davvynn said:
KiriKaneko said:
You love PoP, don't you?!
Well, that is very detailed plan which points to the very vast amount of experience you have about the mod and the game in general. Proof of that for me was the FAA choice for the hard-hitting infantry. Other choices are FAA mixed with Berserkers and Gladiators.
I do not plan that much usually, I just level every companion just above either F.Warrior or E.H.Infantry mostly int builds so spamming is the way in my case. I've never tried with FAA but the testing thread which you can easily find among non-pined topics (It's fairly up in the list) changed my opinions about what and who is more efficient.
Edit: P.S.: The thing about the percentages, they never work unless opposing parties fit nicely into battlesize number. or the battlesize is very very high. Basically what you would end up with is that first slot troop which is 15% of your 300 sized party will be the 80% of your first wave.
Thankyou for the useful info. I hadn't considered that the large number of Jatu would disrupt my team. I suppose what I could do is go with 30% heavy cav at the very top of my list and everyone else is 2H infantry. If my first wave of 2H infantry can dehorse a lot of the enemy then if I lose cav and end up with mainly 2 handers they should make short work of the dismounted cavalry so long as they have space to move
I love warband in general and I have played a lot of different mods. I discovered in native and Perisno that short range infantry is excellent for tightly packed sieges. The redwood elves fell quickly to the dwarves in my defensive sieges because I observed my elves were whiffing constantly with their long swords. In native I discovered that huscarls performed poorly in offensive sieges but rhodok sergeants became the bane of my life and on testing they performed remarkably well as offensive infantry
My general idea was to go with exclusively close ranged infantry but then I saw my samurai getting dominated by ashigaru spearmen in gekkokujo, my cavalry in pendor getting wrecked by mettenheim two handers, my cavalry in warsword getting destroyed by some kind of very fast and lightly armoured two handed infantry. I did a lot more testing with different units in different mods after that and discovered some interesting things
The primary power of AI ranged units seems to be down to missile speed and dropoff. This seems to make much more of a difference than their proficiencies when it comes to accuracy. They lock on to the closest unit in sight and won't change targets unless they either get shot by an enemy on their line of sight or someone gets very close and aggroes them. Ranged weapons have a much closer aggro range so you can stand 5 metres from an enemy with a 2H sword and no shield, they'll ignore you for the sword and board guy 20 metres away that they were already locked onto, but if you pull out a bow they'll suddenly switch target to you. You can control who is targetted by controlling line of sight. This means not only can you avoid being fired at by hiding behind trees while your tanks stand in the open but you can make your missile units target archers on walls over sword and board infantry by breaking your archer's line of sight of the infantry by positioning them to the side of the castle, then bringing them back around in such a way that they see the archers first. I was confused by how archers sometimes perform spectacularly on the battlefield or get dominated and concluded it comes down to whether or not they get disrupted and whether or not they can quickly deal with the disruption. I now consider them primarily a siege unit and only good on the battlefield if you can get them on the right terrain. I've seen Jatu and mystmountain bandits role right over noldor who stood in the open or on a mildly steep hill and found they perform better if I order the twilight knights to hold fire and charge to fix the enemy at the base of the hill, rather than dismounted the twilight knights or ordering them to charge while firing
Likewise I discovered sword and board infantry perform well in sieges and 2H infantry do well on the field against cavalry. Sword and board with a medium range weapon like an arming sword seem pretty bad when controlled by the AI, they whiff in sieges but they can't close in on two handers on the battlefield who just keep backpedalling and swinging and long ranged melee troops on the battlefield will often focus fire on one troop to keep him stunlocked whereas close ranged troops struggle to overwhelm since to overwhelm they have to surround the target. That said, close range sword and board infantry do very well on the battlefield if you split them into divisions and surround the enemy. Long ranged weapon units like ashigaru in gekkokujo or mettenheim guys in pop do very poorly when compacted from all sides as it creates a sort of "siege" scenario in an open field of close quarters combat
Most of this stemmed from my early experiences with the game. I was a swadian knight spammer in warband but I found that strategy often failed me in other mods. The reason is because there are very few decent 2H units in native and spears in native whiff constantly. In mods with very fast swinging high damage 2H infantry with a high athletics and enough armour to take some initial damage they can break the initial charge and tear them apart. Because of that, heavy cav spam isn't always the best strategy for field battles outside of native! What's more, 2H infantry supported by cavalry are even better at breaking a charge and fixing cavalry in place to be massacred by 2H weapons because the power of cavalry is their ability to stagger by riding over troops while slashing down at their heads and when they're trapped in place they get obliterated by basically anything!
I actually left PoP for a long time because I play realistic saves and I got sick of losing, I'm back now with more experience and it's actually quite easy for me. My only real concern is the stronghold quest as I'm sure I can handle anything else, and I'm sure I can handle the stronghold if I hold out for CKO troops although I'd rather have it asap XD
