Repels and the pike square

[Taqwus]

...reflecting the magnitude of the one-time charge bonus on lance-type weapons.

[Evil Dave]

Taqwus said:
...reflecting the magnitude of the one-time charge bonus on lance-type weapons.

It couldn't hurt, I guess. 'course, pikemen can charge too...

[Dedas]

I think the length of the weapon should play a role when calculating repel effectivness. Now the game (according to the manual) just checks if defenders weapon is longer than the attacker, and if true the repel check is initiated.
It would be nice if the difference in length could be added as a bonus to the defender, not just as a security to be able to repel at all.

[Wick]

Better then giving some weapons an attack & defense bonus against mounted troops would be giving mounted troops a penalty on the repel morale check. No matter how stupid the knight, the horse isn't that brave...

I think of a lot of nice things could come from recognizing that steeds and riders are separate creatures but that would be very developer-intensive.

[Folket]

War trained horses seldom diobied their masters, some even wear blindfolds not to get distracted.

[Dedas]

Well, maybe then the horses should have seperate morale to the rider. I mean, there are those units in the game that ride less than trained warhorses.

[Endoperez]

Dedas said:
Well, maybe then the horses should have seperate morale to the rider. I mean, there are those units in the game that ride less than trained warhorses.

Those troops already have worse morale than the Knights etc who have trained warhorses.

Dedas said:
I think the length of the weapon should play a role when calculating repel effectivness. Now the game (according to the manual) just checks if defenders weapon is longer than the attacker, and if true the repel check is initiated.
It would be nice if the difference in length could be added as a bonus to the defender, not just as a security to be able to repel at all.

This sounds like a really good idea. The length difference times two or three as a penalty to the moral check would maybe work well. then the attack could stay low, so pikemen wouldn't repel infantry too often (infantry has mostly better defense than cav) so increased so the really big moral penalty from a pike vs. a sword wouldn't imbalance them, but even a 2 or 3 penalty against knights would really improve the repel effectiveness.
This isn't moddable though i suppose, while changing att/def is.

[Endoperez]

Dhaeron said:
This sounds like a really good idea. The length difference times two or three as a penalty to the moral check would maybe work well. then the attack could stay low, so pikemen wouldn't repel infantry too often (infantry has mostly better defense than cav) so increased so the really big moral penalty from a pike vs. a sword wouldn't imbalance them, but even a 2 or 3 penalty against knights would really improve the repel effectiveness.
This isn't moddable though i suppose, while changing att/def is.

Natural attacks such as Claw or bite are length 0. Spears are length 4. Morale check at -8 for all animals seems rather extreme.

Also, cavalry often have better defense than infantry. The shield type might confuse you, as e.g. EA Ermor has Tower Shields and those appear to be really fantastic, but don't affect repel (or at least, I think they don't). Just being mounted gives +3 defense.

[Sheap]

An added factor for difference in weapons length won't matter since a knight's lance is pretty long anyway. Once his lance is used up it might matter, but the issue is the pikeman's effectiveness vs a charge.

Repel mechanics just don't work very well as currently implemented. It isn't a huge problem as repel is not a big part of the game, but pikemen just don't seem to work the way they should. Especially, I think there should be a bonus for having a lot of pikemen in one place, historically the pikemen would be placed in mixed formations or even in the second row, to protect their fellow troops, and as it stands they can't.

I'd recommend some weapons be designated as "good at repelling" like pikes, halberds, long spears or jotun spears, and these would have various bonuses to repel. Maybe you could just say any weapon of length 5 or 6 is like this since these are the primary repelling weapons anyway. I'd recommend they be able to repel attacks targeting anyone in the square, have a large attack bonus (+5? +8? Something really useful) when repelling, and maybe do extra damage if the attacker manages to make his morale check. Similarly, some weapons could be designated as "bad at repelling" - like a flail, for instance - and they not be able to repel at all, though their weapon length would still come into play in determining if they would be repelled.