Garlic Sausage Refund

[Maroon]

Spoiler

I will nip this in the bud here and say cav will not be returning to NI. Cav does not work with the bot ai or with the NI maps so please stop bringing it up. Any posts going "bring cav back" will be met with a 3 day mute...

The big problem was that it was easy to kite to long periods of time on a horse (on the big open maps). So, you could have a full server with everyone dead but one person and the cavalry would just ride around trying to kill bots. Often times, it would take multiple passes to kill a bot, times multiple bots, times multiple rounds. Not a lot of fun (I spend much time watching servers after being dead). It also didn't involve much teamwork when a few horses would run and horde the bots (this was also pre-loot sharing), so the only way to get XP was to charge into a concentrated bunch of Nords if you were melee. Archers could pick off bots in the crowd.

The second problem was maps. Cavalry need wide open spots, which are hard for archers/melee to deal with without getting swarmed, so there was also the issue of map optimization.

Also, there were Nord calvary as well, which just trampled the on-foot players for the most part, especially if more than a few spawned (much less a full round of them).

I think it balanced everything out to not have them (although, with loot sharing, some of the problems would be gone). I do miss my little pony though. I will also say that I was a lower level player at the time, which made it very difficult. Higher level players could survive better and still get the XP from their own kills. It was so hard to be lower-level then. The shared loot system has made it so much better....

http://forum.nordinvasion.com/index.php?...860.0.html

Yes, this has been tried before, and it has been turned down every time. But I still feel this mod is lacking something large, and that is cavalry. In my opinion, and from what I've seen in that of many others as well, cavalry can and should return to NI. I'll let you know that I've never seen cavalry in NI at all (except for mounted farmers ;D), because I joined at version 0.4.1 of this mod.
I'll start with listing the reasons I've found for the removal of cavalry:

• Cavalry was the ultimate kiting class, being able to solo tons of waves on his own.
  
• Cavalry didn't require the same amount of teamplay the other classes did.
  
• Cavalry is a lot harder to take down as a Nord, and this combined with the fact that cav was slow at killing the nords, and it's kiting abilities led to full servers of dead people watching one cav guy taking down 4 waves on his own.
  
• Cavalry required open maps to work properly, which doesn't work well with infantry and archers.
  

These are all fair and good points, but I feel some things have changed over time since cav was removed.

• Moar rangers. Every patch, the amount of rangers was increased, and with the latest patch, they are also quite a bit stronger, with volley firing.
  
• Challenging bots like Royal Assassins, Tricksters, Wraiths, Shotgun Rangers, Repeatermen, Axe-throwing Huscarls (lots and lots of 'em), and Ballistamen can counter cavalry effectively.
  
• Nords have gotten loads of gear and stat upgrades, making them stronger and better at fighting cav.
  
• Increased Nord health makes it harder for cavalry to insta-gib them with a lance.
  
• Loot sharing decreases the annoyance of looking at cavalry gib entire waves on their own.
  

And now for my suggestion:

• Re-introduce Mounted Exp, and let everyone start with 0 of it (if they still had mounted exp), forcing everyone to start low again, and not having a lot of players respec to a Knight immediatly.
  
• Remove horseback archery, to put a limit on the kiting ability of the cavalry.
  
• Create a bunch of servers which allow for cavalry, while the other servers don't, to not force cavalry unto people who don't want cav around.
  
• If possible, have lances break after a few hits, to further reduce the cav's kiting.
  
• Make the maps on the cavalry-allowing servers slightly bigger, to allow for a bit of horse manoeuvring, but not too big, to restrick cav's movements, but throw in a bunch of the tighter maps (like Mountain Pass) as well.
  
• Cavalry can join the non-cav servers, but here they spawn without horses.
  
• Possibly also add Nord Cavalry on the cavalry-allowing servers, if that isn't too hard on the Nords' AI, to make Nords counter cav better.
  
• Add more Nords designed for fighting cavalry, like Pikemen, Repeaters, accurate Rangers, etc.
  
• Make cavalry more dependent on team-mates, for example by having med boxes be the only way to heal a horse.
  
• Though this would make for a hell lot of work, maybe redo the current game-modes for the cav servers, such as adding a lot of pikemen to bosswaves, to counter cavalry solo-ing Prince 10x a day, and to slow down the initial leveling to a Knight.
  
• Make the assist-to-mounted exp multiplier low, like 0.3, or 0.25, to make the process to tier 4 cavalry a long one.
  

As you can see, I'm trying to put a lot of restriction on the class, as it indeed is a very powerful and independent one. I hope you see that it is possible to re-introduce cavalry without it being a mean, lean tanking machine.

When I take another look at the points I've stated at the beginning of this post/essay, I feel my suggested points counter these negative aspects quite a lot, hopefully to a point in which cavalry isn't a full-on one man machine, but isn't horribly underpowered either.

I might add more points later on if I think of more, and let me know what you think about these suggestions.
Thanks, Maroon

P.S. Not saying I'm not enjoying the Garlic Sausages (they're lovely!), but I'd enjoy cav more.

[Huscarlton Banks]

You haven't been around too long, but here's what's wrong with your post:

"Moar Rangers" is a joke, the number of rangers has remained constant at 1 per person, if anything there's less since servers no longer count players that have never spawned.
There was no horse archery at the time of the removal.
There are players with millions in assist exp.

The problems have always been

1) Cavalry only works on open maps.
2) Cavalry only gets countered by enemies that are even more effective against non-mounted swadians, to the point where it's ridiculously harsh on unmounted melee.
3) Having cavalry as an independent class in an independent mode that's balanced around cavalry divides the community into players that have a class, and players that do not.
4) AI cavalry cannot handle maps that aren't completely flat.
5) Breakable weapons make no sense when you have to kill scores of bots each wave.

[Maroon]

You haven't been around too long, but here's what's wrong with your post:

"Moar Rangers" is a joke, the number of rangers has remained constant at 1 per person, if anything there's less since servers no longer count players that have never spawned.
There was no horse archery at the time of the removal.
There are players with millions in assist exp.

The problems have always been

1) Cavalry only works on open maps.
2) Cavalry only gets countered by enemies that are even more effective against non-mounted swadians, to the point where it's ridiculously harsh on unmounted melee.
3) Having cavalry as an independent class in an independent mode that's balanced around cavalry divides the community into players that have a class, and players that do not.
4) AI cavalry cannot handle maps that aren't completely flat.
5) Breakable weapons make no sense when you have to kill scores of bots each wave.

True, I didn't think of players with tons of assist exp. I do not agree with you, however, on the point that cav-countering bots make for some very annoying unmounted melee. I mean, look at the bots in Ragnarok at the moment. 2/3 of those bots (well, haven't tried it in 0.5.1 yet) are way too powerful for unmounted melee already, so we've shown that these strong bots can be countered, although it does make for some awkward situations, with some cav riding out, and the rest of the team staying behind in a shield/cadewall... Meh, you've made some fair points. :-\
Also, I've noted the breakable lances to disallow cav from lancing every bot on the map, but forcing them to make short work of the Nords with 1 handers, or 2 handers.

[Huscarlton Banks]

The main counter to cavalry was other cavalry, which can trample straight through shield walls.

And then there's enemy ranged cavalry.

[Maroon]

I'm guessing Nord ranged cavalry was horribly strong? But I don't think there's a need to add them, as the increase of rangers (I know, not in numbers, but in types and strength) can already counter cav as well.

[Honey Badger]

Alot of the bot you named that could counter cav are high wave hard mode, what about cav on normal servers, they would only have a huntsman and other low ranged units firing at them. This would mean alot of waiting if everyone else wiped.

[Maroon]

Ah, IF everyone else is wiped. But on your average Normal server, how many times does it happen that people get wiped before wave 14-16? In almost every Normal game, there are some high level players with good gear and barricades, and you'll almost always make it to at least Troopers. After that, it also gets tougher for cavalry to solo their way on.

[Niezdara]

So what if:

1. no nord cavalry, and no map created specially for cavalry (some, like the outskirts or the bastion, are fine already)
   
2. no weapons that allow couching hits (stabbing with spears still possible).
   
3. no horse archery
   
4. horses cant be healed, but u can spawn with a new one after the spawn wave. Dismounted rider stats make him decent shielder and slasher (high polearm prof.).
   
5. every horse alive add one spearman/pikeman to the nord wave
   

Its way easier to be done, but I expect that "cavalry fans" won't accept so many limitations.

[Honey Badger]

Been on plenty of servers where they have only been level 1-20. And all it takes for them to leave is if somebody decides to try and kite the rest of the rounds on horse back.

[Pikeman]

As much as i love cav myself i don't think that this would be a good idea, sorry but in order for cav to be implemented you would need to rebalance the mod completely and some maps would still be useless for cav (for example Great hall, Port, etc), the majority would make a cav account and shielders (which are already really hard to find) would vanish... there are enough reasons why it was removed