Replenishment Penalty for Imperial Units is stupid

[Xal]

It makes sense on Mandate of Heave DLC to have that replenishment penalty since you start in Turn 1 wih a Doomstack full of Imperial Units.

But on the Vanilla Campaign, (190CE and 194CE) it's stupid for too many reasons:

- 1) By the time you unlock Imperial Units, you already have your armies full of Dragon Units. (Onyx/Azure/Pearls; whichever dragon unit you targeted first) so with such a replenishment penalty, why would you want to replace your Dragons by Imperial Units ?

- 2) When you're a tryharder player that optimize everything, it just makes you avoid them completely. The -20% replenishment penalty is too strong. You dont have 1 turn to spare for your Units to replenish when the key is to be offensive as hell on higher difficulties to win.

- 3) To continue in terms of tryharding, no serious player will ever recruit Imperial Unit unless he's in the very very late game (like me) and wants to get some fun by switching his Armies to full Imperial Units Armies. So at that point, nerfing the imperial Units by nerfing their replenishment is kinda pointless. You're gonna steamroll the map ANYWAY whether it's with Imperial Units or with Dragon Units or any other army composition.

- 4) Why Protectors of Heaven and Defenders of Earth are not affected by that replenishment penalty, lol ? After all, they're also Imperial Units. And they're the first Imperial Units released during the launch of the game. They added that replenishment penalty just on the New Imperial Units... weird isnt it ?

- 5) It's written nowhere that Imperial Units comes with a Replenishment Penalty, even when scrolling on them, you just see -x% penaly replenishment but no reason whatsoever. Clearly a poorly taken decision from CA. Maybe a rushed one.
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Do you guys think like me or I'm wrong ?

[veronicalin101]

I completely agree with you, I have play this game for 600+ hours, and I have never recruit full imperial units army, only 1-2 unit in 1 army group.
The reason is same as you stated, by the time I unlock imperial army and become emperor , the major enemies are already been destroyed or hardly can compete with me

[Gonger]

I agree it's annoying, but I believe it's there to prevent the opponent AI from replenishing such a strong unit back to full instantaneously... but then AI force marches after losing a fight so that rarely happens anyways.

If you want to give CA credit (which might be undue) is that it favors human judgment over strict AI-like thinking, and maybe a historical lesson that it's not the most expensive unit and armies that win wars.

I'm with you, but honestly I don't really care too much about those units anyways since they're underwhelming and late game. Just extra flavored units.

[RustyRed]

I envy people who are able to recruit azure/onyx dragons. This is what my tree looks like by the time I finish almost all my campaigns (~110 turns).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1925615115

Sometimes, I skip the green tree entirely and put them into red.

That being said, I'd recruit imperial units if I adjusted my reforms slightly. My style is more optimized for recruiting imperial units anyway, so I don't have a problem with the penalty.

I'd say it's a nerf for hyper aggressive players who can rush the game to victory in 70 turns or less since Imperial Units are very strong for auto resolving.

[Xal]

Originally posted by xuthan:

I envy people who are able to recruit azure/onyx dragons. This is what my tree looks like by the time I finish almost all my campaigns (~110 turns).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1925615115

Sometimes, I skip the green tree entirely and put them into red.

That being said, I'd recruit imperial units if I adjusted my reforms slightly. My style is more optimized for recruiting imperial units anyway, so I don't have a problem with the penalty.

I'd say it's a nerf for hyper aggressive players who can rush the game to victory in 70 turns or less since Imperial Units are very strong for auto resolving.

Haha you're not the only one, dude. The Reforms Tree is too slow paced with the arbitrary limit of 1 reform per 5 turns.

I also won my campaign from a long time ago but this time I decided to nearly paint the Whole Map and finish the Whole Tree because I'm motivated to do so. Also it's fun to battle the Namnan tribes introduced by the new DLC on their lands !

There's a new soundtrack, new maps, new units to face, etc, when you battle them so it makes me continue my campaign for once !
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Glad to see that you guys agree with me, anyway : D

[Jerroser]

Part of the issue that it feels all lot of the high tier units groups were designed in isolation from one another without really much thought in to what how much their roles would cross over.

With the Dragon units being designed more to slot in to armies of of regular mid tier units as the elites of an army rather than its core in the leaning towards the direction the player has chosen to focus their reforms in. While the Protectors/Defenders are there specifically to serve as a generic Elite force just to distinguish the armies used by the three Emperors once the campaign reaches that stage.

But the Imperial units were added in slightly later, intended mainly for Liu Bian to represent the forces of the main Han armies while it still held power. With them being designed to function all together in a an army but with the replenishment penalty being there more to represent the idea that they have to go through much more intensive training first. And yes they really are just a more expanded version of what the Protectors/Defenders are supposed to represent.

[RCMidas]

Originally posted by Xal:

Haha you're not the only one, dude. The Reforms Tree is too slow paced with the arbitrary limit of 1 reform per 5 turns.

What's interesting about the original start date and the time it takes to fill out the reforms is that your last reform is completed within a year or two of the surrender of Wu to the Jin. The end of the reforms - including, notably, the only one which increases your Corruption, thereby signifying the start of the next dynastic collapse - is also the end of the Three Kingdoms.