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

[BlazingScribe]

The majority of this problem appears to be an imbalance of unit equipment-to tier and some mucked up stat allocation. Unfortunately Sturgia is not the only faction to suffer from this problem, a number of Battanian units also have it was well (looking at you Trained Spearmen). But this certainly sounds the most widespread and egregious. I absolutely agree that this needs to be fixed and that Sturgia needs another look through. Similarly I agree that spearmen could stand to be more effective, or at the very least that the game better explain how to make spearmen effective. All of this sounds absolutely reasonable to change to me.

However.

This, in my opinion, is by far the most egregious injustice done against the Sturgian roster. Noble lines should be the hallmark of a faction that embody it's strengths. Think Battanian Fian Champions, Imperial Elite Cataphracts, Vlandian Banner Knights, Khuzait Khan's Guards: each the epitome of their respective factions. The Sturgian Noble line starts as a shielded spear unit with throwing axes, that was shaping up to be an analog to the veteran and then half way through the tree changes it's mind and becomes the Druzhinnik. 220 Bow skill on a unit that doesn't even have a ranged weapon. 60 Polearm skill, when it's primary weapon is a spear. A heavy cavalry unit that is never mentioned or referenced anywhere in the lore or perceived play-style that Sturgia embodies. The saddest part is the Varyag Veterans, the 3rd level of this unit, is actually a better spearmen than the Sturgian Spearmen, due to the better armor and throwing axes, even if it only has 15(!!!) in the throwing skill.

This entire line needs to be reexamined from the ground up. Sturgia doesn't need a bargain bin cataphract with a broken skill allocation. You know what I'd want to see for the noble line? An upgraded Skolder Veteran Brotva. This is the unique line of troops that the lake-rat Sturgian subfaction has. Spear + Axe + Throwing Javelins with the iconic big shield and a sane stat lineup. Slap the veteran armor on this bad-boy and you have the most the most elite melee infantry unit in the game. A unit worthy of being called a t6 noble unit that embodies Sturgia's strengths rather than this broken and disappointing compromise.

I agree that the stat allocation is dumb as hell. Its possible that the Druzhinnik was originally meant as a general purpose cavalry, combining the features of armored melee cavalry and horse archery. As it stands, it is unfavorably put together, and must be fixed. That being said, I'm not sure I want the Druzhinnik as a unit to be replaced with a infantry counterpart.

Its been argued back and forth many times, but the Sturgians in Bannerlord are meant to be based on the Kievan Rus, a mixed Norse-Slav federation from the 9th-13th century. This is where the famous Varangian Guard originally hailed from. Unlike the Norse Vikings, the Kievan Rus did have and used cavalry. My understanding of the culture and language isn't great, but I believe the equivalent to a western europe lord's retinue was called a Druzhina, and their equivalent of minor nobility (think Medieval Knights) was called the Druzhinniki. Both were known to fight on horseback.

I think that if you were take away the Druzhinnik and replace it with something else, it would compromise that original design intention, and in this case shift the faction closer to its Norse Viking counterparts. I see the appeal of that, especially since in the game currently there aren't any melee infantry noble lines, but I think I would prefer the Druzhinnik remain as Sturgian's sole heavy cavalry option, able to compete with the likes of Cataphracts and Vlandian Knights. As for emphasizing Sturgia's strengths, making their infantry mechanically stronger than their piers may do the job.

 

[Punchtown Hero]

Give Sturgia some love! Q_Q
nice writeup btw

 

[Mote]

I think that if you were take away the Druzhinnik and replace it with something else, it would compromise that original design intention, and in this case shift the faction closer to its Norse Viking counterparts. I see the appeal of that, especially since in the game currently there aren't any melee infantry noble lines, but I think I would prefer the Druzhinnik remain as Sturgian's sole heavy cavalry option, able to compete with the likes of Cataphracts and Vlandian Knights. As for emphasizing Sturgia's strengths, making their infantry mechanically stronger than their piers may do the job.

I'm not against this in theory, this is where the post was getting into more of my personal opinion for where I'd like to see the faction go. I would be perfectly happy if they simple improved the shock troop unit, fixed the Druzhinnik's stats and made spears more functional. From a gameplay perspective, I just find yet another heavy melee cavalry noble line when we already have the more iconic and performant banner knights + imperial elite cataphracts to be a bit underwhleming. Regardless of whether their stats are fixed, the Druzhinnik will always play second fiddle to these, even if only superficially due to their how intrinstically tied they are to their respective faction's style.

From the 1.1.0 beta patch notes ''Minor updates to Sturgian troop tree equipment. '' I guess this is not enough to make Sturgia a bit better?...

I didn't go through every unit, but from the game files I looked at in the beta, the Shock Troop and the Veterans both get cape slot items giving them a noticeable armor buff. +16 to body armor and +4 to arm armor. It's a step in the right direction, but really doesn't address any of the underlying fundamental flaws of the faction I've outlined. All of the stat allocations are unchanged from what I saw.

 

[Punchtown Hero]

The majority of this problem appears to be an imbalance of unit equipment-to tier and some mucked up stat allocation. Unfortunately Sturgia is not the only faction to suffer from this problem, a number of Battanian units also have it was well (looking at you Trained Spearmen). But this certainly sounds the most widespread and egregious. I absolutely agree that this needs to be fixed and that Sturgia needs another look through. Similarly I agree that spearmen could stand to be more effective, or at the very least that the game better explain how to make spearmen effective. All of this sounds absolutely reasonable to change to me.

However.



I agree that the stat allocation is dumb as hell. Its possible that the Druzhinnik was originally meant as a general purpose cavalry, combining the features of armored melee cavalry and horse archery. As it stands, it is unfavorably put together, and must be fixed. That being said, I'm not sure I want the Druzhinnik as a unit to be replaced with a infantry counterpart.

Its been argued back and forth many times, but the Sturgians in Bannerlord are meant to be based on the Kievan Rus, a mixed Norse-Slav federation from the 9th-13th century. This is where the famous Varangian Guard originally hailed from. Unlike the Norse Vikings, the Kievan Rus did have and used cavalry. My understanding of the culture and language isn't great, but I believe the equivalent to a western europe lord's retinue was called a Druzhina, and their equivalent of minor nobility (think Medieval Knights) was called the Druzhinniki. Both were known to fight on horseback.

I think that if you were take away the Druzhinnik and replace it with something else, it would compromise that original design intention, and in this case shift the faction closer to its Norse Viking counterparts. I see the appeal of that, especially since in the game currently there aren't any melee infantry noble lines, but I think I would prefer the Druzhinnik remain as Sturgian's sole heavy cavalry option, able to compete with the likes of Cataphracts and Vlandian Knights. As for emphasizing Sturgia's strengths, making their infantry mechanically stronger than their piers may do the job.

Possible to fix this by giving each faction another noble line
I agree that the Druzhinnik shouldn't be replaced as it's important to their identity nor should it be moved/swapped with a heavy melee unit from the standard tree. I don't think it's a good idea though that out of the 6 factions that 4 of them have mounted noble lines and 3 of those are all heavy cavalry, they need something additional.

Example types
Aserai Elite Skirmisher (With Shortbows + Medium armor and good athletics vs Battanias Longbows)
Vlandian Bannerlord (Heavy Infantry, Kiteshields + Longswords + Heraldic Mail)
Sturgian Huskarl (Heavy Infanty, Axes + Moar Axes + Big Roundshield)
Imperial Phalanx Legionairre (Heavy Infantry, Square Shield + Spear and Short Sword)
Battanian Gallowglass (Heavy armored 2H Infantry, 2h axe/Sword)
Can't think of one for the Khuzait... They kinda have everything covered...

 

[Mppqlmd]

I love how OP didn't even mention the Aserai. Most forgettable faction in the game

This entire line needs to be reexamined from the ground up. Sturgia doesn't need a bargain bin cataphract with a broken skill allocation. You know what I'd want to see for the noble line? An upgraded Skolder Veteran Brotva. This is the unique line of troops that the lake-rat Sturgian subfaction has. Spear + Axe + Throwing Javelins with the iconic big shield and a sane stat lineup. Slap the veteran armor on this bad-boy and you have the most the most elite melee infantry unit in the game. A unit worthy of being called a t6 noble unit that embodies Sturgia's strengths rather than this broken and disappointing compromise.

This +999

 

[Mote]

I love how OP didn't even mention the Aserai. Most forgettable faction in the game

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.

 

[Mppqlmd]

One thing that is very odd in this game is the noble troops system. I know Battanians are better archers than everyone IN THEORY, but in practice vlandian and imperial will have more archers than them because of how hard it is to recruit them.

Comparatively, battanians can spam the heck out of their cavalry that is amazingly easy to recruit, far easier than vlandian or imperial cavalry.

Those facts are because in a time of war, the IA will pretty much recruit nothing but recruits, and thus the recruit-tree will shape the meta of the faction, and not the noble-tree.

 

[Punchtown Hero]

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

The only time I have ever seen it they took daunastica from the imperials and imperials took it back immidiately followed by khuzait swooping in and taking so the aserai couldnt bc they werent at war.

 

[Mppqlmd]

About sturgian infantry, i think looking at brigands might show us the issue :

- Looters are trash tier, of course
- Wood brigands had to be nerfed because of how prevalent archery is
- Mountain bandits are throwing-heavy, and have some really good cavalry, so they are strong
- Step bandits are pretty much all horse-archers, so they are broken
- Desert bandits are pretty weak, but have the amazing throwing-cavalry (hasari ?)
- Sea bandits... they used to be killing-machines in warband with their amazing armors. Now they have spears, that don't really work that well, and throwing weapons that are inferior to bows in every regard, and an insufficient armor.

So it seems the devs are struggling to make infantry units viable, even in the bandit meta.

 

[SmattlePattle]

I agree with most of what you've written but find it unintentionally amusing that you talk about the unique niche of each faction but don't mention the Aserai.

 

[hruza]

Sturgia troop tree is fine, it just seems to have some stats and equipment misplaced, likely unintentional and likely thanks to last minute changes been done before early access was released. Things like shock cavalry having high ranged and very low polearm skills or higher tier troops having less armor or even less primary stats then their predecessor.

Structure of the tree and equipment itself fits lore of the faction very well.

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.

All in all I actually think that devs have been listening to feedback from the forum and many discussions we had here about Sturgia.

This entire line needs to be reexamined from the ground up. Sturgia doesn't need a bargain bin cataphract with a broken skill allocation. You know what I'd want to see for the noble line? An upgraded Skolder Veteran Brotva. This is the unique line of troops that the lake-rat Sturgian subfaction has. Spear + Axe + Throwing Javelins with the iconic big shield and a sane stat lineup. Slap the veteran armor on this bad-boy and you have the most the most elite melee infantry unit in the game. A unit worthy of being called a t6 noble unit that embodies Sturgia's strengths rather than this broken and disappointing compromise.

You are mistaking Sturgia for Nords. They are not. They are predecessor to Vaegirs instead. It's clearly mentioned in the lore.

 

[Landstrider]

You are mistaking Strugia for Nords. They are not. They are predecessor to Vaegirs instead. It's clearly mentioned in the lore.

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.

 

[Mote]

Strugia troop tree is fine, it just seems to have some stats and equipment misplaced, likely unintentional. Things like shock cavalry having high ranged and very low polearm skills or higher tier troops having less armor or even less primary stats then their predecessor.

Structure of the tree and equipment itself fits lore of the faction very well.

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.



You are mistaking Strugia for Nords. They are not. They are predecessor to Vaegirs instead. It's clearly mentioned in the lore.

I'm not familiar with the Mount and Blade lore or their historical analogs as I am a newcomer to the series. All I have to go off of is what's told in game, so take everything that I'm saying into that context. In terms of gameplay and in-game dialog, my impression of Sturgia was one with a strong melee infantry focus. The core of my argument is that for a melee infantry focused faction, Sturgia poor melee infantry overall, with the exception of the Veteran Warrior. I think having a noble line that reflected that focus would be a rather elegant solution, but fixing the currently existing troops would be another completely viable option.

A separate, but relatively minor complaint is that heavy melee cavalry is already occupied by the Banner Knight and Cataphract, so having a third heavy cav melee noble line that will always be in the shadow of those iconic troops seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity. This is all completely apart from the whole Nordic vs Slavic influence discussion threads, which I am largely out of the loop of. This is purely from a gameplay design perspective.

 

[hruza]

Those facts are because in a time of war, the IA will pretty much recruit nothing but recruits, and thus the recruit-tree will shape the meta of the faction, and not the noble-tree.

That's actually pretty reasonable and how it should be. Elite units are elite, they shouldn't make the meta of the faction.

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.

And non of that makes Sturgia Nords. Sturgians are not Nords and should not be Nords. Especially since Nords will likely come with the DLC. Sturgian infantry is perfectly fine and have fitting equipment from the lore perspective, save for some misplaced stats and equipment, which I don't believe was intentional on the devs part and I expect it to be fixed.

 

[Landstrider]

And non of that makes Sturgia Nords. Sturgians are not Nords and should not be Nords. Especially since Nords will likely come with the DLC. Sturgian infantry is perfectly fine and have fitting equipment from the lore perspective, save for some misplaced stats and equipment, which I don't believe was intentional on the devs part and I expect it to be fixed.

I didn't mean that it made them Nords, but obviously it points to a trend in Heavy Infantry being more elite than other factions, a point needs to be made that you said they are the ancestors of the Vaegirs, but if that had any bearing on what made Sturgian troops, then we would be seeing them using elite archer units.

The reason I pointed out their lore in my previous post was precisely to suggest that it doesn't matter if they ended up being Vaegirs or Nords in the future, what the current lore implies both from the main quest and from character bios is that Sturgia does indeed seem to have a strong focus on powerful infantry.

 

[Mppqlmd]

That's actually pretty reasonable and how it should be. Elite units are elite, they shouldn't make the meta of the faction.

Indeed. The problem is that Battania has no other archer than those nobles, which makes the empire and the vlandian more "archery" than the battanians, simply because battanians refuse to learn how to shoot if they are not of noble blood.

But battanians are a more "heavy cavalry" faction than the empire, despite the empire having better cavalry, because imperial peasants can't ride a horse while battanians can.

I like the noble units, but it puts the factions identity on its head : the most "archery" faction is the one that actually has the least amount of archers. The most "cavalry" factions are the ones than don't have that many cavalry units, because nobles are rare.

You are mistaking Sturgia for Nords. They are not. They are predecessor to Vaegirs instead. It's clearly mentioned in the lore.

Then why do they have the worst archers in the game ?

 

[hruza]

I'm not familiar with the Mount and Blade lore or their historical analogs as I am a newcomer to the series. All I have to go off of is what's told in game, so take everything that I'm saying into that context. In terms of gameplay and in-game dialog, my impression of Sturgia was one with a strong melee infantry focus. The core of my argument is that for a melee infantry focused faction, Sturgia poor melee infantry overall, with the exception of the Veteran Warrior. I think having a noble line that reflected that focus would be a rather elegant solution, but fixing the currently existing troops would be another completely viable option.

Infantry focused and infantry exclusive are not the same things. Vaegirs, who in the lore of the game are ancestors of Sturgians have second/third best heavy cavalry in the game. From a historical inspiration point of view, noble line is also very well made, as Sturgians are Russians.

Sturgian troop tree needs some stats and equipment fixing, that is clear as many stats are clearly misplaced and some equipment likely as well.

What I would suggest is:

Fix bowmen, so that top tier Sturgian bows have either retain their lower level armor but get significantly better skills and bows/arrows then tier below, or swap the body armour around.

Fix mid tier melee infantry so that higher tier troops have better stats and equipment then lower tier ones.

Swap Druzhinik heavy cavalry bow and polearm stats, they are clearly misplaced.

Give Ulfhednar armor. In the Norse sagas Ulfhednars are Berserkers that wear wolf skins over their ARMORS. Remove armor from Berserker if you want to make "crazy naked" warrior of the modern pop-culture myth, but then he would also need to compensate with some stats, as high tier unarmored unit with stats just on par with other similar tier units is useless. I honestly think both Berserker and Ulfhednar should not be in main Sturgian tree and instead should be in the Skolderbrotva roster, but they need fixing in any case.

And that's about it.

A separate, but relatively minor complaint is that heavy melee cavalry is already occupied by the Banner Knight and Cataphract, so having a third heavy cav melee noble line that will always be in the shadow of those iconic troops seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity. This is all completely apart from the whole Nordic vs Slavic discussion threads, which I am largely out of the loop of. This is purely from a gameplay design perspective.

With the same logic you can argue that Cataphracts should not be in the game, because heavy melee cavalry is already occupied by Banner Knight or vice versa.

Aseray and Vlandia have heavy cavalry in the standard roster. Both Empires and Kuzaits have heavy ranged cavalry in the roster. Sturgia doesn't have any decent heavy cavalry in the main roster and you need to go high in to noble line if you want one. That seems perfectly fine. Speciality of the Sturgia is good mainline infantry with special 2H shock branch.

 

[Slate024]

I'm ashamed of Sturgia actually, they should have some of the heaviest armor for the higher tiers making Sturgia having some of the toughest heavy infantry in the game. They just seem too weak maybe it's just me.

 

[hruza]

Then why do they have the worst archers in the game ?

As I said, I don't think that's intentional and I would say their top tier archers should be fixed. See my reply above.

I'm ashamed of Sturgia actually, they should have some of the heaviest armor for the higher tiers making Sturgia having some of the toughest heavy infantry in the game. They just seem too weak maybe it's just me.

But they do. Standard branch top tier Sturgian infantry -the veteran warrior is the toughest close melee infantry in the game.

 

[Punchtown Hero]

Give Ulfhednar armor. In the Norse sagas Ulfhednars are Berserkers that wear wolf skins over their ARMORS. Remove armor from Berserker if you want to make "crazy naked" warrior of the modern pop-culture myth

Just change the ai to mimic naked man with a greatsword taking out 60 looters, problem solved