Let's make Heavy Infantries useful!

Post by **anakayub** » January 7th, 2008, 3:41 am

Maybe you'd link to both replays in the archive? I'm sure there's grrr's game of LvU with almost all pierce. And there might be the one's with HI's as well. My take is just that HI is a niche unit, good at what it's supposed to do (hold a position). Similarly with elvish shamans, woses, fencers, mages (though they are needed in almost all matches, they are still that, niche). But I say we study the replays available before making any further suggestions.

Edit: Yo Noy, what's up with the new avatar? Didn't like the mamluke? Or showing your pent up anger?

grrr · Post by **grrr** » January 7th, 2008, 4:04 am

uh actually I used ONE HI there, but in an unusual way: it sat on a village near my keep to draw DA near my horse. If I had put my spearman there, he could have attacked more efficiently. I think my opponent did not see the horse, but he knew I had one back there.

Anyways, such tactical moves probably don't show anything. And the pierce recruitment basically worked because I had a red mage leader and my opponent disliked skellies it seems.

name · Post by **name** » January 7th, 2008, 5:27 am

Noyga wrote:
Cold Steel wrote: What is wrong with allowing HI to move 1 tile over mountains? What would this imbalance?
It is as right as allowing the spearmen 1 tile over deep water.

That makes no sense, spearmen are about the same as mermish fighters, so it would be pointless to allow them to enter deep water when you have mermish for this, especially considering that none of the other loyalist infantry would be able to follow them in.

From a realism standpoint (which is not supposed to be nearly as important as gameplay, right?) it makes no sense that an entire tree, a wose, could climb up a mountain while a guy with 40 pounds of evenly distributed armor cannot.

So could you clarify what you meant? I am not sure I have seen the logic in your comparison.

Post by **anakayub** » January 7th, 2008, 5:37 am

A wose is big, heavy, but powerful. A HI is just heavy.

But I think 40 pounds is and underestimate, just too lazy to find the facts. 40 kg is more realistic IIRC, but I could be wrong.

Edit: Ok, chain mail is 40 lbs. Just looked it up. Couldn't find the info on plate mail weight though.

Edit 2: Check this. Wearable armor weighing 150-225 lb.

nebula955 · Post by **nebula955** » January 7th, 2008, 6:32 am

lol more like 300-400 pounds if "heavy" infantry. not that many men can climb mountainms wearing that mountains. although considering some units are as large as a forest is bigger than a mountain maybe this is possible......
point: woses > hi 13-2>11-2, 52 hp>38 hp, regen>no regen, wose is weak only to fire, hi to fire and cold, wose has 60% pierce, much better than 40%, wose can ambush, wose moves 1 through forest, wose is much more awesomer, wose looks better, wose> hi, thus wose>hi in all cases. and yeah, wose>hi by a lot mroe than just 1g.
yes it's balanced by faction vs faction, but you might as well as put a 100g peasant in loys by comparison (slightly exaggerated)
so we might as well as make the hi more useful.....

Post by **Noy** » January 7th, 2008, 8:32 am

Cold Steel wrote:Noy, what do you have to say about just allowing HI to travel over mountains at one tile per turn?

No?

anakayub wrote: Edit: Yo Noy, what's up with the new avatar? Didn't like the mamluke? Or showing your pent up anger?

What, can't I just like Lions?

Post by **anakayub** » January 7th, 2008, 8:36 am

Remember, faction vs faction.

Nothing wrong with lions, Noy. Love the cat kingdom.

Sombra · Post by **Sombra** » January 7th, 2008, 9:30 am

Velensk wrote:50% vs peice I thought. Accualy the heavy infantry isn't supposed to be a niche unit, it is supposed to be a heavy, and very slow tank. It has become a niche unit due to it's weaknesses. Heavy infantry accualy could do well againt most archers even if several gang up on them, except that not all archers have olny peirce, any archer with fire or cold can get right through that armor.

By the way mage isn't a niche unit, it requires support naturualy, but it is usefull in all match-ups except drake (and in drake if they mass saurians it might not be bad).

+1 Would be nice to bring the HI to a level which justifies its name

Clonkinator · Post by **Clonkinator** » January 7th, 2008, 1:12 pm

Sigh... Can't we just stop this discussion? There are players who like HI and actually also put them to good use, and there are players who seem not to like HI. However, nobody forces you to use them (except against undead perhaps, and you really can't tell me they don't do decent against undead), and demanding the developers to remove the HI from the default loyalist faction just because you don't like them goes a bit too far imho. Just leave me alone with this, okay?

Mabuse · Post by **Mabuse** » January 7th, 2008, 1:25 pm

nebula955 wrote:lol more like 300-400 pounds if "heavy" infantry.

nope. For exmaple a Milan Battlearmor which is among the heaviest weights about 30-35 kg.

together with all other stuff it may get to 40/45 kg maximum, wearing more makes no sense anyway, ah well 45 kg may be to much anyway already

and forget the legends of knights using rope winches to get on a horse

in any case i doubt that it is a pleasure to climb mountain with that armor. certainly not.

Sandman · Post by **Sandman** » January 7th, 2008, 1:25 pm

In my opinion Heavy Infantry is currently useless against all factions instead of undeads. But even against them they are'nt indispensable. They're easy targets for adepts and ghost because of weakness to cold and 4mp. As JW wrote cavalry+mage is better chocie. So there is no problem in balance. The problem is (IMHO), that people want usefull HI (usefull for all, not only for pro players which know how to use this "niche unit"). It's hard to acquire it without damaging balance, but there are my ideas how to do it:

This ideas are based on reducing superiority(usefulness) of loyal spearmen over HI.

1. Give HI one more attack 4-6 (four hits 6 damage) and strong instead of one random trait.
As you can see it's 2dp more than main attack, but chance of hitting with all attacks is lower. Let's say defender has 60% defense. Chance of dealing 24(+strong) damage with first attack is 18%, and chcnce of dealing 28dp with second attack is only 2.5%, so it won't hurt balance to much.
I've noticed, that spearmen is dealing only one damage point less than HI, and with strong trait for both it decreases to... 0. That's solution for this problem(IMHO it is problem). Also it seems quite logical that guys in this heavy armors are... strong.

2. We could nerf spearmen and strengthen HI a little. I wasn't thinking about this idea as much as about first one, but we could work on it together, if developers likes it...
So lets for example increase price of spearmen to 15 and give HI 20% defence to blunt damage, or increase attack by 1.

I hope you find my ideas interesting and usefull.
Sorry for my bad english.

Sandman

Multiplayer Scenarios / Campaigns · Post by **Rhuvaen** » January 7th, 2008, 2:03 pm

HI only useful against undead? So what about Loyalist mirror matches?

name · Post by **name** » January 7th, 2008, 4:21 pm

anakayub wrote:A wose is big, heavy, but powerful. A HI is just heavy. But I think 40 pounds is and underestimate, just too lazy to find the facts. 40 kg is more realistic IIRC, but I could be wrong.
Edit: Ok, chain mail is 40 lbs. Just looked it up. Couldn't find the info on plate mail weight though.
Edit 2: Check this. Wearable armor weighing 150-225 lb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_armour

20 kg for full plate armor.

So no more then 40 kg for heavy infantry armor. After all, he only has 1 less MP vs the other basic infantry. This is not enough to make him less of a mountaineer than a giant tree. It is not like you see tree sized things climbing up mountains in real life, so I think the realism argument is defeated here.

Clonkinator wrote:Sigh... Can't we just stop this discussion? There are players who like HI and actually also put them to good use, and there are players who seem not to like HI. However, nobody forces you to use them (except against undead perhaps, and you really can't tell me they don't do decent against undead), and demanding the developers to remove the HI from the default loyalist faction just because you don't like them goes a bit too far imho. Just leave me alone with this, okay?

Hey, I'm with you on this, I love the HI, both in concept and in game. But for his price and limitations, he doesn't offer as much as he should by a small margin and lowering his price would just buff him in every way, thus creating an imbalance against undead and maybe some other situations. But allowing him to move at a snails pace over mountains would both make him about worth his price and make loyalists no longer the only faction that is perhaps abnormally weak on mountainous terrain (loyalists are also arguably the least mobile faction).

So not all of us want to ditch the HI, I sure as hell do not, but that doesn't mean we don't want some small adjustments.

name · Post by **name** » January 7th, 2008, 4:46 pm

Noy wrote:
Cold Steel wrote:Noy, what do you have to say about just allowing HI to travel over mountains at one tile per turn?
No?

Why?

Could you give us some idea what situations this small change would imbalance or how it would make the HI overpowered within the loyalist faction as a whole or against any of the other factions?

Post by **anakayub** » January 7th, 2008, 5:44 pm

Cold Steel wrote:
anakayub wrote:A wose is big, heavy, but powerful. A HI is just heavy. But I think 40 pounds is and underestimate, just too lazy to find the facts. 40 kg is more realistic IIRC, but I could be wrong.
Edit: Ok, chain mail is 40 lbs. Just looked it up. Couldn't find the info on plate mail weight though.
Edit 2: Check this. Wearable armor weighing 150-225 lb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_armour

20 kg for full plate armor.

So no more then 40 kg for heavy infantry armor. After all, he only has 1 less MP vs the other basic infantry. This is not enough to make him less of a mountaineer than a giant tree. It is not like you see tree sized things climbing up mountains in real life, so I think the realism argument is defeated here.

/me hoping to inject humor into this thread (with some information for the sake of it's good to know stuff). Oh well.