Should recruits have shields?

Should some recruits have shields?


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To be honest, I thing they originally might have thought that it would be long. But you dont include all the balancing that they have done to speed up the campaign not the least speeding up the rate at which skills level.
When you put your focus on it it only takes you around 2 weeks or less, to get to the lordhunting stage. Its going to be difficult to stretch out the early game much, as long as the goal is to get an army. Thats why I think it will be better to fit in another partial goal, worth aiming for, instead.

My fundamental point here is that goals just need to be reasonable.
Let's face it, they won't be adding anything or fixing core issues or adding depth anymore - just fixing obscure crashes/bugs. All we have are number tweaks now only; whether we think they should be inherent in the base game or as a mod.
No, I dont want to spend say a year grinding bandits to be able to afford a cool chest armor for one person. Thats just too slow progress. On the other hand, it doesnt really matter that you can/could buy the entire world with little effort through a combination of trade/smithing.
No, but same as originally, the cost of chest armor should not be what it is currently if other elements of the 'value' of money is better imposed to bring them more in line. Armor costs as they are are solely a money sink, same with buying lords or player ransom (just %scaling to the player). So, on to your point, if it takes a player 10 days to get 500K (from all current avenues) to buy that 250K armor; with an adjusted cost measure, it's the same as if it takes them 10 days to get 20K (same avenues) to buy that same 10K armor.
Except, now with other factors like tweaking troop wages or other income or cost modifiers, those costs come more in line as a 'middle-ground' for balancing.

As it is now, the player can easily accumulate more money than they know what to do with it while still maintaining a 150+party of T6 troops, a few roaming parties, and uncapped garrisons; but still net a decent amount of denars (not even accounting smithing, tournament loot, or even battle loot) creates that dichotomy. Especially since the only other cost 'hindrance' is if you accept that scaling ransom dialogue as a prisoner (who would? just wait another minute or two to escape). Sure, you lose inventory too but I think for most people, that's mainly just food and horses (both of which you never need to buy after a few short hours in game). Fairly sure the player can donate money now too; that clearly won't **** up their precious economy 'balancing'.
It's exactly the same as with influence, I always end up having way, way more than I can or have avenues to 'spend' it on; only thing is dumping it to other clans.

Long, roundabout to say, yes, there should've been more features/goals/depth to spend money on or different play-routes; but we both know TW also won't be adding more on that aspect. So at least tweak the numbers among the current half-assed features.
 
As it is now, the player can easily accumulate more money than they know what to do with it while still maintaining a 150+party of T6 troops, a few roaming parties, and uncapped garrisons; but still net a decent amount of denars (not even accounting smithing, tournament loot, or even battle loot) creates that dichotomy.
We agree that it is easy to accumulate wealth. I think we just disagree on either how easy it is or what implication to draw from it.

Its my view that it is so easy to make money that costs are simply a non-issue. You simply could not tweak costs enough that it would have any real impact on the decisions that you(I) would make.
 
Well I put my little modification out on the Nexus for all to try out: Revised Recruits

Very simple to install, no other mod dependencies, can install/uninstall any time doesn't effect game saves in any way.


Again the idea is to give recruits a bit more survivability against ranged units, especially early on. I don't believe things should be as simple as parking your line of T2/T3 archers and simply melting all the enemy recruits away. And that's fine with Looters and Peasants as they are the true "trash" mobs.

I do not see recruits as "shock infantry" that are meant to be hard countered by ranged units. They should be the lowest form of melee/shield infantry. The most basic, least skilled, combat unit there is. But effective enough when charging in large numbers. Swordsmanship, archery - these require lots of training to become proficient. Spears and clubs? Pretty much anyone can pick up and use with minimal training.


Key point is while I did give some recruits shields, I also made them somewhat worse as melee infantry by giving them longer basic spears in place of pitchforks. This means your higher tier melee infantry are going to dominate recruits more, you will need at least 5x the number of recruits to overrun a unit of T5 infantry in most cases.

So if you play smartly, with proper tactics, you will actually fare just as well, possibly even better in some situations.

I think this is something you just have to try and see, not something I can explain.


Ultimately the game has to be balanced around Upkeep Costs. Otherwise unless you are "roleplaying" the game just devolves into recruiting the "best" units. I mean why wouldn't you? Look if Khan's Guards are gonna have all Glaives so they can be this hybrid Shock Troop/Horse Archer - that's fine. But then they gotta cost more than other T6 Melee Cavalry, like maybe 24 denars a day. And Vlandian Pikeman, total garbage T5 unit. Yeah they can rack up some good kills on an initial cavalry charge with spear bracing, but afterwards, in all other situations they are just about useless.

I mean let us look no further than the the balance of power at the top of the screen. If it is so horribly wrong that the results you get don't make a lick of sense, then you've either greatly outwitted A.I. (not too hard) or there is severe troop balance problem.

Let's take 400 Imperial Recruits versus 100 Imperial Palatine Guards; according to the game this should be a "fair fight". Or you know at least not completely one-sided i.e. you should expect some losses if things take their natural course
630FYwF.png


7vsJ2S4.jpg

3phXSrA.jpg

Also you can win with recruits in this situation as the attacker against Palatine Guards, but you are going to lose an awful lot of units
NQYmVXI.jpg
And you can still get a near flawless victory with 100 Palatine Guards, you just have to do a little more then simply park them in loose formation. You'll actually have to skirmish a little or split up your formation to achieve slaughter results.

That said there's basically no way 400 Imperial Recruits, even with shields, can beat 100 Legionaries.
NCocmWu.jpg

There's a method to my madness you see; take away some of the ridiculous advantage that archers enjoy, empower high tier melee infantry a little more.

It's fine to have imbalances in a game, that makes them dynamic. BUT then there has to be other mechanics present that makes this "fair". It's absolutely silly you can have 50 Recruits (100 Upkeep) that will struggle to beat 20 Tier 2 Ranged Bandits (60 Upkeep). Really you shouldn't need much more than 30 Recruits, maybe 40 Recruits if you want to truly ensure victory.
 
@Bluko88 your problem is that you know how the game works.

others don't and can't see how this change is basically insignificant.

Like you said: There is a method to your madness.
Some here are more like: Madness without a method.

If only they knew how the game actually works they wouldn't be so much against the idea of giving some recruits a shield.

But this makes me wonder: If instead of asking "should some recruits have shields?" You asked "Should there be a perk that allows recruits to have shields?"

How much different the hole thing might have been.

There is a perk at 150 Leadership, we all know how powerful it is, if there was a perk at 125 just for recruits it wouldn't be broken in comparison... just saying to those that oppose the idea like it's the plague.

I'll get to work on testing recruits with and without the mod, see if i can quantify the changes once and for all. I'll need a few hours.
 
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Ultimately the game has to be balanced around Upkeep Costs. Otherwise unless you are "roleplaying" the game just devolves into recruiting the "best" units. I mean why wouldn't you? Look if Khan's Guards are gonna have all Glaives so they can be this hybrid Shock Troop/Horse Archer - that's fine. But then they gotta cost more than other T6 Melee Cavalry, like maybe 24 denars a day. And Vlandian Pikeman, total garbage T5 unit. Yeah they can rack up some good kills on an initial cavalry charge with spear bracing, but afterwards, in all other situations they are just about useless.

I mean let us look no further than the the balance of power at the top of the screen. If it is so horribly wrong that the results you get don't make a lick of sense, then you've either greatly outwitted A.I. (not too hard) or there is severe troop balance problem.
Exactly, troops can be at whatever skill level/armor/strength, but there has to be some counterbalance. If KG's are still seemingly on the OP side for most (enough to not be 'subjective'), make them cost more or make it slightly harder to accumulate 100 of them.
If 100 legionnaires can take on 400 recruits and suffer no loss (which is quite ridiculous), yes, make them cost more. Or alternatively, if giving some recruits shields, align the costs that way too.

8000k denar for X troop type vs 8000k denar of another should have relatively equal results (whether that's 20 EC vs 200 recruits); then account for that 'rock>paper>scissors' aspect from there for the 'tactical' advantage to override that balancing.

'Upkeep' barely exists in the game as is, so there's no thought needing to balance a party, just upgrade all. Maybe you can only afford 25 cataphracts + 5 palatine archers out of a party of 100 troops. Or, even if palatine archers are 'weaker', maybe you go for 50 palatine archers + 5 EC instead. Right now, I can just get 100 EC, or 100 PA, or 50/50; and not break a sweat.
 
Let's take 400 Imperial Recruits versus 100 Imperial Palatine Guards; according to the game this should be a "fair fight". Or you know at least not completely one-sided i.e. you should expect some losses if things take their natural course
630FYwF.png


7vsJ2S4.jpg

3phXSrA.jpg

Also you can win with recruits in this situation as the attacker against Palatine Guards, but you are going to lose an awful lot of units
NQYmVXI.jpg
And you can still get a near flawless victory with 100 Palatine Guards, you just have to do a little more then simply park them in loose formation. You'll actually have to skirmish a little or split up your formation to achieve slaughter results.

That said there's basically no way 400 Imperial Recruits, even with shields, can beat 100 Legionaries.
NCocmWu.jpg

There's a method to my madness you see; take away some of the ridiculous advantage that archers enjoy, empower high tier melee infantry a little more.

It's fine to have imbalances in a game, that makes them dynamic. BUT then there has to be other mechanics present that makes this "fair". It's absolutely silly you can have 50 Recruits (100 Upkeep) that will struggle to beat 20 Tier 2 Ranged Bandits (60 Upkeep). Really you shouldn't need much more than 30 Recruits, maybe 40 Recruits if you want to truly ensure victory.
I hope you realize the power bar at the top is basically completely decided on tier (or unit level), numbers and if a unit is mounted; it doesn't account for anything else. It is just an outgrowth of autocalc. The rest of your post is confirming the thing that I and others don't want to happen with recruits will definitely happen.
@Bluko88 your problem is that you know how the game works.

others don't and can't see how this change is basically insignificant.

Like you said: There is a method to your madness.
Some here are more like: Madness without a method.

If only they knew how the game actually works they wouldn't be so much against the idea of giving some recruits a shield.
I don't know if I would call going from one (random) death among the defenders to forty deaths "basically insignificant." Why would I ever want to make recruits more dangerous in the late game when it is effectively impossible to choke off another kingdom's supply of them? The AI continuously comes at player in the late game. One of the very few ways to actually hurt the AI is to kill or capture all its higher tier troops.

Bluko at least made it clear (elsewhere) he doesn't give a **** about late game balancing because he doesn't play it:
Late game is just a chore.
You reach in-game day 1000 and create new character
 
I don't know if I would call going from one (random) death among the defenders to forty deaths "basically insignificant." Why would I ever want to make recruits more dangerous in the late game when it is effectively impossible to choke off another kingdom's supply of them? The AI continuously comes at player in the late game. One of the very few ways to actually hurt the AI is to kill or capture all its higher tier troops.

Bluko at least made it clear (elsewhere) he doesn't give a **** about late game balancing because he doesn't play it:
Because of this: DATA & conclusions.
 
I don't think anyone was comparing them going up against T2 in this thread? Bluko's tests were against T4 and T5 units and show a pretty big difference.
yes exactly. Read the conclusion part to understand why i did.

Bluko did show a big difference only when using tactics. The problem many have, and from what i was able to understand you as well. is how the AI can mass them up. The AI tactics aren't comparable to a player in the slightest.

So if there is no significant difference against T2 there is even less against T5 and so on
 
I'm taking about the AI: the last thing I want is the army they scraped together in two days after I killed off 3000 of their men to be at all usable in contesting my (now beaten-up) army.

I can't say I have that experience: between archers, improved cav and shieldwall formation putting shieldless dudes towards the back, I can usually mop up a village militia or small lord party for the XP.
Lmfao bro get good :wink:
 
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