Author Topic: how to truely balance cavalry  (Read 4514 times)

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Offline KaMiKaZe_JoE

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #15 on: July 03, 2011, 01:05:50 am »
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^
I love you.

OP you're suggestion, while well thought out and flawlessly communicated, is stupid.
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Offline Kay of Sauvage

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #16 on: July 03, 2011, 01:08:18 am »
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I'm almost exclusively a cav player, but you'd be hard pressed to say the few comments I've made on balance issues in the past were anything but fair. I'm not interested in giving cav an unbalanced advantage, and I don't want to make other classes weak by comparison for some personal advantage. /disclaimer

First of all, when judging how powerful cav are, lets not even bother to count kills against players who wander around alone in the open not paying attention, or standing out in the open shooting their bow or xbow. The power of cav has nothing to do with it, and they will get killed as long as cav can move and attack. Likewise, getting attacked in the back isn't something that is related to cav power, unless you are talking about improving the sound in the game, which is a fine change if it is possible. But you can't possibly expect to nerf cav to the point where you won't be attacked in the back while you fight some infantry in front of you, at least not unless you plan to make cav so useless that nobody plays as cav...

Cav speed seems to be near minimum. Remember, much of what you see is the fastest horse (courser) with max heirloom and high riding skill. At low levels with the slower horses (Sumpter, steppe), an infantry can actually block the attack then slash the horse before it completes the pass, especially if the terrain is anything but perfectly flat. The lance many times will even glance off heavily armored foes at the low max speed of the slower horses. Even successful couch attacks, if you can get enough speed to do them, will not instantly kill armored foes. If you slow down the rest of the horses to these levels, it's going to be pretty ridiculous.

Cav maneuver could have room to be reduced without utterly breaking cav, but I don't see the need. An heirloomed courser with high riding still has a high turning radius at high speeds and must slow down a lot to make 90 turns into even into rather large corridors. At low speeds, they are still making passes (going in from one direction, exiting to another) rather than bouncing in and out from mostly the same direction like high maneuver cav can sort of do at slow speeds. For the high maneuver cav, that's all they have got going for them. They are much weaker and easily taken down by arrows (often making them a liability that will get you dehorsed in the middle of enemy territory), and less deadly because of less speed bonuses (and the weak lances depend heavily on speed to be effective).

Where I agree with "nerfing" is with the cav's ability to block attacks with a shield or weapon. The blocks extend too low, blocking some attacks that are clearly aimed at the horse and not the rider (or just the rider's legs). If it is impossible to change the hitbox size for blocking on horseback, maybe it is at least possible to raise the whole thing higher into the air when on horseback?



All in all, cav aren't doing anything that is overpowered to get kills. If they are doing well in a particular round, it's due much more to the infantry's failure to defend properly. It's kinda rare to see a pikeman defending a bunch of allies. Awlpikes do help a bit, but they aren't really meant for cav defense and won't protect a large swath of allies anyway. And then when there actually is a decent effort to fight together and have someone on anti-cav duty, there's still probably going to be some allies that only focus on their next kill and don't pay attention to their positioning.

If I get dehorsed and my team is still evenly matched, I feel quite comfortable using just my slow heavy lance to defend allies from cav. If I find a long spear or similar that has such a significant length, speed, and damage advantage over any cav, then any allies near me should be pretty darn safe from cav. If you guys have watched Walt_F4 play, he defends quite a large swath of allies from cav, either discouraging their charges or killing the ones that do charge, and he still manages to aggressively contribute to the fight against infantry at the same time. When he's not actively fighting infantry or protecting a particular group of engaged allied infantry, he's probably in a good spot that anticipates the path that cav will be using. For example, you know cav are going to run along the edge of a group of your allies and take a swipe... Walt is usually waiting in the spot just beyond that (or around the corner in city maps) where the horse has to travel on the follow-through of the charge.

Stick together, protect your allies, and cav are mostly target practice.

Offline tankmen

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #17 on: July 03, 2011, 02:59:10 am »
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i was bored, i have 0 athletics lol
The purpose of wearing plate has become nothing more than crippling yourself to look like a knight... or maybe its my lack of athletics

Offline Peasant_Woman

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #18 on: July 03, 2011, 03:23:43 am »
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Yeah, let's nerf cav by making them less effective when dismounted.
Great idea, totally unbiased.

No one may dare oppose the glorious 2hander/pole infantry master race. If a filthy peasant cav kills one of the glorious master race infantry on foot we must nerf thier class into uselessness for even having the audacity to consider it before more of the peasants forget thier place.
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Offline Tydeus

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #19 on: July 03, 2011, 10:39:25 am »
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(click to show/hide)
tldr; Cav is the best pub stomping class.
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Offline cmp

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #20 on: July 03, 2011, 11:06:50 am »
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No one may dare oppose the glorious 2hander/pole infantry master race. If a filthy peasant cav kills one of the glorious master race infantry on foot we must nerf thier class into uselessness for even having the audacity to consider it before more of the peasants forget thier place.

Yeah, poor cav, they are so useless. Last time I've seen a cav player score a kill was 2/3 months ago!

Offline Dehitay

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #21 on: July 03, 2011, 05:35:19 pm »
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There are 2 things about cavalry that I want to see changed. First, I'm not sure about this, but I believe that trampling over somebody does nothing to the speed of a horse. I've seen them just straight out go bowling through the enemy and come out at what seems like the same speed they went in with. Logically and gameplay-wise, it would make more sense for there to be a sudden decrease in speed when they run over something and a flat out stop and horse rearing if they hit too many targets successively. Also, I would like for enemy cavalry to sound different and be more audible. Maybe a clop clop instead of the thud thud or possibly an angry neighing from the horse. But in the end, I'm not even sure if it's possible to change the speed or sound schemes for cavalry.

Offline Dehitay

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #22 on: July 03, 2011, 05:53:26 pm »
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enemy cav sound different? eh, what the ...? horse is horse.

It's less about logic and more about my biased hatred of backstabbing flash ninjas

Offline kongxinga

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #23 on: July 03, 2011, 05:59:00 pm »
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Cavalry good on and off horses? You must be talking about dragoons, or mounted infantry, or man on horse, not real cavalry. Dragoons  split their points, including the very dubious riding AND athletics builds, and thus can do decently on foot and on horseback. Unfortunately, they often become fodder to pure cav, who let's face it, often hunt horses first after picking off the low hanging fruit (afks etc). Assuming they survive the inevitable dismount due to lower ride, infantry duelists can outdance them due to having lower athletics or outlast them due to dragoons having lower armour, since horses are so expensive, especially compared to the cost effectiveness of heirloomed armour all ground pounders wear now. The sacrifice that dragoons make to be Ok on horse and on foot is that they do nothing very good, and must compensate for that with an overwhelming advantage in reflexes or Ping (mostly ping). Pure cav can be deadly cav hunters or crunchy squashers, but are not that hot off horse. Dont forget the potshot window of opportunity that happens if they get dismounted.


@ dehitay, trampling someone DOEs reduce speed of horse. There is a very noticeable unnatural drop in speed in crpg after hitting someone, and is the reason you cant ride through an infantry clump even if no one hits you. There is horse speed reduction in native too, but it is not as blatant as the one in crpg. The speed drop is so bad I often think it is a lag spike.
« Last Edit: July 03, 2011, 06:02:25 pm by kongxinga »

Offline LordRichrich

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #24 on: July 03, 2011, 07:08:29 pm »
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Cavalry good on and off horses? You must be talking about dragoons, or mounted infantry, or man on horse, not real cavalry. Dragoons  split their points, including the very dubious riding AND athletics builds, and thus can do decently on foot and on horseback. Unfortunately, they often become fodder to pure cav, who let's face it, often hunt horses first after picking off the low hanging fruit (afks etc). Assuming they survive the inevitable dismount due to lower ride, infantry duelists can outdance them due to having lower athletics or outlast them due to dragoons having lower armour, since horses are so expensive, especially compared to the cost effectiveness of heirloomed armour all ground pounders wear now. The sacrifice that dragoons make to be Ok on horse and on foot is that they do nothing very good, and must compensate for that with an overwhelming advantage in reflexes or Ping (mostly ping). Pure cav can be deadly cav hunters or crunchy squashers, but are not that hot off horse. Dont forget the potshot window of opportunity that happens if they get dismounted.



Funny, tell me another.
Leeds a "Dragoon". literally every cavalry is a dragoon, I do just aswell dehorsed as I do on my 2h alt. Like some guy said, this mod is 90% skill

Offline EponiCo

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #25 on: July 03, 2011, 07:15:44 pm »
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Yeah, poor cav, they are so useless. Last time I've seen a cav player score a kill was 2/3 months ago!

No, they aren't useless but Peasant_Woman has a point. There's so many exagerations about how many kills cav makes (which is certainly ture) but if you look at the scoreboard you'll often find twohanders beating them by a good margin. But then there's also archer or shielders who reach ridiculous scores.

Offline Dehitay

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #26 on: July 03, 2011, 09:40:13 pm »
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@ dehitay, trampling someone DOEs reduce speed of horse. There is a very noticeable unnatural drop in speed in crpg after hitting someone, and is the reason you cant ride through an infantry clump even if no one hits you. There is horse speed reduction in native too, but it is not as blatant as the one in crpg. The speed drop is so bad I often think it is a lag spike.

Do you know if jumping voids some of the speed decrease? I've seen one horseman jump on top of a group of us. Four of us went to the floor and then he managed to go running out the other side. Granted I wasn't exactly paying too much attention to if it affected his speed since I was picking myself up off the ground. But he was racing off next time I looked at him. Either way, I definitely notice that horses end up getting away with a racing speed after they trample me individually. What percentage of speed would you say is lost from trampling? 10%? And is going over multiple people the same as just an individual?

Offline Thucydides

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #27 on: July 03, 2011, 10:35:32 pm »
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scores are useless in a balancing conversation, since a good player can get massives amounts of Kills with any class.

2h and cav are easier since they can deal massive amounts of damage quickly while playing smart and avoiding clusterfucks/arrow spam

Offline Digglez

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #28 on: July 03, 2011, 11:41:09 pm »
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another terrible cav suggestion from OP

Offline Lech

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Re: how to truely balance cavalry
« Reply #29 on: July 04, 2011, 12:20:44 am »
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First of all, when judging how powerful cav are, lets not even bother to count kills against players who wander around alone in the open not paying attention, or standing out in the open shooting their bow or xbow. The power of cav has nothing to do with it, and they will get killed as long as cav can move and attack. Likewise, getting attacked in the back isn't something that is related to cav power, unless you are talking about improving the sound in the game, which is a fine change if it is possible. But you can't possibly expect to nerf cav to the point where you won't be attacked in the back while you fight some infantry in front of you, at least not unless you plan to make cav so useless that nobody plays as cav...

Those also need to be counted as cavalry is fast enough to engage any target they desire. Also, balance is done around end-game, and every end-game cav have at least 5 ridding skill so he will instant kill anyone by couch (or even normal attack against many targets). Cav can safely engage any infantry with non-long polearm weapon, without risk if he play it right. If he made a mistake he deserve to get hit and even die.

Cav speed seems to be near minimum. Remember, much of what you see is the fastest horse (courser) with max heirloom and high riding skill. At low levels with the slower horses (Sumpter, steppe), an infantry can actually block the attack then slash the horse before it completes the pass, especially if the terrain is anything but perfectly flat. The lance many times will even glance off heavily armored foes at the low max speed of the slower horses. Even successful couch attacks, if you can get enough speed to do them, will not instantly kill armored foes. If you slow down the rest of the horses to these levels, it's going to be pretty ridiculous.

Don't tell crap, any player who is in retire loop play about 85% of time in endgame with high enough ridding skill and ps to be unaffected. Cav speed and maneuver is way too high and need to be lowered by fair amount (43 maneuver/speed top), but lesser horses should be imo less affected (but still affected - 1/2 points decrease would be good approx).

Cav maneuver could have room to be reduced without utterly breaking cav, but I don't see the need. An heirloomed courser with high riding still has a high turning radius at high speeds and must slow down a lot to make 90 turns into even into rather large corridors. At low speeds, they are still making passes (going in from one direction, exiting to another) rather than bouncing in and out from mostly the same direction like high maneuver cav can sort of do at slow speeds. For the high maneuver cav, that's all they have got going for them. They are much weaker and easily taken down by arrows (often making them a liability that will get you dehorsed in the middle of enemy territory), and less deadly because of less speed bonuses (and the weak lances depend heavily on speed to be effective).

If you can't dodge arrows with them blame yourself, not the horse.

Where I agree with "nerfing" is with the cav's ability to block attacks with a shield or weapon. The blocks extend too low, blocking some attacks that are clearly aimed at the horse and not the rider (or just the rider's legs). If it is impossible to change the hitbox size for blocking on horseback, maybe it is at least possible to raise the whole thing higher into the air when on horseback?

Impossible.

All in all, cav aren't doing anything that is overpowered to get kills. If they are doing well in a particular round, it's due much more to the infantry's failure to defend properly. It's kinda rare to see a pikeman defending a bunch of allies. Awlpikes do help a bit, but they aren't really meant for cav defense and won't protect a large swath of allies anyway. And then when there actually is a decent effort to fight together and have someone on anti-cav duty, there's still probably going to be some allies that only focus on their next kill and don't pay attention to their positioning.

They do, they can engage when they want and require way more awareness to deal with them. Also, the more of them, the more overpowered they are as you can't deal with all of them in the same time, and they pick the occupied targets with ease (that how it work, they can dodge the one who is defending other guys and just poke the one he is defending - even other guy with pike). You can't pay attention to positioning of 10 guys who are lighting fast and maneuverable like hell, it's just impossible.

If I get dehorsed and my team is still evenly matched, I feel quite comfortable using just my slow heavy lance to defend allies from cav. If I find a long spear or similar that has such a significant length, speed, and damage advantage over any cav, then any allies near me should be pretty darn safe from cav. If you guys have watched Walt_F4 play, he defends quite a large swath of allies from cav, either discouraging their charges or killing the ones that do charge, and he still manages to aggressively contribute to the fight against infantry at the same time. When he's not actively fighting infantry or protecting a particular group of engaged allied infantry, he's probably in a good spot that anticipates the path that cav will be using. For example, you know cav are going to run along the edge of a group of your allies and take a swipe... Walt is usually waiting in the spot just beyond that (or around the corner in city maps) where the horse has to travel on the follow-through of the charge.

Stick together, protect your allies, and cav are mostly target practice.

Bull, cav is not target practice unless they suck.