Sturgia worst performing faction, due to having the worst Troop tree, Liege AI, Economy and Geography.

[smoky77_2058]

That was deliberate. From what I've seen, the Aserai face many of the same problem that Sturgia faces with it's very spread out and linear geography at the edge of the map. I don't think I've ever seen the Aserai take a single city outside of their strip of land in my 100+ hours of campaign, but honestly I haven't delved into them enough to comment on their units specifically. I do like their dual noble line with a heavily armored two handed axe infantry though, at least in concept.

I have but usually gets taken back really quickly

 

[dphilostrate]

Raganvad’s warmaking needs to be curbed through an overall adjustment of the warmaking nature within the game. And it is true Raganvad is a jerk which fits with the type of person we are told he’s supposed to be like. I have a feeling that there will be something put in place that will empower a player or his vassals to overthrow him. There needs to be an increasingly severe price for all rulers the more tyrannical their decisions such as declaring too many wars, hoarding fiefs, or enacting self-serving laws.

I would totally support the Sturgians having no movement impairing effects in the snow, but if we did that we would also have to balance it by making the Battanians have no movement impairing effects in forests.

I have been looking into the Sturgian economic woes and I can see a lot of has to do with poor resources their villages produce. Most factions start with a handful of villages producing the same thing such as the Battanian villages produce a lot of grapes, hardwood, and clay. Vlandia has a lot of olives, and the Khuzaits have a lot of sheep and horses. The Sturgians have a 7 villages producing fish and six producing cows, neither of which can be transformed into anything through workshops.

Sturgia does have four villages producing furs and four producing flax, but I have yet to see these trades being profitable for them. Sturgia has one source of hardwood and one source of iron while other factions tend to have two or three. Also, it is interesting the Sturgians and Northern Empire are the only factions that I see to not have their own silver mine.

Economic complications probably also stem from limited caravan visits, though I do not know this for certain until someone measures it.

 

[Rconner]

As for spears, they work if you mix troop types. Grouping spears together with close melee infantry causes later to fill front ranks and spears backranks during fighting thanks to AI trying to get in to optimal distance for it's weapon. Spears will also help to stop cavalry and prevent cavalry from demolishing close melee infantry.

Happened today in a battle, Shield wall backed by spears, the two boulders funneled the charge right into them, backed by 50 or so archers. Front line of horses die on the spears, wall holds, archers slaughter them.
A desperate 350 vs 1200. A replay of Agnicort.

 

[Mote]

I just calculated the armor values for all t3 and t4 spear/shield infantry and they are as follows:

T3 Spearmen:

• Empire: 29/32/24/23 - 108 (Total)
• Khuzait: 28/33/17/18 - 96
• Battania: 28/23/13/22 - 86
• Vlandia: 18/15/18/14 - 65
• Aserai: 21/14/10/16 - 61
• Sturgia 35/12/2/12 - 61

T4 Spearmen:

• Empire: 32/56/45/28 - 161 (Total)
• Aserai: 28/26/32/10 - 119
• Battania: 32/44/17/22 - 115
• Sturgia: 26/26/24/29 - 105
• Khuzait: 26/22/33/19 - 100
• Vlandia: (n/a, no spear/shield variant, only Billmen)

Note Sturgia barely edge up Khuzait here, but their armor is weighted toward their legs, and the Khuzait Spearmen get Javelins in t4, both of which far outweigh any extra leg armor.

 

[BlazingScribe]

I just calculated the armor values for all t3 and t4 spear/shield infantry and they are as follows:

T3 Spearmen:

• Empire: 29/32/24/23 - 108 (Total)
• Khuzait: 28/33/17/18 - 96
• Battania: 28/23/13/22 - 86
• Vlandia: 18/15/18/14 - 65
• Aserai: 21/14/10/16 - 61
• Sturgia 35/12/2/12 - 61

T4 Spearmen:

• Empire: 32/56/45/28 - 161 (Total)
• Aserai: 28/26/32/10 - 119
• Battania: 32/44/17/22 - 115
• Sturgia: 26/26/24/29 - 105
• Khuzait: 26/22/33/19 - 100
• Vlandia: (n/a, no spear/shield variant, only Billmen)

Note Sturgia barely edge up Khuzait here, but their armor is weighted toward their legs, and the Khuzait Spearmen get Javelins in t4, both of which far outweigh any extra leg armor.

In my head I figured that in terms of quality heavy infantry, it would go Sturgia, Empire/Vlandia, Battania, Aserai, Khuzait.

This is nothing like that. Wow. Legionaires are putting in work.

 

[vemerce]

Just in general, sturgia also seems to be the faction that both snowballs the least and dies the fastest in pretty much all games. So, even from a macroperspective, it definetly needs some kind of rework. And the suggestions given here are a defenitive improvement and step in the right direction.

I think now I'm going to try doing my next playthrough where I play on the Sturgia side of things and see how it goes. On new plays, I always build my army entirely out of whatever faction I start with (at first) and then I expand from there. Sturgia hadn't even been on my radar until this thread... I think in my 140 hour playthrough they got decimated by Vlandia pretty early in. I'm curious if I can save them or not.

 

[Daiball14]

Main problem I have with Sturgia is that they seem to not have any real strengths to rival that of the other factions, every faction has something they excel at whether thats the Khuzait horse archers or the Vlandian knights. All factions are a bit closer in terms of overall effectiveness compared to Warband, archers for most of the factions are quite similar in skills and equipment same as inf and cav but Sturgia feels underwhelming compared to pretty much every faction their archers are probably the worst in the game their cav is okay but won't compare to other factions cavalry unless you get the druzhinik which you can't rely on that to much as it is a late tier noble unit so it seems like their strength should be in inf but apart from their tier 5 inf and noble line which is limited because the line progresses to cav they really don't have much going for them give or take a few units.

 

[DecoyCode]

I think part of the problem sits with how the decided to template troop stats to something generic, and then decided to do aesthetics over value for armor/weapons. In my mind, Sturgs infantry line should all share a general movement speed/armor value. As a mixed force, they have the best "variety" outside of maybe vlandia for melee troops, but they're absolutely miserable about functioning as one.

The berserker line really is the greatest offender since you have to baby step the berserkers up with the shieldsman otherwise they'll run INFRONT of them and just die miserably. For what it's worth, the few times I've gotten into a mass battle and gotten the berserkers -behind- the enemy blob, they annihilate things. It goes from being a struggle watching them attempt to hit to them killing two dudes in one swing at a time.

Infantry as a whole have a problem functioning for their value after like, t2. t1 blobs even in battles can actually kill pretty reliably, and losing them costs you basically nothing by the time you're getting to lord vs lord fights. If you have enough and they make it to an archer line, your Cav/Archers can reliably clean up stragglers until your blob drops, to which they'll clean up whatever the blob didn't.

I think right now that's what make Vland/Imperial infantry blobs so comparatively dangerous. Vlandians just have a good weapon arrangement on a smaller pool of troops (Vland Sergeants are kings, don't let their noble knight line fool you.) Imperials are just durable as hell. The Sturg blobs don't start to develop into recognizeable units till t3/4, when the vland t1 infantry are mostly somewhat effective short spears while having comparatively high body armor due to the bear pelts they wear. Imperial t1's have pretty decent swords, and don't seem to run into as many cronic bouncing issues.

 

[BattanianDruid]

It is strange that the Druzhinnik have a high bow skill but no bow. Rather than see them replaced with infantry (and thus shifted more heavily toward just being Nords with Vaegir names) I'd prefer they give the Druzhinnik a bow and make them high tier horse archers. This would reflect the Medieval Russian military practices pretty well and help the faction lean more heavily on the Kievan Rus inspiration.

It would also mean the role of their cavalry would be to soften up the enemy infantry (and function as counter-cavalry due to their spears and armor) so that when the enemy engages with the superior Sturgian infantry they break all the faster. Then when the enemy breaks the noble cavalry run the routing army down.

 

[mbchudno]

Its clearly mentioned in the lore that while they are ancestors to the Vaegirs, they are still quite influenced by Nord raids and the Sturgian king himself has a familiar connection with the Skolderbrotva (don't remember exactly which now) and in the main quest itself they clearly state that the Sturgian infantry was famed enough to rival and push the Imperial infantry.

i really wish they did not cluster Nords and Vaegirs together. Each of those faction was unique and played great in Warband....

 

[DecoyCode]

I would totally support the Sturgians having no movement impairing effects in the snow, but if we did that we would also have to balance it by making the Battanians have no movement impairing effects in forests.

The Sturgians have a 7 villages producing fish and six producing cows, neither of which can be transformed into anything through workshops.

Economic complications probably also stem from limited caravan visits, though I do not know this for certain until someone measures it.

The Batt forest thing is kind of a false equivalent. A majority of their caravans don't slog through forest all the time, and the problem with Sturgia is that you're sometimes forced to walk through snow AND forests. Giving the sturgs immunity to snow means that their weak economy never suffers from bad weather, whereas everyone elses good economy has a noteable dip in winter. This means there would be a High and Low period for everyone else, whereas Sturgia would just remain constantly decent. Batts actually make a decent amount of money due to their location, good products, and REALLY dense settlement locations.

Additionally, I'm pretty sure cows are turned into leather at tanneries. You can actually make decent money off this in some cities in Sturgia.

The faction is decidedly awful though. They're a combination of Vaegirs and Nords, but have the good qualities of neither of them. Vaegirs at least had decent archers and while the Guards had mediocre stats, Bardiches hurt like hell. Nords had Huscarls and really cost effective archers.

My vote is to make the nobles horse archers, give them reasonably foot good archers/skirmishers, and fast foot troops. Also, most importantly, make those foot troops consistent in speed at t5. If the 2handers run infront of the shields they just get pasted. Also, give the 2handers actual armor, don't rule of cool this stuff.

 

[Chaosreaper187]

The addition of ships would do nothing to fix the balance issues currently plaguing the faction. And if such mechanic was added, it would likely not be exclusive for Sturgia (that would be pretty unbalanced), and thus wouldn't fix anything anyways. The main issue is that Sturgia is constantly losing castles and towns, thus losing settlements to recruit from, thus losing battles, thus never having anything other than recruits, and this just keeps going until Sturgia is wiped off the map.

Let's ponder a future where Sturgia is the only faction with ships: Likely, AI decision making would be added to make Sturgian lords go raiding along the coastlines with their ships, this would take time away from both recruitment and defending settlements. In other words: Adding ships, and especially only adding ships for Sturgia, would make these problems EVEN WORSE.

The addition of ships would not alleviate these issues.

Also they are based on the slavic rus, not "vikings."

It's funny you mention they are based on the rus which was a realm ruled by a viking dynasty. Also sturgian units look like vikings and use armor and weapons like vikings so why would they not be vikings?
Why would you say they are not vikings if they look, play and feel like vikings and a lot of their lords(not all) have viking names

 

[Androme1]

It's funny you mention they are based on the rus which was a realm ruled by a viking dynasty. Also sturgian units look like vikings and use armor and weapons like vikings so why would they not be vikings?
Why would you say they are not vikings if they look, play and feel like vikings and a lot of their lords(not all) have viking names

There's no such thing as a "viking dynasty". "Viking" is another word for "pirate". The word you're looking for is "Norse". Kievan Rus was not "ruled by a Norse dynasty", Kievan Rus was established by Slavic tribes which at the time were ruled (by invitation) by a dynasty of Norse origin. Within one generation, descendants of the Rurik dynasty were intermarried with the locals, had Slavic names, and practiced local religion.

There's also no such thing as "viking armor and weapons", since that would be akin to saying "pirate armor and weapons". The equipment that hollywood popular culture associates with "vikings" is equipment that was used by virtually everyone in Europe at the time. It's just that most people who don't know much about history wouldn't know that, so they just associate those equipment with "vikings", which weren't even forged by Norsemen, most of it was forged in modern day France and was traded for with other goods, in the case of the Norsemen they mostly traded Amber for it which was abundant in Scandinavia.

In fact, with the recent update, alot of equipment was added tagged with Sturgian culture, and most of the equipment used by the troops and lords of Sturgia were changed to armor inspired by later dates than the 'period' the whole faction is inspired from, and this armor was in fact not as widely spread as the equipment used by Norse vikings, but is in fact armor employed almost exclusively by Slavic peoples aswell as Asiatic steppe tribes.

Virtually all of the lords have Slavic names, none have "viking" names (again, there's no such thing as a "viking name", what you mean is "Norse" name). I think there's one lord called Vulfyr and one called Mimir if I'm not mistaken, those two names would be of Norse origin, but I must call the creativity of these two names into question due to the fact that they share this name with randomly generated village notables.

The only thing "Norse" about Sturgia are four things: 1) Raganvads mother. 2) The sigils of the noble clans which for some reason are overwhelmingly norse-inspired despite not much else about them being norse-inspired. 3) Some settlement notables having Norse names as opposed to Slavic. 4) 1 out of 3 minor factions being explicitly stated to be a Nord mercenary company and is inspired by a possibly fictious mercenary company of vikings that used to exist in the real world (The Jomsvikings).
And of course there's also the lorewise connection that the Sturgians have with the Nords, with Nord mercenaries having been instrumental in the establishment of the Principality of Sturgia (which mirrors the Rurik dynasty and Norse mercenaries helping establish Kievan Rus).

To finish this post off, I'll just state this: For people who mostly just follow popular culture and don't really know much about history, especially Americans (no offense intended but it must be said), I can 100% understand why someone who looks at Sturgia just says: "These guys are vikings!", they've got the equipment, they've got the unpronounceable names, they live in the snowy north, their faction colour is blue and they wield axes. But the fact of the matter is that Taleworlds did a very good job of taking inspiration from what Kievan Rus truly was when designing Sturgia (except the noble clan banners).

If you want some more 'proof' regarding this, just check out the in-game Encyclopedia.

Funny, I am only using Sturgian troops because I like mace troops. With the Sturgian Sergeants using maces I am crushing it. Rarely do I lose a soldier to death in simulated battles and usually only a couple of wounded.

Aren't you thinking about Vlandia? As far as I know not a single Sturgian troop has access to maces.

ye it is something else if a player controls them of course. but the AI is incompetent in pretty much all matters, so sturgia as a kingdom always looses.

There is something clearly wrong with Raganvads AI. I'm hearing this from a lot of people, Raganvad just goes completely bonkers every single game and just keeps declaring more and more war despite already losing multiple wars.

But the problem is not just his warmongering, even if Sturgia is up against one faction at a time, they always lose, due to the lackluster Sturgian economy, geography and troop quality.

Raganvad’s warmaking needs to be curbed through an overall adjustment of the warmaking nature within the game. And it is true Raganvad is a jerk which fits with the type of person we are told he’s supposed to be like. I have a feeling that there will be something put in place that will empower a player or his vassals to overthrow him. There needs to be an increasingly severe price for all rulers the more tyrannical their decisions such as declaring too many wars, hoarding fiefs, or enacting self-serving laws.

I would totally support the Sturgians having no movement impairing effects in the snow, but if we did that we would also have to balance it by making the Battanians have no movement impairing effects in forests.

I have been looking into the Sturgian economic woes and I can see a lot of has to do with poor resources their villages produce. Most factions start with a handful of villages producing the same thing such as the Battanian villages produce a lot of grapes, hardwood, and clay. Vlandia has a lot of olives, and the Khuzaits have a lot of sheep and horses. The Sturgians have a 7 villages producing fish and six producing cows, neither of which can be transformed into anything through workshops.

Sturgia does have four villages producing furs and four producing flax, but I have yet to see these trades being profitable for them. Sturgia has one source of hardwood and one source of iron while other factions tend to have two or three. Also, it is interesting the Sturgians and Northern Empire are the only factions that I see to not have their own silver mine.

Economic complications probably also stem from limited caravan visits, though I do not know this for certain until someone measures it.

Very interesting observations regarding their resources, I had not taken that into much consideration since I didn't think it would be the major deciding factor but perhaps you are right that the lack of resources also contributes to a lackluster economy. I'm still sure that the landmass that Revyl sits on aswell as the relative isolation of Tyal causes many villagers on their way to these towns getting killed by bandits before they can reach them, but I indeed think perhaps Taleworlds should also take a closer look at the resource production aswell.

Now that I think about it, two things spring to mind: Honey and bog iron was mentioned as two resources that Sturgia is supposed to be rich in. Why not introduce honey as a new resource, aswell as just increase the overall iron availability in Sturgia? If Sturgia is meant to be rich in bog iron, then surely this should also be reflected in their villages.

The Batt forest thing is kind of a false equivalent. A majority of their caravans don't slog through forest all the time, and the problem with Sturgia is that you're sometimes forced to walk through snow AND forests. Giving the sturgs immunity to snow means that their weak economy never suffers from bad weather, whereas everyone elses good economy has a noteable dip in winter. This means there would be a High and Low period for everyone else, whereas Sturgia would just remain constantly decent. Batts actually make a decent amount of money due to their location, good products, and REALLY dense settlement locations.

Additionally, I'm pretty sure cows are turned into leather at tanneries. You can actually make decent money off this in some cities in Sturgia.

The faction is decidedly awful though. They're a combination of Vaegirs and Nords, but have the good qualities of neither of them. Vaegirs at least had decent archers and while the Guards had mediocre stats, Bardiches hurt like hell. Nords had Huscarls and really cost effective archers.

My vote is to make the nobles horse archers, give them reasonably foot good archers/skirmishers, and fast foot troops. Also, most importantly, make those foot troops consistent in speed at t5. If the 2handers run infront of the shields they just get pasted. Also, give the 2handers actual armor, don't rule of cool this stuff.

I've also been thinking about whether the addition of Horse archers would help the Sturgians, but I think they've already got the well established and well-functioning Brigand troop line already so why not just focus on improving their strength that they're supposed to posess in the form of their infantry.

You're also completely on point regarding the Battanians, they don't really need a better culture buff, meanwhile Sturgians do both because they just straight up need a buff as a faction but also because the snow is constant in 95% of Sturgia, while the forests can be avoided in Battania.

 

[Earth Dragon]

I thought the Sturgian buff was on the battlefield, not the campaign map

 

[karijus]

I wish they just gave them extremely good noble infantry instead of cavalry. Big shields, good one handed axes, and throwing weapons. High athletics skill, and maybe some way to add extra hp, because we don't have ironskin(?) anymore. Maybe I'll just modify them myself.

 

[Odione]

I agree with OP, my boys in the cold North need some love!

 

[dphilostrate]

After hearing your reasoning I must agree that the Batt and Sturgian culture traits shouldn't be seen asequal since Sturgia seems to be snow year round and Battania is not massively forested that it would interfere with domestic issues like snow does for Sturgia.

And I did forget that cows do make hides for tanneries, yet it still does not seem to be much of a benefit.

I think there should be at least 1 or 2 more villages producing iron to represent the bog iron mentioned in the lore. I love the idea of having honey. If Sturgia had the most honey producers and at the very least there was none in the empire or battania, it could be good for close caravan trade.

 

[Egolith]

+1

In my campaigns where I build my own kingdom I always check for how weak sturgis is at a given moment to take some of their land.

I think that they need buffs, but need to make sure it's not buffed to the point that they steamroll every other faction. I agree that their round shields should be stronger, but also given their Nordic/Norse/whichever you prefer using, they should have superior axemen. Plus they should have a higher focus on raiding/pillaging than warfare. Nordic raids were used for the gold and glory to their religion of Æsir and Vanir.

The Norse might not be the most advanced in armor, but they had superior morale that made them stronger physically to their enemies who relied more on technological advantages in battle.

So, I think that Sturgia should have a way of avoiding going into war from raiding nearby villages and maybe even from attacking caravans. This would inject items into their weak economy and prevent them from getting into multiple wars they can not win. Raiding and pillaging would be more logical if we are basing them around Nordic/Norse culture.

As for the idea on boats, it would be interesting to see that in the game, however I feel like it would take a lot of time and resources toward building naval combat and a looot of balancing to make sure that it isn't too OP.
The only thought right now that could be implemented potentially would be the use of transport ships. That would help with the distance issue of Sturgia, without providing needing to take massive amounts of resources towards building naval combat at the moment.

Those are my thoughts anyways..

 

[Earth Dragon]

I mean, there needs to be waterway travel in some way. The Sturgians can’t even protect their colonies in the Southwest portion of their turf because of lack of transit from the northern penisula to the mainland portion there. It’s just easy pickins for Vlandia.

Hopefully they eventually shift the wars at the start as well so different playthroughs feel different. Sturgia fighting the Khuzaits or Northern Empire at the start may offer a bit more even footing as far as being able to defend and attack assets and not be 100% on defense, but I understand unit balance and trees is the main issue right now and needs to be addressed badly

 

[dphilostrate]

I have been experimenting with the Sturgian troops and am starting to see some of the problems.

I get the impression of how the Sturgians were suppose to work, but I feel that the way you have to play with them is very formation dependent, which makes the units weak unless they work together.

For example, when I played as the Empire with an army of 500, many of which were cataphracts against a well rounded 600 army of Sturgians. The Sturgian AI knew to play defensively and the Sturgians formed a brutal shield wall that decimated my charging infantry an my archers could not penetrate. I was overconfident and charged the shield wall head on during my infantry attack to try to break the shield wall and give them an opening, but those wretched shields held and the Sturgian javelins were perfect at tossing over the shield wall and skewering men sitting elevated on horses.

The only way I was able to eke out a victory was to take my cavalry around to their rear and strike there. It was the costliest victory I have ever had. If the AI Sturgians had not thrown away all their cavalry in the skirmish part of the battle, they could have countered my maneuver.

Perhaps my battle was the exception, but I cannot help but think the Sturgians are suppose to be a formation dependent army. Because of the weight of their shields, they seem to be a low mobility force as well. A Sturgian unit alone is useless and they only seem to work when together.

I will try a few more tests to get a better picture, but if my hypothesis is correct then the question should be whether or not it is right to have a faction in this game so dependent on formation maneuvers. Furthermore, if the Sturgians are formation dependent, then someone needs to tell their lords because they only use a shield wall when they are on the defensive (also tell them to stop throwing cavalry away).

Also it should be apparent that a formation dependency is a weakness when it comes to sieges, perhaps changes to the berserkers could remedy a little of this by being better suited to sieges so they can approach the walls without getting pin-cushioned right away.

When a berserker levels I hate the only choice for him is basically to because the unarmored Ulfhednars. I think it would ideal to give berserkers two different upgrades. One as an armored two handed axe guy with a light shield and a one handed axe...let’s call these “Shield Biters” to play on the theme of berserkers.

It would be good to have some Sturgians with better weapons so they could match some of the other factions’s high tier troops if they fight one on one. The core of their army could be formation dependent, but it would be nice to have something behind the shield wall if it breaks.

It would be interesting to have something like a Varangian Guard-ish warrior (not like the Vaegirs), something like a Sturgian who served with the Empire and now comes home equipped in fur-lined Imperial armor.

Of course, a Sturgian army cannot function if the root problems causing them to be made up of mostly recruits is not addressed first...