So it seems Heavy Infantry >>> Everything. Yes. Even with stamina penalties. The best army, easily, is 100% Heavy Infantry. Maybe an extremely micro-managed balanced composition could be of occasional advantage in open battles, but realistically it's not worth fielding one.
Shields, which are very prevalent, are durable and large enough that ranged units suck, especially since they're not particularly damaging against heavy armor in this game. And especially since bows in this game aren't doing piercing damage - and there aren't any crossbow units you can recruit that I could find at least.
Cavalry are just overpriced, because horses don't give you anywhere near as much power as they do in Native. They're not as heavily armored and you can knock units off their horses. For the PC, who can micro manage, yeah, a horse is nice. But NPCs just can't do it well enough.
Many weapons are utterly useless, making the troops that use them utterly useless(including some fairly expensive top tier troops). Particularly short blades that only do good piercing damage. Spears aren't great either. The NPCs suck at using them and over they're just not effective the way the game mechanics work. Axes and some swords and a few other weapons are good.
Going through the troop trees it's easy to eliminate too many from my list of things worth using. The ideal unit is VC is quite clearly: Heavy or at least medium armor, a shield, and an axe or sword(with good cutting damage).
Granted, native has similar issues, but there's more variety when it comes to strong options. More good blunt/piercing weapons troops to choose from to counter heavy armor, in particular, and of course archers and mounted units being worth a damn makes things a lot more interesting. Maybe they were too strong in native since Mamlukes and Rhodok Crossbowmen were a bit absurd in their ideal environments.
So while Viking Conquest is a fun DLC/mod for the setting and some interesting options outside of combat, I am having a hard time seeing myself put a lot of time into while the combat is so one dimensional. Which is a shame.
I can understand many of the weapon/armor traits are aimed at realism, but I think some compromises need to be made for gameplay. The AI being godawful at using horses and spears, and the weakness of thrusting weapons in general, should be taken into account. An alternative, of course, would be making it substantially harder to field lots of heavily armored troops. Right now they're not that expensive, and you kinda need them to counter the AI groups that use lots of them.
Shields, which are very prevalent, are durable and large enough that ranged units suck, especially since they're not particularly damaging against heavy armor in this game. And especially since bows in this game aren't doing piercing damage - and there aren't any crossbow units you can recruit that I could find at least.
Cavalry are just overpriced, because horses don't give you anywhere near as much power as they do in Native. They're not as heavily armored and you can knock units off their horses. For the PC, who can micro manage, yeah, a horse is nice. But NPCs just can't do it well enough.
Many weapons are utterly useless, making the troops that use them utterly useless(including some fairly expensive top tier troops). Particularly short blades that only do good piercing damage. Spears aren't great either. The NPCs suck at using them and over they're just not effective the way the game mechanics work. Axes and some swords and a few other weapons are good.
Going through the troop trees it's easy to eliminate too many from my list of things worth using. The ideal unit is VC is quite clearly: Heavy or at least medium armor, a shield, and an axe or sword(with good cutting damage).
Granted, native has similar issues, but there's more variety when it comes to strong options. More good blunt/piercing weapons troops to choose from to counter heavy armor, in particular, and of course archers and mounted units being worth a damn makes things a lot more interesting. Maybe they were too strong in native since Mamlukes and Rhodok Crossbowmen were a bit absurd in their ideal environments.
So while Viking Conquest is a fun DLC/mod for the setting and some interesting options outside of combat, I am having a hard time seeing myself put a lot of time into while the combat is so one dimensional. Which is a shame.
I can understand many of the weapon/armor traits are aimed at realism, but I think some compromises need to be made for gameplay. The AI being godawful at using horses and spears, and the weakness of thrusting weapons in general, should be taken into account. An alternative, of course, would be making it substantially harder to field lots of heavily armored troops. Right now they're not that expensive, and you kinda need them to counter the AI groups that use lots of them.
