Why Sturgia often grows weak, Khuzait often grows strong

[Faulty]

Yeah Sturgia has no strategic depth and is usually overrun in my games. Current game I had to bail and join someone else because I didn't want to go down with that ship haha

I think Sturgia could be made more viable with the addition of some depth to its north, which would be a safe spot for recruitment and give an extra path to travel for reinforcements. Something like this:

 

[xdj1nn]

Yeah Sturgia has no strategic depth and is usually overrun in my games. Current game I had to bail and join someone else because I didn't want to go down with that ship haha

I think Sturgia could be made more viable with the addition of some depth to its north, which would be a safe spot for recruitment and give an extra path to travel for reinforcements. Something like this:

not a bad idea, but I'd also slap in yet another caslte between Ov and Varcheg, and move that ridiculously positioned castle west of Revyl to the East of Revyl... Currently it's in a mind boggling and useles position, what the **** are they supposedly protecting there? Snow?

Omor could also do with one or two extra villages, and even then, they lack a defensive fief north of Mocalovea Castle (the one east of Epicrotea), it's like they have open borders to the Northern Empire.

Balance wise,Diathma, Argoron, Omor, Varcheg, Revyl, Balgard, Varnovapol, Sibir and Tyal suck prosperity wise because they have the astonishing amount of .... ... ...... WAIT FOR IT! 2 ****ing bound villages each. So, even by late game, they'll barely surpass 6k prosperity, while the rest of the map is toying with 12k prosperity.

But it doesn't stop there, the Mountain Ridge to the side of Varnovapol holds one of it's incredible 2 bound villages to the other side, so for villagers to travel to Varnovapol, they have to go around that ridge, said ridge runs almost all the way to Vladiv Castle and is in deep forest. I mean, that village is pretty useless economically because if they complete a trip it's already a miracle.

 

[Stratigo]

not a bad idea, but I'd also slap in yet another caslte between Ov and Varcheg, and move that ridiculously positioned castle west of Revyl to the East of Revyl... Currently it's in a mind boggling and useles position, what the **** are they supposedly protecting there? Snow?

Omor could also do with one or two extra villages, and even then, they lack a defensive fief north of Mocalovea Castle (the one east of Epicrotea), it's like they have open borders to the Northern Empire.

Balance wise,Diathma, Argoron, Omor, Varcheg, Revyl, Balgard, Varnovapol, Sibir and Tyal suck prosperity wise because they have the astonishing amount of .... ... ...... WAIT FOR IT! 2 ****ing bound villages each. So, even by late game, they'll barely surpass 6k prosperity, while the rest of the map is toying with 12k prosperity.

But it doesn't stop there, the Mountain Ridge to the side of Varnovapol holds one of it's incredible 2 bound villages to the other side, so for villagers to travel to Varnovapol, they have to go around that ridge, said ridge runs almost all the way to Vladiv Castle and is in deep forest. I mean, that village is pretty useless economically because if they complete a trip it's already a miracle.

I mean, defending against incursions from the sea. It's not a thing in the game, but it is a thing in the setting.

 

[xdj1nn]

I mean, defending against incursions from the sea. It's not a thing in the game, but it is a thing in the setting.

only if it were a coastal castle, it's not, it's literally in the middle of nowhereland.

 

[Kegeyn]

Battania is an interesting case that looks bad but is actually very strong. Looking surrounded, it has 4 factions that are possible enemies (nothing special here). However - since their territory is a circle (sort of) they can react very fast to all of the threats. Also as was mentioned above the can recruit quickly as their cities and villages are clumped together.
Even if they loose a battle, their lords spawn close to each other with new troops and it takes very short time to zerg again against the enemy.

Sturgia on the other hand is everything except that ;d

 

[Stratigo]

Battania is an interesting case that looks bad but is actually very strong. Looking surrounded, it has 4 factions that are possible enemies (nothing special here). However - since their territory is a circle (sort of) they can react very fast to all of the threats. Also as was mentioned above the can recruit quickly as their cities and villages are clumped together.
Even if they loose a battle, their lords spawn close to each other with new troops and it takes very short time to zerg again against the enemy.

Sturgia on the other hand is everything except that ;d

I see battania tend to being double teamed by vlandia and the western empire, but it the WE gets distracted, it can manage and prosper.

 

[xdj1nn]

I see battania tend to being double teamed by vlandia and the western empire, but it the WE gets distracted, it can manage and prosper.

More often than not in my games Battania utterly destroys WE then SE takes the rest like vultures. Vlandia rarely if ever maintains war with Battania, so it's almost impossible to see them eliminated (11 different playthroughs so far, never seen Battania lose unless I was the one attacking them)

 

[durbal]

Wrong. Look at their percentage of won battles. Ask yourself why. (The answer is the ability to only engage on favorable terms due to campaign movespeed and higher percentage of cavalry.)

 

[xdj1nn]

Wrong. Look at their percentage of won battles. Ask yourself why. (The answer is the ability to only engage on favorable terms due to campaign movespeed and higher percentage of cavalry.)

Look at map above, you are talking garbage, that scenario over there is the most common in every single playthrough... Battania (or Vlandia) utterly destroys Sturgia to the West, then if it was Vlandia, Battania takes it for them, then Khuzait succesfully take everything else, unless battania beats it before. Khuzait is broken af, they move too fast, and get a ridiculous bonus to battle auto-calc due to having mostly cavalry....

 

[Stratigo]

More often than not in my games Battania utterly destroys WE then SE takes the rest like vultures. Vlandia rarely if ever maintains war with Battania, so it's almost impossible to see them eliminated (11 different playthroughs so far, never seen Battania lose unless I was the only attacking them)

Weird, I usually see them being beaten by vlandia, but I have noticed that the tempo of ai battania is usually set on the very first big battle with the western empire. If they win, they're set, if they lose, they collapse fast. I've done... a lot of restarts and this was the rough trend. Not as big a thing like khuzait dominance

But I also have increasingly modded my game, recently tossing in diplo exhaustion (eg forced peaces after too much land is taken) and a bunch of TML's tweaks, and battania is doing quite well this playthrough. Khuzaits are STILL doing the best, having conquerred three extra cities (and at one point five before I forced one back to the aserai for crimes against bordergore and the south empire surprisingly rallied to retake vostrum) And this is in the face of significantly buffed militia garrisons AND diplo peacing after too much of a steamroll. And them being my enemy number 1 that I focused on trying to fight when I was doing merc work.

 

[xdj1nn]

Weird, I usually see them being beaten by vlandia, but I have noticed that the tempo of ai battania is usually set on the very first big battle with the western empire. If they win, they're set, if they lose, they collapse fast. I've done... a lot of restarts and this was the rough trend. Not as big a thing like khuzait dominance

But I also have increasingly modded my game, recently tossing in diplo exhaustion (eg forced peaces after too much land is taken) and a bunch of TML's tweaks, and battania is doing quite well this playthrough. Khuzaits are STILL doing the best, having conquerred three extra cities (and at one point five before I forced one back to the aserai for crimes against bordergore and the south empire surprisingly rallied to retake vostrum) And this is in the face of significantly buffed militia garrisons AND diplo peacing after too much of a steamroll. And them being my enemy number 1 that I focused on trying to fight when I was doing merc work.

as I've said, they snowball too easily (khuzaits) due to other ridiculous buffs, then Battania gets the prize because they develop too much over-time... I mean, for the AI, Battanian towns are impossible to take after a while, they won't even target them... It's a combination of factors, again, the AI works bad on Campaign map for most of the time, and anything that has more cavalry will win on auto-calc probabilities, so that's why Khuzait dominates, and even if we beat them to death, they respawn and move too fast, so they recover almost instantly, and are back to the offensive in no time.

Battania on the other hand works best in the defensive, they also recover almost instantly due to the cluster-**** of fiefs, but at least they do not move like Sonic, so they can't really faceroll everybody on sieges (as Khuzaits do), still they always take half of Sturgia and half of WE in most games I play.

 

[ZydrateTheSmoothCriminal]

I just took a look at the southern part of the map and there could easily be 2 desert kingdoms, there is a very usable geography down there. I hope they'll add it, sometime, eventually.

 

[Highest of all Landers]

IMO the OP is mostly right, aside from Aserai not fighting on the SE/Khuzaits border, in my games they always struggle to hold Husn Fulq and sometimes are pushed back all the way to fighting over Razih/Hubyar.

In my games, Battania and Khuzaits are always the strongest factions.

Battanian locations are so close to each other that allows for easy replenishment of parties and for armies to gather quickly, so it is pretty much impossible to get some real advantage after a major battle.

This could be changed so that lords have some sort of cooldown or build up before going around joining armies again, they should stay at towns/castles for more time so they won't be captured by bandits all the time and army vs army battles would actually mean something. As for avoiding making kingdoms defenseless, sieges should be made harder so that armies that took a lot of casualties in said battles would have to reconsider going on the offensive and go back to replenish. Their advantage would not be completely lost as they should be ready for another offensive before the opposing kingdom could rebuild.

This should lead to more stalemates between kingdoms, unless one is fighting multiple wars, to which I would expect the AI to try signing peace as quick as it could.

Khuzaits on the other hand have an advantage because they are much faster than other kingdoms, this means that they can mobilize quicker and they get to pick their battles most of the time, either wiping out a weaker army or running away from defeat. Reducing the cavalry speed bonus could make it more balanced and would also affect the Scooter Steppe Bandits with their 7.5+ speed and shouldn't be felt as hard on other kingdoms. Auto-calc strength is also a problem, it is clear that cav has an advantage, but I don't know how troops are classified or how their weight is calculated so I can't really give an opinion here.

And that takes us to Sturgia, the weakest kingdom. As mentioned by others, their weakness comes from multiple factors, like less locations, lower prosperity overall and difficult terrain making it harder for lords to move around. I would like to propose something, like for the previous two, that wouldn't need to change the map, but I don't think that changing their cultural trait or improving their troops would be of much help.

 

[Stratigo]

People poking around in code have noted that auto resolve pretty much takes into account the unit tier and if they’re on horseback, and that is mostly it in field battles

 

[AndrewBones]

Other than stuff that was mentioned several times already here, there is also IMO one more contributing factor related to Raganvad being an utter moron.

Even if Sturgia gains some upper hand and takes a fief or two, Raganvad just takes it for himself. This in turn makes AI lords pissed and they defect to other empires. I quite often saw Sturgian lords joining other factions very early on.

 

[Earth Dragon]

I agree Sturgia has it rough with the Geography.

But the map is the map.

All factions should NOT be created equal on this front. The Pyrenees are why the Franks stood up the Moors and preserved European Culture. Istanbul’s commanding location is why it was sought after by the Ottomans, and why the Eastern Roman Empire held it for so long. Controlling Cairo has always been an economic boon for its possessor and a hot spot of contention for 3000 years.

Everything just isn’t the same, and it shouldn’t be made that way. Some factions, like all the factions in the center, are gonna have bigger issues. some stretches are going to cause heftier logistical nightmares, and some cities should be built to be more successful then others.

It adds more layers of difficulty to the game naturally when attempting to overcome innate challenges depending on whose cause you take up or where you want to start your kingdom

 

[mexxico]

For last 3 days I tried to understand reasons of lords remaining with 0 gold situation which happens at 1.3.0. It is not common but when happens it is so disturbing, lords even cannot buy food and starving. I was also expecting to prove Sturgians are suffering mostly as economical because their towns has very low prosperity compared others. However I see that Aserai suffers more as economical compared to Sturgia even they have several towns with high prosperity. Also Battanians were in a good economical situation in most games even their total number of towns and total prosperity is less than others even from Sturgia and Aserai. Then it was obvious total income is not mainly come from taxes. I was expecting 80% of npc clan's income comes from taxes but this ratio was lower it seems. Then I collect data from battle loots too in addition to taxes. Made a table all together. In the table it was clearly seen battle loots are so important for Npc clans. Long peace times (identified as blue rectangles in table) damage kingdom's economy because lords cannot get loots, in opposite in war times kingdom clans get rich (red rectangles). As you see at table a kingdom's income source mainly comes from tax from towns / castles / villages but it is only 60% was not 80% like I expect. Remaining 35% come from battles. About 5% others (prisoners, etc).

In table there is only one game 10 year run data. In that game Sturgia was not isolated much and joined lots of battles thats why their economy did not go bad. However in some gameplays Sturgians can be so isolated and they can have long peace times. This also damage their economy. Then if they go in war when their economy is not good they lose settlements because of weak garrisons. Also yes second reason is their tax income per fortification is least among all kingdoms. (in table it is not so obvious because they captured 1-2 extra towns)

By the way empire column for poor clan leaders (last 6 columns) is for all 3 empire factions. You can divide it to 3 to compare with others.

As conclusion, with a patch we will decrease loot income from battles (for only npcs, they get this income as gold instead of items for now, however there was no trade penalty applied, we will add that) by 50% and we will increase all tax incomes from settlements by 25%. This will make economy of kingdoms more stable, they will not need battles to save their economical balance, also player will get 25% better tax too. Current bonuses for Sturgia and Aserai can change in future they are not effective and these two factions should get some important bonus because they suffer from geographical positions also Sturgia has lowest prosperity and they get 30-40% less tax income compared average of others.

One addition : while examining all prosperities I see 3 Aserai castles start game with 0 prosperity. This is weird we did not notice it for 1 month. It will be also fixed with patch.

There are some reports also 1.3x cavalry bonus also damage Sturgia parties in simulations. Will also examine its effects on Sturgia's weakness and give report to teams added that constant.

 

[D0c1]

For last 3 days I tried to understand reasons of lords remaining with 0 gold situation which happens at 1.3.0. It is not common but when happens it is so disturbing, lords even cannot buy food and starving. I was also expecting to prove Sturgians are suffering mostly as economical because their towns has very low prosperity compared others. However I see that Aserai suffers more as economical compared to Sturgia even they have several towns with high prosperity. Also Battanians were in a good economical situation in most games even their total number of towns and total prosperity is less than others even from Sturgia and Aserai. Then it was obvious total income is not mainly come from taxes. I was expecting 80% of npc clan's income comes from taxes but this ratio was lower it seems. Then I collect data from battle loots too in addition to taxes. Made a table all together. In the table it was clearly seen battle loots are so important for Npc clans. Long peace times (identified as blue rectangles in table) damage kingdom's economy because lords cannot get loots, in opposite in war times kingdom clans get rich (red rectangles). As you see at table a kingdom's income source mainly comes from tax from towns / castles / villages but it is only 60% was not 80% like I expect. Remaining 35% come from battles. About 5% others (prisoners, etc).

In table there is only one game 10 year run data. In that game Sturgia was not isolated much and joined lots of battles thats why their economy did not go bad. However in some gameplays Sturgians can be so isolated and they can have long peace times. This also damage their economy. Then if they go in war when their economy is not good they lose settlements because of weak garrisons. Also yes second reason is their tax income per fortification is least among all kingdoms. (in table it is not so obvious because they captured 1-2 extra towns)

By the way empire column for poor clan leaders (last 6 columns) is for all 3 empire factions. You can divide it to 3 to compare with others.

As conclusion, with a patch we will decrease loot income from battles (for only npcs, they get this income as gold instead of items for now, however there was no trade penalty applied, we will add that) by 50% and we will increase all tax incomes from settlements by 25%. This will make economy of kingdoms more stable, they will not need battles to save their economical balance, also player will get 25% better tax too. Current bonuses for Sturgia and Aserai can change in future they are not effective and these two factions should get some important bonus because they suffer from geographical positions also Sturgia has lowest prosperity and they get 30-40% less tax income compared average of others.

One addition : while examining all prosperities I see 3 Aserai castles start game with 0 prosperity. This is weird we did not notice it for 1 month. It will be also fixed with patch.

There are some reports also 1.3x cavalry bonus also damage Sturgia parties in simulations. I did not add this bonus and will also examine its effects on Sturgia's weakness.

why not make the simulation formula take into account the terrain?
cavalry can have their bonus on the steppes but maybe get a debuff on frost and forest terrains.

 

[Androme1]

There are some reports also 1.3x cavalry bonus also damage Sturgia parties in simulations. Will also examine its effects on Sturgia's weakness and give report to teams added that constant.

I will give some more subjective experience regarding this:
I'm playing on 1.3.0, new game, with a mod that just straight up removes the Cavalry 1.3x autocalc bonus. No other mods that affects balance. My observations over multiple games without Cavalry autocalc bonus is that without player intervention, the factions are much more balanced in a constant back-and-forth as opposed to with the Cavalry autocalc bonus. For the first time ever I observed Sturgia successfully battling against Vlandia, Battania and Khuzaits in autocalculated battles almost 50% win and 50% loss, as opposed to with the Cavalry autocalc bonus when they would lose an overwhelming majority of the time, leading to an early demise for the faction within the first few months of the campaign.
Edit: I will add a few caveats:
1) With player intervention, things always turn easy. But this is to be expected.
2) Even late into the game, and after I conquered some territory with Sturgians towards the east, the Sturgians (without my help) still seemed to struggle a fair bit against Vlandia after peace between both factions for a long period of time.

Even without the Cavalry autocalc bonus, Khuzaits still seem like the strongest faction in the game, although not absurdly overpowered as before.

Honestly, I think two things should be considered regarding the Cavalry autocalc bonus:
1) Remove it. The game will be more balanced (in the present), but it may become more unbalanced again in the future when more features are implemented or more balancing is done.
2) Rework the autocalculation formula. I think this should be the primary goal, perhaps the long-term goal while in the short-term you just remove the Cavalry autocalc bonus temporarily. Some obvious suggestions as put forth by many people in other discussion boards is that Cavalry autocalc multiplier should be different depending on the terrain. It would have an advantage in open fields (1.3x still), but lower multiplier in forests, snow and marshes? In any case, it needs to have its bonus removed entirely during sieges, and Cavalry should obviously count as infantry or archers (if horse archer).

My five cents on the issue.

 

[Androme1]

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This is much better attention to detail regarding Sturgias geographical problems than I ever got into. Very well done. I hope some sort of change is in the works, be it geographical, cultural trait or whatever.

I think Sturgia could be made more viable with the addition of some depth to its north, which would be a safe spot for recruitment and give an extra path to travel for reinforcements. Something like this:

Very good suggestion, although perhaps instead of a new city (if that is deemed to be overpowered), perhaps atleast a new castle, with two attached villages, along with an additional village for Balgard? That is actually a very very good suggestion.