General's Bodyguard overpowered?

[Tate]

Last night a five star Lithuanian general's army attacked my city defended by a zero-star general. Long story short, the battle was totally in my favor until all that remained of the enemy was the general's bodyguard. This unit fought through two units of Order Spearmen (at least 50 soldiers in each unit) through the gate. The spearmen routed and fled to the city center with less than ten men in each unit.

At the city square all I had left were about 15 order spearmen and 7 horses of my own general's bodyguard. The five-star Lithuanian attacked with five remaining horses and killed all of my remaining men. All that stood in the city square after the battle was the lone Lithuanian general. I watched all of this unfold in stunned disbelief, followed by a lot of cursing. It was like fighting a batallion of Abrams tanks.

I love the powerful heavy cavalry of SS compared to vanilla, but what unfolded in this battle was just ridiculous. Has anyone else had something like this happen??

-Merged two threads.
Chimaeira.

[Xam Enyap]

Yup they seem a bit unrealistic now

[Quark]

Tate
Where as I agree that should not happen, how tough do you want your generals to be? Should they be easily killed or not?

If you are finding them too powerful, I suggest the easiest solution is to lower there unit size down by 1 in the EDU and see how that goes.

Another thing was was he just a general or an heir/king, they are harder to kill you know, as for some reason they like to have tough knights around them.

[Tate]

Tate
Where as I agree that should not happen, how tough do you want your generals to be? Should they be easily killed or not?

If you are finding them too powerful, I suggest the easiest solution is to lower there unit size down by 1 in the EDU and see how that goes.

Another thing was was he just a general or an heir/king, they are harder to kill you know, as for some reason they like to have tough knights around them.

I'm fairly new to Stainless Steel, I've only been playing it for a couple weeks. I love it, but what happened here really caught me off guard. I was not expecting this kind of outcome because in vanilla my Order Spearmen would have killed that general with no problem, especially in the city gate. My general was not good (no stars), but I should have easily won that fight with just a captain commanding.

[shenryyr]

You really should make it a priority to kill the enemy general as quickly as possible in any battle, that way you can rout enemy units instead of yours being routed.

If you're on hard or very hard, computer-controlled factions get huge command bonuses for their generals. In one campaign heading through Novgorodian lands, we had to fight more than ten 8+ star generals, some 10 stars.

Try to use assassins to your advantage(kind of like as if you were fighting the Mongols in vanialla M2TW), or trap high-ranking generals in a city or fort and make sure they die from battles instead of being able to run away.

[s0meguy]

Hungarian general vs double the number of heavy cavalry: heavy cavalry get annihilated while their general unit only loses like a third. I don't get it, their stats and my cav stats aren't that far from eachother.

[Xam Enyap]

They have 2 hit points I believe

[Guinnessmonkey]

They have 2 hit points I believe

I suppose I could look at the stats myself when I get home, but does anyone know if the stats of the bodyguard units have been built with 2hp in mind? i.e. if one was to lower their hp would we end up with bodyguard units getting owned by an equal number of regular hvy cav? 'Cause they should be the best heavy cav in the battle, just not exponentially so...

Seems to me that having the best equipment and training is nice, but it shouldn't lead to 1 bodyguard soldier being equal to 3 or 4 heavy cavalry soldiers. Similarly equipped units just slogging it out should ideally result in the bodyguard winning with heavy casualties (with the general perhaps among them). I shouldn't see (as I did in my last 5.1 game) bodyguard units being surrounded by multiple spear units AND enemy heavy cavalry and slaughtering the enemy. My heavy cav was destroyed and the spear units nearly wiped out...

The AI still likes to throw it's bodyguard into the fray more than it should, but that doesn't mean we should accommodate the AI and make doing so a winning tactic. Doing so should be a good way to have your army rout (on the general's death), not a no-brainer.

[Willowmound]

That's one mean general...

[Invincible]

What do hitpoints really?

I dont know that exactly...

And what kind of bonuses do 5+ stars generals on H or VH get?

Thx for answers!

[Quark]

Invincible
Hit points are set to 1 or 2 in the EDU, and 2 is alot tougher than 1, as the way the engine handles damage is to distribute the effect over the whole unit. Hence you could say that a 2 hp unit is four times more powerful than a 1 hp unit. Generals unit size was reduced to try and reduce the effect that had in battle, while trying to keep the effect of them actually leading an army in terms of command stars, morale etc.

Ai units recieve a boost to there capabilities depending on what difficulty setting you choose. On Hard they get more morale, battle recovery, movement, command stars, and a few settlement bonuses to help compensate for teh fact that the Ai is not as good at managing a settlement as the player.

Essentially you have two paths to choose from when trying to make the game more challenging, boost the Ai or penalise the player. I much prefer the former method.

[Inhuman One]

I got unit size on small lately and enjoy that more, this might make the bodyguards less of a problem as well since a standard general only seems to have eight bodyguards.

Crossbows kill them just fine, they are not overpowered at all. They went down rather easy against two units of crossbow mercenaries even.

[Dontom]

Well i saw a 5 man general's bodyguard unit kill off 90 feudal knights in my campaign a few moments ago, so yeah, they're kinda OP.

[s0meguy]

Well i saw a 5 man general's bodyguard unit kill off 90 feudal knights in my campaign a few moments ago, so yeah, they're kinda OP.

LOL no way. Which faction was that general?

Just a few moments back, I killed 2 full missile cavalry and spear militia unit with my 30 man bodyguard (heir) (not all at once) in the same battle while losing 14 of them. I suppose that's not too big of an achievement though...

[rageallday]

Generals over powered?

[rageallday]

bump

[s0meguy]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=160444

[rageallday]

bump

[Dontom]

It was a Lithuanian Faction Leader, 5 members remained before they engaged my feudal knights, he routed all of my Knights with 4 guys remaining.

[Naked Emperor]

I just gave all the general's bodyguard 1 hp instead of 2 and gave the unit a base size of 12 and now they are fine IMHO