Holy Nation much weaker than United Cities?

[Galla]

So I travel around Bast a lot to loot dead people, and often watch fights between the 2 major factions, and the Samurai always seem to win unless the HN has a substantial numerical advantage. A samurai scout easily beats a Paladin, and a Samurai recruit beats sentinal. And regular Samurai can take on whole groups by themselves.. I kinda feel like the factions need a bit of balance.. Unless this was intended.

[Peregrine]

Originally posted by Profile Name:

The Holy Nation is in a terrible strategic position, both on the individual and world-wide scale. The northern part of Bast, where the UC forces spawn, the worst the already superior UC soldiers have to face are Rebel Heavies and small groups of Cannibals.

However, the Southern part of Bast, where the Holy Nation spawns, is not only swarmed with the aforementioned groups, but also hordes of Skimmers, who will attack the platoons of Holy Nation forces and cripple them before they can even reach the ruins of Bast.

Then, if by some chance a Holy Nation force sneaks by unmolested or spawns far enough north, if by some miracle the group contains more than a couple Paladins, the seemingly intimidating army will be quickly worn down as more than half of its force consists of unarmored peasants wielding swords they can barely drag across the sand, let alone fight with.

Devs. I have a suggestion for you regarding the Holy Nation. If you want them to truely seem like fanatical soldiers, falling in the name of Okran, wouldn't it be more effective to offset their attack/defense ratio to make them truely seem like religious nuts.

Shidan and I have had that debate many times, lol. Yeah, IRL, Holy Nation is DOOMED for more than a few reasons. They just don't have the manpower, the equipment or the defenses to hold against even just the Eastern UC, let alone everything else that assaults them.

Given the overall situation, there's just no way the HN would have survived for as long as they have. Their defenses are not up to the job.

[Temper]

Dissect this mod ...... the HN troops in this killed quite a few of my 30 to 50 squad members.It's likely they could have taken out a couple of my 70-75 characters.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=744901440&searchtext=holy

Thaboone makes some pretty good toe curling challenges in his mods,sadly a lot of his mods have not worked properly for some time now due to game updates.

EDIT: The mod basically has better overall quality HN troops with higher grade equipment.100 strength throwing around a high tier plank or similar isn't to be sniffed at.

It's the mod I chose to counter the skeletons in the Eternal Conflict mod,which were absolutely lethal to whole towns. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=810627915&searchtext=eternal

[The Pollie]

I think the problem lies in the Servants. They are far, far too weak for their numbers to mean anything. Even Conscripts can fight several of them, actual Samurai go through them by the dozens like warm butter. The Paladins are the only ones that can effect combat, but they are so often outnumbered by Samurai that they simply can't hold their own.

[Peregrine]

Originally posted by Shidan:

Though real world culture has literally no bearing here. Kenshi is only loosely inspired by Japan, and almost entirely only visually and naming. Most likely, the conscipts of the UC are peasants that were given some basic gear and training. They shouldn't be the battle hardened warriors they are, or at the very least the HN's Chosen should be of similar skill if they are.

Also interesting to note, I've been running matches between these armies in my arena (using the same squads that spawn in Bast), and the HN wins almost every time. The problem out in the field seems to be that they get too split up in Bast, and they cannot use their superior numbers in an effective manner, so the UC's superior troops take the win almost every time.

Well, it's possible the Conscripts are former farmers and such, but so were many Samurai and Ashigaru in Japan. I don't think they're just draftees though. The UC is in constant war, internal and external. Thus, their retainers are, as I said before, constantly training and actually fighting. It makes sense that even their low ranking troops are battle hardened, they would be dead otherwise. The various bandits, the outlaw farmers, the constant cold war power struggle within the UC Nobility for domination, and the UC wanting Quality over Quantity all point to well trained and equipped troops, just as any Daimyo would want his troops to be, after all. "A single blunted spear weakens an entire army".

The Holy Nation has vastly different priorities and a completely different approach to battle. For them, with the quality and experience gap unable to be matched, they're forced to use Zerg Rush tactics in the hope of overwhelming their enemies. They simply do not have the industry to overcome the gear disadvantage, and they seemingly don't have much Logistical support either, since for all the "Food Advantage" and "Population Advantage" (lolwut? they're so outnumbered it's not even funny) they supposedly have, they sure are failing to take advantage of it.

[Jet]

have conscripts still not been nerfed? HN is completely outclassed....

[Peregrine]

Originally posted by Jet:

have conscripts still not been nerfed? HN is completely outclassed....

No. Still kicking butt on the front lines for honor and glory.

[TreadLightly77]

I tried to address this imbalance with my The Holy Nation Ascended mod and my United Cities Heightened mod.

In the above mods, I adjusted the armor spawns to add in light and medium versions of both the Holy Chest Plate and the Samurai Armor.
Along with that, I also added some weapon variety to the Holy Nation and the United Cities.

The fights do seem to be somewhat more balanced than one would witness in vanilla.

[Hans]

I've been running around with squad sizes set to 1.75 and I think my camp rate is at 1.5 and I actually witnessed the opposite. Roaming bands of HN in Bast were absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ massive and they were all over the place. The conscripts had better gear but were easily fighting 2 to 3 servants and essentially stun locked from getting constantly clobbered by cleavers. I absolutely hate the HN and gladly joined the side of the UC, but the bit of time I spent in Bast with my modifiers set it seemed like HN was wiping the floor because they were EVERYWHERE.

[m_papi]

It's a bit odd, but while I've noticed that, as always, UC units will win individual combat against their HN counterparts, HN squads do spawn more often than UC squads.

I was playing sort of a Paladin RP Campaign, following a pretty large party lead by a Holy Paladin. We ended up getting into combat numerous times, but somehow pushed nearly all the way to Drin with a surviving 10-15 guys as during almost every engagement we had an extra squad spawn out of the middle of nowhere to help us out. I remember a particularly large engagement in which around 20-25 Samurai and 40-50 Conscripts ended up fighting almost 200 HN soldiers.

[Singrave]

HN>Skeletons
Skeletons>UC
UC>HN
Sheks~everyone.

[DopamineDaydreams (Shardj)]

Originally posted by Galahadn't:

Yeah, and HN only uses cleavers. Which are pretty weak compared to katanas and naginatas

Hackers are the best weapon class in the game, the real answer is simply that the HN uses scrap grade weapons and shoddy grade armor even on their high paladins.

[wordwaster]

Originally posted by Shardj ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°):

Originally posted by Galahadn't:

Yeah, and HN only uses cleavers. Which are pretty weak compared to katanas and naginatas

Hackers are the best weapon class in the game, the real answer is simply that the HN uses scrap grade weapons and shoddy grade armor even on their high paladins.

actually at the time that was posted; a year and a half before you necro'd this thread, katanas had not been nerfed. they were far from the garbage they are now.

[Faerador]

It's funny, almost a year later and they never balanced this issue. I had to go into the FCS to fix it by changing gear tiers. The paladins and higher level paladins were being given shoddy gear, while the higher level UC fighters had standard or higher gear. By allowing the higher level Paladins to be similarly equipped, the fights that occur in the Bast region between the UC and HN are more evenly matched.

[Vamp-OwO]

Think about it this way. This samurais fight skimmers every day with packs, what does HN do all day? they just enjoy the walk around fields fighting hungry bandits. HN are brainwashed idiots with their stupid religion, while UC are more like spartans to survive in crazy desert.
Question is how HN destroyed territory around bast in a day right? UC soldiers were probably fighting more incoming skimmers in desert while peasants were left unprotected and HN simply just used opportunity. now they try to fight for that lands but UC are strong enough to fight them through destroyed walls

[kaiyl_kariashi]

HN kills the UC every time after the weapon rebalance.

1 high paladin can obliterate whole UC squads all day long.

And even regular paladins can take on a whole squad and win fairly often.

Chosen are still fodder, but that's true everywhere and apparently is just part of them proving themselves worthy to be a paladin (it's actually pretty logical from a gameplay standpoint, as since they have their stronger brothers at arms to protect them, taking a lot of damage will build their toughness and melee defense faster).

Though the fighting over Bast has always been a bit of a mystery, as the HN immediately cease fires with the UC if the Shek fall. And even the exact "why" of them attacking isn't clear as Holy Pheonix does not give a ♥♥♥♥ about the east when you suggest going after them.

Though IMO, I think that sword the Holy Sword thief stole was apparently important to the Holy Nation, and either stolen from them by the Noble of Bast, or it was an important possession of a former Phoenix or something that the Noble in Bast discovered and the HN found out about it. And they sent a Wrath of God on Bast in an attempt to recover it, but it ended up going missing in the chaos and their patrols are simply there to try and find it again.

(then again, another theory I had was that the Edgewalker Nodachi was originally HI Seta's and he lost it when he lead a Wrath of God on Bast for some act of unforgivable blasphemy the Noble there did to tick them off. And ended up selecting a Catun Paladin's Cross from the Noble's armory to replace it until his forces can find and recover it. Which is pretty logical, as he's the only important HN character without a Meitou or Edgewalker and the ONLY HN soldier period to have Catun grade weapon (everyone else caps out at refitted blade)).