Feel like I'm doing something wrong

[ddude987]

Ahoy! Excellent mod, been playing through my first full campaign (tried the mod a while ago but then stopped playing rome 2).

I had a few questions, mostly because I feel like I am doing something wrong. It could be I am just terrible at total war.

1. Dignitaries feel to... easy? There feels like no downside to always maxing out dignitaries and just letting them auto-pilot provinces.
2. Is there a DeI encyclopedia? I found honga.net but it is either confusing or outdated. Some buildings list 2 food or public order penalties that disagree with each other, and then aren't even the same as what is seen in game.
3. Supplies don't seem to matter. What is the point of the supply lines? Sure there is a bit of attrition, but I just walk to another province and then that's that.
4. Is it possible to max out all buildings in a province? I just haven't been able to find a way to get all buildings capped and not be suffering from food or squalor. Maybe this is just a design decision albeit a realistic one and one I have no problem with, but its still a question of mine as I have not been able to figure out the answer.

Battles are super fun, and I love that tactics actually feel like they matter. Though this prompts question number 5.

5. Some units feel pointless. I understand it is supposed to match realism, but why are there sometimes 2 units that are almost exactly the same except upkeep costs 1 more, or one has 1 more in a stat. Models are the same, but names and description are sometimes different (not always IIRC). This is more of a why was it design this way question?

Thanks to all!

[Leiska]

4. You just need to build the right things and you'll be fine. If you stop taxing a province, it becomes self sustaining. This way you can build military provinces with huge food deficits without issues. It pays to always specialize provinces to do one thing only, such as food production, trade, industry or recruitment of a certain agent or troop class.

5. There are definitely some redundant units. Sometimes there are more differences than is initially apparent because not every stat is shown in the unit card, though. Indian mace men seem to be almost identical to Indian sword men, but their weapons are actually armour piercing, which makes them slightly better against heavily armoured targets despite having somewhat inferior stats.

[Dresden]

To answer the other questions -
1. Dignitaries are a bit easy, but they are designed that way. We wanted a governor system and they represent that. They are important to DeI, if you don't use them properly you will have various corruption and other issues.
2. There isn't right now, we may have one at some point.
3. Supplies matter up to a point. You can go in to attrition, you have to figure out how to best plan invasions in that way. We didn't want it to be overly limited, though. The population system (mixed with the supply system) will make up for that.

[FlashHeart07]

In addition to 4 and 5.
4. We will be overhauling the building system with version 1.2 and hopefully solve the problem of buildings not being worth upgrading to more than tier 2 or 3.
5. A lot of these units that seem similar are also AoR (Area of Recruitment) units. So the factional unit and AoR unit might be available to you, but to other factions only the AoR unit will be available and the number of redudant units in the specific area may seem lower.

[Drathmar]

In addition to 4 and 5.
4. We will be overhauling the building system with version 1.2 and hopefully solve the problem of buildings not being worth upgrading to more than tier 2 or 3.
5. A lot of these units that seem similar are also AoR (Area of Recruitment) units. So the factional unit and AoR unit might be available to you, but to other factions only the AoR unit will be available and the number of redudant units in the specific area may seem lower.

5) I do have a question on this. Is it correct that the AoR/Mercenary/Trained version of the same units have sometimes very different stats? For example (from memory can check exactly when I get home but I remember being baffled by this):

the Axemen in northern iberia (Cantabri campaign) have an AoR version and the AoR version has a somewhat significant amount (5-10) more melee attack, melee defense, and charge bonus, but like 20 less morale.

Mercenary Godillic (SP) Berserkers have 0 armor but are 150 men, while the trained ones (same name and description) have 100 men but like 26 armor.

[Dresden]

Also the unit diversity will be more important with the population system.