As outlined in the recent blog by Jason, there has been some significant re-balancing of unit stats for Kingdoms, the expansion pack for Medieval II.  I am Jack Lusted, now a Games Tester at The Creative Assembly UK, but when I helped Jason by contributing to the balancing of Kingdoms I was a modder from the Total War Community.

Although the last blog described the process involved in balancing Kingdoms, it did not say what has changed. In this blog I will aim to explain how the balance has altered from Medieval II, give examples of how specific units have changed, what most unit types should be used for, and how the balance varies between the four Kingdoms campaigns.

The re-balance is not a small one, there have been some big changes. Almost all, if not all of the units have had changes to their stats. Some minor, some major. This is to reflect the fact that the whole balance of the game has been re-examined.

The really big change is to cavalry. Cavalry unit sizes are now smaller, and their stats have been dropped. They are now 30 soldiers on normal unit sizes, which means on huge they are 60. But before you all cry ‘nerf!’, let me explain what this means in-game. The smaller unit sizes makes cavalry more maneuverable as the size of cavalry units in update 1.2 proved to be a little unwieldy at times. Now you can use them more fluidly. And despite having their stats dropped, an increase to the mass of the mounts they ride means that heavy cavalry still pack a devastating punch from the rear or flank. This means that heavy cavalry have moved away from frontal charging wrecking balls, towards how they were used in the original Medieval: Total War - fast moving flanking units who pack a devastating punch. Even with a frontal charge, they can still wreak major damage upon non-spear, pike, or halberd troops.

There have been several global stat changes. All armour values have been reduced by 2, and all shield values have been raised by 2. These changes are designed to increase the importance of shields in combat when charged, but make units more vulnerable from the rear. Most units without shields have also received a boost to their defense skill so they have not been weakened in melee. The exception being missile units but they now have greater accuracy and therefore more deadly projectiles, so it balances out.

An example of one of the units that has had major changes to its stats are the Zweihanders. In update 1.2 this unit had the following stats:

Attack: 14
Charge bonus: 6
Attack attributes: none
Armour: 7
Defense Skill: 4
Cost: 680

In Kingdoms their stats have been changed to:

Attack: 15

Charge bonus: 9
Attack attributes: armour piercing (only counts half target armour when attacking)
Armour: 5
Defense Skill: 8
Cost: 520 (390 in Americas where all unit costs are lower. More on that later)

Quite a big change as you can see. Now they are true shock troops who have a very powerful charge. With the changes in unit stats, there has been a redefining of how some unit types are used. I’m going to go through and try and cover every unit type and how they should be used in Kingdoms.

Heavy cavalry - no longer sweep all before them in frontal charges. Spearmen, pikes and halberds can all stop frontal charges from them, and heavy infantry are better at resisting them. However heavy cavalry still deliver a punch that can’t be beat to the rear and flanks of other units, which combined with the fact they’re cavalry, means they can get into positions which allow them to deal the hammer blow. Rear and flanking charges also come with morale penalties to the enemy so they’re great at routing parts of the enemy line.

This has proved to be a more fun balance, and one that offers better for gameplay. Do not think that heavy cavalry are now underpowered, they are not. For instance in the Crusades campaign, knights are crucial to t he Kingdom of Jerusalem. No other unit can match the maneuverability, impact of charge or morale effect from a charge that heavy cavalry has. They’re not nerfed, they just have a different use now.

Light cavalry - fast and maneuverable - they should be used for dealing with skirmishers, routers, horse archers and possibly rear charges into infantry if the infantry is engaged.

Horse archers - with the improved missile accuracy and smaller more manageable cavalry unit sizes, these guys are as deadly as they should be. Vulnerable to archers and faster light cavalry.

Elephants - no major changes here, still the wonderfully fun point and click weapons of destruction they’ve always been. Just like before flaming arrows, artillery, javelins etc. are the counters to them.

2 handed swordsmen - all 2 handed sword units have gained the armour piercing ability and similar changes to the Zweihanders. They are now perhaps the best shock infantry in the game, but are vulnerable to missles and cavalry, and will suffer heavy casualties in prolonged melee. If used in conjuction with sword and shield infantry to exploit the damage done by the 2 handers charge, they should be able to breach most battle lines.

2 handed axe / polearm units - these guys have been made tougher in melee, and have had slight tweaks to their attack stats. They can now survive better in melee and deal out lots of damage on the charge. Think of them as infantry versions of heavy cavalry. Vulnerable to missiles and cavalry charges.

Spearmen - their main use in Kingdoms should be as the most common anti-cavalry unit type, but with the boost to their attack, they can also take on other infantry a bit better. But as always suffer from the penalties they get from having the spear trait so will be outclassed by other infantry.

Pikemen - the specialist anti-cavalry unit. With much higher mass in Kingdoms no cavalry charge can beat them frontally, and they can also deal with infantry slightly better too. Very weak when flanked and not as good as spears against other types of infantry.

Halberds - they have received boost to their attack values and to mass, so they are better against both cavalry and infantry. Good assault troops, but slow moving and vulnerable to missiles.

Halberds without spearwall - from instance Janissary Heavy Infantry. Have had boost to their attack and defense stats and reductions to cost. Great shock troops but can also do better now in prolonged melee.

Sword and shield infantry - no big changes here, these are still the best prolonged melee infantry unit, and probably the best all round unit type. There is now more variation between units like dismounted Feudal Knights and Dismounted Chivalric Knights.

Missile infantry - have been weakened in terms of their melee abilities slightly, but this is compensated by their increased missile accuracy will become more important due to the higher number of casualties they can inflict with their missiles.

Whilst the overall balance for each of the Kingdoms campaigns is the same, there are differences between each campaign for game-play reasons.

In the Teutonic campaign, all cavalry units are stronger with higher secondary attacks. The Teutonic Order units are also stronger than equivalent unit of other nations, but this is balanced out by the fact that the elite units need to have a cetain percentage of catholicism in a region before they can be recruited. The Order is reliant on those troops to expand and further it’s goals so this balances things and prevents the Order from becoming too powerful, too quickly. The Orders units also cost more because of their higher stats so things are also balanced out this way.

For the Crusades, like the Teutonic campaign all cavalry are stronger with higher secondary attacks. But unlike the Teutonic campaign, the Crusader factions do not have superior troops compared to their Muslim enemies. Even so the Crusader nations will be fairly reliant on their strong cavalry to win the campaign.

With Britannia it is spears that are the unit type that receive a boost. This results in a proliferation of good anti-cavalry units, so infantry will dominate the Britannia campaign. But cavalry are not completely negated, they will still be usable units, just not as powerful as in the Crusades or Teutonic campaigns.

And finally in the Americas campaign, New Spain gets smaller units, but sword armed infantry and cavalry with 2 hit points, and a new generals unit with 3. This is to reflect the small numbers of Spanish troops used in the New World, and the extra hit points prevent the smaller units from being overwhelmed. Unit costs are also adjusted to reflect these changes, so overall most units are cheaper but Spanish units are about the same as in M2TW. The Native units will not be pushovers either, and will put up a strong fight.

That just about wraps up my overview of the balance changes made through the unit stats and hopefulle, gives you an idea as to how you’ll be adapting your tactics to use these changes in each of the four campaigns in Kingdoms.

Regards,

Jack Lusted

I find that, of all the questions I am asked, there are certain ones which stand out as more common. An invitation to write a blog entry seems a good opportunity to give answers to those who wondered but never asked, and to explain a few things here and there.

The main focus of these questions is usually “How did you end up writing these guides?” A new patron on the org had been asking questions for a week or two, and I, among others, kept on answering them. He said that if all my posts were gathered up they would make a good newbie’s guide to Medieval: Total War. It sounded easy enough, so I gathered them up and stuck them together in Word. I wasn’t happy with the result - there were so many more things to say about the game! So I said them. When I posted the first draft of my beginner’s guide I didn’t honestly expect much, but the response was incredible. Amid all the praise there were corrections, suggestions, requests, and I did my best to meet them all. It kept on going and going, and the guide grew and grew. Finally there was nothing much left to do with it, and people started asking me what I would do next. Next!? I’d no idea, I’d never considered doing anything else. Which, in a roundabout way, provides the other half of the answer to this question: I wrote because people kept asking and I didn’t want to let them down.

Queries about the writing process, about how much goes into each guide, and about where I get my information are one of the staples of my inbox. Writing the initial version of the guide took me perhaps a week, usually spent writing from 7am through to 11pm or later with barely any breaks. Exhausting. Prior to setting virtual pen to virtual paper there is the necessary research. For my Rome: Total War guide I put in an estimated 200 hours of research spread over nearly two months: reading forums, taking part in discussions, testing things over and over in the singleplayer game, dragging my poor multiplayer partner into games to test yet more theories… Let me tell you, research is tedious and nothing like playing the game for fun. On posting the guide the treadmill of  adding updates begins. Sifting through these many corrections and additions of course adds many, many more hours to the work load.

Because I put these works together in MS Word editing or altering the 200ish pages of text is a nightmare; I don’t have any kind of overview, or a hard copy to consult with, or anything really but my memory of what is where. To make matters worse the manuscript version is full of the coding needed to produce text effects and pictures: it is unpleasant on the eye, and heavily coded areas can be confusing. The RTW guide got so big I had to chop it up into five different documents, containing the five different posts on the forum. Those posts are so big the org software nearly had a nervous breakdown each time I edited them. The final aspect of each guide comes with the messages I get from readers. I try to reply to each and every one; alas time and circumstances do not always make this possible. At this point I’d like to say a big, big thank you to the many people who have sent me kind wishes over the years.

Overall I estimate I’ve spent some 900 hours working on the three guides.

Frogbeastegg consists of one person. Frogbeastegg’s guides are the work of one person only, save for a few technical aspects, such as PDF conversions, which are clearly accredited to someone else. Amusingly I once saw some people labouring under the illusion I was some kind of writing team…

Speaking of misconceptions, I’m not a man. I’m a lady frog. It’s an easy mistake to make, especially when I appear somewhere where I can’t use the custom-made geisha avatar I have on the org. There aren’™t many sites where I would contradict the natural assumption I’m another in the sea of males. This community, however, isn’t populated by people who make crude, lewd remarks and then say I must be a man anyway, because girls don’t play games other than Barbies Happy Horse Fun (now featuring 50% more pink!)

One assumption I encounter a lot is that I have links with CA, or have been employed by them to write my guides, which simply isn’t true. All of the information stated as coming from CA representatives in my work is gathered up from posts made in response to other people on the forums at the org and the .com, or, in the case of MTW, taken from the official strategy guide. So no, I really cannot give you any inside information and/or ask them questions for you and/or do you any favours. Really.What do I gain from writing these guides? There’ve been some truly inventive ways to profit from my work suggested to me; while I’ve taken none of them up I shall remain perpetually curious about how well printed and bound hardcopies equipped with a froggy autograph would have done. That bit of genius makes opening a paypal account so people can donate to my book buying fund seem positively dull.

My gains are, to be honest, likely to sound dull. No money, no writing contracts, my mantelpiece sports no freebie copies of TW games autographed by the CA team members - fun as that might possibly be. I’ve received online awards for my work, and all those messages saying thanks. It means a lot to me. I have learned how to write - that is my major gain. I’m a dyslexic froggy you see. I found that out several months before I started the first guide. Back then I struggled to write anything, no matter how basic. My spelling was so bad Word couldn’t guess at the right words to offer me when spell checking. Grammar was a concept my education had not so much brushed over as swept under the carpet and then pulled the house down on. I was so frustrated I decided that I would do something or die in the attempt. At long last I can say what I want, not what the spellcheckers will allow me to. I don’t need a spellchecker any more. I didn’t get it all from working on the guides, but they helped. Most of my writing these days is fiction: I have my childhood dream of being an author back.

The Beginner’s Guide to Medieval: Total WarThe Complete Total War Unit Guide
(outdated; it doesn’t cover RTW/BI)

Frogbeastegg’s Guide to Rome: Total War and the Barbarian Invasion