What point is to use 1h swords?

[Kshahdoo]

When I read historic books they always say, that swords were the best medieval weapons, and people used axes only because swords were way too expensive for average fighters. Spears and polearms were popular too, but mostly in formations.

But in Battle Brothers swords suck comparing to other weapons. Axes can destroy shields, hammers can destroy armors, spears have their advantages as well, and swords are mostly useless. I think it's a bad balance and nothing more.

[willsama974]

You forget the +10% hit chance, low fatigue, riposte which is very usefull against direwolves and other low melee skill enemies and the fact that swords are quite effective against light armored enemies.
But again, the game gives you plenty of choices and there is not one way to play and enjoy/succeed :)

[mastermind1377]

Low fatigue, improved hit chance, and very good overall damage. Noble sword has best one hand damage output, at 45-50 damage, which means 47.5 average, while axe with 35-55 is 45, at higher fatigue cost and less accuracy. Spears and hammers do even less damage. I generally use swords for characters that are a bit short on fatigue, captains that need their fatigue for other things, or characters i want to hit reliably but still do good damage. Also unique swords tend to be really good. Used some with 120-130% armor damage, making them competitive with everything in fighting medium armor, or 51-57 damage, which is excellent damage output for one hander.

[Statue]

In mid to late game, on your shield+1h guys the 1h sword will likely become your primary 1h, and you'll switch to the others like axes and hammers to do specific jobs (i.e. break shields or smash up armour). The 1h sword is a good all rounder when you don't have such a need, and when your brothers are higher level and can fight better. Starting troops that aren't too good at fighting tend to do better with spears and shields. So it does kind of depend on what's needed (quite often tied to what you're fighting) and what your brothers are like.

[Forseti010]

Cause swords arent made to fight armoured men.There great against low armoured enemies.

[Bone Tomahawk]

Who says swords were the best medieval weapons? One handed swords were usually used as backup weapons, because they were usually too short. Most HEMA practitioners today agree that polearms are significantly superior to the 1 handed sword.

Swords were status symbols for the wealthy because they required more resources than most other weapons to construct. They were convenient to carry around which made them great personal defense weapons. However, they were not particularly effective weapons.

For example, in George Silver's Paradoxes of Defense, the single sword is almost at the bottom of the weapon heirarchy.
http://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=11319&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

[Sheytanaslan]

WUD WUD? Who says you can find good swords in the game :P
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/289727601180936226/B8AD1D26B85C6C2932D6FDB97A57B85C93EC8782/

[gazomierz]

Well, apart from status symbol they were in fact the best allround weapon for a very long time. Not only in Europe, swords dominated samurai culture, they were widely used in China, Korea, Persia, India, pretty much everywhere where ppl figured out how to work metals. Swords were very versatile, they offered very good offensive capabilities but the thing most ppl forget is that swords were exceptionally good as a defensive tool. No other weapon offered such agility. And they were pretty comfortable to carry around. The problem of the sword was increase in armor effectivness and availability. They fare poorly against armor and that's why we started to invent wide range of weapons designed for the purpose of dealing with this problem. But swords evolved into rapiers and other such weapons. Calling polearms superior to swords is just wrong. There is no real comparison here as those weapons were designed and used for different things, for example in a duel I would choose sword over any other melee weapon. In battle I wouldn't be so sure and probably would go for something that can pierce the armor of opponents, or smth to dismount my opponent or.. and so on. There is no one best weapon, it all depends on what situation you'll find yourself in.

In the game the reason why swords are overlooked by many is exactly the same. Swords are awesome when used against gobos, dire wolves and low tier thugs and orcs. But when fighting orc warriors or raiders we rather choose other weapons. Next thing is the game completly ignores the defensive aspect of using weapons. And that was quite a large part of medieval martial arts. I actually made a huge post about implementing some kind of 'parry" system, if anyone is interested here's the link:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/365360/discussions/2/392183857630872779/
I would appreciate support on this subject.

Cheers!

[Bone Tomahawk]

Originally posted by gazomierz:

Well, apart from status symbol they were in fact the best allround weapon for a very long time. Not only in Europe, swords dominated samurai culture, they were widely used in China, Korea, Persia, India, pretty much everywhere where ppl figured out how to work metals. Swords were very versatile, they offered very good offensive capabilities but the thing most ppl forget is that swords were exceptionally good as a defensive tool. No other weapon offered such agility. And they were pretty comfortable to carry around. The problem of the sword was increase in armor effectivness and availability. They fare poorly against armor and that's why we started to invent wide range of weapons designed for the purpose of dealing with this problem. But swords evolved into rapiers and other such weapons. Calling polearms superior to swords is just wrong. There is no real comparison here as those weapons were designed and used for different things, for example in a duel I would choose sword over any other melee weapon. In battle I wouldn't be so sure and probably would go for something that can pierce the armor of opponents, or smth to dismount my opponent or.. and so on. There is no one best weapon, it all depends on what situation you'll find yourself in.

In the game the reason why swords are overlooked by many is exactly the same. Swords are awesome when used against gobos, dire wolves and low tier thugs and orcs. But when fighting orc warriors or raiders we rather choose other weapons. Next thing is the game completly ignores the defensive aspect of using weapons. And that was quite a large part of medieval martial arts. I actually made a huge post about implementing some kind of 'parry" system, if anyone is interested here's the link:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/365360/discussions/2/392183857630872779/
I would appreciate support on this subject.

Cheers!

Actually, the Japanese used the Naginata or the Yari as primary weapons, Katanas were used but they were definitely not used as much as polearms.

The Chinese consider the Qiang (spear) the "King of Weapons" while the Jian (sword) was the "Gentleman of Weapons".

In European warfare, it's almost agreed entirely that in open terrain combat, whether in formation or in single combat, polearms are superior.

Here's a good video by a British HEMA practitioner about swords and polearms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2YgGY_OBx8

In a one on one fight, the reach of a weapon generally decides the outcome assuming roughly equal skill.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Sheytanaslan:

WUD WUD? Who says you can find good swords in the game :P
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/289727601180936226/B8AD1D26B85C6C2932D6FDB97A57B85C93EC8782/

Does that classify as a "sword" in the game? In short, can you Riposte with that?

[Lampros]

Originally posted by gazomierz:

Well, apart from status symbol they were in fact the best allround weapon for a very long time. Not only in Europe, swords dominated samurai culture, they were widely used in China, Korea, Persia, India, pretty much everywhere where ppl figured out how to work metals. Swords were very versatile, they offered very good offensive capabilities but the thing most ppl forget is that swords were exceptionally good as a defensive tool. No other weapon offered such agility. And they were pretty comfortable to carry around. The problem of the sword was increase in armor effectivness and availability. They fare poorly against armor and that's why we started to invent wide range of weapons designed for the purpose of dealing with this problem. But swords evolved into rapiers and other such weapons. Calling polearms superior to swords is just wrong. There is no real comparison here as those weapons were designed and used for different things, for example in a duel I would choose sword over any other melee weapon. In battle I wouldn't be so sure and probably would go for something that can pierce the armor of opponents, or smth to dismount my opponent or.. and so on. There is no one best weapon, it all depends on what situation you'll find yourself in.

In the game the reason why swords are overlooked by many is exactly the same. Swords are awesome when used against gobos, dire wolves and low tier thugs and orcs. But when fighting orc warriors or raiders we rather choose other weapons. Next thing is the game completly ignores the defensive aspect of using weapons. And that was quite a large part of medieval martial arts. I actually made a huge post about implementing some kind of 'parry" system, if anyone is interested here's the link:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/365360/discussions/2/392183857630872779/
I would appreciate support on this subject.

Cheers!

Yeah, weapons do really need defensive bonuses in this game.

[gazomierz]

I'm familliar with vids by Matt Easton, but thx anyway :)

And just like he said in the beginning of this particular video it all depends on the context. It's like an argument what is better tank or airplane. They are just used differently for different tasks :)

[Sheytanaslan]

Originally posted by Lampros:

Originally posted by Sheytanaslan:

WUD WUD? Who says you can find good swords in the game :P
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/289727601180936226/B8AD1D26B85C6C2932D6FDB97A57B85C93EC8782/

Does that classify as a "sword" in the game? In short, can you Riposte with that?

Well its termed a sword as per its description. Here is its utility aspects.
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/289727601181298298/2F90E6B540B7669EF889A93865BDF542AD41792B/
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/289727601181297848/F8C07DCFA4A4DB279C7F0481453577A6AF328A6A/

[Bone Tomahawk]

Originally posted by gazomierz:

I'm familliar with vids by Matt Easton, but thx anyway :)

And just like he said in the beginning of this particular video it all depends on the context. It's like an argument what is better tank or airplane. They are just used differently for different tasks :)

A spear is to a sword a rifle to a pistol. Can I definitively say that a rifle is better than a pistol? Obviously not. A pistol is easy to conceal, and is better in an urban environment or inside buildings. However, I would rather have a rifle in practically every other situation. The same idea applies to polearms and swords.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Sheytanaslan:

Originally posted by Lampros:

Does that classify as a "sword" in the game? In short, can you Riposte with that?

Well its termed a sword as per its description. Here is its utility aspects.
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/289727601181298298/2F90E6B540B7669EF889A93865BDF542AD41792B/
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/289727601181297848/F8C07DCFA4A4DB279C7F0481453577A6AF328A6A/

Ah, so it basically works like cleaver. I may try it on a Nimble guy and see if that's better value than Riposting.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by a fiddle to surpass metal gear:

Originally posted by gazomierz:

I'm familliar with vids by Matt Easton, but thx anyway :)

And just like he said in the beginning of this particular video it all depends on the context. It's like an argument what is better tank or airplane. They are just used differently for different tasks :)

A spear is to a sword a rifle to a pistol. Can I definitively say that a rifle is better than a pistol? Obviously not. A pistol is easy to conceal, and is better in an urban environment or inside buildings. However, I would rather have a rifle in practically every other situation. The same idea applies to polearms and swords.

A good analogy.

I could be wrong on this, but another way to look at this is perhaps to consider the sword as a "specialist" tool, whereas polearms are "amateur" or "everyman" tool? What I mean is that while polearms are superior if someone is un-trained or little-trained, perhaps at the higher levels of mastery, swords are superior? Note that this is a pure speculation, and not based on personal usage (I've done a lot of martial arts, but very little weapons - and certainly nothing with staves or pole weapons), or fact-based evidence. The only thing I am going by is anecdotal evidence in my culture that there are far more tales of legendary swordsmen than legendary polearm or staff wielders - and that generally in (often mythical) contests between the two, the swordsman generally prevailed. But again, this is anecdotal, and much of it is even legendary.