Aristocracy is Unfun and Redundant

[The Big Brzezinski]

I'm trying my damnedest to make Aristocracy work. Went nature and arcane mostly, summoning animals to take pressure off gold flow. I've done this sort of thing in the past, and it works well enough.

Unfortunately it does nothing to mitigate Aristocracy's fiddliness. I can't use summons in the field because it causes them to join the wrong house. I can't combine the outputs of my cities to quickly concentrate force into a single army for the same reason. I instead have to keep track of what units are from which towns and with which heroes. The price for using this culture's mechanic for extra health and morale is mind-numbing management overhead rather than a meaningful competitive downside.

You know, this concept of rulers and subordinate subfactions was already reflected in the vassalage system. Your ruler and vassals' leader heroes are the liege lords. Your vassals pay you tribute in resources and troops, and take instructions from you concerning targets to attack, but they manage their economic and military affairs themselves. In exchange, you promise to defend them according to your own discretion with rally troops, your own military actions, or both. Your relationship is a lot closer to actual feudalism than the feudal culture depicts. By contrast, aristocracy just means matching troops and heroes with the same town names into the same forces. You're still in charge of every little thing the troops and cities do, but with added paperwork.

Calling it feudal culture was fine as a flavorful description of theme, but actually making it function like a feudal system on top of and within the existing vassalage framework just looks ridiculous. You already did this idea in a much better way. Sticking this much lesser implementation of it alongside just invites unfavorable comparison, making it look even worse than it already is.

[jagholin]

How does the summoning not work exactly? If you summon a creature on top of an army, it should join the house of the hero that is leading the army, and if you summon it on top of a city, it should join city's house. At least this is how it was described in one of the dev's livestreams, and if it doesn't work, it's probably a bug

[Gundalf]

You do not need to have units in the same army as their Liege Lord for the combat bonus, it is enough as long as the Lord is on the same battlefield. Only the -10% upkeed and hp regen on map requires the same army.

Also +10 hp and 5 Morale seems a lot weaker than the old +20% damage, which scaled whith order damage boosts.

However the main advantage I see for Aristocracy over Monarchy is the Liege Guard, as Tier 3 draftable Shield or Polearm units are quite valuable as a main frontline unit. While the Longbow can easily be replaced by Gladerunner or Zephyr Archer.

[Azunai]

tried it a bit, didn't like the implementation. i think it would be all right if you could assign units to a different house when they are in the territory of their city or in the army of the liege.

[Arthur two sheds Jackson]

demand a lot more planification then normal playthrought if you want the bonus. cant just create units with any city nearby to plug the hole in an army, kinda restrictive, it was difficult to play haha, like you must upgrade any city fast if you want tier 3 unit of every respective houses

[Sifer2]

Originally posted by Azunai:

tried it a bit, didn't like the implementation. i think it would be all right if you could assign units to a different house when they are in the territory of their city or in the army of the liege.

The whole point of it is giving you an extra buff with the downside of needing to actually build Draft buildings in all cities instead of just your capital. They said being able to swap houses for the units would just let people exploit to get around it.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Originally posted by Gundalf:

You do not need to have units in the same army as their Liege Lord for the combat bonus, it is enough as long as the Lord is on the same battlefield. Only the -10% upkeed and hp regen on map requires the same army.

Also +10 hp and 5 Morale seems a lot weaker than the old +20% damage, which scaled whith order damage boosts.

However the main advantage I see for Aristocracy over Monarchy is the Liege Guard, as Tier 3 draftable Shield or Polearm units are quite valuable as a main frontline unit. While the Longbow can easily be replaced by Gladerunner or Zephyr Archer.

Liege guard is just fine. I have no complaints about it.

Where it becomes fiddly is when you take that army consisting of stacks led by heroes and split it to expand. It'll likely be made up of troops from your starting city with your ruler in charge, so all the troops benefit. If you then want to expand with a second large force, things get complicated. You need to keep track of which troops came from the same city as the hero you're having lead the new army and which came from the current leader's, which troops are coming to replace them and from where, if those cities can even make a viable army at your stage of the game, and probably other factors that escape me at the moment. Usually a big expansion like this can at least be done precipitously after finishing a big income increase like a merchant's guild, or to replenish lost troops after a nasty fight. Aristocracy does this just as well, you just have to keep track of so much more to avoid making stupid clerical errors that rob you of the cultural mechanic that is the whole reason you picked Aristocracy in the first place.

Consider this; if the mechanic was simply to apply a health and morale bonus to all no-hero troops based on the highest renown a hero present at the fight had, it would be exactly the same as if you had done all this bookkeeping properly. It would be no stronger and cost the same despite being easier to use.

[Baron]

I dunno, I kinda like it? It's fiddly, sure, but in a way that makes for an interesting challenge. Monarchy exists to give us the option to skip that challenge when we don't want it and still use Feudal, so I'd say they did a good thing, overall.

Still, you're right that it's a lot of management, and I really have to be in the mood for it to like it. Who knows, maybe Triumph will make more tweaks after collecting game data and watching how the community reacts to it.

Compared to the old Feudal? Massive improvement, IMO.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Originally posted by Sifer2:

Originally posted by Azunai:

tried it a bit, didn't like the implementation. i think it would be all right if you could assign units to a different house when they are in the territory of their city or in the army of the liege.

The whole point of it is giving you an extra buff with the downside of needing to actually build Draft buildings in all cities instead of just your capital. They said being able to swap houses for the units would just let people exploit to get around it.

Baseline feudal draft is already plenty for making armies. Mainly you need to supply the gold and mana to pay for them, and there are many good options for that.

What you don't have options for is getting out of the headaches Aristocracy adds to sorting and replenishing armies in any situation other than zone defense in home territory.

[Astasia]

Then play Monarchy. Aristocracy was introduced as a fiddly complex RP heavy subculture, they basically said in the dev diary it wasn't going to be for everyone. Your idea of fiddly is what other people consider an interesting twist to gameplay, your idea of redundancy is what other people consider fulfilling a fantasy. You can't really control vassals all that well, they aren't part of your empire, they are a 3rd party that you have limited sway over and pay no attention to whatsoever in most cases. Aristocracy is not about controlling external "vassals," it's about controlling "houses" within your empire. It's an entirely different concept.

[Humble]

Originally posted by Gundalf:

You do not need to have units in the same army as their Liege Lord for the combat bonus, it is enough as long as the Lord is on the same battlefield. Only the -10% upkeed and hp regen on map requires the same army.

Also +10 hp and 5 Morale seems a lot weaker than the old +20% damage, which scaled whith order damage boosts.

However the main advantage I see for Aristocracy over Monarchy is the Liege Guard, as Tier 3 draftable Shield or Polearm units are quite valuable as a main frontline unit. While the Longbow can easily be replaced by Gladerunner or Zephyr Archer.

I think you can turn Liege Guard into Heavy cavalry by had race of master mounts or so. Shock and shield unit is not same thing, I guess. shield had lower attack power than Knight do, but it's little same, I guess. I wish archer able to mount, but other faction do allowed mount, just not feudal sadly, I think industrious and dark do had those but not feudal, I don't understand why not archer can had mount even you had master mount by custom race traits.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Then play Monarchy. Aristocracy was introduced as a fiddly complex RP heavy subculture, they basically said in the dev diary it wasn't going to be for everyone. Your idea of fiddly is what other people consider an interesting twist to gameplay, your idea of redundancy is what other people consider fulfilling a fantasy. You can't really control vassals all that well, they aren't part of your empire, they are a 3rd party that you have limited sway over and pay no attention to whatsoever in most cases. Aristocracy is not about controlling external "vassals," it's about controlling "houses" within your empire. It's an entirely different concept.

Monarchy doesn't have T3 shield units. It has T3 archers. It requires different tomes to build a composition. It's also geared for turning your ruler into the leader of a doom stack even more than one usually does, and that's not how I play. I try to have armies that are large, balanced, and flexible to deal with a hostile map. Classic Feudal could be mounted on wolves and augmented with wildspeakers and glade runners for such a doctrine.

Aristocracy is not complex. It's very simple. It may seem complex because the sheer quantity of very simple things you have to do is great, but this is a fallacy. It takes more effort. What it doesn't take is more skill.


For comparison, look at Dark. Ranged units weaken enemies, melee units exploit this debuff. Lots of tomes add weakness. You can work a lot of things into this mechanic, from wolf mounts to bronze golems to fetid legion and many more.

Or how about Industrious? Build up stacks of bolstered defense and resistance, then convert them into offensive buffs and healing. The warding and transmutation tomes almost seem custom made to fit into this.

Reavers invert it. Melee units inflict marked, making enemies take more damaged from powerful ranged attacks. The war spoils thing is... weird but it does mean they have access to two T3 units and expanded diplomatic and "recruitment" options.

Old Feudal's thing was synergizing with adjacency buffs better that other cultures, like those from form traits and the construct tome. It was a mundane bonus rather than a magical one, something you had to counter in situ with pushes and aoe. But if you stuck together, Feudal could do great things.

I could go on like that for every culture except today's Feudal. Monarchy I guess is great for having one stack of T5 mythics and a city structure that stacks seamlessly with Imperialists. Aristocracy, when you use it properly, gives you more morale and health. I have no idea what you're supposed to do with that. Food, draft, and crits is already Barbarian's thing, except they're better at it without having to go through this rigmarole.

[Repairman Mack]

I am now very motivated to play feudal aristocracy! Coucy a la merveille! Thank you for recommending it!

[The Big Brzezinski]

Originally posted by Repairman Mack:

I am now very motivated to play feudal aristocracy! Coucy a la merveille! Thank you for recommending it!

Please do. Tell us what you find out afterwards.

[Baron]

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

Aristocracy is not complex. It's very simple. It may seem complex because the sheer quantity of very simple things you have to do is great, but this is a fallacy. It takes more effort. What it doesn't take is more skill.

I like this point. It really doesn't take more skill or a change in mindset to play Aristocracy - just a well-developed grasp of the basics. The difference between our opinions is, I think that's a good thing, and it reinforces Feudal's intended role. After all, them not having a specific gimmick like other cultures is kind of the point.

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

Old Feudal's thing was synergizing with adjacency buffs better that other cultures, like those from form traits and the construct tome. It was a mundane bonus rather than a magical one, something you had to counter in situ with pushes and aoe. But if you stuck together, Feudal could do great things.

I could go on like that for every culture except today's Feudal. Monarchy I guess is great for having one stack of T5 mythics and a city structure that stacks seamlessly with Imperialists. Aristocracy, when you use it properly, gives you more morale and health. I have no idea what you're supposed to do with that. Food, draft, and crits is already Barbarian's thing, except they're better at it without having to go through this rigmarole.

Both Monarchy and Aristocracy give significant unit discounts now, so the new deal for Feudal is two different methods of "whatever you want to do, just a lot of it". The devs mentioned wanting Feudal to be kind of a vanilla starter culture, and I'd say these changes accomplish that better than "unless you take an adjacency trait in every build, you're wasting the cultural synergy".

Besides, Feudal (and Aristocracy in particular) have been given a new niche: cavalry shenanigans. No other culture gets three cav units in their roster, and there are a plethora of directions to take that, including the old Tome of Beasts standby you mentioned, since Wildspeakers are cav and Unleash Beast still works on Knights and Liege Guards. Coincidentally, the "Greenfang Knights" are the first faction I ever built in AoW4, and they were the first thing I tried when the beta dropped. I'll miss the adjacency version, but the build still works.

And here's the thing - now that Militia units are a gold-based summon, I don't have to spend Draft or Mana replacing a T1 unit that will spend the entire first 20 turns of the game repeatedly disintegrating like toilet paper in a typhoon. Even in a world where Feudal truly had lost all synergy and direction, I'd let that happen just to have basic playability.

[Azunai]

Originally posted by Sifer2:

Originally posted by Azunai:

tried it a bit, didn't like the implementation. i think it would be all right if you could assign units to a different house when they are in the territory of their city or in the army of the liege.

The whole point of it is giving you an extra buff with the downside of needing to actually build Draft buildings in all cities instead of just your capital. They said being able to swap houses for the units would just let people exploit to get around it.

Yeah that's my point. They didn't think that through. Aristocratic would still have a different unique building line, unique t3 and unique leader buffs compared to monarchy. There is no reason to force stupid gameplay on top of that. The two subcultures are already distinct enough without having to actually build units in specific cities.