How to make Armor Knights more valuable?

[X-Naut]

Making Armorknights more valuable... A difficult question to answer.

Well, let's deal with the Mounts>Armors. Decreasing the growths of Cavaliers/Wyvern Riders so that they are more of an all-around unit instead of a mobile tank could help. Giving Cavaliers/Wyvern Riders a -1 or -2 Con penalty, and Armors a +1 or +2 Con bonus might also decrease the overpoweredness of mounts. As for terrain... why the hell is my Draug getting a terrain movement penalty? They walk around in freaking ARMOR. They shouldn't be batting an eye at this stuff. But the horses should.

Unless the terrain is bramble or something else that is explicitly painful to walk through I don't see how armored units would cross it faster than light infantry. Armor is going to make it more difficult to weave through vegetation, not to the level of horses but still an issue. Also the Con drop makes little sense because while their legs don't offer a firm foundation, their mount does.

[Emperor Hardin]

I was thinking:

* Weapon triangle advantage, Unpromoted Armor Knights can uses Axes and Lances.

* High Resistance like in FE10.

* Typically infantry movement, maybe one less movement then your average promoted class infantry after class change.

* Movement bonus indoors

* An auto provoke ability if skills exist

EDIT:

* If given bad movement, don't give them bad speed as well. This applies just as much the other way around. Speed and movement are some of the most important stats even for defensive units.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Emperor Hardin

[Ownagepuffs]

Alternatively there could be more enemies that use horseslayers to tone down the broken Cavaliers/paladins.

This has been addressed already. All that changes is that I'm gonna use my flyers for even more shit than I already do. Or, I can Killer crit them to death. Simply making the map a bit more convenient for my mounts doesn't take away their Mov, Durability, and WTC. What then? More Arrows, too? Then the map quickly goes from "maybe you shouldn't use your mounts" to "tell all your mounted units to fuck off".

Or, I can still just use my bulky enough, fast enough, strong enough Heroes to do the job. There is still no incentive to use the 4 Mov badness that is Knights unless you have invaluable durability (once again, Oswin). Knights are in this awkward position where you use 'em for the first few chapters because they are the only guys who don't die to a sneeze, then all of a sudden your other, not 4 Mov units, can live longer and they aren't needed.

[BBM]

except the problem with that is that most FE games have a few chapters of bandits, where knights face WTD, so if they're supposed to be mini-jeigans that help out defensively for the first half of the game that doesn't really work too great...

EDIT: Oswin in HHM works better kind of because he has really overkill defence and due to lyn mode being the real beginning of the game there are a lot more early non-axe using units than in most games

Edited December 8, 2014 by BBM

[dondon151]

oswin can also muster at least 70 hit despite WTD against early axe-using enemies

[Klokinator]

Dondon, you said it best not very long ago. "Armors are an amazing crutch for casuals, useless for LTCers, and rarely useful for the average player." That's the real issue. Make them better to appeal to LTCers, and casuals will abuse them like crazy. Make them worse for casuals, and LTCers won't use them at all. They aren't a middle ground unit.

That being said, cavalry are good for LTCers and casuals alike, so I'd rather make the Armors amazing for both as well so they can at least compete.

[Lord Raven]

Not the way they've been designed they're not middle ground... The only armor I think was worth much was FE7 Oswin and like MAYBE FE10 Gatrie.

[Klokinator]

I personally think mono weapon cavs and dual weapon armor knights would even things out. Much more than the retarded FE7 reversal.

[dondon151]

you might as well give armor knights access to everything. it still doesn't make up for shitty mobility and offense, but at least they'd have cool points that way.

Edited December 8, 2014 by dondon151

[Lord Raven]

sooo.... jet packs?

[Klokinator]

you might as well give armor knights access to everything. it still doesn't make up for shitty mobility and offense, but at least they'd have cool points that way.

Hey I already do that in chaos mode woot go me!

[Terrador]

I jest not here: make the game harder. Cavalry are already Alpha Bro Tier when Canto exists, and are still unbeatable for attaining objectives you need to rush to. However, they stop being dominating when you need ludicrous durability to comfortably live through EP rushes. The "Thwomps can't have good Speed" stereotype on player units needs to be done away with, and recent games have been doing that--Speed still isn't their best stat, but they can still work with it, on the whole, in 9/10/13.

[dondon151]

we've already pointed out that making the game harder doesn't make armor knights any better, at least for above average players. general wolf and sedgar are pretty dominating in casual playthroughs of FE11, but the amount of enemy offense required to make armor knight usage necessary is an amount that makes the game nigh unplayable.

[Terrador]

If by "above average" you mean "top-tier LTC players", maybe, the pool of players potentially setting records is pretty damn small, no? I dunno about you, but I'd call a nogrind L+ CLA clear firmly "above average" in the vast majority of folks parlance of the term, and I find myself leaning on Armor Knights quite a bit, at least in games that make them genuinely more durable than Paladins and the like. General!Wolf and Sedgar are absolute lynchpins in my current FE11 H5 run (which I'm just now getting around to actually completing); I'm sure an incredibly stuffed Abel or Cain could do the same job, but this has been much easier on me. If Armors are absolutely, explicitly necessary to survive more than one or two exposures--yeah, that's entirely unplayable, simply because a mage walks up and you're left with a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. Expecting unit balance in a very highly-optimized environment is, frankly, a tad unreasonable, especially since that environment will be optimized for different parameters (namely turncount) than ingame balance is optimized for (ease and entertainment value of use in a casual or semi-efficient run).

[Klokinator]

Or you could be like me and give the enemy army such a variety of weapons and possible attacks that durable units should always be soaking up damage on the frontlines, and then make cavalry unable to generally survive blind rushes easily.

[dondon151]

If by "above average" you mean "top-tier LTC players", maybe, the pool of players potentially setting records is pretty damn small, no? I dunno about you, but I'd call a nogrind L+ CLA clear firmly "above average" in the vast majority of folks parlance of the term, and I find myself leaning on Armor Knights quite a bit, at least in games that make them genuinely more durable than Paladins and the like. General!Wolf and Sedgar are absolute lynchpins in my current FE11 H5 run (which I'm just now getting around to actually completing); I'm sure an incredibly stuffed Abel or Cain could do the same job, but this has been much easier on me.

so we're left with this situation, then:

"Armors are an amazing crutch for casuals, useless for LTCers, and rarely useful for the average player."

which may or may not be fine; i mean, not all classes can be the best class ever for every kind of player. but if we're fine with this, then there's no reason why we're asking the question in the thread title in the first place.

[Terrador]

Well, I feel that a discussion of whether unit balance is even a good thing is another thread altogether, no?

As far as ingame balance goes--that's further stratified by difficulty, isn't it? We all know a handful of units whose usefulness will spike or plummet with the difficulty (Edward, Miledy, Rutger, Sedgar, Wolf, Lance, pretty much the entire early cast of FE13...), so balance will almost certainly have to be fixed around one difficulty mode.

For the implications to game design... too tired for this, nacht. Must sleep.

[dondon151]

As far as ingame balance goes--that's further stratified by difficulty, isn't it? We all know a handful of units whose usefulness will spike or plummet with the difficulty (Edward, Miledy, Rutger, Sedgar, Wolf, Lance, pretty much the entire early cast of FE13...), so balance will almost certainly have to be fixed around one difficulty mode.

this is more an exception than a rule. and of the units you cited, of course two of them are going to be much better on a harder mode because they also get huge bonuses to their base stats.

[JechtShotMK9]

Someone mentioned earlier in the thread the idea combining mounted units and knights. They would be Paladins and Great Knights in the outdoor maps, and Halberdiers and Generals for the indoor maps.

Another idea would be to make ballista actually somewhat threatening. Give them a critical bonus to any non-armored unit, since I'm sure a horse or a guy in a robe getting struck by a six foot arrow would suffer the same fate as a flying horse. To be honest, a guy in plate armor would too, but fantasy game logic. This would have the added bonus of making archers a bit more useful.

Lower the strength of the light and middle weight physical fighters. All other things being equal, on average, a Swordmaster should not be able to defeat a General. Make a "unit triangle," if you will. General>Swordmaster>Warrior/Berserker>General, with Generals getting extra crit against Swordmasters, Swordmasters getting extra crit against the Axe users, and the Axe people getting extra crit against Generals. Have Heroes and Halberdiers be jack of all trade characters outside this triangle, and for lols, give us a new axe class to round that out. I'm thinking Lumberjack.

[Jotari]

Someone mentioned earlier in the thread the idea combining mounted units and knights. They would be Paladins and Great Knights in the outdoor maps, and Halberdiers and Generals for the indoor maps.

Another idea would be to make ballista actually somewhat threatening. Give them a critical bonus to any non-armored unit, since I'm sure a horse or a guy in a robe getting struck by a six foot arrow would suffer the same fate as a flying horse. To be honest, a guy in plate armor would too, but fantasy game logic. This would have the added bonus of making archers a bit more useful.

Lower the strength of the light and middle weight physical fighters. All other things being equal, on average, a Swordmaster should not be able to defeat a General. Make a "unit triangle," if you will. General>Swordmaster>Warrior/Berserker>General, with Generals getting extra crit against Swordmasters, Swordmasters getting extra crit against the Axe users, and the Axe people getting extra crit against Generals. Have Heroes and Halberdiers be jack of all trade characters outside this triangle, and for lols, give us a new axe class to round that out. I'm thinking Lumberjack.

We already have two mono axe using classes, Fighters and Bandits.

[JechtShotMK9]

We already have two mono axe using classes, Fighters and Bandits.

That last part was a joke.

[Jotari]

That last part was a joke.

I should have suggested we add Axe Juggler over Lumberjack in that case.

[JechtShotMK9]

I should have suggested we add Axe Juggler over Lumberjack in that case.

Make it a unique class, and have Lumberjack be the promotion of Juggler? A former carney who leaves for a simpler life chopping wood?

[Jotari]

Make it a unique class, and have Lumberjack be the promotion of Juggler? A former carney who leaves for a simpler life chopping wood?

And instead of juggling throwing axes, he juggles tree trunks.

On this subject though, we actually have three mono axe uses. I forgot about Pirates the first time. Though I don't think we've ever seen Fighters, Bandits and Pirates all in one game with distinct differences.

[JechtShotMK9]

And instead of juggling throwing axes, he juggles tree trunks.

On this subject though, we actually have three mono axe uses. I forgot about Pirates the first time. Though I don't think we've ever seen Fighters, Bandits and Pirates all in one game with distinct differences.

Yeah, but there is only one mono-Axe promoted type, since Pirates and Bandits both become Berserkers, and Warriors have bows. And in most games where both are available, the Berserkers tend to be much better than the warriors. I was thinking of a lower strength, high skill axe class, more in the vein of a Halberdier, instead of another brute. One with a lower strength cap to balance out the inherent higher strength that axes have.