Should the game just get rid of levies?

[Voidian]

People are mentioning turning levies into manpower.

I don't remember the user name that suggested this, but someone else mentioned we could use the ROTK system instead.

This means that basic troops, levies, would become an army's HP, so they are always important, but the focus shifts towards the characters leading each army, each commander has a certain rank, and they are only allowed to lead X number of troops, they earn merits and promotions through warfare and victories, and they can lead greater and greater numbers over time.

Of course, a ruler is the highest rank and can always lead something like 10k soldiers.

So, if levies are basically just HP, how do we know which army is stronger?

It's all about the commander's stats, I forgot the exact details but something like their Warfare trait defines their damage, leadership their defense, int was used for certain stratagems, deception, or resisting them and I think there was a Movement stat too, so some generals are faster/can flank better, some are tougher with leadership and can hold the center, others have more war, and deal more damage, of course, there are some legendary warriors/commanders like Lu Bu, Guan Yu, Zhou Yun, etc... That often have very high stats across the board.

So you see an army with 2k soldiers fighting an army with 5k soldiers, but the 2k army has a legendary commander with stats around 100, and the bigger army has a stupid commander with stats around 40, the smaller army might have more soldiers (HP) but it's dealing far more damage, and taking very little damage per tick, meaning it's probably going to wipe the floor with that bigger army, given enough time.

Unless, of course, they get flanked by a very damaging army, or get focused by ranged armies, etc..

Your country also needed to grown food & manpower, so you'd spend your peaceful times developing your country, growing food reserves, restoring your lost manpower, and then raise some armies to fight your wars.

Of course, food runs out very quickly, that means you can't raise an army, say, in spain, to fight a war in the byzantine empire, they'd run out of food (or need resupply stations along the way) before they even get to combat, so it's combat is often done in much shorter scales, it's rare to see an entire country mobilize to a single war (and that means your borders get defenseless, so neighboring rulers often take the chance to backstab you)

Do you think there's any hope of implementing any of it into CK3?

Edit: Oh, I forgot there are troop types too, in some of these games you had to buy/produce enough weapons of a certain type too, so cav needed horses, pikes for infantry, bows/crossbows for ranged, etc...

Not having a weapon would make generic swordsmen that are pretty bad against everything.

Having a weapon wasn't inherently a stronger choice, it just changed what you countered, what you were countered by, and if you had access to ranged attacks.

 

[HP Delron]

Gameplay wise levies are easy to "Fix" in the sense of them making worthwhile to use without changing much about how the rest of the game works.

-Levies take no supply.
-Levies have no upkeep cost.
-Levies always take damage first.
-Levies always deal damage last.

They'd be very useful. Still far from central to your gameplan, but they'd have a clear role as ablative hit points you don't need to spend money on, and they'd certainly never be detrimental to raise.

Heck, if you also gave a 5x multiplier on the number of levies all sources generate they'd also probably start to be central to approaches instead of just a-nice-to-have wounds add-on.

I think this would all be quite functional gameplay wise. I'm personally less concerned with whatever historical implications it might have.

 

[Benismann]

-Levies always deal damage last.

What is that supposed to mean?..

 

[HP Delron]

What is that supposed to mean?..

It means in any case where the game is calculating damage and only a certain number of your troops can be used in damage calculations, levies and their low power are never chosen as the unit(s) on which to base calculations unless all stronger units have already contributed.

This would be so there would be no case in which your army would be able to increase damage output by excluding levies.

 

[Benismann]

It means in any case where the game is calculating damage and only a certain number of your troops can be used in damage calculations, levies and their low power are never chosen as the unit(s) on which to base calculations unless all stronger units have already contributed.

This would be so there would be no case in which your army would be able to increase damage output by excluding levies.

There's only one instance of smth like this that comes to mind and it's combat width..... I dont think basically disabling it is a good idea. If anything it should maybe play more of a role, right now it's kind of obscured and only reduces damage..

 

[HP Delron]

There's only one instance of smth like this that comes to mind and it's combat width..... I dont think basically disabling it is a good idea. If anything it should maybe play more of a role, right now it's kind of obscured and only reduces damage..

I am not suggesting disabling the feature. I'm suggesting when calculating which of your troops deal damage, the non-levies are chosen first. Combat width would still have just as much of an effect on what units can fight.

It's just when the game is choosing which units are fighting and dealing damage, levies are never chosen if anything else can be chosen. When it comes the army taking losses damage, it ignores all other factors and just deals damage directly to levies until there are no more levies in an army.


Basically think of it like there being a magic spell on your army such that if something would cut off a knight's head, a random peasant's head flies off in his place and the knight is fine. At least until you run out of random peasants.

 

[Benismann]

I am not suggesting disabling the feature. I'm suggesting when calculating which of your troops deal damage, the non-levies are chosen first. Combat width would still have just as much of an effect on what units can fight.

It's just when the game is choosing which units are fighting and dealing damage, levies are never chosen if anything else can be chosen. When it comes the army taking losses damage, it ignores all other factors and just deals damage directly to levies until there are no more levies in an army.


Basically think of it like there being a magic spell on your army such that if something would cut off a knight's head, a random peasant's head flies off in his place and the knight is fine. At least until you run out of random peasants.

If it doesnt do anything there it probably doesnt do anything at all, since if how i think the combat works is anywhere close to the way it actually works then all your whole army deals damage each day, (multiplied by 0.03 no less!) and that gets spread across the enemy army, very roughly speaking. So idk where the "deals damage last" part comes into play...

 

[HP Delron]

If it doesnt do anything there it probably doesnt do anything at all, since if how i think the combat works is anywhere close to the way it actually works then all your whole army deals damage each day, (multiplied by 0.03 no less!) and that gets spread across the enemy army, very roughly speaking. So idk where the "deals damage last" part comes into play...

If my understanding was incorrect, then that's fine. You can drop that line item if it does nothing. The overall point is the same:

Levies should take damage before anything else (men-at-arms and knights take 0 damage until all levies are dead), cost nothing, not use supply. If they already can't lower your DPS, that's great! One thing about them is working at least.

 

[Whizzer]

The CK2 levy system is the CK3 levy system. The main mechanical differences are the illusion of complexity.

The CK2 levy system produces low-quality forces in larger numbers than combat-effective units from buildings, which is the same as the CK3 system. The taxation occurs on the same fundamental principles of proportional taxes of gold and levies. The faction system works on the same premise of total levy count rather than force quality. They still serve the same combat role as fodder for the specialty/elite troops that the AI will not match, and as siege fodder.

The individual levy types may seem relevant, but they actually aren't. At the end of the day, once you aggregate a bunch of individual levy types, it still produces an average levy strength. Once you put in all the modifiers there is still an average strength modifier. And due to how the combat system of CK2 worked, this average levy strength was always far lower than any attempt at an optimized retinue compliment... which was the case since as early as the second DLC.

This is the illusion of mechanical complexity- the average CK2 levy is no more exceptional or meaningful than the average CK3 levy. It does not serve a different tactical or strategic role. CK2 levies are still trash mobs that you don't rely upon, and increasingly don't bother gathering, once your custom units are spun up to scale. Their purpose after the early game is still primarily as siege fodder and a faction-instability catalyst, where a ruler's loss of levies is what risks other factions becoming far more dangerous.

In terms of system-level differences, the biggest difference is that CK2 hides the average strength and average strength modifiers, not how the levy system itself works and effects gameplay. There is no fundamental difference between an average levy strength of base 10 and an average base strength of not-10... though there is a computational load difference.

The issue with the CK3 military system as a whole isn't the levies, but how CK3 modifies the retinues/MAA. Specifically, the modifiers for MAA size that are tied to tech/cultures/accolades, and then the stationing modifiers from buildings which compound this size buff, none of which the AI is suited for trying to compete in terms of.

This is not an issue that will be resolved by the CK2 levy system of masked-but-still-weak levies, not least because the CK2 levy system consistently failed vis-a-vis the CK2 retinue system for the same general reasons- the player could farm and spam retinue-size-boosting techs, modifiers, and especially tactical commanders in ways the AI never similarly prioritized.

The real reason CK2 levies seem like their composition doesn't matter, and therefore may seem like CK3 levies, is wholly outside all of this - combat tactics. Their requirements are very poorly setup and their bonuses are so large that they often dwarf any modifiers one might have on troops from holdings and even many commander modifiers etc. I won't argue this isn't effectively an illusion of complexity, since none of this is visible anywhere in the game, but at least CK2 allows for actual complexity whereas CK3 does not.

 

[FondMemberofSociety]

The real reason CK2 levies seem like their composition doesn't matter and therefore may seem like CK3 levies are wholly outside all of this - combat tactics. Their requirements are very poorly setup and their bonuses are so large that they often dwarf any modifiers one might have on troops from holdings and even many commander modifiers etc. I won't argue this isn't effectively an illusion of complexity, since none of this is visible anywhere in the game, but at least CK2 allows for actual complexity whereas CK3 does not.

Speaking of, is it possible to display culture-specific tacitcs on the cultures screen instead of just "Can blind", "can castrate" etc?

 

[Whizzer]

Speaking of, is it possible to display culture-specific tacitcs on the cultures screen instead of just "Can blind", "can castrate" etc?

That is indeed very possible, with custom modifiers, for example, which exist mostly for this purpose.

 

[naq29]

Gameplay wise levies are easy to "Fix" in the sense of them making worthwhile to use without changing much about how the rest of the game works.

-Levies take no supply.
-Levies have no upkeep cost.
-Levies always take damage first.
-Levies always deal damage last.

They'd be very useful. Still far from central to your gameplan, but they'd have a clear role as ablative hit points you don't need to spend money on, and they'd certainly never be detrimental to raise.

Heck, if you also gave a 5x multiplier on the number of levies all sources generate they'd also probably start to be central to approaches instead of just a-nice-to-have wounds add-on.

I think this would all be quite functional gameplay wise. I'm personally less concerned with whatever historical implications it might have.

-Levies take no supply.

may work but a bit unrealistic and kind of making supply useless as MAA are easier to stay under supplies limit.

-Levies have no upkeep cost.

this will surely help. You can already mod the game to remove upkeep cost of levies now.

-Levies always take damage first.

levies already take most of the damage due to bigger units receiving more damage. Making them taking ALL the damage will surely make them die faster, but I don't think it will change anything anyway, as after all levies die, your MAA will take all damage themselves without levies to tank it for them.

-Levies always deal damage last.

it will make them more useless because currently all units deal damage at the same time.

It means in any case where the game is calculating damage and only a certain number of your troops can be used in damage calculations, levies and their low power are never chosen as the unit(s) on which to base calculations unless all stronger units have already contributed.

This would be so there would be no case in which your army would be able to increase damage output by excluding levies.

With the combat width mechanics, there is still cases in which your army would be able to increase damage output by excluding levies, because more troops =>more combat width penalty (so excluding low damage troops can make your whole army deal more damage).

 

[Duchy-2]

I've thought a little about it, and why not do the following:

Have buildings act as a sort of 'troop transformer', as would logically make sense. IRL, a blacksmith, for example, does not turn heavy infantry into space marine heavy infantry, it turns lightly armoured footmen into heavy armoured footmen. So, have 'levies' maybe act as some sort of manpower tool that you can convert into other troops by placing an amount on certain buildings. And maybe instead levies being 'levies', they're just skirmishers. These levies would be a limited resource meaning to have more 'men at arms' than what your demesne naturally provides, you would have to rely on the levies -- or maybe even transformed troops -- from your vassals. So, say, all your counties combined provide you with 1000 levies. You take hundred of those and place them on a blacksmith building > they turn into 50 pikemen and 50 heavy infantry, with building upgrades allowing you to choose which troop type to focus on. Or maybe even having the composition be affected by a combination of buidlings; e.g. barracks = pikemen, barracks + blacksmith = heavy infantry; or something like that. How exactly it all would work needs to be worked out of course, but I feel like such a system would be way more realistic, and more balanced.

 

[Hopciu]

I've thought a little about it, and why not do the following:

Have buildings act as a sort of 'troop transformer', as would logically make sense. IRL, a blacksmith, for example, does not turn heavy infantry into space marine heavy infantry, it turns lightly armoured footmen into heavy armoured footmen. So, have 'levies' maybe act as some sort of manpower tool that you can convert into other troops by placing an amount on certain buildings. And maybe instead levies being 'levies', they're just skirmishers. These levies would be a limited resource meaning to have more 'men at arms' than what your demesne naturally provides, you would have to rely on the levies -- or maybe even transformed troops -- from your vassals. So, say, all your counties combined provide you with 1000 levies. You take hundred of those and place them on a blacksmith building > they turn into 50 pikemen and 50 heavy infantry, with building upgrades allowing you to choose which troop type to focus on. Or maybe even having the composition be affected by a combination of buidlings; e.g. barracks = pikemen, barracks + blacksmith = heavy infantry; or something like that. How exactly it all would work needs to be worked out of course, but I feel like such a system would be way more realistic, and more balanced.

This! Have Manpower as a distinct capacity, that fuels Man-at-Arms Buildings, and any exceeding Manpower can be mobilized as Levies. This could also diversify purely economic Buildings better. Instead of Building, whose line produces most Tax being a no-brainer choice, we could choose between, let's say, Wheat Farns, that give low Tax, but high Manpower, and Pastures, that give high Tax, but low Manpower.

We could also have similar, but distinct horse-manpower (I know it sounds silly), which would be produced by eg. Pastures, and consumed by Buildings that train Cavalry Man-at-Arms.