Now that I have a little more time I will give a more detailed description. The point of this mod was both to make the Rhodoks worth something, and to make the gameplay more realistic, challenging, and enjoyable at the same time.
Archers are now of a much greater importance than before, and if you do not play correctly they can wipe your force out pretty quickly given the right circumstances (seiging a Khergit city on the largest battle size for instance
).
Horses are no longer tanks that can stay standing through a million blows, which means that a swift axe chop or a jarid in the head will bring your saddle horse down really quickly. It also means that
spearmen can actually stop a cavalry charge now.
Does this de-emphasize cavarly at all? Not a bit. Not only has
charge damage been increased, but with the increased importance of archers in the game, it is more important than ever for you to
use your cavalry force to reach the enemies archers and cut them down.
To make the game more realistic and balanced,
I made archers much weaker in melee. There are no more Vaegir marksmen with heavy armour and two-handed axes who can murder you from afar and out fight heavy infantry in melee. Archers now are armed with a dagger, and usually have a padded cloth, padded leather, or chainmail at the most. What this means is that as long as they can keep away from you they can reek havoc on your army, but if you can close in, they will be cut to pieces in melee.
The overall effect this has on the game is not that cavalry or melee is underpowered or any less important, but that the
player now has to use tactics as he would in real life. He needs to keep enemy cavalry away from his own archers, attack the enemy archers with his cavalry, and avoid pikemen
.
I designed the mod for players who play on normal intelligence and on maxed battle size. Overall damage has been increased, so soloing is now much harder and the player will be forced to command an army as well.
I hope you enjoy the mod and please leave any feedback!
Vuk