Did not yet see a topic dedicated to the new professionalism mechanic, so maybe it warrants some discussing.
Some background info for where I'm coming from: I'm Hisn Kayfa on normal difficulty, year is 1592, my development is 2022. I could have possibly been slightly more aggressive, especially with more liberal use of mercs (I've had a total of 8 for most of the game on siege stacks, haven't been recruiting in ages so no professionalism hits) but I feel like my progress has been good - this is to say, I have not been significantly held back by a moderate focus on professionalism, which I've recently maxed out. I've done this by always picking the professionalism option in events, always drilling when I don't need a stack fighting - even during wars, and liberally recruiting generals. The highest rated AIs are currently hovering around 55 professionalism, so relatively speaking, I've been fast - still, it has taken me 150 years and you might say that it takes too long and you'd rather use mercs/slacken recruitment instead.
But now let's get to the good part: nothing says you can't get the best of both worlds. Key here is the -50% cost to general recruitment which you get from 80 professionalism. Military points have always been the most readily available MP, and I often just find myself dumping hundreds of them into development to have at least some use for them. But now, for the meager cost of 125 MIL points (5 generals) you can get large refills to your manpower (in my current example 42,500 out of a maximum of 185000) - and that just comes on top of all the existing benefits, biggest probably being the extra siege ability - and while combat ability is not necessarily too important if you know how to play against the AI, it's still bloody nice to have spacemarines even without much military focus.
So, in summary:
- Improving professionalism takes long, but doesn't really slow you down much - and you will improve it naturally, so even with more liberal use of mercs and more aggressive play you'll eventually max it
- By the time you max it, you'll get nigh-infinite manpower to fuel an elite and cheap (compared to mercs) army - there doesn't even appear to be a cooldown for slacken recruitment
- Alternatively you can recruit 6.67 mercs/25 mil points, and as far as I can tell they'll still benefit from the universal professionalism bonuses, so I don't really see this actually affecting the merc play much - the question really is just "how fast can you max this without hampering your expansion too much"
Now I'll admit I've made very liberal use of the bug where drilled armies reinforce for free (at low maintenance), so perhaps that has made drilling more viable (especially since it affects mercs as well), but still - I'd say that at least 60% of my professionalism has come from events/generals, though this is just a rough estimate and I might be completely off. But I suppose my point here is that while it's a pretty fun mechanic, the current balance feels off - slacken recruitment becomes another easy click to win feature with a really low cost (tbh I feel the same about the new Muslim mechanics, but that's another topic).
Post is perhaps a bit poorly structured, but feel free to add your thoughts.
Some background info for where I'm coming from: I'm Hisn Kayfa on normal difficulty, year is 1592, my development is 2022. I could have possibly been slightly more aggressive, especially with more liberal use of mercs (I've had a total of 8 for most of the game on siege stacks, haven't been recruiting in ages so no professionalism hits) but I feel like my progress has been good - this is to say, I have not been significantly held back by a moderate focus on professionalism, which I've recently maxed out. I've done this by always picking the professionalism option in events, always drilling when I don't need a stack fighting - even during wars, and liberally recruiting generals. The highest rated AIs are currently hovering around 55 professionalism, so relatively speaking, I've been fast - still, it has taken me 150 years and you might say that it takes too long and you'd rather use mercs/slacken recruitment instead.
But now let's get to the good part: nothing says you can't get the best of both worlds. Key here is the -50% cost to general recruitment which you get from 80 professionalism. Military points have always been the most readily available MP, and I often just find myself dumping hundreds of them into development to have at least some use for them. But now, for the meager cost of 125 MIL points (5 generals) you can get large refills to your manpower (in my current example 42,500 out of a maximum of 185000) - and that just comes on top of all the existing benefits, biggest probably being the extra siege ability - and while combat ability is not necessarily too important if you know how to play against the AI, it's still bloody nice to have spacemarines even without much military focus.
So, in summary:
- Improving professionalism takes long, but doesn't really slow you down much - and you will improve it naturally, so even with more liberal use of mercs and more aggressive play you'll eventually max it
- By the time you max it, you'll get nigh-infinite manpower to fuel an elite and cheap (compared to mercs) army - there doesn't even appear to be a cooldown for slacken recruitment
- Alternatively you can recruit 6.67 mercs/25 mil points, and as far as I can tell they'll still benefit from the universal professionalism bonuses, so I don't really see this actually affecting the merc play much - the question really is just "how fast can you max this without hampering your expansion too much"
Now I'll admit I've made very liberal use of the bug where drilled armies reinforce for free (at low maintenance), so perhaps that has made drilling more viable (especially since it affects mercs as well), but still - I'd say that at least 60% of my professionalism has come from events/generals, though this is just a rough estimate and I might be completely off. But I suppose my point here is that while it's a pretty fun mechanic, the current balance feels off - slacken recruitment becomes another easy click to win feature with a really low cost (tbh I feel the same about the new Muslim mechanics, but that's another topic).
Post is perhaps a bit poorly structured, but feel free to add your thoughts.
Last edited:
sadly I doubt ai will use what I say ever