Militia ain't worth it. (Spoilers ahead.)

[Null Winter]

If you spend a fair bit of money (for the early game, anyways) and several vital days of your mercs' contracts training militia (and each other for the other 4), then you can get 8 Veterans in a single location. They will promptly barely be able to win an auto-resolve fight against a Legion assault squad, losing anywhere from 1-5 of their members, requiring you to slog back if you want to reinforce them... starting from recruits again.

And the infamous deathsquad sweep after you have visited the Refugee Camp? They can't withstand it, even on the easiest difficulty; at best, a full squad of ELITES will take out 2 or 3 of a single squad, get wiped, and then that squad will continue its march with at least 1 other full squad behind it. There was only a single auto-resolve victory in my first campaign, and it left 1 Elite alive to be crushed by the full squad behind the first. Because Ernie is plot important, your militia there don't even get an auto-resolve battle check; they are simply wiped from existence, along with the time and money a new player likely wasted on them as part of the tutorial experience.

After this event, most of the Legion assault squads stop spawning, either because the PMCs wiped them out or because you captured the Legion bases/mines that the PMCs don't care about; this means that once you take them all a second time, you again don't need to waste time training militia because the Legion are rarely going to send anyone to do anything about it.

It's a real slap in the face from the devs; there's no point in doing it, because the enemy squads trying to retake sectors are either so flaccid that even clicking auto-resolve on them is a chore or they're so hardcore that only your kitted out mercs ever stood a chance. It's more time and money efficient to just grab every Legion camp to remove the sources of attack squads; an unguarded sector doesn't matter if everyone is too busy being dead to retake it.

[Dorok]

It's easy test auto resolve battles and see that with elite militia (or less elite) you need less mercs for the same result. That's not pointless militia.

For manual battles, it's false they just run like chicken and do nothing, and anyway to argue you would need test with elite militia.

As the game can be solo at least for most combats, then you conclude mercs are pointless? No.

For training time, it's been quoted already, you don't need a main team to train militia.

For cost it's clearly not the problem no matter the difficulty level.

That some players will run through without any militia isn't meaning militia is pointless only that with proper play it can be ignored.

[krd]

Origineel geplaatst door w.f.schepel:

I don't know what the game looks like on 'easy' or 'normal', but I know for certain I would not have been able to clear the map without militia on the highest difficulty.

Solo play is a different story, I guess you need all the help you can get. But then you are cheating the system a bit because it's not entirely solo anymore, is it?

[BearEssentials]

I'm playing on Mission Impossible difficulty. Have Buns and MD in their own two man squad focused on militia training. 8 veteran militia just blocking the red routes is 100% victorious against normal attacks AND tends to give you one to three elite militia AND dropped weapons and items AND boosts town loyalty by 5% each time, increasing income. They'll just come back and do two more trainings when militia numbers in the tile reaches 6 or less.

And yes you're supposed to have the midgame spawn take towns and you come retake them.. which grants huge amts of xp and lots of sapphire and tiny diamond drops, and elite type weaponry and ammo.

AND full stacks of vet militia in all town and fort squares, which is not difficult if you have two or three of Bun/Fox/MD and free mercs full time militia training, will stop the midgame spawn halfway into the town in at least two of the first three towns and kill a lot of the spawn even in captured towns, leaving behind endgame weapons and items.

Complaining about militia being useless.. nope, pure skill issue.

[archmag]

Origineel geplaatst door krd:

It is a valid reason. Because if I have to step in and fight then their existence is pointless. Seriously, what is so hard to understand about it?

This would be only true if you can add the word "always". But no, the "I always have to step in and fight" isn't true. Personally I completed the game and only participated in manual defense with militia twice - first battle on tutorial island and N-Night. Militia defends against legion and even against army successfully. In my experience militia was enough to hold legion and even some army units (army units die after two militia defenses, so when they have to pass two protected tiles to get to the mine they die and you keep the mine). I had 3 mines (1 of them wasn't attacked) plus several outposts and town tiles after the assault. Plus they significantly damaged most army squads so that I didn't have to waste too much time on cleaning them up.

On the other hand economy in this game is non-existent and there is really no reason to defend anything against the army. After it triggers you just clear two more tiles and the game ends. Still, militia does it job, which is to defend things you want to keep without you having to bring your mercs there all the time. Which means militia is useful unless you are not interested in keeping anything.

[Dorok]

Origineel geplaatst door archmag:

Origineel geplaatst door krd:

It is a valid reason. Because if I have to step in and fight then their existence is pointless. Seriously, what is so hard to understand about it?

This would be only true if you can add the word "always". But no, the "I always have to step in and fight" isn't true.

That's far to be the only reason, because:
- With militia you can use less mercs for same results, and that's right with uber military squads.
- Against uber enemies so military squads you can sacrifice some whole militia group to kill some enemy. And that it's not necessary doesn't mean it's useless.
- Gold is never the reason to not use militia because a proper play has more than enough gold to train a lot of militia at any difficulty level.
- Time is never the reason to not use militia because you can not use an A-Team squad to do it.

It's weird this debate is still going on when this thread title is so obviously wrong.

[Dorok]

I can beat the game without ever using shotgun so shotgun are pointless? No.

I can't use properly some tactic at highest difficulty level, so it's a pointless tactic? No if it works at a different difficulty level.

I can't always use some tactic so it is pointless? No.

There's no debate.

[krd]

Origineel geplaatst door archmag:

This would be only true if you can add the word "always". But no, the "I always have to step in and fight" isn't true. Personally I completed the game and only participated in manual defense with militia twice - first battle on tutorial island and N-Night. Militia defends against legion and even against army successfully. In my experience militia was enough to hold legion and even some army units (army units die after two militia defenses, so when they have to pass two protected tiles to get to the mine they die and you keep the mine). I had 3 mines (1 of them wasn't attacked) plus several outposts and town tiles after the assault. Plus they significantly damaged most army squads so that I didn't have to waste too much time on cleaning them up.

On the other hand economy in this game is non-existent and there is really no reason to defend anything against the army. After it triggers you just clear two more tiles and the game ends. Still, militia does it job, which is to defend things you want to keep without you having to bring your mercs there all the time. Which means militia is useful unless you are not interested in keeping anything.

Maybe it's the case of individual experiences vary. They sent about 14-16 squads against me, my militia didn't stop a single one of them. The only ones that were stopped were when I had my merc squads defending. And then it's kind of nuisance because it takes forever to watch militia deploy from various points of the map. I'd much rather move out all militia out of the sector when I have my squad in town, I'll get the fight done much quicker.

Sure, pre-event, against Legion militia had some, but limited use. As I wrote before, I used them to defend 1-2 key ports. All other ones were not really necessary.

If you want to argue technicalities, then fine, the fact that I had used militia in some limited capacity means they are not completely useless. But they failed in key moment and that, as far as I am concerned, was their primary job.

[cheekibreeki]

tl;dr

if PMC captured a mine, they will send diamond shipments with legion-tier troops which can still be intercepted with militia

I lost the Diamond Red to PMC and left it for last. While I was dealing with the army in the east, these asses started sending squads through the Pantagruel, which I didn't cover with militia completely. I was this close to losing the best mine, good thing my dudes made it there in time

[ChaosKhan]

Origineel geplaatst door krd:

If you want to argue technicalities, then fine, the fact that I had used militia in some limited capacity means they are not completely useless. But they failed in key moment and that, as far as I am concerned, was their primary job.

So their main job was to essentially autoresolve away the MAIN COUNTEROFFESIVE in the ENTIRE DAMN GAME?

Sorry, but at this point, it's really a clear *you* problem.

[krd]

Origineel geplaatst door ChaosKhan:

Origineel geplaatst door krd:

If you want to argue technicalities, then fine, the fact that I had used militia in some limited capacity means they are not completely useless. But they failed in key moment and that, as far as I am concerned, was their primary job.

So their main job was to essentially autoresolve away the MAIN COUNTEROFFESIVE in the ENTIRE DAMN GAME?

Sorry, but at this point, it's really a clear *you* problem.

The whole point of the debate was how useful the militia are. And if they cannot stop any of the assaults, then that would be a statement about their usefulness, would it not?

Yea, it's clearly a *me* problem for expecting trained militia to have at least some success rate in defending sectors they were assigned to.
Lmao.

[sooshon]

Origineel geplaatst door krd:

Yea, it's clearly a *me* problem

I guess we're all in agreement here : )

[krd]

Origineel geplaatst door sooshon:

I guess we're all in agreement here, militia are almost useless : )

Yes, we are! :)

[Lightning]

I think the major cities should have let us hire like 16 militia rather than 8 imo

[Selgald]

There are several issues:

- You get steamrolled just for a twist
- All militia dies and so does their money value and training time
- All your income stops, if you dont have reserves, youre done
- Its not fun to lose everything you did in the last 15 hours in 30 seconds
- Even if you fight them, its not fun, since those enemies are division 2 like bulletsponges (2x 80dmg headshots and they dont die?)

Its a fun killer, sure let them get a city, but not everything at once with OP enemies, where you need meta knowledge to prevent a steamrole.

This event alone will probably turn a lot of players to the endless mines mod.

[LArc7thHeaven]

One problem with militas is they AI in combat almost brain-dead especially when the enemy on the far side and in port cacao docks raid. My mercs kills all legion invading when the militias were busy hide their stupid assess in shacks