Now that Captain is separate from the other modes (and somehow still has players?), the goal should be to get it into a good balance state prior to full release, the final influx of new players.
Games like Conqueror's Blade, Blood of Steel, and Tiger Knight demonstrate that there's interest in this type of game, but no one's been able to do it right. Bannerlord has the best engine of the four, but critically lower developer attention.
Here's my best take on how to fix the meta:
History of Monoclass Metas
To my recollection, here's a history of the captain metas:
To address this, these statements are self-evident: (well that's the most useless sentence I've ever written)
On the third: it's a common request that one class hard counters another. For example, it's been suggested on here quite a bit that cav should mow down archers with impunity, and then infantry delete cav with similar impunity. It's also been proposed that Skirmishers need to "counter" something to be relevant. That's not what we should look for. Some classes will always have the advantage against others, and if both players play equally well, then the the "countering" class should end up with the advantage. But if the "countered" player positions better and has better perks for the matchup, then they should end up with the advantage.
(On a tangent, Rock-Paper-Scissors balance doesn't work if rock has the agency to choose who it fights, when it fights, and where it fights, but paper and scissors do not. People suggesting this conveniently ignore the massive agency advantage that cav has.)
This idea extends to full comps, where one team shouldn't have an insurmountable advantage that the other might as well just AFK in spawn and wait for the next round. The outcome should be decided in game, not in the class selection screen.
Each Class Should Have Unique Utility
In other games (and Skirmish to an extent), you want to use different classes because they perform roles that other classes cannot. The most prolific example is the "trinity" of tank, damage, and support. They each have a role that covers each others weaknesses. Back to Captain, you should *want* different classes in your comp. You should be weaker if you're running a monoclass, not stronger. This means that the various roles or jobs must be sufficiently different and seek to accomplish different things.
Therefore, the goal should be to determine some unique utilities that each class can do, and push them in that direction.
Another reason why we need distinct roles is because at the moment, Light and Heavy share the same role, or at least a very similar one. This leads to one being almost always better than the other. Why would you take Rangers if Fians are better? Why take Fians if Rangers are better? Light and Heavy classes do practically the same thing, so if one is 1% better, you'd always take that and not the other.
This means at the moment, 3 of the 7 classes in every faction have no purpose because there's another class that does the same thing, just better, that you could pick instead. Additionally, some Heavy Infantry is superior than its factions Shock, meaning 4 of 7 are dead. Add in Skirmishers, and 5 of 7 classes are either horrible or redundant depending on faction.
Here's what I think each class role should be:
Here's a summary of the changes:
Light vs Heavy Infantry: Light Infantry should have high movement speed so they can flee in kite builds and not get caught, as well as be the ones chasing down kite builds themselves. They should have access to shield/spear/jav perks to deal with different enemy threats. Heavy Infantry should take part in more defensive comps with slower movement speed but more HP and reduced weapon damage.
Light vs Heavy Archers: Light Archers should have high mobility (faster than every non-mounted troop apart from Shock), lots of arrows, but low damage per shot. Heavy Archers should be the opposite: low mobility, small quiver sizes, but high damage per shot. Light Archers should also be bad in melee while Heavy Archers are decent. This gives them two distinct roles and reasons to take one or the other.
Light vs Heavy Cavalry: Light Cavalry should be damage dealing glass cannons with couch lances, while Heavy Cavalry are beefy utility to disrupt archers/infantry, but low damage (lose couch lances). Again, this gives them separate roles, and prevents Heavy Cav from being categorically superior.
As for Shock, Skirmishers, and Horse Archers, they already have clear roles, and will just need balancing.
Suggested Changes
Movement Speed should be changed to give Light Archers the ability to kite more easily, as well as make classes feel more distinct from each other. The current speeds are leftover from skirmish, so at the very least that should get looked into. Here's my take:
The Hit Points for Infantry should also be increased. This increases TTK and shifts Infantry value somewhat from damage to tankiness. Like everything here, this would need to be tested and balanced appropriately.
The Weapons (default and perks) of various units should be adjusted. (I could go through individually for every class but that would take a lot of time.)
Army Size for Heavy Cavalry should be increased to account for the significant damage nerf:
New Composition Archetypes
These changes should lead to three main comp directions, with plenty of favored troops in each:
Kite is well known: run away, do damage, run away, keep doing damage, when you're about to run out of morale then all-in your troops and finish the round against the weakened opponent. The reworked Light Infantry should fit in this comp because it can keep up and protect Light Archers, while Heavy Infantry would be too slow to do so. Skirmishers fit in if you expect the enemy to use hard cover most of the time, meaning Light Archers won't have a long time to shoot all of their arrows, and you'd want the higher burst damage of javs when the enemy is exposed.
Turtle/Defensive is a known playstyle, but doesn't really have a name: camp one flag, threaten another with players or cav to avoid losing too much morale, and then camp on the final flag. Reworked Heavy Archers fit this style well, trading the endless pewpew of Light Archers for higher burst damage. Skirmishers like the timing as well, as you force enemies to come into range of their javs.
Essentially, the goal is to create a dynamic where you have to ask:
As a final note, there will always be a meta, with some comps seen as better than others, but there's a huge difference between a healthy meta and an unhealthy one. I've posted at length on what a healthy meta looks like in the past, but to be brief, every troop should be viable on some map, for some audience, ideally with new and veteran players having a variety of strong choices for each faction matchup and on every map.
For what an unhealthy meta looks like, just look at the history of Captain.
Games like Conqueror's Blade, Blood of Steel, and Tiger Knight demonstrate that there's interest in this type of game, but no one's been able to do it right. Bannerlord has the best engine of the four, but critically lower developer attention.
Here's my best take on how to fix the meta:
History of Monoclass Metas
To my recollection, here's a history of the captain metas:
- Cavalry -- Just pick 6 cav, put them on charge and afk win against full pikes
- Archer Heavy -- 4-5 archers with 1-2 unfortunate shield players pushing up to give their archers better angles/time to kill enemies, but dying in the process because they wouldn't point their shields in the right direction
- Shock Rush -- Started with a 1-2 cav variation to deal with archers, then people stopped picking archers, so it went to 5-6 shock and 0-1 shield
- Shock and Kite -- Full kite comps with 4 archers 2 cav (or something close) were playable against teams that lacked coordination with Inf Rush, but if you're better coordinated, you'd also win Shock vs Shock
- Cav Rambo -- 4-6 cav and 0-2 spears/pikes, where players would park their cav on a slope guarded by inf (or not) and go solo the enemy players and their bots for the next 10 minutes and then finish the enemy off with all their cav when morale was close to running out. (The lack of commas in that sentence represents how dreary rambo is.)
- Current: Inf Rush -- (Probably) With cav nerfed and spears/pikes more competent, cav Rambo is probably dead, so Inf Rush will be the best comp again. Like before, a well coordinated team with archers or a good team on Rambo will probably be able to beat a less coordinated team, but between equal teams, Inf Rush will be meta.
To address this, these statements are self-evident: (well that's the most useless sentence I've ever written)
- There should be multiple viable comps and playstyles
- Comps and playstyles should not be monoclass
- Comps and playstyles should not hard counter each other
On the third: it's a common request that one class hard counters another. For example, it's been suggested on here quite a bit that cav should mow down archers with impunity, and then infantry delete cav with similar impunity. It's also been proposed that Skirmishers need to "counter" something to be relevant. That's not what we should look for. Some classes will always have the advantage against others, and if both players play equally well, then the the "countering" class should end up with the advantage. But if the "countered" player positions better and has better perks for the matchup, then they should end up with the advantage.
(On a tangent, Rock-Paper-Scissors balance doesn't work if rock has the agency to choose who it fights, when it fights, and where it fights, but paper and scissors do not. People suggesting this conveniently ignore the massive agency advantage that cav has.)
This idea extends to full comps, where one team shouldn't have an insurmountable advantage that the other might as well just AFK in spawn and wait for the next round. The outcome should be decided in game, not in the class selection screen.
Each Class Should Have Unique Utility
In other games (and Skirmish to an extent), you want to use different classes because they perform roles that other classes cannot. The most prolific example is the "trinity" of tank, damage, and support. They each have a role that covers each others weaknesses. Back to Captain, you should *want* different classes in your comp. You should be weaker if you're running a monoclass, not stronger. This means that the various roles or jobs must be sufficiently different and seek to accomplish different things.
Therefore, the goal should be to determine some unique utilities that each class can do, and push them in that direction.
Another reason why we need distinct roles is because at the moment, Light and Heavy share the same role, or at least a very similar one. This leads to one being almost always better than the other. Why would you take Rangers if Fians are better? Why take Fians if Rangers are better? Light and Heavy classes do practically the same thing, so if one is 1% better, you'd always take that and not the other.
This means at the moment, 3 of the 7 classes in every faction have no purpose because there's another class that does the same thing, just better, that you could pick instead. Additionally, some Heavy Infantry is superior than its factions Shock, meaning 4 of 7 are dead. Add in Skirmishers, and 5 of 7 classes are either horrible or redundant depending on faction.
Here's what I think each class role should be:
- Light Infantry: Survivability, Mobility
- Heavy Infantry: Survivability, Tank
-- - Shock Infantry: Damage, Melee
- Skirmishers: Damage, Mid-range
- Light Archers: Damage, Long-range continuous
- Heavy Archers: Damage, All-range burst
-- - Light Cavalry: Utility, Melee damage
- Heavy Cavalry: Utility, Survivability
- Horse Archers: Utility, Ranged damage
Here's a summary of the changes:
Light vs Heavy Infantry: Light Infantry should have high movement speed so they can flee in kite builds and not get caught, as well as be the ones chasing down kite builds themselves. They should have access to shield/spear/jav perks to deal with different enemy threats. Heavy Infantry should take part in more defensive comps with slower movement speed but more HP and reduced weapon damage.
Light vs Heavy Archers: Light Archers should have high mobility (faster than every non-mounted troop apart from Shock), lots of arrows, but low damage per shot. Heavy Archers should be the opposite: low mobility, small quiver sizes, but high damage per shot. Light Archers should also be bad in melee while Heavy Archers are decent. This gives them two distinct roles and reasons to take one or the other.
Light vs Heavy Cavalry: Light Cavalry should be damage dealing glass cannons with couch lances, while Heavy Cavalry are beefy utility to disrupt archers/infantry, but low damage (lose couch lances). Again, this gives them separate roles, and prevents Heavy Cav from being categorically superior.
As for Shock, Skirmishers, and Horse Archers, they already have clear roles, and will just need balancing.
Suggested Changes
Movement Speed should be changed to give Light Archers the ability to kite more easily, as well as make classes feel more distinct from each other. The current speeds are leftover from skirmish, so at the very least that should get looked into. Here's my take:
- Light Infantry speed increased by 3.
- Heavy Infantry speed decreased by 4.
- Shock Infantry speed increased by 3.
- Skirmishers speed increased by 1.
- Light Archers speed increased by 10.
- Heavy Archers speed increased by 5.
(Shock + Light Infantry)
Battania Savage: 87
Sturgia Berserker: 86
Vlandia Peasant Levy : 85
Battania Clan Warrior: 85
Khuzait Rabble: 84
(Light Archers)
Vlandia Arbelist: 84
Sturgia Hunter: 84
Khuzait Steppe Bow: 84
Empire Archer Militia: 84
Battania Ranger: 84
Aserai Archer: 84
(Shock + Skirmishers)
Vlandia Voulgier: 84
Empire Menavlion Inf.: 84
Aserai Guard: 84
Sturgia Brigand: 84
Empire Recruit: 84
Battania Wildling: 84
Aserai Skirmisher: 84
Sturgia Warrior: 82
Aserai Tribal Warrior: 82
(Heavy Archers)
Empire Palatine Guard: 79
Aserai Veteran: 79
Vlandia Sharpshooter: 78
Khuzait Khan's Guard: 78
Battania Fiann: 78
(Heavy Infantry)
Vlandia Sergeant: 76
Sturgia Varyag: 76
Khuzait Spear Infantry: 76
Empire Legionary: 76
Battania Oathbound: 76
Battania Savage: 87
Sturgia Berserker: 86
Vlandia Peasant Levy : 85
Battania Clan Warrior: 85
Khuzait Rabble: 84
(Light Archers)
Vlandia Arbelist: 84
Sturgia Hunter: 84
Khuzait Steppe Bow: 84
Empire Archer Militia: 84
Battania Ranger: 84
Aserai Archer: 84
(Shock + Skirmishers)
Vlandia Voulgier: 84
Empire Menavlion Inf.: 84
Aserai Guard: 84
Sturgia Brigand: 84
Empire Recruit: 84
Battania Wildling: 84
Aserai Skirmisher: 84
Sturgia Warrior: 82
Aserai Tribal Warrior: 82
(Heavy Archers)
Empire Palatine Guard: 79
Aserai Veteran: 79
Vlandia Sharpshooter: 78
Khuzait Khan's Guard: 78
Battania Fiann: 78
(Heavy Infantry)
Vlandia Sergeant: 76
Sturgia Varyag: 76
Khuzait Spear Infantry: 76
Empire Legionary: 76
Battania Oathbound: 76
The Hit Points for Infantry should also be increased. This increases TTK and shifts Infantry value somewhat from damage to tankiness. Like everything here, this would need to be tested and balanced appropriately.
- Light Infantry +10 HP
- Heavy Infantry +20 HP
- Shock Infantry +10 HP
The Weapons (default and perks) of various units should be adjusted. (I could go through individually for every class but that would take a lot of time.)
- Heavy Infantry, one lower tier of weapons
- Light Archers, quiver sizes are already large, but some could use 1-2 more arrows per quiver, and all should have the Extra Arrows perk
- Heavy Archers, quiver sizes reduced to 19-23, arrow damage significantly increased, and most if not all should lose the Extra Arrows perk
- Light Cavalry, swap weapons with their Heavy Cavalry counterparts, giving them access to couch lances and shields at the same time. The Nomad should have access to the glaive (with no shield as an option). The Courser should have the glaive option again (in addition to lance+shield)
- Heavy Cavalry, get the crappy weapons that Light Cavalry has. To describe it once more, Light Cav's role should be slayers capable of hard hitting charges, while Heavy Cav should be an armored support unit that doesn't get as many kills put provides high utility.
Army Size for Heavy Cavalry should be increased to account for the significant damage nerf:
- Heavy Cavalry, +2
New Composition Archetypes
These changes should lead to three main comp directions, with plenty of favored troops in each:
- Rush -- Light Infantry, Shock, Skirmishers, Light Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry
- Kite -- Light Infantry, Skirmishers, Light Archers, Heavy Cavalry, Horse Archers
- Turtle -- Heavy Infantry, Skirmishers, Heavy Archers, Heavy Cavalry
Kite is well known: run away, do damage, run away, keep doing damage, when you're about to run out of morale then all-in your troops and finish the round against the weakened opponent. The reworked Light Infantry should fit in this comp because it can keep up and protect Light Archers, while Heavy Infantry would be too slow to do so. Skirmishers fit in if you expect the enemy to use hard cover most of the time, meaning Light Archers won't have a long time to shoot all of their arrows, and you'd want the higher burst damage of javs when the enemy is exposed.
Turtle/Defensive is a known playstyle, but doesn't really have a name: camp one flag, threaten another with players or cav to avoid losing too much morale, and then camp on the final flag. Reworked Heavy Archers fit this style well, trading the endless pewpew of Light Archers for higher burst damage. Skirmishers like the timing as well, as you force enemies to come into range of their javs.
Essentially, the goal is to create a dynamic where you have to ask:
- What threats (shock, javs, arrows, cav) will the enemy have?
- What defenses (shields, spears, cover) will the enemy have?
- How much time will be spent at long-range, medium-range, and close-range?
- What comps and classes work well with this map?
- What comps and classes work well with our faction against their faction?
As a final note, there will always be a meta, with some comps seen as better than others, but there's a huge difference between a healthy meta and an unhealthy one. I've posted at length on what a healthy meta looks like in the past, but to be brief, every troop should be viable on some map, for some audience, ideally with new and veteran players having a variety of strong choices for each faction matchup and on every map.
For what an unhealthy meta looks like, just look at the history of Captain.
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