Pre-battle party screen lock is unreasonable

[Ba18070]

Hi,

So like the title says, when you're lined up for a battle- field, siege, etc. and have the choice to send troops, attack, etc. you are not allowed to access the party screen. This seems strange. You can't make reasonable decisions like pressing willing captive soldiers into action to fill your ranks above the troop cap, or being able to change your heroes fprmation designation despite being able to change their entire equipment loadout. If we're going into a siege and I want to take my cav hero and put him on the field with a bow, on foot, I can. But he'll still assume he's leading the heavy cav detachment, so even when it makes perfect sense to he wont use that 175 bow skill, Noble Longbow and double stacked bodkins for anything other than letting the enemy know how wealthy he is because I didnt get his detachment right.

I hate to use a buzzword but its a massive immersion breaker when you arbitrarily cant do things you normally can because "the menu just doesnt work that way."

Thoughts on this? Am I wrong?

 

[Medivhtratos]

Kinda cheesy.

1.The ai is to dump to recognize that the prisoners are ready to convert and will attack you
2. You can force a Sally out from a garrison and than just go over recruitment limit

The other point of changing the formation is a thing I understand yeah. But since the "pre battle set up" isn't from the table I would wait until it's is implemented.

 

[KingEroc1st]

i mean if a man is willing to drag around 100 prisoners for literal years so they are all willing to join him for a field battle. i'd say let him, that's a set up requiring so much effort, he's obviously a man of sheer determination and will. and considering how slow it is to have prisoners turn nowadays, paired with the morale penalty... why shouldn't a person change his formations before a fight? especially when if the enemy is weaker than you, you can literally click leave with 0 consequence, change what you want, and get right back into the fight... or you can click the party screen right before you meet people on the map screen with a quick pause... this just seems like a design oversight

 

[hruza]

I believe it's disabled on purpose, so that you can't do exactly the changes you talk about. Plus upgrade soldiers. I guess devs did it to prevent players from doing some cheesy stuff, but I am not sure.

For example AI might weight in strength of your army when it decides to attack or flee. Recruiting prisoners or upgrading your troops might change balance to your favor without AI been able to react.

When you are making decision to attack enemy or not, you know that force you see on the map is force you gone face in battle. AI won't sneaky recruit prisoners or upgrade soldiers moment before battle starts.

...again, just a guess.

 

[Ba18070]

I mean I understand if they want to say that "its too late to upgrade" or "You cant get the prisoners equipped in time" sure. But not being able to tell my companions what formation to go in is completely ridiculous.

 

[hruza]

I mean I understand if they want to say that "its too late to upgrade" or "You cant get the prisoners equipped in time" sure. But not being able to tell my companions what formation to go in is completely ridiculous.

I guess they decided that it would be too much work to separate these things, as it would require new interface.

You can change formations in the battle via F3/F5 if I remember correctly. To a degree - you can't choose individual companions of course. But it's better then nothing.

 

[stevehoos]

Does it get in the way of the fast paced action?

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I believe it's disabled on purpose, so that you can't do exactly the changes you talk about.

I feel like this is way to specific and thought out to be on purpose.... but then again somebody did program in a chance for death by child birth, so it could be on purpose.

The problem I have is that it also interferes with changing your captains, as you can only do it in the party screen. I had assumed Kinteg had "Dead aim" but as I got into battle I found my t3 ranged was out ranged by enemy militia... I in fact needed brother as captain to match thier skill to out range them..... but it was not possible and it made the grindy stupid battle much more grindy and stupid.

 

[KingEroc1st]

I believe it's disabled on purpose, so that you can't do exactly the changes you talk about.

except you can still do many things to get around it, and still recruit prisoners right before a battle.

such as attacking with a greater force so the enemy doesn't want a fight to begin with, you can leave the pre fight screen with 0 consequence and come right back.
or pausing right before your armies meet, when it's too late to turn around for them.
and it's not disabled during sieges. so you can still do it right before entering a siege attack / defense.

I personally think the measure they imposed to stop players from recruiting prisoners right before a battle is the morale penalty of 1 per soldier and 2 per bandit. that will drop your morale right to 0 if you recruit too many. 1 extra solider means little but 2% morale might be a big deal.

 

[Julio-Claudian]

Main reason I don't like it is because the party screen is the only way to influence which units spawn first on the field. So if you have a lot of cavalry but they happen to be at the bottom only a few might spawn and the rest might not show up until it's too late.

 

[hruza]

I feel like this is way to specific and thought out to be on purpose.... but then again somebody did program in a chance for death by child birth, so it could be on purpose.

Given you can access other screens, for example equipment screen, I think it's very likely that party screen was disabled on purpose. If I remember right, it's the only one you can't access from pre battle tab.

except you can still do many things to get around it, and still recruit prisoners right before a battle.

such as attacking with a greater force so the enemy doesn't want a fight to begin with, you can leave the pre fight screen with 0 consequence and come right back.
or pausing right before your armies meet, when it's too late to turn around for them.
and it's not disabled during sieges. so you can still do it right before entering a siege attack / defense.

I personally think the measure they imposed to stop players from recruiting prisoners right before a battle is the morale penalty of 1 per soldier and 2 per bandit. that will drop your morale right to 0 if you recruit too many. 1 extra solider means little but 2% morale might be a big deal.

If my speculation is right and it's done to prevent AI misjudging player party/been fooled to think player is weak, then as long as you have stronger party it does not matter that you can exit, access party screen and then reengage AI, because it is fleeing anyway and decision to flee is correct one with or without you recruiting.

But then again, it's just my speculation.