balancing cav

[Tomas]

The only thing "unbalanced" about Cav atm is their numbers.  I've been on EU1 with 30 out of 50 of my team as Cav which is just silly, especially if the other team only has 5 cav which is perfectly possible under the current game mechanics.

Yes, there are many things that could be changed about Cav to make them more realistic.  However I don't believe there is a single change, that can be made on its own to Cav, that would add more balance to the game without further changes being needed as well for that balance.

What they need to do is change is the actual character/server selection process:

1)  First you should pick your server
2)  Then you should select your team (which on official servers balances you to a random team
3)  Finally you should pick your character/gear however now there could be Cav/Ranged limits on servers since if you can't use your cav char you just use another char

A modified version of the Napoleonic Wars character selection would work perfectly for this.  It could list your characters on the left (where you now pick your unit in NW) have the class limits and current numbers at the top on the right and then peoples gear beneath that on the right.  Any gear on a char you can't use can have a red line through it so it is really obvious you can't use it.  That way you can still use a cav char but it will be obvious that the horse won't spawn.

The only drawback is that people may not spawn as they waiting for a cav place to open up but that's their fault not the games fault

[Tears of Destiny]

^ Deserves OP/New Thread.

[Overdriven]

Class limits suck. So no.

[Smoothrich]

I wanna level my main.  Woops, too many characters with HA skill are playing.  Time to delete cRPG and never come back.  - that idea

[CrazyCracka420]

The servers just need better balancing by class and items equipped, as well as a healthy dose of infantry not being retarded and trying to work in groups.

You can't say cavalry is overpowered when it's infantry not doing basic tactics to counter cavalry that is the problem.

[Teeth]

as well as a healthy dose of infantry not being retarded and trying to work in groups.

How did you figure that is ever going to happen? So you can't say cavalry is overpowered because infantry, without any communication and their highest priority being individual kills, is not working together?

[CrazyCracka420]

People not trying to be rambo and realizing the rock/paper/scissors dynamic.  On foot you are vulnerable to something.  If you don't run around in a group, you could easily die from that something.  Cavalry is mobile enough where they can generally stay away from their weaknesses.  As infantry, if cavalry is your weakness and you're by yourself, you can't just run away to avoid the situation...

Mount and musket (which I think is a retarded game) has a good idea where they run server side "practices" once in a while where they organize into formations and such.  For infantry to ever have any hope of working with tactics and as a team in loose formations, the server would need to start having weekly formation practice for an hour, or the game would need a better system for communication (VOIP within "battalions" comes to mind).  Another way to communicate would be for the server to pop up a big bright message whenever you join a game that says "Hit P to join a battalion, hold F1 to move the flag for that battalion".

I've seen many occasions where infantry grouped up into pretty good formations and the cavalry could only circle around and thumb their asses, or pick off the rambo players who thought they could 1v80 the server.  I still think the "OP" feeling of cavalry has more to do with infantry not realizing their weaknesses than cavalry exploiting their own strengths.

Even mob mentality will sometimes be enough for infantry to control the server if they stay relatively close together.  The team that wins is always the team that has infantry working together better than the other team.  Sometimes if that side has more/better cavalry then it will feel even more one-sided, but I think infantry is always the deciding factor on a map.

[Turboflex]

 I've seen a lot of infantry heavy clans in formation in battle, AoW, KUTT, my own. It doesn't work. The archers & cav just pick off players, even the ones in formation, until the team is weak enough to force a melee where the other side has an advantage. Also by stacking so many infantry onto one banner/team you're basically guaranteeing the other team has a cav/archer advantage.

[CrazyCracka420]

I didn't mean having more infantry than the other team (thus making the other team cav/archer stacked).  I'm saying that when one sides' infantry is better and more organized than the other teams' infantry, the team with the better infantry usually always wins.  At least it seems that way from my experience.   Cavalry and archers are only picking off the stragglers.  Think of it like lions attacking a herd of buffalo.  They are only going after the outliers that are weak, alone, or don't pose much risk to the lions.  They lions aren't running into the middle of the healthy herd unless it's absolutely necessary to their survival.   

[Turboflex]

The problem is everyone knows lions are stronger, and everyone wants to be one, and there's no downside. Look at Serge he is a pretty effective infantry, last week he was riding around on a +3 cata in full plate, getting kills like that, eventually he gets dehorsed and then fights on foot like nothing happened. Same for guys like Cyranule, San, etc. Very good infantry who dropped 4-5 easy points into riding and start round mounted, racking up kills lancing people as they move to mid of field. There is no downside at all to doing this, being cav is a huge power enhancer.

Organized infantry units just do not want to put up with this kind of nonsense, they want stand up fights not to sit around being picked off by ranged and playing tag with lancers. Most organized infantry clans are on siege these days besides maybe AoW and Hopsitaller (more of a mixed class clan), where you can actually get legit melee fights. You will find decent groups of KUTT, SoW, HoC and NH on siege most nights now, and I've noticed even top notch infantry from battle drifting in like miley, voester, galv.

Battle is becoming the cav server, and siege the infantry server because cav is so OP that people are tired of the cheesiness of dealing with it. It's too bad cuz battle used to be better for formation fighting and open tactics, but now it's basically impossible you just get overwhelmed by swarms of OP cav, and if you try and form a tight formation against them, range will feast on you.

[BADPLAYERold]

make rouncey/palfrey/steppe/desert 6riding, destriers/coursers/arabians 7 riding, armoured horses 8riding.

add in "weight limits" for each horse so for example if you are riding a courser the total weight of your equipment can't exceed say.. 20? (this is just a random number but you get the idea)

make melee weapons do the same amount of damage to the whole horse as they currently do to the legs and nerf ranged damage to horses by atleast 1/2.

ez.

stops cav being able to hybrid as easily (but still makes it very possible, just not with as good melee builds)
makes cav not be able to use heavier armour so they are worse when dismounted
promotes cavalry going after ranged (which is what they should be designed to do IMO)  and makes it harder for bad cav to kill melee players.

solves all problems implement tia.

[Mlekce]

Make horses more expencive and problems solved.

[Turboflex]

Make horses more expencive and problems solved.

Not quite...gold as a balance mechanism is pretty weak right now. You can easily have gear loadouts that bleed gold but then sell your loompoint for 700k and still make money each gen.

Badplayer's solution is a decent nerf too. Makes riding a bit more costly statwise than currently is and makes them weaker on foot after dehorsing.

[_Tak_]

Just make the rider die when he get dehorse problem fixed

[Rumblood]

The problem is everyone knows lions are stronger, and everyone wants to be one, and there's no downside. Look at Serge he is a pretty effective infantry, last week he was riding around on a +3 cata in full plate, getting kills like that, eventually he gets dehorsed and then fights on foot like nothing happened. Same for guys like Cyranule, San, etc. Very good infantry who dropped 4-5 easy points into riding and start round mounted, racking up kills lancing people as they move to mid of field. There is no downside at all to doing this, being cav is a huge power enhancer.

This is exactly the case.

I wasnt talking about any drawbacks,  au contrair actually.  its a treasur to being able to function as two different classes with one character.

Just as Torben is pointing out and thinking that this is perfectly peachy fine. Sure, no other classes can dedicate themselves to 2 different disciplines other than cavalry, because cavalry is special!

Archers had melee taken away from them when people complained because after you got within range of them, they could "melee just as well". Well no, they had points invested into a lot  more than melee, but that was overlooked in the rush to nerf them.
But hey, that wasn't enough either. Archers were also way too accurate. Nerfed accuracy. They also do too much damage when they do manage to hit someone. Nerf damage. They are able to "machine gun" their arrows. Nerf draw speed. We can't dodge their arrows even when we see them! Nerf arrow speed. They can shoot me from across the map! Increase gravity ie nerf arrow range.

But hey, this isn't one sided at all. Its all my imagination. But those who think that the cavalry hybrid doesn't need the balance stick applied hard and heavy needs it applied hard and heavy upside their thick skulls.

The state of affairs calls to mind an effort by humans to protect a bird species on an island by eradicating the cats there. Once they did, the rabbits flourished and destroyed the local vegetation, endangering the birds even more than the cats did.

Yes, the ranged kitties used to prey on the poor infantry birds, but they also kept the cavalry rabbits in check. Now with the ranged kitties declawed, the cavalry rabbits are running rampant, destroying the native balance and chasing the infantry birds off to siege island where the environment is more hostile to the cavalry rabbits.

You need to reclaw the ranged kitties or put some birth control on the cavalry rabbits.