sugestion removing the inability to train elites

[cadaverescu]

now... given the fact that the dark horde is a army of pure elites. Anything that gets over leve4 over there is a black armour wearing elite killing machine...
why not removing the imposibility to upgrade to elite units for the player...
I mean the king already cheat and recruit elites...
the NPC cheat and use autocalc...
why not leaving the player to grow elites himself... I mean how many ivory archers can you grow anyway? Maybe for some you can increase the xp required....
At this point i am already having a army of slaves full of elites... so being able to train them instead of recruiting the slaves would make a gameplay difference without being unblalancing...
And you can keep the palace for recruiting alternative

 

[Wellenbrecher]

No way. Please leave it the way it is.

To be honest I'd put even more troops under this elite restrictions.
Or let the player to toggle it at character creation at least.

 

[Joker86]

why not removing the imposibility to upgrade to elite units for the player...
I mean the king already cheat and recruit elites...
the NPC cheat and use autocalc...
why not leaving the player to grow elites himself... I mean how many ivory archers can you grow anyway?

Well, the NPCs HAVE to cheat, because unlike the player they don't have a real brain. Consider it as the biggest cheat ever, if you use your brain 

And btw. it would be (and was!) VERY easy to train a few hundred Ivory Archers: you need a few low level companions with a few points in training skill, and a bunch of new recruits, about 30 or more, up to 200 if you like. After two days of training all the recruits should have evolved to the first Vaegir archers. Once you reached this point, travel to the mountains between Vaegir and Swadian territory, and kill hungry bandits en masse. After two or three days of doing so, you will have as many Ivory Archers as you had recruits at the beginning. 

You know what? I would go into the completely different direction: my suggestion would be, to remove the player's ability to take garrisoned troops back. Only the "Give some men to the local garrison"-option, so that you don't have to leave your fiefs undefended. THIS would balance the game massively! 

 

[Lord Samuel]

You know what? I would go into the completely different direction: my suggestion would be, to remove the player's ability to take garrisoned troops back. Only the "Give some men to the local garrison"-option, so that you don't have to leave your fiefs undefended. THIS would balance the game massively! 

 

[Joker86]

Yeah, think about it!

A lot of NE players, and Merc herself among them, don't like how the endgame develops, where players have masses of the best units (Cavaliers, Rangers, Elite Halberdiers, King's Berserkers, Arbalestiers), and very often they lead only one troop type, e.g. only 200 Rangers or 100 Cavaliers, and for most purposes this works very well.

But if you couldn't change your army as easily as you underwear, but had to stick to one single army composition over the whole game, you would be forced to keep your army as flexible as possible, which would automatically lead to a "balanced" army with mixed troop types. Another side effect would be, that when you have losses, you have to replace them with recruits, which would make an end to these all-high-end-unit armies.

You could make it toggable in the camping menu (okay, you should, I doubt there will be 5 players at all who like my suggestion    ), for people who play with autosave and highest difficulty anyway.


Oh, I almost forgot: don't come with agruments like "self discipline" or something like that. You don't play games for selfdiscipline, and as long as you have the option to lead superior and unbalanced armies, 99% of the players will take use of it. Sometimes restrictions increase fun 

 

[Lord Samuel]

A lot of NE players, and Merc herself among them, don't like how the endgame develops, where players have masses of the best units (Cavaliers, Rangers, Elite Halberdiers, King's Berserkers, Arbalestiers), and very often they lead only one troop type, e.g. only 200 Rangers or 100 Cavaliers, and for most purposes this works very well.

Sure, the cavalry and elite payrolls should be much, much more expensive. Like three or four times the price they cost now.
To deter players from forming cavalry-only parties, for example.

But garrison management is an important part in the player's strategies that shouldn't be restrained.

 

[DamienZharkoff]

You do realize merc uses mostly mid tier troops right? she has said so herself, so you sir fail.

Also.. what damned sense does that make? "Let me put you in my garrison... Oh you are denying my wish to come with me even though I am YOUR nobility and hold command over you? Okay!" Its like fallout 3 when that supermutant ally who said he owes his life to you refuses to go into the radiation and save the day (Even though hes immune to it) and instead lets you or lyons go off to die XD

I personally try to use 80-20 Infantry/Troops. Its all based on play style. Imagine if you play oblivion okay.. you have all the best enchanted armor. You put it in a chest while you go off to enchant a new set of armor. Suddenly the game, deciding that you are too powerful, decides to make your armor unobtainable from the chest. Would that be fun? Or frustrating?


Edit: Lord Samuels Idea has been something I have said a lot. Make nobles cost noble prices. nobles being Lesser Khans, Basic Knights, etc

Mounted units should be something you are less likely to throw willy nilly at an enemy

 

[Wellenbrecher]

Has anyone of you ever tried Expanded Gameplay III?
Even mid tier units are expensive as hell there and I found myself running around with an army composed with low tier units at level 15.
And of course the high tier units deal out so much damage, that you will have losses no matter what.
That's what I would do, much like Lord Samuel and DamienZharkoff said.

 

[Josef_the_Pretender]

Joker, it's an interesting idea, but I think I'm going to have to go the self-discipline route. 

Firstly, you can already give troops to your lords' garrisons and not get them back unless you relieve the lord of duty. You'd have to be happy taking the relationship hit and possible defection of the lord in that case. 

So most players probably only control a town and a castle or two. If you took away the ability to manage these garrisons, I don't think it would help gameplay.

Because of the range of challenges in the game, for example - a) different fighting styles for the Swadians, Khergits etc, b) training up your recruits on bandits and sea raiders, c) the Dark Knights, I think you have to be able to swap in and out different troops. If you're sieging the Rhodoks, you need different tools than if you're meeting the Nords in the field.

There's also the fact that if you're planning a major campaign (200 troops and upwards), you need a staging area to gather said troops, otherwise you're trailing around the map leaking morale.

So I think it comes down to you playing the game the way you want to, but to keep it fun for everyone, it's up to you to make the decisions that restrict your own game. I know, we've all ended up with a couple of those horrible Swadian Knights when we're trying to assemble a peasant army, throwing their weight around in the barrack-room and generally being unpleasant, but generally people can stick to their plan without the game actually making the restriction for them.

And I don't think making nobles more expensive is going to make any difference. At some point in the game, you'll never worry about money again, so you'll be able to hire them anyway. If people want to hire them at the start, they'll just import a character with 20K in cash. The best antidote to someone with 100 Knights is the boredom that ensues when they win every battle without lifting a finger. Then they'll stop, cos it just isn't fun any more.

So, the beauty of the game is the player's power to play any way they want, and I think this mod does a brilliant job of giving you the freedom to do that.

 

[daumor]

What cracks me up is that nobles will follow you en masse... I wouldn't think that there would be 1000 nobles in all of Swadia, but hey it's possible.

I vote in a general decrease in troop availability, except with the mercs, as they are crazy expensive anyway... If it takes a month to gather a decent mid tier army than you'll think twice before taking on the more challenging fights.

On topic: I think that a nice touch to the elite farms (Ivory Temples, Cathedrals etc...) would be that you had to pay 500 denars and give a corresponding high tiered troop over for training. A Vaegir marksman is trained into an ivory archer. This would add the time to train the marksman, remove the numbers from recruiting them, but increase the over all availability as you could farm them through regular troop farming. So maybe increase the fee to 1 or 2k denars. If each cost 2k then a large army would get expensive real quick. I mean money making in NE is no problem once you get over the speed bump at the beginning, but a 200K army is nothing to scoff at. And would be silly to pay. I do agree with an increase in wages though, and a extra modifier for the blue bloods, similar to the cavalry modifier.

You do realize merc uses mostly mid tier troops right? she has said so herself, so you sir fail.

Also.. what damned sense does that make? "Let me put you in my garrison... Oh you are denying my wish to come with me even though I am YOUR nobility and hold command over you? Okay!"

-snip-

And its hardly necessary to berate someone in such a manner...

 

[Josef_the_Pretender]

If it takes a month to gather a decent mid tier army than you'll think twice before taking on the more challenging fights.

But where's the fun in that? You can make these things too realistic you know. In Custom Settlements, you have spend the whole the early game just waiting around. I can do that in real life!

And its hardly necessary to berate someone in such a manner...

 

[Joker86]

I knew my idea would cause a nice debate 


First of all: I agree with Josef: never mind how high those wages are, at one point of NE you don't care about money any more. And there is still another problem:

Archers are similarly powerful as knights, especially in masses and together with the morale system: with 150 Rangers you can defeat an amlost endless amount of enemies. I raped the WHOLE F***ING DARK KNIGHT INVASION FORCE, which appeared in Sargoth, my capital city, with nothing more than 300 archers. 2800 lose vs. 300, I had about 50 dead and 100 wounded. Okay, the first fight was tough, I had to lure their cavalry away, at least for a minute or two, until they all got unhorsed, and then I had to occupy those dark rangers a bit. But as soon as I had one 3rd of all the troops on the field, I knew my army would get out of each fight with nothing more than a few scratches. 90% of my casualties were caused by enemy fire.

Now try to balance this with wages... or with troop trees   


Next argument I have to invalidate: realism. I know that it makes no sense not being able to take your men back out of the garrison, but you all know very well, how many things I could enumerate, which aren't realistic either... 


The point with "You can't go out and and gather troops with bandits and sea raiders" is exactly what causes these "problems" with unbalanced parties: it's no "fighting and becomming stronger or dieing" any more, it's a simple "industrial" process, where you artificially breed your elite units. It's no more "These four King's Berserkers are the rest of 87 Raiders, which I recruited once in two days before I started my campaign against the Rhodoks. After seven battles and two sieges they're everything what's left.", as it SHOULD be!

No, you simply let them kill bandits and sea raiders over and over, as if you would learn more by killing 50 bandits than by killing 5 of them. 


Mercenary has opened her "Mercenary Challenge"-topic, where she specified some rules you should follow to, to experience a really hard gameplay. I have started to record a "video diary" with fraps, to share my progress with you. (Although there is still only one uploaded, but three more are ready to go, I'm just too lazy to upload *gg*). I had highest difficulty actived (except of autoblocking), and first time in my life I played with autosaving, so that I can't simply load a savegame when I messed things up.

It all started with creating my horse archer character and buying some first equipment (what the hell do I need a broken sword or a half spear for?), then my first fight against some desperate bandtis followed, which I won. Another one or two followed, then I got knocked out by a large band of hungry bandits, but my character was already that skilled, that after escaping I could make this setback undone easily. And I started to win tournaments. Soon I had enough money for a nice party of Mercs (at this point money already didn't play any role), and after Graveth conquered Malayurg castle and left 58 men as garrison, I had my first castle. And you know what? After this point I didn't experience anything that was worth recording. I waited for a Rhodok campaign against my small kindom, and was hoping for an epic (tower-) siege with my 100 Merc archers against a few hundred vengeful Rhodoks, but nothing came. And even if it did, after this siege there would be nothing interesting any more. I had my Merc garrison in Malayurg, and from time to time I made a "shopping tour" through all the taverns in whole Caladria to increase my army size. Perhaps I would conquer one or two castles or cities more, but there is no doubt, that my chances of failure would be 0,01%, due to my possibility to prepare myself with garrisoned troops. So just a few successful sieges more... 

The fact that I was limited to Mercenaries made things only slightly faster, for Merc not having many uber-units, except of Lady- and Lordless Knights. And do you know how I got my 50 of them? Yeeeeeees, by farming bandits 


I think this is a farce of the original idea of a seasoned warband, which was hardened TOGETHER in the fires of many many battles.

I know my idea sounds stupid on the first glance, but I think the effects on the gameplay would be it worth. What would change?

You wouldn't have three or four different specialized armies for each possible situation any more. You would have your garrison (probably some weaker archers and spearmen with shields, supported by a few heavier troops and better archers, to save wages - even paying half wages hurts, if you benefit from these troops only at siege denfenses) and your party. Your party would become much more "personal", because you fight each battle together. "Breeding" troops wouldn't be so easy any more, and therefore top tier troops would become that valuable as they deserve it. At last. You would have cavalry, archers and infantry in your army, to be prepared both for sieges and open fielded battles. Also the "quality" of your troops would be mixed, due to constant losses and the missing possibility of farming a reservoir of them. Starting a siege or a big battle would become a very important decision, because if you fail, you lose your beloved army.

If you find some good units to recruit (mostly captured prisoners, but also recruited prisoners), but have your party limit reached (and this will be the case all the time in this gamemode  ), you would REALLY have to think about your tactics, and party managment would at last deserve its name.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

After that reply I seriously consider at least to try that mode, if it was to be implemented.

Yet you'd still hit a point where the losses you'll inevitably take won't matter anymore. You'd still have enough elite units to train the new recruits.
And seriously: what was the last time one of you guys/gals was utterly crushed after transcending level 20.
Well supposedly the first time you fought the DKs, but you get where I'm going. 

But that's a M&B thing and not NE.

 

[DamienZharkoff]

Heres the thing... It IS an industrial process where you no longer care about your troops as time goes on. As you gather more and more power, you develope less and less bonds to the cost of human lives. You begin to see your troops as first knightss, then bishops, then rooks, and before you know it, your once proud rook is now just a pawn to you. Thats how it should be, more power, more winning. And heres the thing, EVERYONE has different play styles. as I said before, I always go with 80-20 Infantry/cavalry, if I use archers, its 70-15-15. why? Because thats how "I" like to play. In oblivion, I could jump on a rock and arrow people to death, but do I? NO! Why? Because I choose to play my way. I play for what I feel is fun. If merc started controlling how we developed our armies, the mod would lose its fun, Also, according to your argument of...

"Next argument I have to invalidate: realism. I know that it makes no sense not being able to take your men back out of the garrison, but you all know very well, how many things I could enumerate, which aren't realistic either...  "

Is full of so much bullshat I don't know where to begin.... Fine, at your same argument we should add laser tripwire thermal nuclear bombs to castles.. it would be more challenging. Its not realistic, but would add more challange 

Then theres the fact, its unrealistic AND takes away from gameplay, as most of us pointed out, it would be frustrating and annoying. I use my  castle to store my shieldmen and archers until I raid a castle, why must I suffer because YOU might use it to store high tier units?




If the wages were increased, storing units would become much more needed, and much more harder. Try paying off half a garrison of 500 troops that cost 500 denars a week. (for non-math nuts that's 250,000 Denars a week). That would give the balance you need right there!

 

[Josef_the_Pretender]

Ok, I have to work (booo), so 2 quick points:

with nothing more than 300 archers. 2800 lose vs. 300, I had about 50 dead and 100 wounded.

Really!? You did that? However, I will say that it wasn't that easy - you still had to invest significant effort in getting your troop limit up to 300 and actually recruit and train up the 300 archers. Also, I guess this was the action of an experienced commander. But remember the first time you met the DKs and got your ass whupped? That's a delicious experience in the game - getting taken apart and gradually learning how to fight them. That would be made significantly harder for someone coming to the game if your restrictions were in place.

Secondly, I'm half persuaded now that it would make a better game for experienced people who want that extra challenge  . But equally, the wage increases as DZ's complicated maths formula suggests (I'm no expert), there is a lot to be said for having troops that cost 500 a week. But these ideas would definitely have to be implemented as part of a difficulty setting - you'd have to choose your difficulty at the outset of the game. I don't think you can inflict them upon everyone.

Finally, I'll throw this into the pot: what about, instead of troops costing more, you triple the amount of XP it takes for them to upgrade to each higher level? Or increase it a lot for the higher tier troops, so you could have a progression to a mid tier troop fairly quickly, but it would take significant time to get to Lady Knight status. Then you'd be pretty careful in battles 

I don't endorse the above point, at least not as part of the normal game. If you could choose a difficuly level at the start (as in a menu saying Normal or Hard - or Fun and Not So Fun), then maybe.

 

[Aetheus]

Come to think of it, what difficulty do you people play on? Killing 2.8K with an army of 300? Never knew that NE was set in Sparta ...

I have a band of some 250 or so men with me, about 60% of which are top tier (although not elite) troops, and I still get ass raped by the Dark Knights all the time unless I lure them to forests/mountains. I can't see why anybody would wanna make the game more difficult. =/

 

[cadaverescu]

i think the whole point of the game was the flexibility. If you want to run around with 300 lady knights in the game you can. If you want 300 ivory archers there is plenty to enslave. But if i want 300 lesser khans there aren`t enough around. And there should be a posibility for the player to get them. I play MB  for the freedom of choice, not for the liniarity.
There are 3 things i don`t like..
1) imposibility to train elites... and to aquire some elites from slaving
2) imposibility to train dark troops in the dark towns reconquered...
3) slaves melting in the garison

I mean... if you think the elites are game-breaking.. you should try plaing with no armour, if that makes the game more playable. Don`t limit My choices!

 

[Josef_the_Pretender]

Cadaverescu, I agree with you about the flexibility.

But having to work a little to get the elites isn't too difficult, is it? Whereas the proposals of the other guys would change the core game significantly.

Aetheus - I'm not sure that difficulty really matters - doesn't it really just control damage taken (ok there are things like faster combat which you get used to in 15 mins, and better AI which I'm not sure how to quantify)? I have been playing at 150% but recently because I want to try different things I've turned saves back on and it's 113% I think. But I still couldn't beat 2800 DKs 

 

[Pellagus]

But having to work a little to get the elites isn't too difficult, is it? Whereas the proposals of the other guys would change the core game significantly.

I agree with this point. Lady Knights, for example,  are ridiculously easy to train. The minute you hire peasant women they're practically browsing through the lady's armour section of the Kays catalogue. I have trained up Cavaliers and they take a fair bit longer, which seems fair to me.

(Ideally you'd be able to set a training time for each troop type, so if you say you want a cavalier in 2 weeks, it'll cost you, but you can have one even though he'll be an idiot that doesn't know which end of a horse is the front, or you can wait 2 months and get a cavalier that not only fights well, but opens doors for ladies and can use a knife and fork. I realise this is silly talk, just me thinking aloud.)

 

[amade]

I say we limit the availability of elite troops out of spite.

It's more fun persecuting people who likes everything done easy.

edit: adding obligatory lols and smileys for the hard of thinking.