Frenzy is a crazy strong ability, if I gave them them to swordsmen they'd make make a meal out of pretty much every non-armoured unit (that's why i had to up the Ulric swordsmen price to begin with : they trounced a good half to 2/3 of the units around the 750 multiplayer cost, units in my tests). Which is a bit overkill for a faction whose strenght isn't supposed to be it's infantry.

Then again the purpose of this mod was to make the Empire's infantry a bit closer to their lore and behaviour on tabletop : Tanky, slightly above the rest (but not outright elites like the Greatsword) Swordsmen and hard-hitting if squishy Halberdiers. With Spearmen being a middle-ground between the two.

I see, considering that halberds are now much better at dealing with monsters/large units compared to spearmen, and them being available early now too means you don't really need empire spearmen to complement the swordsmen. Even with the downside of not having a shield or having lower melee defense. Vs large untis melee defense imo is less important as there are usually way less models to deal with and a lot of them deal splash damage.

Idk what i would do to adjust them, maybe i'd try to give them frenzy instead of bonus vs inf?. I think how CA made it is probably a bit more fitting them being the dps variant of spearmen with shields. Then late game you have greatswords instead of swordsmen, and some times halberds instead of spearmen.

That being said i've always thought myself about how to adjust those 2, as the way CA made it makes swordsmen obselite really quickly same as regular empire spearmen with no shields.

@Orendiz
That was the idea anyway, do you think I should tweak them some more ?

@Orendiz
Swordsmen are supposed to be a tanky frontline meant to be a complement for Shielded Spearmen (Swordsmen are meant to tank other infantry units while Spearmen are meant to tank large units and monsters, a bit like the older total war titles in a sense).

Their new stats is a nod to their lore and role in the tabletop game (from 6th to 8th edition) where they were the toughest to kill out of the three types of units melee state troops.

Just tried it and it puts the swordsmen in a very weird dynamic.

Overall they are just buffed swordsmen which is decent. But they still don't really have a purpose. Late game they can be used as a tanky frontline, but they have nothing to help against charges from cav or monsters, and they have no anti large to deal post charge. So you still end up needing spearmen as frontline units. As a duelist units they are still lacking and are never worth over greatswords.

If in vanilla they are used as temporary cheap dps frontline that later gets replaced by spearmen for the rest of the campaign, then with this mod i'm not entirely sure what to do with them.

Meanwhile still not good enough...

My Cathay Peasants have double the Armor and 25 % more Men.

Cathay Jade Warriors in my Campaign have 115 Armor and cost less Upkeep.

@chris

Merci pour le feedback.

Le but du mod était de faire des bretteurs une unité de tanking moyenne, car il ne faut pas oublier que l'infanterie de l'Empire n'est pas censé être son point fort.

Les sessions de test que j'ai fait ces derniers jours montrent qu'ils se débrouillent de façon tout à fait correcte pour leur prix : étant capable de tenir au moins 4 à 5 minutes en moyenne lors d'un duel face à des fantassins à prix équivalents voir supérieur si les unités ennemies n'ont pas d'attributs spéciaux comme la Frénésie ou les dégâts anti-infanterie et ilsremportent même un bon nombre de ces confrontations.

Leur haut niveau d'attaque en mêlée, fait aussi qu'ils vont se tailler le part du lion si leur adversaire a le malheur de manquer d'armure comme l'infanterie skaven.

Salut.
Moi aussi je trouve que les swordmen qui sont sensé être une unité d'élite sont assez mal lotis sur ce jeu.
Pour avoir un peu bricolé les troupes impériales en modding, j'ai constaté qu'il faut d'énorme bonus d'attaque et de def pour "voir" une différence.

En attaque faut du perce armure...

Pour qu'ils soient tanky, faut au moins 100 d'armure (-50% dg base reçu), 70+ def ... Mais à ce niveau là on est plus dans le projet...

Bizarrement ce qui marche le mieux pour la résilience des troupes impériales c'est juste d'augmenter leur nombre... 160 au lieu de 120 ça fait une grosse différence que j'ai un peu de mal a expliquer.

That's fair enough mate, thanks for taking the time to explain your rationale. I will give it a try and see how they go.

@cexyscouse

Thanks for the feedback.

But i'm not sure about the bonus against infantry : the higher melee skill in tabletop affected mostly precision and defense, meaning they HIT more often and are more difficult to hit, but they do not neceserally WOUND more often (they used base weapons which kept their Strenght at 3, while halberdiers count as Strenght 4 and Greatswords as Strenght 5 which gave them an easier time wounding their target compared to Swordsmen).

The Swordsmen true strenght was their survivability and it is this aspect I wanted to bring out of them with the changes i made. The higher precision aspect of their superior melee skill should already be covered by the fact that they already have the best melee attack out of the state troops (well...second best if we count the Greatswords in). I feel that adding a bonus against infantry on top of that might be a bit overkill.

I'd maybe think about giving swordsmen a small bonus v infantry. In tabletop and lore they are meant to be recruited from the best swordsmen in the Empire, Estalia & Tilea. In tabletop they have a higher melee skill than both spear men and halbardiers so your changes should reflect that.