Are Macemen overpowered?

[Nero]

I found the strongest unit in the game to be the Macemen. They're incredibly cheap to produce, fast, butcher away light units and are surprisingly strong against stronger units when in masses.

With these guys playing the zerg rush style, 900 macemen and some Archers there's no stopping that I think xD

[DohItAgain]

They're tough, but I found that a wall of pikemen backed up by archers tends to thin them out incredibly quick.

It's just a matter of positioning yourself so the macement can't surround a unit.

[bulbatrs]

yeah I think macemen are nuts... fast and deal lots of damage, that being said my armies still consist 20% archers 65% peasants.... I just can't manufacture enough weapons for all the peasants in time. even through my peasants are being used as meatshields and die in large quantaties while more valuable troops hardly die at all the relative quantaties stay the same after reinforcements arrive

[nxmt]

Macemen are useful... if you can close the gap. I like to think of them as kamikaze units. They are good for taking advantage of the AI. Before they get into formation, use it to zerg rush the enemy archers.

Will get absolutely slaughtered by anything but peasants.

Also a handful of macemen can easily conquer low population counties on their own.

[Matthew]

Yes they are OP

Try using swords in their place, and they are just too expensive without much better results. Also, maces crush in peasant skulls and the AI loves to mass peasants and archers.

The counter to maces would be too expensive to muster, as it is essentially mass knights and swords.

[Printesa de Aur]

well, the game mechanics HIGLY favors the number superiority. especially in open area battles. in this scenarios macemen look supreme because they kill enemies so fast but in reality just about anything can be very cost effective in this scenario (especially vs peasants). yes, they are useful but they are not OP. they take enough casualities every battle. regular comositions are much better overall.
early game composition: 60-70% archers. 30-40% pikemen will shred just about any county without a lord.
late game composition: 60-70% archers, 10-15% crossbowmen, rest swordsmen/pikemen.
Also, if you prepare an army to take down a castle and you know you won't fight any serious army in an open battle, you can get up to 1200 archers +300 swordsmen. This way you can trade really effectively and you shouldn't loose more than 100-150 against Stone castle and 200-300 against a Royal.

[Printesa de Aur]

And yes. I love Archers. Archers are OP. Archers are GOD.
ARCHERS ARCHERS ARCHERS!

[Nero]

There are some maps with chokepoints like bridges. I guess there they'll be coutnered by a few blocking swordsmen wuth archers behind. But ya if they can get access to attack they will slaughter away pretty much everything.

Those mercenaries 250 Burgund macemen are extremely useful.

[bulbatrs]

Originally posted by BOT Wolf:

well, the game mechanics HIGLY favors the number superiority. especially in open area battles. in this scenarios macemen look supreme because they kill enemies so fast but in reality just about anything can be very cost effective in this scenario (especially vs peasants). yes, they are useful but they are not OP. they take enough casualities every battle. regular comositions are much better overall.
early game composition: 60-70% archers. 30-40% pikemen will shred just about any county without a lord.
late game composition: 60-70% archers, 10-15% crossbowmen, rest swordsmen/pikemen.
Also, if you prepare an army to take down a castle and you know you won't fight any serious army in an open battle, you can get up to 1200 archers +300 swordsmen. This way you can trade really effectively and you shouldn't loose more than 100-150 against Stone castle and 200-300 against a Royal.

early game army consistent of 60-70% archers and 30-40% pikemen... are you fighting with 100-200 men armies earlygame? or your early game is smng 6 years in? also why would you bring 1200 archers and 300 swordsmen to take a castle? who is suppose to do the diging, burning and dieing?

[Chaoslock]

Pikemen and Archers with the occational Crossbowers will annihalate everything. Sacrifice some units when filling moats and make sure to stay outof the fire if possible.

Knights are handy if you have breached the two gates to the keep if you want to make a run for the flag, or in fair number on any battlefield for slaughtering archers.

Not even macemen are that fast. Knights are expensive though. Best made later on.
Pikemen pikemen pikemen, best defence, less expensive than swordsmen.

Tip for making a standard keep almost invincible against the AI: 50 pikemen and 150 crowwbowmen.
Put the pikemen behind the gate, when breached they'll serve as a barricade. Devide the crowwbowmen on the towers. And use your two oil cauldrons wisely.
Just try it, it will blow your mind.

[DohItAgain]

It comes down to if you're playing AI or versus players. The AI gets wrecked by macement because they don't really get the tactics to counter it. The macemen only suffer in close-quarters combat, and the AI will almost never out-economize you to use superior troops in proper numbers.

Versus a player, you need to assume folks are using the wheat-feeding exploit, and even without that, are capable of producing hundreds of advanced weapons a turn. Good players will also tend to bring anti-macemen troops and use placements like staggering pikement to prevent macemen from taking advantage of their speed for flanking.

In a castle seige, expect them just to be slightly long lived peasents for moat filling.

[Matthew]

The part missing from the discussion is cost. Maces are stupid cheap. Populations end up getting too high in regions, so it is useful to keep recruiting military to push population numbers back down.

You cannot mass recruit swords or knights due to cost. And, well, if you can, you've already more than won the game. This also means the enemy cannot mass high numbers as well. Maces are cheap enough to keep up with the amount of soldiers being recruited.

This makes battles largely composed of peasants, archers, and a few mixed in of various other units. Which unit is best at countering peasants and archers? That's right, the mace!

You aren't overly concerned about their lives anyway, as they were recruited to burn off population. Engage with a group of meat shields (pikes or peasants, don't really matter) and archers, then flank with a ton of maces.

I call them OP in the sense that there is no cost effective counter. Pikes are too slow. If they move forward to engage, the macemen can just run circles around them and snipe the archers. Then your own archers can sit back and pelt pikes all day long from range. Swords and knights would be the counter, but both lose due to the sheer quantity of maces on the field.

[DohItAgain]

I disagree, mid to late game when overopulation becomes an issue, you should have more than enough crowns to afford whatever troop type you want provided you went pure wheat.

Pikes are great counters to macemen, you need to stagger the pikement around your archers. If a unit enters melee with a nearby unit, they're very difficult to tear off, so a small square around your bowmen, staggered, will protect them fully.

[Matthew]

Well, sure, and for the same amount of crowns you could have 2 to 3 times as many maces :/ The costs don't change. You making more money just means more maces :)

I was talking more against the AI. This game was like pre-multiplayer for me. Even then, I'm not convinced pikes are any sort of hard counter. Both sides will have archers. If you have pikes, you cannot move them, else maces rush in and engage archers in melee combat, which also are hard to tear off. If you don't move them, they just sit there and get pelted with archers.

I can agree that any sort of castle warfare, pikes win out, but I just cannot see pikes countering a mace heavy army on an open field. Even if you make a literal checkerboard out of archers and pikes, you wouldn't be able to burn down all the maces before the maces burn down the archers. And while it would take forever, a completely archer army against a completely pike army, the archer army would win.

[DohItAgain]

Multiplayer wise, pikes win. AI wise, macement win only because the AI has no idea how to properly set up military lines. They just stack in an open area and let you flank freely.

I know from multiplayer experience macemen drop like flies long before they can get through pikemen rows, as long as you prevent macement from flanking.

[Printesa de Aur]

Originally posted by bulbatrs:

early game army consistent of 60-70% archers and 30-40% pikemen... are you fighting with 100-200 men armies earlygame? or your early game is smng 6 years in? also why would you bring 1200 archers and 300 swordsmen to take a castle? who is suppose to do the diging, burning and dieing?

if you want to conquer something fast, by all means, do what works for you. but this depends highly on your position on the map, difficulty and starting options. for me, early game army is around 300-400 soldiers (150-200 mercenaries). and by he time you have it, settlement would have roughly the same number of units but mostly peasants.
i HATE using peasants. because they die without impacting a battle too much. and throwing away population is stupid. yeah, you save some money since you're not making bows and pikes but you lose the money those people would make if they were paying taxes or working.
what do you mean who is supposed to dig/burn and die in a siege? you lose some archers exchanging fire with enemy archers, but with smart positioning and expliting the AI, you will take most of the enemy army (and some of the oil pots) before you enter the castle. then, use a couple of swordsmen to dig a small path (enough to get a tower through) since there's nobody to fire at them, and then close in, bait the remaining units against your archers (attack remaining oil pots with 1 unit) and then close in to the flag. this strat is the best against stone and royal castles. other castles are trivial to conquer anyway. they key are archers. even if a fraction of your arrows go throgh the wall, just by engaging with tons of archers agains very few will make the exchange favorable. once enemy archers are gone, things are very simple.