Why nerf hordes more

[Kalderus]

The thing is, what players did was to build their entire army out of these foreign troops. This feels cheap and was generally unheard of in history.
The right solution for this problem would have been, IMHO, to make these units much more expensive so that you'd have to pick and choose where you use them.
They also should be mercenaries - to limit mass recruiting - instead of regular troops.
There you go, problem solved.

You either stay an unreformed horde and somehow get huge amounts of cash to support your troops - which is no easy feat when you need that money for high level advisors to combat your huge tech penalty, or you just reform and get better troops and need less money to actually do something.

And for multiplayer, I doubt that not reforming would ever be an option if those foreign units were mercenaries.

Increasing the cost of foreign units by such a factor would be almost as severe a nerf as outright removing the feature. To demonstrate this, even with only a mix of level 1 and 2 advisors, and an army of a size <75% of my forcelimits as Mongolia here, I'm still barely able to eke out 15 gold/month, and add colonies into the picture and it's barely above 0.

Even with lucrative income and trade from the Spice Islands, and owning + vassalizing the entire Steppe + Russian + Chinese + Persian regions, I can still barely support 3/4 of my forcelimit and make a meager profit. Adding the cost you suggest would basically make recruiting foreign units virtually pointless, since you'll almost never get those "huge amounts of cash".

Secondly, you don't need high level advisors to combat your tech penalty. The only tech you really need to worry about is military, and with a combination of excellent "No Child can Be Khan" rulers and a military NF, you can relatively easily stay on par with France, as I did here, even with only level 1 advisors for the first 250 years.

 

[Big Blue Blob]

"Hordes", or steppe nations as they are more properly known (the Timurids were more than a wild flock of men who lived in tents and drank mare's milk, they had a very established capital city in Samarkand), should be less disadvantaged than Sub-Saharans or Americans. This means upgraded units. By 1800, many steppe nations were using guns.

 

[Stategem161803]

I love how people argue that hordes shouldn't get upgraded units because they were uncivilized beasts that lived in tents while the actual uncivilized people who lived in tents get upgraded units.

 

[RhoDaZZ]

Meh, mass hysteria over very little imo. Hordes are a challenge, yes, and they shouldn't be complete pushovers either, no. However, it's certainly not impossible to play them successfully as a player and with the new pips (?) and provinces, maybe the AI will do better sometimes too.

If you have a problem with the never-upgrading troops for hordes, you're a little late to the party (although I do agree a better solution could be made). That's not really a 1.8 complaint, but rather a 1.6 one (well hidden behind the "The different tech groups are now largely balanced in overall unit strength, but 'peak' at different times throughout the game" sentence).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Meh, mass hysteria over very little imo. Hordes are a challenge, yes, and they shouldn't be complete pushovers either, no. However, it's certainly not impossible to play them successfully as a player and with the new pips (?) and provinces, maybe the AI will do better sometimes too.

If you have a problem with the never-upgrading troops for hordes, you're a little late to the party (although I do agree a better solution could be made). That's not really a 1.8 complaint, but rather a 1.6 one (well hidden behind the "The different tech groups are now largely balanced in overall unit strength, but 'peak' at different times throughout the game" sentence).

It's a 1.0 issue, but they had more unique options and strength back then. No nation has been nerfed even half as hard, and yet they haven't outperformed as a whole in around a year. Bias is the word here, and it's awful in this case.

 

[Outrider]

If you have a problem with the never-upgrading troops for hordes, you're a little late to the party (although I do agree a better solution could be made). That's not really a 1.8 complaint, but rather a 1.6 one (well hidden behind the "The different tech groups are now largely balanced in overall unit strength, but 'peak' at different times throughout the game" sentence).

Whats funny is that the same nonsense statement is in the current dev diary:

- Units pips have been rebalanced again so that the different tech groups are now almost completely equal, but still peak at different times.

Time to insert the "O Rly?" meme.

I love how people argue that hordes shouldn't get upgraded units because they were uncivilized beasts that lived in tents while the actual uncivilized people who lived in tents get upgraded units.

And the entirely inconsistent "reform or die" statement from Wiz that goes along with it. Sub-Saharan and Meso-American (especially with apparently weakened tech malus in v1.8) have no "reform or die" requirement. They get unit upgrades without reforming and are able to realize those units largely on-tech without reforming if they want to.

The inconsistency is what makes me consider all the "no upgraded units" arguments BS. My cynical side assumes its just smoke and mirrors to disguise the fact that its done purely to handhold inexperienced players when they decide to play as Ottos, Russia, or far-east favorites. I can't think of any other rational explanation if the devs have really thought things through.

 

[Novacat]

Meh, mass hysteria over very little imo. Hordes are a challenge, yes, and they shouldn't be complete pushovers either, no. However, it's certainly not impossible to play them successfully as a player and with the new pips (?) and provinces, maybe the AI will do better sometimes too.

The reason why people are hysteric is because hordes are not getting new pips. Hordes were ignored in the last pip overhaul, they are being ignored in this one, as well.

If you have a problem with the never-upgrading troops for hordes, you're a little late to the party (although I do agree a better solution could be made). That's not really a 1.8 complaint, but rather a 1.6 one (well hidden behind the "The different tech groups are now largely balanced in overall unit strength, but 'peak' at different times throughout the game" sentence).

This has been a consistant, but ignored, complaint since Westernization was removed from the hordes back in 1.3. Honestly, im not even sure why we are suggesting horde improvements considering the last half-dozen 'horde improvement' threads were completely ignored by Paradox.

I love how people argue that hordes shouldn't get upgraded units because they were uncivilized beasts that lived in tents while the actual uncivilized people who lived in tents get upgraded units.

+1

 

[highsis]

I like the changes themselves. It makes sense that you woudn't be able to recruite anything more than cannon fodders in conquested area, and low local autonomy too.

However, hordes should receive unit upgrades like the rest of other techs. I don't understand why hordes wouldn't adept to new tactics and weaponry. Mongols conquest of Middle East were largely thanks to Mongol's absortion of siege warfare technology from China.

 

[blackchoas]

I love how people are complaining about Hordes being nerfed when Hordes are meant to be the literal worst tech group in the game, so bad you have to westernize twice basically to actually westernize

And yet they doesn't stop them from easily dominating the map to the point of most people recommend not reforming at all and doing the whole Great Khan achievement as a Horde

 

[MaXimillion]

It was an exploit in regards to hordes because hordes were not meant to get better units.

Did you actually check what the original intent behind implementing the feature was? I can see why you would want to get rid of it, seeing how it's not very intuitive, the interface doesn't really support it, it doesn't match your current intent of how hordes should work, and the AI doesn't use it. That's fine, and I have no problem with you changing features that no longer fit well with the rest of the game, but please don't use words like 'bug' or 'exploit' in such cases. It makes it sound like you're trying to label them as mistakes or oversights rather than simply obsolete mechanics in order to justify their removal.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I love how people are complaining about Hordes being nerfed when Hordes are meant to be the literal worst tech group in the game, so bad you have to westernize twice basically to actually westernize

And yet they doesn't stop them from easily dominating the map to the point of most people recommend not reforming at all and doing the whole Great Khan achievement as a Horde

People recommended that for fun. Obviously, if you play golden horde and westernize, you can just 1-shot Ming with protectorate and win faster than alternatives, because you get the largest required region for the achievement in 1 war rather than over 100+ years.

The other reason people complain is that it's ignorant, ahistorical drivel to the point of being offensive to somehow claim these nations weren't capable of advancing like anybody else near them, especially in the face of multiple instance of hard evidence where they did exactly that, without an enormous dip in stability.

As stategem said, it's odd that ignorant people defend the "no new units for hordes" thing due to the misplaced and unsubstantiated "they were all nomads living in tents" (which just looks absurd when you look at Timurid, Golden Horde, Crimea in this period, or Aq Qoyunlu...not to mention Manchu's situation)...meanwhile actual tribes living in poor, sparsely populated areas with much less contact somehow *do* get new units all the way to 30 and somehow *can* westernize without reforming.

That you ducked that point reflects incredibly poorly on your argument, as it does for everyone else trying to do so. The only remaining assertion is that this somehow improves the game's balance, but that kind of assertion is a laughingstock, which is why virtually nobody who has even attempted a semblance of discussion has made it.

 

[ozonns]

The thing is, what players did was to build their entire army out of these foreign troops. This feels cheap and was generally unheard of in history.

That damn GB in India with their British Army.. cheaper foreign hired army in count a lot more than one from homeland. Okay i know this is a bit out of EU timeline.. yet there is also a lot of documentations happening this far before EU timeline, for example: Mongol invasions of Japan, most of their army was made from "foreign" troops.

 

[oblio-]

That damn GB in India with their British Army.. cheaper foreign hired army in count a lot more than one from homeland. Okay i know this is a bit out of EU timeline.. yet there is also a lot of documentations happening this far before EU timeline, for example: Mongol invasions of Japan, most of their army was made from "foreign" troops.

1. Those were just for a single front.
2. It wasn't their entire army.

Let's not kid ourselves, we were planning our strats around getting foreign cores so that everything except artillery would be foreign.

 

[AKronblad]

So beacuse DDRJake posts his screenshots of Ryukyu WC, does it mean that Ryukyu should be hit with nerfbat, because screenshot of succesful WC with them? Also screenshots are done BEFORE 1.8 which will bring another batch of nerfs to already severly nerfed hordes.

Not "should", but it's not like they seem to be extraordinarily hard to play at the moment, based on the screenshots.

Maybe it is a simple as Hordes will be harder to play in 1.8 and much harder to WC, but either accept the challenge or choose a simpler country.

 

[Novacat]

I love how people are complaining about Hordes being nerfed when Hordes are meant to be the literal worst tech group in the game

No, Native Americans and Subsaharans were meant to be worse.

 

[lordelenath]

Not "should", but it's not like they seem to be extraordinarily hard to play at the moment, based on the screenshots.

Maybe it is a simple as Hordes will be harder to play in 1.8 and much harder to WC, but either accept the challenge or choose a simpler country.

Did you have the impression that Ryukyu is easy because DDRJake did WC twice? Not going to claim that all Horde players are exceptional, but at least TMIT (who posted the screenshot I think) is certainly one of the better players. What I'm trying to say is: You cannot make design choices based on a few or take a decent guess at the difficulty by looking at two screenshots.

And as we all know: failures tend to be not posted in this forum. I'm going to take a wild guess here: I think most EU IV-Players do not have a lot of success as the Hordes and they certainly won't in 1.8.

As I said previously: I think the current implementation of foreign core recruiting wasn't well done. It was crude, certainly felt "not working as intended" to me and overall it's just pretty bad design. Personally I'd like to see a decent mechanic for foreign units (because that was a thing in a lot of cases).

Regarding Hordes I'd like to see at least a few unit upgrades (they can fall off compared to others in terms of pips) and a removed/reduced legitimacy requirement for reforming. If they feel to powerful I'd rather give them more challenging game-play (e.g. a mechanic compareable to the splitting off of Kingdoms in Elective Gavelkind for Norse in CK2 would fit Hordes pretty well), make the current succession issues harder to manage or even increase the tech penalty slightly.

 

[AKronblad]

Don't know about this other guy and Ryukyu, I just looked at the Mongol screenshots.

In my view, WC should be virtually impossible to achieve, other than for extremely good players (requiring some luck), or even totally impossible. And some countries should be even more difficult than that. Unfortunately this is not EU4 at the moment.

But that's just my ideal view of what Europa Universalis should be all about.

The problem, I believe, lies in that every player expects to conquer and expand, independent of their actual skills, and independent of the country they're playing.

Instead people want to feel they're Napoleon or Genghis Khan when in fact they are more of a Varus (Teutoburger Forest, you know). Don't worry, I am a Varus too.

 

[Rozmarzony]

The existing design on Hordes is that they should reform or die, pretty much. You can argue that design should change, but leaving an exploity workaround (recruiting in foreign cores) is not the way to go about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Kazan_Wars
Kazan was lost in 1552... now, in the game it's happening like few decades from start, so you're really going against overall sense of logic, when doing so weak Tatars and post-Mongols.
Horders weren't weak at start and still remained not weak for decades. But now, even at start after a little teching they are mostly pushovers.

 

[Vincenzo_667]

Don't know about this other guy and Ryukyu, I just looked at the Mongol screenshots.

In my view, WC should be virtually impossible to achieve, other than for extremely good players (requiring some luck), or even totally impossible. And some countries should be even more difficult than that. Unfortunately this is not EU4 at the moment.

But that's just my ideal view of what Europa Universalis should be all about.

The problem, I believe, lies in that every player expects to conquer and expand, independent of their actual skills, and independent of the country they're playing.

Instead people want to feel they're Napoleon or Genghis Khan when in fact they are more of a Varus (Teutoburger Forest, you know). Don't worry, I am a Varus too.

The issue is not playing as hordes. If you're a good enough player (and there's a sh*tload of very skilled players on this forum, check out this thread > http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...Post-your-Europa-Universalis-4-Empire/page290 ) you can WC with virtually anyone and I'm pretty sure it won't be any less possible even after the next patch. The main issue is that the AI hordes should be at least a bit millitarily menacing to the player, which is the exact opposite of how it is now, you can wipe out a 100k horde stack with a less than 10k troops easily now, I fail to see how that is adding anything at all to gameplay or how is it realisticly mirroring the history of that era. Their technological disadvantages should be portraied by the fact that they fall behind in tech, not that they have one basic unit type throughout the whole 400 years. Hordes were not cavemen.

 

[AKronblad]

Yes, that sounds admittedly a bit binary. Some development in units over time would make sense, even if very modest.