Army Types

EagleofPatmos

Which type of army in total war do you prefer? The required general of all games since Rome II. Or the more freely structured armies that came before that.

sccrboi01

I see the reasons why they implemented the whole "General Required" mechanic, to prevent those micro stacks just milling around doing nothing.

I would however like it to go back to the former, with some modifications. Generals are no longer required, but armies led by a "captain" have debuffs and or do not perform in battle as well.

I just hate the fact that to move reinforcements to a province or town from another I need to recruit a general to simply move the troops, just a pain in the but. I am sure they can set up mechanics to prevent AI from spamming leaderless armies all over the place. Not requiring generals to recruit/move troops gives players alot more options and tactics in a campaign and in battles.

Just my opinion on it

TheGuardianOfMetal#3661

sccrboi01 said:

I see the reasons why they implemented the whole "General Required" mechanic, to prevent those micro stacks just milling around doing nothing.

I would however like it to go back to the former, with some modifications. Generals are no longer required, but armies led by a "captain" have debuffs and or do not perform in battle as well.

I just hate the fact that to move reinforcements to a province or town from another I need to recruit a general to simply move the troops, just a pain in the but. I am sure they can set up mechanics to prevent AI from spamming leaderless armies all over the place. Not requiring generals to recruit/move troops gives players alot more options and tactics in a campaign and in battles.

Just my opinion on it

How about Armies lead by Captains can only reinforce armies or defend cities, this would avoid single unit stacks from destroying "minor" cities (if we ever go back to the minor In Region cities of Shogun II and Empire) but would allow them to be used in defense and for reinforcing your other armies.

I'd also not give "captain" armies a debuff in Battle, aside the lack of the Generals boosts (maybe a smaller boost for the captains unit), but vastly worse auto-resolve values, to show the differences between a General, educated on teh Art of War and a "random Captain"

Chaosfolk

I'm strictly against troops moving about without generals mainly because it strains the AI too much and increases AI turns.

Secondly, recruiting whole stacks of cheap units and placing them in settlements in late game would negate the threat of rebellions. If these stacks dont give "military presense" bonus to public order, then it's illogical because there is an army sitting in a region. If these stacks give military presense bonus, then there is no threat of rebellion. And even if it spawns, this stack without a general can just mop up the rebellion without issue.

Thirdly, I don't think that it's plausible for an army without a "general person" to make adequate tactical and strategical desicions during a campaign. Especially in this time frame. Troops need a chain of command to function and desicions where to go and who to attack is handled by general and his staff, not captains, colonels etc.

I believe that a global recruitment system that we had in TWW is a nice compromise but I would make it so it's impossible to global recruit in foreign lands. Units in global recruitment pool will take double time to recruit (1 turn swordsmen will take 2 turns to be recruited). This will represent the travelling time of the troops to reach the army. But I don't want global recruitment to cost double price, that was the reason why global recruitment was very rarely used in TWW.

Its not ideal, but it's best possibility that we have.

Hrafn

It'd be cool if you had a visible supply column for each army that could connect to one or more friendly provinces (determined by the general's logistics skill, and maybe with a maximum supply column length), with each province capable of supplying one army, but capable of more with certain governor traits.

The army would be able to recruit and replenish units from any province that it is 'connected' to.

Reassigning an army to be supplied by another province would have a short delay, with more skilled generals able to do it faster; which would be important, because generals would now have the capability of cutting off enemy supply columns.

alstl

TheGuardianOfMetal said:

sccrboi01 said:

I see the reasons why they implemented the whole "General Required" mechanic, to prevent those micro stacks just milling around doing nothing.

I would however like it to go back to the former, with some modifications. Generals are no longer required, but armies led by a "captain" have debuffs and or do not perform in battle as well.

I just hate the fact that to move reinforcements to a province or town from another I need to recruit a general to simply move the troops, just a pain in the but. I am sure they can set up mechanics to prevent AI from spamming leaderless armies all over the place. Not requiring generals to recruit/move troops gives players alot more options and tactics in a campaign and in battles.

Just my opinion on it

How about Armies lead by Captains can only reinforce armies or defend cities, this would avoid single unit stacks from destroying "minor" cities (if we ever go back to the minor In Region cities of Shogun II and Empire) but would allow them to be used in defense and for reinforcing your other armies.

I'd also not give "captain" armies a debuff in Battle, aside the lack of the Generals boosts (maybe a smaller boost for the captains unit), but vastly worse auto-resolve values, to show the differences between a General, educated on teh Art of War and a "random Captain"

Also limit the size of an army depending on the rank of the officer leading it.

sccrboi01 said:

I see the reasons why they implemented the whole "General Required" mechanic, to prevent those micro stacks just milling around doing nothing.

I would however like it to go back to the former, with some modifications. Generals are no longer required, but armies led by a "captain" have debuffs and or do not perform in battle as well.

I just hate the fact that to move reinforcements to a province or town from another I need to recruit a general to simply move the troops, just a pain in the but. I am sure they can set up mechanics to prevent AI from spamming leaderless armies all over the place. Not requiring generals to recruit/move troops gives players alot more options and tactics in a campaign and in battles.

Just my opinion on it

My suggestion would be small stacks without a general with a limit to number of units in the stack and a limit to number of non-general stacks in a region. Perhaps a limit to lower level troops only in non-general stacks. This would allow for non-general stacks while not returning to the previous situation in which spamming stacks everywhere was the norm.

I understand why the change was made but a limited return to non-general stacks would improve the game.

tak22

Generally prefer general-led armies. For a few things, I wouldn't mind being able to have detachments, though - say, no more than 50% of the army can be detached from the general, in no more than 2 detachments; detachments can only go to adjacent regions and have no replenishment, and are led by a captain.

This would let you send cav ahead for scouting/mop up, or split up to send out garrisons or reinforcements, but IMO would avoid the swarms of 1-unit armies swarming the map.

Axelrad77

I was initially skeptical of the new general-based system, since it seemed too limiting to me. But after having gone back and played the older-gen games through again, I find myself much preferring it. With the aid of the replenishment system, it eliminates *tons* of micro-management the older games required in order to keep field armies at fighting strength. This also makes it easier for the AI to field respectable armies and not dilute its forces -
it's pretty common in the older games to see the AI have a full stack of weak units, with its elite units in a bunch of tiny stacks that are easily picked off.

Overall, I really like the direction CA has gone with making armies feel more distinct and enduring. The only gripe I have is that you can no longer detach the cavalry to run down a fleeing army, whereas in the old games this is one of my go-to strategies - since cavalry have a longer move distance on the map, it basically always allowed you to engage an army just out of range and draw the rest of your force in as reinforcements. In the new system, I've lost count of the times the AI has managed to park itself *just* out of range of my forces. However, this just requires more clever play to defeat.

I don't think any move back to "captains" is a good one. They were already ineffectual army leaders in the old games, really just useful for shipping units around and garrisoning - IIRC, they counted as 0 star generals, so all their units had a morale penalty. Any general was better than a captain, since even if they were a 0 star, at least you got a powerful bodyguard unit. But the AI never really understood how to form armies effectively, so you could see its best stack led by a captain while its super-star general was off marching by himself. All the proposals I'm seeing here to bring back limited captains sound like way too much work for no real gain.