Mod: Bretonnia, Knights of the Grail

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

I did to make it consistent with Sombre's WH mods. On about 99% of cases, recruiting a scout from casle is a absolute waste of a commander slot, so I agree with Sombre's view on that national scouts should just cost 0 gold.

The impact is that even if you're gold limited, you would *always* recruit a scout from each castle that you would otherwise be unable to recruit from. As long as it's consistent across nations, it's not a problem, but otherwise, it's an advantage (even if a limited one.)

Zero upkeep scout units could then be used e.g. to cheaply break into blood via the scout hunting technique (vs. the upkeep on however many scouts you normally devote to such a task.) They'd also be great fever fetish hosts. Or anything else that just needs a unit with available slots as cheaply as possible.

As you point out, most of the time you'd still rather have a mage or commander unit, but it's something to consider.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Stavis_L

The impact is that even if you're gold limited, you would *always* recruit a scout from each castle that you would otherwise be unable to recruit from. As long as it's consistent across nations, it's not a problem, but otherwise, it's an advantage (even if a limited one.)

A very limited advantage. How often do you not build a commander? At which point in the game? How useful are a handful of scouts at that point in the game?

People recruit indy scouts whenever possible, but that's because they don't take a commander slot. Even with scouts costing nothing (or 1 as I costed them) it makes no difference to whether you build an indy scout or not. Like you said, people will scout up only when they have no gold or are trying to save every last scrap of gold (even at the cost of a commander slot for a turn). This doesn't happen very often and hence I think you'll still see very few scouts.

Zero upkeep scout units could then be used e.g. to cheaply break into blood via the scout hunting technique (vs. the upkeep on however many scouts you normally devote to such a task.) They'd also be great fever fetish hosts. Or anything else that just needs a unit with available slots as cheaply as possible.

Indy scouts are way better for all of these things because they don't take a commander slot. You therefore have them in large enough numbers for the blood hunting without disrupting your main strat (no way scout blood hunting in anyone's main strat). It's true they're infinitely cheaper than indy scouts, but they have a far, far greater opportunity cost for the vast majority of the game. They are also inherently fewer in number.


Edit: It should also be noted one reason I made commanders 1 gold in my mods is that I play exclusively on NI maps where the commander slot is even more precious.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

And about the siege/freespawn problem, I brainstormed some solutions. Opinions are welcome:

1) Make the freespawn cost more upkeep (by making them summon different units that the basic recruitable peasants).
2) Reduce the amount of freespawn to 2, but make the summons a bit better. Like Lord to 2 chain men-at-arms and Marquis to 2 Yeomen. I could reduce the gold cost of the leather men-at-arms further to see that they see use in Bretonnian armies.
3) Change the troops to domsummons -> the sieger can preach to get the freespawn in control.

Any of these changes could also be added with the castle change.

1) This doesn't really remove the problem and it would arguably add another level of annoyance because you'd be getting gold draining chaff whether you liked it or not and might even have to specifically suicide them to keep upkeep down. You know, when they aren't preventing sieges from working. They are still generated for free and still bypass the siege-stops-recruitment mechanic.

2) You mean summon allies? This doesn't change the siege situation since the besieged will have nothing better to do than summon dudes. Generally speaking I'm in favour of summon allies over freespawn though, because summon allies is never annoying - you have a choice about it. Even if it is technically worse.

3) The problem with domsummon is that on domsummon2 you still gets LOADS of dudes with high dom (basically you'll sit your domsummon commanders in your cap) while on domsummon20 you get so few it's a bit pointless (unless they're pretty powerful units like bat demons, vampires etc)

My advice would be to remove or otherwise heavily scale back the non recruitment creation of these units. When I started with the skaven I used a lot of summon allies and freespawn etc and over time I've realised it generally just causes more trouble than it's worth and creates a bizarre second economy based on hoarding commanders. If you look at the vanilla game it's really limited in application - cap only wolfherds for example. I suspect because of the warping effect it has on the game.

I think it's probably ok as a main feature of some nations, but bretonnia doesn't exactly feel like one of those to me.

[llamabeast]

I think #animal does count doesn't it, at least for sieging if not repairing? I remember learning that it counted and realising my years of using Call of the Winds for sieging had been futile.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

I think #animal does count doesn't it, at least for sieging if not repairing? I remember learning that it counted and realising my years of using Call of the Winds for sieging had been futile.

Nope, not according to lch. He has been in the code - see the thread I linked to above.

Call of the winds does suck for sieging, but not because they are animals. It's because the small hawks have an intrinsic -1 to their siege score. The entire call of winds has a siege strength of 6. The equivalent of 6 str 10 militia. Note this only applies to sieging - they are great at defending a siege.

[llamabeast]

Where does the -1 come from?

[Sombre]

It's some sort of siegemalus flag I think - lch described it in the thread as an attribute of the unit.

But as I understand it, it's only coincidental with #animal and no other animals actually have it. So the birds were specifically made rubbish at sieging. The great hawk leading them sieges normally for example, despite also being an animal.

[Foodstamp]

I am glad I could help. I really like the UK spellings for this mod, I just wanted to make sure it was intentional.

[llamabeast]

2) Reduce the amount of freespawn to 2, but make the summons a bit better. Like Lord to 2 chain men-at-arms and Marquis to 2 Yeomen. I could reduce the gold cost of the leather men-at-arms further to see that they see use in Bretonnian armies.

I would have thought that might work reasonably well. I think that would be a sufficient change to make my "Recruit 3 marquis every turn and churn out freespawn like crazy" strategy pointless. It would be a shame to lose the freespawn altogether because you have done a good job of making it actually tempting to recruit commanders who aren't mages. Very few nations manage this and I think it is good.

NB I think both Burnsaber and I are using "freespawn" to mean "Summon Allies", somewhat incorrectly I realise.

PS Thanks for the hawk info Sombre, that's interesting.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

I would have thought that might work reasonably well. I think that would be a sufficient change to make my "Recruit 3 marquis every turn and churn out freespawn like crazy" strategy pointless. It would be a shame to lose the freespawn altogether because you have done a good job of making it actually tempting to recruit commanders who aren't mages. Very few nations manage this and I think it is good.

NB I think both Burnsaber and I are using "freespawn" to mean "Summon Allies", somewhat incorrectly I realise.

PS Thanks for the hawk info Sombre, that's interesting.

Yeah, I think scaling back the numbers like that and forcing you to use the summon allies command is probably sufficient to make it fair, while still being useful. I don't think you need to worry about the price of leather men at arms though... 6 gold is pretty cheap as it is, that's already lower than almost anything in dom 3. They're plenty usable as chaff. Not as good as skavenslaves, but what is?