Reconquista Mod: Details about its balance inners

Reconquista Mod is more than just a bunch of new units and factions. Being designed specifically for multiplayer games, the balance between units and factions has been carefully considered. Despite the limitations inherent to the game, which prevent full control over all the combat parameters in the Mod, the final result attained (in the authors opinion) is fairly good.

One of the main problems with the original balance in MTW:VI is the imbalance btw, for example, between swords and their supposedly bigger enemy, the cavalry: once you raised up to certain levels the valour of the swords you achieved foot sword-units that couldn't been killed by cavalry even when correctly charged. The original balance made by the game authors works very well in the single player Campaign, but fails when playing over Internet due to the freedom to upgrade units well beyond the typical limits of a Campaign.

The game programmers have admitted their balance was designed in the supposittion that people would confront units with the same or very similar valour (v1 maa vs v1 cav). As the game is played usually over Internet, such "ideal" condition was never achieved. CeltíberoMordred, this Mod author, has chosen to try to balance the units expecting to play with florins equality (the typical units in a 10000 florins army average a cost of about 700-800 florins).

Besides this particular approach, he has also modified the foot unit bonuses when fighting versus cavalry, the march and running velocities, the armor types and many more factors trying to achieve his goal: giving each unit its usefulness (if used how and when it should be).

The full list of changes done for the Mod, updated for version 0.3, is as follows:

Velocities

Unlike the original game, in RM there is more variety in velocities. Comparatively:

From the above numbers, it can be concluded that:

• The units move a tad faster when marching, so they will get less exhaustion while they approach the enemy lines; in addition, that produces less delay in the game.
• With greater differences between a fast unit and a slow one, it now becomes an interesting approach to take a faster army.
• Cavalry moves a bit faster. In addition, as there is more cav speed variety, it gives richness to the game.
• There are some "ultrafast" cavalry units, which are able to catch the enemy cavalry archers.
• In general, the increase of speed makes the game faster and less static. It favours dinamic battles (you must pay attention all the time).

Exhaustion

• The increasing of speeds and the lack of pavise units (with the subsequent absence of a long pav war) avoid the waste of energy of all the army before the definitive engagement.

Missile Weapons

• Bows, napthas and javelins have now more ammo, so they can get more kills before they become useless. The crossbows have a tad less ammo than in original VI and, therefore, the missile duels will be shorter (remember that in VI xbows/pav xbows got "exhausted" before expending all their ammo).
• Javelins have been replaced by darts: more range (2500 vs 1500 javelins). Unfortunately, they lose their armor piercing ability. However, the increase of ammo and range still produce more kills than the old javelins.
• Some archery units have the mountedbow, (which I named "shortbow") in order to establish a difference between regular archers and elite archers, which have the normal bow (which I named "composite bow"). The short bow have an accuracy of 0.55, and the composite bow 0.60. In addition, the composite bow is the only one that can fire flame arrows against wooden walls.

• The long range weapons (arbalests and longbows) are only available using mercenary units, not being available for regular armies.
• Due to the decreasing of the armour valor in stats, missile units have a better chance of getting kills.
• Non-hybrid archers have a severe penalty (-4 combat points) against cavalry.
• Regular archers are now 80 men in order to make them more useful. In addition, they have less morale (-2).
• Now that there are not units with pavise, the missile units die faster than before under enemy fire. Battles can get resolved in less time too.
• Some factions have naphta throwers units with 20 men, making those efficient and dreadful weapons.
• There are not handgunners, and only one unit of arquebusiers, a mercenary one, available only for muslims.
• The hashishin have become a 20 men unit, and cheaper, being now a mercenary class unit.

Armor piercing

• Some units still have armor piercing weapons: axes, maces, two-handed swords, halberd, etc. This allows a kind of mini-RPS btw infantry units: for example, the heavy infantry, even when it overwhelm any medium infantry, gets slaughtered by light infantry armed with combat axes.

Bonus versus Cavalry

• There is more variety in the anticav weapon class. The following table shows the stats for each one of this weapons. Despite the high anticav bonus for the spears, their devastating effect is nothing when compared against the halberd class weapons, as the regular (base) attack value of the spear units is very low.

Anticav (defensive)					Anticav (ofensive)
	Attack	Defense	Rank Bonus			Attack	Defense	Rank Bonus
Light Spear	+2	+3	2		Polearm	+3	+1	0
Heavy Spear	+3	+3	2		Bill	+4	+2	0
Pike	+4	+5	4		Halberd	+5	+1	0

• On the other side, the missile units get a -2 attack and -2 defense versus cavalry.
• The h2h infantry units (and the hybrids) get a -1 attack and -1 defense, except for some units with double-handed swords and bastard swords (like the Infanzons) which get only -1 defense.
• The great difference between an anticav unit and a "normal" unit leads to a specialization in the units: an anticav unit is REALLY an anticav unit, meanwhile a "normal" unit suffers badly to win vs a cav (if able).
• Camels maintain their bonuses versus cavalry (the game have them hardcoded): +2 to attack, +4 to defense.

Spears

• They are the light spears (2/3), the heavy spears (3/3) and the pikes (4/5). Those are units esentially meant for defensive roles, being able to withstand a cavalry charge (even to the point of being completely invulnerable to it if they are maintaining the formation) and also able to fight for some time against infantry.
• Their stats and costs have been adjusted so they are now useful to defer the enemy infantry.
• The morale for some spear units is slighty higher than in the original VI.
• In general, they have been shaped as high defense/low attack units. A bigger defense rating than in the original game allows them to maintain the rank bonus for more time too.
• All this make them now worthy units in combat.

Halberd weapons

• The units wielding polearms (3/1), bills (4/2) and halberds (5/1). All them have the armor piercing bonuses. Those are ofenssive units, true cav-killers which benefit from the enemy cav slowness: the more heavier the enemy cavalry is, the more effective those weapons are. They are vulnerable, though, to the cavarly charges, but once the charge finishes, the mounted units are no match for them.
• For a reasonable ammount of florins they get a level 6 morale, better than the original VI numbers which used to be around 4 in 10k games, too low to stand against the onslaught of the cav and, generally, to any real combat confrontation.

Swords, Axes, Maces...

• These units are no more the field rulers, which were able to fight against everything and that only were vulnerable when they were tired or heavily flanked and backstabbed.
• They get a penalty of -2 combat points when fighting against mounted units (-1/-1). Thus, they tend to make a poor stand against the charges and subsequent fight versus cavalry. Generally speaking, confronting a cav unit versus an infantry unit of a similar cost will lead to the cav defeating the inf.

Cavalry

• Except for the heaviest cavalry units, all mounted units are slighty faster than before
• They are more effective against the infantry units that don't wield anticav weapons (cav has better charge and sword-type units get a penaly when fighting it).
• The heavier cav units (elite ones) are cheaper.

Mercenary Units

• They can be found in the Artillery section of the unit selection screen. From version 0.3, these units are balanced with regard to the regular units, but they can be removed in hosted games if the players wish to maintain the true nature of each available faction in the Mod. Aside this, they don't give now any special advantage to players using them.
• They are included in the Mod to be used in the upcoming multiplayer Campaign, where they will be unbalanced (in a different Era available after an additional patch), where special rules will keep them under control.