If factions consider how much damage each side can do instead of army size. 100 levies<most men at arms.
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Your military strength in the top right includes your levies, when you view another character, their strength includes their levies, when you declare war it tells you your alliance's total troops and your opponents' total troops, including levies, faction rebellions are based on total troops, the battle predictor gives the side with the larger army better odds. The game is constantly telling you bigger number equals better, even though that's not reflected in the game's mechanics.
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
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The game also very clearly tells you the stats of these levies compared to the men at arms you have or could recruit...
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current levies would need A LOT of buffs to make them relevant, in fact you probably have to nerf MAAs too otherwise you need levies to have base stats of like 20 damage 20 toughness which just makes archers and especially skirmishers really bad in comparison.
Just look at my mod - MAAs are less than half in size, levies have 12 toughness at base and gain combined 6 damage and 8 toughness through innovations and they're still a bit too weak imo.
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if anything you WANT factions to revolt coz you can easily crush them with MAAs and redistribute land to better/more loyal vassals.
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Information being available in-game is not the same as it being clearly communicated to the player. The game uses total troops as an indication of relative power near-exclusively, clearly communicating that levies are important.
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Levies should be scrapped and be used as a sorta manpower pool, you can use your levies to replenish and train new MAA, MAA can be damaged or fully destroyed meaning you'll need to have enough manpower to remake a new MAA regiment this would make warfare far more damaging and battles more risky as there'll be actual consequences to losing. You should be able to raise raw recruits if you have no time to raise a new MAA regiment which would hopefully take at least a year or two or you don't have the gold to afford it, these raw recruits should be slightly stronger than current levies. As time goes on and new innovations are unlocked your raw levies should get stronger and stronger till they can match an MAA in strength, in order to show the slow professionalization of warfare from the 800's to the 1400's.
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Then that's an issue with that particular power indicator (and the mechanics behind the AI deciding that having a ton more levies than you do means it should try to attack you).
Start a game with a new character, look at the military tab for the first time and it tells you this immediately. If you are a completely new player, this tells you that these armoured footmen you have are three times as powerful and that levies never counter anyone. Surely that's clear enough?
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...which is used all over the place.
That tells you that MaA are much more powerful than levies, not that you should stop using levies altogether at a certain point, those are not the same thing and is something that is not obvious from the UI.
In fact, again, the game communicates the opposite (bigger number = stronger).
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I think you underestimate the intelligence of the average player who will open some tabs before invading people.
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Funnily enough this is something paradox is kind of transitioning from ever since 1.13:
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the feudal contracts are total BS by the way. Medieval realms did not have an income tax, and certainly not the "give me a percentage of your dudes to be MY dudes" levy system.
When AUH rolls out, western feudalism will be the most unrealistic government.
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Just scrape the current Levy & MAA system altogether, and tie units to buildings, just like CK2 used to do.
Instead of MAA stationing bonuses (that even medicore player easily stacks, and AI can not use at all, which makes warfare absurdly easy), buildings should just straight up increase number of units. Eg. Barracks, instead of giving some +15% modifiers to Heavy Infantry, should just give 100 Heavy Infantry.
We could even add options to diverge basic buildings, to add variety. Eg. Barracks upgrading to lvl 4 could either become Infantry Barracks (giving more Heavy Inf) or Pikemen Barracks (giving more Polearms).
Cultural Special Units would just replace these units in their respective Buildings (eg. stables in counties with Polish culture giving Konni instead of generic Light Cavalry etc.).
This would make game less prone to abuse, and AI more competent at warfare. Also, should Vassals provide not only Levies, but also pther units to their Liege, it would make Vassal contracts (and Vassals overall) more important.
Instead of MAA stationing bonuses (that even medicore player easily stacks, and AI can not use at all, which makes warfare absurdly easy), buildings should just straight up increase number of units. Eg. Barracks, instead of giving some +15% modifiers to Heavy Infantry, should just give 100 Heavy Infantry.
We could even add options to diverge basic buildings, to add variety. Eg. Barracks upgrading to lvl 4 could either become Infantry Barracks (giving more Heavy Inf) or Pikemen Barracks (giving more Polearms).
Cultural Special Units would just replace these units in their respective Buildings (eg. stables in counties with Polish culture giving Konni instead of generic Light Cavalry etc.).
This would make game less prone to abuse, and AI more competent at warfare. Also, should Vassals provide not only Levies, but also pther units to their Liege, it would make Vassal contracts (and Vassals overall) more important.
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Tying units to buildings means some cultures have access to wildly stronger variants of MaA.
And you'll be even more pressed on Cultural traditions to make sure you can get the units that you want.
Which in turns means even fewer uses for the less used traditions.
Players will still also be able to game the system far better than the AI.
And you'll be even more pressed on Cultural traditions to make sure you can get the units that you want.
Which in turns means even fewer uses for the less used traditions.
Players will still also be able to game the system far better than the AI.
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It'd be more concerning if the players are less able to game the system than the AI, having more limits on players is a natural consequence of a human being more capable of overcoming limits compared to what the current gaming world calls an AI.
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The AI will just use it's native MaA, while the player can customise their culture to have all the best MaA.
I fail to see the issue, honestly.
It'd still be a large improvement over the current situation.
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The "best" MAA are about 1/100 as impactful as average MAAs with the current insane bonus system
Even if your entire roster is, somehow, composed of nothing except horse archers, or elephant riders, or whatever, they still couldn't face a fraction of the size of this army that was completely crushed in this example:
What to do about levies
Levies are basically worthless. Despite being presented as an entire half of the tax system and an entire branch of your army, levies are only even worth raising as a duke/count and for bolstering your numbers for raiding/siege purposes. After...
The fact regular MAA can surpass 200~500 damage each, with just the nomad building and accolade upgrades cripples the game beyond any hope of repair, specially when you consider the hidden combat width system, these guys are just instantly wiping any front the enemy puts against them instantly. There is no real battle going on.
Specially when I'm forced to create a large army of soldiers with varying unit types from vassal levies too, and I'm forced to field a much larger army, subject to combat width, against a much stronger enemy army since the enemies also wouldn't be using the trash "levy" unit type either.
No matter the scenario we come up with it couldn't be anywhere as ridiculous as those screenshots
I don't believe there should be any +damage or toughness boosts for MAA anywhere in the game, that includes buildings and accolades, maybe a flat boost in quality after you unlock each research era, but a tiny one, roll back from the stacking +90% boosts to something like 5% or 10% in total, like EU4 does things.
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We should have some way of boosting levy damage and toughness, that comes much more natural to the AI than players.
Like maybe levies get boosted from every defensive pact and alliance.
Something players tend not to want too many of, unless they're going tall and thus won't go on a conquest spree.
But the AI loves doing that.
Like maybe levies get boosted from every defensive pact and alliance.
Something players tend not to want too many of, unless they're going tall and thus won't go on a conquest spree.
But the AI loves doing that.
I don't really see how this is a bad thing, a turkic ghazi warrior was undoubtedly more skilled in warfare on the open anatolian terrain than your average Serbian footman, certain cultures will have better MAA but it can be balanced by you simply having better generals and maybe some sort of discipline or morale system that adds more layers to the lame and bland systems we currently have.
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