Game:

Medieval II: Total War (2006)

Duration: 43:09

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The cost of infantry in vanilla M2TW was about one third to half the cost of cavalry and this reflected the stats, except the fact that cavalry goes faster, so the charge of a cavalry unit is multiplied by about 1.6 or thereabouts. So cavalry was OP and that was not reflected in the costs because the costs did not take into account that the charge of the cavalry is much faster than the actual stated value. Subsequently, some gamers pushed for the stats of the cavalry to go even further up and the stats of militia to be nerfed even further to the point where an encounter between cavalry and infantry is just a joke, as you can tell from my videoclips from many current medieval mods.

Now, why under these conditions, the costs of these two respective unit types were not changed in accordance with their new values is beyond comprehension. In BC 2.4.2, a couple of lancer units can wipe out entire armies consisting of only infantry and yet lancers cost just 2-3 times as much as the most basic levy unit. This is not only ridiculous from the viewpoint of a human player, it is cheating also the AI that is recruiting these worthless infantry types at high cost.

If infantry was so weak in reality compared to cavalry, e.g. untrained levy types, they would not venture out of settlements to fight cavalry in the open. Such ultralight units perhaps should be available to the AI only via a garrison script and the AI should be normally recruiting cavalry and very heavy infantry. When the Saracens campaigned, they did so always on horse, dismounting mostly the heavy spearmen, if necessary. So yes, heavy cavalry can destroy militia infantry, if militia have a suicide wish and leave the safety of the city walls they have been entrusted to defend. In all other cases, infantry out in the open would only deploy behind field defenses and in such a way that cavalry attacks would be ineffectual.

In my view, battle balancing in many mainstream mods leaves much to be desired because cavalry is so OP and the AI gets so little cavalry and so much light infantry that battles are a joke. If cavalry is so OP that the human player can do away with infantry, why should the AI recruit any?

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