Let's talk about Sturgia

[Sketchyad]

Sturgia is in seriously trouble every time I start new campaign, they get rekt'd within a year or two. Infantry need buff cause they're weak as heck. This explains why Vlandia and Khuzait dominated them badly especially Battania. Sturgia is supposed to be most strongest in melee class since they're specialized in melee.

Here are the links below relating to Sturgia (just so I make this easier for you).

War Declaration on many factions

Buffing Sturgia

Sturgia need some love

I'll add more links to here if I find one or any of you find it.

 

[Beoron]

I actually like their Veteran Warriors quite a bit as they are heavily armored and have a throwing weapon. I find they often get more kills than my Legionnaires, but are perhaps slightly more squishy. I would agree that their infantry is not good enough relative to how lackluster their other units are though. They have some of the worst calvary and archers and their best unit isn't as dominant as say Khan's Guards or Battanian Fian Champions. They're also not as well rounded as the Empire troops.

 

[JohnnyOnslaught]

Technically, Sturgia is the strongest in melee. The problem is that so little of the combat in Bannerlord revolves around the infantry melee. They have a really hard time with sieges because they've got bunk all for ranged, and they lose out vs cavalry and ranged units in big battles because they don't know how to shield wall.

 

[Nordmann]

In both of my current saves, Sturgia does indeed seem to get the short end of the stick.

 

[Affliction]

I think if TW improves the way A.I use formations and shields Sturgia could easily counter archers and cavalry, last thing I want to see is a band aid fix that just makes Sturgia harder to kill without fixing the real issues

 

[urugamer5]

Me too, was planning make sturgia my next play through because didnt see them in all my campaign haha

 

[Hrulj]

Sturgian elite units are rare and much harder to find than those of other groups. They also are very slow to develop compared to other groups. Vlandians start their elite as cavalry. Imperials need a single upgrade to get them on horses. Sturgians have 3 infantry levels before they get to horses. Their archers are weak compared to other nations. So they lose out there. Their lands are much more spread out compared to others negatively impacting recruitment. Their king is close fisted so vassals stay poor and weak. In general they need changing.

 

[Styo]

I played 5 different campaigns with each a newer patch version and each time Sturgia got destroyed first.

 

[Al'extérieur]

Technically, Sturgia is the strongest in melee. The problem is that so little of the combat in Bannerlord revolves around the infantry melee. They have a really hard time with sieges because they've got bunk all for ranged, and they lose out vs cavalry and ranged units in big battles because they don't know how to shield wall.

Yep, this is true. Cavalry are ridiculously good in this game, especially archers on horses. I got a party of myself and 95 Khuzait Cavalry I'm not even sweating. Biggest loss I got was 10 troops in a 500v500~!

For some reason, Cavalry with spears are decent but land their hits half the time whereas archers are literally aimbots.
I'd say it also doesn't help that most of the time the enemy doesn't react when you pelt him with arrows, Infantry just stands there and takes it.

Some Sturgian troops have pretty weak stats too... I'm currently playing on 1.1.0 Beta version, but on the version right before that I remember the Ulfhednar being weaker than the Battanian Falxmen, even if they were 1 Tier over. So you end up spending more gold for a weaker overall army, it's kind of sad. I put my Sturgian save file on the side for the moment because of things like that, I'm a little disappointed because I was really hyped about having Nordic Vikings, but I'm struggling so much just to help them not suicide themselves.

 

[Bob Gnarly]

Sturgia does feel like they need a little love. I decided to do a play through with them simply for the challenge I knew they would be. I pretty much had to join them straight away as they got into a 2 front war and lost a third of their territory.

Their fiefs seem more spaced apart than other factions, on top of that you have to traverse snow which sucks if you're character isn't Sturgian. This makes defending and recruit runs a pain.

They're elite units are also lackluster so far, they could do with a spear IMO as thrown weapons and a short one handed axe don't seem to cut it on horseback. Right now they serve as a distraction until my archers and infantry can dwindle the enemy down. It also took an age to get them to tier 5 & 6 where they actually use horses, before that they're on foot. I think they even have skill points in Bow, but they don't even use a bow...

I ended up recruiting some Battanian elite archers and now we destroy everything except for the huge siege armies.

 

[karijus]

I decided to do a sturgian playthrough, and it works if you recruit battanian shooty bois, but the whole thing feels like hard mode. Lands are hard to defend, they get into wars all the time, and the units are a bit screwed up. For example I noticed their noble cav has high skill with bows, so I assumed they are like a combination of cav archers and knights, but apparently it's just a mistake lol. Pretty much have to use this mod to play the game atm https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/73

 

[VictorF]

Ueah, Sturgia got wrecked in my game too

 

[Jarl Malcolm]

In my experience, Sturgia can become really dominating with good tactics, the best example I can come up with is this :
If I'm alone with 60 troops (25 Heavy Infantry, 5 Shock Infantry, 10 Cavalry, 20 Archers), I use a mixture of Sturgian (65%) Sea Raiders (20%) and Skolderbrotva + Forest People (15%) against 200 Khuzaits, I'll win with merely 5 casualties in Realistic. Shieldwall, Hill for the Archers, Druzh and Cav used as Counter-Stream against Horse Archers and enemy Cav. and it can be extremely devastating.
The thing is... If I join an army, and we are 300 Sturgians against those 200 Khuzaits, we are going to lose, everytime. The AI doesn't use the Shieldwall tactics and just charge, they try to flank Horse Archers instead of just ramming them full force counter-stream. I reckon Sturgian Veteran Warrior as the most powerful infantry in the game right now, if used properly. (Wish they would rename them Huskarls, or even Varyag and find another name for the Noble Varyag, because 'Veteran Warrior' is really generic for such a great unit)
Sturgia has my favourite troop tree, three choices of Infantry, Skirmish Cavalry and adequate Archers. I reckon the problem right now is not only the troops that could use a (small) buff, but they need the AI to use them at full strength, it can really make a difference.
In this game (Sturgia, started in e.1.0.0 30th of March and updated ever since) we have half the map, but without player intervention, they really don't survive.

 

[daxiapi777]

You dont really need any ingame testing at the this point. Just look at their troop stats which are totally off the track. Their druzhina cavalry have 280 bow skills which they dont use and only 80 in polearm which they do use. This happens to many other of their elite troops.

 

[bigbalzzz]

change difficulty to challenging and the the strug ai becomes smarter and uses shield proper and destorys everything infantry rangers and cavs and become super syian but if you play in low difficulty they are not strong

 

[Lyrsten]

War Declaration on many factions

I updated the thread since i see you used it for a good point.
I did continue that save for a while, and Sturgia sure did declare another war on Vlandia while i was trying to hold Battania off

 

[High chief Kieran]

i have seen sturgia steamroll a few times.
also i have done a few playtroughs in which i recruited only sturgian troops, it worked very well indeed, all you need to remember is to set them to shieldwall untill the lines clash, than tell them to spread out and than order them to attack (shieldwall is broken and units deal little damage in a shieldwall at the moment).
the Ulfhednar could use a buff but they still preform very well, just use them as flankers.
the archers are oke, they do their job, nothing special, and they function as they should.
cavalry works oke, again nothing special but to be honest with sturgia you should stick to infantry anyway.

the problem for sturgia is that the ai does not know how to handle shielded units. they should have their shields raised untill battle starts, than spread out a little bit than attack or the attack animation get blocked and the attack fails.
sturgia itself is balanced fine, it is the ai that needs work.

 

[MBeagleguy]

change difficulty to challenging and the the strug ai becomes smarter and uses shield proper and destorys everything infantry rangers and cavs and become super syian but if you play in low difficulty they are not strong

Is that evident when you use Sturgian troops against the AI?

And is it evident when the AI Stugia Kingdom faces other AI kingdoms through simulation?

 

[Sketchyad]

change difficulty to challenging and the the strug ai becomes smarter and uses shield proper and destorys everything infantry rangers and cavs and become super syian but if you play in low difficulty they are not strong

I'm not sure so about that. I tried all of levels and AI seem to be all same to me. I mean this is known bug so can't really see any difference as of now.

 

[Marcery]

I'm not sure so about that. I tried all of levels and AI seem to be all same to me. I mean this is known bug so can't really see any difference as of now.

Opposite for me, seems like increasing combat AI makes archer base factions weaker and infantry heavy armies stronger. In my khuzait play through when I fight Sturgia, It’s a challenge, they don’t break formation to chase my horse archers and my Calvary struggles against their infantry when it’s bunched up. AI seems to love the stein formation which I’ve noticed is really good for heavy infantry, they seem to fight properly in that formation. Battles against Sturgia came down to how much damage my horse archers could do to their infantry, they seem to sacrifice their archers and just sit in formation with their infantry, only time I could break them was when I surrounded them with archers and horse archers. Interestingly, the Battanians and Khuzaits seem worse on higher combat AI which is weird to me.