Manhunters are overpowered

[anoddhermit]

Admittedly, recruitment of them is impossible and you have to get them from bandits who've taken them prisoner. However, it's not that difficult.

What you get for that small amount of extra trouble is extremely fast leveling reasonably heavy cavalry, with blunt weapons, with prisoner management boost, that can quite easily make short work of most small groups of bandits and deserters in a manner that allows you to sell tons of them as prisoners easily paying for their weekly wages and more.

I think it's a bit much. I've been playing with several mods and I think Floris is the closest to ideal balance other than the manhunter issue(and the bows still needing to be moved around the troops post-bow stat changes).


My suggested fix would be making manhunters level up slower than average troops rather than faster, and reduce the prisoner management bonus to +1 for every 20 with a limit of +3. They'd still be great for early game, with 20-40 early tier manhunters you could still hunt down bandits and make tons of denars from prisoner selling. However, it'd make alternative cavalry units a more competitive alternative.

 

[Michiko]

You can't really determine how slowly a single particular troop levels up except for raising their level, which will make them even more powerful.

They're not supposed to be recruitable in large numbers, so I think it isn't so bad. The most I've ever gotten without cheating (by teleporting and intentionally finding bandit groups with manhunter prisoners) is only 30. That's not a lot considering in later game we're dealing with 200 troops versus 600. The Sarranid cavalry I normally use is way stronger than the manhunters by that point, because they're more effective fighters as a whole and can survive well even in sieges and can still get blunt kills for prisoners.

Lastly, they weren't built with the player's army in mind. They were made to be strong on their own, because they have to deal with bandits and deserters. So while you aren't prohibited from using them, just take that into account.

 

[Articulo34]

You can't really determine how slowly a single particular troop levels up except for raising their level, which will make them even more powerful.

They're not supposed to be recruitable in large numbers, so I think it isn't so bad. The most I've ever gotten without cheating (by teleporting and intentionally finding bandit groups with manhunter prisoners) is only 30. That's not a lot considering in later game we're dealing with 200 troops versus 600. The Sarranid cavalry I normally use is way stronger than the manhunters by that point, because they're more effective fighters as a whole and can survive well even in sieges and can still get blunt kills for prisoners.

Lastly, they weren't built with the player's army in mind. They were made to be strong on their own, because they have to deal with bandits and deserters. So while you aren't prohibited from using them, just take that into account.

After 300 ingame days you can mass them up easy from bandit groups. I´ve been encountering said groups holding more than 400 prisoners of which at least 1/3 of them are Manhunters. If I wanted I could have an entire host of them but since I´m a Rhodok lord and my army is composed solely by Rhodok troops, I rather not.

 

[Xenomion]

In one of my game I tried to recruit a looot of manhunters. At the end, I was level 25, King, and had more than 300 manhunters with around 150 Slaver Chiefs. I could easily beat the entire Nord Army, the Vaegir Army, the Swadians (which weren't really an army anymore). I got around 30 deaths in my army with all those fights.

 

[anoddhermit]

You can't really determine how slowly a single particular troop levels up except for raising their level, which will make them even more powerful.

They're not supposed to be recruitable in large numbers, so I think it isn't so bad. The most I've ever gotten without cheating (by teleporting and intentionally finding bandit groups with manhunter prisoners) is only 30. That's not a lot considering in later game we're dealing with 200 troops versus 600. The Sarranid cavalry I normally use is way stronger than the manhunters by that point, because they're more effective fighters as a whole and can survive well even in sieges and can still get blunt kills for prisoners.

Lastly, they weren't built with the player's army in mind. They were made to be strong on their own, because they have to deal with bandits and deserters. So while you aren't prohibited from using them, just take that into account.

I can tell manhunters level up more quickly than regular troops. I don't know the details on why but it's very obvious that they're treated differently.

Also, my "nerf" suggestion doesn't actually affect their strength. There are t5+ cavalry that get the job done just as well if not better, it's really the ease of amassing tier 4+ equivalent manhunter troops and paying for them.

If anything I think manhunter groups that stay alive over the course of many bandit battles should start to reach their higher tiers, right now manhunters just stay manhunters, they don't have the higher tiers in their numbers. That would counteract a slower leveling speed for them mid-late game, since you'd occasionally recruit those from bandit's prisoners.

 

[Leifdin]

Actually, mercenaries are overpowered as well. But you can't recruit those in such great numbers and there's a good chance you'll get bunch of useless/unwanted units.
However, AI doesn't use them, so if you don't like them, don't use them. BTW you can edit them by yourself, it's easy.

 

[Michiko]

I've gone over two years on one game and I couldn't collect many of them without intentionally going around looking for bandits with them as prisoners. That's what I'm saying though. By that point in the game bandits aren't really my problem anymore, so if I'm going around getting manhunters, that's me looking for them intentionally. I find myself more often than not riding to defend some castle that's being besieged halfway across the continent.

Leifdin's right as well. Since troops don't actually level up by themselves (they move up in tiers instead via manually upgrading them), this means that they're just getting a lot of kills. Any troop type that gets kills gets more exp per battle, in addition to the shared exp after winning. What makes them overpowered isn't really their stats or even their equipment, but the fact that you're using masses of a cavalry troop type in a game that doesn't necessarily deal with cavalry well. And my point is also that using any cavalry troop of the same tier, I personally get the same results, if not better. I've had so many 0 casualty battles when I use all-cavalry armies like the Khergits, even when I'm outnumbered 3:1. That's just how it is in this game.

I don't think the manhunters are anything special, much less "overpowered", especially since I can raise 60 new cavalry troops from the Khergits or Sarranids within only a week with my Trainer levels, and that manhunters would take a few weeks (without cheating) to amass even 30. And I personally feel 30 of my Khergit/Sarranid cavalry will still beat those 30 Slaver Chiefs, even if a commander of the same tactical command skill level were commanding the Slaver Chiefs. C6 Slaver Chiefs only use practice bows, if they even spawn with any, and only have 50 archery proficiency, an H6 Sarranid Sipahi is a respectable horse archer and can dominate a battlefield even after they run out of ammo. I'm not afraid to charge these guys up a ladder during a siege. The only advantage a Slaver Chief has now is the elephant, which isn't indestructible, as a lancer could probably kill it with a couched lance charge or two, not to mention that the elephant does no charge damage to other cavalry units (charge damage only affects infantry).

I'm not saying they're useless or underpowered for that matter. It's just that there's this illusion of being overpowered because people aren't used to having them around yet. It's kinda like how many people think the Rhodok crossbowmen are overpowered. Man, I've been playing as a Sarranid for so many years and when you get used fighting Rhodoks, I would dare even say they're the softest of all factions, even with their big shields. The crossbowmen are crazy weak in melee combat. In contrast, I find the Nords very difficult to beat by comparison, because I'm not usually at war with them. My fighting style isn't adapted to theirs at all, and throwing weapons are significantly more effective against my combat style than crossbows are.

With all that said, I think the Manhunter line is just fine as it is.

 

[Leifdin]

BTW talking about being overpowered, C6 Mercenary Hochmeister has stats of C7 units and T7 armour. A5 Virago has stats of maybe t6,5 archers. And you can get them in bunches in taverns! It's not unusual to recruit 11 t6 mercenaries.

C6 Slaver Chiefs only use practice bows, if they even spawn with any, and only have 50 archery proficiency

Let's not forgot about their sad and very small(actually zero) power draw which makes their archery slightly more dangerous than spitting.

 

[Michiko]

Haha yeah them Virago are pretty OP. If they're the only archer units you ever use, it'd be money well spent. They can even double as a shield wall if you wanted by telling them to hold fire and use their huge pavise shields. Then you can have a secondary (split army) archer group behind those shields firing from relative safety. It's insane.

 

[kab]

Overpowered?  Compared to what.  Equivalent faction cavalry is just as strong and doesn't require the effort to find.  They're fantastic early on because you have the luxury of patrolling bandit areas to pick them up, they raise Prisoner Management and they start out as cavalry keeping you mobile.  After that they're not all that relevant and I'd rather have others for campaigns.  Chiefs in the open field against any foot soldiers is overpowered.  It's a complete joke how trivially easy it is to plow through ANY infantry by forming up 10 Chiefs in a wedge and sweeping the entire field.