Party size. Scaling needs attention

[Bronoomsie]

I've played on hard and or normal difficulty with hard simulation with free and region locked exploration. In all cases I've built my party to around 20 companions and a few animals each time. In one case I fight 5 or 6 defenders. So, no contest. On the other side I now face 25 to 40 opponents and the battles just take too long, especially with the random placement all over the map. I'm not complaining, just looking for better scalability. Perhaps a number of party members should be capped? It's a tough one because its' fun to have all the builds in your troop, but maybe the cost of tis is too much? I would like the game to scale accordingly based on my party size. So if I only play with 5 companions can the game scale accordingly? If the game allows so many companions, I understand it's a choice, but now the fun factor is out because the battles are too long. If you are in Ludern with so many roving animals, it becomes really bad. I'm wondering what the optimize party size should be.

[drake_hound]

Lurden road animals are the only one who scale to ridiculous size.. all others are ok 10 more or less then your party..
Lurden Animals are totally stupid with double the party numbers +10 .. cause they take into account you are fighting them with the guards patrol.. which often doesn't happen and they just kill the guard patrol. and then hang around with ubersize pack till they get killed off.

[Jǫrmungandr]

I'm envisioning a party size roughly the same size as you. 18-24. My question is why must the enemy always have roughly the same or more numbers than us ? You think the battles get too crowded and take too long. Doesn't really bother me, but my party is only about 14 or so at this stage...

Anyway, my point is that the enemy could potentially have significantly fewer numbers than us if they were bigger and stronger than humans. You have plague rats in large numbers, and plague-ridden humans in Ludern, you have giant mosquitos also in Ludern and so forth. They all have big numbers, big swarms, and are individually not formidable enemies. Only in swarms.

But if we were occasionally fighting real, big monsters, like trolls and the whatnot, much bigger than humans, potentially having major advantages, more strenght, more endurance, more constitution, much more movement and more action points to spend each turn, tearing through our ranks, then at least every battle would not neeed to be so crowded.

You could have 12 mercs against a single troll. You slay the troll, but you also suffer 4 casualties, because such is the power and might of the troll.

You fight a drake (smaller than a dragon obvisuly), same thing. Ogre, same thing. Wyvern, same thing. Yeti, same thing. Fewer enemies, very strong, very deadly. Some enemies/battles should be like this. it doesn't have to be 20 vs 20 all the time.

The devs could really have played around with that stuff. Plenty possibilites.

[Red Rum]

iv had as many as 62 ... the battles dont bother me its the cost of my troops .. iv worked it down to under 35 ,, the cost is still very high ... when i rest it cost me over 1k .... when the game first started money was not a problem .. running out of food was.. now my troops are all over lvl 8 and i cant make the money to keep them....

[Bronoomsie]

60 plus guys is like an army, so it makes sense that the logistics of war are just too high a cost to endure. The game is about a mercenary company after all. Nevertheless, the game is delivering content that accommodates to different player wants. So, the design supports a huge variation in play style. That's a huge positive. For me it's now an exercise in tedium with 10 out of 20 mercs with maxed upgraded skills. As an example, an executioner on level 7 with valorous duel and an obliteration attack or malestrom at 150% damage on first hit generally, (unless the targets are guarded) can kill 3, or 4 with placement luck on the first turn when you follow up with wrath.  If your character before can use destabilization with an incapacitating throw, this becomes even more certain. If as your 1st two actions you kill 6 of the opponents, (often rangers or bowmen, and certainly the leader) the activation system swings heavily in your favor and you just kill more things quicker and the enemy never activates. So ultimately, while its a good strategy, it's no longer challenging.  Again, no complaints, just putting this out there. Now, if the enemy were played by other players, then you could maybe have a good fight, but the AI will just walk into 2 spear walls, again giving you a 2-activation advantage. 

[Kruppe]

Originally posted by Bronoomsie:

I've played on hard and or normal difficulty with hard simulation with free and region locked exploration. In all cases I've built my party to around 20 companions and a few animals each time. In one case I fight 5 or 6 defenders. So, no contest. On the other side I now face 25 to 40 opponents and the battles just take too long, especially with the random placement all over the map. I'm not complaining, just looking for better scalability. Perhaps a number of party members should be capped? It's a tough one because its' fun to have all the builds in your troop, but maybe the cost of tis is too much? I would like the game to scale accordingly based on my party size. So if I only play with 5 companions can the game scale accordingly? If the game allows so many companions, I understand it's a choice, but now the fun factor is out because the battles are too long. If you are in Ludern with so many roving animals, it becomes really bad. I'm wondering what the optimize party size should be.

Optimal party size - many of us who've played the game since February talk about this frequently - some of us use no more than 7 or 8 while some of us use 14-16 - i don't believe many of us use any more than 1 or 2 bears - and the odd other animal, as needed strategically to do a few things.

In my four games going I have 8, 10, 12 and 14 as my party size - the smoothest game is the one with 8 - battles are quick - but saying that with 14 my battles are also quick - rarely do they last more than a round.

What's critical to your party size is how you set up smaller attacking teams within your larger team - my mercs pair up with each other in twos - so with 8 i've got 4 mini teams, and so on... as merc party greater than 14 or 16 becomes slower and it takes longer to work out where to place guys before combat. the more mercs you have the more food you need - keep it simple :) in free mode your enemies will scale - in region locked, apart from guards, the enemies will not scale