So Retinues cost SIX times more!

[Groogy]

Archers is generally a problem in the combat mechanics, however archers do just melt whenever skirmish ends. But with latest changes in the game the archers should be more of a gamble, if you bet everything on arches and you do not win the entire combat in skirmish, you will loose the entire combat with barely any troops left. If you guys feel differently after a week I might go in and change more stuff, but right now light infantry and pikemen should be the powerhouse troops but I might be wrong.

 

[AchedTeacher]

Archers is generally a problem in the combat mechanics, however archers do just melt whenever skirmish ends. But with latest changes in the game the archers should be more of a gamble, if you bet everything on arches and you do not win the entire combat in skirmish, you will loose the entire combat with barely any troops left. If you guys feel differently after a week I might go in and change more stuff, but right now light infantry and pikemen should be the powerhouse troops but I might be wrong.

I found in many of my battles combat ends without melee mode ever happening.

 

[Zakath]

I just don't feel you're getting it. I can't realistically afford to have any supplementing retinues at all at the moment without being totally bankrupt. Since a lot of retinues are eventually going to get wiped out due to poor rebel spawning etc, I think it is much more cost effective to build an entire barracks than to use a similar amount of money for retinues, not to mention how impossible it is to have even 2 or 3 huscarl retinues as a Norse pagan. This all boils down to the fact that four people in a QA team is insufficient, and it doesn't give enough voices of how people truly play a game.

Then you're too poor to maintain a standing army. It's why the feudal system provides more or less free troops, they work land you own most of the time but answer your call to arms. You can afford a few retinues even with just a few feudal holdings, you just can't mass thousands of them without a well built up demesne to support them.

Keeping standing time armies is expensive, especially considering the technology level. There is a reason standing armies didn't really catch on for quite a few centuries, the agriculture was simply too inefficient to spare all that many warm bodies for such trivial issues as practising sword swinging all day long.

 

[AchedTeacher]

Then you're too poor to maintain a standing army. It's why the feudal system provides more or less free troops, they work land you own most of the time but answer your call to arms. You can afford a few retinues even with just a few feudal holdings, you just can't mass thousands of them without a well built up demesne to support them.

Keeping standing time armies is expensive, especially considering the technology level. There is a reason standing armies didn't really catch on for quite a few centuries, the agriculture was simply too inefficient to spare all that many warm bodies for such trivial issues as practising sword swinging all day long.

That's not really what I'm implying. I don't want an army similar to my total levy count, I wan't a supplement that actually does anything. In real history huscarls certainly were a small standing force for the king in Norse and Anglosaxon culture, it's not like a king commanding a few thousand men (levies) in wartime couldn't afford 500 housecarls. In the current game, you simply can't.

And on the issue of levies, if I raise all my personal levies as a Norse pagan I'm running -2 monthly already, I can't even afford a single retinue at this point.

 

[Ranjid]

I just don't feel you're getting it. I can't realistically afford to have any supplementing retinues at all at the moment without being totally bankrupt. Since a lot of retinues are eventually going to get wiped out due to poor rebel spawning etc, I think it is much more cost effective to build an entire barracks than to use a similar amount of money for retinues, not to mention how impossible it is to have even 2 or 3 huscarl retinues as a Norse pagan. This all boils down to the fact that four people in a QA team is insufficient, and it doesn't give enough voices of how people truly play a game.

Let's analyze a screenshot, shall we? Here's a shot of my retinues:

Retinue upkeep for a whole year: 27,25 gold - 9650 men.

Below that is the cost for my varangian guard

Varangian upkeep for a whole year: 56,65 gold - 3150 men.

Tell me: How is this not affordable? If the replenishment hurts your coffers, simply lower the replenishment rate while you're low on budget.

 

[Kombatdoctr]

I think the changes to their cost and size were definitely needed, and I'm glad they were done, however the nerf to their combat effectiveness (the bonuses are smaller than before) was unneeded in my opinion.

P.S. Archer spam was a gamey tactic anyway, I'm glad we have to mix it up now.

 

[AchedTeacher]

Let's analyze a screenshot, shall we? Here's a shot of my retinues:

Retinue upkeep for a whole year: 27,25 gold - 9650 men.

Below that is the cost for my varangian guard

Varangian upkeep for a whole year: 56,65 gold - 3150 men.

Tell me: How is this not affordable? If the replenishment hurts your coffers, simply lower the replenishment rate while you're low on budget.

I'm facepalming so hard right now. Of course it's the replenishment that hurts me, but I can't put the replenishment on hold with 10 men in my retinue can I? I might as well not have paid the ridiculous ~100 gold up front for raising the retinue and invested in a barracks.

 

[Lord Roivas]

No middleground, it's my ground.
No but seriously they are supposed to supplement your army and not be the only army (which they were before, don't lie to me)
They are still stronger than your army and cheaper in long term perspective. However they do not any longer win on their own.

What I have done (including other nerfs/fixes like assassination and banishment) is removing the "press button for bacon", even though ck2 is different from our other games it's still strategy, you have to weigh decision against each other. If you just press a button for instant win it isn't much of a game.

I gotta disagree just a bit here.

I'll give you my two reasons. One of which is the Dev Diary videos which outright says you made the changes because of some of the people on the forums practically lobbying you. I'm sure that's not the entire truth, but that language worries me a bit. Either way it is fine but as I point out often here, most of the people who can really talk out and weigh in a big way every aspect of this game on these forums is typically among the top tier of players. Our opinions for what's too easy and what's not are to be taken with a grain of salt. There are a lot of facts in these arguments true and I give my opinions often in no small words, but by no means can we in every circumstance be considered the group to balance everything around. I include myself in this category of players as well. I can definitely see a lot of less skilled players wondering what happened in quite a few aspects of this game.

The second of which is they were (retinues) the only army when you were quite a giant empire that's spamming out military organization. I typically play smaller realms and I've tested this before, but typically even if you maxed out military organization, you had to be at least a 400 to 500 size realm before the retinues became the sole or primary fighting force. Did they need to be nerfed or at least shifted drastically? Yeah I would say so, but do it in small steps, trial and error, right now they are being marketed as the fighting force for giant late game empires, which was ironically the time when they were most a problem to begin with. You'll be hearing about late game retinue problems again, believe me. I'm gonna give it a lot more games before I can accurately judge the new retinues, but right now they don't seem too worth it gold for gold.

I also take issue with parts of the tech system, I mean you guys set it up to be exploited by the better players of this game. The military tech tree is pretty weak overall, and retinues could have been at a 3rd strength of what they were and military organization would have been the far better investment. That and how 1 building that required small tech to boost you by 60 retinue was basically setting up everything else as subpar. If there really needed to be a first step to changing retinues, then the tech tree is something that needs to be looked at in a far bigger way.




I will however agree with the assassination spam, that was a bit annoying and cheap.

 

[Groogy]

I am certainly making no demands, though I will note two things: first, you avoided noting the problems I pointed out with the "bacon button" like running out of money, ending up with a dagger in the back, or running up malus enough to get a decent faction going; second, that response was somewhat rude whether it was your intent or not.

If you look it from that, that you get penalties would "hit" you, from the assassinate button, they were not harsh enough in comparison to the success rate of the bacon button. Even if you would not have enough money at the time, its still at most of times 50% chance success. And the response would have been same if I had just increased the penalties, so what I did is remove one out dated system and make sure we aimed for only one instead of having two separate ones to aim for ones. I can understand if you are not pleased with the plots if you are used to the quick assassinate button, however trust me in this is way better than we have before and this actively makes us force ourselves to focus on one thing instead of diverting attention to two different mechanics. We've said it several times, we should have done this from the start of the game.

Also sorry for derailing, I tend to do that. Continue with retinues from here on.

 

[Jango40]

No middleground, it's my ground.
No but seriously they are supposed to supplement your army and not be the only army (which they were before, don't lie to me)
They are still stronger than your army and cheaper in long term perspective. However they do not any longer win on their own.

What I have done (including other nerfs/fixes like assassination and banishment) is removing the "press button for bacon", even though ck2 is different from our other games it's still strategy, you have to weigh decision against each other. If you just press a button for instant win it isn't much of a game.

Adventurers as a small nation are an unfair instalose. I disagree with your changes, as they have, in my and quite a few other's opinion, made the game more limited.
Also, why was vassal limit being extended by bigger prestige removed? You could actually have some control over it, but now...

 

[vandevere]

Well more or less what you do is, you keep pressing it until you get bacon. That is the core of the problem and I hope I don't have to motivate why that is a problem. And if you demand me to explain why that is a problem I am probably never going to be able to explain to you how that is a problem. But hey if you find that fun, just enable it again in the defines.

Then do *SOMETHING* about those @#$% adventurers!. And, no, I don't mean buff them again.

You keep on saying the nerfs are meant to discourage blobbing. But these nerfs are making it incredibly difficult to play *SMALL REALMS*. We don't all blob, you know. But the nerfs-which are ostensibly to discourage blobbing-are harming the small fry *FAR* more than they're harming the blobbers.

I've said this before, and I'll say this again; Large Realms-Empires and such, will *ALWAYS* have an easier time against adventurers. They'll have larger armies, more retinue-nerfs notwithstanding-and more money to hire mercs, if necessary.

And, even if they do lose to the adventurer, the player will still have some lands left over to fall back on.

A small realm will have *NONE* of these things, and a single Adventurer will now mean a Game Over for the player playing a small realm.

 

[Ranjid]

I'm facepalming so hard right now. Of course it's the replenishment that hurts me, but I can't put the replenishment on hold with 10 men in my retinue can I? I might as well not have paid the ridiculous ~100 gold up front for raising the retinue and invested in a barracks.

Of course you can. Just do it until you have enough money. I don't get your problem. After all you're trying to raise a professional army, which you have to support with weapons, training and salary.

 

[Myrten]

No but seriously they are supposed to supplement your army and not be the only army (which they were before, don't lie to me)
They are still stronger than your army and cheaper in long term perspective. However they do not any longer win on their own.

I agree in case of classic feudal realms, but shouldn't they be the main army in case of ERE and Merchant Republics?
Maybe instead of nerfing them for everyone you should limit access to them to most advanced&organized states, for everyone else they should only be a 'personal guard' with an upper limit of like 1000 soldiers.

 

[Dracko81]

Playing a small realm? Swear fealty to someone who can protect you.

 

[monsteronastick]

Playing a small realm? Swear fealty to someone who can protect you.

My second game (playing the Dregnot count in southern Italy), I quickly swore fealty to the King of Sicily because there wasn't a lot of choice. Then Pisa came after me and the King did squat.

 

[GeorgieBest]

Honestly, I think this way is better. They now feel like..retinues. IE a small, elite unit, as opposed to a modern standing army, like they were before. I think we just got too used to how retinues worked before now.

The problem for me is that they don't feel elite, they can barely beat regular levies that slightly out-number them.

 

[Dracko81]

My second game (playing the Dregnot count in southern Italy), I quickly swore fealty to the King of Sicily because there wasn't a lot of choice. Then Pisa came after me and the King did squat.

Did you try again?

I am currently on game 3 of my tribe creation game. First one I got trounced, it was funny expanding fairly well then every single neighbour declared war on me and I was taking a beating, then I got a religious uprising and I lost my troops from simple overwhelming odds. Second game I was good sorted my central holdings and went feudal, only had one castle ready so had no troops after the reform. Got trounced again, due to having not troops/income. Round 3 and I am 50% of the way to going feudal and slowly expanding to land my sons.

If at first you don't succeed try again.
Defination of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

 

[1alexey]

No middleground, it's my ground.
No but seriously they are supposed to supplement your army and not be the only army (which they were before, don't lie to me)
They are still stronger than your army and cheaper in long term perspective. However they do not any longer win on their own.

That would make sense for some realms, but why can`t I recreate Roman Legions when I play Italy or ERE?
What happened to the Mediterranean that it suddenly can`t afford to support such armies?

It is quite tiresome to see again and again that PI tries to force us into feudal system, and outright disallows any other approaches, both returning to older stuff like relatively professional armies of Roman empire or Citizens-Soldiers for Republics, we can`t try to build up realms with different proportion of Church and Cities to feudal. The entire point of giving bishops land was that it made the realm more **** stable, as priests could be chosen every time, kinda being the predecessors of bureaucracy.
You keep destroying options and forcing everyone into the same thing, instead of making balance adjustments that would guide certain places to prefer certain things.

That is iritating, fortunately, I stopped buying your DLCs before ROI came out, so I`m at least pleased I don`t fund this changes.

If you look it from that, that you get penalties would "hit" you, from the assassinate button, they were not harsh enough in comparison to the success rate of the bacon button. Even if you would not have enough money at the time, its still at most of times 50% chance success. And the response would have been same if I had just increased the penalties, so what I did is remove one out dated system and make sure we aimed for only one instead of having two separate ones to aim for ones. I can understand if you are not pleased with the plots if you are used to the quick assassinate button, however trust me in this is way better than we have before and this actively makes us force ourselves to focus on one thing instead of diverting attention to two different mechanics. We've said it several times, we should have done this from the start of the game.

Also sorry for derailing, I tend to do that. Continue with retinues from here on.

Great, so should I assume, that you first made sure that plots now can cover all the plausible and necessary cases, and then you actually removed the option, not vice verse?

 

[balistaus]

Playing a small realm? Swear fealty to someone who can protect you.

why though? If that's the only way then wouldn't that mean the dev/others forcing their playstyle on to you? =p. Also, i agree with the problem of adventures, it is literally impossible to defend from them as smaller realm, sometime even with alliance to medium/large realm.

 

[Ranjid]

why though? If that's the only way then wouldn't that mean the dev/others forcing their playstyle on to you? =p. Also, i agree with the problem of adventures, it is literally impossible to defend from them as smaller realm, sometime even with alliance to medium/large realm.

The hell? No, that simply means you're playing a too small realm surrounded by enemies who are glancing upon your lands. Does PDX really have to cater to a playstyle, where a 1 county guy can take on the ERE?