Unit variety through strategic role (campaign only)

LennoxPoodle#1380

This is an "idea" running through my head for quite a while now and WH3 on the horizon provides a fitting occasion to share it. I think it addresses two aspects of the game I perceive as lackluster. The first of those being the issue of building ever higher tier doomstacks, which only gets partially addressed by this I guess. The other is the insufficient (IMO) representation of the ebb and flow of war and peace (or rather consolidation in the case of warhammer) ruling supreme throughout many historical periods (especially those dominated by levies and militias) in the TW series in general (except for thrones maybe). This latter part is the driving factor of the actual idea itself. In Total War (and many other strategy games) we always built up our forces making them constantly stronger. In reality however militaries are very often raised or reinforced based on immediate need or ambition and then disbanded or downsized once the reasons for them dwindle. Even in modern wars economies get restructured from growth to war efforts and vice versa.

I would address that by separating all units of most (?) factions into 3 separate strategic categories, the emphasis on each being different per faction.
The first group are militia units, drawn from the general populace and other sources of convenience. This can encompass Free Company Militia(ofc), peasant mobs, archers(Bret and elven) and Knights Errant, goblins, zombies, fell bats and direwolves among others, but even stuff like spearmen and Thunderers. They should be easy and fast to recruit, but cause serious headache in the long term maintenance, providing the main oscillation in the players force. Strategically militias are meant for relatively quick reaction, be that recruitment in short term preparation or the replacement of losses. Maybe their recruitment prerequisites could be lowered, even dropped completely in some cases.

The next category will provide the more permanent core of your forces and the main source of long term buildup (vertical progression): standing/professional forces. The prime example here are obviously imperial state troops, but pretty much every faction has some form of basic full time warrior like Knights of the Realm, Clanrats(?), Saurus, Silver Helms, (non-black)orcs in general or almost every regular war machine. The conditions for those units are inverted to those of the militia. Not relying on external sources of income (or whatever really) and discipline (sometimes) allows them to be feasibly maintained long term. The flipside is the high cost of equipment and accompanying infrastructure plus the long training, which comes with a considerable cost too. So the burden of these units should mainly be handled through initial recruitment (at least relative to maintenance).

Our last "faction" is inconvenient in any way. Often drawn from a very limited recruitment pool and/or hard to drain, elite units require a special treatment, making them both hard to acquire and to maintain. This makes them only feasible for use in small numbers were their superior strength can be leveraged to maximum effect. Giants cause major mayham in camp, greatswords are granted significant privileges in addition to their double wage and Hell Pit abominations require small armies of slaves to attend and confine them. Those units are there to accentuate your main force and intervene at critical points. Those units are a contious strain on your economy, but can't be disbanded and reestablished quickly either.

How exactly these costs in buildup and maintenance are handled is another question. The easiest (and probably least impact full) way is to tweak the existing cost and upkeep, by redistributing between each other depending on unit and changing recruitment times here and there. For this the transition between game 2 and 3 wouldn't even be necessary. If they implemented unreplenished recruitment, like they did for 3K and ToB, that would be the ideal point to introduce this distinction. Due to being much more gradual than recruitment time, replenishment allows much finer adjustments in recruitment duration. I'm in favour of this anyway, maybe even alongside the abandonment of recruitment slots. In this case, the base replenishment rate of each unit category would be different (favoring militia units of course).
A more intricate way to do it might be offered by a toned down version of the Tomb Kings version (them being exempt from this anyway) working with an availability parameter for each unit (weapon variants and such being pooled together), at least elite and standing ones. Availability would be increased by appropriate recruitment buildings and decreased by the amount of affected units in the factions employ (regenerating over time when the unit gets destroyed or disbanded). Recruitment cost and replenishment (and maybe recruitment time) would then be determined by the current availability.

No matter how exactly it is handled, I think this change would enrich gameplay. We'd still kind of build up our forces, but once war happens we could (and would have to) put our money in quickly raised units, alternating between growth and warfare due to the long term inefficiency of these short term investments. Additionally deterioration of higher tier units could happen faster than we can restore them, introducing a form of attrition in longer conflicts, were our forces get gradually replaced by the hole patching militia. This might even hamper steamrolling, depending on its severity.

Additionally it might help defining faction identity. Many of the younger races such as the empire, Bretonnia (through its Knights and Men-at-Arms) or the greenskins rely more on standing forces for the bulk of their forces, whilst the Elves and Dwarfs draw their most numerous units from their militia (because of their dwindling numbers. These elder races might then maintain a relatively small core of permanent units, being quickly bulked up once the need arises, whilst the younger races use their militia more sparingly based on short term changes within a conflict, lending them the flexibility no longer provided by other units.

Let me provide two examples how it could look like:

The Empire

Militia

Flagellants and Free Company, not much really.

Standing Forces

Here comes the bulk of them:
Swordsmen, Halberdiers, Spearmen, Crossbowmen, Handgunners, Pistoliers, Imperial Knights, Greatcannon and Mortar.

Elites

Reiksguard, Demigryph Knights, Knights of the Blazing Sun(?), Outriders, Greatswords, Luminark of Hysh, Hellblaster Volleygun and the Hellstorm Rocket Battery.

High Elves

Militia

Archers, Spearmen and Seaguard(?).

Standing Forces

Silver Helms, Eagle Claw Repeating Spearthrower, Tiranoc Chariot, Eagle(?), Ellyrian Reavers(those maybe even militia?) and White Lions (Lore says 100% top tier elite though)

Elite

Dragons, Phoenixes(all of them?), Phoenix Guard, Swordmasters of Hoeth, Shadow Warriors, Sisters of Avelorn, Ithilmar Chariot(?) and Dragon Knights of Caledor.

LennoxPoodle#1380

Oh, as you can hopefully see, I tried to bring somewhat redundant units into different categories, they need all the distinction they can get. This mainly applies to birds, White Lions, Pistoliers and imperial knights.

Steph#6413

Have you tried this?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1456828999

LennoxPoodle#1380

steph74 said:

Have you tried this?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1456828999

No, but hard caps are not what I'm looking for.

LennoxPoodle#1380

Unknown6203 said:

Well, this would have been fixed easily if they added the TT rules, i for one i am tired of seeing Hight Elves Army composed of Swordsmen of Hoeth, Phoenixes and Maidens.

Some units should be rare and should have a limited number on them example at max 2 Phoenix per army or 1 dragon per army not counting mount, i also dislike how early units get displaced... in real life we cant have a army of navy Seals that why we have infantrymen and they are by no means less courageous or useful than the Seal. each fills a hole.

I agree that something needs to be done. I just think that hard caps are a rather clumsy solution. Some form of softcap seems much more promising in my eyes.

FinishingLast#1402

LennoxPoodle said:

Unknown6203 said:

Well, this would have been fixed easily if they added the TT rules, i for one i am tired of seeing Hight Elves Army composed of Swordsmen of Hoeth, Phoenixes and Maidens.

Some units should be rare and should have a limited number on them example at max 2 Phoenix per army or 1 dragon per army not counting mount, i also dislike how early units get displaced... in real life we cant have a army of navy Seals that why we have infantrymen and they are by no means less courageous or useful than the Seal. each fills a hole.

I agree that something needs to be done. I just think that hard caps are a rather clumsy solution. Some form of softcap seems much more promising in my eyes.

This. The supply lines mechanic should mostly just affect higher tier units with little to no impact on chaff. This means that fielding armies of clanrats are cheap. Fielding units of dragons is not. It's kind of ridiculous that the supply line mechanic punishes each of those armies equally as far as percentages increased goes. This would naturally make for more balanced armies.

Steph#6413

Unknown6203 said:

Well, this would have been fixed easily if they added the TT rules, i for one i am tired of seeing Hight Elves Army composed of Swordsmen of Hoeth, Phoenixes and Maidens.

Some units should be rare and should have a limited number on them example at max 2 Phoenix per army or 1 dragon per army not counting mount, i also dislike how early units get displaced... in real life we cant have a army of navy Seals that why we have infantrymen and they are by no means less courageous or useful than the Seal. each fills a hole.

That's exactly what the mod I linked a few posts above is doing.

#28957

FinishingLast said:

LennoxPoodle said:

Unknown6203 said:

Well, this would have been fixed easily if they added the TT rules, i for one i am tired of seeing Hight Elves Army composed of Swordsmen of Hoeth, Phoenixes and Maidens.

Some units should be rare and should have a limited number on them example at max 2 Phoenix per army or 1 dragon per army not counting mount, i also dislike how early units get displaced... in real life we cant have a army of navy Seals that why we have infantrymen and they are by no means less courageous or useful than the Seal. each fills a hole.

I agree that something needs to be done. I just think that hard caps are a rather clumsy solution. Some form of softcap seems much more promising in my eyes.

This. The supply lines mechanic should mostly just affect higher tier units with little to no impact on chaff. This means that fielding armies of clanrats are cheap. Fielding units of dragons is not. It's kind of ridiculous that the supply line mechanic punishes each of those armies equally as far as percentages increased goes. This would naturally make for more balanced armies.

Absolutely agree. Supply lines penalty should be reworked, so it punishes the elite spam armies, not core/fodder as it does currently.

uriak

It's a great reflexion. I don't support hard cap per army per se because I think it's just an awkward reuse of TT convention. In the TT your army was your whole army, it was logical put limits on what it would contain. The strategic layer surrounding the battles gives us a good and more logical space to apply restrictions, so caps per faction rather than caps per army.

Plus honestly players will want to make some doomstacks especially for their main lord. So be it, if you want to put 6 dragons in one army and zero elsewhere, it's a choice.

Obviously an indeal setting would make upkeep something a tad more complicated, perhaps taking into account the actual logistic, unfortunately the setting and the rules of the game don't allow much for it. And CA is not keen to burden players with these notion, at least in the "arcadey" contest of TWWH

I think the whole issue runs into what the game is supposed to be about in terms of "victory" TW is by essence a "paint the map" simulator, but other kinds of campaigns are possible (I think the original bretonnian one was the best for this) where sucess is making your faction survive, reclaim some needed possessions and solve an historical problem of theirs. WITHOUT ending with countless regions and armies. Middle sized empires can let players engage more complex rules imho.