I'm trying to increase the exposure of this video with the algorithm, your help would be greatly appreciated! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JpQUTU5QQFc.html&ab_channel=StratGaming
Bannerlord has some great potential for combat, but it looks like there is simply too small amount of coders working on combat system. TW is possibly simly too small company.
Summary Put on a glaive, longbow, 2 quivers of arrows. Quiver can be replaced with javelin if you want to level them up to 250 throwing and become a shield piercer
@@clessayons nobody has made a video testing it. I don't know for sure but I'm routing for falxman t4 because they have a shield destroying special ability
The other important thing to summarise: thrust damage is utter trash Not that this is discovering anything new, just reinforcing how useless trust damage is
@@furimindusties5736 it's true for player control but someone would have to test how ineffective a glaive is during a castle wall defense vs a mace vs a two hander
I am a companion enjoyer myself. If you build them like Fians and put them in your archery group under a strong captain, you're going to have a good time watching their name frequently appear in the kill feed. If you want them to be mounted archers, 1h without a shield seems to work great as their melee option. Allows you to keep 2 stacks of arrows, swing speed of the 1h means they often hit first when trading and seem to do really well both mounted and dismounted. Get the perks that buff 1h usage without shield. If you want to make shielded infantry units, avoid any weapons that are 1h/2h, BUT if you equip a 2h-only together with the shield/1h, they will switch between both nicely. I tend to choose a 2h sword/axe over a 2h polearm here because infantry often find themselves crowded and the pole gets chamber blocked a lot by other friendly infantry. If you want to make a mounted knight archetype, craft them a very long couchable thrust-only lance, as well as your 1h/shield. The remaining slot can be equipped with a 2h only swingable polearm, or if you want to make them a melee specialist and don't mind the 5 focus points, a 2h axe/sword (you will get some nice perks from adding that tree, but its 5 focus points). This has the added effect of making them a VERY versatile infantry and horse knight as 2h skills are infantry based. Build the polearm tree to be a mounted lancer, skew 1h towards infantry fighting so their shield doesn't weigh them down on foot, and the 2h is pure infantry, they're a true knight and formidable with or without a horse.
Big ups for all the work that must go into running these tests, let alone the video editing. If you wanna feel real good about yourself, multiply the time it took you to run all these tests, by the views on this video and that is the amount of time you saved society as a whole. add up all your videos and tests, not to mention the spreadsheets, and you've easily saved people hundreds of thousands, potentially even millions of hours of testing.
As someone that's been playing this franchise for over 15 years, it's absolutely bonkers to me that Taleworlds still hasn't addressed spears and thrusting attacks.
Great video! Concerning thrust only spears: I found that troops work very well with them and shields against cavalry when in shield wall. The cavalry charge is usually stopped dead right in front of the line and get slaughtered. I did this against the massive Khuzait and Aserai cavalry-heavy armies with great effect
Yeah that's a great point - I still like to use polearm troops in a large mass. I think for a handful of companions though, you'll get more bang for your buck with a swingable polearm or 2H weapon. I probably should have stated that in the video lol I think maybe the video comes across as a unit testing, but was meant specifically for equipping companions with high level combat skills
@@Strat-Guides To use only one combat skill, for melee I started crafting Very short polearms with bardiche blade. It can be used in 2 hands but when used with shield, it's moveset is only thrusts and it's short enough that it can be easily used in tight fights. It works really well in tight formation because you never get random swings from side that stop on your allies. You should test very short spears. I find shields important because enemy does use ranged weapons and you get slathered without them. As does enemy without shields against ranged troops.
I’ve been wondering this a long time! I become deeply invested in my companions through the story that unfolds, especially my Distinguished Service companions. Only want the best for them.
rhomps might be the best pole arm for companions - strictly 2h only, can equip back shield and secondary 1-hander, long range and useable mounted or dismounted.
I really enjoyed this video, I actually started a new campaign and I can’t wait to give my companions the best possible gear, thank you for all this long testing and editing for these amazing videos!
Some of the most powerful combinations for leveling up a companion through my experience is having mostly any 1h + 2h and then a short spear just for taking down cavs on the battlefield. This way it level all the vigor skills at the same time. Another powerful combo is bow with 2 quivers, and either a heavy twohanded axe or swingable twohanded polearm. Prioritize athletics first to get to the last perk that increases health. Also amazing videos thank you!
in defense of the pikes, they are actually pretty good against cav on flat ground i run some tests with my custom pikemen and they perfromed very well, killing most of the horses on the charge, then overwhelming the rest with ease
extremely late hopping on the BL train but i have been watching your guides and test videos a ton, the test videos are fun to watch and seeing how the AI behaves is extremely helpful
Thanks for the guides, they've have been super helpful. Your formation video alone decreased my troop losses significantly. I honestly don't know how you haven't gotten burnt out or sick from making all of these but I'm happy to watch them until you do.
@@Strat-Guides I have to admit i've written the glaive off for close range combat purely out of logic. It doesn't make sense a long glaive would be an OP close range weapon, but this video proves it's not only good but arguably the best.
@@Strat-Guides I always forget TW MATHS lol! I'm about to try two handed glaive builds on my all companions playthrough though. They are going to be insane.
Spear brace is designed to kill the horse. Which is why thrusting spears need other supporting troops. You do spear brace or thrust to kill the front of the cav charge and force the rest to slow down and get bogged down in your heavier weapons. When I'm running an army I normally make around 15 to 20% spearman because once I slow down the charge my line breakers brutalize the riders.
It's nice to see someone making game vids who actually know what they are doing. 99.9% of people who make these kinds of videos are terrible at the game. There's nothing worse than someone who is clearly terrible at something, giving you 'advice'.
This kind of video reminds me of when bannerlord first came out and everybody was testing what units were the best in the game, spent hours watching those.
Interesting. I've never seen all the weapons tested like this before, and I had no idea that your choices could lead to such radically different results. I've always given myself and my companions the longest 2h glaives I could craft, along with the best bow they could wield. They generally got swords as a sidearm for close quarters combat. Suppose I should have known that maces would be better. The game has always been exceptionally biased against thrust attacks, so any time you're using something where the AI could potentially poke someone they're going to be losing a lot of damage output.
Hey Strat, commenting for the algo. I have learned so much from you! Thank you for releasing so much content for this gem of a game. Can't wait until your next live stream. I have been enjoying your Tamerlane play through, thank you for telling me you did a bandit run already.
It's like you read my mind after the last video. "RBM is cool and all, but my work week doesn't give me time to science vanilla." Thanks for the breakdown!
Honestly, realistically it’s actually difficult to make spears really effective in a game like this, and I don’t even think it’s unnecessarily realistic in real life. If you’re decked out in armour, and have close range weapons and a nice shield, it’s really difficult for the spear to do much, especially in a press. RBM made spears effective by making all ai not matter the armour level complete cowards with the intuition and adrenaline fuelled aggression of a blob fish. I think they should give spears and pikes a ‘hold-out’ button, which allows them to hold the spear or pike out at length which damages any who comes forward in a small cone, like Yari Wall in Shogun 2. In formation with multiple men in the line, would make them absolutely devastating to low to medium armoured opponents and light to medium cavalry. But if the line is broken or flanked, they revert back to their normal, poor performance and get mulched or switch to a secondary weapon.
This is a good idea, though I was thinking that an optimal fix for the spear issue would be to simply make it so that the shaft and point of spears have a hit box that deploys when at the ready (the animation before releasing mouse button 1 to attack) that while not necessarily dealing damage, would act as a wall that couldn’t be phased through as it would be in vanilla. The strength of the spear wall would depend on the weight of the spears as well as the weight of the armour of the attacking troops. This would encourage the player to use deeper pike formations to counter infantry and cavalry alike, since the overlapping of spears would create a wall with fewer gaps. There still exists the issue of the spears hit box making it difficult to attack with in tight formations without being interrupted by a friendly unit getting in the way, so to fix this, I would remove the hit-box from the back of the spear and the part where the user holds it so that they may attack with it without being impeded by the guy behind him.
I like the way conquerors blade does it, pikes do more damage at the tip and closer enemy is the less it does. Add in the fact if you brace the speed the enemy is moving adds damage.
"I don’t even think it’s unnecessarily realistic in real life. If you’re decked out in armour, and have close range weapons and a nice shield, it’s really difficult for the spear to do much, especially in a press" Well, in practical fact what we see is that this is not true. Spears have quite consistently been major favorites of all varieties of troops, including heavily armoured elites (like archaic greek hoplites), including when in no particular formation and when used in single combat. In Bannerlord spears trade damage and speed for range. In reality, spears hit like a truck and are exceptionally fast when held in two hands, while also having significant effective range. The uselessness of the weapons in Bannerlord can be primarily attributed to the lacking damage of the spears and secondarily to the lack of self-preservation of the AI. As for RBM, the AI seems pretty good to me - no idiotic football scrum like the vanilla game. The behavior there is perhaps animated by different factors, but resembles actual historical formation combat much more than the base game, as people were not in fact suicidal maniacs who would charge heedlessly into the enemy and mix about until friend could not be told from foe. We know this, because we have significant evidence as to how individual melee combat works, and significant evidence as to how long historical battles lasted and how many casualties resulted from them. If the former dynamic was applied without modification to the scenario of a large battle, with Hollywood style scrums, the latter would not last a fraction of the time that battles did and would produce egregious casualties - a duel can vary in length, but in general is extremely lethal and over very fast, often in a few seconds. Since charging a line of enemy warriors is even worse than a duel as regards lethality, being more constrained in movement and allowing for them to outnumber you, people generally did not do this. Instead they occupied the liminal spaces between individual combat and a standoff, where pressure would be exerted on the enemy but chance of serious harm was more infrequent, allowing the historically recorded combat casualties of often less than five percent. Typically an additional ten percent casualties would be inflicted upon the defeated side while they ran away and were run down and stabbed in the back.
@@melanoc3tusii205 Personally, I’ve always been extremely sceptical of applying standard models and expectations to how warfare will go, especially when it comes to warfare that largely involves melee troops, mostly because there are so many contexts that must be applied beforehand. Who is fighting? Are they a culture that glorifies death in battle and reckless bravery like the Celts or Germanics? Can they be confident that their home will be burned if they flee or are defeated? Where are they fighting? Is this a place thats important to either or side? Do they have a place to retreat to? Why are they fighting? Is this simply basically a large scale judicial duel between city states or is this between people that hate each other? How well armoured are they? Can they afford to be more risky and aggressive? What general is in command etc. And it’s not like these people had any particular hesitancy towards killing, especially the further back you get wherein plundering, sacking or even an outright massacre after a battle wasn’t uncommon. So making everything predictable and everyone is on the exact same wave length no matter the circumstances just seems equally as unrealistic to me imo. What I’d like to see is a why to make some units more aggressive then others, far more willing to wade into combat without fear. Whether it be a Doppelsoldner, religious warriors, simply brave men or possibly even actual psychopaths who knows. On spears, spears are popular because A. They’re good, range is good, in good order they’re menacing and out of order they’re still good and B. They’re cheap as all hell, the only bit of rough value is the spearhead, the shaft is replaceable as all hell so of course you’re gonna use this weapon. But once armour is applied and a shield things get very tricky. If you’re a regular spearmen going up against a 15th century knight or men at arms with a sword and shield good luck
Hmm. My basic bitch loadout for companions is 1h, shield, pole arm, javelin unless they have skills in something else. Glaives won’t work with that but should fit well with any shieldless companions. I’ve personally loved swing polearms for their usefulness as a 2h weap for horseback duels but didn’t know the AI also did so well with them. Dunno how much more testing you wanna subject yourself to but a couple situations worth looking at are cav harassing distracted enemies (or archers) and lower tier weapons. As much as thrust weapons suck they’re easy to aim and use the speed of the horse to punch way up with early game scavenged gear. Mad ramblings aside thanks for the video and have an algorithm comment.
No problem, I mostly make guides without mods and have move coming soon! I need to redo my perk and skill guides and will start on that before end of the month.
It's strange that the companions suck with spears, but then you look at Vlandian pikeman who can pierce the best armor and even almost instantly kill you if you're on horseback. Though it is nice to know that Glaives are the best in any scenario for the most part, sort of already thought so from my own experience with them and two handed axes.
the spear brace test should be tested again on flat ground to see if the AI doesn't aim too high (you can see them adjusting upwards as the cav get closer, so they 'tried' to hit something). crossbows should be tested in a siege situation, as everyone should know they suck on open field but AI crossbow troops can pick you off before you can get in range if you are being stupid or unlucky (usually both). the cavalry tests should be done by increasing the number of enemies until they lose. this should help separate out weaponless cav as they would get stuck more and perform worse when stuck since they rely on charge damage. it also helps to show who will live when they do AI things. overall great video Strat, these really show how the under the hood stuff translates to when the rubber meets the road.
Companions (and troops in general) cannot switch modes with their 1H/2H weapons, so they'll always be stuck with whatever the default is. If they have a shield, default is 1H + shield; if they don't, default is 2H. That's why TW doesn't give shock troops/pikemen shields. But if you give companions 2 different weapons (e.g. a 1H/2H couchable polearm + a 2H swingable polearm + shield) they will switch between them according to the situation (couchable + shield on horse charge / swingable polearm when fighting close range on horse or foot). Also, shields are not useless, you just gotta use the correct loadout with them. They allow you to charge into archer formations and soak a ton of charge and couched lance damage. Give your companions a good shield and a short polearm (same loadout as the legionary) and put them in square formation and they'll defeat any charging cav with minimal damage. Add a swingable polearm and you'll have a hybrid of legionary and menavliation, the nightmare of any cav unit.
This video was so helpful specially the part where AI couldnt use properly the polearms i never noticed that since i use to skip those battles or havent paid attention to the one i fight my self
I think a shield wall of either the 1h spear or the shorter 2h one in the front row and glaves in the back row would be pretty good against cav. In my experience, spears tend to work better for slowing down cav so your other 2h weapons can kill the riders while pikes are better against low tier cav with poor horse armour.
Yeah that's a good point - it's better to have a well balanced group than just all one type. I do still like spear braces in smaller numbers to handle that first charge, then something stronger to take them down when they get stuck.
@@Strat-Guides actually come to think of it. You can recreate the tactics of hussite revolts by using mixed formations of short and long weapons. You can even create pseudo wagon forts by having your cav stay in shield wall and dismount to create a wall of horses that the enemy cavalry cant charge through without losing massive speed. Its a pretty unique way to play but its fun
Something you could test is the difference the amount of troops makes in choosing a weapon, especially when you get in the hundreds and all the combatants generally end up smushed together. Also on the matter of two-handed axes I am curious if the shorter and faster ones would fare better against infantry.
@@notsorrystory yeah, but how much better could decide wether it is imperative that you have specialised weapons or that it is an insignificant difference.
I'd prefer one-handed mace/axe. A companion could be a good captain only when he's alive. And your test doesn't include siege scenarios, which might not be in favor of long weapons like Glaive. Siege cases are as important as open field cases in late game.
I am playing a companion only strategy recently. Then you post this and the previous video. When you start the javelin test, I was wondering what if they have the impale skill. Then 10s later, you discuss the lvl250 skill. What a coincidence. This test has a limitation that the enemy troop type is single. For instance, two handed weapons seem very good to counter shielded one handed troop, but vulnerable to archers. Shielded troops are bad at melee fighting, but can defend archers well and interrupt cavalries. Archers have range advantage, but impale javelins have breaking shield mid range advantage. So in real combat, with a mixture of all types of troops, there exists no best type of companion build up. However, we can determine a build that is overall the best. Based on your video, I think bow + two-handed swing polearm are the best. Bows can do damage at long distance, so they don't stand there and wait for the enemies to approach. When enemies approach and start a melee combat, two-handed swing polearm has big advantage. Do you think there is anything to improve to have a overall better build?
Just give spears a brace like function where all the spears in the formation are held out at length and then thrusted further into anything that comes within reach. Including infantry. They could also do this to pikes. Giving pikemen more versatility and use. I also feel that soldiers in lines of 3+ should be ai written to pull out spears if they are a few lines behind and start swi ging at enemies from range while the front lines slug it out with 1h weapons.
It's not as clear cut as archers>crosssbowman. The increased dmg and penetration from crossbows make them a lot more effective against shield walls, while the shield dmg is a lot lower than javelin the stack size means ypu can get a lot more total dmg with a crossbow. Plus the crossbowmen with pavises might be the most cav charge resistant ranged troop out there. Mixed formations of crossbowman and pikemen are super helpful for vlandian playthroughs, let's you pull most of the agro with your own cav but if the enemy cav gets opportunistic they can't do much to the crossbows without support.
the amount of diss4erve Taleworld does to the spear is staggering. If you ask any medival fighting expert (and i mean those who actually fight with medival weapns) the spear is actually quite superior in most melee scenarios, and ESPECIALLY if used in any kind of formation. Granted in yourt test you made the , sorry but not sorry, decision to break you formation with the charge command, it still should not be even close to a loss for the spear. One problem, that i see here, is the fact, that in Bannerlord, you never use anythign but the furthest reach of your weapons, which is not how you fight with a spear. While their range is normally a great advantage, you can also quite easily shorten the reach of it by just sliding your hand 'upwards' the spear for closer combat situations. Also spears are not only used fro thrusting. Granted most spear tipps are not really designed for cutting, and woud probably not deal much damge, they still can beasily used in horizontal motions, which is completely impossible for piercing poleamrs, and only accessable to slahsing ones like Glaives. I know that changing the grip on weapons is probably too hard to program, but limiting the range of motions for spears is just stupid. Important flaw during the pike vs. cav test: your guys were poositioned on an downward slope, since the game does not account for such things, of course your pikes were put up to high, if you would repeat the same test on even ground or an upward slop, you probably had a much better result.
Been a while since I played but as a fan of the Sturgia troops I found that against enemy cavalry a small/tight circle formation can do wonders, the initial charge is always brutal but then they get inside the circle and can struggle to get out. Putting your infantry in a thin line is exactly the kind of formation cavalry wants to fight against since they can easily smash right through. And keeping up with the Sturgia theme I was a little sad to see that javelins were not used against cavalry or on cavalry. Its a bit hit and miss(pun intended) but the damage bonus from the speed against charging cavalry or when used by cavalry can be disgusting and I remember seeing cavalry charges pretty much fall right in front of my lines because the horse took a javelin to the face + damage bonus from its speed for about a bazillion damage. Same with cav vs cav where the enemy rides into a javelin throw.
Circle against cavalry is kind of meh. Square is where it's at. When deploying, you can drag the square to be really tightly packed, and any cavalry trying to get at your infantry just get bogged down a few ranks in and die horribly. As a bonus, infantry in square with shields will keep the shields raised at all times, nullifying any roving horse archers and, if they have throwables, they'll be able to return fire. You can beat a Khuzait army with Sturgian Heavy Axemen this way, especially if you can find a nice rock to collect the horse archers on.
the pike vs cav test @6:15 you bring up that the pikes are aimed too high for the brace to work. I wonder how much better the pikes would have fared had they been bracing on flat terrain or from downhill? My guess is the initial charge-vs-brace would have favored the pikes but quickly turning to the cavalry's favour once things moshed up
It definitely would have helped some for the first charge! The problem is after that, they become pretty much useless. I noticed this before when I was testing the pikeman from Vlandia - tons of damage at the start of battle but completely useless after that.
@@Strat-Guides You can make swingable pole arms that can be braced as well, they are not as long or as high damaging, I managed to get 220 length, 120-130 swing cut damage with over 76 swing speed with all the parts unlocked.
after seeing how terrible having a 1h polearm can be in the ai's equipment set, i'm looking at all the shield bearing infantry available to see which ones don't have a polearm and it is only the Sturgian Heavy Axeman. Every other tier 5 infantry with 1h + shield all come with a 1h polearm. With your other video demonstrating how good the square formation can be, i think the Sturgian Heavy Axeman might be the most consistent sword (axe ;P) & board infantry unit in the game at this point.
@@VisibleNoises I think he may just be talking about how the AI switches weapons. Axemen don’t have a polearm so they never get caught using one in any situation.
The polearm vs cavalry test is bunk. Stack Menace-vilitions 3 rows deep. They bring any cavalry charge to an instant halt, then drag those poor bastards off their horses into the mud and drown them in the grass like it's Agincourt. It's about a >WALL< of spears, not a velvet rope fence of spears.
I wish the AI treated them differently too. Even when you craft a shorter polearm, they treat it the same :( RBM does a great job with polearms and thrust damage though
1. How do long pikes perform while not on top of a hill. 2.Are you the one on the side of the attacking troops in the bow videos, since there's one with difference armour and weapons. 3. What are the stats of the companions during the tests?
YES, the Mechanics I want to see! so it looks like the RBM AI Tweaks fix a lot of the issues here even if you don't use the combat tweaks. sounds like Taleworlds needs to go the route of Zomboid and start pulling in Modders!
I would love to see some of the more popular mods be integrated into the base game or at least become an option for people to choose. That's one thing PZ does very well - you can make the game play exactly how you want.
@@Strat-Guides That actually one of the things PZ does best. if you read there newsletter PZ put out, they recruited some of the modders into the dev team to develop the features. the foraging system is a result of that if I remember that correctly (there are a few more but i can't recall them all). it has a fantastic history in development hell but a huge cult following. Kind of like how warband was for the re-enactment community.
the sppear issue is a real thing IRL. once you manage to get past it's length advantage it's mostly useless by fighters with point blank weapons. and all of these guys love to close distance if they aren't archers
I like how on RBM the spear is the exact opposite and is the best weapon to use. Am currently on a campaign focusing on spear and spear troops and the damage is incredible
Spears and pikes always need deep formations Small front with many pointy sticks. They have to stay in formation. As soon as they break up into hand to hand brawl, they get slaughtered. But deep blocks usually win the day against everything
I don't have the game, so I know zilch about it, but I would venture a guess that recruitment of men, horses and purchase of equipment costs some form resources. So, instead of 20v20 pit x amount of resources against each other. I would say that 20 cavalry would have to content with more than 20 infantry given the same amount of resources. Again, don't know the game, but it would surprise me if a mounted combatant comes at the same cost as a foot soldier.
It's a shame how bad 1H spears are in vanilla, since spear and shield are one of my favorite playstyles in a game like this. Fortunately, i believe their is a mod that corrects this issue.
Are polearms just spears, because billhooks use the two handed stat and are classed as an axe. Where does the omnipotent glaive fall? (I'd have to travel to the opposite side of the map for that)
Wait a moment, at the beginning of the video it looks like the spear brace of the infantry didn't work, because the spearheads were too high up to hit the cavalry. That's pretty crazy. This means that pikes need to be placed either at the foot of a hill or on flat land to make use of the spear brace mechanic.
Strat removes feelings, and shows what's actually going down! A lot of time I just used to give AI companions whatever looked cool or had the highest stats. I was always wondering why my heavy spear and full body shield companions would get next to nothing for kills.
The really nerfed crossbows. Back in my day, i played this cool game called Mount and Blade: Warband, and Rhodok Crossbows punched through shields and did heavy damage despite the slow rate of fire. Now, they're just a bunch of peashooters
I use my companions with crossbows and 2H axes on camels one of my characters in Steppe Bandit formations It works well and with the height advamtage it also works good on hitting targets over the heads of the other troops and usually leads to head to the leg from infantry
Thanks Strat for these guides. They REALLY help ! Can you test companions using multiple weapons at once? For instance, a 2H couch lance w/ sword + mace. I'm curious if the AI switches to mace or sword depending on they type of unit they're up against. Thanks
