Cavalry rebalancing

[Quinn Inuit]

I wanted our cavalry to be strong (link to old discussion), but as I play through the game, I think we've overdone it. Even a frontal charge into a group of spearmen usually results in the cavalry surviving and winning. That's not OK. Similarly, light cavalry absolutely chew up light infantry, like peltasts {both the Ps(S) types like Greek peltastai and Aux(O) types like Pontic light infantry}. Realistically, light cavalry should do reasonably well against them in a straight fight, but ATM they're dominating.

Any recommendations for how to nerf them relative to infantry a little? I hate to apply an across-the-board negative vs. infantry, since that will show up in the unit info scroll and potentially confuse players.

[Flinn]

From my gaming experience (largely with Med2) with TW titles; cavalry can be OP, as long as it is limited in numbers.

To put it in other words, in the past centuries heavy cavalry was the tank forces, litterally stomping over any other unit other than heavy cavalry itself (at least in plain open fields battles) and this remained valid unless new stronger ranged weapons became available (better and faster to reload crossbows, reliable gun weapons); the use of spears/pikes is largely overestimated: they are mostly ancients weapons and they have confronted cavalry with little results over centuries.

The key here is training, for both heavy cavalry and pikes/spears: the real heavy cavalry, those lads able to crush everything, were people training for all their lives, hence they could be OP but there should be only little of them, while light and medium cavalry should me much less effective in charges and suitable only for flanking and chasing enemies (or light archers/javelins/etc). The same is valid for spears/pikes: it needs more than a spear and a shield to make a spearmen; the petzeteri of Macedon are a good example, as those lads trained hard to do only one thing basically, be the anvil of the Macedonian armies.

So it depends on who is confronting who: having a bounch of higly trained "knights" stomping over regular lancers should be the rule, just like seeing light cavalry impaled on the pikes of hardened and experienced lads.

Backing to the technical aspect, I'm not expert with RTW, but do you have a charge bonus on the attributes? If so, you can increase it and lower down the other attributes (mostly attack, you can leave defense on higher values); alternatively, can't you simply nerf down light/med cav stats and keep the heavy's ones as they are now? is it possible to increase pool recruit replenishment with RTW?

I apologize for my silly questions, I have limited modding exp only with Med2, but I worked on unit balance as a tester, hence I can share a bit of my exp here

[Quinn Inuit]

From my gaming experience (largely with Med2) with TW titles; cavalry can be OP, as long as it is limited in numbers.

To put it in other words, in the past centuries heavy cavalry was the tank forces, litterally stomping over any other unit other than heavy cavalry itself (at least in plain open fields battles) and this remained valid unless new stronger ranged weapons became available (better and faster to reload crossbows, reliable gun weapons); the use of spears/pikes is largely overestimated: they are mostly ancients weapons and they have confronted cavalry with little results over centuries.

The key here is training, for both heavy cavalry and pikes/spears: the real heavy cavalry, those lads able to crush everything, were people training for all their lives, hence they could be OP but there should be only little of them, while light and medium cavalry should me much less effective in charges and suitable only for flanking and chasing enemies (or light archers/javelins/etc). The same is valid for spears/pikes: it needs more than a spear and a shield to make a spearmen; the petzeteri of Macedon are a good example, as those lads trained hard to do only one thing basically, be the anvil of the Macedonian armies.

So it depends on who is confronting who: having a bounch of higly trained "knights" stomping over regular lancers should be the rule, just like seeing light cavalry impaled on the pikes of hardened and experienced lads.

No argument here. What's bugging me is that I can frontally charge HC into elite spearmen (or LC into twice their number of light infantry) and have them smash their opponents. That just ain't right.

Backing to the technical aspect, I'm not expert with RTW, but do you have a charge bonus on the attributes? If so, you can increase it and lower down the other attributes (mostly attack, you can leave defense on higher values);

Yep, I do, but I suspect this is either a lethality issue or an issue with game engine cavalry mechanics. I think all mounted units get some sort of bonus vs. infantry, but I can't find the specifics on it. If that's the case, I may need to dial back the relevant attribute to compensate.

alternatively, can't you simply nerf down light/med cav stats and keep the heavy's ones as they are now? is it possible to increase pool recruit replenishment with RTW?

I'm afraid the heavies are part of the problem here, too. Unfortunately, we can't mess with pool replenishment.

I apologize for my silly questions, I have limited modding exp only with Med2, but I worked on unit balance as a tester, hence I can share a bit of my exp here

It's cool. I appreciate the suggestions.

[Flinn]

so if I got it right, the problem here is not the charge but the melee, right? The fact that the cavalry can survive easily a prolonged melee with any infantry, isn't it?

if it's a value hardcoded, there's little you can do; what about increasing drammatically the cost of recruitment and maintenance then? If you cannot change the replenishment time, then the only way to limit them (at least for the palyer) is to increase their cost. Are you using a sort of money script for the AI? One of the issues I remember with Med 2 about having expensive units is that the AI wasn't able to handle them and soon get to bankrupt.

Have you tried to reduce the attack/defense stats to very low values and see how they behave? With Med2 I remember the case of pikemen, that due to their attack animation were really OP, hence it was (and still is AFAIK) needed to keep their values low, with the result that many would not use them assuming that they are weak units; I don't think this can be helped, but I would rather prefer to see a cavalry unit with 3 attack vs infantry with 10 attack in order to have a balanced fight, more than reading a "weak vs infantry" on every cavalry unit. Also, what about reducing the number of knights per each unit?

I apologize if I look pretentiuos in my questions, I'm more than aware that you are an experienced modder and much better than me in this, but that's just my way of asking straight questions

[Quinn Inuit]

so if I got it right, the problem here is not the charge but the melee, right? The fact that the cavalry can survive easily a prolonged melee with any infantry, isn't it?

Aye.

if it's a value hardcoded, there's little you can do; what about increasing drammatically the cost of recruitment and maintenance then? If you cannot change the replenishment time, then the only way to limit them (at least for the palyer) is to increase their cost. Are you using a sort of money script for the AI? One of the issues I remember with Med 2 about having expensive units is that the AI wasn't able to handle them and soon get to bankrupt.

That's one solution, but I'd like to make it possible for users to keep cavalry as historical percentages of their armies if they're so inclined.

Have you tried to reduce the attack/defense stats to very low values and see how they behave? With Med2 I remember the case of pikemen, that due to their attack animation were really OP, hence it was (and still is AFAIK) needed to keep their values low, with the result that many would not use them assuming that they are weak units; I don't think this can be helped, but I would rather prefer to see a cavalry unit with 3 attack vs infantry with 10 attack in order to have a balanced fight, more than reading a "weak vs infantry" on every cavalry unit. Also, what about reducing the number of knights per each unit?

I apologize if I look pretentiuos in my questions, I'm more than aware that you are an experienced modder and much better than me in this, but that's just my way of asking straight questions

It's cool. I think I need to change the stats, but I'm not sure how yet. If necessary, I can add a gameplay note to cav unit descriptions to help guide users.

That's interesting to know about the OP pike animation in Med2, thanks.

[Flinn]

I think that if you want to maintain a certain balance between efficency and presence of cavalry in the armies, the best would be to decrease the number of men per each unit. If there's an hardcoded bonus of cavalry vs infatry that you cannot change, then in a way or another you need to tune them down, and personally I'd rather prefer to see 4 cavalry units per army with only maybe 15 or 20 men each than just one unit of them with 60 men; at the end of the day cavalry is particularly useful for flanking, chasing and hunting enemy's generals, so a minimum of 3-4 units per army is a must IMO; on the other hand, I don't think it would be possible to have a balance that will also allow you to have armies completely composed of cavalry (such as for the Partians for instance), because in general if you can deploy an army composed only of cavalry and stomp the world with it, there's something broken (at least during mid/late campaign a good balance means that you need armies made of mixed units, in order to be really effective vs the AI).