Suggestion for wielder hiring and cap

[lokk23]

Something ive noticed while playing vs the AI is that there is no real penalty for killing armies outside of losing the troops and maybe a good artifact. When your wielder dies the cap goes down one, and you can immediately hire a new wielder and fill it with troops and march out. If you do this enough or abuse tutor to level up every wielder, theres no real real loss from using a lower level wielder. The AI seems to do this by default (why wouldnt you?) but it seems to create a situation where no matter how many armies you kill there is always another army marching towards you. I feel like the cap needs to stay when your wielder dies instead of dropping by 1 to let you instantly replace them.

That way it actually means something when an army dies and makes who you choose actually matter. It really doesnt matter who you pick if you can suicide a wielder to hire a new one to tutor/level up and always have a good leader ready to replace any that die. But if the cap doesnt decrease when a wielder dies, it forces you to actually consider what leaders you want to use and what kind of strategy you want to employ. It also stops the army spam since you actually have to either pay or wait for the respawn, giving a chance to actually get something done in the meantime.

[The.Bat]

Seems like a good idea, probably would require a more complex AI to implement properly tho

[Water Ｖａｐｏｒ Merchant]

The way it works is fine, this is a game about resource management. Killing the enemy armies is part of winning, but preventing the enemy from pulling a new wielder altogether hampers one of the main components of the game, that being your effectiveness at resource management. If you have the gold income, you can hire someone brand new right away. Or, if you've already cycled through multiple wielders on death by now, you can revive a long-deceased wielder and stock them up with reserve troops immediately. The main focal points of whether you win or not are "how fast can you produce units" and "how fast can you procure resources, primarily gold". Your main goal should be to outresource your enemy, then you can throw armies at him until he's bled dry and either isn't producing more than a handful of units each turn, or doesn't have enough gold to scrounge together an army.
The wielder caps are there to stop you doing much fighting before you've developed a strong economy. They're fairly trivial if you know what you're doing. You can hit a level 3 fortress no later than turn 8 or 9 provided the map you're on isn't a barren wasteland devoid of literally any resources.

[Darkcake99]

Idk if its been fixed yet but when I played 2 weeks ago enemy wielders were respawning way too quick with pretty hefty armies. Nothing too threatening to a kill stack but having the same person's armies bomb dive me as I approach a city over and over again is so annoying and feels like rough design.

Like you said, just a simple change to how wielder cap works would make this so much more bearable. To me it seems like a temporary system, when a hero runs out and dies to you, then instantly reappears with a small army on turn end.... idk how to feel about that (its technically a whole new person but they coincidentally have the same name and appearance and skills, wowo.) Not to mention the AI will often flick off their strongest heroes this way and become pathetically weak after a border skirmish.

Love the game regardless, but seeing less "obvious cheese" mechanics would be promising for multiplayer. HoMM3 hero spam nightmares are something still experienced by the community.

[lokk23]

Originally posted by Water Ｖａｐｏｒ Merchant:

The way it works is fine, this is a game about resource management. Killing the enemy armies is part of winning, but preventing the enemy from pulling a new wielder altogether hampers one of the main components of the game, that being your effectiveness at resource management. If you have the gold income, you can hire someone brand new right away. Or, if you've already cycled through multiple wielders on death by now, you can revive a long-deceased wielder and stock them up with reserve troops immediately. The main focal points of whether you win or not are "how fast can you produce units" and "how fast can you procure resources, primarily gold". Your main goal should be to outresource your enemy, then you can throw armies at him until he's bled dry and either isn't producing more than a handful of units each turn, or doesn't have enough gold to scrounge together an army.
The wielder caps are there to stop you doing much fighting before you've developed a strong economy. They're fairly trivial if you know what you're doing. You can hit a level 3 fortress no later than turn 8 or 9 provided the map you're on isn't a barren wasteland devoid of literally any resources.

The problem is also a matter of when i kill armies and pillage some buildings or raze a settlement, nothing is stopping you from popping out an army with 1 rat in it and repairing everything and stopping the raze. And considering your armies are usually not at home, there tends to be a backlog of units and you can instantly refill your army. So if i approach a main city get into a huge fight with the main army and win, if you have the money nothing stops you from spawning an army at the main city, filling it up to be the size of the first army, and fighting me again with a full stack after i JUST killed your main army. Its can completely invalidate you winning a huge battle since there can immediately be a sizable army attacking you literally the next turn.

[Water Ｖａｐｏｒ Merchant]

Originally posted by lokk23:

Originally posted by Water Ｖａｐｏｒ Merchant:

The way it works is fine, this is a game about resource management. Killing the enemy armies is part of winning, but preventing the enemy from pulling a new wielder altogether hampers one of the main components of the game, that being your effectiveness at resource management. If you have the gold income, you can hire someone brand new right away. Or, if you've already cycled through multiple wielders on death by now, you can revive a long-deceased wielder and stock them up with reserve troops immediately. The main focal points of whether you win or not are "how fast can you produce units" and "how fast can you procure resources, primarily gold". Your main goal should be to outresource your enemy, then you can throw armies at him until he's bled dry and either isn't producing more than a handful of units each turn, or doesn't have enough gold to scrounge together an army.
The wielder caps are there to stop you doing much fighting before you've developed a strong economy. They're fairly trivial if you know what you're doing. You can hit a level 3 fortress no later than turn 8 or 9 provided the map you're on isn't a barren wasteland devoid of literally any resources.

The problem is also a matter of when i kill armies and pillage some buildings or raze a settlement, nothing is stopping you from popping out an army with 1 rat in it and repairing everything and stopping the raze. And considering your armies are usually not at home, there tends to be a backlog of units and you can instantly refill your army. So if i approach a main city get into a huge fight with the main army and win, if you have the money nothing stops you from spawning an army at the main city, filling it up to be the size of the first army, and fighting me again with a full stack after i JUST killed your main army. Its can completely invalidate you winning a huge battle since there can immediately be a sizable army attacking you literally the next turn.

Razing kinda blows unless you have several armies in an area that can defend it until it's finished razing. Converting is better if you've only got one wielder in the area, since he can defend and prevent the enemy from immediately reclaiming it.
If you're on a death march and hitting an enemies' main fortress, you should be using multiple armies specifically to counter the scenario you just described. If you only send one giant army, you are probably going to run into the problem where by the time you start sieging your army will have dropped in size by 20-25%, and that will make dealing the final blow substantially harder if the enemy has a lot of gold and units in reserve. Having a back up army or two, either to fight instead of the first army or merely to resupply your main army with more troops, will ensure you more victories.
Like I said, this is a resource management game first and a tactical turn based war-sim second. You gotta think ahead and deduce how much gold and reserve troops your opponent is going to have and will levy against you if you decide to make an offensive. VS AI is probably easier to predict than VS humans, the AI always maxes resources but also never sells or buys from the market. They generally build their army at the wielder's creation and then won't attempt to grow or replenish them after the wielder leaves the fortress unless it's the very early game.