Heavy Infantry, Light Infantry, and Mundane AP Weapons

[Saber Cherry]

There seems to be a consensus, amongst most players, that light infantry and militia are fairly worthless. And specifically, that they are worthless because everything light infantry and militia do, heavy infantry does better. Plus, HI Lasts much longer.

Note:

LI=Light Infantry
MI=Medium Infantry
HI=Heavy Infantry
LC=Light Cavalry
HC=Heavy Cavalry
AP=Armor Piercing, not Action Points

Suggestions to rebalance light and heavy troops include:

1) Allow variable unit upkeep (not always 1/15 of cost);
2) Include resource cost in unit upkeep;
3) Allow light units to disband;
4) Decrease the gold cost of light units;
5) Increase the gold cost of heavy units;
6) Give additional tactical commands to light units (e.g. "skirmish" - avoid melee);
7) Change the tac AI to allow effective skirmishing;
8) Add additional formations (like "wide" and "loose");
9) Give light units free supplies, or making them consume less;
10) Make HI consume more supplies;
11) Rescale supply points by a factor of 10, to reduce granularity (average consumption => size*5);
12) Increase light unit defense stats;
13) Let blows that do not penetrate armor still do some minor HP damage (say, .25 average);
14) Make blows that do not penetrate armor do some minor fatigue damage (say, 1d6/size);
15) Add mundane armor piercing weapons (like making pikes AP);
16) Give bonuses/penalties to light/heavy units in various terrains;
17) Add "Critical Strike" which deals 2x or AP damage for very high attack rolls;
18) Make heavy armor reduce attack rating;
19) Allow LI/LC to attack non-adjacent enemy territories (move across a friendly province and attack);
20) Add strategic "Raid" orders for LI/LC (skirmish and retreat);
21) Add "Move-Pillage" orders for LI/LC (e.g. Mongols, Vikings, German barbarians);
22) Increase armor encumbrance in deserts (dehydration), swamps (footing), and mountains (elevation);
23) Introduce variable armor-piercing levels: X% AP, or 50% AP for the first X protection;
24) Give both LI and HI 2 strategic moves, but allow LI to move through rough terrain at a cost of 1 move point.

So, if you have more suggestions, or want to praise or slam an extant one, comment here.

I've been thinking that one of the big problems with heavy armor is that it lacks mundane counters - you either have to react with your own HI, or with crossbows. Why not give some mundane weapons AP ability? Many weapons were designed just for that - pikes, the spikes on halberds, the spike on some warhammers, and heavy 2H weapons like battleaxes. If there existed mundane melee units that could actually hurt HI, their total dominance on the mundane battlefield might dissipate somewhat. Adding AP to an existing weapon would also require that its stats be altered, of course. This is not suggested as a complete solution - just a complement to, say, #4,5,9,10,11.

-Cherry

[ November 01, 2003, 16:15: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[DominionsFan]

The mod tools will solve your problem dude.

[Nerfix]

Originally posted by DominionsFAN:
The mod tools will solve your problem dude.

I would prefer to see the devs fix balance issues...

[ October 31, 2003, 23:03: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

[licker]

Pretty nice sumation there Saber. You might also add changing encumbrance for HIs, or upping defense for LIs. I still think that some economic reason to chose LIs will make them seen. And to accomplish that you have to fiddle with their upkeep and supply, both must be less than for MI or HI otherwise you'll still hit the value bottleneck and find LI useless.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
There seems to be a consensus, amongst most players, that light infantry and militia are fairly worthless. And specifically, that they are worthless because everything light infantry and militia do, heavy infantry does better. Plus, they Last much longer.
[snip]

So, if you have more suggestions, or want to praise/slam and extant one, comment here.

-Cherry

I just came up with an even more radical one: allow strategic moves that end in enemy territory (i.e. move through a friendly territory into an enemy territory that isn't adjacent to where you started). This could allow a LI army facing a HI one to move into a province that the HI couldn't even reach to defend it. And potentially keep doing so, turn after turn, until the enemy came up with a more mobile army or split his forces to cover several directions.

Cavalry (especially light cavalry, which has the same problems as light infantry and is more expensive) would benefit even more from this change.

After all, one of the main benefits of mobility is to be able to hit them where they are weak, then move somewhere else before they can effectively respond. Light armies should be able to effectively damage the enemy while avoiding battle. (If you're actively trying to use a Fabian strategy, you could give your troops a far-back deployment and retreat or fire-and-flee orders, so they would retreat quickly if engaged. Which reminds me - any squad that retreats due to orders shouldn't take the -4 def for routing, and all such squads and commanders should go to the same province. There's a huge difference between a retreat and a rout.)

In the same vein, I'd also like to see "Move and Pillage". Pillaging shouldn't require that an army stand still for a month - it really doesn't take that long. Move and Pillage could be really nasty for Vanheim (which is entirely appropriate, it's how viking should (and did) work). Combined with the above suggestion, Light Inf (or Light Cav) raiding forces could be a real pain in the *** for someone who is depending on a concentrated force of Hvy Inf with their limited mobility.

Orderly retreat, move and attack, and move and pillage would all tie together into a new strategic way of using light forces that isn't possible in the current model, that would allow them to actually outmaneuver heavier, less mobile enemies (unless stopped by terrain, fortifications or other mobile forces). Stealthy light forces would be even more dangerous, because they can switch unpredictably between sneaking (at their full strategic movement, of course), move-and-pillage, etc.

If that still isn't enough, implement the skirmish (fire but stay out of melee) order too.


Needless to say, if these suggestions are implemented, the AI (which loves to build armies of light units) should use them ruthlessly and, if possible, unpredictably.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by licker:
Pretty nice sumation there Saber. You might also add changing encumbrance for HIs, or upping defense for LIs. I still think that some economic reason to chose LIs will make them seen. And to accomplish that you have to fiddle with their upkeep and supply, both must be less than for MI or HI otherwise you'll still hit the value bottleneck and find LI useless.

You're looking at the wrong problem IMO - assuming that LI will always be the same as HI but weaker, and trying to find a price point where they will be useful anyway.

I'd rather see them get new abilities that make them useful in a way that is different from HI; then even though they may have equal cost, both types of infantry would still be useful.

The same issue applies to light vs. heavy cavalry, too.

BTW, thanks to Saber for starting this thread. Some of the same issues were being discussed on another thread, but on this type of forum you can't change the thread title to indicate topic drift.

[Bawlfman]

I was just wondering if you are taking the base value of protection type spells into account here. I haven't played this game much, but I think that these spells combined with their strategic map movement advantage and the fact that you can hire swarms of them can make light troops quite useful. If thats not enough, maybe increase the base value of these spells a bit if that doesn't unbalance nations with earth or nature magic.

[apoger]

>allow strategic moves that end in enemy territory

This would be a good way to model light troops.

Light troops do poorly in straight up battle with heavily armored troops. The reason they are great is their strategic mobility.

Outstanding suggestion Mr. Byler.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Bawlfman:
I was just wondering if you are taking the base value of protection type spells into account here. I haven't played this game much, but I think that these spells combined with their strategic map movement advantage and the fact that you can hire swarms of them can make light troops quite useful. If thats not enough, maybe increase the base value of these spells a bit if that doesn't unbalance nations with earth or nature magic.

Earth mass protections are pretty weak (+3), and nature protections (barkskin) are single-unit. And both are more effective on heavy units than light units=) I may be missing some spells, though.

[Bawlfman]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bawlfman:
I was just wondering if you are taking the base value of protection type spells into account here. I haven't played this game much, but I think that these spells combined with their strategic map movement advantage and the fact that you can hire swarms of them can make light troops quite useful. If thats not enough, maybe increase the base value of these spells a bit if that doesn't unbalance nations with earth or nature magic.

Earth mass protections are pretty weak (+3), and nature protections (barkskin) are single-unit. And both are more effective on heavy units than light units=) I may be missing some spells, though.

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The nature spells have a base protection value of 10 for units with less than 10 protection. Mass protection comes available at level 6 alteration. I guess I assumed the earth spells worked the same way. Even with just the nature one, light troops seem more useful than medium ones.