Knights are way too rare

[Baron_von_Beer]

Perhaps the addition of "Medium" cavalry would be a simple and effective solution? The impression given is that "Heavy cavalry" is meant to represent something more than someone in mail with a sword, while light would seem to be something lightly armored used for skirmishing and pursuit.

 

[barny]

I just looked it up:

While I get like 9% of my levies as HC, my dukes have like 60 men out of 2700 are HC, so that is definitely not enough.

 

[Blastaz]

i mean, literally. The armor, once worn can never never be removed as it was sewed together and wasn't couldn't be removed unlike what you see in movies. To removed it, they had to rip out the chest of armor, open it in half and then saw off the plates on the shoulders. This completely destroyed the armor in process.

As for how they did...you know, their "needs". The armor didn't extend in the buttlocks, only in the front.

And they couldn't go to their farms or whatever simply because they wore 24/7 for ~20 years a 80 kilo armor. They had no armor. They were soldiers for life.

potm

 

[unmerged(9428)]

Honestly, I think there is rather too much certainty on this thread. The sources are deeply contaminated, since the armoured and mounted knight was such a popular figure in the literature of the age, and trying to work out actual medieval battle tactics from that is about as easy as deducing the finer points of WWI air warfare from "Biggles Learns to Fly"

I never was much of a student, but I do remember being told during a module of my history degree covering roughly this period, that the real problem was that no-one today actually knows how medieval battles really unfolded. Eyewitnesses are contradictory and frequently provably incorrect, literary sources are impossibly romanticised, and actual teaching materials are patchy due to the sensitivity and secretiveness with which they were regarded.

A misconception. Early historians took the numbers quoted in the old romaticized tales by face value but nowadays these mistakes are no longer made. Stewards kept accounts of the payments to the soldiers (including knights) during a campaign. Some battles were described by scribes on both sides on the fence (christians/byzantines/muslems) and can be cross referenced and so on.
This is a good book to get started:
The art of warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages

There is no certainty, but it's not like we have no idea what was going on. We know many things quite well in fact.

 

[unmerged(9428)]

The problem is that it is related to culture. As it is currently in the game, it would seem like that italians simply didn't have heavy cavalry. That wasn't true, of course. The italian wars in the Renaissance are full of tales of those soon-to-be-obsolete knights with glamourous armours. What is true is that they were mostly mercenaries (but still some feudal lords had their own knights). But what if I manage to carve a strictly feudal italian kingdom? Does it still make sense for me not to have heavy cavalry?

Crusader Kings' original system was better as it could offer troop variety based on the balance of power between social classes, not on culture.

I agree!

 

[KonradRichtmark]

Perhaps the addition of "Medium" cavalry would be a simple and effective solution? The impression given is that "Heavy cavalry" is meant to represent something more than someone in mail with a sword, while light would seem to be something lightly armored used for skirmishing and pursuit.

The problem is, if heavy cavalry is supposed to specifically refer to dudes in full plate armour, heavy cavalry should only appear around 1300, and not be around even in minuscule numbers before that.

If someone at Paradox did state in an early dev diary that Model 1066 knights would mostly be represented by light cavalry, it seems like they got their design concepts mixed up at some point, since the actual combat stats and tactical behaviour (as in, what tactics give them bonuses) of light cavalry in the game doesn't match that interpretation.

The most simple, realistic and internally consistent solution is plainly to let mounted knights be represented by heavy cavalry all the way, and let the progress from mailed knight to plate armoured knight be represented by the actual tech system, just as in CK1.

 

[KonradRichtmark]

As for Italian city-states, the simple solution is to just let Italian castles produce knights just like everyone else's, and let Italian cities produce pikemen. Then let Italy, or at least the parts of it under the rule of city-states, have a larger ratio of cities to castles than other regions. Then, barons are still barons and mayors still mayors, but Italy gets more burgher-dominated simply because there are more cities ruled by mayors than there are castles ruled by barons.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

But... his claims are on their face absurd. How exactly would one create a set of plate armour that could not be taken of any other way than by outright "destroying it"? Welding it together?

Please don't respond on the public forum, to posts made by a moderator as a moderator. That is no allowed, see the forum-rules.

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Just because you doubt what he says is correct, doesn't make him a troll. It also is not up to normal forumites to decide who trolls and who not.

 

[JaguarXJ6]

In my current game, it's 1206 and there are TWO realms that have heavy cavalry, with 12 each. That's it.

I would settle for buffing an upgrade chain of buildings around this, but it's far from even being historically accurate. As in certain kingdoms at certain ages make an event coded "discovery" of a new technology or set of buildings allowing them access to these as with history.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Well, we can add troops to techs and holdings, so that might be two solutions for the problem.

 

[Beagá]

In my current game, it's 1206 and there are TWO realms that have heavy cavalry, with 12 each. That's it.

I would settle for buffing an upgrade chain of buildings around this, but it's far from even being historically accurate. As in certain kingdoms at certain ages make an event coded "discovery" of a new technology or set of buildings allowing them access to these as with history.

And I have 240 HC in 1150 as a duke.

Your point? If the AI fails at building heavy cavalry buildings that´s a problem with the AI not the game. And what wouldn´t be historically accurate is to give alll cultures the same amount of heavy cavalry. Italians didn´t have as much as the french, period.

 

[KonradRichtmark]

But that could just as well mean that, IRL, the French chose to build those buildings while the Italians by and large didn't.

 

[Nick B II]

I have no problem with Italian levies having no heavy cavalry (although they should have access to some HC mercs). Even where the communes failed to maintain republican power, they still significantly weakened the power of the feudal lords. Society in Italy was much more based around city-states and commerce, so a bonus to pikemen instead of HC makes sense.

There are two problems with the current system.

1) It's stupidly deterministic. Yes if the Emperor's Italian power collapses exactly the same way it did IRL; you should expect an Italy with relatively few HC. But if, OTOH, the Emperor's power collapses because a human, ethnic Norman, King of Sicily marries Mathilda, beats off all interference with his HC, and acculturates to Italian about 1250, one would expect that by 1400 all of Europe would associate the Italian culture with HC.

As is there's no way for that to happen. When he acculturates his Squire Lists disappear, and can only be replaced by buildings that reduce HC to zero.

2) Even if you assume that the only acceptable result in Italy is that the non-HC Merchant Republics dominate everything, no Italian character can field HC. And they did.

This feels a lot more like the devs developed a feature to respond to in-game problems on one regions of the map (the Baltic), and then applied it map-wide without thinking the probable results through.

Nick

 

[Alerias]

I mean, literally. The armor, once worn can never never be removed as it was sewed together and wasn't couldn't be removed unlike what you see in movies. To removed it, they had to rip out the chest of armor, open it in half and then saw off the plates on the shoulders. This completely destroyed the armor in process.

As for how they did...you know, their "needs". The armor didn't extend in the buttlocks, only in the front.

And they COULDN'T go to their farms or whatever simply because they wore 24/7 for ~20 years a 80 kilo armor. They HAD no armor. They were soldiers for life.

This is quite simply untrue and historically inaccurate, in addition to being physically impossible. Nobody could bear heavy armor for extended periods of time. Knights took off their armor just fine, unless it was damaged.

I don't mind mistakes, but acting like its common knowledge and suggesting others are ignorant of history for asking a citation seems excessive to me. Just saying.

This nitpick aside, to get back on topic, it's true that the portion of knights to levies was low, but its also true that the game appears to be a little light on heavy cavalry.

Perhaps each castle holding should comme with a token amount of heavy cavalry, representing knights. 5, perhaps?

 

[Grave Digger]

I have to agree that the CK1 system seems a bit smoother. Where you could decide what troop type you focus on with the help of laws and giving power to certain goups. I liked to increase the power of the nobles a bit and set laws to produce more knights. The armies went EXTREMLY expensive, but it was worth it. (Game as Bohemia)


Edit: Now as bohemia I cant even build squirelists.

 

[Dinsdale]

I absolutely love the idea of armor being worn until death, welded on to 4th born sons with a one way ticket to Outremar, tied around the neck. Its time to update 1066 And All That

There doesn't seem to be enough heavy cavalry around outside the holy orders, and this leads to a real reliance on the Orders to crusade early game.

There seem to be a lot of different issues being discussed, but is there any consensus on what the % of HC should be in general terms?

 

[JaguarXJ6]

While my preferred start and avatar are Sicily, I was simply remarking that pulling up the ledger I was shocked at how little HC existed anywhere. The ledger does give you every barony/city/temple in the game or is it only showing your own realm? I was positive I was looking at army composition of my rivals, but if only 12 existed out of the hundred or so of m own baronies, it might as well not exist.

 

[Dreadlord]

There should be culture-tied auto-builded trait buldings like pagans warrior cults(not just adding a bunch of troops but adjust the ratio of troops according to the culture, like a German trait bulding should add, lets say,-30 light cavarly while +20 knight/heavy cavarly and some bonus to heavy cavarly.With this German-trait auto-bulding and German/Frankish knight lists Germany whould have more knights while a non-German province can only have some knights when a German/Frankish owner builds a squire list). Right now a barony in England, Anglo-Saxon England, Sweden, France and Jerusalem whitout any upgrade has the SAME amount of troops which is terribly wrong IMAHO.

With the trait-Buldings one whould have:
-more dynamic armies which obiously leads a more realistic and a fun game.
-Possibility of having battles like Battle of the Golden Spurs (wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Golden_Spurs) or having outcomes like Hundred Years' War when an army has more archer/knight/heavy infantry... against other which changes the fate of battles and campaings significantly.

I think this has some merits enough to find it way in an official patch but if not, it can allways be a great modding material

 

[Pode]

Is it possible to tie the number of troops given to the holder's stats? Thinking something like one HC at each barony for every 4 points of the holder's state martial (attract fighting men to you) + 1/2 diplomacy (persuade rich men to fight for you) + 1/2 stewardship (pay to equip men to fight for you). This would give a truly stellar leader something on the order of 20 HC per castle or ~200 total, powerful enough to matter but not enough to be balance breaking.

Edit: the culture specific buildings check for the liege's culture and destroy themselves if they don't find a match. Perhaps that code could be tweaked to look at stats for a building line that cost 1g each and give 1 HC each, per level, upgradeable so long as the holder had enough martial stat and destroying themselves if a lesser holder took over.

 

[Calbrenar]

Cheltham: [laughing] You are outmatched. You have no heavy cavalry. In two centuries no army has won without--.
William: I'm not finished. Before we let you leave, your commander must cross that field, present himself before this army, put his head between his legs, and kiss his own arse.
[Cheltham rides off]
Mornay: I'd say that was rather less cordial than he was used to.