I never used Vaegir heavy cavalry either. I can also only recall one kind of infantry in Warband. Its not necessarily a major issue.
Did you ever use anything other than the strongest...
Sorry, I cant care about twohanded something something. You are on your own there.
The
whole point of game balance is to make it so that the game content is all useful for the player! If you don't care about game content getting used, why are you even discussing balance?
Your position is genuinely that we shouldn't make armor more effective against arrows because you "don't care" if all pike infantry and shock infantry continue to remain ****? Why should anyone listen to that?
These are always the sources listed for impenetrable (mail) armor, but they are far from convincing.
I am inclined to believe the well-sourced article. And the article itself doesn't come to the conclusion that mail was
impenetrable - with the possible exception of high quality double mail. What the article says is that
good quality mail over padding provided very good protection from arrows.
I don't say that mail was always easily penetrated, it was quite protective, although arrows and bolts surely acted as the biggest threats because of the physics involved.
The physics involved is also explained by the article. Arrows have great difficulty with a combination of felt and mail, because a narrow-tipped arrow like a bodkin can slide between the links but cannot cut its way through the felt, while a broad-headed arrow can cut its way through the felt but cannot slide between the mail links.
The source for Ranulf is not comparable to the sources you cited because it does not tell explicitly about penetration of his armor or behavior of armor at all. Usually however the sources tell wether an unprotected part of the body is hit, for example Tostig at Stamford Bridge (hit in the face) or Harald Hardrada at the same battle (hit in the throat, maybe he had no mail aventail, or was it penetrated?). That Ranulf fled and died for me speaks more against having been hit in the face/head, maybe his torso was penetrated (few wounds are immediatelly deadly) and he died from bleeding (the usual reason for death from wounds) or inflammation.
Well we don't know and you have to guess, and we don't even know if he was hit by multiple other arrows previously, so it isn't a fantastic example for your point. What Ranulf fleeing and dying does tell us with certainty, however, is that his wound was not instantly fatal, unlike the Bannerlord arrows that make you drop dead instantly after 4 hits.
Hardened mail however would be very rare before the 14th c. AD, it mostly been made from iron and more easily penetrated.
Lower quality metal for mail, but also lower quality metal available to use for arrows.
In Todd's tests of a late 14th c. AD plate torso armor replica, one arrow which "missed" penetrated the mail and dublet with ease, but it was a strong 160 lbs bow, going surely over 150 Joules.
And no bow that powerful would be available in Bannerlord's time period, without a question. Even Fian Champion bows are probably only in the 100lbs range, and they're rare and head and shoulders above 90% of bows in the game which are all short bows.
A wound one inch deep (that's 2,54 cm) is a deadly threat at some places of the torso/neck, and surely a deadly threat generally in a world without antibiotics. There is one source from the 14th c. AD (?, not sure, I saw it recently cited in a video from scolagladiatoria) about a "funny" event involving a proud manufacturer of aketons, being so convinced of his design that he stabbed himself in the chest with a dagger to test it, receiving a wound of allegedly "half an inch" and dying "immediately". How they measured the depth of the wound and what "immediately" means is not clear to me, but it surely shows that minor wounds can be dangerous.
Be good to see that video for, in the words of Easton, "context".
To get to 100 to 120 Joules you need a strong bow or a medium crossbow, but such weapons would have been in use in the medieval period, and would have posed a danger to mailed people from shorter distances.
In Bannerlord's time period, powerful crossbows were uncommon, they were all wooden-prod rather than steel-prod. And this is reflected in the game, Vlandian Sharpshooters use wooden crossbows. Crossbows were actually almost always weaker than longbows, contrary to popular belief.
That big shields were used by mailed people shows that they knew about being endangered by contemporary weapons depite being armored. When Henry I (German king in the 10th c. AD) advised his heavy cavalry for fighting the Magyars who were famous horsearchers and bowmen, he did not say "attack without concerns, you have mail armor" but "take the arrows with your raised shield and then attack before they can shoot again".
Obviously you want the most protection you can get, this does not mean that mail did not afford good protection in itself though.
Yes, you would risk injury in mail if shot by an arrow (I am not asking for impenetrable mail), and so would prefer to have your shield hit instead of your mail if possible.
But the injury you would take in mail if shot by an arrow would usually not be so serious as to kill you in a handful of hits. As the multiple historical sources have already stated, it was not an uncommon occurrence to be hit by 10+ arrows and not even be injured.
With this and everything else in mind, I think there is plenty of evidence and justification to ask for arrows to take 7-8 hits to kill a mailed person instead of 4-5.
But only seldomly before the 14th c. AD when plate formed a bigger part of the armor and foot combat for men-at-arms became more common. Armored people usually where on horse and used lances and shields earlier.
During the Middle Byzantine era, the Byzantines commonly used two-handed pikes - the Kontarion of around 4-5 metre length, and Menavlion - and pike tactics. There was actually a distinction between shieldbearers - "skoutatos" - and pikemen - "kontophoros".
The Varangian Guard and many other Vikings were also well-known for their two-handed axes - the Daneaxe. This later influenced the Anglo-Saxons - their elite troops at the Battle of Hastings used two-handed axes, as depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry - and the Scots and Irish, who developed the Gallowglasses who were well known for two-handed greataxes.
So two-handed axes were certainly
not an uncommon sight in Bannerlord's time period.
The Welsh and Scots were known for using pike tactics even before the 1300s.
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