[S] Pike and Blade 3.5: Riders on the Storm!

[Aeon221]

Great job dude, love how you've put so much thought into the tactical aspects of the troop and their balance.

Just a coupla suggestions;

1.Maybe you should keep the khergits as a purely mounted faction, since generally as a counter, light missile cavalry never has an issue fighting any form of infantry in the open. The armoured horsemen work fine, since the Golden Horde did have heavy cav, similar both in form and function to the Byzantine cataphracts.

2.You could rename the Cleavermen as Guildsmen, since the Rhodoks are based upon an urbanized culture(Lombards, Venetian etc..), that would make sense given their generally tool-based weapons. Urban mob/rabble given weapons and some drill.

3. Mounted crossbowmen for mercs are awesome. I've been working on a personalized mod that specifically gives the mercs a unique culture quite foreign to the other Calradian factions, much like the better condottiere, well-armed and armoured with more modernized weapons but cheap horses, think early dragoons,
mounted for quick deployment and for light skirmishing against infantry, but best dismounted on tactical high ground against true cavalry.

All the Khergs are still mounted, so no problem there. I even made their recruit always spawn mounted! Just some of them are actually from other factions.

The Cleaverman issue was resolved in 2.5, when I totally changed the Rhodok tree from cleaver/shield centric to pike centric and gave them a bunch of weapon specialists (glaivemen, cleavermen who only use a cleaver, pikemen and macemen, among other units), but that wouldn't have been too bad a solution.

Your merc idea is interesting, but I'm not sure how you'd make a unit work worse on horseback than on foot. I mean I guess you could give them some foot only weapons, that might work. And as long as you're making them only for humans, you won't run into the issue of the AI not ever dismounting them.

Speaking of mercs and the AI, I'm thinking that if I update the mercs in game, it'd be nice to see the AI use em. So I'll probably have a few spawn into the AI armies, with spawns based on flavor (so Rhods might get 1 t3 merc cav per high end reinforcement party, while Swads might get 1 t3 merc inf and 'nids getting 1 t3 merc xbow).

Oh, and if anyone has ideas on how to make the Khergs cooler, I'd love to hear em!

 

[androsh]

Heyo, I've been trying to download the new awesome version, but alas, every time I click on the download icon, it offers me to download a file named "pike", that seems to be unusable. Am I doing something wrong? 

 

[Leowulf]

All the Khergs are still mounted, so no problem there. I even made their recruit always spawn mounted! Just some of them are actually from other factions.

- Aye, I see where you're going with that. If only there was someway of allowing the Khergits to actually really recruit troops from other factions since traditionally, the mongolians(like the romans) did tend to utilize auxiliary troops.

The Cleaverman issue was resolved in 2.5, when I totally changed the Rhodok tree from cleaver/shield centric to pike centric and gave them a bunch of weapon specialists (glaivemen, cleavermen who only use a cleaver, pikemen and macemen, among other units), but that wouldn't have been too bad a solution.

- My bad then, I thought you were looking for a new name for the cleavermen, hence "Guildsmen".

Your merc idea is interesting, but I'm not sure how you'd make a unit work worse on horseback than on foot. I mean I guess you could give them some foot only weapons, that might work. And as long as you're making them only for humans, you won't run into the issue of the AI not ever dismounting them.

- Well, there are a number of ways; mounting merc troops on sumpter or saddle horses, ensuring that they do not have many points in horse archery(makes a massive difference), giving them crossbows that don't reload on horseback would be another. Makes sense too, since mercs seem to come from a generic western medieval culture not represented in Calradia. What i really want is for the AI to actually dismount them on strategic high ground, which is at the moment, wishful thinking.

Speaking of mercs and the AI, I'm thinking that if I update the mercs in game, it'd be nice to see the AI use em. So I'll probably have a few spawn into the AI armies, with spawns based on flavor (so Rhods might get 1 t3 merc cav per high end reinforcement party, while Swads might get 1 t3 merc inf and 'nids getting 1 t3 merc xbow).

- Good idea. Could give them some distinctive gear to highlight the difference between merc and regular.

Ps: If you like a little more flavour for the khergit, you could modify the steppe horses via the item editor. Scale them down and slow them down a little.

 

[flazard]

Heyo, I've been trying to download the new awesome version, but alas, every time I click on the download icon, it offers me to download a file named "pike", that seems to be unusable. Am I doing something wrong? 

just download it and rename it to pike.rar, worked for me.

 

[androsh]

Heyo, I've been trying to download the new awesome version, but alas, every time I click on the download icon, it offers me to download a file named "pike", that seems to be unusable. Am I doing something wrong? 

just download it and rename it to pike.rar, worked for me.

That... worked. Holy crap, it worked! Thank you, flazard

Oh, and while I'm at it, here's some feedback:

- Had a battle with a Swadian noble. He had 80 dudes, I had 50. My army was 1/3 archers (some skirmishers, some crossbow men), the  rest was Rhodok infantry, ranging from basic pikemen and cleavermen to sergeants. I won, losing only 10 men  I lined up my archers in front of the infantry, and made the latter charge at the last possible moment. Meanwhile, I assaulted the enemy's behind with mah two-handed axe and my Companions. It was glorious.

So far, I'm really liking the infantry-based gameplay, even though I'm used to fast-paced cavalry battles. It's pretty cool, making my guys form up in lines, and organize them according to the situation, and knowing that if I win it's because of good tactics, rather than telling my troops to CHARGE all the time.

 

[Aeon221]

It seems like MBrepository doesn't process ampersands well, unlike Rapidshare, so I renamed my file and reuploaded it to fix the problem. Dunno what's with that, but it shouldn't happen again.

And yeah, I too prefer the primary tactic to not be WAAAGH all the time, although the option is still there with the Khergs =D

edit: Thanks for the combat report against the Swads! I agree, nothing is quite so nice as hitting them with the assault troopers and watching the casualty count just soar!

I might, and this is shocking, need to increase the Swadian/Sarranid Cav spawn rates, as I'm worried that the Swadians in particular have poor infantry and poor assault troops and won't be able to break the Rhodoks lines without their assault cav! The Sarranid axemen are extremely good, and they've got their skirmishers, so I'm less worried there -- but the Swads are less proficient on foot and might be a little underpowered, even with their beefed up knights!

 

[Aeon221]

v2.51 has been released!

This is a bugfix and balancing patch. Replacement rate on the Swadknights and Mammies was a little too slow. Although it was a cast iron ***** to kill the bastards the first time (I've found that a good rule of thumb is 60 pikes for every 15 Knights!)  it was taking way too long for their lords to fully recover from a good old fashioned beatdown.

In entirely unrelated news, the Veteran Boardmen apparently missed the memo that they'll no longer be receiving a t5 training session, as they were still signing up for Glaiveman classes. As a consolation prize, they've all been reassigned to TPS Reports 110, which counts as both a writing and a PE credit, so they're all pleased with that.

Some Sarranid Squires may have believed that they had an exchange student program with Swadia, while the Swadian Squires apparently forgot to register for classes! We've remedied that error tout suite, so all should be good with them in the future.

There might be a few more bugs lurking in the woodpile, but I think that's most of em.

As of this post, the mod has received 614 downloads in total since 4.23.2010. Thanks!

 

[Leowulf]

Nice work. Will get to testing

By the by, have you ever thought of including rcm in this mod?

 

[Aeon221]

So I rebalanced AI spawn rates on the higher end units, as I was unhappy with how "brittle" their armies had become, and I'm fairly content with the results. Rhodok armies tend to do well on the field, although they also tend to need a numbers advantage due to the potency of enemy horse based assault units. But once you take those bad boys down, you'll find that your infantry can easily deal with the horse based faction's infantry.

I've found that enemy cavalry is most devastating when it engages pikes that are already engaged in melee with enemy infantry -- the pikes can clean up against either group individually, but collapse when engaged by both simultaneously. On several occasions I found myself taking a royal beating when the enemy picked up cavalry heavy reinforcements that charged into the flank of my pikes, who were spread out and engaged with enemy infantry -- even though immediately prior I had been crushing their army! So you've absolutely got to make careful use of support units to win.

The only units I find myself NOT using are the xbows! Now that I've got access to melee units whose damage output is fairly good, and skirmishers who have better close range stopping power, I don't really feel the need to bring them for anything other than sieges. The great thing about having so many different roles in every army is that I've got no doubt that other people are making great use of the xbows in field battles, and are totally neglecting the assault infantry lines!

I'm planning to do a longer, flavor text based manual explaining how to play with the units in the mod and how the command system works, so feel free to post fun looking screenies! I thought I had taken a few, but apparently I took em wrong, so no looking at some of my recent fights -- which is unfortunate, because I had several wins where good tactics, rather than overwhelmingly potent units, pulled off some great wins against difficult odds.

Nice work. Will get to testing

By the by, have you ever thought of including rcm in this mod?

You're gonna have to explain that acronym, or at the least provide me a link to whatever it is!



edit:

Ok, for the interested I've posted in the readme section of the OP the unit trees for all the factions, as well as the final names for all the units. My goal has been to create a set of consistent naming conventions for the factions.

All the factions (except the Khergits) use the same four ranks for t1-t4: Recruit, Militia, No Modifier and Veteran. It's in the t5/t6 ranks that you see the variations. The Western inspired factions (Rhodoks and Swadians) use Sergeant for t5 units, while the Eastern inspired factions (Sarranids and Vaegirs) use Guard for t5 units. The Nords use the terms Huscarl and Thegn for their t5 and t6 unit, but I'm considering adding a t5 skirmisher to them, so it might not be done yet! All t6 units use an aristocratic term equivalent to Knight -- or at least they will! The Khergits do their own thing up until t5, at which point they use the Eastern Guard title.

I could use replacement terms for the Sarranid Mameluke and for the Vaegir Champion. It has to be a single word, short and have an aristocratic background equivalent to a knight. If I get any suggestions that I use, I'll name the v3 edition after the winners!

 

[Leowulf]

RCM is the realistic combat mod, it's essentially a rebalancing of weapon and armor properties to reflect realistic values. On second thought though, it'll probably be extraneous as you're already getting the balance and gameplay feel that you want. 

You could use "Boyar"  as a replacement for the vaegir champion title, "Aswaran" for the Sarranids.

 

[Aeon221]

RCM is the realistic combat mod, it's essentially a rebalancing of weapon and armor properties to reflect realistic values. On second thought though, it'll probably be extraneous as you're already getting the balance and gameplay feel that you want. 

You could use "Boyar"  as a replacement for the vaegir champion title, "Aswaran" for the Sarranids.

I thought about boyar, but that's already grabbed by the lords themselves. Realistic Combat Mod is for MB, and I'm not so sure integrating it would be easy. Besides, it'd be a heck of a lot easier to integrate my units into RCM than to integrate RCM into my mod!

Aswaran is pretty good, I'll definitely consider it! I might just end up going with Knight, since it's the correct English translation, but a little flavor can be fun and people will probably get what it means.

 

[Livinus]

Hi there,

Big fan of your mod. There is just something i noticed when I was playing around with it. The Swadian armies include Sarranid squires and Sarranid Mamelukes. Could it be that there is some mix up there?

 

[Aeon221]

Hi there,

Big fan of your mod. There is just something i noticed when I was playing around with it. The Swadian armies include Sarranid squires and Sarranid Mamelukes. Could it be that there is some mix up there?

That was fixed in version 2.51, which was released on the 27th. It was a big shocker here as well!

If you're playing a game where you started in 2.5 and then just updated to 2.51, it'll take a bit for all the Mamelukes in the Swadian army to die off and be replaced with Knights. If you'd like to make it happen faster, you'll just have to kill all those lords off!

 

[SirWolf]

Very nice mod, really adds a lot more fun to large battles, and makes controlling armies interesting for a change.  Hopefully the TW will continue improving the AI with new patches. Kudos to you Aeon 

 

[Cassial]

I don't know about other people, but the Man-At-Arms seems... Incomplete now. I just feel as though he needs to have a stage after him to upgrade to. Maybe turn him into the two-handed sword wielding one?

 

[Aeon221]

Since I'm replying to Cassial and SirWolf anyway, here's an update on the status of 3.0!

I've changed all the Swadian lords to Baron to differentiate them from the Rhodok Counts. I know that the two countries sharing titles was a lore decision as the two were once one nation, but it makes using the Notes-Character screen to manage relations inconvenient as either faction. For the really die-hard loremonkies, I'll maintain a second version without this change.

I've fully implemented the standardized naming conventions, and added in a new Rhodok Crossbowman so that the Rhodoks are no longer getting a t5 ranged unit in a t4 slot.

I've also been tinkering with stats on some of the units, so some of them might be stronger than you remember, and others might be weaker.

Finally, the mercenary changes are ready to go, I'm just doing some testing to see whether they pop up in taverns.

I don't know about other people, but the Man-At-Arms seems... Incomplete now. I just feel as though he needs to have a stage after him to upgrade to. Maybe turn him into the two-handed sword wielding one?

I personally consider t5 horse units a balance risk (they're a little too easy to train for a lot of oomph), so the Man-at-Arms wouldn't get anything other than the option to upgrade to the Squire.

I personally like him the way he is, although I might consider giving him a 2h/lance combo instead of the lance/shield/sword combo he currently gets -- that might help differentiate him more from the knights, and make him the aggressive and expendable unit I'd like him to be.

Normally I would be extremely hesitant to couple mounted Swadians and blunt weapons, but that seems like a great spot to do it.

Very nice mod, really adds a lot more fun to large battles, and makes controlling armies interesting for a change.  Hopefully the TW will continue improving the AI with new patches. Kudos to you Aeon 

Thanks!

 

[mar5ha11]

Bravo! What a great mod!

As has been stated, I was getting tired of my elite cav rolling through every battle and only having to fear other elite cav en masse. I love the idea of actually using infantry. In fact, I have ONLY been using infantry and it's a blast.

A few things I have noticed that I would like to see:

-Larger battle maps to allow time to form my troops to get into position (I haven't been playing with your mod for very long and so I haven't had the chance to fight in batles with over 100 troops combined. Maybe with larger battles it'll be different.)

-Right when I enter the combat world about to fight a battle, all of my units charge. I fu***ng HATE that! SO, my suggestion is this: include an option other than "Charge the enemy" in the encounter screen. (The screen with a few options: charge the enemy, order troops to attack without you, leave)

I tried the 1257 AD mod and they had basically accomplished the second suggestion by including some automatic order at the beginning of each combat that told all of the troops to stand ground. So, you still clicked on the "charge the enemy" option but then your guys wouldn't actually charge.

Those are just suggestions, mind you... no complaints about your mod here. None. 

PS I haven't played many in-game days yet with the mod but as I do, I will try to provide more feedback if you want it.

 

[Aeon221]

I'm not a big fan of bigger maps for balance reasons -- the longer a player has to set up, the greater their advantage over the AI and the weaker cav becomes. If you've got a couple minutes before even cav show up, the best possible units become ranged ones that now have plenty of time to get sited and wipe out the approaching forces.

But not having to spam "FOLLOW ME DICKBAGS" at the beginning of every battle does sound nice, so I'll look into what 1257 did to make the dudes not durka durka and see if I can implement it here as an optional change.

I do hope that when you get the chance to play more you develop some complaints, as it's a real ***** to do any balancing when no one is complaining! And feedback is always appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Iaksones]

Poked around with your mod a little bit, but not extensively, and I liked it! Only thing that bothered me was that Sarannid Horsemen and Swadian Man-at-Arms were end units; it didn't sound right to me, and I thought it would be better if they could upgrade to mameluks or knights or something. However, reading your recent musings about 2-handed men at arms makes me think that would be a better idea than giving them an upgrade.

Kudos, I'm going to keep trying out your mod!

 

[Cassial]

Or they could be given 2 handers AND an upgrade. Just a thought.

... I use a two-handed sword myself, so I'm kind of excited to have my army emulate me.