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[Tack]

Kemmler has a sword which resurrects units as he fights.

I personally found that good 'nuff.

[umiman]

Mmm...

Kemmler has the ability to auto heal units he stands next to (like other Necromancers). I think his starting units are also better. I honestly rather have Cairn Wraiths AND Hexwraiths rather than the one Vargulf.

Not to mention to recruit Kemmler in the campaign you need to build the library whereas to recruit Mannfred all you need to do is get the two provinces you were to get anyway.

I also think him getting on the zombie dragon is a nerf. He dies so, so, so much faster. Mannfred on foot at level 30 can solo armies. But Mannfred on the dragon seems to die to two to three squads. Looks cool though. If I play VC again I'd probably leave him on the flying undead pegasus as it's faster.

But yeah, Mannfred is stronger. He's also twice the price in a custom battle haha.

[Criptfeind]

Yeah. The zombie dragon is just... Such a huge disappointment. I build Mannfred for pure combat power (probably not the best, but heh!) he was my missile that I could point at any enemy unit, or even a group of enemy units, pull the firing button. And they'd be taken care of.

Now on a zombie dragon I feel like I have to babysit him all the time, be way more careful, and he doesn't even feel like he's much more killy for it! It's just a really sad 'upgrade' all around.

I cry every time.

I think maybe a better compromise for monster riders would be to give them two healthbars, sure, make them more killy (even more killy then they are now) but have they die quick, but when they do die that just means the monster is wounded (maybe needs some amount of cash/time to nurse back health?) and the lord steps out of the carcass and keeps on slaying. Or at least something better then this ultimate sadness...

Edit: Also I have to say, in comparisons to the total war games I've played in the past, the combat seems pretty disappointing. Not the like, tactical stuff of moving your dudes around, getting flanks, and that sorta thing, but the actual unit to unit model to model combat and how the health works and such. Stuff just seems... So much more resilient. Even on low difficulty I can charge a unit of bog standard T1 infantry with multiple units of shock Cavalry, and when zoomed out it looks properly glorious, broken bodies splaying out 20 feet back. But then disappointingly all the dudes who were throw back just stand right back up and walk into the fray, at which point the units just sorta gyrate against each other for about a minute, the infantry apparently largely unbothered by the fact that they were just partially surrounded by four times their number in heavy Cavalry that sent them all flying on the charge, until eventually their moral ticks over and like 2/3 of the unit of infantry are still alive and they just walk away. And of course I need to send a unit to chase them down otherwise they just go for like 50 meters and then think "You know, that wasn't so bad. Lets go back in for seconds lads!" Combat between infantry also has this issue somewhat, I'll totally surround a T1 unit with five times their number in high tier anti infantry infantry, and it'll be like... five minutes to kill half of them! It really seems insane. And when I zoom in it looks like that's because all the models are just buzzing against each other, only the very odd swing, and I wonder if there's something happening that lowers the damage done in a combat by overcrowding, as insanely stupid as that thought is. The only halfway satisfying combat I've found is with flying units, probably because there's not really a limit on how many models can crash into one unit. When I have a full half of my army flying, and send the whole group crashing into a single low tier unit, and there's not an enemy general nearby, if I'm lucky sometimes they break on the charge.

Whew, that turned into a bit of a rant. I still think this game is really fun. But, yeah, everyones health seems really inflated to me, and I can't help but wonder why that is. To bring it back around to monsters, this resiliency makes them quite disappointing. Mannfred charges in, sends the unit scattering, they just get back up, doesn't matter that like 4 tons of zombie dragon just smushed them and that they should probably be more interested in modeling for vampire blood pancakes then they should be in fighting at this point. Just get back up and wade back in. And oh look since they can all attack at once, the dragon gets totally wrecked as it sorta gyrates about doing practically nothing.

[Grim Portent]

I suspect the health bloat is to try and make heroes, monsters and magic not be too devastating to infantry such as to make even high tier ones pointless. If everyone died in one swing to a dragon or to the Purple Sun spell there'd be little reason not to just make your entire army out of Giants, Steam Tanks or Vargheists. Even stuff like Chosen would be kind of bad if they could be crushed underfoot by a Shaggoth with no real way to fight back.

The other option would have been for armies to be limited in what stuff they can take, which would if anything be more gamey than bloated hitpoints are. There's little reason Mannfred couldn't take a full flock of Terrorgheists with him as a vanguard to lead his invasion of the Empire for example, it was just never allowed in tabletop for balance reasons.

As is there's a place for even tier 1 infantry in high end fights, even if that place is as a meat shield for more useful units or mass backup being carted around by a low level Lord. Which actually rather emulates tabletop, VCs best Core choice in TT was zombies because they made great tarpits and were incredibly cheap even though every other choice was a much better fighter.

[Antioch]

To be honest soldiers died WAY to fast in some recent total war games, especially in shogun 2.

[Criptfeind]

I suspect the health bloat is to try and make heroes, monsters and magic not be too devastating to infantry such as to make even high tier ones pointless. If everyone died in one swing to a dragon or to the Purple Sun spell there'd be little reason not to just make your entire army out of Giants, Steam Tanks or Vargheists. Even stuff like Chosen would be kind of bad if they could be crushed underfoot by a Shaggoth with no real way to fight back.

Sure, it'd need to be balanced, I think that perhaps monsters and heroes are generally too too tanky as well. If a giant gets surrounded by anti large units, or maybe even just straight up fight one 1v1, it should loose, be cut down, and die in short order. Actually same with Vargheists really getting stuck in against any unit, I think they are really quite a bit too strong in front on fights in this game, on the table top I recall that they were actually quite squishy.

I think it's fine that there is a place for meat shields in the game and a cost vs benefit analysis. But it goes pretty far past the table top idea. In the table top, sure, you'd have like 40 zombies tying down roughly their own numbers or less in dudes for a while and constantly raising them back up with necromancers, but even they would explode quite quickly if they were totally surrounded by enemies. As an aside by the way, I think zombies with their incredibly poor moral in this game are probably one of the units I actually don't have issues with. If you surround them they will actually properly start dying and crumble away in pretty short order.

To be honest soldiers died WAY to fast in some recent total war games, especially in shogun 2.

This is a good point, I think, really it is personal preference eh? I like deadly combat where both my and my enemy units die quickly...

Although I'll certainly cop to me being a pretty poor player, and maybe it's a necessary part of the balance of the game that units are so sticky.

[Tack]

Waiting for a unit to crumble properly is agonising though.
As far as I can tell they don't crumble faster if their leadership goes in the negatives, save for game-end disintegration.

I find it an annoying mechanic when I need to free up cavalry for a back charge, and yet it's enough of a difference that my whole strategy has to change slightly vs undead, which I love.

[Teneb]

I think the mounts are a nice option if you are building your lord with the commander skills, rather than fighter ones. Mages too. You want mobility for these, and since they shouldn't be going into combat, you can safely put them on a horse or monster.

[umiman]

Waiting for a unit to crumble properly is agonising though.
As far as I can tell they don't crumble faster if their leadership goes in the negatives, save for game-end disintegration.

I find it an annoying mechanic when I need to free up cavalry for a back charge, and yet it's enough of a difference that my whole strategy has to change slightly vs undead, which I love.

There's two kinds of crumbling. Normal and rapid.

--------------

Criptfeind:

Vargheists are super squishy in this. If they ever get stuck against even peasant spearmen they will all die. They're glass cannons. You can't even leave them within range of ranged units as they get cut down hilariously fast. Even faster than bats (probably because they're easier to hit).

Giants will lose 1v1 to certain dedicated anti-large units. Demigryphs for example. Terrorgheist. Slayers. Etc. They won't lose to the above peasant spearmen 1v1. Will lose 2v1 though.

[Criptfeind]

Yes, yes. Both of these are true (I mean, presumably, I'm not going to test it but I trust you sure). My thing is that it happens too slowly.

Edit: and also if infantry were nerffed to die quicker in my little fantasy for what criptfeind would like in the game, then of course monsters should be as well, so that saying monsters would be op in that case wouldn't necessarily be an issue.

[umiman]

Uhh... Demigrph knights kill giants in about 30 seconds... how much faster do you want it?

[Criptfeind]

Who knows, I've never experienced the demigrph knight vs giant fight, as I've never played as empire or orcs. That's perfectly possible that it's 'fine' for my sense of fine. The same way I'm cool with how zombies are. If so, cool.

[umiman]

Have you been playing a lot of VC or something? Because yeah, they don't have a lot of options for massive units other than the Terrorgheist and spirit leech.

[Criptfeind]

Yes, absolutely I've been playing lots of vampire counts. My issue isn't with massive units specifically though dude.

[umiman]

I believe your issue was that everything is too tanky, which I can see why you'd think that way.

But the reason I brought that all up is to show you perhaps you're not playing the counters properly or haven't explored more of the game's systems yet? You were under the impression that monsters were too durable but you've been playing VC which has no simple solutions for them. Similarly you think infantry don't die fast enough, but perhaps that can be accounted for how things like zombies et al. don't actually work very well at killing things? Honestly all of the VC's infantry are very bad at killing things. Even their Grave Guard are kinda meh compared to stuff like Ironbreakers and Greatswords. The only two "infantry" units they have which are good at fighting are the Crypt Ghouls and Cairn Wraiths.

You were talking about how the Cavalry impact doesn't seem to kill anything, and again, I think I know why you're thinking that. Is it because you've been charging the VC cavalry into lines that you bogged down with zombies and those other cute dudes? So perhaps instead of how other factions have the infantry doing damage to the other before the cavalry come in and clean up, instead the cavalry here is reliant on doing all the damage so it feels a lot slower.

Similarly, you complained that the units have a tendancy to only rout for a very short time, but did you know all undead units cause terror and fear? Fear innately reduces leadership for all units in an AOE around the unit whereas Terror causes units to roll a leadership check against it upon first contact, and if their leadership is lower than terror they will automatically rout for a few seconds before reforming. This is something fairly unique to the VC so they do a lot of what you were talking about more than the other races.

Perhaps try the other guys out first for a few hours and see if your opinion changes. Play some custom battles with high tier units like the Demigryph knights or Black Orcs. You might see things in a different light.

I think right now some of the most popular mods involve lengthening the combat because people think everything dies or routs too fast, which is contrary to your opinion.

----

That being said, this game does use the same engine as Shogun 2, Rome 2, and the extreme shit that is Empire. This engine was built for the matched combat where units would pair up and fight each other in 1v1 and have lots of execution animations and stuff like that. It was awful in Empire, quite nice in Shogun 2 (as that's what the Japanese's idea of warfare was back then though it did kinda change as it became more about total war than samurai duels as time passed), and started kinda stupid in Rome 2 but got gradually patched out.

Now it's almost completely nonexistent here. So you have the remnants of that engine where units rotate on their axis like some kind of doll and float around when they're too close together. They did that before to position units for those sync moves but now it's just kinda there. Like an extra nipple that annoys everyone except some freaks.

If you're looking for more things to nitpick about, you could also notice that units no longer have any mass or weight behind them during combat, as they can't move around the battlefield while fighting like in Medieval or Rome. So when you fight in the streets, you just stay there until someone routs whereas in the older games, if you had like 500 men pushing 50, the 50 guys would get pushed backwards gradually. I actually find that part kinda annoying.