Vlandian Pikemen really need a buff

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Just make the pikes swing

 

[xdj1nn]

Yeah Recruits in general are really frustrating, due to their lack of equipment.

Honestly I consider Recruits to be just Peasants, even though they are often worse! I legitimately avoid Recruits at all costs. It wouldn't be so bad if you could actually get them trained up in a relatively short period, but that's pretty difficult even with Perks.

Warband handled this a lot better. Even with a bunch of recruits in that game, with decent amount of Training skill you could get them to the mid-tiers fairly quick. But I guess in Bannerlord you're just supposed to stop and fight looters all the time, even though you can't create formation for just recruits anymore. And because recruits die so easily you lose about half of them anyway, so then you gotta get more recruits...

Everything is so blasted grindy and repetitive in this game it's ridiculous. It's unfortunate, but I really do feel the Devs are quite out of touch with how their game actually plays.


Considering how long it has taken them to address spawns, armor, cavalry, etc. I don't think I want wait 2-3 years for their "fix" at this point

Honestly I'm almost positive they see no issues with spears currently. Not sure how that's possible since if you play in a couple practice fights in say an Imperial Arena, it's pretty effing obvious how gimped spears are.


Also my suggestion is a real simple fix for Pikemen ATM, not that hard to go back and give them a regular one-handed sword. Vlandian Pikemen as is are an utter waste. If they won't tweak them, then just remove them.

Well maybe with Mercenary Pikemen more folks will see how bad they are. Honestly all the new mercenaries in 1.9 are so **** performance wise and expensive, why anyone would recruit them is beyond me. Oh well great way to screw new players who won't know any better!

fair point, but that's sad because if the game becomes too blend and too dull I'll stop playing until the actual fixes come - or, I'll need to find a good mod compilation to basically overhaul all of their design...

Just make the pikes swing

 

[Bluko88]

IMO the biggest downgrade in the game is Empire Peasant -> Empire Recruit.

It's a very similar problem though, the Empire Peasant gets a scythe and throwing stones and can overall defeat looters. Empire Recruits get a mix of weaker weapons that includes pitchforks, and no throwing weapons, and overall they will consistently lose to the same number of looters. So it's the same dynamic of going from a swinging polearm to a thrusting one and becoming useless, with the added insult(or just...more injury) to injury of losing throwing weapons that are actually kinda decent for a low tier troop.

I think some other Recruits are also downgrades from peasants but Empire is most noticeable for me. Of course, this is relatively minor since you can't recruit peasants and t5 balance is more important - but I've recently started a character that doesn't start with a bow for shooting packs of looters down for early renown and watching them cleave through recruits like butter was kinda odd.

Yeah Recruits in general are really frustrating, due to their lack of equipment.

Honestly I consider Recruits to be just Peasants, even though they are often worse! I legitimately avoid Recruits at all costs. It wouldn't be so bad if you could actually get them trained up in a relatively short period, but that's pretty difficult even with Perks.

Warband handled this a lot better. Even with a bunch of recruits in that game, with decent amount of Training skill you could get them to the mid-tiers fairly quick. But I guess in Bannerlord you're just supposed to stop and fight looters all the time, even though you can't create formation for just recruits anymore. And because recruits die so easily you lose about half of them anyway, so then you gotta get more recruits...

Everything is so blasted grindy and repetitive in this game it's ridiculous. It's unfortunate, but I really do feel the Devs are quite out of touch with how their game actually plays.

Yep got inspired again, so I modded all Recruit lines to consist of 50% Shields, 25% Spears, and 25% Throwable Stones. (Surprised to learn equipment is all randomized between troops - sets aren't locked in, so you get quite the variety in-battle.)

Sturgian Recruit as example:

Again my initial testing with a few custom battles show recruits to be pretty well balanced. Pretty even across all cultures 1 vs 1 recruits, and can inflict some causalities against tiers above their own. Most importantly they aren't absolute cannon fodder for archers anymore. Recruits should be "squishy", but they shouldn't be free kills. You would expect a recruit to field some basic equipment before joining any sort of "warband", otherwise they may as well be a Peasant/Looter. In which case they happen to be expensive peasants in base game.

Would like to test effectiveness against Looters, but can't do that in default Custom Battles unfortunately.

100 "modded" Recruits

Spoiler: Some battles results

Recruits vs Warriors

Recruits vs Woodsman

Recruits vs Hunters

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

Yep got inspired again, so I modded all Recruit lines to consist of 50% Shields, 25% Spears, and 25% Throwable Stones. (Surprised to learn equipment is all randomized between troops - sets aren't locked in, so you get quite the variety in-battle.)

Sturgian Recruit as example:

Again my initial testing with a few custom battles show recruits to be pretty well balanced. Pretty even across all cultures 1 vs 1 recruits, and can inflict some causalities against tiers above their own. Most importantly they aren't absolute cannon fodder for archers anymore. Recruits should be "squishy", but they shouldn't be free kills. You would expect a recruit to field some basic equipment before joining any sort of "warband", otherwise they may as well be a Peasant/Looter. In which case they happen to be expensive peasants in base game.

Would like to test effectiveness against Looters, but can't do that in default Custom Battles unfortunately.

100 "modded" Recruits

Spoiler: Some battles results

Recruits vs Warriors

Recruits vs Woodsman

Recruits vs Hunters

The more you mod troop trees, the more you'll start wondering why they aren't fixing this stuff. Its... not very hard at all.

 

[xdj1nn]

The more you mod troop trees, the more you'll start wondering why they aren't fixing this stuff. Its... not very hard at all.

never changed troop trees, already knew all of this, have being contesting their slack-off attitude towards patches since EA started... Either they want to force the crap onto us or they really don't give a f and are following orders to push other stuff that nobody in the player base cares about only them for more profit$ (like the console version) - At this point I don't think anymore, at all, I just come here, give feedback, throw in some ideas and leave it at that - hopes that anything I say will be listened to are zero, it's much more sort of playing echo-chamber with the rest of the community - feels good for the wrong reasons.
Sadly we lost some soldiers who were at least entertaining to read like mostblunted and some of the community seem to have some serious insecurity issues and pitchforked against him for no logical reason (as if they were forced to read his posts yet hate him and his posts)
I don't contest ban reasons, it happened because it needed to (mods here are very tolerant in general), yet watching flaming after the fact's quite the distasteful sight.

 

[Brano]

One of the issues with vanilla troops weapons loadouts is that many of them has too much weapon types hanging on them. Vlandian Voulgier is a shiny example. He has voulge, two handed sword, one handed sword and throwing axes(?). Why? AI doesnt know how to effectively use such variety of weapons and usually switches them in most inappropriate time. They are much more effective in general with just one, max two weapons. Second one being ranged.
I usually do changes by removing redundant weapons from them. As example Battania, which I play the most:
1. Spearman line ending up with Oathsworn(?) has only spear and shield + for spears I have shortened them, mostly those long hooked ones to be no more than 2m long
2. Skirmisher line ending up with Wildlings(?) has one handed axe, one set of javelins and shield
3. Falxman line I completely changed and renamed to two handed axe shock troops, removing those ridiculous curved abominations.
4. Cavalry got long swords replacing those silly short axes
5. Fians I didn't change much, as they are suppose to be the only noble unit of Battania. Just made some variation with body and leg armor and add those nice new bronze/steel helmets.

I do such changes step by step to all factions and bandits as well. Like giving looters low tier bows insted of stones Nothing agains stones, but sling is missing as their launching platform.

 

[xdj1nn]

One of the issues with vanilla troops weapons loadouts is that many of them has too much weapon types hanging on them. Vlandian Voulgier is a shiny example. He has voulge, two handed sword, one handed sword and throwing axes(?). Why? AI doesnt know how to effectively use such variety of weapons and usually switches them in most inappropriate time. They are much more effective in general with just one, max two weapons. Second one being ranged.
I usually do changes by removing redundant weapons from them. As example Battania, which I play the most:
1. Spearman line ending up with Oathsworn(?) has only spear and shield + for spears I have shortened them, mostly those long hooked ones to be no more than 2m long
2. Skirmisher line ending up with Wildlings(?) has one handed axe, one set of javelins and shield
3. Falxman line I completely changed and renamed to two handed axe shock troops, removing those ridiculous curved abominations.
4. Cavalry got long swords replacing those silly short axes
5. Fians I didn't change much, as they are suppose to be the only noble unit of Battania. Just made some variation with body and leg armor and add those nice new bronze/steel helmets.

I do such changes step by step to all factions and bandits as well. Like giving looters low tier bows insted of stones Nothing agains stones, but sling is missing as their launching platform.

in warband we had formation commands for weapon type (limited to blunted but it was useful when AI carried a mace with other main weapon - this allowed for 3 slots to be effectively used like 1 for thrown/ranged 1 with blunt + 1 with their main tool of murderous intent) - BL gives us much less control - yet even if we had identical feats, AI has never used any of those at all, and the few they had access to they'd use wrongfully used / misused... I still remember in WB troop AI automatically dismounting when stuck - that was really annoying, specially when the army deployment was totally outside our control (we had no pre-battle placement without mods)

BL, in a nutshell, is sort of a cesspool with golden coating - looks pretty with plenty of shiny, but once you get past the novelty it's inferior to Warband on almost every single aspect of it - arguably identical on the campaign nonsense (like bad AI - lack of meaning - lack of objectives - arbitrary balancing that turns the AI into a constant nuisance, much like sitting nearby a mosquito nest being forced to deal with impossible to catch up 20 men AI parties zerg raiding - map painting = the only thing to do and than bam, game's dead)

 

[LyonExodus]

Don't forget the old saying: If it doesn't work, just give them a 2 Handed sword

 

[Pentagathoos]

Menavlion as weapon is debated by historians as no one exactly knows what it was. Could be either long pike or as portrayed in game in polearm cathegory, with a reasonable size to use both in melee and against horses.

I'm pretty sure it's the romphalia that's murky, the menavlion is described quite clearly in Byzantine manuals. The shaft is made from a thicc cornel or oak sapling of a certain length, tipped with a long head, and given to big strong lads. Used as a counter to heavy cavalry specifically, but also in plenty of other situations too. The thickness of the shaft is particularly important presumably as it means it will be stiffer (giggidy) and better at penetrating (huehue) heavy armour of the heavy cav. I don't think it was a particularly long weapon, iirc it's fairly standard spear length, but it was used in two hands so maybe a little longer than standard infantry spears.
Pikes aren't necessarily great weapons against cav just because they're long, a trained cavalryman with a lance can actually quite easily parry/swat aside a braced pike well before their horse hits it, and once inside the reach of the long ass pike they can bring their lance on line onto the pikeman more easily than the pikeman can redirect their super long pike. Obviously that's 1v1, big old massed formations would definitely favour the long pike, since men are smaller than horses so infantry formations can be much more dense than cavalry.

Re this actual thread topic, stabbing polearms just need to be more useful in general, they sucked in warband and they still mostly suck in BL. Pretty sure this is TW's deliberate choice though, to make it a kind of rock, paper, scissors type thing, so I wouldn't expect this to change in the base game.

 

[Dead End]

Well maybe with Mercenary Pikemen more folks will see how bad they are. Honestly all the new mercenaries in 1.9 are so **** performance wise and expensive, why anyone would recruit them is beyond me. Oh well great way to screw new players who won't know any better

I've come back to this game for 2 years now, and every time I try to play with the mercenary units it's such a massive disappointment. IDK why it bothers me so much, I just think they look cool and would like to use them but it's a waste of time and money