So Manchu cultural banner troops have to be the best thing ever, right?

[Vampiresoap]

+5% discipline
25% manpower to reinforce
-50% maintenance

Even the "downside", which is the -50% reinforcement rate, seems pretty easy to deal with.

This probably makes Manchu/Jurchen culture the best culture in the whole game.

PS: OH man, I just realized that Oda into Manchu is probably brokenly strong lol...

 

[Jarvin]

Speaking from the perspective of warfare, unit efficiency and the likes:
There was never a point after 1.20 where banners/manchu would be legitimately useful.
Prior to 1.29 you had banners that were strong, but insanely difficult to micro properly and just extremely tedious to deal with.
Then in 1.29 Paradox looked at that, and decided that since banners were hard to micro and not really worth their price too often, that they should nerf them to the ground, leading to the current bonuses that banners have.

Then 1.30 came along, bringing in a much needed improvement to the UI, allowing you to at last reasonably recruit banners, but... it's still simply not worth the effort

-50% reinforcement is NOT pretty easy to deal with. In simple terms it means that whenever you use your banners for anything, they are effectively useless for a solid few months before they can be used again. While this is somewhat manageable if you are defending your own territory, when it comes to doing anything on hostile land, where further penalties to reinforcement rate and attrition apply, it just becomes a nightmare.
And obviously you have other downsides of using banners; you can't really merge them, they are useless for assaults...

And most importantly: while +5% disci, lower maintenance and less manpower cost looks cool on paper, and very much is cool for the first few decades... it's simply not anything amazing going into mid/late game, and that isn't even including the high cost of actually getting a decent number of banners

In general Paradox has systematically struggled to make special units that are actually worth anything.

Marines have always been almost useless. Janissaries are so bad that recruiting them is borderline nation ruining

The only usable special units in the game right now are raiputs and streltsy; but it's not like they are amazing either, they are just.. nice

 

[TeutonicTortoise]

National Guard and Strelts are always go to. Cossacks can be amazing because of the multiplier potential with the nations they're linked to. Raiputs can be handy but can't be massed too much but having them is no malus. Banners main difficulty is the reinforcement speed but link that with something like defensive ideas and you can counter that, also learning how to use supply depots can make their reinforcement as high as standard units and if you can't see the benefit of the reduced manpower cost then youre missing out. Also banners multiply based on which age youre in so they become steady in terms of relevance as the game goes on though obviously 100 to 105% dis is 5% bonus vs 120% to 125% is 4% bonus.

Jans have their place and I wouldnt call them nation ruining just require managment. Pay events are annoying but unit bonuses are nice . Marines are very specific and if youre in a long war and have had the potential for say 5 marines but didnt and are now sat at -20k manpower then only yourself to blame. Also just use them for sieging and youre golden.

 

[MatthewP]

Speaking from the perspective of warfare, unit efficiency and the likes:
There was never a point after 1.20 where banners/manchu would be legitimately useful.
Prior to 1.29 you had banners that were strong, but insanely difficult to micro properly and just extremely tedious to deal with.
Then in 1.29 Paradox looked at that, and decided that since banners were hard to micro and not really worth their price too often, that they should nerf them to the ground, leading to the current bonuses that banners have.

Then 1.30 came along, bringing in a much needed improvement to the UI, allowing you to at last reasonably recruit banners, but... it's still simply not worth the effort

-50% reinforcement is NOT pretty easy to deal with. In simple terms it means that whenever you use your banners for anything, they are effectively useless for a solid few months before they can be used again. While this is somewhat manageable if you are defending your own territory, when it comes to doing anything on hostile land, where further penalties to reinforcement rate and attrition apply, it just becomes a nightmare.
And obviously you have other downsides of using banners; you can't really merge them, they are useless for assaults...

And most importantly: while +5% disci, lower maintenance and less manpower cost looks cool on paper, and very much is cool for the first few decades... it's simply not anything amazing going into mid/late game, and that isn't even including the high cost of actually getting a decent number of banners

In general Paradox has systematically struggled to make special units that are actually worth anything.

Marines have always been almost useless. Janissaries are so bad that recruiting them is borderline nation ruining

The only usable special units in the game right now are raiputs and streltsy; but it's not like they are amazing either, they are just.. nice

This seems a bit harsh. I'd say banners are situational. They are very strong if you're in a position to keep them at/near full strength, and pretty weak if you aren't. Unlimited manpower and half-priced troops is a very big bonus, even ignoring 5% discipline. If you are in a position to do a bunch of culture converting you can make your whole army out of them. Of course, if you are trying to do a speed-run WC, sure, you probably will run into reinforcement issues.

Added to this: while they may not be as OP as they seem, the fact that they can be very strong and very weak depending on if you play to their strengths or not makes them pretty fun to use. At least for me; I can see how mileage could vary.

 

[Vin55]

strelitz in sp are more or less used when there is no manpower or lack of gold to fund armies. It is still better than the others though, same with the trash special mercs like black army or the hessians, there is no need for them, in this form.

 

[Vampiresoap]

LoL how are the Streltsy troops anywhere near the power level of Manchu banners? I just played a Manchu game and didn't have manpower problem the ENTIRE game. -50% reinforcement rate is only horrible if you lose battles horribly. If you just lose like 20% troops max in each battle, you won't even notice the difference. In that game, I fought 100 Mandate Ming with only 30k troops vs. their 90+k troops and still came out on top. Sieged almost all their lands and got 99% warscore. Not sure if I could've done it with regular troops because sieging alone can almost surely drain all your manpower.

 

[Less2]

The idea that they are bad is nonsense, aside from the upfront cost of +1 corruption. Do they reinforce slow? Yes, but they also have -50% maintenance along with their -50% reinforcement rate. This means that you can just flat out buy 2x as many banners for every regiment you want to replace, which negates every possible downside. Manchu isn't exactly rich enough to fill their force limit to begin with and everything else is just a pure bonus. The majority of battles you fight are going to have recovery time in between, including all rebels which basically become meaningless rather than significant manpower/ducat drains.

Not good in the mid/late game? I mean, does it even matter? When you have hundreds or thousands of regiments who cares about 30 banners? Arguing about whether they are good or not is meaningless when you can't have enough to matter either way. It's not like streltsy where you can just pretend that Russia has +10% infantry fire as an NI because 100% of their infantry are streltsy. Banners are clearly designed and intended as an early game power spike to help Manchu (among a dozen other things designed to help Manchu) and obviously won't scale unless the player wants to commit to genociding china.

 

[Howl]

Banners would be much better if you did not have to go out of your way to recruit infantry banners. Hire cav up to force limit, recruit banners, dismiss cav. Unless playing a tengri horde with no syncretic faith I find high numbers of cavalry dangerous.

 

[Ionxion]

Speaking from the perspective of warfare, unit efficiency and the likes:
There was never a point after 1.20 where banners/manchu would be legitimately useful.
Prior to 1.29 you had banners that were strong, but insanely difficult to micro properly and just extremely tedious to deal with.
Then in 1.29 Paradox looked at that, and decided that since banners were hard to micro and not really worth their price too often, that they should nerf them to the ground, leading to the current bonuses that banners have.

Then 1.30 came along, bringing in a much needed improvement to the UI, allowing you to at last reasonably recruit banners, but... it's still simply not worth the effort

-50% reinforcement is NOT pretty easy to deal with. In simple terms it means that whenever you use your banners for anything, they are effectively useless for a solid few months before they can be used again. While this is somewhat manageable if you are defending your own territory, when it comes to doing anything on hostile land, where further penalties to reinforcement rate and attrition apply, it just becomes a nightmare.
And obviously you have other downsides of using banners; you can't really merge them, they are useless for assaults...

And most importantly: while +5% disci, lower maintenance and less manpower cost looks cool on paper, and very much is cool for the first few decades... it's simply not anything amazing going into mid/late game, and that isn't even including the high cost of actually getting a decent number of banners

In general Paradox has systematically struggled to make special units that are actually worth anything.

Marines have always been almost useless. Janissaries are so bad that recruiting them is borderline nation ruining

The only usable special units in the game right now are raiputs and streltsy; but it's not like they are amazing either, they are just.. nice

But 5% discipline

 

[Jarvin]

But 5% discipline

In fairness you look at bonuses that janis have

where the balance is clearly negative, as in. having janis is detrimental to your army, and that's not even counting their recruitment cost
and some people still seem to believe that this is a good deal

 

[fleetothemoon]

Being Manchu, by the time you take out China, you are set to take on the world, without needing to rely on take-forever-to-reinforce-and-annoying-micro-to-recruit banner troops. If you haven't taken on China, you probably still need your troops to reinforce properly.

 

[Orioniys]

In fairness you look at bonuses that janis have
View attachment 733730

where the balance is clearly negative, as in. having janis is detrimental to your army, and that's not even counting their recruitment cost
and some people still seem to believe that this is a good deal

Full 1 stack front line of those seems like ok idea to me. If this is the stage of the game where money don't really matter.

With banners tho I completely agree, - reinforcement cost just adds unnecessary micro, 5 disc is not worth trading it for usability.

 

[JaxElite]

Being Manchu, by the time you take out China, you are set to take on the world, without needing to rely on take-forever-to-reinforce-and-annoying-micro-to-recruit banner troops. If you haven't taken on China, you probably still need your troops to reinforce properly.

But taking out china is the very first thing you do after forming manchu, so essentially 1450-1455

 

[grotaclas]

Banners would be much better if you did not have to go out of your way to recruit infantry banners. Hire cav up to force limit, recruit banners, dismiss cav. Unless playing a tengri horde with no syncretic faith I find high numbers of cavalry dangerous.

You don't need to do that anymore. You can now recruit infantry banners in the macrobuilder.

 

[Ionxion]

In fairness you look at bonuses that janis have
View attachment 733730

where the balance is clearly negative, as in. having janis is detrimental to your army, and that's not even counting their recruitment cost
and some people still seem to believe that this is a good deal

Don't seem bad to me

 

[Less2]

Don't seem bad to me

No Jannisaries are actually quite awful. Drill gain rate is a thoroughly useless modifier because you drill for professionalism not for drill, and you don't gain more professionalism with it. -10% damage taken is way weaker than it appears since it (for some reason) doesn't affect morale. Probably roughly equivalent to +2.5% discipline.

 

[JaxElite]

No Jannisaries are actually quite awful. Drill gain rate is a thoroughly useless modifier because you drill for professionalism not for drill, and you don't gain more professionalism with it. -10% damage taken is way weaker than it appears since it (for some reason) doesn't affect morale. Probably roughly equivalent to +2.5% discipline.

Drill is not as bad as it used to be especially for jannisaries. With -35% less damage taken they have far fewer casualities and don't lose drill as fast as other armies do. Not great, but definetly better than regular units

 

[Jarvin]

No Jannisaries are actually quite awful. Drill gain rate is a thoroughly useless modifier because you drill for professionalism not for drill, and you don't gain more professionalism with it. -10% damage taken is way weaker than it appears since it (for some reason) doesn't affect morale. Probably roughly equivalent to +2.5% discipline.

This has always been the intended behaviour I believe, but yup that bonus is pretty miniscule.

To say that janis have -35% damage reduction is
a) to say that you will somehow be able to maintain 100% drill on average
b) ..that your other units willl have -25%, -25% vs -35% looks not as impressive.

Janis aren't an awful unit because of their bonuses though. They are an awful unit because of their cost.

 

[Manwe_Sulimo]

Your other units will have only have half the drill of jannisaries, so if anything you would need to compare 12,5 % with 35 %. However, of course its unlikely that you drill a lot as you will be at war, so that buff is kinda limited, I think they could be stronger, but they are not that bad imo.

Well the reinforcement cost is painful indeed, but you forget these are troops that are instantly available for a small military cost that you can afford most of the time and cost no manpower (and money but thats offset by the other costs of course).

 

[Jarvin]

Your other units will have only have half the drill of jannisaries, so if anything you would need to compare 12,5 % with 35 %

Janis don't have more drill, and they don't retain drill better. It's merely easier to get drill on them. The only thing it saves you is a bit of money and time; doesn't really make them more combat efficient, unless we are talking about an extreme case where, dunno, you have to go to war in exactly 6 months and only have this long to drill your troops starting from 0.

But the cost of drilling and the cost of recruitment is never really what makes the cost of a regiment; in by far the majority of cases it's going to be reinforcing cost, and janis' penalty here just makes them functionally worthless altogether.