damage reduction with calculations based on armor values and assumed secondary protections, like how thick is the padding underneath and what it is composed of. There can be no penetration but enough force to cause internal injuries, broken bones.

I don't really see how those two videos you linked were any better, if anything they were less strict in material usage (carbon fiber shafts, modern arrow tips, packing blanket) and in target quality (loose mail hanging from hog, or hard mannequin with no leeway to move back and absorb impact, which was considered for the testing in the Arrow vs Armour video) and there was a disparity in results when comparing the man shaped target he used previously versus the hog.

 

[highlandlettuce]

Totally agree. Why would anyone wear armors if they cannot protect them from bunch of metal tipped little sticks? THE ARROWS are just little wooden sticks if they cant penetrate one's armor pieces, and as we can see with soooo many YT clips usually they can not.

 

[Medivhtratos]

the game has no armor penetration mechanics

In some way the game has a penetration mechanic for Cut,Pierce and Blunt. Just look in the Code "CombatStatCalculator" Class.

Btw, if Arrows shouldn´t do dmg to high armored Troops, a part of the Range System would go to hell, since the player would also not use Bows anymore.

 

[Highest of all Landers]

In some way the game has a penetration mechanic for Cut,Pierce and Blunt. Just look in the Code "CombatStatCalculator" Class.

Btw, if Arrows shouldn´t do dmg to high armored Troops, a part of the Range System would go to hell, since the player would also not use Bows anymore.

If it is anything like Warband was, then it is just a static multiplier applied to the armor values, like 0.70 would mean only 70% of the armor value is considered when calculating damage.

Totally agree. Why would anyone wear armors if they cannot protect them from bunch of metal tipped little sticks? THE ARROWS are just little wooden sticks if they cant penetrate one's armor pieces, and as we can see with soooo many YT clips usually they can not.

Yeah, because wearing armor is just like becoming a tank, no penetration = no damage (well, if you discard chemical munitions that is).

 

[kreamy]

Realistic based on what? If they were to increased realism, then you would have plenty of chain mail equipped troops dying from a single hit to the chest by a crossbow or longbow.



Even when coded well, sometimes there are just no more optimizations to be made and in game settings would have to be reduced. I personally have no problem with this, my system is high end, but people that were close to the minimum requirements and bought the game based on those would have every right to complain if they could no longer run or had to make big reductions in their settings.

They would have to set templates for complexity so people with older processors wouldn't be so impacted, but we already have something like that with combat AI "difficulty". Amount of entities in the battle could also be reduced anyways if people start to have problems.

Maybe.... Its a really dubious claim that a single bolt/arrow would kill someone with mail, given that people do not die from single high caliber rifle rounds (one hit). Im not talking full realism of course, but the game really isnt built for it (vis a vis combat, there is only ~4 attack directions etc. anyways).

My idea of realism was large damage reduction buffs for armor against slashing weapons, increased penetration damage (spears for example, last time I played was really underwhelming), and some other tweaks that could lean it towards a less balanced, but more full feeling. Clearly there is potential to address balance (what with more troops as a kingdom policy VS troops that are very strong).. I wont go too much into it but

BASICALLY

A more realistic option that more accurately reflects (not 100% authentic however) weapons and armor. There really are lots of ways to approach it, but I wont get into it. It could easily be done.

 

[Twezie]

You seems like a man who knows Armagan. How rude people can be. Just logged in since i enjoyed this game and all i read is insults

You just started the game then? Thats why you dont understand.

 

[Johnna4you]

You just started the game then? Thats why you dont understand.

No i have been playing this game since early access release. So what does that have to do with you insulting people ? What have Armagan done to you to deserve this ?

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

The problem is that the game doesn't really allow this. Archers historically would spend hours, days or in some cases weeks firing upwards of a million arrows at an enemy. The typical use of archers (from what I've read, mainly the Crusades, the Mongols and imperial Roman era battles) was to slow down an enemy and harrass them, not just to kill them. Being hit by arrows, even if you know they can't kill you, would prevent a portion of an army from resting or reorganising, and in the case of the crusades when one side (the Ayyubids and other Seljuk successor states) has a massive ranged advantage, they can dictate the flow of battle and the course of a campaign much better. However in those same wars we have sources where infantrymen and knights were literally covered in arrows but kept fighting. It's similar to how in modern warfare the main effect of gunfire is to suppress an enemy, not to kill him.

In bannerlord both armies appear on the battlefield together and fight for about 5 minutes. If archers were realistic, there would be no way for them to do any damage, so the game compensates by essentially making them into riflemen. I don't have much issue with this, there's no easy way to simulate the conditions of a premodern battle, but I think there are far better ways to accomplish it:

1. Archers and other light infantry could show up first, and the initial phase of a battle should be to take ground in a skirmish. Troops would be in loose order, spread out along a wide front, engaging in shooting duels rather than in a long line.

2. Then the heavy infantry and cavalry would arrive at a specific spot when called in by the player. Doing this too early would allow the enemy light infantry to harrass them and slow them down, with some kind of suppression mechanic where non-skirmishers can only walk with their shields up if an arrow has landed near them recently.

3. Cavalry would have to be relatively fragile but their mere presence should rout light infantry.

I hope people slowly come to realise that realism should not be the goal for this game like I have. I think whatever we have right now is awful, but let's not pretend that taking the literal 'realistic' approach won't result in something just as bad.

Your idea could work, but I feel like TWs won't go for it.

Personally I think battlefield roles should be something like this:

Archers/skirmishers excel at killing unshielded troops, damaging shields and softening up the enemy enough to make them easier to kill off. Especially if they can neutralise enemy archers. Skirmishers in particular will just be more expendable, especially when other troops start to gain throwing weapons of their own.

Shield infantry anchors everything together. Spear armed troops can fend off cavalry, while troops with swords/axes/maces fight better in a tight press.

Two hander infantry (pike, glaive, or twohanders) trade their shield for the ability to be harder counters against melee opponents, while suffering at a range.

Light cavalry can chase away skirmishers, attack flanks and chase down routed enemies.

Shock cavalry should be devastating on the charge. Only pikes and glaives should counter them hard- shield and spear troops can only hold them off at best. Anything else on foot gets run down. If used poorly, they should be difficult to replace.

Mounted archers are basically extremely mobile archers, albeit at the cost of accuracy and numbers. Heaps of tactical application, but they won't be your true killers.

This is all hardly realistic or accurate to the realities of historical combat, but the veneer of it is there. But more than that, it makes for an engaging gameplay dynamic where everything has a purpose.

 

[Great White Nanuk]

I know it's a movie and so takes some liberties when balancing art vs science, but the creators of the movie "The King" did some research, read some historical sources, and went to see a few medieval tourneys to get an idea of how to choreograph the action scenes. The way the movie portrays medieval combat is - I think - a good narrative for Bannerlord to follow to get a decent balance between gameplay and realism - in terms of combat, not plate armor.

The movie is focused on King Henry and finished with the Battle of Agincourt. It does a good job with costumes, so you see a mix of plate, mail, and gambeson. Most of Henry's kills are actually with a dagger that he uses to cut and pierce critically exposed areas. Throughout the movie, swords, lances, even maces show that most of the fatalities are a result of exhaustion leading to vulnerability, rather than slicing and dicing through heavily armored foes. There's a scene where a character - Falstaff - in heavy plate armor is trading blows with another, and no one is dying, then a rider comes along and bashes Falstaff in the head with a blunt object, probably a mace. Falstaff removes his helmet and is visibly very shaken, fighting for air after getting the wind knocked out of him. He pulls down the mail from his head and tries to regain his composure. In the scuffle, he has lost his sword. He gets back up and there is no room to move or even turn as both English and French soldiers are pressed against each other. He starts bashing with his arms in frustration as he is helpless in the sea of plate armor.

Then in a following scene, Henry drops his sword and instead goes to his dagger, as the fighting is mostly heavily armored soldiers wrestling with each other. He starts stabbing in the armpits, the neck, anywhere that is exposed. And it takes a while for his opponent to pass out.

There is no sword-swinging bravado save for a few pitched moments. It's a really believable fight. Even the terrain is a factor in the battle. No one is going into a fight gracefully. Even when Henry recovers from the ground after a scuffle, he looks around and freezes up for a moment as he tries to figure out what to do in the mad melee, right before a horse knocks him back down to the ground.

As for plate armor being impenetrable, this is false. Longbows and crossbows were the bane of European nobility, especially crossbows which allowed quickly trained peasants to kill knights. English longbows were famous for nullifying plate armor. Not only do we have videos of this on youtube, but it can be seen in tapestries and historical art of the era.

However, it is not to say plate armor was pointless. Just because two types of weapons can render it obsolete, not only is there a high chance of not being hit, but the chances of the wearer encountering the many other weapon types made plate usable even up until the 20th century. To this day, plates are uses in body armor to high-enough effectiveness that it can make the difference between penetration or not. Nobles and warriors were known to carry their plate armors with them everywhere they went, even if they weren't going to use them most of the time. It was so valuable, that just having it meant you were richer than most. Another good depiction on the big screen of this that comes to mind is the movie "The Mission" where Rodrigo carries his armor with him everywhere, and even while trying not to drown while being carried down a fast-moving river, spends all his energy on trying not to lose his armor because it is his entire estate's worth in the New World.

Anyways, these are all things you just don't get from Bannerlord, currently. The game lacks depth at this moment, and everything is left up to the player's imagination. I hope TaleWorlds picks up the slack in depth, and doesn't just hope modders will save the day. Especially right now, since their patches regularly pull the rug out from under modders and has resulted in many modders abandoning this game until it becomes more stable.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

I know it's a movie and so takes some liberties when balancing art vs science, but the creators of the movie "The King" did some research, read some historical sources, and went to see a few medieval tourneys to get an idea of how to choreograph the action scenes. The way the movie portrays medieval combat is - I think - a good narrative for Bannerlord to follow to get a decent balance between gameplay and realism - in terms of combat, not plate armor.

The movie is focused on King Henry and finished with the Battle of Agincourt. It does a good job with costumes, so you see a mix of plate, mail, and gambeson. Most of Henry's kills are actually with a dagger that he uses to cut and pierce critically exposed areas. Throughout the movie, swords, lances, even maces show that most of the fatalities are a result of exhaustion leading to vulnerability, rather than slicing and dicing through heavily armored foes. There's a scene where a character - Falstaff - in heavy plate armor is trading blows with another, and no one is dying, then a rider comes along and bashes Falstaff in the head with a blunt object, probably a mace. Falstaff removes his helmet and is visibly very shaken, fighting for air after getting the wind knocked out of him. He pulls down the mail from his head and tries to regain his composure. In the scuffle, he has lost his sword. He gets back up and there is no room to move or even turn as both English and French soldiers are pressed against each other. He starts bashing with his arms in frustration as he is helpless in the sea of plate armor.

Then in a following scene, Henry drops his sword and instead goes to his dagger, as the fighting is mostly heavily armored soldiers wrestling with each other. He starts stabbing in the armpits, the neck, anywhere that is exposed. And it takes a while for his opponent to pass out.

There is no sword-swinging bravado save for a few pitched moments. It's a really believable fight. Even the terrain is a factor in the battle. No one is going into a fight gracefully. Even when Henry recovers from the ground after a scuffle, he looks around and freezes up for a moment as he tries to figure out what to do in the mad melee, right before a horse knocks him back down to the ground.

As for plate armor being impenetrable, this is false. Longbows and crossbows were the bane of European nobility, especially crossbows which allowed quickly trained peasants to kill knights. English longbows were famous for nullifying plate armor. Not only do we have videos of this on youtube, but it can be seen in tapestries and historical art of the era.

However, it is not to say plate armor was pointless. Just because two types of weapons can render it obsolete, not only is there a high chance of not being hit, but the chances of the wearer encountering the many other weapon types made plate usable even up until the 20th century. To this day, plates are uses in body armor to high-enough effectiveness that it can make the difference between penetration or not. Nobles and warriors were known to carry their plate armors with them everywhere they went, even if they weren't going to use them most of the time. It was so valuable, that just having it meant you were richer than most. Another good depiction on the big screen of this that comes to mind is the movie "The Mission" where Rodrigo carries his armor with him everywhere, and even while trying not to drown while being carried down a fast-moving river, spends all his energy on trying not to lose his armor because it is his entire estate's worth in the New World.

Anyways, these are all things you just don't get from Bannerlord, currently. The game lacks depth at this moment, and everything is left up to the player's imagination. I hope TaleWorlds picks up the slack in depth, and doesn't just hope modders will save the day. Especially right now, since their patches regularly pull the rug out from under modders and has resulted in many modders abandoning this game until it becomes more stable.

14th century combat is an entirely different beast the period that Bannerlord is set in. Shields were not as important in the Hundred Years war, so soldiers were more free to wrestle or swing bigger weapons. And Bannerlord itself has no wrestling component to it at all. I don't even know that's going to be well implemented. If anything, its simply not there.

And sure, we have videos of long bows vs plate armour- longbows losing to plate armour that. Same with crossbows. No seriously, watch the vids that someone linked and you'll realise how wrong you are on that. Plate armour makes you virtually impervious to harm.

 

[Great White Nanuk]

14th century combat is an entirely different beast the period that Bannerlord is set in

The point I was making was both against the argument that plate armor is impervious to weapons, and that TaleWorlds should adopt a similar tone to the fighting in that specializations will be crucial.

And sure, we have videos of long bows vs plate armour- longbows losing to plate armour that. Same with crossbows. No seriously, watch the vids that someone linked and you'll realise how wrong you are on that. Plate armour makes you virtually impervious to harm.

This is why it's important to do a study on the subject that isn't reliant on a simple field test through controlled methods, anecdotes, and deductive reasoning.

There are modern examples of plate being penetrated by both bolts and arrows;

To go into further analysis of how and why, this is a good collection of both contrasting evidence.

There are a number of notable modern testing that concludes both yes and no to the question of can longbows penetrate plate. Such as English Longbow Testing by Matheus Bane.

Historically, contemporary sources around the times of the battles that get famously used as an example of plate vs bows such as Agincourt and Poitiers give mixed results. But same as Crossbows, using empirical evidence can support one century of warfare vs. heavy armor, but not another. For example, in the 15th century the Taborites used steel-prod bolts successfully against armored imperial forces.

There is perhaps no uniformity when it comes to the forging of armor in pre-industrial times (that is to say, in its strength/durability/etc.. not design), leaving one knight vulnerable whereas the one next to him is fine. Factors such as the different bodkins used, range, skill, angle, point of where the bolt/arrow makes contact, even something as simple as how dry the weather is plays a role in determining the results.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

The point I was making was both against the argument that plate armor is impervious to weapons, and that TaleWorlds should adopt a similar tone to the fighting in that specializations will be crucial.



This is why it's important to do a study on the subject that isn't reliant on a simple field test through controlled methods, anecdotes, and deductive reasoning.

There are modern examples of plate being penetrated by both bolts and arrows;

To go into further analysis of how and why, this is a good collection of both contrasting evidence.

There are a number of notable modern testing that concludes both yes and no to the question of can longbows penetrate plate. Such as English Longbow Testing by Matheus Bane.

Historically, contemporary sources around the times of the battles that get famously used as an example of plate vs bows such as Agincourt and Poitiers give mixed results. But same as Crossbows, using empirical evidence can support one century of warfare vs. heavy armor, but not another. For example, in the 15th century the Taborites used steel-prod bolts successfully against armored imperial forces.

There is perhaps no uniformity when it comes to designing armor in pre-industrial times, leaving one knight vulnerable whereas the one next to him is fine. Factors such as the different bodkins used, range, skill, angle, point of where the bolt/arrow makes contact, even something as simple as how dry the weather is plays a role in determining the results.

Imma look into those tests.

Still, plate armour is simply not a thing in Bannerlord, so I have no idea why its been brought up.

 

[stevehoos]

Imma look into those tests.

Still, plate armour is simply not a thing in Bannerlord, so I have no idea why its been brought up.

Agreed, not sure why this coming up.