My impression on this mod so far is pretty much satisfactory though there are some issues with this mod.
I'm at about 200 days in the game ( in-game-days ) and I currently conquered half of Calradia.
In this mod, world seem to revolve around pike.
This mod turns 'Mount and Blade' into 'Mount and Pike'. ( this is not a sarcasm
)
Even you, you start the game with extremely long Pike which you can use to kill anything in one-two hit.
It is quite noticeable that Two- handed weapons somewhat became worthless as most of those weapons can
no longer be used on horseback.
( ironically huge pike which is 3 times the length of man can be used on horseback without big restriction )
I still use two-handed when enemy kills my horses or come too close but this almost never happens thanks to 300 length
of the pike.
-Field battle.
Still mostly about the pike. Extremely easy if enemies are wielding one handed or two handed weapon.
Extremely dangerous if enemy army is comprised of pikeman ( sadly it happens most of the time ).
One wrong charge can kill both you and your horse.
Good thing is that some cavalry also get a long pike and flanking the enemy pikeman with them works.
I also use pike myself and I am quite satisfied with the field battle.
-Siege battle (Offense )
Enemy at at the top of the ladder ( with more than 10 pikeman ) seems to kill any unit in a mere second.
( they were not supposed to attack through the wall but sadly its the problem with m&b itself )
I don't even bother sending 100 swadian knights up the ladder as
30-40 low tiered rookie pikemen can easily decimate the battle-hardned swadian knights from a distance.
Interestingly ratio of melee unit to archer is about 7:3 in the castle and cities. So besieging the castle or town is much easier
with mass archers. I just use 50-100 archers to pick them off from a safe distance.
Siege battle ( Defense )
All about the Pikeman. Period. I say with this was the easiest defense in all m&b mod I ever tried.
It was 80 my men vs 880 Nord army and I only lost 2 men plus few wounded. Pikeman just kills everything.
Bugs
-Inconceivable amount of loot from outlaws. I killed about 4-5 of them ( about 8 outlaws in each party )
and I easily amassed 10k + mid-end gears.
-Autoloot seems bugged, even after the fix ( adding two lines and changing 580 to 581 ). Sometimes
companion automatically equip items they cannot use. For instance, Arteminer equipped himself with heavy charger
( which requires 4 ridings ) when he had 2-3 riding skill.
Suggestions.
Overall, I liked the mod. This mod gave a new 'mount and pike' concept to the game and I really like the new way of
playing Mount and Blade. Sadly, I think there is still a huge problem with pike and it definitely requires some nerfing.
In the field battle, Pike seem to do fine ( though the damage is still huge ), but in the Siege battle, everything becomes
unbalanced because of pike.
Siege battle is supposed to be hard but there seem to be a very low possibility of winning the battle with melee units.
Low tiered troops should be given a crude pike with lowest damage or the damage of the pike they use should be lowered.
Siege battle and the pike are the only problem in this mod, other than that it is quite stable.