Empire Overpowered

[Deutschland]

In my Empire campaigns I destroy the Chaos invasions pretty easily and its even easier to cope with Sylvania etc. I guess this is mainly cause there are so many counties of the empire which are all allied.

If I start a crusade the enemy gets whiped out totally : up to ten armies crush their city.

I would really like to see the empire weakened. The unit costs could be raised and the chance of counties turning against each other (e.g. heresy) should be higher too.

[Painis_Cupcake]

Ah, no.

Crusade - yes, it's crushing and I never saw it fail. BUT it makes all counties less protected, because all of them send a stack or two to crusade, for instance once Ostland was almost crushed (1 territory left when I was Nordland and they still send the stacks for crusade, instead of protecting themselves more effectively. I have, however, regained their cities conquered by Chaos/Dark Elves, giving them back to rightful owners...

Empire, however, has very, very bad results from autoresult. I don't use it, but AI do - they lose many battles that should be rightfully won by them. If you made them fight against each other, then... It would be even worse for them, while I want to keep every part of Empire alive (and I help them to make it so) - even if it's down to 1 region.

[midterm360]

Yes and do not forget that some empire factions are inherently harder than others, while Ostland as poor border province is a very hard campaign I think you'll find Averland to be much much easier it being a core and rich province.

[Gondoriangrunt]

in my campaign as Wissenland the other empire factions are completly useless they lose 2/3 of all their battles because the other factions(mostly orcs) are unbalanced in autoresolve..

when chaos undivided came it was just the nail in the coffin for all the northern provinces: nordland went heretic, ostland was overrun (they were quite big) ostermark couldn't fight both orcs and the spam stacks from chaos, talabecland were also mostly destroyed by undivided spam stacks.

to try and help out a bit i called a crusade to get the south in the fight... but that turned out to be a big mistake as (really huge!!) Averland sent their heirless faction leader and he got killed and they went rebel. which insured that Hochland, Middenland, Reikland and stirland were more busy taking land from traitor Nordland and rebel Averland than the hordes of chaos.

btw i killed Archaon on the 2 turn he spawned (thank god for the bretonnia allies) and simply spammed armies to fight the hordes but i think im gonna fail...
and i play on medium

[Outlawstar15a2]

Well here's the golden question. How DO you balance autoresolve since it's almost ENTIRELY based on number of men fielded and unit types (heavy infantry, heavy cavalry. NOT Talabecland Swordmaster, Chaos Knight etc.) Autoresolve also does not take into consideration the: Attack stat, Defense stat, unit capabilities, actual battle performance, lay of the land, or time of day or weather.) Because it never actually fights the battles it is purely a number run.

So what do you want? Lower Orc unit sizes? Then their not very Orc-ky. As Orcs tend to come in droves a literal "Green Tide". You want to lower the number of Empire elite troops? They have a hard enough time against Chaos as is. You want to increase High Elf and Dark Elf unit costs? Can you say nerfed?

Regardless of what you think it's not something simple to fix.

[Ozzmosis]

Auto resolve definitely does take unit stats into account: a small army of elites can still beat a larger army of spam-units in autoresolve.

[Outlawstar15a2]

Auto resolve definitely does take unit stats into account: a small army of elites can still beat a larger army of spam-units in autoresolve.

I'm quite sure from what I've seen it doesn't. I've seen autorev armies with high proportion of elite troops backed by decent regulars go against pretty crappy armies. I've seen one sided victories turn into one sided massacres. It's not hard to witness autorev battles you just need toggle_fow, a couple of good spies, and knowledge of whose moving against who.

Take another look, I can almost guarantee you that you'll see that unit stats aren't calculated and if so then it is one busted calculator because a well balanced army with a good core of elites should murder a peasant army with none stat wise. They don't to me it looks like a game of luck.

[midterm360]

Did you look at the general's stars par chance? One big trend in Auto resolve is that a 10 star general leading a half stack of peasants can kill off or seriously mess up a whole stack of regulars under a captain/0 star general. This is where command points really comes into importance.

[Outlawstar15a2]

Did you look at the general's stars par chance? One big trend in Auto resolve is that a 10 star general leading a half stack of peasants can kill off or seriously mess up a whole stack of regulars under a captain/0 star general. This is where command points really comes into importance.

I thought that in Rome Total War and all games made after command stars only add morale...

[midterm360]

They do in the combat map, but as far as I know and anyone who knows for SURE correct if I'm wrong, that in auto resolve they have a BIG impact or at least a moderate one. Why thinks you that in Vannila a fleet of 2 boats attacking one identical boat but that 1 outnumbered boat just happens to have 3 command stars for its admiral beats the 2 boats. I apologize for that somewhat hard to follow example and apologize for the fact that I will make no attempt to clarify it

[Outlawstar15a2]

They do in the combat map, but as far as I know and anyone who knows for SURE correct if I'm wrong, that in auto resolve they have a BIG impact or at least a moderate one. Why thinks you that in Vannila a fleet of 2 boats attacking one identical boat but that 1 outnumbered boat just happens to have 3 command stars for its admiral beats the 2 boats. I apologize for that somewhat hard to follow example and apologize for the fact that I will make no attempt to clarify it

Point taken.

No, I understand the example.

[Redron]

To the OP, what difficulty are you playing on? And are you assasinating faction leaders? Orcs and beastmen can be crippled instantly by assasins which kind of breaks the game so I dont do it.

[Achilla]

Well here's the golden question. How DO you balance autoresolve since it's almost ENTIRELY based on number of men fielded and unit types (heavy infantry, heavy cavalry. NOT Talabecland Swordmaster, Chaos Knight etc.) Autoresolve also does not take into consideration the: Attack stat, Defense stat, unit capabilities, actual battle performance, lay of the land, or time of day or weather.) Because it never actually fights the battles it is purely a number run.

So what do you want? Lower Orc unit sizes? Then their not very Orc-ky. As Orcs tend to come in droves a literal "Green Tide". You want to lower the number of Empire elite troops? They have a hard enough time against Chaos as is. You want to increase High Elf and Dark Elf unit costs? Can you say nerfed?

Regardless of what you think it's not something simple to fix.

Nope. It does take base stats into account, like melee attack, total defense and hit points. However, it underpowered missile units by default, and cavalry rarely shines either due to traditionally low number of men, despite their effectiveness. However, these things aren't a problem if factions are balanced around total AR power (want more men? ok, but we nerf their base stats ... and vice-versa) and when the EDU unit recruitment priorities and EDB unit recruitment support creation of balanced armies (as spam of heavy infantry is completely devastating over AR to any kind of balanced/all-cavalry/all-missile army).

AR will never be perfect, however it can be neatly manipulated. You can even introduce secondary hit points to boost relative AR power of certain unit types, such as cavalry or missile. This tool can be used to bridge the AR gaps on per-faction basis as well.

You can use numbers ranging from 0 to 3, for secondary hit points - they don't work only in custom battles, as there is no need for that.

However, side effect of secondary hit points is unpredictable (and usually bad) AI behaviour on the battlefield in campaign, as it thinks certain units are relative stronger or weaker than they actually are.

They do in the combat map, but as far as I know and anyone who knows for SURE correct if I'm wrong, that in auto resolve they have a BIG impact or at least a moderate one. Why thinks you that in Vannila a fleet of 2 boats attacking one identical boat but that 1 outnumbered boat just happens to have 3 command stars for its admiral beats the 2 boats. I apologize for that somewhat hard to follow example and apologize for the fact that I will make no attempt to clarify it

Command stars in Med2 affect morale, +1 for each unit per each star.

That's a lot, and hell overpowered, especially coupled with dread which seems to lower morale of enemy units by -0.5 for each skull.

Total, 15 morale difference - that's basically a difference between peasant and knight, over PB's RC.

AR does give hell of a bonus for command stars and the such.

As for the navy AR, it simulates normal field battle with 'boat' soldiers, and the end result is that it takes morale into account, assuming one party will be eventually routed before the other (that's why when you have oblivious advantage, you often don't sink the enemy fleet but just damage them a bit and cause to retreat ... or why equal 0-star fleets of player versus the AI turn up in AI favour when you introduce bonus morale scripts for the AI-recruited units on campaign map, or play on higher difficulty which gives hardcoded AR advantage to the AI).

[Rhio]

Did you get a Bright Wizard yet? Now THAT's overpowered (I'm kidding, I love the ginger bastards, really I do )

Faced off against a full stack of Orks and not only did my Bright Wizards kill over half the army, but the rest was so demoralized from the barrage of fire, that a single charge from the rest of my army was enough to get them running for the hills.

[Deutschland]

lol i just had the chaos invade. Now this explains a lot.

Omg ! Someone pressed copy paste waaay to often when he created chaos spawn armies

One of the gameplay problems i face that the orcs always turn to rebels some time and i didnt use assassins.

[Gondoriangrunt]

night goblins always goes rebel in my campaign... which sends averland on a huge land grapping spree

Omg ! Someone pressed copy paste waaay to often when he created chaos spawn armies

and yeah there are way to many stacks in one go.... and the fact that the empire's first line of defence Kislev is totally ignored is annoying

but still it's one of the better mods out there