Unit caps

Laindesh

What do people feel about unit caps?

Factionwide or\and army wide.

Personally i like it if its done well. But it's not for every faction out there.
It forces me to consider what kind of army i want to build, what it will focus on.

Rather than just pump out doomstacks.

Canuovea#6291

I'd be fine with Army composition caps, or at least be willing to give it a go with a mod.

Factionwide? That's more a Tomb Kings thing. Rather keep it unique.

Steph_F_David

I'm using both in my mod. I think it helps making army more lore friendly, and make the stronger units more interesting.

I just hope CA patches the UI and activate the UI counter for other factions than Tomb King

Walkabout

I am using a mod that restricts the number of high tier units in each army and one that adds two basic unit, recruitment into the main building line. This combo seems to work really well. When you see the big monsters they are much more interesting

TheShiroOfDalton

This is badly needed in this game. Tiring of all the doomstacks that are all you get to encounter come midgame.

Whiskeyjack_5691

I'd be down for unit caps per army. I tend to restrain myself from using too many high tier units in an army anyway, but sometimes the temptation to build an absurd death-stack is too much to resist. Could lead to more interesting army comps for players and AI.

Unit caps faction-wide though, I don't think would be great.

Steph_F_David

You can combine both.
The unit caps per army is "fixed", like 5 points or Rare units allowed max.

While the cap is dynamic, like one dragon for each 5 tier building built.

dreagon

None. If you don't want to use that many elite units, simply don't use them. But if there has to be a cap it has to be per army. To me it never made sense that 1 province could provide 5 elite units, just like an empire controlling an entire continent.

TheShiroOfDalton

dreagon said:

None. If you don't want to use that many elite units, simply don't use them. But if there has to be a cap it has to be per army. To me it never made sense that 1 province could provide 5 elite units, just like an empire controlling an entire continent.

Self-limitation is a invalid suggestion. The game mechanics heavily push doomstacking and the AI will do nothing but doomstack.

CA has to fix this. Elites must be elites, not standard troops after turn 50.

Tennisgolfboll

I want both army caps and faction wide caps.

Kaffeemann#8893

I'd prefer some kind of army capacity system. Where elite units take up a lot of your army capacity and cheap units only take up a little.

FrostPaw

As an optional campaign check box sure, but the AI better be using it too.

Helhound

The most recent patched update of Thrones of Brittania has the recruitment system I'd like to see moving forward for their titles. At least their titles that follow the 20 stack req. But without tying tech to units. That idea is **** garbage tier.

Since tech isn't tied to units (thank god) in TWW, that would mean you actually have access to the full roster right outta jump street. But unit recruitment would be on a "CD". Meaning that your recruitment pool only has x amount of a certain unit. At each turn of the CD, another unit would populate that pool. Each time you recruit a unit it goes up in CD by 4% percent for each one you have.

So if High Elf Spear took 2 turns to replace, and you had 25 of them, it would now take 4 turns to get another. Each building you build that corresponds to a particular unit group would actively lower the CD for replenishment by a set amount, and increase the max stored in the pool.

This system would actively fight Doomstacking. Because while you can get access to the big stuff early, if it has a long CD and you haven't built anything to counteract that, you'll only be getting a few of that unit for a long time.

To use Elves again, say a Star Dragon. Has something like a 15 turn "CD". Because that base number is high, you'll start seeing it jump up even higher much quicker than HE Spears. If you had even 3 of them, that's now a 17 turn CD (rounding). Protect them, as you aren't getting them back quick. Also that means buildings that lower their CD become much more valuable and the chief way to field them in any number. Where basic units do well enough on their own.

On the other hand, if you lose them they come back quicker since you no longer have the penalty for ownership. Especially if you have the a lot of the buildings that lowers CD. Means that just because you lost or the AI lost all of a particular type of unit, they won't just vanish from the war.

Walkabout

Ephraim_Dalton said:

dreagon said:

None. If you don't want to use that many elite units, simply don't use them. But if there has to be a cap it has to be per army. To me it never made sense that 1 province could provide 5 elite units, just like an empire controlling an entire continent.

Self-limitation is a invalid suggestion. The game mechanics heavily push doomstacking and the AI will do nothing but doomstack.

CA has to fix this. Elites must be elites, not standard troops after turn 50.

Agree self limiting does not work with AI army formations. Maybe this is another “essential” toggle option for WH3. TT elite unit restrictions on/off. I guess this would help those of us who want it in core game and still give a total free play experience for those who want that.

Walkabout

Doh like Frostpaw suggested above. Just saw Frostpaw’s post.

Vanilla_Gorilla#8529

I don't like them.

They're a rather bad way to make units feel "elite" because you inevitably can have as many as you like (as the TK demonstrate nicely) because your empire is so large. If anything they're a way of hamstringing the AI and making the game easier.

imnrk

I really like the way the mod "Boyz will be boyz" does it. The way the mod does it is giving a strict cap for every elite unit, but the more military buildings you create the higher the cap gets - Tomb Kings style. This gives a natural progression, as well as giving a use for multiple military buildings and limiting AI doomstacks.

I also like what the mod does to battles, but that is neither here nor there.

FrostPaw

Vanilla_Gorilla said:

I don't like them.

They're a rather bad way to make units feel "elite" because you inevitably can have as many as you like (as the TK demonstrate nicely) because your empire is so large. If anything they're a way of hamstringing the AI and making the game easier.

Actually if both the AI and the player followed a unit cap that was balanced (no easy task), then it should increase the difficulty, not make it easier.

Typically battle difficulty is made easier due to one side having an excess of something significant. Be it large, anti-large, armour pierce, armour or artillery.

Sagranda

FrostPaw said:

Vanilla_Gorilla said:

I don't like them.

They're a rather bad way to make units feel "elite" because you inevitably can have as many as you like (as the TK demonstrate nicely) because your empire is so large. If anything they're a way of hamstringing the AI and making the game easier.

Actually if both the AI and the player followed a unit cap that was balanced (no easy task), then it should increase the difficulty, not make it easier.

Theoretically.
But with how bad the battle AI is, having balanced armies on both sides hardly makes any noticeable difference.
There have been mods that addressed the unit recruitment of the AI and I think one of those is still up, and even with armies that were around the same strength as the AI one and of roughly the same composition, the battles really didn't get any harder.

The only difficult battles I had (the time when I started with the game excluded) were the ones where my army was heavily outmatched.


I personally like not having unit caps, since it allows me to do all kinds of different campaign runs (that can be adjusted mid-campaign) without having to mod every time I start a new one or have to restart because a change to the mod would not be save-game compatible.

Canuovea#6291

Speaking as someone who often, out of nostalgia, keeps my early game army for my starting Legendary Lord most of the game quite often (especially as Empire), I'm fairly sure that the game would be a good deal easier with AI forced into a balanced composition.

That being said, I do look forward to giving it a try in that mod.

Tennisgolfboll

Kaffeemann said:

I'd prefer some kind of army capacity system. Where elite units take up a lot of your army capacity and cheap units only take up a little.

This also a good way to do it!

mightygloin

I'd never play a campaign without any sort of unit cap mod, especially after witnessing Noctilus' dread doomstack consisting of 12x necrofex and 7x leviathan.

Vanilla_Gorilla#8529

FrostPaw said:

Vanilla_Gorilla said:

I don't like them.

They're a rather bad way to make units feel "elite" because you inevitably can have as many as you like (as the TK demonstrate nicely) because your empire is so large. If anything they're a way of hamstringing the AI and making the game easier.

Actually if both the AI and the player followed a unit cap that was balanced (no easy task), then it should increase the difficulty, not make it easier.

Typically battle difficulty is made easier due to one side having an excess of something significant. Be it large, anti-large, armour pierce, armour or artillery.

How so?

I have an excess of intelligence over the AI. If they lack elites because they manage them worse than I do it seems like it makes my job easier.

Sagranda

mightygloin said:

I'd never play a campaign without any sort of unit cap mod, especially after witnessing Noctilus' dread doomstack consisting of 12x necrofex and 7x leviathan.

Which can be fixed without unit caps though, as proven by recruitment mods and even a statement by CA.

mightygloin

Sagranda said:

mightygloin said:

I'd never play a campaign without any sort of unit cap mod, especially after witnessing Noctilus' dread doomstack consisting of 12x necrofex and 7x leviathan.

Which can be fixed without unit caps though, as proven by recruitment mods and even a statement by CA.

But still, caps would make it more immersive since nobody could have a Star Dragon farm. Anyway they could just make it a campaign difficulty option for those who want to spam such units.

From a lore perspective also units like HE spearmen should be always present in their armies, late game or not. It wouldn't be possible to fully replace them with swordmasters or phoenix guard etc.

MonochromaticSpider#5650

Aryndelin said:

What do people feel about unit caps?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Aryndelin said:

Factionwide or\and army wide.

Factionwide: Only if you want to **** off Settra by stealing his gimmick
Army wide: I repeat my previous answer.

Aryndelin said:

Personally i like it if its done well. But it's not for every faction out there.
It forces me to consider what kind of army i want to build, what it will focus on.

Bad jokes about plastic surgery in women spring to mind, but leaving those out, I reckon the Wood Elves show us exactly how these kinds of things would play out.

Currently you either go all elf with no forest spirit units to save amber or you go all trees and tier 1 archers with no murder elves to save amber, and this choice depends pretty much entirely on whether you picked Orion or Durthu. And this is pretty much every single stack, and there's just no variety, so every single battle pretty much ends up playing out the same way.

Now contrast with Chaos. You can go mass chosen very easily and that will win eventually and it is sort of fun, particularly in sieges where your tide just rolls on and on. And it fits Siggy very well, since he doesn't have a mount. But Siggy, two heroes, and 17 chosen? That's maybe overkill, so maybe add some cav? Or some dragon ogre pseudo-cavalry? Then just tank with Siggy, who is borderline immortal in melee, and have chosen GW and dogres pile on. Siggy is one lord for whom a giant might also fit in nicely.

Chosen and knights isn't bad, though. And it fits Archaon whose mount is a stupid horse anyway. You can of course also throw some shaggoths into the mix to really open up tactical options. You can spice up your chosen with trolls for added offense. Mass shaggoths will do a very solid job of breaking things.

Or one overlooked option, manticore spam. One manticore sucks. It will rampage and get itself killed. 5+ manticores? That's a lot of angry birdies in one place. If you bring a sorc and a hero on manticores as well as four ferals then that's almost certain air dominance, it will murder enemy characters, it will murder individual units on a wall, and if a couple of feral manticores die then it's just a one-turn recruitment anyway.

Kholek, ten shaggoths, hero, sorc, rest manticores is probably the most brutal stack I've ever pushed in a campaign. It is unreal how efficient this is at pretty much anything.

The point I'm trying to make here, there are so many amusing chaos murder stacks you can build and they all work. Now imagine that there was a two-unit cap on chaos knights, since they are tier 4. Suddenly you can't really go nuts with a Bret-style Archaon stack that has him, a horse-mounted hero, the ROR knights, and 4+ units of regular knights. How is that inability any fun?

Or take Throgg and his monster horde, full of skinwolves, fimir, trolls, maybe a few mammoths, and maybe even a dragon. That's fun, isn't it? Not efficient, of course, but how is that not fun? How would it possibly be more fun if you had unit caps that broke this concept and forced you to bring ass-clenchingly boring marauders?

Imagine a Greenie army with caps on black orcs? Can you even do that? My imagination does not suffice and people tend to accuse me of being crazy every so often. Don't know how far gone you'd have to be to imagine a late game greenie stack with just 2-3 black orcs.

And so on, and so forth. Point is, unit caps means less choice, and less choice is generally not more fun in a sandbox game.

MonochromaticSpider#5650

Tennisgolfboll said:

Kaffeemann said:

I'd prefer some kind of army capacity system. Where elite units take up a lot of your army capacity and cheap units only take up a little.

This also a good way to do it!

If I wanted to play Starcraft, I'd play Starcraft.

And I'm not sure this would really help the AI, it just wouldn't be as capable of building doomstacks. What would the best player strategy be? Well, garrison spam springs to mind. Defend with garrisons and low capacity units, attack with the most capacity-efficient doomstack you can manage.

The AI would of course try to do the same but it cannot manage capacity as well as a player, cannot judge capacity-efficiency as well as a player, and it does not always build garrison buildings.

CatalinUID

MonochromaticSpider said:

Tennisgolfboll said:

Kaffeemann said:

I'd prefer some kind of army capacity system. Where elite units take up a lot of your army capacity and cheap units only take up a little.

This also a good way to do it!

If I wanted to play Starcraft, I'd play Starcraft.

And I'm not sure this would really help the AI, it just wouldn't be as capable of building doomstacks. What would the best player strategy be? Well, garrison spam springs to mind. Defend with garrisons and low capacity units, attack with the most capacity-efficient doomstack you can manage.

The AI would of course try to do the same but it cannot manage capacity as well as a player, cannot judge capacity-efficiency as well as a player, and it does not always build garrison buildings.

Some people like to cheese. Some people do not.
I, for one, enjoy using low tier troops into the late game, but if the ai will only use late tier troops, than my strategy is simply not viable,which means I also have to adapt and start using doom stacks.
I think all of us have different views on this matter, and it is perfectly Ok. I think ca should just provide us with that option of toggling. Cheesers will cheese, hardcore will hardcore. Simple and efficient.
Untill then, I will employ unit caps, both army and faction.
It also makes sense from a lore perspective. After reading a lot of gortrek and felix I have come to appreciate one elite unit, such as a giant, or a demon. If there would be 10 of them in a stack their impact will not be felt.
With sfo, they have the option of having both army and faction caps, and you can easily have flavourful armies maybe not as extreme as without caps, but enjoyable nonetheless. For example, with khalida I always go full sepulchre stalker and necropolis, which have a cap of 6 and 4. That is 10 units, certainly enough to maintain her flavour.
Whilst with the ushabti dynasty Lord I go with tomb guards and ushabti. Granted there can be only 4 ushabti, but I think it is enough to give it it's own flavour.
My point is, if that option of toggling would exist, CA would please both parts, as we all have different definitions of fun.

Sagranda

Yeah, because everyone who doesn't like unit caps just wants to cheese or spam elite units -.-
That whole premise needs to go, since it's just not true. It adds nothing healthy to the discussion.

Also, the only time I was actually forced to bring Doomstacks against the AI was with mods that improved the AI, increased their aggression towards the player and buffed the campaign bonuses they receive a good amount above Legendary.
In Vanilla or outside of such mods? Never.
Heck, there are people who have done L/VH runs with T2 or T3 being the highest tier of units they used.


An option for unit caps would please both sides, true.

MonochromaticSpider said:

Imagine a Greenie army with caps on black orcs? Can you even do that? My imagination does not suffice and people tend to accuse me of being crazy every so often. Don't know how far gone you'd have to be to imagine a late game greenie stack with just 2-3 black orcs.

I have actually done that back in WH1 and it wasn't really fun...

Tennisgolfboll

The option to play a campaign without doomstacking would be awesome!

AmericanViking22

No caps please, I'll keep my sandbox thanks. Maybe as an option or a mod? But really, what's stopping people from self imposing restrictions? I can't understand the mindset of people who want to insist other people play the way THEY want them to play. And for all that I see people complain about the quality of the AI, I don't see how people can think the AI would manage limited elites better than it manages anything else.