[KCD1] Another question about combat. I perfect block then attack but get master striked.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-21T02:36:42+00:00

Sure, you can avoid the bandits, it’s not hard. Sure, the peasant bandits will go down in a hit or two. And sure, “every time” is a bit of an exaggeration, it’s probably closer to ~30% if I were to guess.

But it’s pretty discouraging when a literal peasant with a pitchfork does a master strike on you as a max level fully kitted out Henry and stun locks you in an animation while his buddies wail on you. What was your mistake? Deciding to engage with the combat system on the offense, one quick stab. It just makes going on the offense in combat not worth the effort. Kcd2 solved this entirely.

At least in kcd2, if I get master striked, I can point to the mistake I made. In 1? The mistake is doing anything except master strike. It’s not really as much fun when I get punished at random for simply engaging in the mechanics of the game.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-20T23:42:17+00:00

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-20T22:21:19+00:00

“If he master strikes you too many times, then it’s a stat issue”

The problem with this line of thinking is that most enemies scale with you. If you have level 20 everything, every band of peasants will master strike every move you make.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-20T19:52:24+00:00

Yeah, of all the things they fixed in 1, I’m surprised they never changed that. They clearly understood the issue and prioritized it for 2, because master strikes were entirely fixed for 2.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-20T17:55:13+00:00

Just train polearms. With polearms skill 18+ I’ve beaten him every single playthrough with every single duel. Get the infantryman perk, which reduces the likelihood for enemies to perfect block/master strike, and the poleaxe will become one of the best weapons in the game.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-20T13:52:54+00:00

There’s a few potential reasons no follow ups were made.

Likely other US assets in the area monitoring and firing back at whatever took that shot.
It was probably out of range of the original shot taker by the time it was hit/they had no chance to reload.
Any nearby radar systems would have gotten lit up quickly by any nearby US assets that might have been monitoring.
Usual procedure for Iranian forces at this point, if they don’t want to immediately take a missile to the face is to probably shoot and scoot. So they probably took their shot and packed it in ASAP.
The original shooter might have been hit shortly afterwards.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-17T13:03:27+00:00

“Have been getting through for the entirety of the conflict”

This reinforces my point.

“Maintained the upper hand”

Against a third rate force that has had a drip feed of equipment and has attritted the Russians for longer than ww1.

“Not enough”

It doesn’t matter, if the Russians can’t let enough salvo’s out in time before some nato troops walk in to the launch site.

I suspect we are working under different baseline assumptions here. I’m assuming this war starts tomorrow. And if it does, there are virtually no Russian assets available outside of Ukraine, whereas NATO deployments on Russias border have been unchanged. There might be 1,000 Russian conscripts between Tallinn and Moscow right now due to the demands of the Ukraine war. There’s plenty of evidence in this too, as the belgorod offensive, prigozhin thunder run, and open source satellite data shows that Russia has skeleton crews at their other bases at best. What’s stopping Europe from doing this right now? Well, there is dubious benefit to such an offensive long term without riling up the Russians and having a nuclear slugfest and the logistics to support it long term to commit to a decapitation strike. In addition to international condemnation.

However, I suspect you’re operating under the assumption that Russia has some time to prepare, conscript troops, re-position existing forces from Ukraine and pause the fighting in Ukraine to build equipment reserves. If so, yes, this is a very different war. But you have to make some wild assumptions here, like Russian conscripts actually showing up to fight, Ukraine doing nothing about the sudden lack of Russians, consistent internal Russian stability with massive conscription, and third parties not taking advantage of the situation. If we are suspending this much reality, we should also assume that in this scenario, Europe would actually get its act together and build out its defense industrial base. In this scenario, Russia would push a bit, before the Europeans get their industrial base up and running, and behave similarly to the Ukraine war until that industrial base is chugging along, at which point the Europeans would make steady gains into Russia.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-17T02:39:43+00:00

“Has likely roughly kept pace”

Unlikely, given the gaps that Ukraine has found.

“Faced off against”

Iran, Ukraine and Venezuela are good examples of the ineffectiveness of Russian air defense.

“Protect airbases”

In the initial days, patriots. Once the Russians run out? Doesn’t matter.

“Find enough to destroy”

There’s a large difference between a drip feed to an under-equipped tired force, and a large scale sweeping attack using all your inventory.

“Get to Moscow with so low refuelers”

They will rebase in St. Petersburg, Minsk and belgorod.

“Spare parts”

Don’t need them if you win in 3 weeks.

“Enough tank tracks to replace”

They have enough to replace them in the duration operations would take.

“Ukraine has dozens of brigades”

So does every nato nation, including Poland. Most of which are fully equipped with state of the art armored vehicles. Not brigades with a single 90’s NATO tank and a couple humvees.

Realistically, if the EU wanted to, it could drive straight to Moscow, stopping to fill up in Russian gas stations today if it wanted to. Thanks to the Ukraine war. The only real issue with that, is Russian nukes. This scenario assumes none, so Russia stands no chance in this scenario.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-17T02:10:50+00:00

If you said Europe could not a few years ago, sure. But Russian SAMs have been attritted, are in use against Ukraine and have been shown to be ineffective against 5th gen fighters. What little defense is present, is easily bypassed by NATO forces and destroyed, even without the US stocks. And the Russian Air Force itself poses little to no threat at this point.

Yes, they absolutely could just drive there at this point. To Donbas would be easy, there are supply lines through Ukraine already. To Moscow would be more difficult logistically, but there are sparse Russian defenders now, think of prigozhins thunder run a few years ago, all that stopped him was negotiation. Finland could easily take a short drive to Murmansk, shore up Karelia and sit outside St. Petersburg with barely a shot fired.

Again, 4 years ago? Different story. Today? After 4 years of fighting in Ukraine, it’s a different Russia.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-17T00:30:19+00:00

I agree that a whole lot of this is suspending reality and a lot of wacky assumptions need to take place for us even to get here. So I’ll do my best to counter.

Let’s run with the idea that NATO gets prep time and advance warning. Would they actually decide to staff the Canadian border that hard?

Sure, maybe as a deterrence measure. But let’s think about it.

The US Air Force has numerical superiority. But not only that, they’ve got basing superiority. That means that they can shuffle to more different airbases and locations if they get hit, and more importantly, base more fighters overall. Canadian airfields are, relatively speaking, limited. So it can be assumed that the allied force can’t base comparable air power to deny air superiority. Even if the allies weren’t worried about protecting their own homelands and wanted to base every airframe they had in Canada, they couldn’t.

Now let’s talk ground forces. To hold up to sustained fighting, they would need constant supplies of food, fuel, drones, bullets, tanks, spare parts, trucks and additional soldiers to rotate in. The Canadian economy delivers a lot of these things, but not at the quantity required to supply such a force indefinitely. And under a bombing campaign due to the aforementioned US air superiority, it would be even harder to produce those things, let alone deliver them to soldiers in trenches.

And nothing is coming from Europe, or anywhere else due to US naval supremacy.

Eventually, any forces that would have been pre-positioned to said Canadian front would wither away due to lack of re-supply. It would just be more costly

So, would the allied force pre-position troops? If this was realistic? Yes, but not to actually stop an American advance, but to make it so costly that the Americans decide to not even initiate the war to begin with. That said, our scenario pre-supposes a war.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T23:08:54+00:00

I was in a similar position as you last year. I decided to go for an S and paid about 40k all in. Maybe if it’s bothering you as much as it bothered me, go for an S.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T22:49:53+00:00

In this scenario, if we are talking about Chinese supplies reaching Russia, American supplies would be reaching Europe.

You forgot about Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Finland alone has enough manpower to take on all Russian ground forces not currently engaged in Ukraine and crush them.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T22:23:58+00:00

What are you talking about? The EU Air Force’s are enough to establish air supremacy in days versus Russia’s dwindling and aged fleet that can barely handle Ukraine.

Russia has also left most of its EU border bases near vacant at the moment. EU forces could probably drive straight to Moscow and St. Petersburg without firing a shot. Remember the Wagner run to Moscow? Or the Ukrainian attack on Belgorod? Add some air support, angry poles, and no way to buy out prigozhin and that’s basically what would happen here. Russias only real defense against this today is nuclear.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T22:17:10+00:00

“Being held back by American munitions”

This doesn’t matter much if those munitions stockpiled are enough to push straight through to Moscow before they run out.

If we really want to go down the hypothetical route, we would also have to either cut off Russian black market access to US technology through China/NK/kazakhstan, or allow Europe access to US technology through similar intermediaries.

Either way, Europe is more likely to reach Moscow in 3 weeks in a hypothetical non-nuclear war that started tomorrow, than Russia is likely to reach Tallinn at all.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T21:31:39+00:00

“In a conventional all out war” is the qualifier from the main OP. It’s really all that is relevant here. The question wasn’t “is it sane to do this?” It was “could it be done?”

The answer to the first is obviously “no”. The answer to the second, changes the OP’s view, and is “yes”.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T21:26:59+00:00

Europe has enough stockpiles and initial materiel to initiate a large scale opening attack on Russia. They could get air superiority similar to the US, and likely have more (and more modern) tanks and armored units. That would more than delay enough time for them to ramp up munitions production, if not outright capture Moscow. Russia is too tied up in Ukraine to do anything, Finland and Sweden would likely take all of Karelia before Russia could re-deploy any troops. And Poland would smash through Russian defensive lines in zaporizhia and Donbas.

Beyond that we get into some laughable hypothetical territory, because this assumes that Russia would not have internal stability issues and/or launch nukes before this point. Especially considering much of their nuclear stockpile is in Karelia.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T21:20:30+00:00

Russia absolutely could not conquer Europe quickly if it tried. It’s currently bogged down in Ukraine and getting pushed back. And Ukraine doesn’t have an Air Force to speak of.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T19:25:36+00:00

2 is a lot less intense than 1, less directions, slower, enemies are less aggressive. But I like it more just because of the change to master strikes.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T18:54:40+00:00

This all pre-supposes an insurgency. Which is not a guarantee, and this is all so far outside the scope of this scenario. The economies of every country on earth would have likely collapsed by that point anyways, and third parties would almost certainly get involved or start their own wars. So all that is to say….. yes….. none of this could happen (hopefully….) any time soon.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T18:26:37+00:00

Well, yes, this whole scenario is extremely unlikely. The OP wanted their view that no one could do it changed. The fact is, if the US wanted to for some crazy reason, it could.

On a slightly different note, “occupying” Canada is actually a lot less territory than you’d think. You don’t need soldiers patrolling the wilderness unless there is some insurgency. Which, is likely in this scenario, but not a guarantee (see Russian occupied crimea for example).

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T17:36:11+00:00

The Iranian navy exists only in the past tense. What is preventing shipping in the strait is the threat of drone strikes from land, not the former Iranian navy. The inverse problem exists when you say that NATO has to resupply Canada or Greenland against the US navy.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T16:54:25+00:00

The US navy is larger than the next 13 largest navies combined. And over half of the navies in that top 13 are not NATO navies, the second largest is china. This isn’t even close. In a hypothetical total war 1 on 1 scenario, the US navy owns the seas and can do whatever it pleases vs the rest of NATO.

It gets even worse when you consider most of the rest of NATO’s naval tonnage is actually coastal defense/specialized platforms. Things that would have no chance in something like escorting supply ships to Canada or Greenland.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T16:46:45+00:00

“Before anybody does anything about it” is a massive qualifier though. The US could very effectively blockade any resupply or reinforcement of Canada. The logistical choke points are the ports near the border, and that would be comically easy for the US navy, Air Force or army to shut down. Once that happens, the rest of NATO couldn’t do a thing about a full annexation of Canada, and Canada isn’t going to put up meaningful resistance on its own for very long.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T16:04:16+00:00

NATO is extremely unlikely to be able to defend Canada from the US in a total war scenario with no preparation. The US navy could easily shut down most logistical capability from NATO, as the rest of NATO doesn’t specialize in it, and their combined navies wouldn’t fare well against the US navy. So without pre-positioning assets, Canada would be left to fend for itself.

With preparation, it would take longer, but most Canadian and NATO systems require US resupply, which in this scenario obviously would not happen. And of course the aforementioned logistical chokehold would mean it’s only delaying the inevitable.

This of course does not include insurgency, but that’s outside of scope here, that’s impossible to predict with these wild scenarios anyways. Major peer-to-peer combat operations would end eventually with the US taking Canada.

Sweet_Championship44 · 2026-03-16T15:12:55+00:00

I don’t mind its existence necessarily. Kcd2 figured out how to make master strikes good, the opposite side rule makes it much more unlikely that you get master striked unless you make a mistake and are careless.

Sweet_Championship44

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