Special training buildings + army traditions + unit experience + general's abilities traits + agent support = insanely overpowered pikemen?

[antred]

Hi,

I just fought a huge fort defense battle (campaign difficulty rating: Normal / Normal) that saw my Legio V Fidelis of roughly 3.8k men duke it out with 2 Nervii and 1 Lugii army of about 11k men in total. Legio V Fidelis is the 3rd best legion in my empire, having reached level 6 army traditions thus far. It is also led by a very experienced general and accompanied by a veteran, further boosting its stats. All units have full armor and weapons upgrades, and most have at least 1 golden chevron.

V Fidelis contains 2 Tarantine Leukaspidai pikemen. Tarantine Leukaspidai have very respectable base stats to begin with, but from this fort battle and others like it I've fought before, I can't help but feel that while DeI may have done a good job of balancing pikemen vs other units with regards to base stats, this balancing totally falls apart when all these various modifiers I mentioned above come into play.

I wrote down the stats of my 2-golden-chevron Tarantine Leukaspidai:

Melee Attack: 47
Melee Defense: 84 (that is WITHOUT the Pike Phalanx formation enabled!)
Charge Bonus: 31
Weapon Damage: 19
Weapon Lethality: 0
Armor: 63
Base Morale: 61
Health: 49

I placed my pikemen at the entrances of the fort. Now obviously, you'd expect pikemen to perform very well in such a chokepoint defense scenario where the enemy has no choice but to engage it frontally without the option of flanking, but THIS WELL?? A single unit of Tarantine Leukaspidai slaughtered 2,366 enemies (and that was BEFORE the enemy rout started) for the loss of only 6 of their own. I mean I'm not complaining, but it feels like all these modifiers piling up just tilt the balance too massively in favor of pikemen.

[Augustusng]

Yeah, this is something we've been trying to reduce. While general's abilities and agents have been reduced from earlier values, it might be worth reducing those even more. Also, you can try my submod to remove the training building bonuses. That helps a bit, but it probably won't be included in the main mod (for now at least).

[KAM 2150]

All bonuses from generals, training, traits will get rebalance for next version.

[Butan]

Min-maxing is always a bane for balance... if you put everything on your side you can exploit the game to incredible depth, better to impose house rules on yourself as long as the balance is tiltable to such degrees!

[antred]

Min-maxing is always a bane for balance... if you put everything on your side you can exploit the game to incredible depth, better to impose house rules on yourself as long as the balance is tiltable to such degrees!

I lack the discipline for such self-imposed restrictions. If a perk is available, I'm going to use it. I need this enforced on me by the game!

Couldn't you remove those special training buildings entirely, though? Doesn't really make much sense to have a training facility whose effects are only applicable to freshly raised units but not units that already exist.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

I lack the discipline for such self-imposed restrictions. If a perk is available, I'm going to use it. I need this enforced on me by the game!

Couldn't you remove those special training buildings entirely, though? Doesn't really make much sense to have a training facility whose effects are only applicable to freshly raised units but not units that already exist.

If you pile every single bonus onto a unit, of course it's going to become more powerful that it would be under other circumstances.

that's not even remotely a game balance problem, that's a result of the player intentionally making the unit overpowered.

Honestly this kind of balance complaining post really annoys me, you're intentionally buffing up units then complaining they're op? Come on now.

Frankly a lot of the bonuses are already extremely low, 1-2% of armor is essentially nothing, and in some cases, is actually nothing. Some units get no benefit at all from a small 1% increase to a stat.
Other bonuses seem high, but when you take into account what they actually are, it's not really high at all.

Consider the 50% additional ammo trait, man, that seems really high doesn't it? Well what's 50% of 2? Yeah, a whole whopping 1 additional javelin! The increase really isn't as big as it sounds.

A lot of these complaints seem to be just looking at the stat buffs, but not actually taking into account how those buffs work in battle.


There is a sub mod for training building bonuses removal in the sub mod section. Not that it's needed.

I have a revolutionary idea for you, don't build the structure if you don't want the buff.


As for training facilities only working on newly trained recruits, well, it's kind of in the name. Training. As in, new, fresh troops that are trained.

As an example, consider that you have one army that is trained under a certain method. Ten years later you come up with an idea that can improve the results of your new army.
So when your new recruits complete their training they can do something more capably than the veterans in the field. In almost all cases you don't bring your troops home from abroad to send them through basic training.
It would be a logistical problem, the veteran troops already have combat experience that makes them likely still more effective than the enhanced training methods. So sending them back to get additional training is a waste of time.

And to two very specific lines of your post.

I lack the discipline for such self-imposed restrictions. I need this enforced on me by the game!

Your lack of discipline is your own problem, not a fault of the game. And you don't NEED anything enforced on you, exercise some damn willpower and some common sense.

[antred]

[...]

1) Slow down.
2) So no armor / weapons upgrading, no grooming your generals, no attaching agents to your armies, no picking army traditions that give you an advantage, no special training buildings ... you telling me, you don't do any of these?

[Ivan_Moscavich]

1) Slow down.
2) So no armor / weapons upgrading, no grooming your generals, no attaching agents to your armies, no picking army traditions that give you an advantage, no special training buildings ... you telling me, you don't do any of these?

Where in my post did you see me say anything like what you just posted? How about you slow down and actually read.

[Butan]

I lack the discipline for such self-imposed restrictions. If a perk is available, I'm going to use it. I need this enforced on me by the game!

Couldn't you remove those special training buildings entirely, though? Doesn't really make much sense to have a training facility whose effects are only applicable to freshly raised units but not units that already exist.

I totally get you. There is other games where the balance is done so that you NEED to train your units else you fail. Like XCOM or Starcraft etc... And I love the feel of experiencing my units, making them stronger and send them to destroy enemies.

But in Total War with the (local province) effects you can easily mix so many military buildings its not even funny, even in older TW with no province effects, you could build an entire settlement full of military stuff. And the public order, food related problems of those buildings are manageable (food with granary provinces/nation-wide food balancing, and public order with good governors/agents and patrols).

Army traditions/general skills and experience have been rebalanced so that its a minor factor now (maybe not at extreme levels), I think agent skills and buildings are still a bit imba.

[GourmetGorilla]

Either turn up the battle difficulty to legendary, or avoid min-maxing entirely. Switch out units and generals enough that this never becomes an issue, and you're golden.

[KAM 2150]

I even never build those training buildings Always prefered more cash rather then more % bonus to melee attack We plan to have a bit more depth to certain perks so all chocies will be a bit two sided For example general perk for weapon damage or armour value should also increase unit upkeep (as they will use better equipment). This type of stuff

[zonks40]

This has always been an issue, the player is easily able to apply the best combination of bonuses to make their units gods, however the AI rarely does, so it ends up an easy campaign.
But in saying that, every time you nerf a unit or an ability, you are also nerfing the AI.

[loony]

bah, that is the most fun I have with the game.
spend all my cash, suffer through wars without being able to deplo enough armies, etc etc
just to have that 1 army of chuck norrises.... with all bonuses I could muster and all experience i could grind.

And i honestly feel there is no imbalance in that? why? because you have to sacrifice so much cash and time to get those supermen, that you would be better of simply having 2 armies.

In my sparta game was trying to make my hoplites super, however, it was so slow and so expensive, i decided to abandon the idea, made 3 armies out of 1 elite (added levies and mercs) and ... won.
With one elite army I would have had a much longer and harder time.

In short, while tactically all those bonuses do make units unbalanced, strategically the balance is good or - rather - it cash that is more OP, not unit bonuses you buy it with.

[Grimlin]

Why not add some empire maintenance to the training buildings? It would reflect the fact that you have to pay more for a trained army, not just at recruitment but also to keep the training alive when the army gets deployed.

I'd also advise to not pay too much attention to anecdotal evidence. My war dogs shred 3k of non-armoured garrison idiots from some African tribe the other day. They were running around all the time and presented their backs to the dogs. In another battle against organized Greeks I used them to kill some cavalrymen (those pesky javelin throwers) and then they went after hoplites and got nothing done at all.
If you use your pikemen in the most lopsided engagement possible for them I'd say it's perfectly normal for them to be godly. In the regular battles I've played with Sparta against Makedon pikes I found them to be perfectly balanced.

Reducing the bonuses units get is also no real solution in my opinion. The AI gets large bonuses to it's income and can therefore afford vast armies. (in our example here Nervii with 2 stacks) If you take a way the option of building really good armies to take on hordes of barbarians (realistic) you take away a tool for the player to combat them. Instead the player would have to play only like the AI does, get a big income and spam low quality armies.

Making a good quality army more expensive though is intuitive because it makes sense and I think it'd work for balancing.

[geala]

In my opinion once again the wrong way. In decreasing such buffs to near zero you take some variation out of the game. For what purpose: to make the game difficult for people who use the strongest armies and the strongest units and lack discipline to restrict themselves? You will never succeed in trying this. Beside using armies with weaker units I never build training buildings and I always destroy them when in a captured region, but if I would like to make my units better through training buildings I would like to have buildings with real effects, not cosmetical tricks to give you a good feeling by achieving nothing.

[Augustusng]

You know, a big part of the reason I made that submod isn't just that training buildings give the player an advantage, but because they undermine DeI's AOR system. You've got all these choices of AOR units, but if you have a training building in one province, it's only worth recruiting the units available there. That's why the submod doesn't remove just effects from training buildings, but the bonuses that barbarian barracks buildings give, as well the morale bonus from the main city chain.

[LordJiggum]

Personally I'd say there are too many buildings/traits which give free experience to units. I personally prefer to have my units 'earn their stripes' and don't build any buildings or pick any traits which give experience on recruitment. I understand there might be a 'better training' argument but surely that is reflected by building training fields and upgrading them? If I had my way I'd remove them all but that might not be popular!

[Drowsy]

Please care not to shaft those that play with house rules and 'historic' army compositions, rabble rabble rabble.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

Personally I'd say there are too many buildings/traits which give free experience to units. I personally prefer to have my units 'earn their stripes' and don't build any buildings or pick any traits which give experience on recruitment. I understand there might be a 'better training' argument but surely that is reflected by building training fields and upgrading them? If I had my way I'd remove them all but that might not be popular!

It's not even that it might be unpopular. It's that you have the choice of not using them in the first place if you don't want them. Where as if you take them away, people who do want to use them have zero options.

People seem to forget options can be not taken by choice of the player, no one is forcing you to build bonus structures.

And for the record, I never build training fields. I can always use more farms, or more money producing structures without reducing my combat efficiency in the slightest.

Please care not to shaft those that play with house rules and 'historic' army compositions, rabble rabble rabble.

Pretty much exactly this. I'm already making substantial use of historical army compositions and a handful of house rules. Some of these player suggested balance changes would be very unfriendly to this playstyle.

[hainkostok]

i don't understand how can you complain unbalanced units in n/n difficulty? playing against ai, upgrading your unit in every possible way in game, placing pikemen in a position where your enemy can not even flank. if you want challenge go for leg/leg difficulty in campaign. and try to defend your gates with single pikemen in multiplayer battle.