Stack of Doom

So far they have put in a disincentive for a stack of doom that is mostly heroes. The fact that heroes split experience among them makes it potentially more effective to have only 1 or 2 heroes in each stack, each with their own group of normal units.

That will help somewhat. but it is still possible to have one or two really powerful stacks and the rest of your units just small garrisons in your cities.

I think that limiting you to 9 units per stack, and allowing only one stack per battle will require stacks of doom to be efficient. You want to have a high density of power in your stacks to ensure you get few or no casualties in every battle.

I don't really see how command spots would help this.

I think the solution is to rebalance the strength, production and upkeep costs of units. Generally the only punishment for stacks of doom is if the AI can swarm you with armies in 10 different places turns the game into whack-a-mole. Unfortunatley, forcing the player to micromanage 10 different armies is really annoying for me and probably many others. So if the designers can figure out a way to encourage both AI and human players to field a certain number of armies, maybe 4-6, then that would probably be best.

Another problem that I forsee is that

a ) monsters seem to be too powerful to destroy with just a small army of normal units.

b )you are losing out on potential exp if at least 1 hero isn't at every single battle. Since it is difficult to get a large number of heroes, in the early and mid game, this could also restrain min/maxers from playing without stacks of doom. Maybe giving out experience more liberally from quests and other means could help resolve this.

Or, they could change it so that exp is split amongst ALL units. This would make you try to win every battle with as few units as possible if you are min/maxing, and make you have very low exp units if you are lazy. Not sure if this is a good idea, since it makes it more hardcore. Also, splitting exp in a simple manner like this is only semi-realistic... maybe they can make a more sophisticated system for distributing exp (X-Com had a good model for this).

First one, not true, you split your xp between all your units in the group, or said in other ways, you get less xp on your heroes if they are accompanied by other units, (non heroes). And I mean Very few amounts of xp if you bring other units, due to normal units high attack scores, that does little.

Second one, I hope they will not do this, I dont want a game that approves of micro managing things to that extent, that would be a big turnoff for me.

I hope they soon implement features to make it more feasible to have more armies, I would enjoy if I wasn't just supposed to make the biggest units possible, because all my units share experience, and are rubbish without experience, so multi stacking armies becomes a very poor option due to experience depleting very fast and every army unit becomes lvl 2 or so.

I am not sure I like the command post either, sounds silly and needlessly complicated,
I would like if they included special units in a stack, Like the "Warhammer" "little doll game" where each "stack" of units could have a "Flag-Bearer", and a "Leader" for certain benefits (this can be done very simple with proper interface, then again, I suppose most things can),
also I would enjoy if they made it more feasible to have 1 hero and alot of non heroes in the same stack without the hero's XP going to waste on silly militia.

Edit: I'm an idiot

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

[quote who="UmbralAngel" reply="1" id="3121002"]
b )you are losing out on potential exp if at least 1 hero isn't at every single battle. Since it is difficult to get a large number of heroes, in the early and mid game, this could also restrain min/maxers from playing without stacks of doom. Maybe giving out experience more liberally from quests and other means could help resolve this. [\quote]

I like this idea, making combat less of the "XP giver", ofcourse it would cause those researches for quest very very important, and that would be sad, I dont like researches that every player is going to research because they are that powerfull.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Actually, I find that the current (0.86) beta provides some strong disincentives against all-hero stacks -- mostly that heroes tend to accumulate at a much slower rate than in EWOM due to a variety of factors (level, cost, etc.), and that it takes increasing amounts of time and research to bump your army size up by 1. If you try running around with all heroes, they tend to get killed on a regular basis (due to low levels of hit points) and then resurrected with various unbuffs (some minor, some not so). You start off with an army limit of 6 units -- you can bump it up to 7 pretty quick, but getting it to 8 takes a long time (unless you're willing to neglect lots of other critical research). I don't think I've ever gotten to an army size of 9 -- there have just been too many other techs I've needed to research.

That said, it's still possible to build stacks o' doom, but with a few heroes, rather than a lot. In the game I was playing last night (until 2:30 am), I had only three heroes for most of the game: the rest of the stack starts out as spearmen cannon fodder, but I push quickly to get to archers, and then to yeomen (my longbow units), and finally to mounted yeo: longbow units on wargs. I also put my heroes on wargs as soon as I can (wargs give slightly more initiative than horses). Initiative is critical: I focus on it for my custom sovereign (who is a fire mage), and it's an attribute in my yeoman designs (which have the Charge, Fast, and Accurate buffs). if I can get off a fireball (or a mana blast, for fire-resistant baddies) and three or four shortbow/longbow volleys before the other side makes contact or can shoot, the battle is pretty much over before it's begun.

That said, let me note with great reluctance that I think that the Mana Blast spell may be a bit too powerful. I say "with great reluctance" because I just discovered it last night, and it suddenly made life a whole lot easier. It costs 30 mana points up front to cast, then uses 10% of your mana point balance for the attack; if successful, it does that many points of damage; if unsuccessful, it does only half that damage. Since my custom sovereign is a mage, I tend to focus my cities and outposts on capturing shards. This means that towards the end of my playing last night, I was running a mana point balance of anywhere from 500 to 1500, with 15-20 mana points accumulating each turn. That, in turn, means I can cast a mana blast spell on a target (such as a boss) and do 50-150 points damage (25-75 if it "fails"). Oh, and unlike Fireball, it can be cast every turn. Woot!

Now, I think it's there because there are some big nasty bosses in some of the Quests. I beat one such boss (a walking mountain in the desert; its name escapes me) in a previous game, but lost everyone in my army except for my sovereign in the process. (Let me say in passing that I love the ongoing improvements to tactical combat.) The only reason we beat him was because all the units were on warg-back, and he was relatively slow moving, so it took him a bit longer to stomp on each unit, though one stomp was all it ever took to kill each unit.

By contrast, last night my stack took on the Burning Lands, which provided an addition disadvantage, since none of my fire spells would work. But both my sovereign and one of my heroes could cast Mana Blast, while another had a decent (level 5) longbow and some relevant buffs (dealing with initiative and accuracy); the other three units were just on-foot archers. The boss fight turned out to be against three fire elementals and seven ignyses (of varying strength). I believe we won without losing a single unit, though a few took damage.

Which brings us to an interesting tactical AI note. I saved the game before going into the battle (hey, I'm no dummy); I just now reloaded that save point, went into the battle, and put it on 'auto-play' (the computer plays for you). Neither my sovereign nor my (magical) hero used spells at all; they just used their weapons. They still won, but the two heroes fell, and two of the three archer units were killed (the third was damaged). So the tactical AI wasn't able or willing to use the Mana Blast spell.

Which, as far as I'm concerned, is a good thing. I would be very sad if I got into a battle with an opposing (AI) sovereign who promptly killed my sovereign with a mana blast or a fireball. Because, hey, that's what I'd do. ..bruce..

Oh, and one more thing about tactical AI: the AI almost (though not) always goes after the 'weakest' units in your army first. That strategy makes sense in that you want to reduce the number of units that can actually carry out attacks. But there are times when it is smarter to wipe out certain stronger units first. When fighting an opposing army, my whole focus is on killing any archers first, which again is why initiative is so important: I want to take as many of them out as I can before they can fire once at me. It often pays to have a militia or other non-archer, non-hero unit in my army as arrow fodder, so that whatever AI archers survive my initial volley waste their arrows on that unit before they start attacking my own archers and/or heroes.

Likewise, it's why an all-hero stack is counter-productive, because the opposing side will go after the heroes immediately, starting with the weakest one -- and those heroes who die end up stuck the rest of the game[1] with 'unbuffs' (e.g., "Broken Leg: -25% Dodge"). So you want your stack to contain some easily replaceable units to draw attacks while you're wiping out the other side.  ..bruce..

[1] Actually, there is a potion which will remove all 'unbuffs' for a given character, but I've only run across it once in all my hours of playing, so it's not like it's something you can count on.

Incorrect. Say 100XP is given from a battle. 50XP is given to each regular unit. If there is one hero in the army, it will get 100XP. If there are 2 heroes in the army, they will get 50XP. If there are 3 heroes in the army, they will get 33XP. That is the current mechanic. Thought you should know.

Not how I get xp...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

No XP for you!

Seems like I was wrong, did some (rather extensive) testing with 2 heroes and 1 unit of militia, now I just need to grab a more powerfull unit and my newly built Sion to complete the testing, and I will probably post up some results in a new thread.

I must have dreamt of some weird xp system or something since my memory thought this to be different, the xp system was updated at some point?

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I did try slack of hero, but since hero get wound that can't be heal, I left them in city and forgot them most of time. LOL in my last game that is.

Funny, I have a hard time getting my non hero units up to level with my heroes ability to mow stuff down, then again I usually end up having 1 or 2 heroes, My sovereign just absorb all other heroes ability to do magic making a rather powerfull endgame casting unit, no matter what path I choose.

I do end up using only my sovereign as a 1 unit- stack of doom, because the heroe's injuries and xp dividing is a pain to micro manage.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I do use sovereign, though, thankful I don't see I get any wound but one time before?? not sure, so I use sovereign and army, I get non-hero armry level up to 8 to 9 but I am not sure I see much diffent from 2 level.