Bluko88
Sergeant
So something that has bugged me for a long time is the general ineffectiveness of recruits. Now I get it; they are recruits, lowest of the low for the military units, and not supposed to be much better than peasants. But the sad truth is actual peasants are probably better fighters then recruits are in-game (peasants have the wonderful throwing rock).
They basically amount to cannon fodder in any battles where there are large amounts of archers. Now I'm not saying let's give recruits more Skills and Armor to make them effective fighters. I can deal with the fact that they aren't going to do well in melee or anything really except in large numbers. But it's pretty frustrating, especially for those just starting out, to get completely decimated by bandit archer parties. Even when you have numerical superiority, simply because you don't have any tier 2 units with shields you'll be screwed. Nevermind in larger field battles and sieges recruits just get absolutely obliterated by archers - which begs the question why even bring them?
This would kind of be a non-issue if there was a to train up lower tier troops somewhat quickly, but there isn't. You basically got to waste time fighting looters (which is just a chore beyond very early game) or hope enough survive to level up, but even then you're going to lose so many you'll have to go back and get more recruits to replace all the recruits that died. It's damn near an endless cycle trying to get your party back up to full strength. It also hurts A.I. Lords a lot in battle since when they rebuild their parties they will have tremendous amounts of useless recruits units. An easy win for the player usually sure, but also not very rewarding.
I've kind of gotten to the point where I just simply don't get recruits anymore and wait for any tier 2 or higher units to show up in recruitment pools. But that's not ideal either since you won't always have the good fortune of that happening. So either you wait for better units to populate or grab a bunch of useless recruits.
My proposition is simple: Give 2/5ths or 1/3rd of all recruit units a shield for some extra survivability
I've already tested this some and as you will see it does not exactly wildly empower recruits. It simply gives them a fighting chance. And again most still wouldn't have shields, so you will still have a fair number of targets as it were. Just to illustrate here's tier 1 Imperial Recruits vs tier 2 Imperial Archers before and after
100 Imperial Recruits (no shields) vs 100 Imperial Archers
100 Imperial Recruits (with shields) vs 100 Imperial Archers
*Strangely with shields recruits do worse against other melee units somewhat, though I suspect this mainly has to with me taking away the scythe and replacing it with a spear.
They basically amount to cannon fodder in any battles where there are large amounts of archers. Now I'm not saying let's give recruits more Skills and Armor to make them effective fighters. I can deal with the fact that they aren't going to do well in melee or anything really except in large numbers. But it's pretty frustrating, especially for those just starting out, to get completely decimated by bandit archer parties. Even when you have numerical superiority, simply because you don't have any tier 2 units with shields you'll be screwed. Nevermind in larger field battles and sieges recruits just get absolutely obliterated by archers - which begs the question why even bring them?
This would kind of be a non-issue if there was a to train up lower tier troops somewhat quickly, but there isn't. You basically got to waste time fighting looters (which is just a chore beyond very early game) or hope enough survive to level up, but even then you're going to lose so many you'll have to go back and get more recruits to replace all the recruits that died. It's damn near an endless cycle trying to get your party back up to full strength. It also hurts A.I. Lords a lot in battle since when they rebuild their parties they will have tremendous amounts of useless recruits units. An easy win for the player usually sure, but also not very rewarding.
I've kind of gotten to the point where I just simply don't get recruits anymore and wait for any tier 2 or higher units to show up in recruitment pools. But that's not ideal either since you won't always have the good fortune of that happening. So either you wait for better units to populate or grab a bunch of useless recruits.
My proposition is simple: Give 2/5ths or 1/3rd of all recruit units a shield for some extra survivability
I've already tested this some and as you will see it does not exactly wildly empower recruits. It simply gives them a fighting chance. And again most still wouldn't have shields, so you will still have a fair number of targets as it were. Just to illustrate here's tier 1 Imperial Recruits vs tier 2 Imperial Archers before and after
100 Imperial Recruits (no shields) vs 100 Imperial Archers
100 Imperial Recruits (with shields) vs 100 Imperial Archers
*Strangely with shields recruits do worse against other melee units somewhat, though I suspect this mainly has to with me taking away the scythe and replacing it with a spear.