Unkillable characters - what's the point of battle?

[althegreat]

The devs really need to look into nerfing some of the legendary characters. I get they are legendary but there ought to be some kind of defined weakness for each one, or manually resolving a battle is pointless.

Case in point, Prince Sigvald who recently waltzed in to my decently fortified and garrisoned Konquata and took it without losing a single hit point. I did all the sneaky tactical manouevres of rope-a-dope with his big monsters by luring them away and eventually murdering them with Outriders and mounted Grenadiers hidden in trees. Most of his infantry were whittled away by crossbowmen from the battlements.

Sigvald himself shrugged off being hit by cannon from my 2 Magical Towers for 10 minutes, as well as the default towers, archers, crossbowmen, 3 units of rifle, and eventually wandered through the gates after his pared down ogres had bust it down, and was immediately kettled by 5 units of halberdier and my admittedly green Warrior monk general.

Despite being targeted by all of them, I watched his health bar obsessively. Completely unaltered the entire battle.

Inevitably I lost a siege defence that otherwise would have been masterfully organised except for total inability to deal with a single unit. Who is just invincible. What is the point? Franz and his mega-army mosied down from the next town up the next turn and took it back with a decisive victory over Sigvald by Auto-Resolve. Of course I'm left wondering how Sigvald even took a scratch.

So do CA just want us to autoresolve? Is that the future of Total War games? Because a challenge is fun, but an impossible battle, where the balance of power is shown to be even statistically, is just a waste of everyone's time.

[Butcher]

I agree, some legendary lords should have much higher power level for autoresolve purposes.

[Ashley]

Never had that issue beating Sigvald

As for lords being unkillable some of them are not far off. Grim'gor goes and literally solos armies himself in lore

Vlad gets killed every 5 minutes and comes back to life

[SBA77]

Originally posted by althegreat:

Unkillable characters - what's the point of battle?e.

You wouldn't happen to have been playing on Legendary difficulty now would you? If so then it's kind of on you. Legendary difficulty is known for giving the AI ludicrous buffs (as nearly all games do with harder difficulties) and while I haven't heard of making LLs ridiculous tough, goblins spearmen soloing Chosen and the like is common place. I don't think just because you and others are struggling with the hardest difficulty means that the entire game needs to made easier to suit your needs, and potentially ruin it and make it too easy for the rest of us. If you are in over head just lower difficulty, we're not all watching you. No game should tailored around the needs of the crazies that just play on the hardest difficulty. If you make the Hardest difficulty the standard then what's the point of it, you might as well just rename it "Normal" at that point.

[althegreat]

I'm just playing Normal difficulty.

I have no problem coming up against foes that are - almost - impossible to beat. For instance I just had four towns razed by Azazel in consecutive turns and I accept it because I don't have sufficiently good armies to counter him there. I'm talking specifically about lords that take zero damage without any type of weapon even scratching them. If the battle is unwinnable because of bugs or some kind of buff that keeps getting re-generated in error then it is something the play testers should address. Even the vamps were hard, but not impossible, and that's fine by me.

[chickabumpbump]

Balance has never been an issue or a strong point on CA part

[KoboldUtopian]

Sometimes you just have to distract them while you kill the rest of their army and wait for army losses to kick in.

[Ashley]

Originally posted by CoerciveUtopian:

Sometimes you just have to distract them while you kill the rest of their army and wait for army losses to kick in.

Generally how it goes. Army losses should have kicked in. Will get most of them off the field unless it's a close fight.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Until they also have a source of unbreakable and then you're screwed.

[chickabumpbump]

or just auto resolve, why go through the frustration of their bad design

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by althegreat:

...

I'm not gonna argue against them perhaps needing a bit of rebalancing.

But at the same time i will say that none of them are unkillable. Just bring a proper counter to units like that rather then try to drown them in chaff.

[althegreat]

Sig had been observed to be hit by cannon, magical cannon tower, crossbow, rifle-fire, halberd, greatsword, hammer, grenade, fire. Not sure how that counts as "chaff". The only type of damage not inflicted on him was the luminark thing, and that is a lesson in frustration on its own.

I hit pause after each hit. Not one HP reduced from the original 3840.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by althegreat:

I hit pause after each hit. Not one HP reduced from the original 3840.

Ahh, then we are simply talking about a bug. While you can reduce damage a ton and Sigvald has regen with his armor, there is no way to completely negate damage so that you take zero damage from high damage units like cannons and the like (unless there is a item or something that gives invulnerability for a limited time, but if so i don't know about it and i think i would with my 1000+ hours in game 2 and 400+ hours in game 3).

[Butcher]

Human entity falling from the wall is instakill. You could try to destroy wall he was on.

[althegreat]

Yeah, I'd be happy to cheese it somehow by luring him onto the wall then blowing it up but he was the attacker and never showed any interest in climbing the wall. His ogres had smashed in me doors.

[chickabumpbump]

or just auto resolve this one battle, play normally for the rest