Usefulness of allied troops and new skills?

[Phoenix]

Seems to me adding allied troops to your army jsut doesn't have enough benefit, given all the bonuses your own troops get at higher levels, and that allied troops get none.

Why not add a few more skills to the skill tree, designed to buff troops of other allied factions? Buffs would be smaller than that of your own of course, but a little something to make it more attractive.

[Urist Microcline]

Yea allied recruitment is very bad.

[A.Pot]

Its best to add allied troops to fill niches in your army.

Had a Dark Elf campaign where I hired a pair of Ogre Bull units (through allied recruitment) and they did fantastically as the hammers to the anvil of my Bleakswords and Dreadspears. Had another campaign as Kislev where I hired Dwarf Grudgethrowers to be the artillery for basic cheap policing force and they did fantastically when assisting during sieges.

Don't bother getting allied troops that do the same thing your own troops can already do like for example hiring Dwarf Hammerers or Empire Greatswords as the High Elves, get cannons that outrange your Bolt Throwers.

[Mazisky]

There are some specific situation where it can be very useful, for example having Dwarfs with Bretonnia give them a strong frontline they don't have.

[leandrombraz]

Skill boosts are overrated. Sure, they are great, but it's not like the units are worthless without it, to the point that not getting a boost is a huge disadvantage. Allied units will get the job done regardless of boost.

On top of giving your armies things that your race don't have access to, like cavalry for Dwarfs, allied recruitment also gives you 4 extra slots to recruit without spending gold. It's really helpful when you need to raise an army ASAP.

[Holeypaladin]

It's too difficult to hire them in sufficient numbers to matter... if only they could be hired with gold.

Allies can help if you're playing a faction with a crippling weakness, like Empire, Brettonia, or Vampire Counts... but if you're playing a faction that's good at everything, like Chaos, Vampire Coast, and all of CA's favorite elf factions, then it's pretty pointless, yes.

[Basarab Laiota]

It's still incredibly useful to be able to recruit extra units in one turn globally

[kilen]

I build plenty of crapstacks (hobgoblin with Chorfs for example) to fill the gaps on cold fronts, allied units can help a lot in that case.
Chosen of chaos instead of shielded hobbos definitely help as frontline.
Or shaggots monster cav instead of hobbos on their piggies, that’s also an improvement.

And it’s the case with most of the races, you can also play chaos and make great use of skaven plague catapults ie, etc…
Multiple situations where it definitely helps.

[Verchial]

Skaven artillery & ranged teams with my beastmeanies is ❤️

It’s one of the very few instances I will ally with another faction tho.

[Holeypaladin]

Hm... an option to purchase allegiance with gold, at say, 1 allegiance per 100 gold, would go a long way towards improving the alliance system in general.... since allegiance is used not just to recruit units, but for general war coordination. "Hey ally, you don't have much allegiance right now, but here's a thousand gold... go kill this unit for me, will you?"

[Zeek]

Originally posted by A.Pot:

Its best to add allied troops to fill niches in your army.

Had a Dark Elf campaign where I hired a pair of Ogre Bull units (through allied recruitment) and they did fantastically as the hammers to the anvil of my Bleakswords and Dreadspears. Had another campaign as Kislev where I hired Dwarf Grudgethrowers to be the artillery for basic cheap policing force and they did fantastically when assisting during sieges.

Don't bother getting allied troops that do the same thing your own troops can already do like for example hiring Dwarf Hammerers or Empire Greatswords as the High Elves, get cannons that outrange your Bolt Throwers.

This.

[Man of Culture]

I used allied recruitment to get units for vampire counts or chaos that they don't get normally like good ranged units. Or I get stuff like mammoth warshrines or something.

[Holeypaladin]

It would be nice if we could recruit allied heroes in addition to just units. There are already in-game examples, such as a legendary master engineer in Wulfhart's expedition, so why not an option to hire regular master engineers for other Empire armies? It actually makes perfect sense, as there is a precedence for it.

Imagine recruiting Empire wizards into a Dwarven army... finally allowing them to use winds of magic.

[Amphibian Artillery]

Originally posted by Holeypaladin:

It would be nice if we could recruit allied heroes in addition to just units. There are already in-game examples, such as a legendary master engineer in Wulfhart's expedition, so why not an option to hire regular master engineers for other Empire armies? It actually makes perfect sense, as there is a precedence for it.

Imagine recruiting Empire wizards into a Dwarven army... finally allowing them to use winds of magic.

You can technically do that in game but it's more of an exploit. If your ally has a hero you want i.e. a bright wizard and that hero is level 20 (auto-unlocks immortality skill) you can request that army from your ally then get the hero killed in battle. When the hero respawns they will be given to you permanently instead of your ally

[Holeypaladin]

Originally posted by Amphibian Artillery:

Originally posted by Holeypaladin:

It would be nice if we could recruit allied heroes in addition to just units. There are already in-game examples, such as a legendary master engineer in Wulfhart's expedition, so why not an option to hire regular master engineers for other Empire armies? It actually makes perfect sense, as there is a precedence for it.

Imagine recruiting Empire wizards into a Dwarven army... finally allowing them to use winds of magic.

You can technically do that in game but it's more of an exploit. If your ally has a hero you want i.e. a bright wizard and that hero is level 20 (auto-unlocks immortality skill) you can request that army from your ally then get the hero killed in battle. When the hero respawns they will be given to you permanently instead of your ally

Sure, but rather than an exploit, it should be a basic feature of alliances. There's a lot that can be done with alliances to make this game something other than "player vs the rest of the world."

In the current state where Chaos factions can vassalize other Chaos factions with ease, it would be balanced to strengthen the ability for other factions to ally with each other and work together..

[Central]

in the early game allied recruitment can be useful to get access to units of your own faction which you have not unlocked yet.
even later in the game it is still useful because it is a 1 turn recruitment slot, it helps with building armies quickly.

some factions can benefit from allied recruitment more than others.
the dawi for example can benefit quite a lot from it since they have so many gaps in their roster, they lack healing, cavalry, magic and monsters.
with allied recruitment you can fill a few of those gaps.

i do think it would be better if they would unlock allied recruitment.
sadly some of the more interesting units are not recruitable as allies in vanilla, even if they have the right buildings. i found that i started using allied recruitment a whole lot more once i downloaded a mod which allowed all units to be recruited (no hero's and still limited to 4 units per army).