Make Hordes hold 40 units!

[Flinn]

Stay on topic gents, thanks

[loony]

Quite the other way around, i found playing with a limit of 20 units in battle made my chaos playthrough much more enjoyable. As empire I cannot resiste the temptation to spawn 2 armies and just autoresolve the heck of it.
With chaos? no... you need to think it through and get some memorable battles in return
Also when you manage to catch the AI with its pants down (i.e. can use lightning strike) it is also more tense and more enjoyable.

I tried another strategy in my vh playthrough: i did sort out the north well before going south, I had 3 hordes and a bunch of vassals (NOT ALLIES) as northern tribes; i could swarm down with a lot of company and had a lot of 40vs40 with my vassals present. Lots of fun abusing vassals and taking very few losses in huge battles.



Say I had my 2 hellcannons make 300+ kills each, archaon close to 400.

[KAM 2150]

What is not a joy is that that Chaos doesn't seem to stack much beyond 20. I've seen 22-25 or so, but not even Archaon has 40 units, and that is what I keep hoping for.

That is because Chaos lacks money do sustain that much men. Other factions have steady income and with dozens of cities, they are able to run 40 men stacks, while Chaos has no steady income and AI has no greater plan how to handle it. AI Chaos would need both increase to income and start with maxed out generals with upkeep skills and those upkeep reducing buildings.

[♔atthias♔]

May I go Off Topic just a little by asking with which mod you removed it?

thanks!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...searchtext=cap

[Psyalexander1664]

I suggested this in the mods request aggggeees ago. No one answered I don't think but now I see that it's an issue with the change applying to all armies.

Really it would make the Chaos Hordes much more unique because the hordes would feel like hordes and the points cost would probably balance it out anyway. In the "Storm of Chaos" campaign Archaon's horde had a special scenario called "Halting the Tide" where they got a replacement unit whenever one died and the aim for the defender was to hold them back as long as possible.

I do think mods are the only answer though, I don't see CA adding this now.
I wonder if it could be made a trait for all factions but only let Archaon unlock it or something.
My idea was make the chaos horde armies double size and make horde attrition much more deadly, but with a smaller range, so they could never reinforce safely but your armies really felt like the lord of the end times.

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

That is because Chaos lacks money do sustain that much men. Other factions have steady income and with dozens of cities, they are able to run 40 men stacks, while Chaos has no steady income and AI has no greater plan how to handle it. AI Chaos would need both increase to income and start with maxed out generals with upkeep skills and those upkeep reducing buildings.

Hypothetically you should be able to go into the Chaos Invasion script and give them 40 unit armies, but I don't know whether that would cause crashes or not.

[KAM 2150]

So far nobody ever made 40 slot armies while rest had 20 slot armies, so I guess it is either either first or second for all.

[daelin4]

Let's put the issue into perspective: the main problem OP raised is not so much "we need 40 unit stacks", but rather "attrition between Chaos army is annoying". That I definitely agree, and more definitely think there should be an element of player agency regarding this unique effect.

With that in mind, I'd suggest a simpler solution like skills, events or other gameplay elements the player can interact and influence to modify this mechanic. What this means is that starting time, Chaos stacks get normal attrition; as characters level up, skill points ca be spent to reduce the amount of attrition; do this with multiple characters and their stacks would eventually have zero attrition effect when close to eachother. Events like mission rewards can also add (or detract) to this idea: Moorslieb events for example can temporarily remove (or increase, maybe add a bit of randomness!) the attrition effect, giving Chaos players some extra breathing room and take advantage of that time to press the attack or stick close together to avoid annihilation. Heroes can have additional benefits that reduce either the attrition amount or the attrition radius can. Even regular events like winning battles can affect the attrition mechanic for one turn.
This is of course based on limited knowledge and experience playing as Chaos.
On the subject of 40-unit stacks, this is not a good idea because the game is designed around 20-stack armies. Giving twice the number of units- just to avoid an annoying challenge peculiar to playing as Chaos- seems neither fair nor even a benefit for the player as they would have fewer Lords to level up, and the AI would have to deal with twice the strength when dealing with what is regularly a single army.

As for mods, sure they might not be "legit" fixes, but they at least allow modders to demonstrate the feasibility of their ideas, if not craft variants of a product that many people have access to and subscribe according to their varying preferences.

EDIT: loading up a vanilla Chaos campaign, in Archaeon's skilltree there is only skill related to Horde Infighting, and that is Dark Apothecary, which reduces attrition from all effects by percentage, according to skill level. Stances affect attrition, but specifically exclude Horde Infighting.
With that in mind, the ideas I brought up can be made to expand to include affecting Infighting. For example, the Encampment Stance, which allows building structures, either reduces or removes Infighting, whereas Raiding does not.
I also gauged how far Chaos stacks need to be to affect Infighting, and it looks rather large. Quick glance at the skilltree indicates that there are no skills that reduce the range of infighting.
I currently use a mod that grants numerous new skills for all Lords. They are for the most part generic (there are no Chaos-specific skills, for example); the relevant one at hand is the "Survivalst" skill which has two levels: the first removes attrition from the character itself; the second removes attrition entirely. This does make skills like the Dark Apothecary irrelevant, however the skill is unlocked at level 29, so naturally it's still practical to unlock the Dark Apothecary skill which can be gained as early as level 8 for each lord.

[Beas7ie]

Probably a technical limitation preventing army from holding forty units in campaign map. The portraits are already squished as it is in battle mode.

That's CA's fault for making a crap UI. They can easily expand that unit card section out a bit and then instead of squishing all the unit cards when reinforcements come in so you have no idea where any unit's unit card is, they can just split in half horizontally. This would make all the unit cards straight squares and you can still see the units on them. Rome 1 this unit card style and it looks great. I really don't get why CA can't do this right as Rome 2 and Attila had the unit cards pop up and take up half the screen and then in Warhammer they just all get squished together so they basically become useless.