Rock, paper, scissors

[Ano2]

A lot of posts I have read have been discussing the usefulness of cavalry in 2.3. Now I just wanted to say that in the orignal MTW (Which I think it what Lusted is aiming for in terms of battles) cavalry were only useful on the flanks. In multiplayer the unit balance was pretty much perfect.

Most battles involved both armies deploying near each other, and a missile fight was always the first thing. Cavalry were pretty much used to disrupt archers alone in the earliest part of the battle. Then once ammo was depleted, or when someone decided to attack, the infantry would clash and the battle would pretty much be decided by them. Any cavalry left at this point was only used to counter other cavalry and to help fight the infantry.

However you can argue that cavalry should therefore be a a cheaper unit, however its price must remain fairly expensive because their role on the battlefield is unique and not interchangable with any other unit. If you go up agaisnt an army with cavalary, and youi have none, you will find that their superior mobility is priceless and you simply cannot afford to lose the ability to dictate the battle.

I feel with 2.3 we are very close to the orignal balance that MTW had. It is different from most stategy games these days, because now in most games unit price often dicates their usefulness (Anyone with CandC3 knows what I am talking about). Keep up the good work Lusted!

[Lusted]

Exactly Ano2, that is exactly what i've aimed for and i feel i've achieved in 2.3, i've been trying to get closer to the way things were balanced in MTW. All i need to do now is try and make the ai use its cav to flank more. Here are some early changes i'd like people to test. Just put the files in landstoconquer\data

[Favre]

Ooh me first!

[Sonny WiFiHr]

I use lot of spears and cav. can't flank me so at this point cav is too weak Light cav sometimes can't beat archers (holibars vs peasant archers).Those nations with superb cav now are the weakest nations (Italian nations super powers?) .

[Ano2]

Awesome lusted, i'll give it a shot and let you know how it works!

[StrongGuy]

Ok fine ... balance like in MTW ? That means ... ?

And whats the main idea behind it ? I mean historically heavy cavalry was not used to flank - light/middle cavalry was used for this purpose. Heavy Cavalry punched holes in formations with an aimed head-on-charge.

[Lusted]

Ok fine ... balance like in MTW ? That means ... ?

Means what Ano2 posted in the first post. Spears beat cav, who beat swords, who beat spears.

And whats the main idea behind it ?

It's a more fun balance, and better for gameplay.

I mean historically heavy cavalry was not used to flank - light/middle cavalry was used for this purpose. Heavy Cavalry punched holes in formations with an aimed head-on-charge.

I know that, it just removes a lot of fun as all you need to do if that were true would be line up heavy cav and charge.

[StrongGuy]

I know that, it just removes a lot of fun as all you need to do if that were true would be line up heavy cav and charge.

I guess nobody would like to do that, besides its somehow impossible to have armies consisting only of heavy cav. cuz its impossible to retrain them all, you have to wait too long. Elite units were extreme expensive and the upkeep was very high maybe its a way to bypass your legitimate concerns ?

But its ok, its your mod and your ideas I only play and test it now

[Space Voyager]

I know that, it just removes a lot of fun as all you need to do if that were true would be line up heavy cav and charge.

Europa Barbarorum (RTW mod) countered this by HUGELY expensive and HIGH upkeep heavy cavalry.

Really, if a medieval leaders would be able to afford all-knights-armies they would have them. I don't like these artificially introduced balancing if real world balanced it quite well with prices. It could be the same in LTC.

[Kefka_101]

I think cavalry have been weakened a bit too much in the mod. Granted, they were much too powerful in vanilla but seeing cavaly charges was fun, even if it made the game too easy. Maybe the price or availibility of knights could be used more to balance them, instead of lowering their power so much.

[rdbrady]

Maybe there's a way to do both. Ideally, I think a heavy cavalry charge should destroy an infantry formation - maybe just knock them all down though, rather than kill a whole lot. I think this can be done with lethality settings for weapons. Also, the charge value should be high, but the regular attack not so much. That way, if the heavy cav stays in the infantry for too long, they get destroyed. Thinking about it in a tactical sense, it seems to me that heavy cavalry should lead a charge to disrupt infantry formations. Directly afterwards, infantry should charge the line. The heavy cav should try to push through and hit any ranged units on the other side. The enemy can counter this by having deep formations. The way to get around deep formations is to use light cavalry for flanking.

[DrJambo]

Ideally, I think a heavy cavalry charge should destroy an infantry formation - maybe just knock them all down though, rather than kill a whole lot.

Ultimately, that's what I'd like to see heavy cavalry do - knocking down units but not necessarily always killing them in the process. Right now the cavalry charge always tends to kill. Anyone know if it's possible to make cavalry knock more of a unit down but not necessarily kill them?

[thecactusman17]

To reduce the Cav spam, couldn't you have instead made cav more expensive and given them higher upkeep? You know, to simulate that players were not just maintaining better soldiers, but also all the equipment necessary to keep their horses?

This would mean that instead of huge stacks of cav, players would utilize fewer cav units more efficiently, returning balance to the battles but letting cav still be a force to be reckoned with in battle.

I have yet to see a cav army that can do serious damage to my units. Especially if I rain them with fire arrows on their approach. They just seem to die off too quick to pose a serious threat to me, or me to my enemies.

[StrongGuy]

Maybe there's a way to do both. Ideally, I think a heavy cavalry charge should destroy an infantry formation - maybe just knock them all down though, rather than kill a whole lot. I think this can be done with lethality settings for weapons. Also, the charge value should be high, but the regular attack not so much. That way, if the heavy cav stays in the infantry for too long, they get destroyed. Thinking about it in a tactical sense, it seems to me that heavy cavalry should lead a charge to disrupt infantry formations. Directly afterwards, infantry should charge the line. The heavy cav should try to push through and hit any ranged units on the other side. The enemy can counter this by having deep formations. The way to get around deep formations is to use light cavalry for flanking.

very much my point of view

that's how it should work, exactly

If you find a mod close to this description then give me a sign

[Lusted]

No that won't work, as the player always end up rich and the ai will not recruit overly expensive units, so it would only end up hurting the ai.

[Namm]

All range units should do at least half the damage that they do now. The AI can't use them properly (not protecting them from cavarly charges, using them to storm walls (getting slaughtered and routing) instead of decimating the defenders from a distance) and most, often nearly all, of my kills always come from horse archers, crossbow militias etc. It's boring.

[notger]

I second Namm: Right now, infantry mostly serves as speed bump so that the archers can get more kills. This also shortens the battles: The AI now has "realistic" armies due to the patch. He advances with his infantry towards your archer-heavy army and loses one third of his men even before he is there. Then the archers retreat behind the friendly infantry lines, the own infantry routs the AI-infantry and the archers get a lot of other kills. Infantry fight? Time for flanking manoeuvers? Prolonged battles? Not when the player has good archers in his army.

As much as I approve the archer vs. muskets balancing and as much as I like to have potent Longbows around, I dislike the fact that infantry got more or less the role of a bystander.

What I wrote above is not true for all battles but is a tendency I observed in quite a number of battles while playing the English and the Byzantines. I would also like the archers to be a little bit less effective, let's say 1/3 less.

[Pagan Deity]

I second Namm: Right now, infantry mostly serves as speed bump so that the archers can get more kills. This also shortens the battles: The AI now has "realistic" armies due to the patch. He advances with his infantry towards your archer-heavy army and loses one third of his men even before he is there. Then the archers retreat behind the friendly infantry lines, the own infantry routs the AI-infantry and the archers get a lot of other kills. Infantry fight? Time for flanking manoeuvers? Prolonged battles? Not when the player has good archers in his army.

As much as I approve the archer vs. muskets balancing and as much as I like to have potent Longbows around, I dislike the fact that infantry got more or less the role of a bystander.

What I wrote above is not true for all battles but is a tendency I observed in quite a number of battles while playing the English and the Byzantines. I would also like the archers to be a little bit less effective, let's say 1/3 less.

Cut down on ammo. The trouble with making infantry very resistant to archers is that archers will become worthless. They have to be able to make some kind of impact before the two battle lines connect or they risk becoming useless.

For my own interest I played years and years of MTW. From when it came out, I played that game until summer of last year because I never had a good enough computer for Rome. And personally I'm tired of the AI running its army near me than shifting its entire army left or right and then trying to out flank my army. I despised the Rome engine with units chasing their weakest counterparts all day. Thank god MTW2 has the enemy coming face to face with me.

And lets face it Knights sucked at being knights in that game(MTW). Having a full blown charge by knights would rout the other army not kill units. Knights in a full charge killed a handful of men. Given the much better engine at our disposal why make knights ride around flanks again? The real Knight charge is available tweak it, not kill it.

For example, last night I had a unit of Kataphracts run headlong into charging dismounted gothic knights and for the loss of 5 men the gothics slaughtered the kats in the charge (5 secs of contact). I would also point out that the german mounted knights never saw my front line as I kept them chasing my HA's all day long. If such is the case I would be better off using light cav that runs around the flank faster, can chase HA's better and have no need of real armor since their hitting an opponent in the back! Point here is Knights do not belong on the flanks As much as I've grown to like this mod the gimped knight thing is ruining the immersion for me.

Now I just need to figure out how to unmod the gimped heavy cavalry in 2.3. A tall order since Lusted knows his stuff and I don't. Any tips lusted?

[Lusted]

And lets face it Knights sucked at being knights in that game(MTW). Having a full blown charge by knights would rout the other army not kill units. Knights in a full charge killed a handful of men. Given the much better engine at our disposal why make knights ride around flanks again? The real Knight charge is available tweak it, not kill it.

Because that was so much better in balance term. Why go back to vanilla M2Tw where you only need Knights to win, other units are pointless. MTW had a great balance imo, and i liked the fact you needed to use cav for flanking instead of frontal assaults as it added more tactics to the game.

[Sonny WiFiHr]

Now cav units are pointless. I only find them usuable for chasing routers. Btw you can flank with inf . When I charge missle units (becuse of balancing I use heavy cav) most of the time my cav stop when missles start running in cover and I can't outrun them.Light cav can't beat any archers ( in most cases ) and charging again again and again against missle fire is suicide.Same for AI I kill most of cav before they get chance to flank me or I just send spears to anihilate them. Where is the fun in that. I miss the times where I was afraid of heavy cav charge because they could broke my lines and I was forced to react with my cav. This balancing more hurts AI than me. If player build heavy cav army this is his problem not mine ( I call it cheating ) . Make new house rule - no more than 2 ( 3, 4 ) heavy cav per army or put some special script for player (only for player) to raise upkeep cost and recruiting price for heavy cav (and mercenary cav).Before this balancig my army consist of 2 h cav 2 l cav 1 general 5 missle rest inf. ,now only archers and inf and I beat everything they throw on me with ease.Archers kill everything on aproach (include light cav in melee fight, sometimes h cav if I don't withdraw them) and inf. finish the job. It is stupid tactic but it works perfectly (and kills all the fun I have before ).