autobalance is awful

[Bulzur]

I admit it, i have sinned.

I got a bit exasperated bored after being trumpled to death, or seeing useless teammates getting couched in the first 20sec, not being able to look out while moving in one direction.

As a dedicated polearm (longspear support user), i admit having changed my flag to the GK yesterday evening. And it was quite fun seeing the mighty cav in action, while watching from the good side. Also... it's one less pikeman for them, so better chance for the cavalry to be effective. Everybody is happy.



For all this "balance issue", i really blame teamplay (and "play" in general) :
-Archers with TATAR arrows shooting at highly armored infantry, rather than at horses.
-Pikemen, deciding to go fight in melee, rather than staying behind, protecting the few archers for the first 30sec at least.
-Berserkers, knowing only how to charge, and die while charging.


But i'll still play, cause it's definitely a lot of fun when "randomers" win.^^

[Gurnisson]

Cav is easy to kill/repel if you pay attention.

Any decent cav will avoid the most dangerous enemies and go for the ones they know are not paying attention. Only archers are the ones capable of taking down good cav on their premises. Pikes just can't guard everything and the cav will one-hit everyone who's outside the range of pikes. It's just people being dumb and splitting out, nothing else.

[CrazyCracka420]

Been saying this since day 1.

Either reduce horse bump damage to 0.  Or make it so riders take damage on falls.

And then allow me to jump off when it's trotting slowly (or at any speed but you take damage if over a certain speed).  Also make it so that when my horse corpse crashing into you it knocks you unconcious or snaps your ankle in two.

There is so much missing for the game to be "realistic" you can't talk about only one aspect and not bring up everything else.

[Turboflex]

And then allow me to jump off when it's trotting slowly (or at any speed but you take damage if over a certain speed).  Also make it so that when my horse corpse crashing into you it knocks you unconcious or snaps your ankle in two.

There is so much missing for the game to be "realistic" you can't talk about only one aspect and not bring up everything else.

No one should be arguing it needs to be changed for the sake of "realism" (altho obviously the more realistic the better), all arguements should be made on balance lines. Cav clearly needs a new balance mechanism, cuz the old balance of high cost to horses no longer applies due to inflation.

Personally I think an elegant balance mechanism would be damage on horse death. fleshing it out with other things like flying horse corpse damage, wall hit damage, moving dismounts, etc. would be fine too, but the main issue is there needs to be more risk/downside to riding around.

[CrazyCracka420]

Joker for President of Development!!!!!!!!

yeah cav is easy to kill if the cav is a moron who runs straight at someone who is watching him and has a weapon ready. which is why cavs with half a brain get their kills by running down people who are distracted (by other cavs or in combat). Cavs are basically lamers who get their kills by 1) backstabbing and 2) stunning people with horsebump. Neither of these practices adds much to the quality of the gameplay, especially in their current widespread state.

 There's no downside to starting the round on a horse, besides cost, which is being obliterated by loompoint prices. If you added something like damage from your horse dieing under you, it would add some balance to the equation.

Lamers?  So there shouldn't be in cavalry in a game called "Mount & Blade"?  Cmon guy...I realize you really don't like cavalry (as a lot of people don't) but you're a moron if you can't see the value in having them on your team.  You can counter them with teamwork and tactics.  End of story.

Every class has strengths and weaknesses, if your team can't learn the proper tactics for countering another's strength, then that's your fault, not the games.  Cavalry have been nerfed a lot from native with the lance angle and slow riding speed.  Any half decent player can kill me on a straight on lance thrust charge (even with me "juking" on a champ courser and changing my speeds).  All the good players do is jump out of the way at the last second, outside of my lance angle and they can still swing and kill me or my horse (even with 1h swords).

Learn tactics, I'm tired of reading your rage posts about cavalry and hearing it from others in game.  Nothing is that overpowered that a tactic can't counter it.  End of story.

I don't get why there needs to be more risk/downside to being cavalry?  Because you don't know what tactics can counter it?  I've seen teams organize shield walls with pikes in tight formations and the cavalry literally had 0 chance of countering that tactic.

This is to everyone, and in general: Stop bitching, stop asking for nerfs.  Learn some tactics, and try to organize your team to counter what is killing you.  Everything in the game has a counter.  Nothing is overpowered.

[Turboflex]

That is a lot of BS blah blah blah organize tactics!! They have weaknesses too!!

The facts remain:
-strengths >>> weaknesses
-Cost balance mechanism was meant to keep cav in check, it is getting weak in face of increasing inflation, how cares how expensive a warhorse maintanence is when you can sell a loom point for 650k?
-Given the above, Cav #s keep increasing.
-Becoming a major problem on battle, especially when people stack onto a popular cav banner like GK or BRD.

Pikemen are a passive defence against cav, pikemen have limited range, and cav avoid pikemen who are watching them. Also not many people are interested in playing a pikeman just so they can spend the entire round with their back turned to the real fight, to keep watch for backstabbing cavalry, who now won't attack around them cuz they see the guy watching! You seriously expect pikemen to do this? It's a videogame we play for fun, not to simulate being on sentry duty.

Now it's nice that you, a guy who spends all his time ontop of his champ courser, lancing people in back, is saying there is no problem, but I respectfully believe a lot of people would disagree.
 

[Eugen]

Since the thread shifted to be about cav balancing instead of autobalance, I add to it.

It seems true, that cav players increase atm. I have no statistics, but I believe some months ago there usually were not more then 3-5 cavs in total on the map with about one or two of them beeing skilled. Now there often are 4-8 cavs on the map with varying skilldegree.

I hope this cavallry boom wastes some money in c-rpg and counters inflation - (armored) horses still are money wasters.

But there really needs to be an alternative for gamers who dont want to play in cav dominated battles. So please join the melee only server - or open up another server with melee + ranged.

And now back to team-balance...

[CrazyCracka420]

At any given time there is less than 1/4 of the battle server on cavalry, most of the time there's around 1/4 to 1/5th cavalry on the server, sometimes when it's "really bad" you get 1/3 cavalry on the server.  When you're putting together a balanced army I'd wager you want at least 1/4 to 1/5th of your army to be cavalry.  But when you're in a public server you want it to be less, because it's annoying you? 

Guess I'm pulling this out again:
http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,27409.0.html

TwoHander           9,277,779  24.50%
Polearm             7,929,018  20.93%
OneHander           5,576,296  14.72%
Polearm (mounted)   4,772,240  12.60%
Bow                 3,644,565  9.62%
Crossbow            1,932,102  5.10%
Thrown              1,554,781  4.10%
Crossbow (mounted)  989,434    2.61%
OneHander (mounted) 902,528    2.38%
TwoHander (mounted) 704,806    1.86%
Bow (mounted)       514,014    1.36%
Thrown (mounted)    78,197     0.21% 

That was February's stats on NA1 battle server.  12% of damaged from mounted polearm.  Stop complaining.  Better yet, Developers, stop listening to the bitching and complaining. 

Cavalry doesn't dominate battles, they are able to move people around, and they can pick off the lone stragglers.  The ones who dominate the server are the large groups of infantry running in a pack (the key though is that they need some spears in the mix).  They control the battlefield, not cavalry.  If people had better formations cavalry would be even more marginalized.

[Joker86]

CrazyCracka is right.

The problem of most infantry players is, that they are not aware of the fact that their class is different from others, because it requires real teamplay to unfold its complete potential.

You can have 1hd+shield cav, lancer cav or horse archer cav.

You can have archers, crossbowmen and throwers.

You can have 1hd+shield inf, 2hd inf and spear/pike inf.


Now to ask you: how much can the three cav classes influence each others, if they try to play together as good as they can? Almost not all all, best they can do is distract enemies from cav mates.

How much can the three ranged classes influence each other? A little more, due to the simple fact that putting ranged fighters together increases their effectivity exponentially. But there is little difference in which class it is, archer or crossbowman or whatever.

But how much can the three infantry classes influence each other? The answer is easy: heavily! If they play together they nullify all possible counters, but represent a counter themselves to almost everything except of horse archers perhaps.

Face it: being a good infantryman means being a good soldier. It requires discipline. Stay with your teammates, don't hunt down single enemies and break up formation doing so, take care that you always got some of the other classes around you, charge aggressively when a charge is required, stay clam if you need to defend yourself. If all infantry players would do so, the other classes would get completely raped. An infantry block with shieldmen at the front, pikemen at the flanks and the back and two handers everywhere between them would steamroll everything. Cavalry can't approach due to the ring of pikes around the infantry and archers couldn't shoot due to the shields in the front.

And this doesn't mean walking in perfect formations like in Medieval II: Total War. A loose blob is already enough, if the different classes keep positions roughly. And it's not like this behaviour would require a lot of brainpower or so, after doing it for a week you get used to it and don't even notice how you keep formation by default.

Cavalry can do shit against enemies who are aware. If 100% of the server would be aware of enemy cav, how many kills could they score? The only target which can be attacked while aware are 1hd+shield, and all they need to do is to stick to a spearman. Can this be changed by any stat regarding horses or lances or whatever? No.

Cav seems OP because infantry (many archers included) sucks. That's all.

[CrazyCracka420]

I honestly think as "lame" and "fascist" as it would be, they should do an hour force practice on all the official battle servers once a week.

Make the people line up into formations and learn how to work as a team. 

I know this would never work, but from the 3 or so times I played mount and musket it really helped.  Not to mention clan practices, or trying to stay disciplined in strategus battles helps a lot.  If anyone played sports as a kid (like basketball, soccer, hockey, football, etc).  You practice formations, and plays, and where people go at certain times.  This is just common sense that if you practice a little you're going to get better at it.

That being said, it's just common sense:  Infantry in ACTUAL formations (at least loose formations, not necessarily 100% perfect) dominate the battle field. 


Watch this (don't gotta watch all 10 mins, although I'd recommend, but just the first 2 mins) and tell me cavalry is overpowered: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4qbQCJ9QKs

Try using shields and spears effectively and cavalry can literally do nothing except pick off the idiots too stupid to be working with their teammates.

*EDIT* I'm not being unrealistic and thinking that infantry formations in game (even with super organization) could ever be as good as in real life or in the movies, but they certainly can be more effective than everyone running from spawn across an open field and waiting to get picked off from cavalry.

Also saying that cav is overpowered because teams are too stupid to use their natural counters to their advantage is ridiculous.  It comes down to tactics and the willingness of the team to work together.  Because those two rarely happen then people want to suggest we dumb down the classes?  Cmon now...

[Turboflex]

cav players like op cav itt

[Elmokki]

Seriously, even with onehander you can avoid or even kill cavalry if it's a single (or sometimes two) horsemen. You just need to stop being terrible or go play in melee servers if you can't.

[Turboflex]

I kill plenty of cav, I carry 2 stacks of +3 heavy throwing axes, it's just annoying to have to be on a 360 degree swivel all the time watching for backstabbing cav lamers when I am trying to fight and it's also annoying to constantly see whatever team has a cav superiority basically guaranteed to win. But according to the cav playing tools here, cav makes the game more fun for everyone, and is not overpowered at all!

[EyeBeat]

I really do not mind autobalance.

As long as I have the most kills on my team or have close to an equal amount to the best on my team.  I then know I am doing my job and the rest of my team isn't.

Anyone can go easy route and join a big clan like Chaos or just throw on their banner.

[Eugen]

At any given time there is less than 1/4 of the battle server on cavalry, most of the time there's around 1/4 to 1/5th cavalry on the server, sometimes when it's "really bad" you get 1/3 cavalry on the server.  When you're putting together a balanced army I'd wager you want at least 1/4 to 1/5th of your army to be cavalry.  But when you're in a public server you want it to be less, because it's annoying you? 

[...]

Cavalry doesn't dominate battles, they are able to move people around, and they can pick off the lone stragglers.  The ones who dominate the server are the large groups of infantry running in a pack (the key though is that they need some spears in the mix).  They control the battlefield, not cavalry.  If people had better formations cavalry would be even more marginalized.

Right. My point was that there seems to be a slight cav increase. I really dont mind if this tendency doesnt continue with new cav players sprooting like mushrooms (including myself). With more and more people gaining enough gold to sustain medium to heavy cav it IS possible that the curve continues to climb...

However I still am not raging against cav (although it may seem so) becouse of the fact that medium and heavy cav emptys the pockets quite fast if you dont keep a high multiplier constantly.

I also agree that an organiced team and aware infantry can counter cav. But honestly, when does the average battle teams are really organiced, when not all clanmembers are on ts and concentrated on game and not chit chat. Some rare times there is somone acting as team general giving good tactical advice and using battaillion flags, and even rarer people are listening - and only then there is a chance for cavallry counter play.

This game for me still is about being fun and not about being hyper serious about wartactics and awerness all the time.

For balancing I would think it to be fair when cavallry was splitted up in equal measures on the teams. How to do this is another story. There have been ideas like allocating players with riding 3+ to cav, or to let the server remember equiped horses and allocate such as cav in next round and divide them up skill based.

I'd like to see such a cav balancing becouse onesided cavallry surplus on one team is overpowerd imho.
But still i agree that cavallry as such is good as it is. Its just bad when one team has double amount of cav.
This would mean that the team without cav has to excel in strategie, awareness and skill to have equal chances. And this imho is not fair.

Also I am aware that no one will give a cake about this cav-balancing so I will also go cav if I see to many cavallrists on the other team and there will be even more cav on the map