Pictish Factional Ability is Insane

[AnonMilwaukean]

So, a morale bonus (+9) during night battles, and the ability to fight night battles with any attacking army at any time? Sounds good, but I was more concerned with the agent bonus to success of either the Caledonians or Ebdanians when I first was looking through the game after getting the DLC.

But, good grief is it powerful to use night attacks in the campaign. I mean, for one, it can be useful to help your army if the enemy has way more ranged units than you (as I think night battles reduce the range of most units). Secondly, night battles block reinforcements... so, if you see 3 or 4 stacks of an enemy faction coming at you, you can pick them apart one-by-one and survive onslaughts other factions might have lost, all without needing to do anything at all to enable the night battle option.

And on top of all that, there's that morale bonus, too.

This is possibly my favorite ability in the game for any faction, now. Night battles mean that, in a single turn, I can take on 3 or 4 enemy stacks with a single powerful stack of my own and do fairly well. Which is IMO ultra powerful, especially as the difficulty level goes up, because the free money the AI gets translates into them having more stacks than the human player much of the time.

The only ability I see as rivaling this is the Huns', which is like 2 abilities put together when considering all the things that the 'Four Horsemen' ability does.

But being able to stop all enemy reinforcements to a battle without needing to first unlock night battles on a commander, and without needing to use agent abilities to stop enemy army movement? Really, really powerful stuff.

Thoughts?

[Go0lden_Archer]

It is powerfull, but only at the start. When 1-2 generals get 6 cunning (Or how much is it) they can go attack at night themselves, and the hole point of this bonus fades away. +9 morale isn't that important, especially when you're fighting with "powerfull" army.

In my campaign as Langobards I was able to hold off Hunic invasion completely with 1 stack, when they were sending 3-4 my way almost every turn. Simply attacking them at night, and use 'replenishment' option after victory, with that bonus from Langobards one can simply go on rampage nonstop. Sure, units didn't have any experience most of the time because of it, but they were powerfull themselves.

[Caligula's_Horse]

I agree with pretty much every word in the original post.

Though its only all powerful at the start of the game, before you could gain access to it normally through high ranking generals, and when all your units still have bad enough morale that the +9 bonus is game changing. Still pretty useful late game though, as I always find myself with more armies then experienced generals. Besides, the early game is usually when you need the most help anyway.

[Lugotorix]

Love the night battle ability. Even if you're against insurmountable odds, it will still let you diminish their numbers by a lot before your general and stack is taken out the next turn.

[AnonMilwaukean]

The reason I rank this ability so high is that I often lose generals to agent spam in the mid-late game area. Attila isn't as bad with agent spam as R2 often was, but I still encounter it enough (on Hard and V. Hard, at least).

But yeah, I definitely agree that the ability tapers off in usefulness after you have a couple of generals at 6 Cunning or whatever it is.

[raven63]

I think at this point the ability should be changed from being called (and implemented as) "Night battle" to something like "Strategic maneuvering" - a mere cosmetic change to appease to the realists among us. I mean fighting night battles may be a surprise tactic to catch an inexperienced general off guard, but when it is used so frequently and to such decisive effect, it feels a bit off to me.

Generals with the ability to "strategically maneuver" would be able to engage the enemy stacks one at a time, much like we have now with night battles. The ability to do night battles should be somehow represented as a surprise weapon, which may backfire if your troops are not good enough, perhaps with Celtic factions being exceptionally good at it.