Do you balance armies or do you doomstack?

[♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥]

Just curious about this because i noticed since legend of totalwar became more popular on youtube and reading the forums that alot of people seems to do doomstacks and enjoy them. Personally I always balance my armies to keep the immersion and I've never been drawn to doomstacks.

I'm not here to ♥♥♥♥ on anyone just genuinely curious what you guys think about this and what are people takes on doomstacks?

Should CA put units caps in WHIII to have a more lore friendly experience in campaign?

[yuzhonglu]

Whatever is most efficient, money wise.

1. As Counts I never doomstack since hordes of skelle trash with Shadow Magic vampires is just better.
2. As High Elves I always doomstack due to awesome late game econ and Sisters of Avelorn.

3. As Dark Elves I rarely doomstack since Darkshards are just too good to not have in an army.

4. As Bretonnia I never doomstack since peasant mobs and trebuchets with paladins can beat almost anything, cheaply.

5. As Sisters of Twilight, I doomstack every army with hawk riders. In fact, other than heroes and the occasional Zoat for siege attacker, that's the only unit I get for every army.

6. As TK you fill out your armies with the highest tier you can get since everything is free.

[A.Pot]

My go to strategy in every Total War game is to make most of my armies composed of basic units.

In Warhammer this means mostly units recruited from a level 1 or 2 barracks with a few siege weapons thrown in.

My Legendary Lords though I make armies themed after the character. So for example Alith Anar will have lots of Shadow Warriors / Walkers, Ungrim has lots of Slayers and Aranessa has lots of her pirate militia.

Occasionally though in the late game, I will sometimes make expensive armies.

[Lucipurr, The Silly One.]

Personally I avoid proper doomstacking. My end game HE army is like this
1 Archmage of Life
8 Silverin Guard
2 Swordmasters of heoth
4 Sisters of avelorn
3 Arcane Pheonixes
2 bolt throwers.

Maybe remove a silverin guard for a different mage, or throw a random combat hero in like a handmaiden.

[Mr Robert House]

Depends, i do both as high elves, the doomstacks do the heavy lifting. Same with dark elves.

As skaven i use the weapon team summon doom stack, but that’s because i don’t even know what a balanced skaven army looks like (stormvirmin obstruct rattling guns, and rat ogres are pretty useless on very hard, flayers could work but they’re vulnerable to enemy cav so idk)

As bretonia i cav spam but have a balanced army in the early to mid game.

As vampires i spam skeletons, but 6 vampires is basically a doom stack and that’s what i give isabella.

[amanstaett]

i go balance and themed armies all the time doomstacks just seem to unrealitce to me thouse i might overbalance some of my armies like skaven and dwarfs with ranged units and cav with bretonia

[JeffreyFo]

Most of my armies are themed in some viable way, although by late game ill probably have a doomstack or two as well because I usually find them fun as well. Just not when it's the only thing.

[Xaphnir]

I often tend toward doomstacks without much variation because they require fewer buildings, so you can get them earlier and with less investment. What am I going to do? Grab a bunch of Sisters of Avelorn with one building at T4, or wait until T5 and get a more varied doomstack from a bunch of buildings?

Might be worth it for CA to run another proving grounds with a bunch of experimental changes to buildings.

And there's one other reason I don't like highly varied armies for the most part: red line buffs discourage doing so. Red line buffs are practically limited to two classes of units for that lord. You could put more points in, but those points would usually be better spent elsewhere. And this means that if you want to mix in one unit of a different type than most of your army for a specialist purpose, you're discouraged from doing so as that unit will underperform.

[Funky Monk]

I personally do balanced armies because I don't find Doomstacks fun.

Should CA add unit Caps? i don't think they should do that for the Campaign. Unit caps is a thing that makes TK unique. Maybe it could work as a togglable option

[franz]

Originally posted by yuzhonglu:

Whatever is most efficient, money wise.

me too.

[marcaroh157]

i have ♥♥♥♥ micro so i just doomstack because theyare easy to use and i have fun with them but whatever floats your boat

[Zane87]

Always balanced armies. I hate Doomstack and find them no fun. Also use unit caps mods and no lightning strike mod which means battles are a lot more challenging but fun.

[DedZedNub]

(Ok, so here's my quick reaction to this, for the few pennies it may be worth).

I watch a lot of Legend of Total War videos, but I must say that I'm not really sure what is the difference between a "Doomstack" and so-called Balanced Army. I'll elaborate.

I mean, I get that a Balanced Army might supposedly work well in most conditions and against most types of enemy Army composition, but I don't see NECESSARILY why a Doomstack might not do the same thing.

Let me go further. I don't see NECESSARILY why a Doomstack might not have within it the necessary flexibility in construct, that is its unit make-up, to be balanced.

A Doomstack, in the more general gaming vernacular, simply means that it is an optimized stack of army with a composition that can usually roll the map within being stopped by the opposition. However, it in NO WAY REQUIRES that the Doomstack itself not be balanced in unit make-up. It simply requires that it roll over the opposition in most cases.

In a sense, what I'm saying is that it is simply a case of optimizing a stack to roll the map, which always has some limitation which is its flaw. Because, sooner or later, even an A.I. will put up as opposition either a situation or an army that will defeat your singular make-up of that "perfect army", since in general, in a game of the breadth of units that TWWH series has, you cannot actually create a one size fits all perfect army that rolls the whole board map.

I don't even see this, then, as a valid question, as it is possible in many cases to perhaps optimize your Doomstack by removing several repeated super units by more balanced other units, which carry as much doom effect, via their different styles, attributes, and supporting abilities to the rest of the stack.

This concept of Doom Anything is really rather a misnomer. I don't think Legend of Total War actually believes in a one size fits all Doomstack, which is why he rates so many, then goes into the details of why they won't always work, etc. Also, Doomstacks or DoomWhatevers, are a simplified concept in almost every genre of card, board, or computer game.

I'm sort of belittling the actual comparision implied in the question. See, when we say every stack really ought to have at least one magic user -- well that's common sense. Winds of Magic are there to be used for no additional cost, and mages are capable of defense, support, healing, and attack using that Winds of Magic resource. Similarly, you can make the case for any engineer type unit that increases effectiveness of any ranged unit using ammo by increasing ammo available, accuracy, and/or rate of fire. Do we call those notions also Doomstacking or do we call it min-maxing or strategy or tactics or common sense?

I would say that anything that furthers the aim of success is the aim of a strategist and optimizing those within moderation are not mere Doom-whatevering, but simply good gameplay.

As to what people now say, online, is this buzzword or another, well, I find the last 3-25 years, depending on one's perspective, the growing Age of Hyperbole and not the age of sensible thought.

[Migromul]

I wonder, what's a "doomstack" in the first place: HE with 12 bows and 8 spears? Is this already a "doomstack"? (or even more bows...?)

Or is it only a doomstack, if you have a lot of at least T4-units in the army? Is alit anar with 20 shadow stalkers already a "doomstack"?

BTW: how do you "doomstack" as TK? at least with T4 or higher? You don't have enough units for a T4/T5-Doomstack as TK... Or did I miss something?

BTW2: how do you afforrd T4/T5 doomstacks? I'm just not able to do that...

[Jukelo]

A Doomstack is an army which does exceedingly well in auto-resolve or is effective beyond reason and without requiring much micro in manual battles.

In any case, I play TW to have enjoyable and somewhat challenging manual battles, so I go for themed armies I know will be interesting to play.

[Sn3z]

CA should do unit caps but it needs to be in a very specific manor we need a class based system, how some units are classed would have to be carefully considered to fit the game's design.