Seals victory is terribly unbalanced

[Darroc]

I liked the idea of the Seals, defending a few key points from the ai players instead of the late game becoming a slog as you march to each player's capitol.
Each seal has like a 800-1000 army defending them which is fair, it's to prevent players from taking them too early before any other player can even see them.

However, every seal needs to be defended from random ai armies that spawn on your seals every 3 turns or so which is far too common. These armies start just as powerful as the 800-1000 stack you just killed which is already a bit too much. But these armies scale way, way too fast. just on normal difficulty around turn 100 I was fighting two stacks for a total of 2k-2.5k strength that spawn all max level containing tier 4 and 5 units while the other AI players just, of course like always, sit around and do nothing. They would park a scout every now and then on a seal to amass points, but no way in hell would a normal difficulty AI trigger a seal victory I can guarantee it.

I'd reduce the power of these spawning armies by a lot, reduce the spawn rate or maybe even delete them, and make the AI prioritize your occupied seals instead of running around and pillaging a random province every now and then.

Only 0.1% have completed a seals victory so far so I don't know if I'm alone in this or not.

[Wish Maker]

Only 0.1% have finished -- because A) I like my games super duper long; and B) crap have been buggy as HELL; and I'm waiting for a few more fixes. Basic stuff isn't work right -- BASIC STUFF. So yeah, haven't exactly dived in deep to it yet.

[Kinja]

I didn't bother with seals victory because it was just much easier to run up on the enemy faction and take it out. I also had a really weird thing happen where I left a single unit guarding the one seal I took on the map and it had three 1.2k strength armies spawn around it to retake it but they just never did. They sat there for like 20+ turns and never attacked the one wolf guarding it.

[Balekai]

I tried Seals last night on the last DLC story mission and observed a lot of what has been said here.

I was playing on Easy just to test out the story mission mechanics. My build was a Reaver, Silver-Tongud Bannerlord Order/Materium vassal/liege abuser. Now the issues could have been compounded by the fact that I still hadn't figured out a Reaver frontline and army sustain as many players seem to have issues with (I eventually settled on, and had the best luck with, Bronze Golems). I also buggered up some economic growth and city placement because of some Edward scripted story pressure and terrain changing among other things.

First off I noticed what Kinja did: The spawning armies never attacked. This could be a world threat level issue with playing on Easy. If they would have attacked quickly/ever I would have been in trouble.

Trouble I had anyways because I treated the stacks as if they would attack immediately just to eliminate the threats. I wasn't sure if the stacks would just keep spawning over eachother. and cause real problems.

I was defending 2-3 seals. I had all three possible AI leaders in an alliance with Edward gimped, about a half dozen full vassalage Free Cities supporting me, tons of resources coming in to support large liege spam, a liege rally on a 3-4 base turn refresh, I summoned non stop copper golems on seals, pushed out Bronze golems later game and built teleporter outposts nearby and still could hardly keep pace with seal stack spawn.

Enemy seal stacks that were only like two stacks of 0.7-1.5 power on Easy (they turned into 1.4-1.7 stacks by 70-90ish Seal points), but still partially wiped a lot of my 3 stack, T2-3ish offensives because of enemy composition.

I'm not sure how someone who's actually under enemy faction pressure, in higher difficulties, and trying to maintain a large non-Vassal Empire can pull this off. I say that because my Vassals took care of themselves and their own development while I still got a lot of resources to support "Seal operations." I would have hated having to defend all my cities and deal with Seal spawning too.

One thing I wish I had as an option for was the ability to war coordinate with free cities vs. Seals, since they act just like a spawner in many ways. I found the new Free City War Coordination helped me clear out far away spanners and deal with Edward. It would have done wonders if I could focus those War coordination on the seals enemies (not sure how this would work though. Some AI or command like "help with defnd "x" seal?).

I could only get some help with by chance when Free City AI would park a group near a bunch of my stacks preparing to attack seal enemies (if the free city provinces were adjacent to the seal). Then i would cheese my attack so it included the 1-2 free City stacks to save me some stack wipes.

I think my unit composition and support was crap though. If I was playing a very self sustaining stack composition with lots of AOE heals and buffs, I think maintaining multiple seals would have been easier.

[IonizedMercury]

"Winning is hard and that sux, I shouldn't have to earn my victory it should be given to me free of charge!"

[Kinja]

Originally posted by Balekai:

The stacks are the same size on normal. And they didn't move on normal either. I assume it's just a bug and it will get fixed. Either way they're too much of a pain to hold to bother with once it will get fixed, they'll require a full stack of strong units if it keeps spawning 900-1.2k stacks every 10 turns (i think) to take it back, especially since you can't claim the province they're on so you'll have to move the stack off to heal and keep pumping new units out to replace the losses. It's simpler to just go for any of the other victory conditions instead.

[Balekai]

Originally posted by Kinja:

Originally posted by Balekai:

The stacks are the same size on normal. And they didn't move on normal either. I assume it's just a bug and it will get fixed. Either way they're too much of a pain to hold to bother with once it will get fixed, they'll require a full stack of strong units if it keeps spawning 900-1.2k stacks every 10 turns (i think) to take it back, especially since you can't claim the province they're on so you'll have to move the stack off to heal and keep pumping new units out to replace the losses. It's simpler to just go for any of the other victory conditions instead.

It's starts at around every 10 turns, then goes down to aroumd 5 turns, then about every 3 turns. :/

Originally posted by IonizedMercury:

"Winning is hard and that sux, I shouldn't have to earn my victory it should be given to me free of charge!"

It isn't so much that it's too hard in of itself (it is pretty hard but challenging is good). It's more that it's too hard compared to other victory conditions making it a total "Victory Trap." Just as Kinja just stated above. A lot easier to just go for something else.

Take my game. I could have won that story mission about 30-60 turns earlier. I didn't because of story mission reasons as I wanted to defeat Edward more peacefully with Seals (as suggested by Laryssa), even though I have a stinking suspicious its the same ending for wiping the floor with him too lol.

I probably threw about 15-20 full stacks of 3 at Seals defending them every 10 than later every 3-5 turns, when I could have thrown 2-3 stacks at Edward once and ended him. Or even just war coordinated all my Vassals to attack him at the same time (I had to coordinate them to target some seal Guardians so they would finish him off with my allied Faction pressure haha).

As I wrote this i was thinking about it a bit more. The way the ticker works I believe is that it doesn't reset when you lose a seal. Whatever seal points you get you get.

In that way it could make more sense to not put so much effort into maintaining seal control and just ninja whatever points you can over a long game. That's still less appealing compared to other victory conditions.

When seal AI is fixed, the only strategy worth doing would be to raid seals close to an opposing player and start seal victories there. When you think the seal guardians are about to spawn you leave or just leave a single trash unit to rack up points. Or just leave once taking it save for one trah unit/stack.

Then when the enemy Guardian stack pops up just let them take it and the seal is someone else's problem. rinse repeat.

[Kinja]

Originally posted by Balekai:

I probably threw about 15-20 full stacks of 3 at Seals defending them every 10 than later every 3-5 turns, when I could have thrown 2-3 stacks at Edward once and ended him. Or even just war coordinated all my Vassals to attack him at the same time (I had to coordinate them to target some seal Guardians so they would finish him off with my allied Faction pressure haha).

As I wrote this i was thinking about it a bit more. The way the ticker works I believe is that it doesn't reset when you lose a seal. Whatever seal points you get you get.

In that way it could make more sense to not put so much effort into maintaining seal control and just ninja whatever points you can over a long game. That's still less appealing compared to other victory conditions.

When seal AI is fixed, the only strategy worth doing would be to raid seals close to an opposing player and start seal victories there. When you think the seal guardians are about to spawn you leave or just leave a single trash unit to rack up points. Or just leave once taking it save for one trah unit/stack.

Then when the enemy Guardian stack pops up just let them take it and the seal is someone else's problem. rinse repeat.

The AI seemed completely uninterested in the seals, i don't know if it's just because of that one mission or it will be that way in general. As you said though you can just win the mission with 3 decent stacks, Edward gets some very strong free army spawns the closer you get to taking him out but i managed just fine. I could have probably won even faster but i ♥♥♥♥♥♥ around quite a bit to test out the dragon lord because it was my first time playing one.

If the AI actually takes them in regular missions and the guardian issue gets fixed/changed then yes, your strategy is very much the correct one. There's little to no point in struggling to hold them, if you start out with a seals victory (probably for roleplaying because i don't see why bother otherwise) in mind just assemble a stealth capable group and simply go around stealing the AI's armies clear them, steal them and leave a cheap summon standing on them as you move between them. Even if the cheap summons only holds them for a couple turns it will still be very effective if you keep your stealth army moving.