Your current army composition?

[Wira]

Just kind of interesting little discussion question I thought, and I want to know how you guys play!

I'm currently playing without any cavalry (as I've been doing in my last few armies, I'm on foot aswell), just cus it's fun 

got around 120 Merc. grenadiers for my ranged and 100 gaucho pikemen+50/50 swadian halberdiers and Rhodok stormtroops as my infantry. +ofc. some 12 companions.

infantry kills cav.
Rifles, grenades, nest of bees' and companions kill everything else (usually rifles and stormtroop grenades kill 80%, my companions sweep up the last 20%) 

EDIT. This is on normal diff. 

 

[xenoargh]

Playing out a Nord Barbarian atm for my AAR / noob guide.  Mommy, ofc.

I keep ending up with random prisoners of various kinds, so I have a very mixed bag, but I'm trying to build a high-quality force of Nord infantry, especially Beserkirs and Expert Spearmen (whose armor I'm upgrading in the next patch- I think they're still not quite up to snuff, even with 'nades).

 

[Wira]

do merc. grenadiers actually have grenades?

The name kinda suggests it, but I never let them get in a situation where they could use it.

 

[xenoargh]

Yes, they do.

 

[nilloc93]

i'm playing with ~240 rhodock stormtroops (since their spearmen suck later on)
another ~120 Sarranid snipers
and 90 Swadian handgonners

makes a good do-everything force

 

[xenoargh]

Is it just me, or is everybody gravitating to infantry with 'nades?

I may have created a monster there, lol.

 

[Wira]

and 90 Swadian handgonners

WOW, doesn't everything that gets over the horizon just die instantly?

and sieges must be just standing outside waiting for the enemy to put their heads up.

EDIT.

I may have created a monster there, lol

you kinda did yeah, with eksplosives in general, IMO

 

[xenoargh]

The cannons don't bother me.  If you can afford 90 handgonners, then you can afford just about anything in the game (although maybe I need to bump them up in price... again).

The infantry with nades causing massive death-spam, on the other hand, may have broken things.  IDK, I'm still playing things through.

 

[Wira]

I think I could kill just about everything with a large regiment of stormtroops, most infantry don't even get close to them before they've been grenaded to death.

 

[xenoargh]

I'll keep an eye on this.  If it needs nerfing, it needs nerfing.

 

[Wira]

If it needs nerfing, it needs nerfing.

the question is how? you can't really change their damage without making it very unrealistic, possibly nerf the size of the AoE.
also maybe make them even rarer with infantry, not how many types have it, but how many men have it (eg. like 1 in 6-8 stormtroops with 'nades would be powerful enough)

 

[xenoargh]

Well, there are a few things that could be done.

1.  Make them do friendly-fire damage.  Probably not a good idea, as WFaS demonstrates; the AI isn't bright enough to deal with that, and can't be made bright enough.  And it wouldn't really cure the main problem, anyhow- troops charging loosely against a solid line.
2.  Make them occasionally blow up in the user's hand, like they did IRL, killing the thrower and damaging nearby troops.  Again, a bit nasty for the AI, to say nothing about the flames I'll get from players 
3.  Reduce their frequency, like you said.  This may be a good solution to general OP-ness, but it bugs me; IRL, once grenades were invented, they were quite popular, and it'll make distribution weird.
4.  Reduce their AOE and effectiveness.  That's probably the best general solution, although, again, there are issues.  If it's too low, then players will find it doesn't give them a useful tactical tool, like it does now, or it'll just be plain useless in a lot of situations.
5.  Keep AOE, but use a different randomizer for the shrapnel simulation (i.e., make it a bit more random).  IDK whether this can even work; there are weird issues with Warband's random number generator.
6.  Swap out troop grenades with a new type that only gets 1-2 shots, to reduce the amount of damage your troops can do before they're out of ammo.

It's a hard issue, really.  I like grenades; they add a lot of the real flavor of combat to the firearms period.  But modeling them totally realistically is probably not a good idea, for all of the above reasons, so I need to figure out what would be a good nerf without totally hosing things.

 

[Wira]

use a different randomizer for the shrapnel simulation

There is such a thing :O interesting . . .

would say giving troops only 1 or 2 would be good, and also, make them as random as it says they are in the description.

 

[xenoargh]

Right now, they're actually really random- they do anywhere from 5-250 damage.  If I lower that much, it'll mean they no longer work against high-armor troops, so it's a bit of a catch-22.  I guess I could adjust the minimum damage code, though. 

What I may try is lowering the radius to 250 from 300, which is a significantly smaller AOE, then lowering the amount available to AI troops.  That may be enough to balance them out.

 

[bortlings]

I really like nades, perfect for clusters of troops, especially skeletons, love seeing "You reached level x" spam! 

Perhaps severely tone down the damage but a wide radius guaranteed "knock down" attack? It'll be a severe lethality nerf but could regulate the weapon to a disrupting weapon, kinda like shield bash spam?

 

[xenoargh]

Well, that's the thing; I really like how they give players another crowd-control tool.  It's just not working out for army balance, methinks.

So what I'm going to do is have non-heroes use less ammo in the next release.  The knockdown idea might be worth pursuing, too, although there isn't any way to do that with horsemen (kind of a marginal case anyhow).  Using less ammo also means that I can adjust troop grenades separately from player grenades, which is probably a good idea.

 

[Noobertuber]

The knock down idea is probably the best I have heard so far; it keeps the grenades usefulness as crowd control, and weakens them to other attacks. As it stands, I can get about 7 kills per grenade, thus 42 kills per grenade slot. Interestingly, with 2 bag of arrows, a Mercenary archer, and a mourn bow, I can get about 70 kills. For that many slots of grenades, you get 126 kills. A bit unbalanced, if you ask me. Besides which, the bow becomes unreliable, accuracy wise, at too short a range to make it useful for sniping, even with MA. In addition, as Blood and steel is specifically not supposed to be heroic, it wouldn't be appropriate for soldiers to use weaker weapons than the player does.

 

[nilloc93]

personally i would just take nades away from stormtroops, it overpowers them, they were fine as just 2H polearm units IMHO
also DON"T bumb handgonners prices please its bad enough that i had to sacrifice my otherwise standard force of 50 rhulugs for another 50 stormtroops cause of prince bumping

 

[Interceptor_II]

Yeah grenades are OP as hell, even modern grenades aren't that powerful lol
More seriously a nerf would definitely be welcome, the Aoe radius is way too big it's like a C4 explosive charge 

I like the knockback effect idea, it would work like an infantry/cavalry disrupter before charging. For horsemen it could just stop them like a pike does, maybe it could be done by adding pierce attribut with very low damage.

 

[xenoargh]

Actually, no... modern frag grenades have a lethal radius of 5 meters, with injury probable out to 15.  These grenades only have a injury radius of 3 meters.  They aren't anything like a modern grenade in terms of performance.

That, and my results with grenades vs. Vaegir pretty much convince me that the problem isn't that they're 'too lethal', it's that the effects of armor are mucking things up.  The top end of damage for them is such that less-armored troops generally just get slaughtered, while armored ones take multiple grenades to kill.

I'll write a fix for it.