As far as AI battling each other go, "simulated" battles consider unit levels and whether units are mounted (a flat multiplier to level based strength of the unit card). Thus factions with a lot of cav and nobles get advantage in AI wars. Let's look at party templates.
Empire: 63 men total, 7 cav, 7 nobles
Sturgia: 53 men total, 3 cav, 0 nobles
Aserai: 50 men total, 5 cav, 0 nobles
Vlandia: 54 men total, 16 cav, 10 nobles
Battania: 53 men total, 12 cav, 7 nobles
Khuzait: 57 men total, 19 cav, 0 nobles
I feel like there are indeed some factions here that have unfair advantage but I'm not sure if Sturgia is one of them.
Where did you got those numbers from? I was recently fighting Vlandians non stop for like a few months in game time and their armies are certainly not made of 40% cavalry. That might have been result of troop desertion bug but that wouldn't change the fact that those numbers does not appear in the game itself. Also I could swear I have captured noble line troops from Sturgian armies. If your numbers are true, they shouldn't have been there. I am not 100% sure about that thou as I did not pay attention to it specifically.
Also how large is mounted bonus?
Now let's do players. There is an obvious hole in Sturgian troop tree, their top tier archers have low tier bows and arrows and mid tier medium armor. They aren't comparable in any way to tier 5 ranged units of any other faction.
Troop trees of different cultures are not supposed to have comparable units. But if you want to compare then Batania doesn't have archers at all in their standard troop tree so they are infinitely worst off in that regard. And yes, you can get super archers in their noble line. But unless you take Disciplinarian perk and abuse forest bandits, you are going to have much harder time getting archers in your Batanian armies then Sturgian ones.
Are there some other units in the Sturgian troop tree that justify their ranged being trash?
Units are not there to justify anything. Each faction have a focus, with Imperial been sort of jacks of all trades. This is not competitive challenge, it's a single player game and factions are designed to have flavor, not to compete with each other on every field equally. Sturgia gets weaker archers, but it gets better infantry and super heavy cav in the noble line.
Are there some other units in the Sturgian troop tree that justify their ranged being trash? Druzhinniks are basically Vlandian knights but slightly worse due to some questionable equipment pieces and are a pain to upgrade because they only get a horse at tier 4.
First of all, Sturgian archers are not trash. They have the same ranged stats as Imperial or Kuzait archers, they just have less armor at tier 5 and slightly worst bows. But then unless you screw up, your archers should not get in to melee combat to begin with and you don't want them exchange archer fire no matter how much better armor yours have.
Vlandian knights are the best heavy cav in the game. Druzhinniks been "slightly" worst still makes them pretty damn good. Especially because some other factions doesn't have anything comparable.
Veteran warriors are good but hardly better than legionaries and sergeants. That leaves us with shock infantry and skirmish cavalry. I really doubt those are great enough to pull Sturgia up by its bootstraps.
Well Vlandian knights are "hardly better than Druzhiniks" in your opinion. So why do you count Sturgian unit been slightly worst in one case and dismiss another Sturgian unit been slightly better in another?
And yes, shock infantry are very good. They might actually be better then veteran warriors. Especialy because they will demolish any melee cavalry with their warrazzors. Vlandians can kiss their Sturgian ass, because Sturgian infantry will walk strait over dead bodies of Vlandian knights and their expensive horses.
If you want the best infantry in the game, Sturgian t5 is way to go. No competition here. The only weakens is that Sturgian T4 infantry absolutely sucks. That's really the only thing I would like to get changed in their roster.
Obviously, as a player in all your wisdom, you can lure the AI into attacking your shield wall and play as Sturgia in that way. You can also do it with any faction. In fact, every faction will be better at it than Sturgia, even Khuzaits on foot.
No they won't. You just said yourself that Sturgian top tier melee infantry is best in the game.
Their ranged units will just slaughter half the enemy army by the time they get to melee. Empire and Battania won't even need a shiled wall, they can spam archers and win every time.
Vlandian knights will wipe floor with those ranged units. So why don't you just declare every faction in the game been trash except for Vlandia?
And then there is the last thing -for a player non of this matters, because you can recruit what ever units you want. Nothing is preventing you to take Sturgian infantry, Vlandian cav and Batanian noble archers.
Sturgians get -20% to snow penalty, not + 20% to movement in snow. If the the penalty itself is 20% then the effective bonus is +5%. Is the penalty itself even implemented by the way? Meanwhile Vlandians upgrade their already bs knight armies 20% faster and Khuzaits get +10% to movement bonus from cav everywhere on the map. I certainly hope that these traits don't work for AI parties because it would just exacerbate the issue if they do.
And if penalty is 40% then bonus is +10%. You also don't know if it's -20% FROM the penalty or -20% TO the penalty. If the later and penalty was 20%, then Sturgians would effectively not suffer from snow penalty at all.
I certainly hope that these traits don't work for AI parties because it would just exacerbate the issue if they do.
AI armies are made of conscripts, upgrade rate for Vlandians makes absolutely no difference here. It might be the worst and most useless AI bonus of the all factions. And that's assuming AI upgrade it's troops to begging with, because AI armies are pre set to contain certain % of each tier troops.
And Khuzait armies are already faster then anybody else anyway. 10% is just small bonus to already large advantage they have.
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