Confederations Turned up to 11 After Amazons

Dutchbannger · September 2020

I had never seen a confederation in any of my play throughs. There was always one who was willing to confederate under me but I would leave them and the AI never even attempted it.

For example on my current save as Achillies before this patch the Beoetians wanted to confederate with me but wouldn't join any of my wars and so I was considering finally doing it because for once it seemed like the confederation would be of better value to me.

I left it as it was and didn't pick it back up until the Amazons launch and new update. Now the Beoetians are very against a confederation but payed me to join all my wars.

In one end turn sequence Aeneas confederated Hector and Paris and Odysseus confederated Agamemnon. To me this is ridiculous- the factions in this game and the stories it is based on don't lend itself at all to confederations, military allies and vassals should be as far as it is goes. Freaking Agamemnon getting absorbed by Odysseus and both princes of Troy going to Aeneas are probably the worst possible choices for being allowed to be taken over by someone else.

So my issue is that these confederations should be removed from this specific total war title or only minor factions should be confederated- which as I said before is still pushing it as every faction in this game serves a purpose within the story it is based on and military allies/ vassalization serves the confederation role just fine. A side issue is that when a confederation does happen there is no announcement. I click through a bunch of stuff about agents and then have to notice myself on the map that suddenly mass amounts of factions are gone later finding their legendary lords as generals flying other banners.

daelin4 · October 2020

They've been around long before Amazons.

Also, it can't be "turned up to 11" when on release it was like 17.

mooshdotjpeg · October 2020

I agree a lot of the confederations don't make sense and really ruin the immersion. They allow factions to become huge fairly quick.

MrCanister · October 2020

Yeah I don't think there's much point to confederations - from a strategic/economical perspective, it's very rare that a confederation would be beneficial for the player (maybe with a smaller faction with very high-value settlements, definitely not with a major faction). For the AI it doesn't make much of a difference.
From a variety/making things interesting perspective, it's a clear negative. And yes it's usually very weird from a story and immersion perspective as well - especially when it's Agamemnon getting confederated and Aeneas confederating everyone else most of the time.

I haven't really noticed much of a change with Amazons when it comes to confederations.

Tomash_79 · October 2020

We discussed this topic some time ago, here is the link:

https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/comment/2773787#Comment_2773787

In my opinion the 8 main factions (10 with DLC) should have never been asimilated, with exception of Priam's Heir core mechanics for Hector and Paris.

BTW, I currently quit playing since I realised that AI factions doesn't care about economic rules as player does - they can field armies with food upkeep of 20k-30k without any infrastructure support. For me it is cheating bigger than my acceptance level. Shame on You, CA.

JeanLucPicard · October 2020

I agree they should be reigned in. Haven't seen that many confeds in my game but many of them are still immersion breaking. The "pillar" factions should stay independent unless there's a specific story reason for why they shouldn't.

ShiroAmakusa75 · October 2020

Best solution:

Complete removal.

Boicote · October 2020

I don't undestand all this hate toward confederations. I really like them because they make the game more challeging. It's easy for the player to conquer 10-20 regions and after that point the game is "over" because it's a question of time until the human player conquers all those small factions with <5 regions in the map. The confederations allow the AI to create an huge faction that can threat the human player

MrCanister · October 2020

How does a single confederated faction have more fighting power than if they stayed unconfederated?

ShiroAmakusa75 · October 2020

Boicote said:
I don't undestand all this hate toward confederations. I really like them because they make the game more challeging. It's easy for the player to conquer 10-20 regions and after that point the game is "over" because it's a question of time until the human player conquers all those small factions with <5 regions in the map. The confederations allow the AI to create an huge faction that can threat the human player </p>

No, they make the game less challenging. A big AI faction is easier to deal with than an alliance of smaller factions.

SkipIt · October 2020

I am delighted that CA has discovered the Bronze Age. Great game.

Confederation is ruining the immersion. Best solution is to get rid of it.

AdmiralJello · October 2020

I like confederation as an option for players to use(I would like to be able to do it from time to time, mostly to collect unique characters).

But the AI shouldn't be doing it to each other very often. Especially not major story factions.

Druidsbrook · October 2020

In nearly all Total Wars I am more afraid of fighting several small-medium factions than one large one.

AI struggles to defend large empires and its bonuses give less weight. The high amount of confederation in Troy makes the game easier, the greeks had me on the backfoot until Achilles confederated nearly everyone it resulted in far fewer armies attacking me and his land was much easier to swipe.

This is a mechanic that was expanded from a feature from Rome 2 where certain tribes with the 'same blood' could confederate under certain rare circumstances. The tribes you could confederate with were very limited so it never let anything crazy happen. It was a nod to celtic cultures banding togeather to fight a greater threat like in Gaul.

Now nearly every faction in recent Total Wars can confederate with lots of different factions. It is likely to stay because many seem to like to collect every unique leader in a culture but I think there could be better ways to do this.

MrCanister · October 2020

Druidsbrook said:
It is likely to stay because many seem to like to collect every unique leader in a culture but I think there could be better ways to do this.

That's a good point. Since the primary valid reason people have for having the option to confederate seems to be collecting heroes with special names, it might be worth separating out the two - like you manage to persuade the person to embed into your military structure, but their nation's independence wouldn't be affected. It could be more like an exchange stay which they're giving you as a diplomatic favor (you could even really be required to provide a hero in exchange to simplify the army leader replacement).

Hex Agoros · October 2020

This title just doesn't need confederations. They serve no purpose here.

Eldrick · October 2020

I like the idea of preventing AI confederations but leaving it optional for those players that like to confederate so they can. I can choose not to confederate.

Dutchbannger · October 2020

Thanks for the responses everyone, I guess this has always been an issue and I just happened to avoid it until Amazons and made a correlation = causation mistake.

However clearly the overall sentiment is an agreement that the confederations feel out of place in this title. Hopefully CA can either find a way to either

A ) make certain factions "off limits" i.e. no down grades like Agamemnon king of men becoming a general in Odysseus' army or Paris Prince of Troy abandoning his birthright to serve Aeneas

B ) make it far, far more difficult to confederate as in down to the last settlement subjugation scenario for survival

or

C ) just remove confederations from Troy entirely.

olnorton · October 2020

Or they could just rename the game.
Total Confederation Troy.

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Confederations Turned up to 11 After Amazons

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