AI Army compositions makes no sence at all to the players Recruiting capability 1.4.2 Beta

[Apocal]

I'm also not convinced that factions totally collapsing due to attrition from field battles is necessarily even a good thing. Is it more historical? Sure, but the player is currently much too strong in field battles compared to the AI and it would be trivial to ride around slaughtering npcs until they run out of money and then go clean up the fiefs afterwards. In my opinion, attrition should happen on a sliding scale that doesn't bottom out, but still lessens the resistance faced when sieging, etc.

It isn't difficult to test what happens when serious field losses have a more lasting impact on faction strength: the Snowballing(tm) happens right from the beginning of the game and without the player being involved at all. That was the state of the game on release. There isn't a meaningful difference between not being able to field parties because looters keep beating your lords or not being able field parties because you're broke. The end result is the same.

We'd need another system to counteract that tendency if there is going to be meaningful player agency in the late-game.

 

[Bannerman Man]

It isn't difficult to test what happens when serious field losses have a more lasting impact on faction strength: the Snowballing(tm) happens right from the beginning of the game and without the player being involved at all. That was the state of the game on release. There isn't a meaningful difference between not being able to field parties because looters keep beating your lords or not being able field parties because you're broke. The end result is the same.

We also got a taste of it with consequence-free executions. Beating each noble one time was enough to conquer the whole map once you exterminated every enemy clan.

We'd need another system to counteract that tendency if there is going to be meaningful player agency in the late-game.

It's a bit like the joke about Skyrim, that no matter what type of character you set out to make you always end up a stealth archer because it's such a powerful strategy. If one strategy is clearly better than the rest then people will always tend to gravitate toward that strategy, whether they mean to or not, which hurts playstyle variety in the long run. I feel that way about massed foot/horse archers right now as well as hoarding high tier troops.

I'm not sure what that countertendency system looks like though. Lowering income or raising wages so that high tier armies become unsustainable just gets misinterpreted by people as a poorly balanced economy instead of coming to the conclusion that you aren't meant to keep such an expensive army.

 

[PanzerSchutzen]

We also got a taste of it with consequence-free executions. Beating each noble one time was enough to conquer the whole map once you exterminated every enemy clan.


It's a bit like the joke about Skyrim, that no matter what type of character you set out to make you always end up a stealth archer because it's such a powerful strategy. If one strategy is clearly better than the rest then people will always tend to gravitate toward that strategy, whether they mean to or not, which hurts playstyle variety in the long run. I feel that way about massed foot/horse archers right now as well as hoarding high tier troops.

I'm not sure what that countertendency system looks like though. Lowering income or raising wages so that high tier armies become unsustainable just gets misinterpreted by people as a poorly balanced economy instead of coming to the conclusion that you aren't meant to keep such an expensive army.

New to the game (two weeks) and new to the forums (just registered today because I had a question on Heavy vs Light cav in terms of how they target when told to advance). Just wanted to say I appreciate the digging and extra insight in your responses

 

[Bannerman Man]

New to the game (two weeks) and new to the forums (just registered today because I had a question on Heavy vs Light cav in terms of how they target when told to advance). Just wanted to say I appreciate the digging and extra insight in your responses

Thanks man!