Please adjust respawn mechanics

[icthulu]

The last fief of the Kingdom and this is what they muster... They should be broke and all their armies deserting from starvation, but they constantly get an infusion of 500-1k troops per day. I sat here and watched for a week to see what the AI did.

I love your game there is so much good here, but things like this keep me from wanting to play. Please nerf to oblivion the free troops you give the AI, this is unreasonable.

 

[Hugo_Stiglitz]

Cheating campaign AI magically spawning entire stacks of multiple armies out of thin air used to drive me absolutely insane playing Total War vanilla till the modders stepped in and sorted things out.

Just have to hope for mods that fix this cheating of the AI in the interum. Heck there may be a mod specifically for this mechanic I just haven't got far enough into the game/story line to experience this first hand so I don't have the need to seek out a mod yet.

Not to insult your intelligence but games like this are made for mods and installing mods is pretty smooth and easy in this day and age compared to the late 90's and early 2000's.

 

[hruza]

Are you talking about those tiny retinues lords have or about garrison of the town?

 

[icthulu]

Hi Hurza, while the 30-40 clan armies of 20 troops are annoying, my main issue is the city which is starving and losing 50 prosperity a day would get 500 troops from nowhere each day to restock the garrisons from my observations.

I was waiting outside after taking 3 fief to see a decrease in those defenses before building an army to siege the last holdout, but the AI was just outright cheating. I gave it a week hoping the foodstock and prosperity depletion would affect the garrison strength, but it just kept resetting over an over to indicate that there was no way the current programming would allow it.

If half of the 30+ armies ceased to exist because of the crippling of their power, that would make the free troop spawn tolerable, but combined, it's frustratingly unreasonable. While I do appreciate how much this company is spending effort to improve game performance, I would love if they would address some of the kindgom balance issues.

 

[mexxico]

Hi Hurza, while the 30-40 clan armies of 20 troops are annoying, my main issue is the city which is starving and losing 50 prosperity a day would get 500 troops from nowhere each day to restock the garrisons from my observations.

I was waiting outside after taking 3 fief to see a decrease in those defenses before building an army to siege the last holdout, but the AI was just outright cheating. I gave it a week hoping the foodstock and prosperity depletion would affect the garrison strength, but it just kept resetting over an over to indicate that there was no way the current programming would allow it.

If half of the 30+ armies ceased to exist because of the crippling of their power, that would make the free troop spawn tolerable, but combined, it's frustratingly unreasonable. While I do appreciate how much this company is spending effort to improve game performance, I would love if they would address some of the kindgom balance issues.

There are only 3 cheats currently :
-npc lords are spawning with 25% of their part size is filled (this will decrease to 10% soon)
-npc lords get extra small amount of xp to troops daily (starting with 1.3.0) to allow them have more elite troops otherwise they have 50% tier-1 troops
-npc lords know your garrison sizes at your distant towns

There are no other cheats.

 

[paladinx333]

-npc lords get extra small amount of xp to troops daily (starting with 1.3.0) to allow them have more elite troops

As a player I would like to have that as well. I really miss the trainer skill from Warband.

 

[Badcritter]

As a player I would like to have that as well. I really miss the trainer skill from Warband.

I imagine the perks Raise the Meek and Combat Tips (first tier in Leadership) will be refactored to apply their daily XP to each troop instead of each stack. That will provide a similar experience to Warband for us as players. Whether the NPC lords need a bonus on top in the long term, we will find out as other systems are fleshed out and stabilised.

@icthulu 's observations about AI garrison strength are interesting, since that doesn't match the intended behaviour @mexxico states. Perhaps there's a bug.

 

[icthulu]

There are only 3 cheats currently :
-npc lords are spawning with 25% of their part size is filled (this will decrease to 10% soon)
-npc lords get extra small amount of xp to troops daily (starting with 1.3.0) to allow them have more elite troops otherwise they have 50% tier-1 troops
-npc lords know your garrison sizes at your distant towns

There are no other cheats.

Thanks Mexxico, you have a fantastic game and I can't wait to see this all balanced out.I look forward to future patches and rebalances.

 

[icthulu]

I imagine the perks Raise the Meek and Combat Tips (first tier in Leadership) will be refactored to apply their daily XP to each troop instead of each stack. That will provide a similar experience to Warband for us as players. Whether the NPC lords need a bonus on top in the long term, we will find out as other systems are fleshed out and stabilised.

@icthulu 's observations about AI garrison strength are interesting, since that doesn't match the intended behaviour @mexxico states. Perhaps there's a bug.

Potentially, or I might be misinterpreting other actions like troop respawn as mentioned for the lords. Since they get 25% currently for free, it could be that they are deserting from lack of food then the system spawns in 25%?

If I would make a recommendation, I would rather a respawn of 0% and rebalance injuries to produce more troop deaths so that armies can't snowball as easily and retreat be a tactical strategy.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

I see a lot of lords with 10-20 troops and a garrison thats probably nothing but militia and recruits. I bet you can take that city with 200 decent troops.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

There are only 3 cheats currently :
-npc lords are spawning with 25% of their part size is filled (this will decrease to 10% soon)
-npc lords get extra small amount of xp to troops daily (starting with 1.3.0) to allow them have more elite troops otherwise they have 50% tier-1 troops
-npc lords know your garrison sizes at your distant towns

There are no other cheats.

Even with the tweaks, they still field over 50% recruits. They need to cheat more troops not fewer.

 

[icthulu]

I see one issue, the militia isn't effected by starvation. So their 297 militia never was effected by any modifiers.

@Lord Irontoe I don't agree, if those lords were destroyable permanently, I wouldn't mind, but they are like looters that just repawn each day no matter what you do. Having 30-40 on your border getting 1k free troops is not a great experience... for me anyways. Even if you kill them, their family member or friend just takes that spot so there's no real winning. Just a matter of bribing them so they stop bothering you directly.

Not sure if there's some endgame mechanic that cleans up these un-landed clans, but that would be helpful. In my game the western empire was down to 1 leader, but no idea how that happened, and that was altered by a couple dozen patches so probably a fluke.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

I see one issue, the militia isn't effected by starvation. So their 297 militia never was effected by any modifiers.

@Lord Irontoe I don't agree, if those lords were destroyable permanently, I wouldn't mind, but they are like looters that just repawn each day no matter what you do. Having 30-40 on your border getting 1k free troops is not a great experience... for me anyways. Even if you kill them, their family member or friend just takes that spot so there's no real winning. Just a matter of bribing them so they stop bothering you directly.

Not sure if there's some endgame mechanic that cleans up these un-landed clans, but that would be helpful. In my game the western empire was down to 1 leader, but no idea how that happened, and that was altered by a couple dozen patches so probably a fluke.

That's mainly because there's no timeout for lords after they get beaten. They just immediately start recruiting again. They ought to be taken off the board for a couple of days after a defeat and only then start rebuilding. But when they do come back, it should be with a strong army. Its just not fun fighting these armies of crap tier troops. Your average bandit group is pound for pound stronger than the average lord army just because they at least have a guaranteed amount of higher tier troops.

 

[Androme1]

There are only 3 cheats currently :
-npc lords are spawning with 25% of their part size is filled (this will decrease to 10% soon)
-npc lords get extra small amount of xp to troops daily (starting with 1.3.0) to allow them have more elite troops otherwise they have 50% tier-1 troops
-npc lords know your garrison sizes at your distant towns

There are no other cheats.

Hey Mexxico, and thank you for your hard work and communication. So far my opinion on most changes you've proposed and implemented have been positive, they have all been good for the game. But I want to provide some criticism regarding npc lords knowing garrison sizes at distance, not because it's "unrealistic", but because I don't believe this "cheat" helps the AI at all. Here's my reasoning:

One of the reasons (out of many reasons), according to my experience, with why factions on the defensive against a stronger faction keeps on losing without the ability to recover (snowballing), is that the AI thinks that besieging a weakened town/castle deep inside enemy territory will shift the balance back in its favour. There are two problems with this assumption:

1) By leaving homeland and venturing far into enemy territory, the faction on the defensive leaves its own lands open for attack by the enemies armies, without being able to be close-by to rush to the defense of its remaining cities and castles.
2) Even if the faction on the defensive successfully manages to locate, besiege and conquer a weakened city or castle, odds are since this new territory might be within the enemies heartlands, it will just soon be retaken by the stronger faction with more resources available to it anyways.

If, instead of knowing the garrison size of towns and castles far away, the NPC's had to work with the information it's able to scout (and remember after scouting for a certain period of time, say a week or two of in-game time? Perhaps more?), it would more usually than not make the decision to attack castles and cities bordering its own territory. This would result in three things:

1) The faction on the defensive would much more quickly be able to respond to the attacking factions attacks against its own territory
2) Army cohesion would on average be higher at the time of besieging an enemy town/castle, leading to sieges not failing due to cohesion running out
3) If the faction on the defensive successfully managed to conquer a bordering city/castle, it would be able to respond much more quickly to rush to its defense once the attacking faction attempts to retake said city or castle.

I think you should take these things into consideration, try them out a little bit and see how they play out when two factions (with one being weaker than the other) are at war with one another over numerous games over some periods of time, and see if perhaps this approach would be more logical and result in more intelligent behaviour by the defending faction.

Edit:
Perhaps a bit unrelated but I think this is important to point out: The autocalculation bonus given to Cavalry of 1.3x over other unit types is one of the major contributing factors to snowballing by Vlandia, Khuzaits and to a certain degree also Battania (which for some reason has alot of cavalry in its party templates).
As far as I know, this bonus to autocalculation is still given to cavalry even during sieges. Which besides not making much sense, makese these cavalry-heavy factions even more "overpowered" during sieges scenarioes, when "realistically" the power of their cavalry should really only shine during field battles, and not during sieges.
In my opinion, the Cavalry bonus should just be removed alltogether, but if this is not on your radar at all, then at the very least consider removing the Cavalry bonus during Sieges, as that would slow down these two powerful factions (Khuzaits and Vlandian) a little bit when it comes to snowballing during Sieges.

Thank you for your hard work and I hope you will take this feedback into consideration.

 

[bonerstorm]

There are only 3 cheats currently :
-npc lords are spawning with 25% of their part size is filled (this will decrease to 10% soon)
-npc lords get extra small amount of xp to troops daily (starting with 1.3.0) to allow them have more elite troops otherwise they have 50% tier-1 troops
-npc lords know your garrison sizes at your distant towns

There are no other cheats.

Thanks so much for keeping us informed!

I don't know if there's any polling of players going on but I would personally really REALLY love if there were little to no AI cheats at all.

Also I'm running mods right now which change passive/garrison training and they make the game a lot more tolerable - especially making training xp apply per unit and not per stack and making training give leadership xp.

It really doesn't make sense from a historical or gameplay perspective for lords to be going on offensive campaign with recruits at all. Ideally, lords who were wiped should recruit and then sit in a castle for a few days to turn their recruits into T2's using passive training - even more ideally with training structures applying to resting troops as well as garrisons. This would help with snowballing too.

 

[Badcritter]

Tweaking the number, quality of troops, and the speed with which they appear is something that is being talked about a lot and I agree it is very important for the enjoyment of the mid to late game. But many people are assuming those metrics will directly impact snowballing when the effect is actually only indirect.

Given any reasonable quantity of troops, the reason for snowballing is that the AI is overly aggressive to enemy lords and holdings, and neglectful of looking after their own holdings. Instead of leaving troops in garrisons they are using too many of them to go on the offensive, which causes settlements to change hands too frequently, destabilising kingdoms.

Yes, the quantity of troops and their composition is something that needs to be gotten right. But if the way the AI uses their troops is not changed, snowballing, comical settlement flipping and deep captures will continue.

 

[icthulu]

But when they do come back, it should be with a strong army. Its just not fun fighting these armies of crap tier troops.

Yes, agreed. When they come back after a much longer delay than 1 day, I hope they have a substanative army.

 

[Maximum997]

the reason for snowballing is that the AI is overly aggressive to enemy lords and holdings, and neglectful of looking after their own holdings. Instead of leaving troops in garrisons they are using too many of them to go on the offensive, which causes settlements to change hands too frequently, destabilising kingdoms.

Main reason of snowaballing is the reqruitment system.

More territories = more replenishment = more troops in armies.

 

[Badcritter]

Main reason of snowaballing is the reqruitment system.

More territories = more replenishment = more troops in armies.

More territories always = more replenishment = more troops for armies. The bandaids that give LORDS free troops disrupts that a little, because it emphasises the dimension of of more lords = more replenishment = more troops in armies. But in the end the problem remains:

Wars are waged to get more power, more power makes it easier to get more power still. That's what a snowball is.

Unless we want arbitrary recruitment penalties for empires as they grow in power, the solution needs to be on a different level. Namely, imo, the AI's priorities for defense. The fact that snowballs start so quickly is testament to the fact that the game is too offensively oriented in its current state, and giving lords more/better troops which they will just go and use to behave offensively will only increase the rate at which settlements fall.

 

[Toplayer]

Tweaking the number, quality of troops, and the speed with which they appear is something that is being talked about a lot and I agree it is very important for the enjoyment of the mid to late game. But many people are assuming those metrics will directly impact snowballing when the effect is actually only indirect.

Given any reasonable quantity of troops, the reason for snowballing is that the AI is overly aggressive to enemy lords and holdings, and neglectful of looking after their own holdings. Instead of leaving troops in garrisons they are using too many of them to go on the offensive, which causes settlements to change hands too frequently, destabilising kingdoms.

Yes, the quantity of troops and their composition is something that needs to be gotten right. But if the way the AI uses their troops is not changed, snowballing, comical settlement flipping and deep captures will continue.

Based on the current sittings, lords need to work together to take cities. Some cities got more than 600 troops in garrison and they require more than 6 lords to conquer. It might take more than 10 lords to take a city if their enemies are going to defend it. I don't think AI can gather enough lords to take any city when they are not aggressive

In my opinion, i think respawn instantly with free troops is the key to stop snowballing. The attacker who lost a lot of troops in siege are less likely to defend the city they just conquered. They defender will come back with free troops very soon and take the city back.
The attacker will have enough time to conquer the next city If the defender need more time to recover from defeat, or their lords are holding in prison for a long time