Paradox Studio Thread

[Sooty Soot]

CK's failure to represent any real difference between professional/professional feudal armies and conscripts/tribes/peasant mobs beyond unit composition is tragic.

Worse still, CK3's removal of the (somewhat) deep unit composition system in favor of bogstandard troop quality and like 3 or 2 unit types (I think generic men-at-arms are one of them) just neuters the combat, it really is big army smash at that pointe barring terrain modifiers. In CK2, you could be trounced in a battle if one of your flanks was under-manned in favor of another flank or had no commander, freeing that enemy flank up to attack one of your remaining flanks, even if your army was 1.5x bigger and had more heavy-inf and heavy-cav, one of the highlights was the special retinues as well where camel warriors could trounce everybody provided they were in a desert or 'jeets could build war elephants.

 

[Computer God Autism]

where camel warriors could trounce everybody provided they were in a desert or 'jeets could build war elephants.

Still sour they never added in Crossbows as a unit type.

 

[LovisXVI]

Worse still, CK3's removal of the (somewhat) deep unit composition system in favor of bogstandard troop quality and like 3 or 2 unit types (I think generic men-at-arms are one of them) just neuters the combat, it really is big army smash at that pointe barring terrain modifiers. In CK2, you could be trounced in a battle if one of your flanks was under-manned in favor of another flank or had no commander, freeing that enemy flank up to attack one of your remaining flanks, even if your army was 1.5x bigger and had more heavy-inf and heavy-cav, one of the highlights was the special retinues as well where camel warriors could trounce everybody provided they were in a desert or 'jeets could build war elephants.

The MaA system in CK3 has all of that? They're more customizable than CK2's levies, that's for certain. Admittedly the main problem with that system is the universal units, which are boring. Of all the things to complain about, CK3's MaA isn't one of them. I wish it were more like Imperator's hybrid levy-legion system it had at the end though, though that's a general problem I have with CK's general inability to represent governmental development, as the "feudal" states of western Europe went through quite different systems, especially regionally.

 

[Sooty Soot]

The MaA system in CK3 has a

If I'm being honest I'm not too familiar with CK3, the only time I tried playing it was as some Shia Persia in 867, tried waging a war, got like 4 events in 2 months and then lost the war. Still, the lack of unique units is just more evidence of CK3 being as wide as an ocean but shallow as a puddle. On a sidenote, does CK3 even have tech or the pagan homeland debuff for feudal armies? I always notice the Byzantines pushing into the Pechenengs in timelapses.

 

[WarrenZHarding]

CK's failure to represent any real difference between professional/professional feudal armies and conscripts/tribes/peasant mobs beyond unit composition is tragic.

Field of Glory: Kingdoms has an interesting approach to this by dividing recruitable units into Mercenary, Levy, and Standing Army. Mercenaries dont cost manpower, but have a high gold upkeep and dont level up. Levies are cheap to recruit, but have high manpower reqs to keep and level up slowly. Standing Army units are expensive to buy, but have very low upkeep and level up the fastest and you have a cap on how many you can field. In addition, tribals have lower caps on SA units, but get buffs to levies and other such tweaks to make sure Feudal armies arent the same as tribal or republics armies. Something like that would really be welcome in CK3.

 

[LovisXVI]

Field of Glory: Kingdoms has an interesting approach to this by dividing recruitable units into Mercenary, Levy, and Standing Army. Mercenaries dont cost manpower, but have a high gold upkeep and dont level up. Levies are cheap to recruit, but have high manpower reqs to keep and level up slowly. Standing Army units are expensive to buy, but have very low upkeep and level up the fastest and you have a cap on how many you can field. In addition, tribals have lower caps on SA units, but get buffs to levies and other such tweaks to make sure Feudal armies arent the same as tribal or republics armies. Something like that would really be welcome in CK3.

I think if they backported a version of what they did for Hordes, where MaA are drawn from the same pool as levies, would be nice.

On a sidenote, does CK3 even have tech or the pagan homeland debuff for feudal armies?

I'll be very honest, pagan homeland supply debuff was the single worst part of CK2, not even close. It doesn't meaningfully change gameplay and is far too gamist for my tastes (same reason I don't care for most Societies), it just makes it incredibly annoying to conquer unreformed pagans, unless you spend a bit of gold to build a fort on every province you siege down, then the debuff goes away completely.