Let's say you have 8 riding, what would be the best choice?
That's the problem with current devs "balancing" ideas. In single patch, they increased heavy horses requirements, decreased heavy horses armor a lot, decreased heavy horses charge a lot, and some heavy horses lost other stats. Same time they buffed most light and medium horses.
For example Eastern Warhorse:
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
| [3] Champion Eastern Warhorse | old | new |
|----------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------|-------------------------------|
| gold | 107306 | 101971 |
| difficulty | 5 | 7 |
| hit points | 125 | 131 |
| body armor | 51 | 44 |
| speed | 41 | 40 |
| charge | 40 | 34 |
|____________________________________________________|________________________________|_______________________________|After patch, it not only requires 2 more riding (which is reasonable change, since just 5 riding for all heavy horses was too low imo), but -7 def, -1 speed, -6 charge, and +6 hp.
New Destrier stats (medium horse):
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
| [3] Champion Destrier | old | new |
|----------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------|-------------------------------|
| difficulty | 5 | 6 |
| hit points | 135 | 150 |
| body armor | 29 | 25 |
| speed | 44 | 45 |
|____________________________________________________|________________________________|_______________________________|It received +15 HP, -4 def, +1 speed, which is clear buff to me.
Comparing Arabian Warhorse and medium horses with heavy ones (but not heaviest):
Champion Arabian Warhorse
Speed: 42
Body armor: 18
Hit points: 132
Maneuver: 50
Charge: 16
| Champion Destrier
Speed: 45
Body armor: 25
Hit points: 150
Maneuver: 44
Charge: 22
| Champion Barded Warhorse
Speed: 43
Body armor: 32
Hit points: 143
Maneuver: 44
Charge: 26
| Champion Padded Warhorse
Speed: 44
Body armor: 34
Hit points: 146
Maneuver: 43
Charge: 28
| Champion War Horse
Speed: 43
Body armor: 38
Hit points: 140
Maneuver: 43
Charge: 32
| Champion Large Warhorse
Speed: 42
Body armor: 41
Hit points: 151
Maneuver: 42
Charge: 35
| Champion Eastern Warhorse
Speed: 40
Body armor: 44
Hit points: 131
Maneuver: 44
Charge: 34
| Champion Cataphract Horse
Speed: 42
Body armor: 46
Hit points: 143
Maneuver: 41
Charge: 37
|
Even Arabian Warhorse (light horse) has more HP now than Eastern Warhorse (which supposed to be heavy horse). Large Warhorse has almost same HP as Destrier, Padded Warhorse and Barded Warhorses are not far away too. War Horse (I consider it as last medium horse, but it's more like in between) has just 8% armor less than Large Warhorse, while having more reasonable speed/maneuver stats.
Whoever played cav in crpg, should know horse HP is the thing which matters the most with high damage hits (arbalest, heavy xbow, long bow, high damage 2h swing, high damage pole swing, high damage throwing weapons), while armor protects mainly - but not only of course - from low damage hits (horse archers, archers with low tier bows, people with low PS or low damage weapons).
I played my heavy horse mainly to counter archers with low tier bows (like horn bows) and HAs, they were doing max 1/10th damage to my horse (in most cases not even that much). Now, with body armor decreased in heavy horses, and same time HP increased in medium horses, I see absolutely no reason to take heavy horse! Especially medium horses are much better in avoiding everything, from throwing stuff, archers, xbowmans, to other cav and aware infantry. Riding on heavy horse, which has just slightly stronger defence now than medium one, is stupid (eg. now Eastern Warhorse dies from 2 bolts from Arbalest, Destrier also dies from 2 bolts from Arbalest). Devs could just remove Large Warhorse, Cataphract Warhorse and Eastern Warhorse, as their hp, decreased body def and especially speed/maneuver abilities are terrible compared to buffed medium horses. Those 3 horses just lost their ability to survive high amount of low damage hits, so the only advantage they had over medium horses.
In case of Charger, Mamluk Horse and Plated Charger - I never really liked those horses, because of their low speed/maneuver. Now, with decreased survivability (eg. Plated Charger lost 9 HP and whole 10 armor), I don't like them even more than before.
From my point of view, far best horses now are some light and all medium ones (basically all horses in shop from Courser to War Horse). I don't understand why light and medium horses were buffed, especially their survivability, but now there is absolutely no sense to use heavier horse than War Horse.
This patch is same kind of absurd, as archery low tier bows change (their current crazy missile speed and accuracy).
If chadz wanted to show he wasn't that bad dev, by giving crpg development to complete amateur hands, his plan worked brilliantly. All those broken promises, patches which never came, destroyed builds, rollbacks, even database resets (yeah, I remember those) were nothing, comparing to what new devs are doing with this game. From one hand, it's a shame crpg ends like that, but from the other, many people can finally free themselves from long years of crpg addiction.
