Cathay caravans

[Sad Man Battalion]

predictions on how far are cathay trade routes going in mortal empires?

imagine being the poor schmuck who travels from cathay through the empire brettonia and the high elves just to get eaten ship wrecked by the creature in the seas before you get to the vampire coast

[Panfilo]

If they are over land I feel like Marienberg will be the westernmost one. Maybe Al-Haikk or wherever Repanse is located? Or even further south, to Settras pyramid?

[Panfilo]

The fact that the map won't loop like a globe also opens up funny questions these poor guys are going to have about the route.

"We need you to sell these trinkets to a frog wizard that lives in a distant continent. First you'll traverse the mountains of Mourn, avoiding our ogre neighbors and their appetites. Then through the harsh industrial wastelands of the chaos dwarves. Clear of that, and you're through to the unending war between Kislev and Norscans. Swing south through the Empire, then cut through a cursed forest full of Beastmen. You'll reach the enchanted lands of the Brettonians but can't rest, you'll need to cross the great sea and avoid maelstroms, and pirates. Reaching landfall you'll need to evade rat men and more slaver elves until you reach your destination. "

" OK or we could just sail east and go straight there without crossing two continents and a massive ocean"
"No, you go this way. It's the only way we can justify selling these tchochkies for so much".

[Central]

i would love to be able to send a caravan to thorek ironbrow. that being said, i think they should focus on what they currently have in terms of caravans.

-caravans need more events so you can recruit a wider variety of units. there are so many units that you simply cannot get with caravans. at least i never saw any recruit longma or recruit a canon. why can i get a caravan lord that starts with those units but am i unable to recruit more of them? (maybe it is possible though, if anyone ever got an event to recruit those units than please let me know). the fun aspect of caravans is having to fight with unit compositions that you would never otherwise consider, desperately trying to survive whatever the road throws at you. with the limited options when you get units you still end up building mostly the same composition for caravans.

-caravan hero's need to be able to level up. right now they are to weak to be of any use later on, they also do not provide harmonic amplification, limiting their use even more. maybe a custom skill tree for caravan hero's? i mean in a caravan they are most likely to develop different skills from their counterparts who stick with their own people simply because traveling with a caravan is a different experience. who is to say that those elven nobles or empire captains are not capable of learning a thing or 2 about harmony if they stick with a caravan long enough, and an ogre hunters skills with sabretusk packs is completely useless in a caravan, but maybe if a hunter is good with animals and they stick with caravans long enough than maybe they can learn how to improve horses/longma.

-they need to fix small things, for example:
sometimes you have to choose in an event between losing cargo/units and fighting, yet choosing the fighting option does not always force a fight, giving you a free pass.

so, while sending caravans further away would be nice, im mostly interested to see what other changes they make to caravans.

[Panfilo]

My idea for caravan heroes is to just have specific variants that the caravan that can get which count as a regular unit, not a hero (so you can't cheese the game by moving them out of the caravan and doing other stuff with them. But they get treated as say a level 6 hero with slightly better MA/MD/HP, and a few embedded skills.

This gives some variety in the particular her you find. So maybe you might find one particular Empire Captain with Hold the Line and Foe Seeker, while another time you'll get one that is mounted on a horse with other skills instead.

This would be particularly good for heroes that get interesting mounts in the game since you'd have a chance to get a mage that might have a handful of spells but be really squishy, or one that is on a chariot/monster/whatever but with more rudimentary skills. Like I said, all they have to do is treat each of these like a unique, caravan specific unit with above average base stats (veterancy would pump it up a bit more).

[Central]

Originally posted by Panfilo:

My idea for caravan heroes is to just have specific variants that the caravan that can get which count as a regular unit, not a hero (so you can't cheese the game by moving them out of the caravan and doing other stuff with them. But they get treated as say a level 6 hero with slightly better MA/MD/HP, and a few embedded skills.

This gives some variety in the particular her you find. So maybe you might find one particular Empire Captain with Hold the Line and Foe Seeker, while another time you'll get one that is mounted on a horse with other skills instead.

This would be particularly good for heroes that get interesting mounts in the game since you'd have a chance to get a mage that might have a handful of spells but be really squishy, or one that is on a chariot/monster/whatever but with more rudimentary skills. Like I said, all they have to do is treat each of these like a unique, caravan specific unit with above average base stats (veterancy would pump it up a bit more).

even with what you are suggesting i would still kick hero's out because they would be to weak. if a hero is not strong than im better off getting more celestial dragon guards or streltsi.

having those random hero's does sound like a cool idea, i think it would be very much fun rp wise, im fearing however that i would end up sacking half the hero's i get because they are useless.

i still think they should make new skill trees for caravan hero's. its a bit more work but i think it is the best sollution. and again, some of those hero's desperately need some harmonic amplification in order to make them compatible with cathays army.

[Kubers]

https://youtu.be/_Uxl1wIyQfg
Apparently even in RoC map you are meant to be able to send them to Southern Realms and Ind. This same should be true in Immortal Empires. Also to Bretonnia.

[Central]

Originally posted by Kubers:

https://youtu.be/_Uxl1wIyQfg
Apparently even in RoC map you are meant to be able to send them to Southern Realms and Ind. This same should be true in Immortal Empires. Also to Bretonnia.

i completely missed this, very interesting. thanks for sharing it.
that being said, it could still be cut content. something which they where planning to do but decided against.

[Who trains thy hands for war?]

Originally posted by Central:

-caravans need more events so you can recruit a wider variety of units.

-caravan hero's need to be able to level up.

-they need to fix small things, for example:
sometimes you have to choose in an event between losing cargo/units and fighting, yet choosing the fighting option does not always force a fight, giving you a free pass.

so, while sending caravans further away would be nice, im mostly interested to see what other changes they make to caravans.

I did get Streltsi once or twice. Perhaps it's for RP reasons that flying horses don't get lost / trivially exported, and that cannons are rendered inoperable to protect secrets

Apparently we can add our Cathayan heroes manually

Sometimes we don't get a fight but maybe they are intimidated and run away. We called their bluff

[Central]

Originally posted by Run 'n Gun:

I did get Streltsi once or twice. Perhaps it's for RP reasons that flying horses don't get lost / trivially exported, and that cannons are rendered inoperable to protect secrets

Apparently we can add our Cathayan heroes manually

Sometimes we don't get a fight but maybe they are intimidated and run away. We called their bluff

those are good reasons for not being able to recruit those units.

i know we can add cathay hero's manually, that does not excuse caravan hero's being useless late game. in their current state they might as well not be in the game.

i very much doubt they got intimidated, there is no popup telling us that. maybe im wrong, but in that case they should still add in an outcome box saying the enemy got intimidated.
this is a bug pure and simple.