SP - Player, NPCs & Troops Troop Suggestion: Light Cavalry for the Empire!

[LuciusDomitiusAurelianus]

As usual, have to open this with @Terco_Viejo has been writing about this *A LOT* and has much better threads / suggestions.

I propose completely getting rid of the Empire Crossbowman line in favor of a Light Cavalry line much like the Vlandian's have. It is quite distressful that the Empire needs Nobles to get melee cavalry, and they are not any good until they hit Cataphract.

If you removed the Crossbow's 2-tiers and moved the Equite + Heavy Horseman (maybe rename that second one to Trapezites) from the Noble Line and into the mainline of Empire's troop tree it gives immediate access to melee cavalry without a huge code change or creating brand new units. This has a secondary affect or preventing the *very specific* Empire vs Khuzait snowballing where the Khuzait's just stomp the Empire in auto-calc due to differences in Cavalry.

Second, the Noble troop tree would need to be redone, I think going from Heavy Horseman (the "old heavy horseman" being renamed / retooled similar to a Gallant) into Cataphract then Elite Cataphract and then finally either into a Clibinarius (even more powerful version of an Elite Cataphract, hopefully with better swords and throwing weapons) and then branching to offer Noble Heavy Horse Archer: Equites Sagittarii and a Hippotoxotai.

This now makes the Empire more versatile in a better way than having Crossbows, and gives better access to HA and Cav without losing out on Archers to turn them into objectively weak Bucellarii

 

[Terco_Viejo]

Yeah I'm a pain in the ass ... I'll step aside and sit in my popcorn corner to read the opinions that come up.

 

[murtega]

+1
Its so heartbreaking to see them have just 1 or 2 horse unit per 100. Once the mighty empire can't even put up a challenge against kuzeits that spam horses out of thin air.

 

[LuciusDomitiusAurelianus]

So I tried to mock up what I thought this would like like in PowerPoint, but got bored, and did up the XML anyway. I 100% messed something up, I assume because I changed the Character ID's, but it only crashes if I try to take a step lol. @Terco_Viejo sorry to tag you again my friend, but any idea how I can achieve my replacement dreams without bricking anything? I assume I will need to leave the crossbow people in there and just create net-new entries and *not* mess with the ID's?

TL;DR - My broken mod pictures! No more crossbows, added heavy HA, replaced Crossbows with Light Cav, and added a new heavy melee cav...


Anyway, to make this work (since you cannot have more than 2 upgrade targets per troop?) I had to orphan the Imperial Archer line off on it's own and I pulled the Crossbowmen out of it. I guess you *could* keep them but they are out of place and useless. I pulled out the Equite and Heavy Horseman from the Noble line and made them direct upgrades from the Recruit and renamed them (and changed their Armors). That means I collapsed the Noble line to go from Vigla>Cataphract>Elite Cat (both renamed to something more appropriate) and added two new entries: they're Level 7s one is a Clibinarius and a Hippotoxotai as the "heavy horse archer"

On the noble line I would likely put the Vigla Recruit on a horse as well and take away his spear, that would make him more like Republican Roman Equites, which were almost always (pre-civilized) Italic or Cisalpine Gallic "sword & board" light cav. That would make it appear a little less odd than having them on foot. These would fit into later Imperial Roman (and Byzantine pre- and post-Thematic) armies where younger land-owners would bring their own horse and kit to join Roman cavalry (the same happened with Equites Auxilia and mounted Foederati).

The Kat and Elite Kat stayed the same, except I gave Elite Kat and everyone above them the Tier 4 Khuzait Saber which does more damage and has a nice roleplay accent for some Seljuq Turk / Fatimid Cavalry vibes. The Clibinarius is a more "elite elite" Kat - I added Javelins to them as Byzantine cataphracts (and early Equities Auxilia in Anatolia were also cataphracts) usually used swords, shields, Kontos (2 handed lance), javelins, darts, and bows from horseback. For a somewhat Varangian Guard vibe, I gave them Triarii capes and the max level Strugian helmet and a Pureblood.

The Hippotoxotai is the prototypical armored horse archer from under Heraclius and Maurice - same armor as the Clibinarius except with a sabre, Steppe Composite and 2x Bodkin for 48+ arrows and melee skills similar to that of a regular Kat. I think this adds nice flavor and finally more HA options (that are absolute brutes and should ragdoll Khuzait Heavy HA) for the Empire troops. Of course they'd be crazy expensive and force you to go for *really good* melee cav or HA.

One the "regular" side of the house I did some research on Thematic Light Cavalry (and other Roman axillary light cav) to come up with the names. At a high level, every single one of them has sword/shield/one-handed spear/javelins - this gives them a good light/skirmish cav vibe to match Vlandian light cav and Sturgian/Battanian skrim-cav.

The Expilatores is just an Equite with slightly better stats and the armor set from the old Heavy Horseman, and the Tasinarioi is just a Heavy Horseman with some blend of its and a Menav's kit. That name is for Armenian and Georgian light/medium cav that was known for its brutality of crashing into flanks and screening horse archers. It seems the Byzantines also used other Turkic, Slavic and Alani (pretty much anyone from the Black Sea/Pontic Steppe) in this medium cavalry role. I found a lot of similar data on a "Trapezites" which is just another name - apparenlty they all mean "Hussar" as well?

To fill in the gap of a T5 light/medium cav I added a Toxotai which is just "regular" Byzantine cav - however I gave them a Vlandian couched lance instead of a regular fine steel spear and gave them a blend of Vlandian / Elite Menav kit. This felt like a Norman medium cav vibe form the First Crusade who fought with the Byzantines against the Seljuq Turks outside of Edessa.

EDIT: I am doing more reading and definitely got my Greek, and troop names jacked up...will try to get this working

 

[Terco_Viejo]

So I tried to mock up what I thought this would like like in PowerPoint, but got bored, and did up the XML anyway. I 100% messed something up, I assume because I changed the Character ID's, but it only crashes if I try to take a step lol. @Terco_Viejo sorry to tag you again my friend, but any idea how I can achieve my replacement dreams without bricking anything? I assume I will need to leave the crossbow people in there and just create net-new entries and *not* mess with the ID's?

TL;DR - My broken mod pictures! No more crossbows, added heavy HA, replaced Crossbows with Light Cav, and added a new heavy melee cav...


Anyway, to make this work (since you cannot have more than 2 upgrade targets per troop?) I had to orphan the Imperial Archer line off on it's own and I pulled the Crossbowmen out of it. I guess you *could* keep them but they are out of place and useless. I pulled out the Equite and Heavy Horseman from the Noble line and made them direct upgrades from the Recruit and renamed them (and changed their Armors). That means I collapsed the Noble line to go from Vigla>Cataphract>Elite Cat (both renamed to something more appropriate) and added two new entries: they're Level 7s one is a Clibinarius and a Hippotoxotai as the "heavy horse archer"

On the noble line I would likely put the Vigla Recruit on a horse as well and take away his spear, that would make him more like Republican Roman Equites, which were almost always (pre-civilized) Italic or Cisalpine Gallic "sword & board" light cav. That would make it appear a little less odd than having them on foot. These would fit into later Imperial Roman (and Byzantine pre- and post-Thematic) armies where younger land-owners would bring their own horse and kit to join Roman cavalry (the same happened with Equites Auxilia and mounted Foederati).

The Kat and Elite Kat stayed the same, except I gave Elite Kat and everyone above them the Tier 4 Khuzait Saber which does more damage and has a nice roleplay accent for some Seljuq Turk / Fatimid Cavalry vibes. The Clibinarius is a more "elite elite" Kat - I added Javelins to them as Byzantine cataphracts (and early Equities Auxilia in Anatolia were also cataphracts) usually used swords, shields, Kontos (2 handed lance), javelins, darts, and bows from horseback. For a somewhat Varangian Guard vibe, I gave them Triarii capes and the max level Strugian helmet and a Pureblood.

The Hippotoxotai is the prototypical armored horse archer from under Heraclius and Maurice - same armor as the Clibinarius except with a sabre, Steppe Composite and 2x Bodkin for 48+ arrows and melee skills similar to that of a regular Kat. I think this adds nice flavor and finally more HA options (that are absolute brutes and should ragdoll Khuzait Heavy HA) for the Empire troops. Of course they'd be crazy expensive and force you to go for *really good* melee cav or HA.

One the "regular" side of the house I did some research on Thematic Light Cavalry (and other Roman axillary light cav) to come up with the names. At a high level, every single one of them has sword/shield/one-handed spear/javelins - this gives them a good light/skirmish cav vibe to match Vlandian light cav and Sturgian/Battanian skrim-cav.

The Expilatores is just an Equite with slightly better stats and the armor set from the old Heavy Horseman, and the Tasinarioi is just a Heavy Horseman with some blend of its and a Menav's kit. That name is for Armenian and Georgian light/medium cav that was known for its brutality of crashing into flanks and screening horse archers. It seems the Byzantines also used other Turkic, Slavic and Alani (pretty much anyone from the Black Sea/Pontic Steppe) in this medium cavalry role. I found a lot of similar data on a "Trapezites" which is just another name - apparenlty they all mean "Hussar" as well?

To fill in the gap of a T5 light/medium cav I added a Toxotai which is just "regular" Byzantine cav - however I gave them a Vlandian couched lance instead of a regular fine steel spear and gave them a blend of Vlandian / Elite Menav kit. This felt like a Norman medium cav vibe form the First Crusade who fought with the Byzantines against the Seljuq Turks outside of Edessa.

EDIT: I am doing more reading and definitely got my Greek, and troop names jacked up...will try to get this working

No problem mate, the fastest way to link is the tag; use it as many times as you need .

When editing troop trees it is vital to maintain a calm and disciplined approach to your work; I say this because if you edit 3 troop trees f.e. at the same time and you happen to miss a (") or a (/>) you can go crazy investigating where the crashes are coming from. I would recommend you to be very careful with this kind of tasks.

That said, fortunately there are QoL tools that the Community has published that are of fundamental help for this kind of tedious tasks. ATC - Adonnay's Troop Changer and Equipment XML Print come to mind; however I don't know if they are currently up to date but I'm sure the Nexus utilities section will have material to get you started... not forgetting our modding section here on the forum ofc.

Personally at the beginning of release I created a small tweak where I changed the aesthetics of the troop trees, however unfortunately it became obsolete after patch 1.5.4 (iirc) where the armour values were reformulated (for the worse).
I'm really looking forward to a 2.0, but I'm still a little bit put off by the idea that Taleworlds won't correct the damage/protection formula and other factors that I consider basic to create that trigger that will make me move that creation wheel again.

As I've said so many times before, don't let my comment stop you from creating those custom trees if that's the way you feel about it.

Courage and good luck.

 

[LuciusDomitiusAurelianus]

Well turns out it was because of the IDs, VSCode XML linting utilities suck, I was also missing a double quotation mark somewhere.

Without going too much into it, I Byzanti-fied the Empire troops except for 2 occasions where I could not find a period-correct Greek work or terminology (hence having Velite and Equite in there). Some others I kept as their English name (Archer, Trained Archer, Vet Archer, Trained Infantry) instead of going really crazy with Hoplitai and Toxotai for everyone.

Noble Changes
Repurposed the Vigla into an Equite - Noble Light Cav, okay horse but only sword + shield. Added an upgrade into a Koursorse (Courser) which was Thematic "medium cav" and gave it a Spear. I "unarmored" the regulat Kataphractoi a bit to distinguish better from the Elite Kat but kept everything else how I previously had it (Clib + Clib-toxotai for super heavy melee + HA)

Infantry Changes - Light/Med Cav
Repurposed the old Equite and Heavy Horseman into a Hippeus (regular horseman) and Trapezitai (skirmish-light cav from Byzantine Thematic cav). They each have one-handed spears, sword, shields and a stack of Javs. Any of them with armored barding is only half-barding to distinguish from their Heavy/Medium Cousins.

Finally I added a T5 light/med cav as a Droungarious - which is a Thematic Byzantine cavalry commander position for what I assume to be a Company-sized element (so a US Army Captain, sort of). Better shield, sword, javelins and I gave him an Aserai Couched Lance to have more of a Medium Cav feel similar to the Koursorse

Infantry Changes - Foot
I gave all of the Infantry line Javelins, not sure why they don't have it. Changed their shields around to look more "Byzantine" and renamed the Veteran Infantry into a Skutatoi (Thematic medium infantry).

Proper Greek name for the Menavilaton, I swapped it with the "Elite Menav" and gave him a Shield and Mace, as that is the proper loadout. They were supposed to be used as anti-cav screens for the skirmisher troops.

I also added the Varangian Guard - but called them by their Greek descriptive: Pelekyphoros Phroura - which means "axe wielding guard" - they have Kataphractoi load out (so does the Legionary) and have a shield, mace, and a Sturgian Heroic Line Breaker two-hander.

Ranged Changes - Archers/HA
Not much change other than the Palatine Guard and Buce (renamed Hippotoxotai). I gave them Sturgian scale/Llamelar armor and gave a noble bow to the Hipppo. Thematic Archers were raised from Mainland Greece but also became increasingly drawn from the Black Sea Region (Trebizond, Caffa, Pontic Steppe) with some from the Eurasian Turks and Slavs hence their armor style changes. I gave the Vet, Palatine and Hippo 2 quivers each.

Ranged Changes - Skirmishers
It felt weird that the Byzantine-inspired culture group did not have any Skrimishers so I added some.Velite, Psiloi and Peltastoi. They are all light/medium (Pelt) infantry-ish with 2x Jav stacks, small kite shields, and to Psiloi and Peltastoi all have one-handed axes which was apparently period correct. Really good athletics but nerfed the entire Ranged tree's OH ability to make them not quasi-infantry



As far as tests I am on a separate 1.5.10 Gamesave and have done ~40 or so custom battles. In the campaign, the Empire can finally hold their own against Aserai and Khuzaits which is leading to a lot more "status quo" after a few 20 year tests (didn't do a snowball score) which is what I wanted to see.

Empire vs Empire wars are absolutely brutal and lead to high casualties but not many captures, with all the cav available (plus all the villages) the Empires get massive stacks against each other which is crazy fun to see. They also hold their own against Vlandia and usually have the edge in auto-calc.

In Custom / Field Battles Vlandia with the right amount of Crossbows will still put up a ton of casualties, especially against the Light Cav. Battania does not fare well in Auto-calc and got gobbled up by W. Empire in my playthrough with this tree. Sturgia also stands no chance given their low amount of Cav and were gobbled by N. Empire.

Just a few hours of reading history books and articles and messing with XML - pretty happy. Hopefully Taleworlds sees this and adds some Light Cav into the Empire I think my changes are a bit unbalanced and extreme in the grand scheme, if it just added the light cav and nothing else I'd be very happy.