Armyless Lords Should Function Like Heroes

TheShiroOfDalton

Simple suggestion, if your lord is all by themselves, they function like a hero, so they can't attack or be attacked and can't enter stances. They also can't reinforce battles nearby. They're basically dead weight until you actually attach an army to them. Would remove nonsense like a single lord locking up an entire city or somehow being able to raid a region all by themselves.

Would also be an incentive to remove the supply lines mechanic and replace it with proper economy scaling.

Ben1990#8909

Karl, Gelt, Volkmar and Markus in one army? I LIKE THIS.

Heretical_Cactus#7598

Ben1990 said:

Karl, Gelt, Volkmar and Markus in one army? I LIKE THIS.

I think he mean that you can't use the Lord in the same army but they can't be attacked

Beef545

I would go even further and make Lords/LL being able to switch to work like regular heroes. That would solve recently popular "CA please give us more of those pointless and expensive to make LHs" topics.
Yes it would require some work, their army buffs would have been disabled to maintain the balance but still I think this is a nice solution, would allow us to have thematic duos in an army like let's say Vlad and Izzy.
As for 1 man doomstacks, don't see hows that problematic, everyone should be able to play however he wishes.

drizzlynewt

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Simple suggestion, if your lord is all by themselves, they function like a hero, so they can't attack or be attacked and can't enter stances. They also can't reinforce battles nearby. They're basically dead weight until you actually attach an army to them. Would remove nonsense like a single lord locking up an entire city or somehow being able to raid a region all by themselves.

Would also be an incentive to remove the supply lines mechanic and replace it with proper economy scaling.

Realistically this just changes a single lord locking up an entire city or raiding a region by themselves to a single lord and one unit of the cheapest fodder unit locking up an entire city or raiding a region by themselves.

Wouldn't it be more prudent to, say, set a certain amount of units and/or troops, relevant to the garrison of the city they're encircling, in order to be able to block them from coming out? Or, perhaps, you could have it so that when a settlement is encircled a battle must happen between the garrison and the encircling army in advance of the main battle that's instigated whereby if the garrison army wins it will be able to reinforce? If you wanted to get super complicated you could also set something to delay the time of the reinforcements depending on how long that battle takes so you'd have a situation where a garrison that's had to face a big army either can't reinforce at all or will be able to reinforce but much depleted and arriving late while an army that only had to face a lone lord probably comes in pretty close to full strength and before much time has passed?

A system like the above would add a further level of strategy to the game that's currently lacking. If you're the defender and you won the first battle with your garrison then you might be outmatched in the main battle but you now know that you'll get some troops which might be able to turn the tide of battle provided you can hold out that long. On the other hand if you're the attacker it's possible you don't even make an attack that you would be making as things stand because you know that your lone lord isn't going to be able to stop you from being double teamed by the army you're attacking and the garrison, meaning you have to think of another way to deal with the situation you find yourself in.

In terms of raiding, provided I'm right in thinking that the issue here is that you get the full public order penalty for being raided regardless of how many units are raiding, perhaps you just make that scale instead like the amount of income you get would. It's not like a single lone lord wouldn't be able to go around raiding at all... They'd still be capable of attacking people, burning things down and stealing stuff. But their ability to do so - and to cause panic amongst the population - would be limited by the fact that they're on their own. I'm not sure how complex you'd want to make such a system - on face value it seems to me that if you've got Kholek or a lord on a dragon raiding alone they'd have more impact on public order than a level 1 empire general, but that might be a bit difficult to balance - but it seems like it'd be a better workaround than just not allowing them to raid at all.

TheShiroOfDalton

This is just a suggestion that armyless leaders shouldn't function like an army. Just how many units should be attached to
a lord to obtain this status is another. You could lock certain functions behind a minimal troops requirement, but I'd already be happy if they just didn't let armyless lords do any of those things.

Prince_Alucard

Sounds like a good change to me, for the reasons listed and sometimes I want someone to scout ahead but I don't want someone to scout ahead. Should be still be able to lead garrisonsp though if they're within a settlement.


Scaling to raiding would also make sense I suppose, like it does make sense for a single province or a lord like Kholek to be able to raid.

Pontifex711#9147

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Simple suggestion, if your lord is all by themselves, they function like a hero, so they can't attack or be attacked and can't enter stances. They also can't reinforce battles nearby. They're basically dead weight until you actually attach an army to them. Would remove nonsense like a single lord locking up an entire city or somehow being able to raid a region all by themselves.

Would also be an incentive to remove the supply lines mechanic and replace it with proper economy scaling.

While I don't hate the premise, I could totally see Grimgor or Wulfrik raiding solo being lorefriendly (not sure if it is though).

Actually I originally misread the title as "Lordless armies" (don't believe I'm dyslexic) and it reminded me of Medieval 2, if I'm remembering correctly as it's been some years, when you had an army where the lord died but they got attacked and then won the battle and a "lord" was promoted afterwards to lead that army. That I could totally see, and think would be cool.
I believe also in Medieval 2, you could stack lords together. So your prince could either lead the army or join the king's. So perhaps that could be a concept where you have Tyrion and Alarielle in the same army stack- not just reinforcing each other. And I believe the commanding lord was chosen by rank, or if you could choose. Esp with supply lines, that could be very beneficial early/mid game. Ugh... now I want this feature!!! CA!

445Aas#5515

Walk high level lord into enemy teritory, get to a valuable city, instant recruit regiments of renown. Profit?

Vampire Counts with raising the dead...
Horde Factions???

You have a high level horde faction lord with valuable buildings and found yourself cornered by enemy armies, disband your army, walk away.
Try me next time!

davedave1124#4773

Yes, as it just doesn’t allow them to lock a city up while at the same time doesn’t allow multiples to be added to an army.

Although a player could use a number of existing features like RoR to turn him/her into an immediate army

TheShiroOfDalton

davedave1124 said:

Yes, as it just doesn’t allow them to lock a city up while at the same time doesn’t allow multiples to be added to an army.

Although a player could use a number of existing features like RoR to turn him/her into an immediate army

Can you recruit RoRs outside of your own territory? I never tried.

If yes, it should be disabled regardless. And be restricted to one RoR per turn because those emergency RoR armies are another really dumb thing that needs to be kiboshed.

445Aas said:

Walk high level lord into enemy teritory, get to a valuable city, instant recruit regiments of renown. Profit?

Vampire Counts with raising the dead...
Horde Factions???

You have a high level horde faction lord with valuable buildings and found yourself cornered by enemy armies, disband your army, walk away.
Try me next time!

Well, since you have to re-recruit all that many troops, including elites, which will take quite a bit of time and money that in itself would already be a punishment. And hordes could do with more survivability anyway.

Could even make it so that lonesome lords become vulnerable to wounding and assassination actions again.

Tried, found wanting.

Djau#5149

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Would also be an incentive to remove the supply lines mechanic and replace it with proper economy scaling.

Let's not.

TheShiroOfDalton

Amonkhet said:

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Would also be an incentive to remove the supply lines mechanic and replace it with proper economy scaling.

Let's not.

CA themselves acknowledged supply lines isn't fulfilling its role, so if it's your most favorite mechanic in the game, you are already bound for disappointment come WH3. I just hope they axe it in this title already.

Djau#5149

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Amonkhet said:

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Would also be an incentive to remove the supply lines mechanic and replace it with proper economy scaling.

Let's not.

CA themselves acknowledged supply lines isn't fulfilling its role, so if it's your most favorite mechanic in the game, you are already bound for disappointment come WH3. I just hope they axe it in this title already.

I'd rather they just keep it and add some form of corruption mechanic on top (though not as crazy as previous TWs.) Taking it out without reworks just penalises some races and not others.

TheShiroOfDalton

Amonkhet said:

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Amonkhet said:

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Would also be an incentive to remove the supply lines mechanic and replace it with proper economy scaling.

Let's not.

CA themselves acknowledged supply lines isn't fulfilling its role, so if it's your most favorite mechanic in the game, you are already bound for disappointment come WH3. I just hope they axe it in this title already.

I'd rather they just keep it and add some form of corruption mechanic on top (though not as crazy as previous TWs.) Taking it out without reworks just penalises some races and not others.

Eh, did you miss the part where I clamored for a scaling mechanic that actually depends on your income rather than something arbitrary like "how many lords have you deployed at once"?

Forumaccountkroqgar

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Amonkhet said:

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Would also be an incentive to remove the supply lines mechanic and replace it with proper economy scaling.

Let's not.

CA themselves acknowledged supply lines isn't fulfilling its role, so if it's your most favorite mechanic in the game, you are already bound for disappointment come WH3. I just hope they axe it in this title already.

CA themselves developed Total War Troy, which has a updated version of supply lines. So if you think they are going to disappear, you are setting yourself up for a bad surprise.

TheShiroOfDalton

yukontherun said:

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Amonkhet said:

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Would also be an incentive to remove the supply lines mechanic and replace it with proper economy scaling.

Let's not.

CA themselves acknowledged supply lines isn't fulfilling its role, so if it's your most favorite mechanic in the game, you are already bound for disappointment come WH3. I just hope they axe it in this title already.

CA themselves developed Total War Troy, which has a updated version of supply lines. So if you think they are going to disappear, you are setting yourself up for a bad surprise.

They explicitely said so after the Proving Grounds beta that supply lines would have to go. Troy is different because it has the five resource system which means Supply Lines doesn't encourage doomstacking, they also patched it to have have always the easy mode percentages.

So, sorry, it'll go in WH3.

Forumaccountkroqgar

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

yukontherun said:

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Amonkhet said:

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Would also be an incentive to remove the supply lines mechanic and replace it with proper economy scaling.

Let's not.

CA themselves acknowledged supply lines isn't fulfilling its role, so if it's your most favorite mechanic in the game, you are already bound for disappointment come WH3. I just hope they axe it in this title already.

CA themselves developed Total War Troy, which has a updated version of supply lines. So if you think they are going to disappear, you are setting yourself up for a bad surprise.

They explicitely said so after the Proving Grounds beta that supply lines would have to go. Troy is different because it has the five resource system which means Supply Lines doesn't encourage doomstacking, they also patched it to have have always the easy mode percentages.

So, sorry, it'll go in WH3.

I really don't mind if it goes away, but Troy came after proving grounds, and sagas are experimental titles that allow them to rework mechanics. If I had to bet, some second resource like in troy is coming to warhammer rather than supply lines disappearing.

#568367

Potentially annoying, as that renders them extremely difficult to kill unless you spam Assassinate

Redknight#3373

I think what everyone may have forgotten in WH1 their was a serious problem with the AI spamming heros all over the campaign map. This would probably just be a return to that.

Draxynnic#3149

It's an interesting idea. Could even allow for blurring of the line between lords and heroes by providing mechanics by which one can act as the other (although skills would still favour using lords to lead armies and heroes to perform actions). It also makes sense that if an all-flying army can't hold ground, an "army" of a single person isn't going to be able to lay sieges or present a significant raiding threat either in most cases. Maybe certain mounts like dragons could allow the Lord to act as a single-entity army again, but you can only equip mounts when in your own territory.