Megathread: Raising Armies in 1.2

[MakeB]

I made this account just to tell that this new way of raising armies is the worst new feature ever. In late game, if you want to use only MaA, its a chore to click all the new armies and stop raising and then disband. Before this patch, you had to click twice, now about 25 times. I see absolutely nothing positive in this. Also, with about 200 playing hours, i've had to divide my army in 5 different stacks maybe three times. You allways have enough supplies to march around atleast few months before getting any attrition in your own lands. If you want to address the problem of teleporting armies, just ad timer to raising MaA, maybe counting from capital etc. This change in raising armies only makes everything to feel tedious.

 

[RaynorXia]

That's my reason to create this account too! When you have 100k troops and mercenaries in late game the control becomes really really awful.

 

[Franconian]

I really want the option to only raise a limited amount of troops. Surely I don't need the full might of my empire to attack one count?

If you do that via a MAA only button, a slider, a selection, some buttons depending on the time troops take to arrive, I do not care.

 

[Ezumiyr]

Seems like many people never played AoE. You can select several armies at the same time and give them common orders.
Just select all your armies and send them somewhere. You can easily merge them afterwards if you want.

Really I don't understand why you feel the need to control only one army.

 

[Heiliges Thüringens Reich]

I rather have them raised in one province, as well.

 

[GeorgieBest]

I really wish they would give us an option to raise our men-at-arms/levies separately.

 

[MakeB]

Seems like many people never played AoE. You can select several armies at the same time and give them common orders.
Just select all your armies and send them somewhere. You can easily merge them afterwards if you want.

Really I don't understand why you feel the need to control only one army.

Of course you can do this. It's just more work and i see no reason why you should have to do it like this in a game, especially when it used to be easier. And this makes it way harder to raise army in numbers that you really want to raise it.

 

[zack137]

Not playing the game until this is fixed; literally worst "feature" ever. How about when you're trying to raise an army near an enemy and, whoops, a little army is raised right where an enemy is moving! I love getting good knights killed that way. WHO THE F THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA? No, it isn't "game-breaking" its just so annoying its not worth playing.

 

[prenda claw]

Seems like many people never played AoE. You can select several armies at the same time and give them common orders.
Just select all your armies and send them somewhere. You can easily merge them afterwards if you want.

Really I don't understand why you feel the need to control only one army.

Well... I mean... this isn't RTS AoE?

By concentrating your killing power in one stack, you can kill the other side more effectively. You just bait with a Levy stack, and ambush with the strong stack.

You're free to field less effective stacks if you want, but the easiest way to beat numbers is by quality. That's the point of MAA stacking, you see. I'm not always going to attack 10,000 with 20,000. Sometimes, I'll take 5,000 versus 10,000 or even 20,000 and win.

Yes, you can scramble 5 stacks of MAA mixed with Levies (diluting your killing power by reducing stack quality), but why? Why do that? It's less effective.

 

[Praetori]

This is pure speculation on my part, but I imagine they were responding to a player concern I've seen raised numerous times. Quite a few players have noted the AI splitting up its stacks and moving large armies across the map where each individual army had its size managed to avoid supply loss from exceeding the limit, while that level of micromanaging was not realistic for the player.

Seriously? I thought that was essentially what everyone did. March divided fight concentrated and all that.

And yes this new "QoL improvement" is silly. Why are we even putting rally-markers down if they don't actually rally the troops there?

 

[GeorgieBest]

I wish they would address this issue, because it's been the worst gameplay mechanic since release. Raising/managing armies is a total chore.

If we could assign our champions/men at arms slots to specific rally points that would be a massive improvement.

 

[akkaro]

I've found a workaround for raising just the MAA that works most of the time. Putting loads of rally points around my country lowers the local levies to the point that most provinces can support them and the MAA. Now I just raise my local army and cancel the levies from raising, leaving just MAA.

thx for the tip! ...

but honestly, such workarounds shouldn’t be necessary in a game like CK3 ... 1 button for levies, 1 button for MaA, 1 button to split, 1 button for raise all ... that can’t be rocket science to implement that!

 

[AA-Tyrael]

I also prefer raising my army in one province. I wish it could be rolled back to the preivous version.

 

[MishaTX]

I just liked the old system better, when MaAs were retinues. You had your retinues raised at all times (standing army, after all), you couldn't "teleport" them, and you didn't have to tediously click/split/order them to converge on one specific spot every single time you raised your troops while individually disbanding your meat shields.

That being said, spamming your realm with rally points and raising local armies wherever you need your MaAs works. It's just silly.

 

[M22413751]

I just liked the old system better, when MaAs were retinues. You had your retinues raised at all times (standing army, after all), you couldn't "teleport" them, and you didn't have to tediously click/split/order them to converge on one specific spot every single time you raised your troops while individually disbanding your meat shields.

That being said, spamming your realm with rally points and raising local armies wherever you need your MaAs works. It's just silly.

My thoughts exactly. CK2 army management system was so much better in every aspect. I'm actually thinking of going back to CK2 for the time being.

 

[SpankyMcJiggleswurth]

CK army mechanics to me always felt like a balance between player agency and micromanagement. If they add in features to give the player more agency they add micro to the game which can be tedious after a time. But when they try to eliminate micro they remove some player agency and that also becomes unpleasant when you are unable to do as you wish with your armies.

I personally disliked the rally point mechanic in CK3 as I could never figure out how to use multiple rally points and get the desired result. I would always end up with lopsided armies that would then require me to disband some to re-raise elsewhere, leading to several months of wait time in some instances.

I anticipate I will like the new system more. Overall a lot of the army management has been simplified from CK2. Not worrying about flank commanders is such a godsend, I hated having to rearrange my commanders every time I combined several stacks. This I feel was a good trade off to reduce micro at the cost of some player agency.

The micro needed to bring armies together in the upcoming patch I think will help add to the player agency side of the equation.

 

[The Shacks]

I just liked the old system better, when MaAs were retinues. You had your retinues raised at all times (standing army, after all), you couldn't "teleport" them, and you didn't have to tediously click/split/order them to converge on one specific spot every single time you raised your troops while individually disbanding your meat shields.

That being said, spamming your realm with rally points and raising local armies wherever you need your MaAs works. It's just silly.

I dont get it either, the switch (in England atleast) from relying solely on mercenaries and feudal levvies to household standing retinues you salaried into your service on a daily basis, in the 14th century, is kind of clear. Your retinues are your personal household and should always be raised. Equally dont understand at all why they abstracted your vassal levvies. Used to make a lot of sense creating powerful border Ducs beacuse you could oneclick raise their feudal levvy on your borders to deal with threats. In a setting where troops are very much men of their shires, the fact you can raise them thousands of miles FROM their shires is just strange, removes player agency and a lot of granularity in early war decisions.

 

[dschenkelman]

Decided to revert back to 1.1.3 for now just because of how the new "raise armies" works. I am spending more time than ever at the beginning of wars and small raids because of it, it is extremely frustrating.

Would love for this to be an option or just go back to previous version.

 

[Jaigen]

The previous way of raising armies was a bit wonky but now its just painful. Especially if you have 50 k levies . im experiencing FPS drops because i suddenly raise 30 armies.

 

[defekt]

To prefix 'hilariously' to the already much repeated 'broken' refrain: when you try to raise armies in a region of few counties it stacks a dozen armies in the same county anyway. *golf clap*

_Maybe_ this new approach could work if it filled up the supply in a county with an army before it spawns another army.

_Maybe_ this new approach could work if it also came with the option to raise armies the old way instead.

_Maybe_ this new approach could work if...

...a bit more thought went into designing it before it was released into the wild.