Why Cavalry Isn't Overpowered

[AngryScotsman]

One more thing; in response to the 'rebuttals' and someone trying to be a smart arse.


"It will if the rider is an idiot and makes the same mistake multiple times." Translation: only if the rider is an idiot.

Hasty Generalisation Fallacy

Except this infantryman walking into a pike has 4 times the starting life and the equivalent of black plate+ plated gloves. Did I mention he doesn't get the wpf of black armor either?

Speak English.

Sure you can! Are you saying that in armor, a horse can't break a leg? Or that you can't stab a horse in the eye, gouging out its brain? Or that you can't attack the unarmored part of a horse? Plenty of ways a horse can die in armor.

Are you arguing realism or gameplay? Inconsistent argument.

Translation: it should take multiple people to kill a single person on a horse. By this definition, having one person be worth 5 equally skilled players is balanced.

This is a pathetic generalised complaint about cavalry itself with any consideration of mechanics.

. and if you're arguing realism, then you should have to sit-out 1/3rd of all battles to nurse your nasty case of dysentery brought on by the life of a soldier. Realism arguments have no place in c-rpg. We tossed that out with the implementation of the boulder-on-a-stick (aka "long maul.")

Non sequitur.

I can't hear you over the sound of you fapping to your horse.

Ad hominem.

Same can be said to your heavy-cav build you are so infatuated with

Ad hominem.

And clearly, since your an uneducated scumbag, here's the link about logical fallacies for you to read up on. http://www.logicalfallacies.info/

Next idiot who thinks he's smarter than me please.

[Rhuell]

lol looks like someone just took his first year logic class

[AngryScotsman]

No no no. You don't fully understand what you are saying. You want plated chargers running around cRPG taking 5 pikes or so before they can finally be killed? Even with a "proper pike drill" do you actually expect the idiots in this mod to perform a basic maneuver?
That is irrational. And couching pikes would never be used because they would be outlengthed by any bright and agile horseman with a lance. There shouldn't be tanks on the cRPG battlefield but there are. Everyone knows it too...except you.
Actually. I would be fine with plated chargers tanking it up like a Panzer IV...as long as I can bring my 300p Spartan Laser with me.

Final reply before I go sleep.

Hence my distinction of System and Behaviour Visus. Just because people are crap doesn't make it overpowered innately. The incompetance of people is irrelevant to the innate balance of cavalry. Read the first post before jumping in ffs.

[Visus]

Final reply before I go sleep.

Hence my distinction of System and Behaviour Visus. Just because people are crap doesn't make it overpowered innately. The incompetance of people is irrelevant to the innate balance of cavalry. Read the first post before jumping in ffs.

I did read it. And you are quite incorrect. It shouldn't be a nightmare to kill a horse. It shouldn't take an entire team to kill a horse. The horse shouldn't play the game for someone (see TheFinn). Horses like this shouldn't be part of the game. It is basic common sense.
Now, I bet that you have one of these horses yourself. And I would also say that you have never been on the ground with a pike, trying to dodge the LoC while piking a tank rolling into you. Thus, you should be in no position to describe if one side or the other is balanced as the majority of the population does not have heavy horses, and the majority of the population says they are overpowered. You are simply wrong. Maybe if you would stop acting so...hmmmm. Haughty? Intellectual? Omnipotent? Your word isn't law, nor is it innately right. Get off your high horse (see what I did there?  ), stop trying to grow your mental e-peen by throwing out Latin words and historical tactics on the internet, and think about it from another point of view.
Honestly, I almost feel trolled here. This can't be for real.

[Joxer]

As a pikeman I have to give my input on this. Before respec I had 6ps, +220 polearm, 18str and tempered pike. Back then I could take out a plated charger if I could get one perfect hit from the front and 2-3 after it stopped. It was very rare. Now with the respec it's even more unlikely. A dedicated pikeman has to go for high athletics to use the weapon effectively. This means now that you cannot invest to strenght and therefore less PS. Which means more hits to take out a plated charger. Something like 5-7 hits. A pikeman is not a perfect anti-heavy horse counter anymore. A foot soldier who has high PS and polearm and who carries a pike in case is the best option now.
Also chadz: Why didn't you fix the shields on horseback?  Still get tons of perfect hits that end up on the riders shield right through the face of the horse

[Eluem]

Is the OP of this thread a troll???

They're going around stating all these logical fallacies in people arguments: Ad hominem, non sequitur, ect..

meanwhile their arguments are plagued by the same fallacies.

"If your not arguing for realism, then theres no reason to believe a single pike should take down a plated charger. You are not superman."

Not arguing realism, ends with arguing realism.....

Cavalry aren't balanced. They don't require skill to play and they are incredibly effective. Horse bump is far too damaging and allows you to run over far to many units (including incredibly heavily armored units).. even with the lighter horses.


The cavalry need some nerf to the charge damage and the number of people they can charge through.

The plated charger needs a nerf to its armor and health.
I saw a plated charge with NINE fucking axes in it. That should easily be enough to kill a horse.

[Beans]

And clearly, since your an uneducated scumbag, here's the link about logical fallacies for you to read up on. http://www.logicalfallacies.info/

Next idiot who thinks he's smarter than me please.

Pro move, call people out for name calling then finish your own post with name calling.



Armored war horses are extremely powerful, and they should be to an extent. That's why the upkeep system is designed to only give access to these expensive creatures to those owning cities.  That's fine, those should remain the lordly death machines they currently are.

[Seawied]

One more thing; in response to the 'rebuttals' and someone trying to be a smart arse.
Hasty Generalisation Fallacy

Hey hey hey now. I'm not trying to be a smart ass, I am being a smart ass 

That said, its not a hasty generalization to say that if you repeatedly try to go for a guy with a pike equipped, then you're being an idiot. Go for a different target, and then pick off that guy later when he is distracted.

"Except this infantryman walking into a pike has 4 times the starting life and the equivalent of black plate+ plated gloves. Did I mention he doesn't get the wpf of black armor either?"

Speak English.

Heavy Cataphract:
70 Armor
150 life

Base life of a player in c-rpg: 35
Black armor: 60 body
Plated gloves: 10 armor
Total: 70 armor
WPF penalty for both
-33.4 (based on previous patch. chadz mentioned a more serious penalty in the current patch, but has not elaborated yet.)

"Sure you can! Are you saying that in armor, a horse can't break a leg? Or that you can't stab a horse in the eye, gouging out its brain? Or that you can't attack the unarmored part of a horse? Plenty of ways a horse can die in armor."

Are you arguing realism or gameplay? Inconsistent argument.

No, I'm saying that your stated logic of using realism as a basis that horses should be near invincible is flawed. My overall argument is that the current system is neither realistic nor balanced and should be changed.

"Translation: it should take multiple people to kill a single person on a horse. By this definition, having one person be worth 5 equally skilled players is balanced."

This is a pathetic generalised complaint about cavalry itself with any consideration of mechanics.

No, its not. If it takes 5 players to take out 1 player with a specific item, then that item is clearly imbalanced. On top of that, a player on horseback in c-rpg has no drawbacks. This is why we designed cavalry in native multiplayer to have worse stats and worse items than their infantry counterparts.

". and if you're arguing realism, then you should have to sit-out 1/3rd of all battles to nurse your nasty case of dysentery brought on by the life of a soldier. Realism arguments have no place in c-rpg. We tossed that out with the implementation of the boulder-on-a-stick (aka "long maul.")"

Non sequitur.

Not at all. C-RPG is not based on realism. Several instances in your post you mention realism, but realism is non sequitur

"Same can be said to your heavy-cav build you are so infatuated with"

Ad hominem.

Not at all. You claim that players on foot think that they should be superman and unstoppable, your heavy cavalary build which you are defending too much is exactly that. Its strong in all aspects of the game and weak in next to none.

And clearly, since your an uneducated scumbag, here's the link about logical fallacies for you to read up on.

Next idiot who thinks he's smarter than me please.

Hahahahah, using a fallacy and then trying to brag about your knowledge of logic. Irony much? What a fucking idiot.


Another cocky college freshman who thinks hes a lot smarter than he actually is.

Smacking down teenagers is so fun 

[Eluem]

[.... awesome arguements...]

Another cocky college freshman who thinks hes a lot smarter than he actually is.

Smacking down teenagers is so fun 

Very well put together. Idk if they're a cocky college freshman or just a troll though.

Though the original post was well put together there are clearly flaws. The plated charger is obviously over powered..

The new upkeep system will hopefully force all of the super gear into the hands of the few that own land. This is awesome. This will create a more realistic and diverse setting. It's what the game was meant to be, there will only be a few super troops running around in the game.... eventually

However, I think the plated charger and other warhorses are a bit TOO overpowered... even though they should be powerful enough impose great influence on the battle field..

plated chargers shouldn't be able to take 6+ stabs to the head... or 6 throwing axes + melee hits. It's insane... if they're gona do that.. they need to be super super expensive.. any only a very very few should be able to afford them lol..... people running around on these things with shields bumping everyone to death is retarded...

[bruce]

The type of horse which survives getting speared in the chest/face at speed should be the type of horse which is not feasible to upkeep (or more accurately, should not be feasible to upkeep), but sadly upkeep only hits if you lose, which is the core problem; winning team gets to play the old crpg with plated chargers, full plate, etc, losing team plays the new with lower end equipment.

We all know armoured horses are OP to hell and back.

I'm waiting for a few days though to see if upkeep does work at reducing their numbers or not.

[Thomek]

to OP

You clearly have some issues resembling some kind of inferiority complex. (Why would you try to convince us you are smart otherwise? We read your words and judge you by them..)

Anyway back  to topic, you have some valid points in theory. :-)

There is 2 major problems though.

1.
cRPG players will never learn to operate effectively as an organized force.
1. They don't know how and why, and can't easily communicate while fighting.
2. They simply don't care, they just want some quick action
3. They are kids
4. They are stone
etc etc..

Common Sense tells me this, as well as practical experience in trying to command a group of players to do something together. It is very rare that they listen. Even to Phaz or me, high profiled players, with a name and command-experience. They only follow orders in about 30% of the cases, and even then there are about 30% of players that don't follow orders/try to work together.

2.
In cRPG because of balance issues, no single playstyle/class should be OP in the sense that the class in General, is more valuable, player to player, than any other. It is also important because if one playstyle became too dominant, we would have a shift in the playerbase towards that direction. (As seen multiple times with archery. And hence the Archer nerfs, too many archers made cRPG more like CS.) This is also the reason why realism can be thrown out the window.. Horsemen are powerful by Idea. They are faster than everyone else, so they can choose their battles freely. They also have a handy 1hit-1kill ability, they can be within and out of a single infantrys range in a split second. Some classes have almost no defense, i.ex a shielder with xbow. After firing 1 bolt he's basically dead, because he has no inventory space for a spear. The horseman can just ride him down until hes dead after that, or hit his shield until it breaks, then couchlance him etc.. Or simply bump-slash him.

The worst ability and what horsemen get's most kills by is however Ninjaing people in the back while they are busy doing something else. They can simply try to hit someone hit or miss, ride away, find a new unaware target, ride away, find a new unaware target etc. Horsemen die when they run out of unaware targets.. And the bump-slash is of course a joke. No other mechanic let's you get a free slash at someone to the head, except kicking which is a very hard and risky maneuver.

But if you want to talk realism:

A. Horses in cRPG are driven like cars. Super accurate controls, never riding the wrong way. Or acting strange after getting x amounts of arrows etc.
B. When the horse gets stopped, rides into a wall full speed, reared or whatever, the rider should fall off and take serious damage. My friends brother was hospitalized a month ago after falling off a horse. Hell superman went lame after a horse fall..

Those are just examples of many many factors.

Most alarming with your post is the lack of Experience and Common Sense though. You are like the philosophers in ancient greece discussing how many teeth a cat has, in stead of taking a look..

[AngryScotsman]

Thomek (ignoring your pathetic slurs):

1. Common sense tells me the exact same. That is besides the point. Cavalry is not overpowered just because the average player is incompetant. We don't work towards the most common denominator in this world, else we'd still be sitting in fucking caves using sticks and stones to light fires. There are ways you can improve the game to make teamwork a better option without reducing difficulty for the common ape.

2. No inventory space my arse. You accuse me of lacking common sense yet your arguing that a crossbowman who didn't bring a polearm should not be mowed down by cavalry. He's got four slots. He could have brought one. Not every 'class' should be able to defend against cavalry. It the players fault for making the class choice and you must therefore suffer the consequences; everything has a weakness.

You also overstate the cavalry damage. They do not have a 'handy 1 hit 1 kill ability'. If someone isn't wearing armour, gets caught off guard, is seperated from his team, and gets nailed because of it, he deserves to die.

And this long winded example you talk about a horseman being able to ride down an enemy and couch him is completely out of context. Where is the players team? Why was he caught by himself in the open so that he can be couched? Not to mention it takes time on the cavalry players part.

Your complaint about cavalry making kills by backstabbing is also out of context. Why is that player being backstabbed? Because he wasn't working with his team, or got seperated, or his team weren't watching him. You're arguing that ground soldiers are the only privileged class to be allowed to backstab.

And to be honest, all this talk is of comparing infantry against cavalry is utter bollocks anyway: completely out of context. No one ever argued cavalry should be evenly matched to infantry. The proper counter to cavalry is cavalry; and its not like players don't have cavalry on their team as well. Try staying with your team more often instead of soloing and you might not get run over by cavalry, Thomek.

One final thing; there are too many muppets in this thread making criticisms against heavy cavalry but dressing it up as a general argument against all cavalry in general. There's a difference. Realise it.

[The_Bloody_Nine]

kudos to all people taking their time to reply to OP's arguments!

@angry, especially last post:

Only 2 things:1. You are conseqently mixing up realism and game balancing things. 2. You completely ignore that Thomek stated in his post that in his Opinion "cRPG players will never learn to operate effectively as an organized force". If this is true can be discussed, but you just ignore things and thus your argumentations are ... not useful at least.

[Thomek]

"No one ever argued cavalry should be evenly matched to infantry"

That's the thing. They should. In this mod, for balance.
It should be just as hard to do well as a cavalry player as an infantry player. Currently it's not like that.

I'd also reason that the average cavalry player is as incompetent as the average infantry player, but an incompetent cav will do much better.

"You also overstate the cavalry damage. They do not have a 'handy 1 hit 1 kill ability'"
Well, they do, in 5 different variations, 1 which is bump damage. They can get away from all of them without the victim having any chance to strike back. To an unaware player they are practically riskless attacks.

1. Couched lance at high speed can kill armored targets. Unblockable except by shields.
2. Normal lance damage at high speed at a lightly armored target
3. Bump + headstrike, takes out most light armored guys.
4. High speed pass with crush through morning star.
5. Just a normal bump, often resulting in a kill, or serious damage. Very often letting a teammate strike riskless at the victim.

And talk about awareness... 

No one can track 4-5 cav circling around you + infantry + archers in their heads. It's impossible. The distance in time from far to close is also very short for cav. So they are easy to ignore or loose track of..

I do understand that people might seem blatantly unaware when you snipe them off with your lance, but believe me, people often have other things to worry about like the xbow or archer aiming at them, the Ninja that just disappeared around the corner, or the lolhammer 2 seconds away. (but yes people are generally too unaware, I know all about that as it's my main exploit.. ) But we are not going to change that fact.

I dunno, your perspective on the game seems rather screwed. Like you think you are some kind of king on a horse, having a birthright to kill everyone with it. Your scotsman should get down on the ground and try to play as a pikeman. Not only cav has the right to rank on top of the scorecharts.

Oh and btw:

You are the only muppet I saw here.

[Joker86]

A forewarning to those of you apes who are incapable of rational thinking, have the attention span of the arse end of a camel or have nothing useful to add to this world: this post requires you to follow my reasoning and see why I think cavalry isn't overpowered.

System vs. Behaviour

Firstly, I will define this model I will use to describe this perceived problem.

"System" can be defined as the mechanical aspects of CRPG relating to cavalry; such as cavalry weapons, anti-cavalry weaponry, horse statistics, etc.
"Behaviour" can be defined as the habits, tactics, methods of coping with or defeating cavalry players use against them, etc.

Secondly, there is an important practical distinction between something be overpowered because of  the mechanics of the system and something being 'overpowered' due to the (bad) behaviour of people. I will paraphrase a conclusion relating to health and safety law that I think is a useful paradigm in this case. 'Systems don't make mistakes, people do'.

So additional hitpoints (protected by armour), additional speed, additional bump damage and additional hit speed are balanced by gameplaymechanics by spending 4 or 5 skill points? And only behaviour breaks this balance? Really?

Thus, in order to make this argument, I will have to discuss why I think the System of cavalry in CRPG is innately balanced.

Countering Cavalry

I'll address plated chargers mainly: if the argument applies to them, it applies to other warhorses.

Players don't like the durability of the plated charger. Nor do they like its ability to take chunks out of a players health bar by riding into them. These are poor arguments against the plate charger because of reasons (mainly poor tactics) I will describe further below when I discuss Behaviour. But for now, I will make an observation. A great many players who complain about the plated charger attempt to defeat it using the wrong type of weapon. These same players may also fail to acknowledge that their builds have to have weaknesses. In the end of the day, if one player invests as a cavalry character, and you invest as a foot based character, you would be an idiot to not have acknowledged the threat against you from the cavalry. To that end, the polearms weapon set is a versatile weapon tree that includes many weapons that, if you had been built to counter cavalry properly, you would have no problem with.

The Only Proper Cavalry Counter (As In Reality) Is A Pike

So everyone without horse is supposed to run around with a pike? You also miss one important point: a pike is only a (not really convincing) PROTECTION against cavalry, it's no counter, as a counter would get cavalry killed.

Also you can't suppose all infantry players want to skill into polearm. What about people who want to use 2hd or 1hd+shield?

Consider the Long Awlpike. It's a long weapon that can stop a horse attacking you at a 45 degree angle (a tactic used by cavalry players to give the infantry fighter minimum chance to hit). It can also be used with a shield; thus you have some protection against ranged attacks. It does 32 piercing damage and thus will penetrate the heavy armour of the plated charger effectively. No other melee weapon does such significant piercing damage at such distance. Consider also the Pike, its an extremely long weapon that is the ultimate cavalry stopper. It may not kill the cavalry outright, but no weapon should unless the cavalry player rides into it without guard up.

Wrong. Horse gives incredible additional benefits, which should be made up by severe weaknesses. Like "Horse stopped by pike = dead".

As for characters not built to be defensible against cavalry; it is a poor argument to be surpised when your two handed sword is not reliable weapon against a heavy horse galloping at you at full speed. Or when your bow doesn't little damage to the horse. Good armour would defeat arrows and histrically, a longbow was only effective against mail at about 20m. With a pike, or long awlpike, you would deter that cavalry and defeat it if it was stupid enough to repeatedly attack you. it is an equally poor argument to claim cavalry is overpowered when being attacked by multiple horseman. The fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter if your fighting cavalry or infantry: if you're being hit by multiple enemies you are at a disadvantage (and rightly so). As such, there is no Systematic problem, only a Behavioural one. Wrong weapon, wrong place, wrong expectations.

So infantry has to skill accordingly to the cavalry threat, end eventually accept hitbacks concerning the euqipment they want to use. (E.g. crossbow and shield+axe... where is there room for a pike?), but where are the hitbacks cavalry has to take against other classes? There are no, you can use whatever you want, in most cases a shield and a lance is enough.

Other Misperceptions

Poor situation awareness is a common Behavioural reason why cavalry is perceived as overpowered. Consider this: for every cavalry player in CRPG there are usually more capable pike users. That means the cavalry cannot simply ride you over; a common perception by many is that a player on a plated charger (like TheFinn) rides over the enemy team because his horse is impregable. This is nonsense, more often than not the enemy horseman rides over a team because half of them are staring at a wall, leeching, mistime their pike attacks, do not have pikes ready, or expecting that their simple spear will stop the armoured horse. All it takes is one pike out of the entire team to stop a cavalry player. Note also, that a spear will stop an unarmoured horse. Poor situation awareness and team incompetance does not make cavalry overpowered.

This is nonsense. You don't have to be aware even of archers as much as of cavalry. Which other class forces you to constantly turn around that fast that you could start to feel sick?

Infantry also have mobility that a cavalryman doesn't have in that cavalry is terrain dependent. It is a poor observation to say cavalry is overpowered when standing in the open being flanked by horsemen. You will notice decent players stay near walls, jumping out the way of a charge, evading attacks at the last moment, and detering the cavalry with ready stab attack. Considering that a good archer can do massive damage by headshotting a charging horse, cavalry are actually very limited in what they can do if not armoured. The armoured horses themselves can be stopped a weapon like the awlpike.

Stopped, not killed. And the whole mobility thing is bullshit. In worst case a cavalryman can dismount and voila! You've got an infantryman! Cavalry = infantry + more awesome.

Horse Archery

Mechanically, for a horse archer to be a more powerful shot they must invest in Power Draw and thus Strength. For a horse archer to invest in horse archery skills like riding and horse archery, they must invest in Agility. This mitigates the nightmare scenario of a plated charger mounted horse archer. Horse archers are also unable to use a shield when shooting. Once again, I believe there is nothing Systematically wrong with horse archers, but Behaviourally players are frustrated by horse archers but instead of commiting ranged attacks all at once towards the horseman or horse, they get seperated, singled out, shot and killed. No horse archer is impregable to arrows. They cannot wear heavy armour and they cannot equip a shield.

And what do you do if you have no ranged weapon? Then you have the choice of either being trampled or being shot and trampled. I don't know any other class being able to take out other players with 0% of own risk.

The Onyl Real Problem With Cavalry

In my opinion, the forcefield shield effect on cavalry is the only real overpowered matter on cavalry. The shield is too maneuverable and too effective on horseback with high shield skill. Fixing this is a matter of balance, but all the other situations describe above relate mainly to examples not involving a shield. Sometimes, a pikeman will end up hitting the shield instead of the horse despite aiming for the horse. In the wider dynamics of the game, this is not a major problem as multiple pikemen can and should be employed anyway, as described below.

The Real Problem Is Teamwork

The ultimate contributing factor to the effectiveness of cavalry is the way people play. Cavalry is effectively when ranks are broken, enemies are in disarray, and self-interest is greater than teamwork. Consider that most CRPG players do not use pikes effectively to protect their team or have an expectation that their messy barbarian horde team should be cavalry proof when it exactly those types of rag tag formations cavalry is made to destroy.

In practice, a good team will be able to deter cavalry from their team using pikes, good use of terrain, and having a stake in your teammates surivival rather than your individual kills. There is no decent cavalry player stupid enough to charge into a bristle of pikes. With the addition of friendly horse bumping in the latest patch; cavalry are further limited in who they can attack when looking for openings.

So all other players have to rely on teamwork. So does caval...? Ah, no! No need for cavalryplayers to care for any tactics. 

If teams got in the habit of using a mixture of pikes and other weapons when moving across open terrain and stay tight enough to protect each other but not so tight such that weapons start bouncing off people, then it makes it very difficult for cavalry to attack. If once the infantry enters combat and simply 'forgets' about the enemy cavalry: do not be suprised when you get a lance up your arse.

Again: what has cavalry to be aware of? Pikes? OMG this is really hard! 

And there is absolutely no chance in being aware of cav while fighting in meele. The problem is: you can turn around only each few seconds, 5-10 maybe, but cavalry needs 2 sec- to reach you and another 2 to ride away again.


I am cavalry player myself. Cavalry is easymode, all horses above courser need 25-50% less hitpoints and armour, and 0 bump damage at all.