Mod: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail

[Burnsaber]

Heh. There are many more contributor names. "Sir Rond of R'donj" is just the most obvious of them.

[SlipperyJim]

I'm sorry to tell you, but Sir Rond died in battle. Many of my prophets meet such a fate, especially the Bretonnians. Unlike other prophets, the Bretonnians insist on charging into the fray, often ahead of their own troops.

Sir Rond is merely the latest example. He spurred his mighty steed into battle with a mob of ill-mannered barbarians. Sadly, their warhammers managed to knock Sir Rond off of his horse and pound him into tomato paste. Alas, valiant warrior, he met his end too soon....

My newest prophet is Sir Burnsaber the Industrious, a Marquis. I hope that he will last just a little bit longer than the late, lamented Sir Rond.

[Burnsaber]

Alrighty, Trumanator gave some feedback in the "Sign of the Hammer" game. I decided to mreply to that stuff in this thread so that other people can comment on it.

Originally Posted by Trumanator

Brettonia: While of course llamabeast will have the best overall view of things, I will still make a few observations. First, freespawn archers are perhaps a bit much, particularly against Skaven. Second, having what amounts to an income and resource independent recruitment is a difficult thing to balance. It might have been interesting to see how they might have done had llama been able to recruit damsels in his cap every turn for a respectable research.

Yeah, I can see how the peasant (note however that the archers aren't freespawn, expect as a very rare Lord domsummon) spam could have decimated you since you were playing with a nation that has really sucky recruitable troops, allowing Breton to overwhelm you. However there are many factors at stake here, like Llamabeasts sucky start, lack of gold and so forth. Ultimately, his peasant spam was a sub-optimal stragedy and he lost. I'm not really concerned about a clearly losing stragedy being very unbalancing.

Although you have a point about the summons being a bit problematic. You can easily concentrate on the spam in the beginning and simply overwhelm one player by literally drowning them in chaff. But I really can't see it working in the long-term, it's bit like double blessing EA Oceania in that aspect. You might win in the early game but you will simply be decimated in mid/late game when the chaff doesn't serve any purpose expect cost upkeep and make your armies more vulnerable to "flee kills" with their weak morale.

However, I'd be really intrested to hear more opinions on the matter (which is the balance of the peasant summons in MP).

[SlipperyJim]

Burnsaber:

Apologies if someone has already mentioned this, but what would you think about bumping the Knights Errant up from their current "poorleader" status (10 troops) to "okleader" (40 troops)? I'm finally starting to play around with Errantry War, and it's bugging me that my commanders can't lead all of their own troops after the combat is over.

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by SlipperyJim

Burnsaber:

Apologies if someone has already mentioned this, but what would you think about bumping the Knights Errant up from their current "poorleader" status (10 troops) to "okleader" (40 troops)? I'm finally starting to play around with Errantry War, and it's bugging me that my commanders can't lead all of their own troops after the combat is over.

IIRC, only the footed KE should have poorleader. The mounted one should be okleader. I'll look into it soon.

[HoneyBadger]

I had the thought, particularly about Brettonia, but also in general for independent knights, etc, that mounted knights might possibly get the ability to dismount, via an application of Shapechange.

[rdonj]

You could do this, but given that it would be an incomprehensibly poor decision I don't think I would ever use said command. Dismounted knights just build too much fatigue too quickly. You would need to give them more gear than a mounted knight just to keep their fatigue levels from growing too much.

[SlipperyJim]

I agree with rdonj. Dismounted knights would be possible, certainly -- but not practical. In addition to the Fatigue Factor, there's also the point that lance charges are a big part of why knights are so deadly. The lance charge is even more important for Bretonnia, because the Bretonnian lances have been upgraded over the "standard" lance. Why on Earth would I want to give up my lance charge?

There's also the Mobility Problem. Knights on foot are S-L-O-W. Yuck. I'd much rather keep them on horseback so they can run down fleeing opponents.

Lastly, there's a thematicness (is that a word?) problem. Knights on foot are just elite heavy infantry. Yawn.... Dom3 already has a lot of elite heavy infantry. Anyway, Ulm does it better.

[SlipperyJim]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

IIRC, only the footed KE should have poorleader. The mounted one should be okleader. I'll look into it soon.

I just checked the code, and the mounted Knight Errant is a poorleader. No big deal ... I can make the change myself. Thanks for responding, and thanks for making such a fun mod!

[Sombre]

One thing I noticed in the sign of the hammer game was that Bretonnia is HARD AS NAILS to siege. I'm not sure if this was intended, but with their freespawning of troops I couldn't get anywhere near cracking their walls, even with my own freespawn as Tomb Kings. This doesn't really fit with Bretonnia imo. I mean I get that forts are huge for them and maybe that they should have more of them, but unlike Dwarfs for instance, they shouldn't be so great at digging in behind the walls. I mean they're an agricultural society.

One thing you could try is making peasant level Breton troops animals. That's certainly how the nobles see them anyway.