Men-at-arms broken?

[SIX]

So after playing a good 200 hrs I feel like the domain/duchy stat boost of the men-at-arms broke the game. You don't have to build up that much to be able to field a boosted men-at-arms army that you can exploit to win anything. I feel the stat boost should be removed.

[kgptzac]

How is it exactly broken? You are limited on how many domains and duchies you can hold, so there's a ceiling on how strong they can be, and the AI have the same restriction.

[SIX]

Play a couple games where you reach the end and you will understand. The AI doesn't stack building like you can so you end up with 90% stat buff (I like to keep 3 Duchy). You basically can steam roll anything when you reach 1200. I don't think the mechanic is necessary at all you should be able to field more of them as you grow not a steroid version.

[XTAKK]

Originally posted by kgptzac:

How is it exactly broken? You are limited on how many domains and duchies you can hold, so there's a ceiling on how strong they can be, and the AI have the same restriction.

It isn't a hard limit. You can endure the penalties and still hold hundreds of counties and field tons of men-at-arms with insane bonuses if you go full exploit. It wouldn't be an issue if it was a SP only game but with MP they really need to make the demsene limit a hard limit not a penalty limit.

[Bike Knight]

That's not even accounting for the hilarity knowing that you can teleport them instantly around your empire using rally points, including on counties an enemy army is locked into moving to.
Claimant coup with 200% of your numbers started a civil war? No biggie, just orbital drop your uber MAA into the path of each vassal's army and they'll all be imprisoned in no time. That's gotta change as well as the flat building buffs OP brought up.

[Mikey]

Originally posted by Syvyvn:

Originally posted by kgptzac:

How is it exactly broken? You are limited on how many domains and duchies you can hold, so there's a ceiling on how strong they can be, and the AI have the same restriction.

It isn't a hard limit. You can endure the penalties and still hold hundreds of counties and field tons of men-at-arms with insane bonuses if you go full exploit. It wouldn't be an issue if it was a SP only game but with MP they really need to make the demsene limit a hard limit not a penalty limit.

If you hold hundreds of counties you will not get any bonuses from the buildings
1.1 patch notes:

If you vastly exceed your Domain Limit for more than one year (the grace period for new inheritances/conquests), all buildings will deactivate until your domain limit is lowered.

https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Patch_1.1
At the bottom of the "Game Balance" list

[Lovecraft's Cat]

At least the NK (Best Korea) tactic is not possible anymore, because all buildings get disabled. Still, you're 100% correct, MAA are ludicrously OP when you stack up on bonuses from barracks. In the later game you got 10 or more holdings with level 4+ barracks, and it's just ridiculous how powerful the units become.

[SIX]

Originally posted by Bike Knight:

That's not even accounting for the hilarity knowing that you can teleport them instantly around your empire using rally points, including on counties an enemy army is locked into moving to.
Claimant coup with 200% of your numbers started a civil war? No biggie, just orbital drop your uber MAA into the path of each vassal's army and they'll all be imprisoned in no time. That's gotta change as well as the flat building buffs OP brought up.

Yeah that also you just disband and rise them up anywhere anytime .....

[JuX]

It's definitely unbalanced, as computer opponents don't know how to deal with this. You can even make godlike knights which men-at-arms can't even counter to reduce their insane damage output. And this is just holding one extra duchy for very small penalty.

[maurinusa]

Do your men at arms only get buffs from the buildings in your personal domain or can you get buffs in any other counties? Reading this discussion it sounds like you might get buffs from other buildings in duchies you hold title to, is that right?

[Mikey]

only personal domain, your vassal domains do not contribute
To get the duchy building buff you need to hold the duchy title and the duchy capital

[Slimane]

Originally posted by kgptzac:

How is it exactly broken? You are limited on how many domains and duchies you can hold, so there's a ceiling on how strong they can be, and the AI have the same restriction.

Guess you haven't reached the point where your 6k men at arms wipes a 30k great khan army while taking less than 100 casualties. Yes the AI technically have the same restrictions but they're too busy wasting all their gold on stupid wars and mercs to actually build up a meaningful stack of Men at arms + upgraded buildings.

Men at arms are too strong right now. While levies are too weak and cost too much to maintain for how weak they are. In almost every game I play i don't use the majority of my levies and very often lower the levy obligation of my vassals while increasing their taxes.

[Azunai]

the stacking stat buffs are broken.

the different man at arms types have plausible base stats. also compared to levies. the option to boost their stats by stupid amounts is what breaks them.

building buffs would be fine if they didn't stack. boosting archers from 25 to 35 damage or whatever is a plausible effect when they have good infrastrcuture to support them. boosting them to 150 damage is just plain nonsense. that's like replacing their bows with machine guns.

and the stacking is pretty much a "human player only" thing since the AI is too unfocussed and just generally too dumb to play the stat stacking game.

heck, even if you'd give them control over an unstoppable player empire with a fully decked out "space marine" quality level MaA army, they'd probably find a way to lose it all within 1-2 generations.