Strengthened garrisons to add command depth

#427116

Hello,

I think it would be very nice if you could, for instance, pay a fee to alter the makeup of your garrison. Because the units that fight the wood elves well are rarely as good vs the Dwarves, but the garrisons are all the same. The only restriction could be that it has to keep under the current limit of upkeep or you pay the additional upkeep out of your tab. Also if you could pay out of pocket to put more men into the garrison of a hot zone, and continue to pay for their upkeep, that'd be great.

Right now I'm defending as Tor Yvresse against a super aggressive 'Ardboyz and while I could easily afford to put 5 extra Lothern Sea Guard and phoenix in each major garrison, making them practically impregnable to a single army, I cant afford to pop up a General and an army at each one because of the multiplicative nature. The supply lines system just feels too restrictive to gameplay so there needs to be workarounds to allow the player to actually have more input as a 4x commander (in my opinion, of course.) Maybe even allow for extra payment to get your garrison slowly trained so when the big assault comes they're already rank 3-5 and can actually hold their own against the rank 9 army of complete garbage thats coming against them? Its frustrating to watch my rank 1 guys route to rank 9 orc boyz just because of the restrictive nature of chevrons that I cant get to my garrison, despite them having sat around for the past 45 turns (you would think they could at least train one day a month, wouldnt you?)

Conversely this also allows the A.I. factions to do the same so sieges would not be 100% identical per faction, adding some desperately needed variety in that field too. Having to figure out how to handle a garrison that you didnt expect to be hard that shows up with a star dragon or 4 mortars unexpectedly would be really beneficial to the gameplay instead of the current "bring one piece of artillery, shoot tower, roll over" style.

Maybe you could have a "Garrison pool" of additional units to pick from that replenishes slowly. When you disband an army or some units of it you can pay a one time fee to make them a 'pension' unit that will take a garrison spot when selected from the pool, so you get a high rank unit into that garrison, and they will slowly train up the others to one below their rank. Or by paying to place a hero unit that will train them. There's lots of deeper interactions you can think of in designing this system and it solves a lot of core issues- repetitiveness, lack of garrison strength, lack of security for outposts, supply lines and "throwing away" units when you either cant afford the upkeep or they've conquered their corner of the globe and walking them back is not efficient at all. I want to feel like more of my actions matter in the long term, and that I can make choices today that might save me 20 turns from now.

TL;DR- I would enjoy seeing some changes that allow for both more and less aggressive gameplay styles without feeling the burden of supply lines so hard, and I think the Garrison system is the answer. Player choice is King.

p.s. cut the "need a siege attacker to attack round 1" nonsense. If I want to climb the walls, let me. Its not like I use the ram anyway, and my general/heroes/cavalry that arent classified as siege attacekrs can already bust the door down. Limiting stuff like this that isnt for a gameplay-related logical reason is silly. The A.I. likes to wait a turn before attacking to make stuff and that's fine, let them do that. The player doesnt need to be so thoroughly punished for not dragging a specific unit along.

#427116

I did get a ton of support for this idea today on Enticity's stream, incase some positive feedback would help the developers know if its actually a wanted feature.
"Franz, This Is Total War | Turn 163-186, Part 8" for reference.