Mount And Blade Warband Samurai
No shields.But I'm going to cheat and elaborate, anyway. It's not that I particularly dislike shields, but one 'issue' (depending on your perspective) with them from a gameplay perspective is that they circumnavigate the need for directional parries against close attacks, and reduce the impact of superior ground against ranged attacks.
As a result, there are many gameplay options that many players will never really explore - and why would they? Mount & Blade is comparably complex and difficult, even on its easiest settings.Without shields, though, you can't sit your soldiers in front of a ranged barrage; their precise location is what counts. You can't wade into and through combat with universal frontal cover. Spears are actually versatile, effective foot weapons, rather than a self-inflicted handicap. Your best line of defense is now, often, intercepting an enemy's attack. Getting in close with katana strikes or thrusting from long range with a polearm serves the same function shield blocking used to, but are far more decisive. There is no easy way out.
You live or die by the sword - and only the sword.Speaking of swords, consider how the sidewards attack animations are more conservative than in vanilla Mount & Blade and most other mods, while also having a shorter range. With the aforementioned emphasis on defending oneself by way of pressing the attack, this establishes an emphasis on lateral movement while tracking opponents closely enough that they stay within the relatively narrow space your attacks will threaten. Polearms don't have this alteration, but that's also for the good of the game; their wide swings deliberately make them a liability in tight situations where the likes of the katana and tachi shine.Gekokujo does quite a few things right, but right off the bat, removing shields drastically alters the way the game is played to the extent that a greater emphasis on skillful personal combat and troop positioning is required to progress. And I think that's pretty great, apart from being appropriate for the setting. In games, we often take shield defenses for granted, but the all-encompassing defensive might of shields in gaming can just as easily detract from a gameplay experience as fulfill a role.(Hint: The commonality of shields on the battlefield also took a sharp plummet in Europe during the late Middle Ages and afterwards. We can ride this wave all the way back to the 1370s.). Early handheld firearms were pretty awful, and almost certainly not the reason shields became less common - especially given that some troop types took up shields again throughout the Renaissance (the 'half shield, half buckler' targe shields spring to mind).
Said firearms were also quite poor at piercing proper plate armour. They were primarily used because minimal training was required to operate one when compared to a sword or even a spear, which allowed generals to raise and deploy much larger armies at a much faster pace.Or rather, early handheld firearms were successful for exactly the same reason that getting 40 Swadian Knights and then a bunch of peasants works just fine in vanilla Mount & Blade. Your more professional troops do the heavy lifting while your gun guys fill out the ranks. The thing is that shields saw a decline during the late Middle Ages and then saw a resurgence during the Renaissance.
This coincides, closely, with the way armour was used; the effectiveness of a soldier's armour looks to be the major factor in determining whether they used a shield or not. Prototypical plate armour (or elements thereof) was in use by particularly wealthy knights as early as the mid 13th century, which also coincides with more frequent use of two-handed weapons. Justice league heroes cheats. Current archaeological evidence suggests, for instance, that the first (relatively) widespread use of greatswords in Europe was at around this time.The point here is that there's a whole lot more going on with changes in the use of defensive measures during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance than firearms. Shields saw a decline because the greatsword gained favor.There's really nothing else to it.
Those who could not afford, or could not wield due to strength or lack of training, the two handers were still using shields.Long range firearms reduced the use of shields for the same reason, not lack of effectiveness, but the need for the second hand. The small arm shields, bucklers and what have you, gained favor during the early long ranged firearm period because they weren't a drawback. During the height of the two hander period, you don't see them because they are more harmful than helpful, since it's more a means of having one arm disabled than it is a 'shield'. Shields saw a decline because the greatsword gained favor.But those dedicated greatswords get phased out in most places for the lighter (and pointier) longswords, especially given that the latter can easily be worn at the hip while a man-at-arms or knight can carry a lance, bill, poleaxe, or what-have-you into battle.
This gives that soldier access to two two-handed weapons (and oh god using the same word twice in a row is awkward). If anything, I'd say additional diversity in polearms had more to do with it, as they were cheaper and (generally, but not absolutely always) more effective in formation.There's really nothing else to it.
Those who could not afford, or could not wield due to strength or lack of training, the two handers were still using shields.Your average two handed sword clocks in at approximately a bee's dick in additional weight when compared to a one-handed equivalent. In fact, using a two handed sword is less strenuous, as the mass is spread across two hands, with a lengthy fulcrum to aid in control. They're also easier to use from a technical perspective due to that additional control.The small arm shields, bucklers and what have you, gained favor during the early long ranged firearm period because they weren't a drawback.Partially true, but let's look at the most well-known and archetypical late medieval missile soldier: the English yeomen, or longbowman. Typically, one of these has their longbow, a one handed sword, a buckler, and a dagger on their person. The sword and buckler combination is really useful to them, because it's so easy to maintain defense against close combat attacks with that weapon pairing, and they don't require the capacity to make overwhelming assaults on enemy positions. Additionally, the range of their longbows protects them; no enemy general would dare deploy their own missile troops within range of English yeomen without significant cover, as their missile troops would take casualties well before getting into close enough range to return the favour.
To the English yeoman, their longbow is a form of both missile offense and missile defense, with the sword and buckler combination allowing them to remain survivable specifically against enemy infantry assaults (if it ever came to that).This results in the 'pressure cooker' strategy that Agincourt made famous. The English could attack enemy positions with relative impunity, forcing opposing forces to either leave the field or throw themselves into an assault - which the English were perfectly well prepared for (with shieldless, dismounted, poleaxe and longsword-wielding knights, no less).The takeaway from this? With or without firearms, late medieval warriors could find plenty of good reasons not to use a shield, between advanced in both armour and weapons technology, and new large-scale strategies. That, say, Serbian knights (in relatively close proximity to the Ottomans) continued to use shields to a degree while English knights discarded them tells us plenty. Firearms had relatively little to do with shield use (or disuse), and the use of various kinds of equipments had much more to do with the broader state of technology, military strategy, and the preferences of individual combatants. Actually, I'm not making a word up. I'm a student of Johannes Liechtenauer's Kunst des Fechtens.
Liechtenauer was a 14th century German knight, whose students would go on to leave behind dozens of illustrated martial arts manuscripts over a period of about three hundred years. Some of his students were associated with the Brotherhood of St. Mark, which was Germany's premiere fencing guild, supported and authorised by the Imperial throne. What I have to say about the use of medieval weapons comes from first hand experience, although I confess to being absent at the Battle of Agincourt.I'm sincerely sorry if I offended you, but I'm simply recounting what I've been taught by first-hand sources. And I do mean that apology earnestly. I never wanted to come across as rude or crass, but there's a lot of (well-meaning) misinformation out there.Edit: Oh, I'm ignored.
So much for that. They were primarily used because minimal training was required to operate one when compared to a sword or even a spear, which allowed generals to raise and deploy much larger armies at a much faster pace.I think you're confusing them with bows. Firearms didn't become more common because they were easier than swords and spears. Swords and spears are essentially a different combat 'triangle'. You can't replace all your swordsmen with firearms and expect the same output in battle.
Swords and melee weapons have their place in battle, and firearms didn't replace them.Firearms replaced bows. They were easier to use and didn't require the years of dedicated training that an archer would (like those English Longbows). I'm talking about their uptake over a longer period of development. Initial performance of those firearms didn't live up to the common pop-cultural idea that they undid conventional medieval warfare. But they were cost-effective, which paid dividends after a long period of development (clearly).In any case, firearms didn't replace bows for a long time - long enough for Machiavelli, in his Art of War, to talk about how firearms had supplanted the role javelins and other throwing weapons used to have in ancient warfare, but not the role of bows and crossbows.Edited to remove inappropriate smartassery, because I'm a big dumb jerk at times.
Mount And Blade Warband Samurai Armor Mod
Today we are talking to Dan Taylor, a professional level designer who has in the past worked for Eidos, Square Enix, Ubisoft, Rockstar (among others) on games such as Medal of Honor Heroes 2, Hitman: Sniper, or Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Dan - who started out as a modder for Morrowind, Skyrim, and Fallout New Vegas - has close to two decades of experience in the video game industry under his belt and his talk on Ten Principles for Good Level Design at the Game Developer's Conference 2013 is cu.