Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age

[PvK]

Pale One Soldiers are good units, especially _underwater_. They allow MA Agartha to expand quickly against indies underwater, which is a huge advantage. The attack score of 8 is compensated by decent armor, high HP, good ST & MR, a long weapon, and of course amphibian, need not eat, siege bonus, and 100% dark vision.

I agree though that it would be better and make more thematic sense to have humans for PD.

As for no ranged troops, everyone can get shortbows, but not everyone is so hard to hurt with shortbows as MA Agarthan troops.

[vfb]

Endoperez said:
Pale One Soldier isn't inferior to his human counterpart due to being of a different race, but due to using much worse equipment.

Nah, I think the one-eyed attribute messes with their depth perception, that's why Pale Ones have horrible attack skill.

[Dedas]

Also more than horrible precision (7).

Have any of you tried EA Agartha's "wet ones" in water? For me it was a bit of a surprise, and now I actually only use those instead of "pale one" in the water.

[danm]

I don't use the "small" pale ones anywhere in EA or MA given the choice (PD being the obvious "no choice" situation)

I'm ok with the "flavor" of them being slow and clumsy... but I'd like if they were a bit more durable than they are. Their extra hitpoints just dont seem to translate into extra survival on the battlefiled.

not too much, because i do think they're supposed to be a BIT underwhelming, but currently I find them to be darn near useless.

[HoneyBadger]

Endoperez: "and instead of chain mail, Pale Ones use inferior scale mail."

I think it's hilarious how scale mail is so often interpreted as having been somehow inferior to chainmail. It wasn't-infact it was a good deal better, since you've got overlapping *plates* of metal protecting your vitals, instead of a fine metal mesh.

Chain was cheaper to produce and repair-especially poor quality chain, but the only type that was as good as scalemail, protection-wise, was high quality double-chain, which put two layers of chainmail on you, which ofcourse was nice and heavy.

And in any case, scalemail of comparable quality would have distributed it's weight across the body more comfortably, and it simply was easier to create lighter versions of scalemail than it was chainmail, because the quality of steel could be regularly higher in a plate than a wire, in a midieval forge. The only real advantage a suit of chain armor has over scale is a slight increase to flexibility, but their are ways around this, and the factor would still be small.

If I were re-doing the armor in the game, I'd assign a base Protection for each type of armor, and then increase or decrease it based on the Nation at hand (different technologies, different methods/preferences, etc) and the materials used. Making armour was a highly individualistic artform, much more so than any industrial science of today. Two different suits of full armour-look at a collection of platemail in a museum sometime-are never going to be identical, unless they're identically poorly made.

To conclude-and not go completely OT-Agarthans would have to be ridiculously mindless to use bucklers over large shields, and to use spears-because spears require *PRECISION* to use (I know, I've trained with them for years, and they're my personal favorite melee weapon) and if they're using scalemail-especially bronze, which was actually better than iron/steel for armor, at the technological level we're talking-they should get a very decent bonus to their Protection.

Agarthans should lose the spears and glaives and whatnot and start using very long-handled obsidian-spiked or bronze morningstars.

And, I don't know if this is programmed in, but bronze armor should be immune to several spells, since it doesn't rust and isn't magnetizeable.

[PvK]

HoneyBadger, I like your post, but consider that especially in Middle Era, the Pale Ones are really designed for use underwater. Consider using a morningstar (i.e. mace & chain) and a large shield _underwater_, compared to using a spear and buckler.

And again to everyone who looks at MA small Pale Ones and never tries using them, try recruiting a 2-4 turns of them and sending them into the ocean. In sufficient numbers, they can do well against independents underwater, allowing you to be a semi-decent underwater nation from the start of the game, which of course is a major national advantage unless you don't start anywhere near available seas.

[HoneyBadger]

I agree with you, PvK-large shields and huge morning-stars are poor choices for fighting underwater. However, the spear and buckler combo is just as poor on land, for the Agarthans. I guess a solution would be to create some units who fight with weaponry suitable for land-based combat, and others for water-based combat. It's too bad they can't simply drop one weapon and pick another weapon up, though.

If I had to arm Agarthans for amphibious combat, I'd definitely go with a 5 pointed trident-weapon (four short, sharp points about 6 inches apart, surrounding a central spike or blade) and a weighted net. The buckler would definitely go, it's mostly just dead weight, underwater.

[Xietor]

No one has yet to justify using them in the pd for a post 20 unit. You are supposed to get better units after 20, not worse.

[HoneyBadger]

Yes, you should get better units-specifically: better armed and better trained units.

[MaxWilson]

Xietor said:
pd over 20 is supposed to give you a better unit, with an attack of 8, i would prefer to just keep getting the heavy infantry.

Well, you do keep getting the heavy infantry per point of PD. The Pale Ones are a free bonus, like a prize in a cereal box.

-Max