Troop test project (Suprising results!) [Berserk and hired blade update]

[Kegeyn]

So finally got bored to death with quarantine and decided to do something significant with my life.
Therefore instead of actually working i looked for a way to test game's troops and their performance since custom games are not available.
Right now i tested T5 troops shielded, and 2h.

Spoiler: Test assumptions

1. Testing 100 units of the same type in 3 consecutive games against the same opponent

2. All tests performed vs the same army with fair mixed troop count. For t5 test, i found Derhert's initial spawn as a great example of a mixed army.
Enemy Army composition

3.Player army is being outnumbered 2to1

4.Balance of power is 20% in favour of enemy lord

5. Forced AI to attack (by walking to NPC with 1 soldier and after being engaged modified troop count via console) to avoid circle of defensive madness issue

6.Tested 2 AI behaviours (F6 and F1+F3) and picked better result. Main reason for that is that shielded troops without throwing weapons get assigned "defensive AI" that forces them to stay in place waiting to be attacked. This leads to insane losses. Second AI "skirmish" works perfectly

Scoring Rules:
For a won game unit gets 1 point for each surviving unit on the battlefield
For a lost game unit gets -1 point for each enemy surviving

Main Faction t5

Troop​	g1​	g2​	g3​	Sum Games​
Aserai veteran​	12​	-5​	-31​	-24​
Imperial Legionary​	28​	-51​	48​	25​
Battanian Wildling​	50​	-46​	22​	26​
Vlandian Sargeant​	54​	-55​	75​	74​
Khuzait Darkhan​	63​	-58​	77​	82​
Sturgian Shock​	59​	61​	79​	199​
Sturgian Veteran​	90​	95​	68​	253​

Conclusions:

Aserai veteran - ok during skirmish,completely obliterated in meele due to 1 hit headshots. Big loss was when they could not throw due to terrain.

Imperial Legionary - despite their armor performing very poorly all around. It seems that their attacks are too slow and get swarmed and stunlocked by enemy force.

Battanian Wildling - Similar result to Imperial, different reason - Wilding is great during skirmish phase. Low armor got them obliterated by cav

Vlandian Sargeant - I think this is our "mr average" here. Saved by weapon loadout - they pack huge 1 hit potential to infantry and cav

Khuzait Darkhan - That was a big suprise for me, Great in skirmish, ok vs infantry. Mostly suffered vs cav if they don't have javelins anymore

Sturgian Shock - Thought they will get killed easily. They do, but they also kill so fast,enemy morale breaks and mass routing gets them big victories

Sturgian Veteran - This T5 member of "weak sturgia" is a wrecking ball of slaughter. I don't even know why, roflstomp whole army.

Result screenshots zip
Link to zipped screenshots. If you are afraid PM me i can get the ones you are interested in via online pic hosting

Spoiler: Minor factions

Troop​	g1​	g2​	g3​	Sum Games​
Mercenary Hired Blade​	-144​	-161​	-173​	-478​
Lake Rat Wrecker​	-128​	-113​	-141​	-382​
Sea Raider Chief​	-86​	-94​	-62​	-242​
Skolder Veteran​	-69​	-45​	-114​	-228​
Triarii​	-86​	-26​	-115​	-227​

Conclusions:

Lake Rat Wrecker - they seem gooded on paper but had very weak kill potential. Also looked kind of slow both movement wise and attacking.

Sea Raider Chief - This is not t5 but wanted to include them for comparison. Actually quite a decent performance for t4.

Skolder Veteran - close second minor faction performer. Despite bugged stats (do they matter though?) for their 1h

Triarii - They got the best result definitely due to their armor. However every time their formation broke they were too slow to recover.

Spoiler: Additional comments

*I don't plan to test shield walls. Too random and unfair for enemy.
*If i find an "anomaly battle" where the result does not seem correct i redo the battle. Sometimes enemy lord dies in first 10 seconds and army routs. This is to limit RNG
*For Imperial Legionary to be sure of the result i did 20 battles. F1F3 resulted in better, more consistent result.
*Also i checked whether mods like "Armor does someting" or "Collision fix" change results. Actually no, battle results with those 2 mods are more consistent. i included 1 battle with those 2 mods and 2 battles "vanilla style". Probably you won't be able to even tell which one was that (different battle # on different troops)

If you are interested then feel free to comment and critique. I am willing to make reasonable adjustments here and test different scenarios / units

 

[Kegeyn]

2h Test results.
Same rules as the above. For Khan's guard test had to unmount them and cease fire

Troop​	g1​	g2​	g3​	Sum Games​
Sturgian Ulfhednar​	-29​	-79​	-39​	-147​
Vlandian Voulgier​	60​	56​	68​	184​
Imperial Elite Menavliaton​	51​	77​	61​	189​
Sturgian Berserker​	42​	77​	81​	200​
Battanian Veteran Falxmen​	82​	66​	75​	223​
Khuzait Khan's Guard​	86​	65​	83​	234​
Aserai Mameluke Palace Guard​	84​	87​	90​	261​

Conclusions:

Sturgian Ulfhednar - I think it finally proves whether this unit is viable or not. Too fragile and awkward to use to be efficient. Only troop to lose here

Vlandian Voulgier - On par with Imperial unit, Voulgiers have very weak throwing weapon and polearm swing which gets them swarmed

Imperial Elite Menavliaton - Empire units actually would be ok but they are the slowest of all here. And since battles are very quick they dont kill fast enough and get circled and killed by backhits

Sturgian Berserker - This seem more T5 than sturgian T5. Only drawback here is lower armor but still their weapon cuts them through both infantry and vlandian cav.

Battanian Veteran Falxmen - Quite good! I think this is what ulfhednar should be. Fast, agile, good weapon, good reach, fast swings. Med armor

Khuzait Khan's Guard - ok, i know this is t6 but look at the result here. To perform the test i had to ban them from using bows. On normal scenario if they were allowed to shoot before clash they would contest 1st place. Truly unique multiple purpose troop!

Aserai Mameluke Palace Guard - Biggest looser of shielded test strikes back! I had to redo their battles 10 times because they kill so fast that derhert was constantly dieing in 10 seconds leading to 99-100 alive wins. They got perfect weapon for this game's meta, good throwing axe and are actually fast and agile. Huge suprise of the test

 

[COOMER]

I acessed early

 

[brognar]

problem with sturgian units is that all the units leading to their top tiers suck balls

 

[drallim33]

Can you do sea raider chiefs?

id="sea_raiders_chief"

They are only tier four but I'm curious

 

[MinhTien]

Thanks for your work!

Other people people have been doing battle tests, and most of them seem to agree that Sturgian Tier 5 infantries are amazing and Darkhan is a sleeper hit, which mostly aligns with my experience. Sturgia seems to suffer mostly from weak low tier troops and in auto-resolve during campaign.

Testing against Dehert's party does favor strong anti-cav capability though. Shock Troops' Warrazors melt through horse like butter. Might be interesting to see how they fare against different type of opponents.

And second testing Sea Raider Chief and maybe the Skolderbrotva Veteran(or whatever the best one is).

 

[Wheem]

problem with sturgian units is that all the units leading to their top tiers suck balls

Yea, this is really easy to see when it comes to their infantry. Just doing regular custom battles will spawn in T4 units for all factions, and the Sturgian Spearmen get absolutely dominated by literally everything else. I think their archers are actually decent, but the infantry is abysmal in comparison to other factions (including the Khuzait, who should have some of the weaker infantry, but actually seem to be the absolute best at T4).

 

[Kegeyn]

Hey guys thank you for comments! I added minor factions and requested Sea Raider chief

I thought that something changed because of how they performed so i did sanity check and replayed the battle with Darkhan and got mediocre result win, replayed with sturgia veteran and got stomp win.

It seems right now that Javelin infantry is the way to go. They perform the best against mounted units and are causing huge impact before meele clash. Not sure whether this is intended by the dev's though

 

[Dabos37]

Really interesting test. Looking forward archers and cavalry test .

 

[Kegeyn]

Finished 2h troop test and was not expecting what i saw. Included Khan's guard because they have 2h.

There is a clear looser and a clear winner here finally putting proof about some of the units usefulness on the battlefield

Btw i have no idea yet how to do proper cav test. For archer one though i will have to change army and terrain type to more flat open space.
Will try to test 2 scenarios for ranged - where arrows do cutting damage and vanilla

 

[drallim33]

Just goes to show how little skills matter, falxmen only have 80 in polearm but they chop chop everything just as well as Khan's guard who have 220 polearm skill.

 

[Apocal]

Just goes to show how little skills matter, falxmen only have 80 in polearm but they chop chop everything just as well as Khan's guard who have 220 polearm skill.

Unless they activated it, skills have zero effect. Only unit level and equipment.

 

[Punished Mert]

Skills improve the ai, not necessarily the performance of the specific action. So a unit with 130 in polearms, wielding a polearm will act smarter than a unit with 80. At least thats what TW claims.

 

[Badcritter]

Yes, they will block and strike more effectively with higher skill. Very important in a duel, less important on the battlefield.

On the battlefield it is more about suitability of gear. Spears tend to do better for example because their strikes are less likely to be disrupted by nearby units in formation.

 

[Punished Mert]

Yes, they will block and strike more effectively with higher skill. Very important in a duel, less important on the battlefield.

On the battlefield it is more about suitability of gear. Spears tend to do better for example because their strikes are less likely to be disrupted by nearby units in formation.

Spears? Do better? All spear strikes get disrupted in formation in the current version of the game.

 

[Badcritter]

Depends how tight the formation is. In this test, shieldwalls weren't used for example so spear troops did fairly well.

That said I got my thinking backwards on Sturgian Vets vs Shock Troops. I was thinking it was the Vets who had spears and that may have contributed to them doing better, but it is the other way around.

 

[eddiemccandless]

Unless they activated it, skills have zero effect. Only unit level and equipment.

Skill seems to have quite an effect on one handed with the partial perk overhaul in 1.4.0 https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...roblem-with-new-1h-perks.422400/#post-9431705, probably not very relevant for these tests though.

 

[Punished Mert]

Depends how tight the formation is. In this test, shieldwalls weren't used for example so spear troops did fairly well.

That said I got my thinking backwards on Sturgian Vets vs Shock Troops. I was thinking it was the Vets who had spears and that may have contributed to them doing better, but it is the other way around.

There's almost a unanimous consensus among the forums and players that spears dont work in vanilla when its infantry vs infantry. The collision is way too tight and the thrust mechanics are broken. Spear infantry quickly switch to sidearms and then use the overhead attack to clip through the collision.

 

[Bannerman Man]

Interesting tests!

I wonder how Hired Blades would fare. Probably not well haha. But the latest patches have buffed mercenary hiring in taverns, so they might start seeing more use.

id="mercenary_7"

Edit: Yeah, on second look they're rather poorly equipped at the moment. I don't think the merc line has had the same balancing pass that other troops have had yet. For their price they should be packin' better equipment IMO.

 

[Maximum997]

Btw, can ulfhendars beat any t5 infantry in melee? Right now i am not sure they can beat even t5 archers in melee.