Iron equipment balance

I’ve noticed that the Iron pike makes the Iron Mace and Iron Shield completely useless.

Went you first get Iron, your First footman is already level 2 or 3 therefore you look at the iron equipment and think I’ll make a Pike as it has better attack than the mace and only requires level 2.

But the Pike is 2 handed so your footmen can’t equip it and a shield (which also requires level 2 to equip). So there is no point in making Iron shields as every footman weapon better than the pike is also 2 handed.

Another reason why a player wouldn’t made Iron Maces and have a chance of needing Iron shields is that an Iron Mace costs 4 times as much as an Iron Pike. These 2 factors combined make Iron Maces and Shields redundant.

I propose a balance where:

Iron Pike
Cost: 1 Iron ingots + 1 wood => 2 Iron ingots + 1 wood
level requirement: 2 => 4
(This is fine as there are no other craftable weapons footmen can equip at this level)

Iron Mace
Cost: 4 Iron ingots => 2 Iron ingots (Same amount of ingots as the copper mace)

What are your thoughts @yshan ? Or is something interesting going to happen with these items? :stuck_out_tongue:

I realised this is a problem when creating this Progression table.

I talked about that with @yshan. I also pointed out the problem with fighters changing to two-handed from one-handed and offered solutions. She wanted to give that a thought.

The root of the problem isn’t the weapon cost balance, it is telling the Hearthlings what they should be equipping in the first place.

would be great if we can actually designate equipment loadouts (from item classes to specific items. something like what Dwarf Fortress has?)

No I disagree. This issue can be resolved by changing 3 numbers.

If I had to manually select which equipment my 12 combat hearthlings had and then remember to update it everytime one of them levelled up or I got some loot or made some new equipment. I think I would die of boring micro management.

May I ask, is there a reason to have soldiers not just upgrade and go to knight. Is a knight not the stronger version?

The knight is not the stronger version of a footman, you might want to look up the differences.
This is concerning level 2 footmen anyway.

The problem you are having is not that much of wrong balance of equipment. It is just you leveling fast your soldiers, and your blacksmith not being fast enough to upgrade their equips.

Note that if you have a max blacksmith and have him craft all equips, and then you get a (new) footman, that footman will progress normally through the tiers.

Although I agree with a few changes, like the cost change and level change, not to level 4, but to level 3. Cause it is at that level that the footman and knights splits. (promoted footman to )Knights still using shields and footman now only with 2hand

No it is definitely bad balance. if you get a new footman that progresses though the tiers and you have a level 6 blacksmith and all the equipment, your footman will never equip the iron shield.

I don’t understand why having a shield has to be knight only.
I proposed it because these items are never used and I personally want to see them used a lot more. What is the point on having them if they are not used.

Also I dislike how long the pike is your main footman weapon. It also uses sword animations and not a pikes animation which just looks odd.

Wait, the shield and the pike is at the same level?

Yes, they are both level 2.

Yeah, then its level needs to be bumped by at least 1.
It is probable we will receive more equips later too, which means fewer gaps like the pike level range.

Ok, looks to me like the diff is damage and speed. Upgrading to knight is still better , just company them with a archer.

Can you stop comparing units that have different roles, you get footmen for AoE damage, archers for high damage and effects but for single targets and knights to tank, you need all 3.

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Ok, sorry for asking !
Was trying to figure out what is the best to use if you don’t have many soldiers or much metal to waste on bad armor.

Never needed footmen, even in lategame. knights outtank all damage easily with best equipment + some healers and the damage comes from archers. Why send in a footmen that dies after 3 hits?

@topic: I think another solution would be, that two handed weapons get the notification in the crafting window, that footmen automatically will equip this over 1h+shield, when the damage is higher. Then the player at least knows that he shouldnt craft it when he wants to stay sword+shield.

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There is just one problem with simply not crafting pikes and sticking with mace+shield: loot. Pikes can drop from stronger enemies, as well as chests, not to mention every unique weapon that can only be aquired through loot is two-handed and stronger than the pike. The comes a point where you are forced to switch your footmen over to two-handed and give up the additional defense.

I would personally like to see the option to set a footman as sword-and-board or two-handed once they reach level 3, then they stay that way forever to provide some balance. Along with that, I’d like to see at least one more shield, and a couple more one-handed weapons. It might make their usefulness a bit more apparent, and prevent everyone from saying footman are useless and should be made knights or archers asap.

A flag to define the weapon type a soldier wields sounds like a good solution to me. I guess, three states are enough: ‘1h only’, ‘2h only’ and ‘both’. It could be located in the soldiers character menu. And it is a good way to handle loadouts, without getting too deep into micromanagement territory.

I’d like the micromanagement to be an optional thing someday maybe, but I would like to choose between one- or two-handed at least. I wouldn’t want to micromanage all the time though. If I want that, I’ll play Dwarf Fortress, aka Micromanagement The Game, aka “Oh, you spent an hour getting that military set up? Well let’s just kill the entire squad and destroy your fortress with the very next invasion because your legendary axedwarf happened to be hungry at just the wrong moment.”

I’ve found this to be the case as well. All footmen do is run ahead of everyone and get their asses kicked before the healers and tanks can engage. Archers seem like they’re always better, especially considering the different ammo types.

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I proposed a change to that system a long time ago to yang and @sdee, but this didn’t get implemented. It was supposed to allow footmen to change between 1- hand and 2- hand weapons like archers can e.g. be ordered to fire spiky or normal arrows. 2- hand weapons would need a major bonus to aoe capability and footmen would have to walk in formation in order to get in when everyone else does.