Variety Project

[Taveren]

Just sharing some overhauls of vanilla troops I made to include all available armor and weapon items, add variety to their gear loadout, and add consistent progression to gear scaling through levels of troop units. Also included many if not all of the latest added item in 1.8.

I made overhauls of every faction, and some of the minor factions.
For the Empire I loosely based changes on the Byzantine Empire; the Sturgians are styled after the Kievan Nord; Aserai after the Fatimid Empire, Vlandians after the Normans, and Khyzaits loosely after the Keraites and other pre-Mongol federations

Any feedback or suggestions welcomed. I made this just as a personal project as I became frustrated by the many cultural inappropriate gear, the poor armor and weapon progression. I have not changed any troop tiers. Thinking about putting on Nexus.

Here are the Imperial elite cataphracts.
Now utilizing the Royal cataphract helmet in a way to add "unit commanders/serjeants" to the cataphract troops.

Gear variety includes: every troop has different short weapon (cataphract mace, different swords), different body armor (allowing noble troops to shop at different Imperial cities), one unit has "noble officer loadout with noble cataphract helmet and legionnaires cloak.
Gear scaling includes: upgraded to Lamellar boots (seems to be made for these armor sets and cataphracts are supposed to be "fully encased"), now has the cataphract lance (not courser)

 

[Taveren]

Imperial Cataphracts

Gear variety (mace & sword; different head, body and neck armors)

 

[Taveren]

Imperial Heavy Horseman

Significant gear (& style) upgrade - helmet, weapon, pauldron diversity

 

[Taveren]

Imperial Legionnaire

Professional soldiers mixed with military nobility

 

[Taveren]

Imperial Veteran Soldier, Imperial Menavliaton, Imperial Elite Menavliaton

All significantly improved in terms of gear loadout, gear progression. Added shields to Menavliatons (for survival)

 

[Zerosaiko]

Won't that make the Menas a lot weaker? Iirc their Menavliaton can be used with both one hand and two hands, so they won't be able to two-hand anymore unless their shield breaks before they die.

 

[Taveren]

Imperial Archers Mid tiers

Mostly going for sensible gear progression and added weapon diversity to enable more variety.

Imperial top tier Archer units

Aimed to have the Bucellarii look arrogant and extravagant. They are meant to be flashy. Utilized the Palatine Helmet where it should be.

 

[Taveren]

Won't that make the Menas a lot weaker? Iirc their Menavliaton can be used with both one hand and two hands, so they won't be able to two-hand anymore unless their shield breaks before they die.

The Pilum Menavlation they use is the shortest of all polearms (159), and can be thrown, so I interpret that as being one-handed. The base game gives them terrible armor, so they have very low survivability.
I decided to upgrade them to the Legionnaire Armor, and add the shield as I did not observe them using the pilum 2-handed. They did have extreme casualty rates. They are (supposed to be) the same tier as an Imperial legionnaire (and cost the same to train and upgrade), yet the vanilla game gives them trash armor and a weak weapon. I compromised

 

[Zerosaiko]

Oh huh, I must've missed the game changing them from Menavliatons to Pilums since I wasn't playing with Native troop trees.

Edit:
Oh wait, now I see. TW gave the Elite Menavliatons both a Menavlion and Pilum for some reason, so now they've got two polearms on the same set, one of which they probably don't even use since they're the same weapon category. Though the T4 Menavliatons still only have the Menavlion and sidearm. Maybe the fix would be buffing their armor and taking the Pilum away from the T5 ones so that they'll use their Menavlion again?

 

[Taveren]

Oh huh, I must've missed the game changing them from Menavliatons to Pilums since I wasn't playing with Native troop trees.

Edit:
Oh wait, now I see. TW gave the Elite Menavliatons both a Menavlion and Pilum for some reason, so now they've got two polearms on the same set, one of which they probably don't even use since they're the same weapon category. Though the T4 Menavliatons still only have the Menavlion and sidearm. Maybe the fix would be buffing their armor and taking the Pilum away from the T5 ones so that they'll use their Menavlion again?

My error above. They do have a Menavliaton as you stated, but yes. They have 2 polearms (one which can be thrown, and I guess was intended to be a javelin), yet nobody throws pilums in game. They use them as short pokers. I changed that by removing the pilum from 2 (leaving one as vanilla), and instead giving a short or mace

 

[Zerosaiko]

My error above. They do have a Menavliaton as you stated, but yes. They have 2 polearms (one which can be thrown, and I guess was intended to be a javelin), yet nobody throws pilums in game. They use them as short pokers. I changed that by removing the pilum from 2 (leaving one as vanilla), and instead giving a short or mace

Ah, okay, that makes sense. I still have no idea why TW made the pilums unthrowable. And apparently it was even intentional. https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...-equipment-changes.450649/page-4#post-9791579

 

[Taveren]

@Zerosaiko - thanks. I now made an edit and completely removed the pilums from both tier 4 and 5. Now they have a primary 2-handed polearm and (should/could) switch to shields and sword/mace in close combat. Spear combat is very broken at this point - everyone is too bunched and leave no room to have a stabbing distance.

 

[Taveren]

Yes, all it does at present is confuse the legionnaires AI as they all carry one yet can't throw it.
@Zerosaiko - man I'm glad I decided to post these here. Your comments have been very insightful. I have now changed all the pilums out for actual throwable javelins.

 

[Taveren]

Here is my Vlandian overhaul, called "Normannus". I themed it after research what the Normans around 1100 would be wearing, which is the time of the 1st noble crusade.

Vlandian Banner Knights

My thanks to the author of "Swadian Armoury", where I 'borrowed' all the helmet items from. Added in the new items (reinforced mail shoulders), and gave them the top tier lances and diverse weaponry

 

[Taveren]

Vlandian Champions

You should notice the subtle differences (no gilded helmets, neck chain only, mail mittens)

 

[Taveren]

Vlandian lower tier knights

Aiming for a gear progression within a certain style mandate (so no clunky chain hauberk for the knights)

 

[Taveren]

Vlandian commoner cavalry units

Still pretty useless, but now with more style

 

[Taveren]

Vlandian Sergeants (shouldn't that be Serjeants if we are historically accurate?)

Out with the stolen imperial cloak, in with new chain & scale neck protections

 

[Taveren]

Vlandian Pikemen

A vast improvement in my opinion. Armor and weapon diversity

 

[Taveren]

Vlandian Voulgers

You can see that the top tiers are all quite similar in terms of armor choices, with subtle variations (different helmets, different weapons).
My reasoning is that, as a professional soldier becomes higher ranked, their is (usually) more consistency with their gear, as they become more formally enrolled in units (think Byzantine Varangian Guard, etc.). Lower ranks are more militia, so the gear variety was a lot more noticeable and wide ranging.