Overpowered and underpowered units

[Ecthelion]

Overpowered:

Artillery in general: far far too accurate

Archers: too much penetration and attack power given their cost.

Underpowered:

Any type of two handed weapon wielder, especially units wielding two handed pole arms like billmen. I've found them to be near useless.
In general though, two handers suffer from the parry problem. Their animation for an attack is so slow that they are often attacked and forced to parry before they can complete their attack, forcing them to start the attack sequence over again.

Feel free to add to the list.

[lawngnome]

2-handers shouldn't form a main line, so I think it's a matter of improper use. Use them for flanking or for 2nd line duty and you will see much different results.

Archers? Which ones? Most archers do minimal damage... maybe you're talking about Longbowmen or upper-strata Crossbowmen? They penetrate well, but good luck getting an average archer to do much against a heavily armored opponent.

Siege weapons? Accurate? I once had 2 Trebuchets fire flaming ammo at a unit of Spear Militia that was the main line of my enemy's approaching army... every single shot missed.... they hit other units nearby, so I didn't care too much, but they are hardly accurate. Maybe you've experienced a few freak accidents.

[Tiwaz]

Trick with siege units, if you can, is to fire from flank of enemy force.

Ok, getting them there is going to be troublesome but since shots tend to go long or short instead of wide it has better chances of success. And rocks can do more damage to side (had couple catapult shots take whole line of cavalry with single rock)

[centrelink4]

Artillery:

Artillery does feel overpowered. Especially basic units like catapults. I dont know if its the accuracy or what but they make units near them with similiar or greater cost (like alot of archer units) look bad. THat alone is a problem, I find myself taking silly armies of catapults now.

Archers:

Seem too good at actualy fighting for their cost. They shoot you on the way in and then when you actually get to fight them there better then you. That sort of power needs to cost more.

2-handers:

Again, I dont know what the issue is but they dont seem that good. And its a cost and availability issue. If there only for occasional use and should only be used for flanking then they should be costed for that, including building the barracks. Not costed out like a tanking unit that can take all comers.

And whats the point of a second line spear wall then?

[snuggans]

:hmmm:

you guys are finding archers overpowered?
are you guys talking about their melee combat or their use with the ranged weapon?

because in my case i am just a little dumbstruck by their inaccuracy and also at the fact that firearms like arquebusiers are more accurate than longbows... at any distance. and that high arc firing is INCREDIBLY inaccurate, so much that you can zoom out a little bit from the enemy unit and see the arrows landing dozens of meters away.

IMO:

underpowered:
the actual ranged ability of Archer units
they seem to have put too much into their melee power and not enough into their use with the bow. (note: i only have experience with the english longbowmen up to retinue)

of course there are clearly some units that were meant to do both.

[Fondor_Yards]

Artillery so far as been extremely unaccuract. I can't even hit towers with my trebs unless they are facing head on, firing at it from the side jsut wasted a ton of ammo. And artillery, in field battles so far as been just as bad. I've used cannons in two battles *both times only 1 piece* and they rarely hit anything. I've faced cataputs twice, used my the eygptians. They first time they had about 4, didn't hit me once before I killed them. 2nd time they had about 10, hit me maybe once. Archers in ranged are very weak unless you can somehow get your enemy to sit there and take the fire till they use all their ammo. I can't really comment on them in meele, the only ones I have used in meele have higher then normal attacks *dismounted heavy mongols, dismounted dvors, saphar*sp* milita*.

Hussars need a tone down. They are as strong as knights, but a lot cheaper and faster.

[Chuffy]

Polearm troops are definitely underpowered but thats mainly because a bug in the game means they don't attack cavalry.

No, really, they stand there and don't even make any attempt to strike cavalrymen.

Happens with Billmen and Varangian Guard, test it out for yourself.

[Lee1026]

and pikemen

[lawngnome]

I still disagree on the 2-hander thing. My main force as the French is like 5 armored segeants with 4 Voulgiers (polearm units) and I can rip apart anything my enemy throws at me... the Armored Sergeants form the 1st line and absorb the charge or make the charge themselves and then the Voulgiers go in and rip things to shreds. Then other units make up the rest of my army... I like archers for the most part, but if cavalry charges work properly a unit of heavy cav will run over an archer unit in about 5 seconds.

But really, in an average full stack vs. full stack battle my Voulgiers come out with 100-ish kills and 10-20 deaths on Hard, while my Spears won't get many kills and will take a few more casualties.

[Metellus]

I have had excellent experiences with Halberdiers, so I can't appreciate where you guys are coming from when you say similar units are nerfed. They are excellent on attack and defend. I even put them up against Mongol Heavy Lancers (they were my main battle line) and they performed excellent. I zoomed in to see the hack-work and their animations certainly aren't slow; they cut down those horsemen really well and drove them off (1 unit Lancers vs 1 unit Halberdiers). Haven't got to Zweihanders yet (can't wait, I'm HRE) but I expect much of the same.

[Wautd]

Underpowered: walls.

Seriously, they already crumble by 1 or 2 volleys of a simple bombard

[Tiwaz]

Artillery so far as been extremely unaccuract. I can't even hit towers with my trebs unless they are facing head on, firing at it from the side jsut wasted a ton of ammo. And artillery, in field battles so far as been just as bad. I've used cannons in two battles *both times only 1 piece* and they rarely hit anything. I've faced cataputs twice, used my the eygptians. They first time they had about 4, didn't hit me once before I killed them. 2nd time they had about 10, hit me maybe once. Archers in ranged are very weak unless you can somehow get your enemy to sit there and take the fire till they use all their ammo.

Like said, you should NOT aim in battlefield your artillery at any specific unit but rather give them target which is in the middle of enemy army. And as shots either go long or short instead of wide getting an angle on the attack can help hit OTHER units which are in front or behind target.

As for archers, it is again question of positioning. Shields and heavy armour give good defence against arrows, so to rack up kills you have to maneuver your troops. But in sieges and assaults archers can really shine. Enemy troops pinned down by your infantry and archers shooting at the back of the enemies forces far faster morale drop for enemy.

[Mythos]

By the middle ages the catapults were so accurate that they could hit 1 person from 90m away and a small group from 150m.

[Ambrosius]

artillery is far from too accurate. its balanced, IMO. i would like it more accurate, however then i would be tempted to build to much of it and bombard my enemy before i attacked.

as it is now, it requires a lot of luck and some skill to use in open battlefields to good effect. they are very useful in sieges, but in open field warfare they are completely useless. youll be lucky to land one good hit on a charging opponent before they wash over you, and then youll wish you had a unit of infantry instead of a cannon.

as for billmen and 2-handed infantry: theyre shock troops... they are supposed to be defensively underpowered. they give up defense for more offense. you are probably using them incorrectly: use cheap, upgraded, high defense spear militia or armored sergeants to soak up the damage, and then either flank the enemy with billmen, charge them in from the side, or just charge them in from behind your own spearmen.

crossbowmen are powerful against armor but thats the way they should be. they were extremely lethal and feared in the day. sure, theyre great for defense... but the only reason people think they are overpowered now in field battles is because of the passive AI. if they AI just charged peoples mass ranged armies, they would die miserably. they have a high reload time. in open fields youll get one volley off vs light cavalry and two off against infantry, then youll get trampled.

in siege, they are useless for taking out siege equipment. i would much rather man my walls with, say, muslim archers than pavise crossbowmen in siege warfare.

play more human opponents, or wait for the patch, and you wont think crossbows and artillery are overpowered. i hope that CA doesnt listen too much to these 'balance' threads, since IMO the game is already very welll balanced, the last thing we need is them screwing with game balance and messing things up again like they did in Rome. honestly, the only thing i would like is that the bugs be fixed: unit cohesion, cavalry charge, etc. everything else is fine the way it is... if you think its not, odds are youre not using the unit properly.

also, not everything is supposed to be 'perfectly equal' the whole point of the game and its different factions is to make use of each factions strengths and weaknesses. some factions should be more challenging than others.

[Ecthelion]

First of all, to make statements about this topic, you really need to base them on custom battle tests.

Campaign games have too many extenuating factors.

Artillery accuracy is type dependent. In general, ballistas and catapults are VERY accurate, try a custom battle and you'll see.

Cannons in general are not nearly as accurate, even the explosive ammunition power can only compensate if there is a large mass of the enemy.

The pike/halberd/bill/other two handed polearms issue is well known. There are a few units that are excluded: namely the Dismounted English Knights and other similar units. Not sure why. Basically it boils down to the fact that once in formation the units are not really great at what they're supposed to do (stopping cavalry) and even worse at stopping an infantry attack of any kind. Out of the spearwall formation, they are entirely useless. Heavily armored pike units are an exception.

I can see the reasoning for this if it were just pikemen militia, but even halbrediers have the same problem, and that makes no sense.

Billmen, like I said are almost entirely worthless for their cost. Try them against anything, they will lose.

Two hander swords and axemen are decent for charging but fall apart almost immediately in melee against far worse infantry opponents who happen to have a shield.

Archer accuracy is not the biggest problem, it's their attack and penetration power.

Gun units have too low of an attack power. Unshielded and unarmored units can regularly take gunshots and not go down, even at close range. To balance higher attack power, their accuracy needs to be cut.

[Shaba Wangy]

Pavise crossbowmen and Italian Spear milita's are way to overpowered. Pavise crossbowmen ripped my Gothic knights apart IN A MELEE!

Italian Spear milita's cost too little and are too good.

[HungDaoDaiVuong]

I don't think Archers are overpowered, both in accuracy and in penetration power. It's VERY hard to use a bow effectively in a battle (take up a real bow and you'll see what i mean, i have been doing archery for a few years and it's never simply a matter of Point and Shoot). There is the matter of air resistant, wind, arch of fire and all that kind of stuff, so except for professionally trained Longbowmen and such(which i find incredibly powerful), i think archers are portrayed just fine

As to Crossbow, they are accurate and devastating at close range, and they should be, although their long reload time and and short range make them far less versatile than good bow archers like Longbowmen, so i gotta say but for a few situations, like bridge defense or wall deathtrap, I much prefer bows for missile units

Now to underpowered, I agree with what you guys saying about poleamrs and pike, but I gotta say the first one that come to mind are gunpowder infantries, ie. Aquebursiers and Musketeers. Why? Simply because if i have a line of men shoulder to shoulder with guns, and another line of men in dense formation charging at them, i expect most of the first line to fall when the gun fires. Why they don't is a mystery to me. Once i had a full formation of musketeer, 60 men standing in dense formation 3 lines deep, aiming at 10 pikemen standing still at about one third crossbow range. Just exactly why 7 of them still stood after the guns fire I just can't understand. Even with muskets, 20 men abreast firing at 20 m range should fill the air with musket balls, so those pikemens should each be hit with 3-4 of them at least. They should fall. Of course there is the matter of balancing the game, but still, if you're going to include guns, make them fire like guns.

[ghyslyn]

believe it or not, but i find the peasants to be WAY WAY WAY overpowered, right now in my campaign nobody is making any money, so the average soldier is of that quality, but i still dont get how a unit of 75 peasants will beat one of my units of 55 dismounted feudal knights head on about 30% of the time, like what the hell? peasants should have no chance but the kills are always about even, im even having trouble flanking them with cavalry

you shouldnt even need to flank them, they have gardeners forks, what use is that(when holding it in both hands) against a guy on a fully armoured horse?

im tired of losing to armies of 20 peasants,

i had caeronaveron(or what its clled) i get attacked by a full stack of peasants, peasant archers and a bit of town militia, my army consists of two units of dismounted feudal knights and 3 of mounted feudal knights, i got raped, killing only 27% of enemies, yet before the battle it calculated as equal.

makes me start thinking that buying the more expensive units is not worth it at all... spend as much money on numbers as you do for another army on quality, numbers will win.

whats up with this? never was a problem in RTW

[HungDaoDaiVuong]

Well there is the matter of maneuvering, terrain, experience, armor and all that. Low level units like peasant or militia gets their strength in number (a standard company of peasnt (assuming you're playing with the normal unit scale) comes in 75 instead of the normal for other infantries, and they wouldn't rout as easily as we think they would if they are supported in the rear and the side by their comrades. On the other hand, even dismounted feudal knights, and armored swordmen wouldn't fight very well well enveloped on all sides. Here's what i imagine your battle would be like (it's just a possibility, no offense intended and please don't get angry): confident of your superior troops, you charge headlong into the enemy formation with your heavy infantry, which, being vastly outnumbered, was easily enveloped and gotta fight garden forks coming from all side while being picked off by arrow. You send in your calvary, hoping to save the day and bump into some militia (which are spearmen and can "rape" calvary without much efford provided they are not outnumbered). It is very possible that your over confidence in the superior troops leads to the defeat, as i've once experience when i sent 2 companies of English knight charging up hill at 4 companies of spear militia and peasant, thinking they gonna come through in no time. Well they didn't,routed instead, and only luck, dumbness of the AI and superior quality of the english longbowmen saved me that battle.

On the topic of longbowmen, i just went through some researches, and found out the professionally trained longbowman in a medieval English army could put out a rate of fire of 10-20 arrows per minute. That's pretty intense, if you ask me (bottomline? compared to the historical longbowman, the medieval II counterpart is pretty much underpowered )

[ghyslyn]

longbowmen were very very good quality in medieval times, only the much later and rare thick italian plate armour was able to stop it.

btw real situation for me:

they had a ram, broke through the gate and poured in, i had my dismounted knights making a triangle against the wall to try and stop with my cavalry behind on both sides waiting to charge when a gap was formed:
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so my knights fought, then mounted knights charged in, but i still got massively overwhelmed by their crowding numbers(they werentkilling my men as much as they were pushing through)