Sturgia's unplayable

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Dont forget that the AI will have random troops once you start fighting actual battles with 1000+ participants.
That too.
I was about to make another thread showcasing just how bad Circle Formation is but...just not worth it.

In that fight I went down by a crossbow hit as I was charging with the cavalry at their crossbowmen.
Suffice to say they retreated their infantry balls deep into their crossbowmen whilelist their infantry was just now respawning.
They went ****ing circle formation and left my Fian Champions outside to melee the cavalry and infantry!!!
And then I had the LUCK to get all my 10 Line Breakers and many more spawn in as they went into the circle and got aimed at!

I was so angry but I just couldn't be bothered by it anymore...so I just took a deep breath and FF it to win it with an equal nr of wounded and dead..
A shame because before I went down we were winning to a 1.8/3 K/D/W ratio.
 
Actually, I compared sturgian t3 armors with battanian and vlandian - and they're, surprisingly, on par. Battanian Trained Warriors have about 5-6 more BA, but they still lost to sturgian soldiers in a 100v100 (Enhanced Battle Test mod). Which, I believe, wasn't the case about a year ago, when I was digging into this matter last time. So sturgian regular infantry is not in that bad of a place these days, but yea smth a bit better than a scarf wouldn't hurt. Heavy axemen are actually good enough to beat legionaries most of the time and even vet falxmen - mostly thanks to their initial jav volley in both cases (which apparently does not happen in the youtube video you mentioned, it seems the author tests melee only). Heavy spearmen are confirmed garbage tho - I had doubts about how they perform against cavalry - they don't brace their spears and just don't perform against anything at all.
Varyag vets confirmed to lack skills in comparison to their rogue counterpart - chiefs are significantly better in 1-h, throwing and athletics and also occasionally have fur cloaks, when vets occasionally have scarves.
Druzhinnik Champions consistently lose to Banner Knights and Elite Cataphracts but are on par with Vanguard Farises (usually wining). Maybe a heavy lance wouldn't hurt tho, but in that case banner knights should get a longer one too.
And yea, general cav AI is retarded, any cavalry performs better with RMB battle AI (didn't like the mod's weapon and troop overhaul, but thankfully these two come in separate modules). On the downside - this AI complicates things too much for shock infantry with throwables - like breakers and falxmen - these just keep throwing their ****ty axes till they run out of them instead of closing in asap in order to do what they're actually good at.

Now, about those Khan's Guards. Yep, they're way too good. Yep, all thanks to glaives. Not only KGs actually, but starting from Torguuds and up. Even khuzait T4 noble units dominate anything. Only Elite Cataphracts got them routed for the enigmatic reasons of how morale works now - body count was still well in favor of KGs. So it's not about armor or skills or horses - only the glaives.
Yea Sturgian Soldiers are T4 to T5 worth.
Their my favourite troops and the best in game(as a T3 ratio goes).
The devs probably messed armor value or replaced their helmets with the wrong ones.
They win mostly because of the 46 head armour and like it was done in previous tests,in melee shield wall,upper slashes are the most used for the head.
The commoner axe is also a beast of a weapon compared to Spearmen mostly swords.

The only norse sword really worth using is Pointy Warsword in early game and Long Sword if you get 10K denars for it.
Really good and medium hitting weapons.
Once you get a slash in you can go for a second pretty easily.
 
That too.
I was about to make another thread showcasing just how bad Circle Formation is but...just not worth it.

In that fight I went down by a crossbow hit as I was charging with the cavalry at their crossbowmen.
Suffice to say they retreated their infantry balls deep into their crossbowmen whilelist their infantry was just now respawning.
They went ****ing circle formation and left my Fian Champions outside to melee the cavalry and infantry!!!
And then I had the LUCK to get all my 10 Line Breakers and many more spawn in as they went into the circle and got aimed at!

I was so angry but I just couldn't be bothered by it anymore...so I just took a deep breath and FF it to win it with an equal nr of wounded and dead..
A shame because before I went down we were winning to a 1.8/3 K/D/W ratio.
Stop hurting yourself already and stop playing vanilla. If you dont like combat balance of RBM (Sturgians work properly) just give the AI module a try, it solves all these mindbogling AI problems. Obviously both modules are save game compatible.
 
Stop hurting yourself already and stop playing vanilla. If you dont like combat balance of RBM (Sturgians work properly) just give the AI module a try, it solves all these mindbogling AI problems. Obviously both modules are save game compatible.
I know,dude.
But I have a this feeling that these big issues shouldn't be ignored.
At this point it isn't about my fun anymore,it's about TW not giving a damn about these issues,it wouldn't take more than 1 to 2 hours to solve them all in one go.
 
I just find it weird that the Sturgians have bad archers. Aren't their descendants the archery-happy Vaegirs as well as the Nords?
 
I know,dude.
But I have a this feeling that these big issues shouldn't be ignored.
At this point it isn't about my fun anymore,it's about TW not giving a damn about these issues,it wouldn't take more than 1 to 2 hours to solve them all in one go.
It ain't 2 hours work, mate. I've given razors back to heavy spearmen - now they're the new (old) cancer - not only these are as good as glaives, they're braceable - the dudes wreck noble cavalry with minimum casualties. And line breakers just lost their purpose. I don't think I like it that way. When I only gave druzhinnik champions better swords they started eating banner knights for breakfast which is not supposed to happen. Upped banner knights' loadout - same weapons but longer and better - they're shining again but now I think the gap between them and druzhinnik champs is too much.
I've been digging these spreadsheets and running tests a whole night - and I'm only doing 1-2 runs of uncontrolled 100v100 in Enhanced Battle Test, which is quite far from actual gameplay testing.
So yea, it doesn't take one go to solve all the balance issues without turning every faction into terminators.
I just find it weird that the Sturgians have bad archers. Aren't their descendants the archery-happy Vaegirs as well as the Nords?
Well, historically, russians learned advanced archery shenanigans from mongols during their invasion. And Sturgia is kind of like pre-mongolian-invasion Rus' - heavily influenced by nordic culture but not the mongolian just yet. So we can easily picture how vaegirs possibly became renowned archers. Remember where Vagiroving clan resides?)
Btw, nords don't really descend from sturgians - they're mentioned in Bannerlord lore, but it seems their actual presense in Calradia is not that prominent yet.
 
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I just find it weird that the Sturgians have bad archers. Aren't their descendants the archery-happy Vaegirs as well as the Nords?
if we consider lore. those guys are almost all forest hunters so makes sense they'd be decent archers, while the Khuzait should definitely be the best since they take after the mongols. I find it odd how empire has such good archers, and how the Aserai, a desert place native to no trees or animals has the best none noble archers. where do they get the wood for bows? and what are they gonna shoot at? sand?
 
Aserai are based on Arabs, who highly valued archery and were really good at it. Their bows were almost the same size as a European longbow, and could shoot an arrow 150m away. Muhammad even spends a fair bit of time praising archery in the Quran.

At the Battle of the Yarmouk, the Arabic foot archers played a crucial role in inflicting a heavy defeat on the Byzantines using arrow volleys. The Arabs used all types of soldiers but if there was a specialisation at all, I'd say it was foot archery. (Horse archery was practiced, but wouldn't become dominant until many Turks were incorporated into Arabic society later on)
 
I dunno, but someone needs to have the ****ty archers.
i thought that was supposed to be empire (you know, all peasants and no hunters) and vlandians who don't even know what a bow is. but the devs decided to make crossbow have more range than bows and so the vlandian xbow dudes outclass all archers of the same tier while the palatine guards have great skills and best gear making them arguably the strongest archers ...

honestly I feel the devs could have made a lot more sense with balancing troop trees. maybe start by deleting all useless weapon skills such as bow on Khuzait Dark Khans. (when will they ever use one?) maybe make them a bit weaker too (instead of the currently second strongest), since historically the mongols had almost 0 infantry. and the best archers in human history, so it really bothers me seeing the Khuzaid marksmen being the second worst only slightly better than the sturgians...
 
i thought that was supposed to be empire (you know, all peasants and no hunters) and vlandians who don't even know what a bow is. but the devs decided to make crossbow have more range than bows and so the vlandian xbow dudes outclass all archers of the same tier while the palatine guards have great skills and best gear making them arguably the strongest archers ...

honestly I feel the devs could have made a lot more sense with balancing troop trees. maybe start by deleting all useless weapon skills such as bow on Khuzait Dark Khans. (when will they ever use one?) maybe make them a bit weaker too (instead of the currently second strongest), since historically the mongols had almost 0 infantry. and the best archers in human history, so it really bothers me seeing the Khuzaid marksmen being the second worst only slightly better than the sturgians...
I would still think the Empire's archers are still kind of **** though. They literally run around with one less quiver than everyone else, with nothing to compensate for it. Their helmets also kind of suck too, so they're not all that amazing.

Wouldn't even mind if Empire had **** archers tbh, though I think they ought to be a good all rounder sort of faction.

Those extra skills are for tournaments. Wouldn't want that Darkhan to be a complete can if given a bow, and its not likely that they'll only ever train with the weapons of their trade either.

And I don't really think Khuzait Marksman are that bad, are they? They've got steppe arrows, which do better than average damage.

But yeah, the devs don't put much thought into the troop tree and its designs at all. They simply don't care at all atm.
 
Balancing vanilla is nightmare because most of mid-hight tear weapons are instakills or 2 hit kills no matter what, so only other relevant stat in that case is range and sometimes speed. Under such conditions small tweak to weapon can have butterfly effect.
 
Regarding the need to fix Sturgians, I got a few suggestions I'd like to see shot down angrily and rudely.
Maybe replace the Sturgian Heavy Spearman with the old war razor shock trooper, tweak 'em to be a good menavlion style melee monster while the Heavy Axeman gets repurposed into more of an arrow-withstanding, line holding Huscarl or Guard unit?
Aserai have a 'light' archer unit as their midtier bowmen, maybe the T5 Sturgian archer could be a lamellar plated Bow Guard or Heavy Archer, packing an axe or sword and a round steppe-style shield?
 
Regarding the need to fix Sturgians, I got a few suggestions I'd like to see shot down angrily and rudely.
Maybe replace the Sturgian Heavy Spearman with the old war razor shock trooper, tweak 'em to be a good menavlion style melee monster while the Heavy Axeman gets repurposed into more of an arrow-withstanding, line holding Huscarl or Guard unit?
Isn't the Heroic Line Breaker meant to be the shock trooper melee monster?
Apologies if that wasn't angry and/or rude enough.

I like that Sturgia has two offshoots of shielded heavy infantry, it makes them more unique from other factions in my opinion.
And having a spearman with a shield fits in well with Sturgia's Kievan Rus' inspiration.
Toporshic1.jpg

As an aside, it would be nice if the two shielded infantry looked more distinct (and more Slavic) by having differently shaped shields. Right now both Heavy Axemen and Heavy Spearmen get the same size/shape round shield.
 
Isn't the Heroic Line Breaker meant to be the shock trooper melee monster?
Apologies if that wasn't angry and/or rude enough.

I like that Sturgia has two offshoots of shielded heavy infantry, it makes them more unique from other factions in my opinion.
And having a spearman with a shield fits in well with Sturgia's Kievan Rus' inspiration.
Toporshic1.jpg

As an aside, it would be nice if the two shielded infantry looked more distinct (and more Slavic) by having differently shaped shields. Right now both Heavy Axemen and Heavy Spearmen get the same size/shape round shield.
That's true, forgot about the Line Breaker as they're the real Nord unit in the Sturgians. The Heavy Axeman/Spearman having different shields would be nice, though. Further help set 'em apart.

Could've been a bit ruder, I'd say. Lol.
 
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