Do city values vary by faction?
Fantastic mod by the way, have played a few so far and this one is out and out amazing. A more impressive and higher quality mod than any of the Kingdoms campaigns... everyone involved in making it deserves the highest praise.
I've played campaigns as the Ghorids, Georgians (twice), and as Jerusalem so far. Sometimes on H/H, sometimes on VH/H.
1) Sometimes I've captured cities and they've been worth almost bizarrely low amounts. Playing as Jerusalem on VH/H I blitzed down from Kerak with the elite units in that area and grabbed the northern Arabian cities to block off Ayyubid expansion there. I was displeased to find that the cities were all next to worthless, with Medina being worth ~200 florins/turn and Mecca being worth 17 florins/turn--- not enough to justify any kind of infrastructure buildup and barely worth hanging onto.
In an H/H campaign as Georgia I had grabbed all the local neutrals, but was in an Alliance with the Kypchaks and the Seljuks (after meeting a slow Vietnam-like demise in a previous VH/H game where I rashly courted war with the Kypchaks before I had built up after seizing the neutrals, and lost to them on the plains even though I had a 5-7 province advantage over them and a rather sweet uberstack led by that 2nd generation Georgian leader who gets to 10 stars easily... my armies bogged down on the plains and I was unable to effectively defend my territories, necessitating a dispiriting pullback to the caucuses themselves) anyway, in this latter) blocking nearby expansion. I built up economically, but became concerned about Islamic dominance as the Ayyubids swallowed Jerusalem and the ERE came under heavy triple fire from crusading armies, Kypchaks, and Turks (Armenia was doing remarkably well though, go figure)... long story short I sent a fleet to sieze Iraklion and Rhodes and the unoccupied half of Cyprus (remarkably still neutral) as stepping stones for potential intervention in the Mediterranean... only to find that Rhodes was worth a large NEGATIVE value, something like -200 florins per turn, and Iraklion was worth some paltry number like 47 or 100.
I'm assuming that Rhodes, Iraklion, and Mecca aren't worthless for everyone and there's some kind of distance or faction based penalty at work here... does anyone know what the deal is on how this works?
2) I'm assuming that the lack of priests/imams was a (good, IMO) design decision, but am I correct in thinking that there is no religious movement until a city is large enough for third tier religious structures or monasteries? It's a bit odd that 1st and 2nd tier religion structures seem to provide no bonus, and a bit counterintuitive that an invading power can religiously assimilate large cities with ease, but cannot do anything about small cities unless they grow large enough.
3) Count me in as all for the augmentation of the AOR system that is planned. While I'm a big fan of the idea behind AOR, it is "a bridge too far" to have castles in invaded territory be utterly worthless--- I'm sure that most of the most logical fixes (such as, have the units be "local", and be more expensive and available in smaller quantities... or give each castle its own dedicated regional merc pool, enabling castles to augment the "rely on mercs" strategy that works well for expanding past your borders, but is usually of limited use for sustained fights, even in Merc rich areas like the steppes) or only letting castles build units when there is a degree of local religious conversion) are difficult to program, but some sort of fix is badly needed to minimize the sometimes ridiculous shuttle effect.
4) Unit balancing: Are some units as imbalanced as they initially appear, or am I not considering the subtleties sufficiently? Playing as Georgia I was struck at how bad of a bargain the spearmen seemed (4 attack for 200 florins upkeep), and how bad a bargain the tier 3 archers (dismounted horse) seemed (300 florin upkeep for a VERY minor improvement (melee attack and maybe armor were the only thing that was better, if I remember right, and those not by much) when compared with the 200 florin upkeep archers. Also, Javelineers always seem to have really impressive numbers relative to their price. Playing as the Ghorids it felt almost unfair how many nice units had 80-120 upkeep costs. Of course a bit of imbalance is to be expected (in the case of the Afghans this surely reflects the way the faction is portrayed and their historical strengths) but when, as with the Georgians, units seem almost hopelessly poor value when compared with other units within that faction it seems a waste.
But then, how big of advantage are spears? How do the mechanics on that work? I know they do fairly well with cavalry (though I had an 11 man general unit on a suicide mission (bad stats) kill 70 rebel spearmen with one casualty via repeated charges), but maybe they have some kind of advantage against infantry too? When you look at Khevsur swordsman numbers vs the spearmen numbers for the Goergians, it's hard to justify the spearmen ever being used except in absolutely minimal anti-Kypchak numbers.
Curious if there's a consensus on whether this kind of thing is imbalance or if it's more balanced than I realize.
Reply With Quote
We will have ways of decreasing the shuttle effect, however players who want to keep an entirely native army will have to shuttle troops - They'll be able to access at the very highest AOR tiers a very limited amount of troops native to the invaders, but it will take longer to build up a new army made up entirely of them than it would to ship them from home.
Originally Posted by Ahiga
