Lord Pools Should Be Limited

TheShiroOfDalton

One thing this game is very terrible at is that there are too many meaningless battles, you defeat one or two or even three stacks, but in the time it took to do so, the AI has already thrown out another three and so you've achieved little. It's a constant war of attrition and endless grinding come mid- to lategame because losses mean so very little. That goes for the player too, even in the unlikely case you actually lose battles, you just build another army and the loss means close to nothing.

So here's my suggestion, make it possible for factions to run out of lords. Not permanently, but there should be a cooldown once you've recruited and fielded a certain number of lords. So you take out a lord out of the pool and into your roster but his slot in the pool is only replenished 15-20 turns later. Could also weigh it so that advanced lord types have smaller limits than more generic ones. So elf princes could have three slots while archmages would come only one at a time. You could have a mechanic in place that slowly increases the number of slots depending on the territory you control, so +1 slot of every X regions you capture for example. That way losing characters and territory would actually have a meaningful impact on the game.

Also, immortal lords and LLs under this system should have the chance of picking up negative traits that increase their recovery time the more often they are felled in combat.

jgascoine011

Thats not the problem.
The problem is that some factions can poop out 3-4 full stacks in a single turn or two.

They need to make the AI stop using global recruitment because its insane how quickly they can recruit units.

I would also say that the max number of armies you can field should be limited, even if its something like 10.
Because yea, right now the mid/late game is just a boring slog.

DeadpoolSW#7283

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

One thing this game is very terrible at is that there are too many meaningless battles, you defeat one or two or even three stacks, but in the time it took to do so, the AI has already thrown out another three and so you've achieved little. It's a constant war of attrition and endless grinding come mid- to lategame because losses mean so very little. That goes for the player too, even in the unlikely case you actually lose battles, you just build another army and the loss means close to nothing.

So here's my suggestion, make it possible for factions to run out of lords. Not permanently, but there should be a cooldown once you've recruited and fielded a certain number of lords. So you take out a lord out of the pool and into your roster but his slot in the pool is only replenished 15-20 turns later. Could also weigh it so that advanced lord types have smaller limits than more generic ones. So elf princes could have three slots while archmages would come only one at a time. You could have a mechanic in place that slowly increases the number of slots depending on the territory you control, so +1 slot of every X regions you capture for example. That way losing characters and territory would actually have a meaningful impact on the game.

Also, immortal lords and LLs under this system should have the chance of picking up negative traits that increase their recovery time the more often they are felled in combat.

The idea of running out of lord makes me think of the feature in other total war games where they limit the actual number of armies you can field based on "prestige", though I'm not sure how that would translate to Warhammer- maybe Skaven/Vamps could finally field a lot more armies than Elves/Dwarfs?

Also, I love your point of increasing recovery times for constantly defeated LLs, I'm sick of everyone Empire army being lead by an Unbreakable Karl Franz

TheShiroOfDalton

Rome2 had the Empire meter where the amount of armies you could field depended on where you were on the scale. It also added buffs and debuffs to your faction (like actually making all troops more expensive).

If WH could have this I'd be OK with it too.

AkiAmaz

I agree with the identified problem.

I love ToB where every battle is a game changer and a loss can really set back a campaign. In WTW there is no sense of that and the mid to end game devolves into an AR slog fest.

LL should spend longer recovering.

Units should cost more to reduce army spam.

Maybe lords should be more limited and have caps like heroes. I'd also prefer if they were only recruited at certain locations eg mage lords at mage towers (or similar).

Anything to reduce the endless army spam.

ERICdbs#2077

Yes, any kind of limit that affects both the player and the AI would make wonders to increase the individual value of each army and thus victories or defeats would feel more impactful.

Rheingold#6691

Yeah, really get tired of killing Karl/Morathi/whoever and 2 turns later they are back.
Also the empires special units are a problem. Not the units themselves but the fact that they can raise armies instantly . Defeat one army and next turn there is another full army of special units.

mightygloin#2446

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Also, immortal lords and LLs under this system should have the chance of picking up negative traits that increase their recovery time the more often they are felled in combat.

Yes murdering the same lord every few turns and farming his/her/its trait gets boring real fast. There should be real downsides to dying.

Rheingold said:

Defeat one army and next turn there is another full army of special units.

Never knew why RORs are instant recruit. You can build an emergency army instantly out of them. Same for the AI.

Rheingold#6691

Also would be nice if they looked at the darn sword of Khaine maybe make the downside more impactful for the ai. it becomes really tiresome dealing with the pointy ears who insist on drawing it at every opportunity.

AkiAmaz

Also, I hate it when a LL reappears to take over an army far away from their own territory. Maybe defeated LL should return but have to start at the capital or a nearby major settlement rather than getting full control of an army already in the field.

Rheingold#6691

mightygloin said:

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Also, immortal lords and LLs under this system should have the chance of picking up negative traits that increase their recovery time the more often they are felled in combat.

Yes murdering the same lord every few turns and farming his/her/its trait gets boring real fast. There should be real downsides to dying.

Rheingold said:

Defeat one army and next turn there is another full army of special units.

Never knew why RORs are instant recruit. You can build an emergency army instantly out of them. Same for the AI.

Ror's were never a major problem because they were limited in number and power. Now there are more of them and added to that, you have a faction like the empire who can now recruit a pretty elite army instantly. Add 60/70 settlements and many steam tank/arti doomstacks it becomes a real slog.

TheShiroOfDalton

Making it so that you can recruit only one RoR per turn would solve that issue. Oh, and have it take up all recruitment slots for that army for that turn and require all recruitment slots to be open in the first place.

Loreguy#1056

It was discused before. Some solutions:

One army + one per provincie.

--or--

Add manpower as currency.

--or--

Make LL killable. (late game generic fest)

SteelRonin#4832

The only thing I hate is when the AI has 1 province capital (1 settlement), with a huge garrison, and 1 full stack inside of it and a second army outside....and you have to attack it with your only initial low tier stack, because you can't afford a second army even when you have 2 provinces (6 settlements)

mightygloin#2446

Rheingold said:

Also would be nice if they looked at the darn sword of Khaine maybe make the downside more impactful for the ai. it becomes really tiresome dealing with the pointy ears who insist on drawing it at every opportunity.

I would completely remove it from the game if i could.

Jerroser

Loreguy said:

It was discused before. Some solutions:

One army + one per provincie.

--or--

Add manpower as currency.

--or--

Make LL killable. (late game generic fest)

One idea that crossed my mind was to add something similar to the Tomb Kings unit limit system for elites, which would at least partially address the issues. Although this is mostly born from my own frustration at having to deal with High Elf Dragon/Arcane Phoenix spam for multiple battles in a row.

Another thing that could work to address the repetitive battles against the same lords over and over again is to add a chance to capture a LL from another faction (kinda like a cross between Eltharion's mechanic and the ransom system for 3K) where can actually hold on to a LL defeating them in battle then can keep them imprisoned until a peace treaty is signed. Perhaps along side a penalty in replenishment and or recruitment time after suffering a large number of casualties after multiple defeats. Which should at least mean that in conflicts that go on for a long time with few changes in held territory, the side that on the losing end of most battles with at least grow weaker.

endurstonehelm#6102

You are already limited to recruiting one lord per province per turn. I'm not sure that we need additional limits, particularly for the AI. The AI has problems, and the more restrictions you put in place on the AI, the worse the AI gets. So please try to keep limits on the AI to a minimum.

TheShiroOfDalton

endur said:

You are already limited to recruiting one lord per province per turn. I'm not sure that we need additional limits, particularly for the AI. The AI has problems, and the more restrictions you put in place on the AI, the worse the AI gets. So please try to keep limits on the AI to a minimum.

The AI has zero problems spamming armies.

Tennisgolfboll#5877

endur said:

You are already limited to recruiting one lord per province per turn. I'm not sure that we need additional limits, particularly for the AI. The AI has problems, and the more restrictions you put in place on the AI, the worse the AI gets. So please try to keep limits on the AI to a minimum.

This.

Artjuh90#8868

Loreguy said:

It was discused before. Some solutions:

One army + one per provincie.

--or--

Add manpower as currency.

--or--

Make LL killable. (late game generic fest)

people will cry and shout when they LL actually dies. so not going to happen, which is a shame.
you can already see a part of this by the perpetial cry for conferderations which is one of the worst mechanocs in the game

Xenos777

It's a possible solution among many possible others, but I agree that something must be done.

jamesbluewave

It’s not a bad idea, but I don’t think it ultimately solves the issue of meaningless 20v20 battles or the endless grind against the usual suspects. A lot of times, such as grimgor/empire/DE/dwarfs, lords are just confdederated in. Sure this can help you in the Very late game (turn 140+)after all is established and slowly you can chip away At number of fieldable armies , but in the early-mid game the ai will have 3-4 armies confederate and keep adding other armies and this process keeps repeating until there’s only 1 faction representing the race. (Nagarrond,kharazakarak,Reikland,grimgor, etc)

Imo, they should bring back population, recruiting from cities, and incentivize using generals, not make it mandatory. For example, lords get the skill trees, leaderless armies don’t. And maybe lords also let you bring max 40 units and leaderless armies max 20, but leaderless aren’t affected by supply lines. Stuff like this mixed with population controlling recruitment speed is gonna vary battle size and add meaning.

Just limiting how fast the ai can recruit a lord doesn’t do much for you when you consider confederations. And most times, I see complete landslides ai wars, I never see factions wear eachother down or fight for extended periods of time, one usually just steam rolls the other because it’s units are favored in auto resolve, so their older armies aren’t “dying” so they wouldn’t be affected by this slower lord regeneration pool.

MrDragon#2461

jgascoine011 said:

Thats not the problem.
The problem is that some factions can poop out 3-4 full stacks in a single turn or two.

They need to make the AI stop using global recruitment because its insane how quickly they can recruit units.

I would also say that the max number of armies you can field should be limited, even if its something like 10.
Because yea, right now the mid/late game is just a boring slog.

At the very least the Dwarf AI needs to be told it can't have 4 armies on 1 settlement because that's just taking the p*ss.