[MODULE] Bannor Chain of Command

[Andvare]

I absolutely love the new Bannor system, but if you focus on the special Bannor upgrades, you do have a weaker army to begin with.
That kinda changed when I started out next to the Balseraphs. I rushed them, and left them crippled with one useless city. And boy-o-boy are Bannor Mimics evil.

 

[Andvare]

Okay, so perhaps this isn't really that balanced yet. I just had the Baron get to 1900 XP, which is a fair bit more than there are promotions for. My primary great general has around 1000, and my old champion, which I've had since my first campaign, has around 250. The Baron is a somewhat new addition to the army, but because of how it scales, and that he a commander, it just went nuts.

A question, does the AI know how to group Great Generals after unit type? I.e. if a GG has specialized towards discipline units, another towards siege, and if you auto group them, does it know how to optimize it?

 

[Barak]

Playing as Bannor, love the new system, its a LOT of fun! Adopting Order, Valin Phanuel decided it was time to spread the glories of order by the sword. Having promoted him to Captain, he along with his Horsemen followers tried to "convince" the earth loving (kilmorph) Chislev to convert to Order. When they did not, Valin led the charge.

Interestingly enough, when he achieved level 12, he did so due to XP awarded to him by leading troops. But rather than allowing him to get any promotion, he was limited to Great General combat promotions, and now has to wait till he advance to level 13 to add another "regular" promotion.

Was this intended?

 

[odalrick]

Interestingly enough, when he achieved level 12, he did so due to XP awarded to him by leading troops. But rather than allowing him to get any promotion, he was limited to Great General combat promotions, and now has to wait till he advance to level 13 to add another "regular" promotion.

Was this intended?

He has to wait a long time...

Captain changed the unitcombat to commander, he will never get mounted promotions again.

 

[Barak]

He has to wait a long time...

Captain changed the unitcombat to commander, he will never get mounted promotions again.

Interesting, then I'm not so sure I like having traditional units getting that high. Live and learn I guess.

 

[kenken244]

I usually stop my heroes at master seargent, at least untill all promotions worth taking are already taken. Donal makes an excellent captain/general because he has +3 command limit over regular units.

 

[xienwolf]

Okay, so perhaps this isn't really that balanced yet. I just had the Baron get to 1900 XP, which is a fair bit more than there are promotions for. My primary great general has around 1000, and my old champion, which I've had since my first campaign, has around 250. The Baron is a somewhat new addition to the army, but because of how it scales, and that he a commander, it just went nuts.

A question, does the AI know how to group Great Generals after unit type? I.e. if a GG has specialized towards discipline units, another towards siege, and if you auto group them, does it know how to optimize it?

I took the easy approach with the AI for the time being. Right now they will join a commander with the first unit capable of doing so all the time. I assume that eventually the followers will all get killed who aren't actually grouped with the commander. And instead of matching the unit who joins the commander to the commander's strong unitcombat, the Commander selects his promotions based on the unitcombats which are following him at the time.

End result for the AI should be fairly decent. They will lead troops and get XP on the commander. Eventually the Commander will be in command of his own stack. And eventually the commander will have promotions appropriate to the units following him (primarily because most AI's pump out a TON of a single unitcombat type, and virtually ignore the others)

Interesting, then I'm not so sure I like having traditional units getting that high. Live and learn I guess.

Yes, the choice to promote to a captain is a hard one. It is probably a good idea on Heroes to wait until they are level 19, then get Captain and General as your next 2 promotions and have him be a battle commander all the way.

 

[Andvare]

BTW, I found the reason why the Baron was promoted that fast, he aparently can act as a Field Marshal, as in commanding a General, which is probably not intended.
This means he gets the Generals already extreme XP plus some extra, which also means he can, with some siege support, single handedly convert half the enemy's army (okay, that is hyperbole, he ain't that powerful a hero, but his power has been multiplied with the Bannor, he probably shouldn't be able to lead the whole Bannor army...).

 

[xienwolf]

Any unit who has a Command Limit and does not have one of the Bannor Command promotions can lead absolutely any unit WITH the Bannor command promotions. So it is intended that such things can happen, but I would think that the Baron should have been specifically forbidden to allow anything but Werewolves to follow him. It doesn't make much sense for him to lead normal units.

 

[Darksaber1]

I could get non-werewolves following the Baron. In fact, it was a Skald, who certainly wasn't a werewolf.

 

[Brokenbone]

I'm fairly sure it's working as designed, but I think it might've been sort of non-intuitive, so I'll test the observation in this thread, it's about all the lovely promotions Captains and Generals can get applicable to their followers. Things like Zealot I or Battle (something) I-III, all the great buffs other than just "Enlisted."

I think I had the false impression that those TRICKLE DOWN throughout the ranks. I believe though, that those only apply to their direct minion/followers. Sure, a high level captain or general could've taken all kinds of "command limit" increases, but it's still only the tier of followers directly below him which seem to get most of the decent buffs, minions at a subtier, do not.

Example: Captain has a sergeant following him, and a corporal follows the sergeant. Sergeant will get all the cool buffs from the captain, but the corporal won't. Switch things around until the corporal follows the Captain directly though, and you're good.

Anyhow, again, I think this is working as designed... but if so, it makes "nested" command structures a little disappointing except for the fact of all the "regimental discipline" related XP flowing up to the top of the command structure. Example, I've often had Donal Lugh taking no rank promos, having three captains follow him, and tons of XP blasting in through the many, many minions (master sergeants, sergeants, and many corporals) feeding all kinds of XP upwards. Again, great benefit for Donal, but nothing much happening in return.

Do my observations sound about right? Any commander providing buffs (other than the ones mentioned in the first post of this thread in highlights) do not "Trickle Down" throughout the command structure, applying only to his direct reports? I.e., if you want a Captain with Siege boosting buffs, it better be six catapults reporting to him as opposed to 12 catapults reporting to 6 sergeants reporting to the captain or it's wasted...?

 

[xienwolf]

You are correct, the "basic" Commander setup doesn't account for nested structures, so the only promotions which trickle up/down are the Bannor ranks. One of the large reasons behind making this "showcase module" was to inform people of the possibility.

 

[vale]

I've played around with this alot more recently and honestly do believe that the sheer weight of numbers needs to be toned down a lot. Regimental discipline is not the problem as it is not what is generating the potential for a huge army under one General (and incidentally, the math that generates 343 as a max potential army has some mistakes - Master Sergeants only lead 2 units each and the Captains and General each can lead one more unit each if they came from a UU Captain). I liked the suggestion earlier about removing layers, but I also think pruning some potential branches at each layer would also help significantly.

I'm not sure if all of these suggestions are doable, but if they are, it would seriously cut down on the unwieldy nature of some of the original numbers.

1. Master Sergeants (and only Master Sergeants, not Captains or Generals with the Master Sergeant promotion) should grant their minions -1 command limit. This helps limit the depth of the bottom part of the command structure. A Sergeant under a Master Sergeant would have no command rating not because he himself is unable to lead, but because his commanding officer is not prepared to command such a large contingent.

2. Remove Bannor access to +command limit promotions. As is, a self made Captain comes with 3 command limit and a UU Captain comes with 4 command limit. This, combined with the fact that their command limit is effectively doubled or tripled by having Sergeants or Master Sergeants in their command structure is more than adequate to compensate for this loss. Also, I believe something should be done to reconcile the difference in command limit between a self made Captain and a UU Captain. Perhaps it is possible to grant +1 command limit to a unit possessing both the Corporal and Captain promotions?

3. Remove the minion +2 command limit from the General promotion.

I know these suggestions are a pretty huge weakening of the Bannor's command structure, lowering the upper limit for a fully nested general command structure to a much more manageable 53 units including the General. A Captain's squad would max out at 13 units including the Captain.

Now to help compensate the Bannor for the above changes:

1. Make Motivated and Hardened Troops stackable. This will only happen when a Captain and/or General has the relevant granting promotion and will stack at most 3 times for a Corporal or Sergeant at the bottom of a command structure.

2. Some Bannor only, fully trickling and stackable command promotions. These will certainly be weaker and more general than the non-trickling command promotions.

examples effects to be potentially trickled:

+% unit strength - potential multiples available - higher level prerequisite for
+% healing rate - prerequisite for
march effect, -% healing rate (essentially this malus and the above bonus should cancel out granting a march bonus to all of the command structure at a cost of two promotions)
+% unit withdrawal rate - potential multiples - higher level prerequisite for
+1 movement rate - prerequisite for
ignore terrain movement cost - prerequisite for
use enemy roads
no supply cost
+? first strike chances
+% experience gained from combat
+% city attack
+% city defense

3. More ways to manipulate command range for commander types - could be creative here does not have to be strict +1 command range promotions - example promotion could grant a commander automatic range on his minions as long as they are all within the Bannor cultural borders. Another promotion could allow friendly unblocked roads to be factored in when calculating range. This may be getting in the realm of too difficult though.

4. Some way of getting at least +1 command range on Sergeants/Master Sergeants. This could be in the form of a commander promotion granting this bonus to minions.