I just finished a playthru of Vlandia having just come back to the game (havent played since release) and decided to start up an empire campaign. The first thing that stuck me is how ridiculously difficult recruiting cataphracts are, atleast compared to vlandian banner knights.
First off, the raw recruitment numbers just seem really low. I just spent 40 ingame days doing nothing but following a path to hit all the 'recommended' recruitment spots for cataphracts, aswell as hitting many villages in inbetween. My haul, 4 vigla recruits. This is a far lower time to return ratio than any other faction I have played. This is not to mention that the empire is (i think) the only faction where you can not recruit the noble line from bandits.
Second, atleast compared to the Vlandian noble line, it is harder to actually level up the empire noble line than the Vlandians due to the rather abysmal combat capabilities of the Vigla, being basically jumped up tier 1 recruits, the survival rates from vigla to atleast heavy horseman seems like it would be very very bad. This is again, in contrast to Vlandia where (playing on all hardest settings) I am able to get about 70% of my noble recruits upto atleast tier 5.
Third, not only is it so much easier to get the noble line for the Vlandians but there is also an alternative with the knight, that, while not very good, still provides some alternative if you are having problem getting a critical mass of nobles.
Now, all this could be explained away if the cataphract was some mythical unit that simply outclassed all others to such an extent that there was no alternative but to make it really hard to get. This would be true, however, if the cataphract wasnt effectively a worse version of the vlandian banner knight. It is also worse than the khans guard which, while I havent tried to recruit myself, I am aware can be recruited from bandits quite easily.
Please tell me that I am crazy and that I am simply doing a simple thing wrong and that no it really doesnt take two hours to get a handful of nobles (one of which will actually survive to be a cataphract). If not, how is this defensible?
First off, the raw recruitment numbers just seem really low. I just spent 40 ingame days doing nothing but following a path to hit all the 'recommended' recruitment spots for cataphracts, aswell as hitting many villages in inbetween. My haul, 4 vigla recruits. This is a far lower time to return ratio than any other faction I have played. This is not to mention that the empire is (i think) the only faction where you can not recruit the noble line from bandits.
Second, atleast compared to the Vlandian noble line, it is harder to actually level up the empire noble line than the Vlandians due to the rather abysmal combat capabilities of the Vigla, being basically jumped up tier 1 recruits, the survival rates from vigla to atleast heavy horseman seems like it would be very very bad. This is again, in contrast to Vlandia where (playing on all hardest settings) I am able to get about 70% of my noble recruits upto atleast tier 5.
Third, not only is it so much easier to get the noble line for the Vlandians but there is also an alternative with the knight, that, while not very good, still provides some alternative if you are having problem getting a critical mass of nobles.
Now, all this could be explained away if the cataphract was some mythical unit that simply outclassed all others to such an extent that there was no alternative but to make it really hard to get. This would be true, however, if the cataphract wasnt effectively a worse version of the vlandian banner knight. It is also worse than the khans guard which, while I havent tried to recruit myself, I am aware can be recruited from bandits quite easily.
Please tell me that I am crazy and that I am simply doing a simple thing wrong and that no it really doesnt take two hours to get a handful of nobles (one of which will actually survive to be a cataphract). If not, how is this defensible?