Hi all,
I am new enough to Stainless Steel that 6.4 is the first version I have ever played...and love it (mostly)! I have played M2TW off and on pretty much since release. It is one of those games that for me has endless replayability, and the last few years I have been playing Third Age mods almost exclusively.
Having the medieval era bug again I recently discovered the SS 6.4 mod, but I have some questions regarding the use of cavalry vs spearmen. For example my current campaign is early era Denmark. I am at turn 176, in the year 1187. I have conquered all of Scandinavia, Finland and the British Isles. I am in the process of mopping up the remaining Brits in Normandy. I just had a battle where I had a considerable advantage in numbers against 2 enemy groups, the first a small group of two mailed knights (32 knights, not the smaller general units), the second a larger force with a balanced mix of units.
The odd thing is that I don't have any spearmen more powerful that the spear militia I started with, even though my economy is rocking and I have several fully upgraded castles and cities. The Brits fielded armoured sergeants against me but I can't produce them from their captured cities.
In this last battle the Brits immediately made a full speed run with their two mailed knight units at my front line of stationary spearmen on defensive posture. They seemed near invincible and annihilated one spear unit, routed another, killed half of the remaining two and were only stopped by throwing all my huscarls and landsmenn at them and charging them from the rear with my own two cav units. Even after they broke and fled they had such high moral they'd almost immediately rally and charge again, despite the fact that the first two unit group had no general.
The second group soon arrived and they had 4 catapult units, a mangonel and two ballistas. These seemed WAY more accurate than my artillery units and did some major damage until I was able to shut them down with flanking cavalry. In the end I won the battle but my 1100 strong army took nearly 500 casualties to the enemy's 450.
I then reloaded my save and auto resolved it and won with only 39 casualties. You can guess which outcome I progressed from. My questions are:
Have cavalry been buffed to the point where non-cav oriented armies are no longer viable?
Is it normal that 176 turns in with fully upgraded cities and castles the Danes cannot field spearmen better than their starting militia? For reference my largest city is Arhus, with a pop of 27k +, and my largest castle is Kalmar with 20k + pop. Both have fully upgraded barracks.
I am loving this mod, and my economy is rocking enough that I can take the losses and keep expanding, but it is just not the cavalry/spearmen dynamic I'm used to. It literally reminded me of the charge of the Rohirrim into weak ass ranks of orc rabble.