StewVader
Sergeant
In my opinion, the gameplay is broken and ill-conceived at a fundamental level (specifically talking about vanilla).
The AI is granted cheats mechanics that make victories feeling meaningless, and yet, without these cheats mechanics the map could be completely conquered in no time at all by the player.
What do I mean?
When you defeat an enemy, unless they are captured, they spawn back with a near complete army/supply. So any loses you suffer from each engagement (assuming you aren't playing on very easy) in most cases cause you to give up sieges or retreat a deep push after 2 or 3 cycles of defeat/respawn (esp if your ally AI has been burning every village along the way). This makes conquering/snowballing slow because no victory is ever really meaningful or decisive and losing in some cases is preferable for the AI (they respawn with an army rather than having to travel around to reinforce it).
However, imagine if the AI didn't spawn back and had to go around and recruit and level troops like the player does after a significant loss? They would be captured by looters or caught in endless retreat loops between unfriendly AI and friendly caste/towns. The decisiveness of any single major victory would cause the entire losing faction to collapse.
How can there be no middle ground here? Can't a system be developed that facilitates meaningful gameplay that allows a faction to take advantage of victories without causing a faction to completely collapse? It seems like this system has been purposely designed to artificially stretch out the game, rather than implementing NEW and more complex mechanics (or a bigger map, more fiefs etc).
The current mechanics, which haven't changed since the launch of EA in any significant way (meaning the player does exactly the same things they did then, as they do now) are ill-conceived and completely negate the advertised sandbox experience.
The AI is granted cheats mechanics that make victories feeling meaningless, and yet, without these cheats mechanics the map could be completely conquered in no time at all by the player.
What do I mean?
When you defeat an enemy, unless they are captured, they spawn back with a near complete army/supply. So any loses you suffer from each engagement (assuming you aren't playing on very easy) in most cases cause you to give up sieges or retreat a deep push after 2 or 3 cycles of defeat/respawn (esp if your ally AI has been burning every village along the way). This makes conquering/snowballing slow because no victory is ever really meaningful or decisive and losing in some cases is preferable for the AI (they respawn with an army rather than having to travel around to reinforce it).
However, imagine if the AI didn't spawn back and had to go around and recruit and level troops like the player does after a significant loss? They would be captured by looters or caught in endless retreat loops between unfriendly AI and friendly caste/towns. The decisiveness of any single major victory would cause the entire losing faction to collapse.
How can there be no middle ground here? Can't a system be developed that facilitates meaningful gameplay that allows a faction to take advantage of victories without causing a faction to completely collapse? It seems like this system has been purposely designed to artificially stretch out the game, rather than implementing NEW and more complex mechanics (or a bigger map, more fiefs etc).
The current mechanics, which haven't changed since the launch of EA in any significant way (meaning the player does exactly the same things they did then, as they do now) are ill-conceived and completely negate the advertised sandbox experience.