Stack spaming?

[Rabenrecht]

In search for a nice TotalWar experience I have just downloaded this mod and so far I'm impressed by the amount of work that must have been put into it

Testing the starting locations of some factions that interest me, I've noticed that factions start with quite large armies. And despite having only a few underdeveloped provinces, the faction are able to support those large armies.
I've investigated a bit further and it seems that upkeep and recruitment costs are relatively cheap, even for elite units, compared to the income. Together with the 0 turn recruitment of some units, all this supports a phenomenon I think is known as "stack spaming".

Stack Spam describes a situation where most of the factions have a very large number of full stacks running around that are both easy and fast to replace. This leads to very frequent (full stack) battles that have, individually, very little influence on the grand scheme of things.


Now, the stack spam issue is that greatest problem that keeps me from actually playing total war games. I absolutely hate stack spam.
I want my battles to be climatic and decisive. Fighting endless hordes with very little strategic gain bores me to death.
I aware that there are many player who don't mind it or even prefer it, and thats fine. Its just not cup of tea.

Before I put a large amount of time playing this mod only to be bummed about stack spaming issues, I rather ask you, IBFD veterans, if my impression that IBFD will result in stack spam is correct or not

[Justinian Australis]

Yep, stack spamming does occur and aside from bumping up the costs to the units and the recruit times perhaps, there isn't a whole lot to be done about it. I'd imagine that it would hurt the AI more than it would hurt you, as these spam stacks are more prevalent when the AI loses its main heavy troop barracks and all it can really do is just mass produce stacks of equites, milites, auxillia etc. It is frustrating...what I did was grab a single unit and just autoresolve in my favour to reduce these stacks into a pittance. Hardly ideal but the last thing I want to do is waste my time using say Julianus or Flavius Aetius etc fighting these meaningless battles, chasing huge stacks of rubbish cavalry all over the battle map.

Here is a rather extreme example of stack spamming....the poor Roman empire went bannanas when I had smashed them and stolen their most important city...this is SAI btw..