Issue with Elector Count Event Battle *RANT*

kriegmann

So, I just got the defense event for the first time playing as the new Golden Order Empire faction. Talabecland was under attack by Norscans. I chose the option to send an army. Minor spoiler alert for those who want to find out what happens ahead.

I was sent into battle with an arch lector lord, two swordsmen, a handgunner, and two empire knights. My "allies" had two swordsmen, two halberdiers, two crossbowmen, and an empire captain. The enemy forces were: A Norscan lord, a marauder champion, 7 marauders, 3 marauder hunters, and two skinwolf units. I assert that this is a grossly unfair matchup if I were able to control all the forces and deploy them myself. Instead, I was reinforcing the fight from the side. It was on that new map with the forest in the center, so my "allies" deployed hidden in this forest and left me to die. I tried to lead their army to the cowards with my empire knights, but of course, skin wolves are faster than empire knights so they ate them for breakfast.

To add insult to injury, apparently in addition to paying for the cost of recruiting the army, it comes out of your upkeep apparently, tanking my income to 0. I am deeply disappointed by this mechanic after being pretty excited to help defend the empire. Overall, I do like the new changes, but it feels really bad to have your army, generated by RNG, half owned by the idiotic AI, and reinforcing from a weird angle. This needs to be fixed.

TheShiroOfDalton

No, they should not neuter these battles. The game's already too easy as it is.

kriegmann

Looks like losing the army caused the upkeep to go away after I opened a menu, but now I see that I did not get imperial authority because I lost. So I spent 2,000 gold for nothing, really.

kriegmann

Ephraim_Dalton said:

No, they should not neuter these battles. The game's already too easy as it is.

How would you have played that battle?

Udoroth

I would have played to win

kriegmann

Udoroth said:

I would have played to win

Show me a replay of that in a custom battle. I would legit want to see how that's possible in any way.

Cookie35641

"That´s XCOM baby"

Well, no, obviously. But it still strikes me as a good comparison.

Honestly, i fail to see your problem. In a rather dynamic sandbox there will always be situations where you just can´t win. Personally i wouldn´t have it any other way, because everything else would mean to streamline the experience to oblivion.

You make choices - like spending 2000 gold to help you fellow imperials - and sometimes they don´t work out in your favor by no fault of your own. For me, it adds to the immersion and everything else would bore me quickly.

GrimgorsAxe#7537

Ephraim_Dalton said:

No, they should not neuter these battles. The game's already too easy as it is.

Speak for yourself. My experience is the game's campaign can be really frustrating and unforgiving no matter what difficulty you're playing on.

RikRiorik#9890

Cookie35641 said:

"That´s XCOM baby"

Well, no, obviously. But it still strikes me as a good comparison.

Honestly, i fail to see your problem. In a rather dynamic sandbox there will always be situations where you just can´t win. Personally i wouldn´t have it any other way, because everything else would mean to streamline the experience to oblivion.

You make choices - like spending 2000 gold to help you fellow imperials - and sometimes they don´t work out in your favor by no fault of your own. For me, it adds to the immersion and everything else would bore me quickly.

As long as this isn't the set thing for the Norsca event. If that's the case you'll learn just to not do the battle. Should it indeed be all but unwinnable.

Cookie35641

RikRiorik said:

Cookie35641 said:

"That´s XCOM baby"

Well, no, obviously. But it still strikes me as a good comparison.

Honestly, i fail to see your problem. In a rather dynamic sandbox there will always be situations where you just can´t win. Personally i wouldn´t have it any other way, because everything else would mean to streamline the experience to oblivion.

You make choices - like spending 2000 gold to help you fellow imperials - and sometimes they don´t work out in your favor by no fault of your own. For me, it adds to the immersion and everything else would bore me quickly.

As long as this isn't the set thing for the Norsca event. If that's the case you'll learn just to not do the battle. Should it indeed be all but unwinnable.

Good point, yeah. I assumed those events are also a bit dynamic. It would suck if they were the same everytime.

sCor

I had a quick glance through the script in case anyone is wondering how it works.

SPOILERS if you don't want to know.

There are 4 possible attacking factions. Beastmen, Norsca, Skaven and Greenskins.

They have a couple of different army setups that also depend on whether or not the settlement is minor or major.

It does not take into account how big the garrison force is. Sometimes the AI might have build walls or has another army nearby which can make the fight easier.

The gist of it is that it is very random.

Cookie35641

sCor said:

I had a quick glance through the script in case anyone is wondering how it works.

SPOILERS if you don't want to know.

There are 4 possible attacking factions. Beastmen, Norsca, Skaven and Greenskins.

They have a couple of different army setups that also depend on whether or not the settlement is minor or major.

It does not take into account how big the garrison force is. Sometimes the AI might have build walls or has another army nearby which can make the fight easier.

The gist of it is that it is very random.

I like what you describe, especially that it doesn´t take into account the actual allied forces (because realistically, it shoudln´t).

My hope would be that a similar dilemma also triggers when an actual enemy faction is besieging/attacking a empire settlement, but that´s probably a different topic altogether.

Sephlock

kriegmann said:

Ephraim_Dalton said:

No, they should not neuter these battles. The game's already too easy as it is.

How would you have played that battle?

Kill the lord at all costs and pray to Sigmar your rear cycle charging bears fruit.

Then I'd lose.

But at least I would have bloodied their noses! It's a moral victory!

WastedDeer

My issue with the battles is that you get a penalty for trespassing with the lord you are trying to help. Stupid how that wasn’t spotted before the dlc was released.

I helped someone and now they are annoyed with me for being on their land

sCor

WastedDeer said:

My issue with the battles is that you get a penalty for trespassing with the lord you are trying to help. Stupid how that wasn’t spotted before the dlc was released.

I helped someone and now they are annoyed with me for being on their land

You could just ask them for military access

WastedDeer

sCor said:

WastedDeer said:

My issue with the battles is that you get a penalty for trespassing with the lord you are trying to help. Stupid how that wasn’t spotted before the dlc was released.

I helped someone and now they are annoyed with me for being on their land

You could just ask them for military access

Yep definitely my fault for thinking they would make a feature work correctly. It honestly never occurred to me they would do something like that. What if they wouldn’t give me military access and I tried to help them to increase relations? Instead it has the opposite effect.

sCor

WastedDeer said:

sCor said:

WastedDeer said:

My issue with the battles is that you get a penalty for trespassing with the lord you are trying to help. Stupid how that wasn’t spotted before the dlc was released.

I helped someone and now they are annoyed with me for being on their land

You could just ask them for military access

Yep definitely my fault for thinking they would make a feature work correctly. It honestly never occurred to me they would do something like that. What if they wouldn’t give me military access and I tried to help them to increase relations? Instead it has the opposite effect.

But you do increase fealty with them (even if you fail the defence!).

Relations barely matter anymore in an empire campaign. One time trespassing isn't going to make them hate you.

Vladimiri

kriegmann said:

Ephraim_Dalton said:

No, they should not neuter these battles. The game's already too easy as it is.

How would you have played that battle?

Pull the enemy away from your slower units using empire knights harrass and walk your slower units to your ally. You can even sacrifice some unit if needed.

In all seriousness the enemy is faster than your ally and closer to you too. It only makes sense to enemy attack your faster force and leave the slower part to join in later. I'd play exactly as the enemy did. The harrasment and type of movement required to combine forces is something you can't expect the AI do for you.

AkiAmaz

RP it as Imperial politics. Maybe they asked for your help but they didn't want to lose any forces so let you do the fighting and afterwards claimed your force went through their land, stole food from some poor peasant then went home leaving the settlement to get sacked by the Norscans.

Realpolitik

Helhound#7332

These are some of my favorite engagements in the current Mortal Empire campaign. And no, you won't win all of them. Did one where I reinforced a siege, but by the time I was able to get somewhere useful the AI had already been killed off and they were storming the city.

By default these aren't supposed to be simple victories, but rather a last ditch effort to save yourself from taking the Imperial Authority penalty. You can always head over yourself to rebuild/retake the area to get back the Imperial Authority and then some. Just don't get too uptight about losing. It's not a real army you lose anyway.

Herr_Arnulfe

I guess the point isn't whether you win or lose intervention battles, it's about building up Authority so you can confederate. Event battles only exist because CA removed provincial alliances (i.e. you can no longer ally with Elector Counts and reinforce their towns using regular armies). CA should just have given Karl Franz Military Access to the entire Empire from turn 1, and let the player decide which AI towns to reinforce. Every time he supports an AI army in battle, he gains an Authority point. Instead we have these meaningless event battles for backwater towns, using up gold that could be spent on building development. And there's nothing to be gained from the event battles, they're a lose/lose proposition.

psychoak

With full control of the units, that is an easy battle to win, very easy.

Marauders are equivalent to swordsmen, halberds will absolutely destroy skinwolves, crossbowmen are much better archers than hunters with that short range, and with the two characters to the enemy's one, there's zero challenge there.

The unit of handgunners is gravy, it wouldn't be a hard matchup if the lord was on a mammoth.

It's only hard because he fought it with half the troops by himself. His far superior forces could easily have countered the superior numbers of basic melee infantry, if he'd had full control. With the tard AI wasting the halberds and crossbows on whatever it happened to attack, he'd have a serious challenge on his hands, but by no means an unbeatable one.

Basically, it's a tard AI problem.

epic_159734710662pNaBWVD

Having jumped into a Karl Franz campaign I have played a few of these and I don’t think the ally AI army is random. Rather i think it is the garrison army from the settlement that is being attacked. So if the settlement has walls it is a siege defence battle and the Ally AI army depends on the infrastructure of the settlement.

In one fun instance the settlement in question was a level 4 fort. And in addition to the garrison there was an AI ally reinforcement army in addition to my reinforcement army...

The bit I am have difficulty with is that this appears to be there in place of the normal diplomatic alliances between the Empire factions.

kriegmann

Sephlock said:

kriegmann said:

Ephraim_Dalton said:

No, they should not neuter these battles. The game's already too easy as it is.

How would you have played that battle?

Kill the lord at all costs and pray to Sigmar your rear cycle charging bears fruit.

Then I'd lose.

But at least I would have bloodied their noses! It's a moral victory!

Ok, but a level 1 arch lector lord cannot beat a norscan lord ever. There is also no rear cycle charging because the skin wolves eat the knights. Honestly the berserk physical resist means I really can't kill the marauders with just swordsmen. If those skin wolves were trolls instead it would've been a very different battle.

kriegmann

Vladimiri said:

kriegmann said:

Ephraim_Dalton said:

No, they should not neuter these battles. The game's already too easy as it is.

How would you have played that battle?

Pull the enemy away from your slower units using empire knights harrass and walk your slower units to your ally. You can even sacrifice some unit if needed.

In all seriousness the enemy is faster than your ally and closer to you too. It only makes sense to enemy attack your faster force and leave the slower part to join in later. I'd play exactly as the enemy did. The harrasment and type of movement required to combine forces is something you can't expect the AI do for you.

I tried that and the skin wolves killed my knights... because they are faster. The AI literally sat back and watched me die. Only when their forces engaged my infantry did they even leave their starting position in the forest.

kriegmann

Fear_The_Wolf said:

These are some of my favorite engagements in the current Mortal Empire campaign. And no, you won't win all of them. Did one where I reinforced a siege, but by the time I was able to get somewhere useful the AI had already been killed off and they were storming the city.

By default these aren't supposed to be simple victories, but rather a last ditch effort to save yourself from taking the Imperial Authority penalty. You can always head over yourself to rebuild/retake the area to get back the Imperial Authority and then some. Just don't get too uptight about losing. It's not a real army you lose anyway.

I haven't won one of them yet. It feels really bad to be set up for failure. That's my point. I don't expect an easy victory, but like you said, there are many scenarios where it is literally impossible to win at all.

kriegmann

psychoak said:

With full control of the units, that is an easy battle to win, very easy.

Marauders are equivalent to swordsmen, halberds will absolutely destroy skinwolves, crossbowmen are much better archers than hunters with that short range, and with the two characters to the enemy's one, there's zero challenge there.

The unit of handgunners is gravy, it wouldn't be a hard matchup if the lord was on a mammoth.

It's only hard because he fought it with half the troops by himself. His far superior forces could easily have countered the superior numbers of basic melee infantry, if he'd had full control. With the tard AI wasting the halberds and crossbows on whatever it happened to attack, he'd have a serious challenge on his hands, but by no means an unbeatable one.

Basically, it's a tard AI problem.

I mainly agree, but marauders are definitely at least marginally better than swordsmen. Sure, they have a bit less armor, but they have their berserk, which more than makes up for it, plus more agressive stats, which makes a difference when your infantry line is outnumbered. Hell, even if the reinforcing angle was always just from behind or slightly to the side it would make a huge difference. Maybe I could've prevented the AI from forming a blob with their infantry.

Nefesh

Are you playing on Legend?

It's a tricky battle, but the key to dealing with an AI co-op situation is to form up around them and coordinate your movements and attacks off of them. They're stupid but you can use them as a distraction, and as meat for the grinder while you flank and do smart stuff.

Use the Ai as a meatshield and try to bait the wolves into your friendly AI infantry, then either break your knights out a different direction with the wolves tied up, or pursue the wolves off the map if they're routed (they may rally and kick your ass, this depends on close to the map border you are).

The new battles are a little repetitive but a cute addition imo. They only unwinnable one so far was a siege defense against beastmen. Their minotaurs were through the gates before by squad was even at the city center, by the time i had marched to the walls the AI army was in full retreat. Maybe the answer is a last ditch defense in the city center with the AI rallying, but I dunno.

FeddyCaeks

Auto-resolving them seems to result in a victory more often than not. Then you can recoup a portion of your investment by releasing the enemy troops. I find it to be a stupid mechanic, and I find the fact that Gelt plays exactly like Franz to be idiotic as well. Why should I have to deal with the game randomly deciding that Wissenland wants to secede, ruining my trade agreement with them? I'M NOT THE EMPEROR! LET HIM DEAL WITH THIS CRAP! For me, Gelt is a complete waste of time due to this. I just can't play as him pretending to be emperor, it's absolutely obnoxious.

kriegmann

FeddyCaeks said:

Auto-resolving them seems to result in a victory more often than not. Then you can recoup a portion of your investment by releasing the enemy troops. I find it to be a stupid mechanic, and I find the fact that Gelt plays exactly like Franz to be idiotic as well. Why should I have to deal with the game randomly deciding that Wissenland wants to secede, ruining my trade agreement with them? I'M NOT THE EMPEROR! LET HIM DEAL WITH THIS CRAP! For me, Gelt is a complete waste of time due to this. I just can't play as him pretending to be emperor, it's absolutely obnoxious.

My headcanon is that Gelt is basically becoming a puppet emperor. I find it especially funny when you get Reikland to confederate with you. I did notice the autoresolve thing myself after a while. I definitely found myself not caring too much if they lose actually, because that lends itself to new opportunities to get fealty if the settlements get razed or capped.