[mainline] peasants

[Boldek]

hello,
I have been recently playing peasants, when I realized a big and pointless breakage in realism in the game. the peasant has an attack of 5-2. now he upgrades to a spearman with a 7-3, or a bowman with a 6-3. but the gobo spearman has a 6-3, and has the same amount of hp, which means that at dawn, a gobo can kill a peasant in one attack! probably the only time that a unit can destroy another unit of the same level in one attack, with no bonuses. here is the problem. not only is this slightly unbalanced, but unrealistic according to wesnoth description, the gobo is a runty orc, the weakling who is given a sharpened stick and sent out to get killed. so why can a malnourished runt, who is weaker, shorter, and poorly equipped, capable of not only overpower, but destroy in a single encounter, a well-fed, muscular human who has spent his life on agricultural labour, armed with a steel two pronged weapon? even if the devs come up with some WINR thing, it doesn't explain how an unarmed corpse, with no idea of strategy or anything, fighting with its fists, have a larger attack than our peasant? shouldn't he have a 4-2, or at least a 5-2? but why a 6-2? that thing, added with bonus of plague, is simply much more powerful. so why is the peasant so wimpy compared to these guys?
to cut a long story short: I am a peasant lover who the devs to either crank down the wc and gobo attacks to 4 instead of 6, or at least giving the peasant more attack. you could even just pull the gobo hp down.

[Captain_Wrathbow]

when I realized a big and pointless breakage in realism in the game.

Mental alarm bell started going off when I read the emphasized word.

WINR.

Suggesting that the devs distort the balance of the game for the sake of realism is a rather poor argument.

[monochromatic]

Let a peasant sit there for a couple years and gain some xp. He may eventually be able to do a 19-2!
i.e. it's not unit-to-unit balancing. Peasants have so much potential. He's the only level 0 unit able to go to level 3 iirc.

[zookeeper]

What happens whenever you see peasants attacked by goblins or zombies? They scream, fumble, try to run and then die. Occasionally a heroic peasant manages to kill one only to get overpowered by others seconds later.

It's perfectly realistic.

[Captain_Wrathbow]

i.e. it's not unit-to-unit balancing.

QFT.

To expand on that a little: you can't balance one unit against another one; that's not how it works. Units are not balanced against other individual units, factions are balanced against other factions.

[mystic x the unknown]

you can't balance one unit against another one; that's not how it works. Units are not balanced against other individual units, factions are balanced against other factions.

Units stats should be such that the battles can appear reasonably believable. In this case he argues that a unit that appears superior actually performs much worse than the perceived weakling.

However the comparison in the first post is somewhat flawed..

The peasant can have more hitpoints thanks to traits. 2 out of 3 of peasants have more than 18 hitpoints and thus can't die from 1 attack. 1 out of 3 goblins will have the 'weak' trait, capping their maximum damage at 15. Even if the right gobbo and the right peasant meet, you need to deal 3/3 hits. The peasant has further advantages, mostly thanks to it's positive traits. Damage is really the only area in which the goblin shines.

The peasant represents farmers who have been forced to fight. There is no training implied.
The goblins live in a society fraught with danger, they probably fight with each other and spend some time with combat practice.
For the peasant, I wouldn't say they need to be well-fed or muscular. Common people were often malnourished in the past.

You could probably find many more of such arguable discrepancies. For example the Young Ogre has a meagre 5-3 attack even though it's portrayed as large, muscular and possessing "great strength".

Adding damage to the peasant wouldn't be such a big problem, but it would affect many campaigns & MP scenarios and necessitate quite some tweaking.

[Dixie]

Also, for WCs, while they don,t really have training either, they might have greater undead strenght or something, and while the game portraits them fighting with their fists, I have no problem imagining them biting and clawing madly at their target. And unlike humans, they don't know fear. I think the peasant is quite okay as it is, personnally.

[Zachron]

... so why can a malnourished runt, who is weaker, shorter, and poorly equipped, capable of not only overpower, but destroy in a single encounter, a well-fed, muscular human who has spent his life on agricultural labour, armed with a steel two pronged weapon? ...

You are making several grave assumptions. One of them being that the Human in question is well-fed. Peasants usually weren't. Having to perform agriculture without the assistance of fertilizer or machinery was exhausting and only marginally productive. Furthermore, the muscles necessary for farming are not all the same muscle groups necessary for fighting... In ancient human history this was seen in primitive farmers being often raided or even conquered by hunter gatherers, or herders, who would treat the agriculturalists as yet another resource to exploit. (So the class/tribute system itself is a hunter-gatherer type behavior in that regard)

Out of the real world, into the Irdya, the Wesnothian peasant was never portrayed as being the Prosperous Medieval Farmer, rather more often as the lowly drudge who barely eakes out his very existence. Furthermore, the Pesants who are recruitable were quite often representatives of displaced civilian populations or people who are facing very rough times. Quite often there is a reason in the story why these peasants are on the field of battle rather than working in fields of grain... and it's usually a grim one.

So replace the assertion of "well fed" with "adequately fed under normal circumstances... which are never the case when you see them on the field." To put in it simpler terms in times where the peasants are more prosperous, those who muster as members of the militia will have better weaponry to bring to the field and more time to practice in the usage thereof, thus they would muster forth as Spearmen, Bowmen, or maybe even Horsemen. Thus the Golden Age, where peasants were actually adequately fed, would never see peasants on the field of battle as simply "peasants." Conversely those who who might be fielded without weapons in times which are less lean, more likely represent the "have-nots" and thus would not be as well nourished as the "haves." Or if they mustered with a militia without specialized weapons, they may not represent those who are martially inclined.(Even if the individual is martially inclined the family he came from may not be.)

The next issue concerns their pitchforks. Yes they are "steel" sometimes, but they aren't designed to be weapons, nor is a peasant actually trained to effectively use one as a weapon. A goblin on the other hand, holds a spear, and, while it is basically a sharpened piece of wood, the implement is a weapon by design, and the goblin is actually trained to use it as a weapon.

I quite often see the Explanation WINR, which is meant to convey that Balance comes before Realism. But I prefer to say that WIRUIO, Wesnoth is Realistic unto itself only. This means that since balance comes before realism, we must formulate the reality around the situation based on the outcomes of said situations in game. The reality is, peasants get owned on the field. Goblins do as much damage as human spearmen. Zombies are weak but strike in hordes. Peasants fight well in groups. These are facts expressed empirically in game. The reality of Wesnoth, must be constructed from the facts, demonstrated in narrative, and in-game behavior. In fact I tend to hold the credence of facts in this order, from greatest to least. In game behavior >> Mainline Campaign Narrative >> Popular UMC Narrative >> In game Unit Description >> Out of Game Lore on the Wiki >> Out of Game Lore on the Forum...

This means if there is a contradiction between the description an the In-game behavior, it is the description which must be changed.

[pauxlo]

Also, UAPEB. Maybe the goblin spearman unit is composed of more goblins than humans in a peasant unit.

[Insinuator]

Furthermore, the muscles necessary for farming are not all the same muscle groups necessary for fighting... In ancient human history this was seen in primitive farmers being often raided or even conquered by hunter gatherers, or herders, who would treat the agriculturalists as yet another resource to exploit.

Getting a little too enamored with your history lesson there. While you're right about most of it, the musculature of farmers vs raiders never had any impact on their conflict. Experience in warfare, tactics used (pillaging, burning, hit-and-run), and group impact were infinitely more important. Saying the raiders beat the farmers just because they were stronger is silly.

But back on topic... It should be noted that Peasants are cheaper than Goblin Spearmen. Not by much, but it makes a difference.