Common experience - Sturgia

[Sword_of_Light]

Sturgia. Sturgia... uh.....not ringing any bells ... oh, wait, do you mean the province split between Vlalandia, Battania and Khuzait? Who have no counter to Khuzait's infinite horses and mounted snipers, loose that war, and then because they're severely weakened, get warred on by anyone wanting a land grab until they're completely obliterated? Is that the Sturgia you mean?

 

[Dabos37]

My experience is that NE is the worse faction by far and get destroyed pretty fast. It starts at war with Khizaits while at the same time Lucon is pretty aggressive and declares new wars.

Sturgia issue is that it starts at war with Vlandia which is a stronger kingdom and 90% of the time is able to defeat Sturgia in 1v1, and then Khuzaits join to the party and Sturgia has to fight with the 2 strongest factions at the same time, in two pretty far fronts.

 

[MostBlunted]

Also, this never stops being relevant and hilarious:

Nice video, very good editing!

What is sad, that this video is from early may and not much had changed and Sturgia still gets steamrolled like in each playthrough

Maybe they are intentionally so strong. We know from history that there were unstoppable clans which conquered many kingdoms.

It´s a game playing in it´s own setting and not in the historical medieval times. And even if it would be playing in the historical medieval times the factions should be kind of balanced, because it´s a game and not reality.

 

[Dabos37]

Nice video, very good editing!

What is sad, that this video is from early may and not much had changed and Sturgia still gets steamrolled like in each playthrough

Friend, your signature does not do any good for us to be honest. What we are going to get with this behavior is TW patches donot showing small balancing changes which won't be a good thing for us.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

Who have no counter to Khuzait's infinite horses and mounted snipers

They do have counters tbf, its just that everyone cries because they don't want cavalry for my Nords.

Horse Raiders are were (thanks to the loss of extra javs) a great choice against horse archers. And Druzhinniks give a much needed cavalry presence. If anything, they match Banner Knights and Cataphracts. But no, everyone wants huscarls for all the good that will do against the Khuzaits.

Imo, Sturgia is actually well equipped to deal with the Khuzaits. You'd think round shields and good polearm units would mean something. The problem is that AI suck at block projectiles and archery is too strong.

 

[hruza]

In most games I play, northern Empire performs much better than Sturgia. In that one I played today, I joined Sturgia as Merc when they were at war with Northern Empire. NE had some more enemies, but survived long enough. then they made peace... and instantly Battania, Vlandria and Khuzait declared war on poor Sturgia. Within a year, Sturgia had lost 3 castles and 2 towns, and numerous battles. And with the special design of the map, you can't build up a reasonable force of Sturgan troops once the enemies took Ov castle and Varcheg, and use those as bases for roaming troops. You can't evade those f.... enemies while collecting troops because of the silly map design... I had to cancel my merc contract to avoid getting broke.

And I still think the lowtier Sturgian troops are too weak, specially the "ranged". The Woodsmen are no match for imperial archers or Vlandryan levy x-bowmen, not to mention Khuzaits.

Low tier Sturgian troops are fine. I especially like tier tier 2 infantry, easy to get in mass, decent stats, shield and spear and axe makes them pretty versatile. Woodsmen are skirmishers with javelins. Of course they don't match with archers or crossbowmen. Wrong unit class. I would prefer if all of them got shield, but we got what we got. Not a highlight of Sturgian roster, that I agree.

 

[stevehoos]

I have played about 10 campaigns in the last couple of weeks and Sturgia always loses territory first. The Northern Empire usually follows suit.

 

[Dabos37]

The only Sturgia unit I find pretty weak is Sturgian Spearman. Other units are find IMO or at least decent. Anyway, talking about snowballing, the unit performance in actual battles has not much to do with It.

 

[Silfir]

In my game Sturgia actually did really well, they even expanded their territory. I ended up going on a rampage through Sturgia while on a mercenary contract, freeing their lords afterwards to build relation.

By the time I got around to joining back up with them, they had lost every single holding, but still had plenty of manpower. So I swore allegiance and decided to put my every effort into re-raising Sturgia from scratch. Took back Varnovapol. The problem is King Raganvad, that damned fool, kept declaring wars. I tried my best to keep the kingdom in a war at one front at a time - in this case Vlandia or Battania - but whenever Sturgia had recovered a fair amount of troops, Raganvad would always declare war on someone, with the approval of most of the lords. I could almost imagine my character sitting in the meeting hall making the Picard facepalm motion.

This is why snowballing occurs, I'm almost certain. Trigger-happy rulers refusing to accept that they're in a weakened position and should maybe be at war with only one superior enemy at a time. Whatever negative modifier to "Should I declare war" is using in the case of the realm already being at war needs a serious increase.

 

[Dabos37]

The thing is that It is actually "random" but some patterns happen most of the time. Main issue with snowballing is that the AI happily declares a new war when It is fighting another one currently. The AI does not declare war which It thinks It will lose according to kingdoms strenght (sum of strenght of target's enemies), so the AI thinks that It will be able to win this new war. Problem is that the AI does not take some relevant aspects into account and the result of this new war is usually pretty bad.

For example, NE is fighting against Khuzaits and the war is even or Khuzaits have a slightly advantage. Then the NE decides that It is a good moment to declare war on SE because this kingdom is fighting Aserai and the strength sum is in NE+Aserai favor. This sounds ok in theory, but in practice NE gets just wrecked between khuzait and SE.

Plus the strongest factions are less likely to start new wars and then they have always an easy way to destroy factions one by one. While NE, WE and Sturgia love going to war against everyone, Khuzait and Vlandia are usually at war with only one faction most of the time.

AI taking into account the target's enemies to calculate the target strenght is good in terms of smaller factions declaring wars to biggest ones, but most of the time It works badly and just brings war declarations which do not make sense.

This needs to be balanced and fixed in order to deal with snowballing.

- Factions should not declare new wars if they are currently fighthing one, or at least It should be rare. If a faction is winning its current war without problems, It then could be more likely to start new wars, but not if It is actually losing its current war or if It is even.
- Factions getting wrecked should be much more likely to ask for peace and pay tribute.
- Factions fighting a hard or even war, should try to ask for peace if they get a new war declaration.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

In terms of weakspots in Sturgia's army, I'd say they could at least make Sturgian Veteran Bowman a more unique kit. Give them a shield instead of a second quiver, at least that way they have a niche as a good close combatant that happens to have a bow. Ulfhednar could use with a new helmet, maybe a wolf pelt over a viking helmet or something cool.

As for the actual issue, may TW should make the snow penalty is more severe while also greatly improving Sturgia's cultural bonus in snow. Maybe make their garrisons stronger too, since they're supposed to be a warlike people.

 

[Althix]

specially the "ranged"

nah. i don't use archers for Sturgia, i simply rush for Raiders. Basically my army consists of veterans and raiders with some heavy cav presence.

 

[Qeviv]

In terms of weakspots in Sturgia's army, I'd say they could at least make Sturgian Veteran Bowman a more unique kit. Give them a shield instead of a second quiver, at least that way they have a niche as a good close combatant that happens to have a bow. Ulfhednar could use with a new helmet, maybe a wolf pelt over a viking helmet or something cool.

As for the actual issue, may TW should make the snow penalty is more severe while also greatly improving Sturgia's cultural bonus in snow. Maybe make their garrisons stronger too, since they're supposed to be a warlike people.

Yeah, their passive is so garbage, and unnoticeable, it should be remade to something stronger, like for example: higher morales by like 10-20% on snow surfaces

 

[Sword_of_Light]

The problem is that AI suck at block projectiles and archery is too strong.

Player NPC AI suck at blocking projectiles. AI advancing on an enemy seem to block just fine - to the point I've honed the tactic of riding around shielded enemies like Sea Raiders so they'll face me but turn their backs on my archers. But I have noted AI just stand there even when taking fire - especially long distance fire. It would be nice to have a command to turtle up.

And my primary problem with all the cav isnt that there arent counters. Its that building PC cav is vastly more difficult, even as Khuzait. Even if you raid a village with horses, that only means a half dozen mounts. Warband you could build a 100 horse cavalry band no sweat - I've done it - you could catch anything, including Steppe Bandits, and cavalry charges worked. Now that was fun.

Last time I faced a Khuzait band with equal numbers and quality units, I saw probably 50 wounded, 30 dead, 20 fled. They saw 20 dead and a similar number wounded. Why? Horse archers. I sent my cav after them. Didn't matter.

 

[Maximum997]

Yeah, their passive is so garbage, and unnoticeable, it should be remade to something stronger, like for example: higher morales by like 10-20% on snow surfaces

Does it even work btw? Becouse i remember it didnt

 

[Lord Bryggan]

I finally tried Sturgia. They were consistently at war with 2-4 factions at all times, most of whom weren't fighting anyone else.

I gotta say, they inflicted a lot more casualties on their enemies than what they received, but attrition just killed them. But every time there was a peace vote, it was almost always 100% NO!

We were down to one city and one castle (mine) and only the king's clan left, so I left.

The whole time I could rarely get any Sturgian recruits, so I used Imperial archers. But after leaving, I was able to recapture all of Sturgia with just my clan and the occasional merc clan I could find by spending a lot on making peace.

But now I can't get any clans to join me since I fought pretty much every noble during my time with Sturgia... plus I never let them go because I was always cash starved.

I think Sturgia is fine at war and tactics, but they suck at diplomacy and strategy.

 

[Apocal]

As for the actual issue, may TW should make the snow penalty is more severe while also greatly improving Sturgia's cultural bonus in snow. Maybe make their garrisons stronger too, since they're supposed to be a warlike people.

Yeah, their passive is so garbage, and unnoticeable, it should be remade to something stronger, like for example: higher morales by like 10-20% on snow surfaces

If the snow penalty is implemented in-game, it is literally invisible.