Nord Balancing

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Iblan

Iblan

Recruit
Just out of curiosity, I was wondering if anybody else was experiencing high losses when fighting the Nords? I have made myself a king, largely on the defeated Swadian territory, so most of my troops are Swadians, but even when I attack with knights and royal knights (I am using OSP, not sure if royal knights are part of the vanilla Diplomacy) they suffer inordinately large losses, and I generally win because of larger numbers, not because of superior troop quality (I would have thought a royal knight would be superior to a Nord warrior, which is what the majority of their armies are made up of). I know that the Nords are supposed to have the best hand to hand infantry in the game, but it seems a little bit over the top. I suppose it is also worth noting that when my infantry go up against the Nords they get slaughtered, even if I set damage to minimum. Has anyone else had this problem, or possibly have solutions to deal with it?  :?

Thanks
-Iblan

My face after fighting the Nords:  :shock:
 
If you can't beat them, join em?

But seriously, Nords are just awesome in mellee combat and they also kill horses pretty quickly because of their large weapons + throwing weapons. The best way to counter them in my opinion is using ranged troops, while your cavalry rotate around their line and draw their attention, so they have their shields facing the cavalry instead of the archers/crossbowmen. I'd recommend using either the best archers or best crossbowmen you can find, i.e. Vaegir Marksmen or Rhodok Sharpshooters if you use the vanilla troop trees.

Remember that Nords don't have cavalry and only average archers. If they also had normal infantry, they would plain suck.
 
Haha, true I suppose. I was afraid someone might say archers...I hate archers, they aren't very useful until they reach the upper stages of development, and that obviously takes awhile (even with three people with 5 training skill in my party! :wink:). I will try the flank/distraction technique and hope it works. I guess my real frustration is not that they are so good (I mean Swadian Royal knights are bomb, as well as Rhodok Sharpshooters, I mean talk about a headache try to capture a castle with 50 of those guys...ouch), it is that they are so good in their early stages. A Nord warrior is already as/more powerful then a Rhodok sergeant or possibly even a footknight, and they are still two stages from the top! =P
 
I wish I had a denar for every time someone, myself included, asked why they got their butt beat by the Nords. I could retire in comfort. The Captain has given some useful info, but basically, don't go toe to toe with them, you will lose your toes.
 
Iblan said:
Haha, true I suppose. I was afraid someone might say archers...I hate archers, they aren't very useful until they reach the upper stages of development, and that obviously takes awhile (even with three people with 5 training skill in my party! :wink:). I will try the flank/distraction technique and hope it works.
Click to expand...

Archers are not so good because most mellee units use shields, and they catch the vast majority of arrows fired at them. If you can manage to distract them enough so they don't face your archers directly, they can be quite effective. But yeah, training them to top level can be a pain.
 
If my army is Swadian, i usually put infantry and ranged on the front (at the top of a hill if possible) and take command of every mounted man by myself then try to flank the Nords. Usually what happens is that they will turn on me, but keep advancing towards my infantry and ranged troops, becoming exposed. When they are about to reach my line, i charge on them. If i keep my fellow knights following me i can usually do lots of damage without losing too many men. If you let them roam around in charge mode, eventually they´ll get isolated and chopped by mobs of enemy infantry. Also its important to keep the infantry and ranged working together.

Off course it might happen that the Nords will being with a full charge or charge into your cavalry if you flank them. At that point its better to cut through their isolated troops with your cavalry then retreat towards your line.

P.S It also helps having a high surgery and tactics level.
 
Yep that's a sound tactic! I do think Surgery is cheating though, I myself never get more than 5 points in it on one of my companions. I like a bit of realism, when people hack in on each other with sword and axes and get arrows and bolts in their necks, they tend to die.
 
Articulo34 said:
If my army is Swadian, i usually put infantry and ranged on the front (at the top of a hill if possible) and take command of every mounted man by myself then try to flank the Nords. Usually what happens is that they will turn on me, but keep advancing towards my infantry and ranged troops, becoming exposed. When they are about to reach my line, i charge on them. If i keep my fellow knights following me i can usually do lots of damage without losing too many men. If you let them roam around in charge mode, eventually they´ll get isolated and chopped by mobs of enemy infantry. Also its important to keep the infantry and ranged working together.

Off course it might happen that the Nords will being with a full charge or charge into your cavalry if you flank them. At that point its better to cut through their isolated troops with your cavalry then retreat towards your line.

P.S It also helps having a high surgery and tactics level.
Click to expand...

I pretty much do exactly that, accept that once I have flanked them I generally charge as opposed to just waiting. I'll try waiting and see if I can get them to face me. And yes, Tactics and Surgery were some of the first things I invested in, along with First Aid and Wound Treatment.
Captain_Octavius said:
Yep that's a sound tactic! I do think Surgery is cheating though, I myself never get more than 5 points in it on one of my companions. I like a bit of realism, when people hack in on each other with sword and axes and get arrows and bolts in their necks, they tend to die.
Click to expand...

Not if they are barbarians with DULL swords and axes! :D
 
In warband 1.32 Nord archers have gotten a lot of love,
with 7 athltics, 5 powerdray same armer has a sea raider. bodkin arrows, longbow (also got loven)
On top of that two handed axes 4 ironflesh 3 power strike Nord vetren archers are not the so-so troop thay use to be

 
Ya, those two handed axes are MURDEROUS! I go up to slash a few archers and they all pull battle axes and proceed to bash the hell out of my shield before removing my head from it's proper place atop my neck.  :x
 
Iblan said:
I pretty much do exactly that, accept that once I have flanked them I generally charge as opposed to just waiting. I'll try waiting and see if I can get them to face me. And yes, Tactics and Surgery were some of the first things I invested in, along with First Aid and Wound Treatment.
Click to expand...
Also if you dont think your front line can hold or dont want to risk charging with the rest of the knights you can use the minimap to make them flank by themselves while you take command of the infantry and the ranged troops.
 
I wouldn't know. I'm always in the shield wall with my Nordsmen cutting down anything and everything that comes into contact  8-)

And yes, the extra love the Norse Archers get has been a blessing. It has made my Norse campaign much easier. The Huscarls still make up 70% of my army, but it's still good to have these archers back you up.

If you think the Nords are tough in the field, they're even tougher during siege, both defense and offense (Rhodok, I would argue, it only good defending a siege.)
 
Rhodoks are also strong in sieges, but only if the player controls them so he can put the Sharpshooters in a line at a distance from the castle wall.

It also depends a lot on the difficulty of the campaign AI. If it is at Good, the lords will have tons of top tier troops. Crossbowmen are relatively more effective against heavily armoured (i.e. high tier) units than archers, and archers are relatively more effective against lightly armoured low tier units. Since I play at the highest difficulty possible, my choice of ranged units is often the Rhodok Sharpshooter.
 
well i just take em on the open field, charge em with cav, then have the infantry move in to mop us whatever's left, and have the archers support the whole time.(The Calradian version of Blitzkreig)

During seiges, well a mixture of faction infantry work + Rhodok/Swadian sharpshooters and/or Vaegir marksmen and u win (as long as u use both of them correctly)
 
Sharpshooters are deadly when it comes to defending a castle, it is insane. The Nords are also very good at holding them, for obvious reasons. I suppose that is another question, do people have trouble with sieges? I find that basically I have to outnumber them a lot to a little (which is realistic, I will admit), but basically I get to the top of the ladder, attempt to jump over everybody off the backside of the wall, and then I head up the stairs to flank the enemy. It works 25% of the time, which isn't very good...=/
 
best way to kill nords is to have archers in the middle and calvary and infantry on both sides that way you can outflank the enemy once they reach your archers with 2 sides completely annilating them and the archers can still attack easily
 
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