SS 6.4 - Cavalry and spears broken, or as intended?

[Bud_Viking]

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.

[Dekhatres]

broken ? yes, intended ? who knows, but why would you even give a ? it's the modders opinion, they were wrong on making cav this op but still their opinion, i guess they just liked it this way

indeed non cav oriented armies are not very viable, dont bother with "better quality" spearman or anything they're all trash at stopping cav, infact almost all infantry is, except maybe some of the elite late units

anyway solution is to change the melee hit rate in the file "battle_config.xml" (open it with notepad), find the line "<melee-hit-rate>1.75</melee-hit-rate>" change that number in middle to 1.0 or 0.5 etc, (the lower the number the weaker the cav charge) test a few battles to see how you like it, also after you make your changes mark the file "read only" so it actually stay the way you edited it
this is the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to kinda fix the unit balance mess in this mod without editing every single unit stats, oh btw it also makes battles last longer

[Jurand of Cracow]

anyway solution is to change the melee hit rate in the file "battle_config.xml" (open it with notepad), find the line "<melee-hit-rate>1.75</melee-hit-rate>" change that number in middle to 1.0 or 0.5 etc, (the lower the number the weaker the cav charge)

I believe in the SS6.4 this number is 3.0, it's only in the SSHIP we've lowered it to 1.75, and Bud_Viking plays the base SS.
In my experience, 1.75 provides a good representation of the field in the Middle Ages - at least in terms of what's possible in the Med2 engine.

[Dekhatres]

yea i dont remember that stuff anymore, whatever that number was, average medium spearman i believe have like around 15 defence with upgrades included and i think you do need a hit rate of around 1.0 for such low def

[Bud_Viking]

I did a search for that file name in the mod's folder and came up with 12 files in various sub folders, for what appears to be multiple AI variants. Not sure which one I should be tweaking.

[Bud_Viking]

I believe in the SS6.4 this number is 3.0, it's only in the SSHIP we've lowered it to 1.75, and Bud_Viking plays the base SS.
In my experience, 1.75 provides a good representation of the field in the Middle Ages - at least in terms of what's possible in the Med2 engine.

Thanks Jurand,

Are there any other download mirrors other than mega.nz? It stopped at 5 GB of a 5.06 GB download and says I need to either pay a subscription or continue that download tomorrow.

[Dekhatres]

edit the one in the data folder (mods/SS6.3/data) make backup first

[LuckyPistol]

From the point of view of someone who didn't edit the units and always went with what the mod gave us, I'm almost certain one of the "weaknesses" of Denmark (and Norway) is that you're lacking reliable spears and cavalry. You've got plenty of heavily armored foot units that should be able to make a shield-wall to stop cavalry and let your militia come around the flanks and swarm them.

Since you've got cash to spend, I'd also think about buying every mercenary Welsh Longbowmen in the British Isles: they are devastatingly effective in 6.4, believe me.

[William the Silent]

indeed non cav oriented armies are not very viable, dont bother with "better quality" spearman or anything they're all trash at stopping cav, infact almost all infantry is, except maybe some of the elite late units

I'm sorry but militia spearman (defense 12) can stop knights very well. They might kill half of them but do not get through.
Also don't make your line too thin. Back your line up with skirmishers. Darts kill knights easily.

If you lack good spear units early in the game, recruit mercanary spearman with your general. They give good defense against anything and can be reinforced in cities.

[Dekhatres]

[randy_cat]

I'm sorry but militia spearman (defense 12) can stop knights very well. They might kill half of them but do not get through.

Which game are you talking about? In vanilla stainless steel 60 mailed knights utterly destroy 150 militia speramen at the first charge. About 20-30 spearmen remain alive after the charge, but they are swiftly killed in the ensuing melee. Knights take almost no casualties in the clash...

[Kataphractos]

I'm sorry but militia spearman (defense 12) can stop knights very well.

Only way spear militia stops knights is if the knights don't hit them with a charge, so defending a gate or somehow running a unit into an idle knight unit is the only way.

Mailed knights can flatten or at least severely deplete a unit of spear militia them in a charge. Sure, the knights might take some casualties each charge, but if they have a couple xp ranks, they can take out or reduce multiple spear militia units to ineffectiveness. Urban spear militia are more durable, but unless you're an Italian faction, you don't have them at first if you're doing early campaign, and they don't stand up well to feudal knights. Pavise spear militia is when militia starts being able to stand up to cavalry.

[aleolex]

I think the main problem is the collision mass of the spearmen. In vanilla stainless steel, all spear units', even armored spear units', collision masses are 0.30, while normal infantry unit masses are anywhere from 1.0-1.8

[randy_cat]

Infantry mass vs cavalry in my experience has nothing to do with It. On the opposite, cavarly mass counts a lot, with heavy knights at about 4 or 5 points of mass, they tend to ride over infantry even spearmen. I tested once with something like very low cavarly mass ( about 1, 1.5 ) and It worked well in making knights less overwhelming.

Infantry mass should be something like from 0.7 to 1.2. This way heavier infantry will push lighter one but most importantly heavy infantry can break through pikemen ( which should have about 1 points of mass ), all the while light infantry cannot break through pikes because of their lighter weight

[Jurand of Cracow]

I'm not into this aspect of the game, but I'd check the parameters in the mod RR/RC 2.0 by PointBlank - I'd think he was an expert in such matters.

[Cerdic]

Which game are you talking about? In vanilla stainless steel 60 mailed knights utterly destroy 150 militia speramen at the first charge. About 20-30 spearmen remain alive after the charge, but they are swiftly killed in the ensuing melee. Knights take almost no casualties in the clash...

Spear militia can stop a charge but only from up a steep hill, or in a city, or if they lose most of the unit, theyre worthless units so its fine to use them as a sacrificial unit to absorb a charge imho. The "unit density" as well as armour is what determines casualties, spear militia have very low "density" so they get unit wiped in one charge unless theyre in a massive blob. Spear serjeants can actually stop a charge and cause casualties, but if you dont want to lose half the unit then you should put them in loose formation or in schiltron, the unit maintains a similar "density" even when in loose formation, as far as the cav charge is concerned, but fewer units will actually get hit, meanwhile the schiltron is all but immune to the charge and will typically only suffer 1:1 casualties . Spearmen are very cheap compared to knights so you should be fine with losing 2 units of spears to kill or bog down 1 unit of feudal knights. Idk why people expect a thin line of crap spearmen to stop a couched lance cav charge, thats not what happens in this mod (or really in vanilla), feudal knights are king of field battles, infantry are king of sieges (apart from athanatoi).

[randy_cat]

Spearmen are very cheap compared to knights so you should be fine with losing 2 units of spears to kill or bog down 1 unit of feudal knights. Idk why people expect a thin line of crap spearmen to stop a couched lance cav charge, thats not what happens in this mod (or really in vanilla), feudal knights are king of field battles, infantry are king of sieges (apart from athanatoi).

This should be true for the very elite knights like templars, lancers, hospitallers, gothic knights and similar cavalry. They are super motivated, almost fanatical and also skilled. Feudal knights should be good ok, but not that strong to wipe out infantry with one charge. Even if expensive they are still OP, to make things even knights in vanilla SS should cost even more... or reduce their charge, and keep their cost.