Infantry/Cavalry balance

[Revier]

This is perhaps just me musing idly(and badly), but: are the infantry units in general balanced against cavalry(and their equivalents, like pegasi and wyvern) units in these games? I feel like the latter tend to overshadow the former, mainly due to their movement speed, but also due to certain innate advantages infantry don't get, like being able to hit and run or ignore terrain penalties. Genealogy is a pretty blatant example of this, but I would say this holds true for FE1 and by extension FE3 too. Don't know enough about Thracia 776 to comment on its balance.

[Saint Rubenio]

14 minutes ago, Revier said:

are the infantry units in general balanced against cavalry(and their equivalents, like pegasi and wyvern) units in these games?

Short answer: Nope.

Long answer: Basically never in the series's 17 game history.

Efforts have been made in a few games to nerf cavalry, but fliers? They've been the best classes in every single game, pretty much. There is no real difference between the stats of infantry and mounted units, so they just do the same thing but they get to places faster. IntSys has always relied on effective damage to combat mounts, but effective weapons do not suffice against the units with the highest ability to maneuver around them. So you end up with "unit that does things" vs "unit that does things but gets there faster."

Fangames often take the route of locking them to one weapon type and/or making the stats of cavalry units more middling compared to infantry, so the comparison is closer to "unit that does things" vs "unit that does things worse but gets there faster." You know, an actual trade-off. Still, it's tough - movement is a pretty amazing stat and one of the very few that cannot be grown except with a statbooster that in every game is exceedingly rare. Having more of it is a trait that's much harder to replicate than, say, having a lot of strength or defense.

[samthedigital]

1 hour ago, Revier said:

Don't know enough about Thracia 776 to comment on its balance.

They're more balanced in Thracia than in most games for whatever that's worth. The main culprit is the fact that they are forcibly dismounted indoors. It helps that Warp has unlimited range too.

[ping]

24 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

The main culprit is the fact that they are forcibly dismounted indoors.

...which also applies to FE3, of course. Although I believe it's less punishing in that game because there's only one single Weapon Level stat, while (iirc) many Thracia cavs/flyers are limited to Iron Swords when dismounted.

I'll say that the Cav line has very bad representation on Celica's side in Gaiden. She can only get one by picking the class for Atlas or by death-warping one of Alm's over... but either is a terrible idea because of all the swamp on her maps. But of course, Alm has some competent (Clive, Mathilda, Zeke) and one very cool cavs on his side of the map, and the Whitewings are incredibly good for Celica.

And so that every NES/SNES game gets its explicit mention - I found that FE1 has very strong Cav representation. The Xmas cavs and Hardin all have straight up excellent stats, and even the meme cavs are somewhat salvaged by the Paladin class's bases. Shout-out to my Roshe for getting two or three Spd procs on the map he got his Knight Crest... which brought him exactly to Paladin Spd base, rendering all the procs useless.

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, samthedigital said:

They're more balanced in Thracia than in most games for whatever that's worth. The main culprit is the fact that they are forcibly dismounted indoors. It helps that Warp has unlimited range too.

Infantry units also tend to more frequently have movement stars and more of them. Which is a kind of fun trade off. A horse can go twice as far but someone on foot can get lucky and do twice as much. Of course movement stars are not classed based so there are some infantry with 0 and a handful of cavalry with 1 (I don't think there are any cavalry with more than 1, though flying man Deen has a few, but see what someone said earlier about fliers always being great).

Edited April 16 by Jotari

[Revier]

Hmm, so it seems like my intuition was right, the general series has always favored cavalry and cavalry adjacent units. But that leads to other questions:

a. Why does the lord generally start out unhorsed? I'm pretty sure that out of FE1-4, only one lord starts with a mount, and he's of course considered one of the most busted units in the series. Might it have to do with encouraging the player to use the lord alongside their retinue, rather than have them charge face first into the enemy ranks?

b. Does the bias towards cavalry have anything to do with the series' focus on royalty and nobility? After all, I know that mounts were major prestige symbols in the past, and their riders were often quite wealthy and of high stature. Obviously there were a fair few "ordinary" cavalrymen, but even these were immensely dwarved by their footed brethren.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 4/16/2024 at 12:38 PM, Revier said:

a. Why does the lord generally start out unhorsed? I'm pretty sure that out of FE1-4, only one lord starts with a mount, and he's of course considered one of the most busted units in the series. Might it have to do with encouraging the player to use the lord alongside their retinue, rather than have them charge face first into the enemy ranks?

That might be part of it. Thinking on it, very few Lords (Sigurd, Seliph, Eliwood, Ephraim, Eirika, Claude) gain any sort of mount in their "natural progression". Presumably, they want the Lord to feel different from "just another Cavalier". Also, in indoor Sieze maps, they have to sit on the very special chair to win. Kinda hard to do when you've got a horse underneath you.

On 4/16/2024 at 12:38 PM, Revier said:

b. Does the bias towards cavalry have anything to do with the series' focus on royalty and nobility? After all, I know that mounts were major prestige symbols in the past, and their riders were often quite wealthy and of high stature. Obviously there were a fair few "ordinary" cavalrymen, but even these were immensely dwarved by their footed brethren.

Maybe? It's not always clear which characters are "noble" or "commoner", especially back in the days before support conversations. But ultimately, when our main character is a noble, they'd naturally have a noble retinue following them. In the case of Ike, it's explicitly mentioned that his cavalry - Oscar and Titania - previously served in the Crimean Royal Knights. As for Alm, the only Cavs he has among his commoner friends are those promoted semi-randomly from Villager.

It's worth noting that, even as early as FE4, Kaga and team seemed to recognize the inherent advantages of a mount. So, they tried to balance it out in certain ways. "Jamke has better combat stats than Midir." "Edain can use more Staves than Ethlyn." "Ayra and Chulainn get powerful sword skills that mounties can't inherit." Obviously, this didn't fully offset the mounted advantage, but it did suggest some recognition of the imbalance, and a limited attempt to redress it.

[Revier]

Yeah that's the funny part, they recognized that cavalry had innate advantages over infantry, and even tried to account for it, but somehow never seemed to have successfully bridged the gap, either in the classic games or afterwards. Part of it might be because it's hard to come up with anything exciting for ground troops without getting absurd, their irl advantages are mostly in mundane things like not costing too much to train and maintain, being flexible in formations, and being far less prone to accidents.