MaA building bonus stacking solution

[Noxer123]

Hello CK3 Team!

I am a long time Paradox fan with about 2000 hours clocked in your games. This is my first time posting a suggestion for any of your games, mainly because I think I have a neat design solution for the issue with Men at Arms bonuses from buildings.

Problem

The issue with buildings and men at arms is that the bonuses can be increased exponentially, which in turn creates a meta of stacking building bonuses for one specific type of troop, and then running only that troop type. It also indirectly makes Stewardship the best attribute to have for warfare, which is a bit weird.

1 building & 1 regiment => 1 bonus application
1 building & 2 regiments => 2 bonus applications
2 buildings & 2 regiments => 4 bonus applications

Then it gets silly
3 buildings & 3 regiments => 9 bonus applications
5 buildings & 5 regiments => 25 bonus applications
10 buildings & 10 regiments => 100 bonus applications

The issue here is that it is really hard to balance. If you nerf the building bonuses, they will be horrific for few buildings and few regiments, and if you leave them be, we will be stuck in this meta.

Solution

Make the buildings only give bonuses to 1 regiment each.

This will give a couple of beneficial effects:

1. It will make the bonus effects from buildings linear instead of exponential. They will be much easier to balance, and the amount of land you hold will determine how much trained MaA you can hold rather than how good the entire army is. It makes sense from a lore perspective as well; multiple similar training grounds wouldn't make soldiers better, it would increase soldier training capacity.
   
   
2. It will make versatile army compositions more viable. If you have a few holdings with farmland, it would mean you can hold a few units of elite (buffed) cavalry, while you might use the rest of your land for other troop types like archers. On the basis of building bonuses alone, this would mean that your heavy cavalry would be just as effective as someone with their entire realm being farmland, just that you can field fewer heavy cavalry regiments with bonuses.
   
   
3. It will make more versatile land holding more viable. Rather than, for example, making sure every holding you have is jungle to stack elephantries, it would be more than viable to hold some jungle holdings for gaining bonuses for a few heavy cavalry regiments, and focus the rest on coast etc for development and income from ports.

I have thought this through thoroghly, but I would be happy to have a discussion if there are any errors in my thinking here. I hope this reaches the team down in Malmö (Hello from Gothenburg!) and that my ideas help the game become better!

Best regards,
Jimmy

 

[fodazd]

I agree with this. Applying the building bonuses only to 1 regiment would solve the MaA Bonus stacking issue.

 

[Matihood1]

So what you're suggesting would make multiple instances of the same military building completely redundant if you don't bother making multiple kinds of the same man-at-arms unit? Yea, I don't know...

Also, is this really that big of a problem outside serious multiplayer games? I mean, I doubt I play CK3 in the most efficient way possible and yet I've been able to get from a count to an emperor in pretty much every region of the game. Do people really care that much about meta in this game?

 

[Noxer123]

So what you're suggesting would make multiple instances of the same military building completely redundant if you don't bother making multiple kinds of the same man-at-arms unit? Yea, I don't know...

Also, is this really that big of a problem outside serious multiplayer games? I mean, I doubt I play CK3 in the most efficient way possible and yet I've been able to get from a count to an emperor in pretty much every region of the game. Do people really care that much about meta in this game?

Well, currently every building that gives bonuses to troops you are not currently using is redundant as well. It would just be a matter of building the right amount of buildings to support your army.

I agree with that the game is not primarily ment to be played as a min-maxing game, but more as a story generator. We have EU4 & HoI4 for the min-maxing fix. However, I still think broken mechanics are damaging to the integrity of the game. Getting super OP space marines just because you build a few buildings is pretty immersion breaking, wouldn't you agree?

 

[Seclouds]

If you have checked the buildings required terrain, there is only 3 building for troops enhanced, heavy infantry & pike shares blacksmith, skirmisher & archer shares military camp, light cavalry & skirmisher shares horse/camel breading. Buildings for the heavy cavalry only can build on very limited area. If following the changes above, and bases on current game MAA countermeasures and damage, the army only need 1 or 2 types of MAA with siege weapon, there should be many useless slots.
I don't mean agree or disagree to the post, I just try to simulate the actually usage.

 

[Noxer123]

If you have checked the buildings required terrain, there is only 3 building for troops enhanced, heavy infantry & pike shares blacksmith, skirmisher & archer shares military camp, light cavalry & skirmisher shares horse/camel breading. Buildings for the heavy cavalry only can build on very limited area. If following the changes above, and bases on current game MAA countermeasures and damage, the army only need 1 or 2 types of MAA with siege weapon, there should be many useless slots.
I don't mean agree or disagree to the post, I just try to simulate the actually usage.

The suggestion implies a revision of the buildings giving MaA bonuses. My approach would be to remove all the minor bonuses from buildings such as Outposts and Pastoral Lands, and make the buildings that give major bonuses, like Barracks, give the bonus to either a regiment of heavy infantry or spearmen.

For the Blacksmith, I would probably change it to give minor, flat bonuses to all troops over the board, like with the Men-at-Arms Maintenance (but Men-at-Arms attack etc). The Archery Ground & Jousting Fields could maybe give 1 regiment bonus slot per level, with being able to support 3 regiments at level 3 etc.

I am just tossing ideas pretty recklessly here, but I hope I make myself understood on where I'm heading with this.