Questions on army production, town design, and others
(Yeah, this is part of the same mega-post from before, but I thought it would be best to split it into the two topics it really needed to be.)
Basically, in order to provide some extra content for a video project I'm working on related to this game (a Let's Play - think of it as a walkthrough with commentary, although that's a slightly confining description) and perhaps improve the quality of my gameplay in said project, I'd like to request a few counter-arguments to some comments I already have made in previous parts. These points are as follows:
1) I commented in my videos for mission 5 that even for their ridiculous time and resource cost, the catapult and ballista were horridly broken in terms of game balance. (Enough to actually make me laugh, which is disappointingly rare.) How are they in this regard, in your opinion?
2) I made a claim in my videos for mission 5 that crossbowmen were useless, and that I would rather be building the lesser bowmen and saving the iron for pikemen. Should I bother with utilizing both tiers of units like this, or am I okay in sticking with just the higher-tier units?
3) I've said several times that my "ratios" for unit casualties in a mission have been very good. Some examples are 43 losses to 141 defeated in Mission 2, 202 losses to 275 defeated in Mission 4, and 170 losses to 441 defeated in Mission 5. At what ratio should I actually be concerned about army management?
4) In my videos for base-building missions to this point, I've been against keeping a standing army always active. Instead, I've been focusing solely on the economy and producing my troops on a "just in time" basis, rather than keeping them around and having to feed them. Will this remain feasible?
5) I've cursed several times over the issue of the unit AI. This relates less to civilian behavior and more to some of the boneheaded actions my military units have taken. (Mission 5 has a real gem; I tried scouting an area with a rogue - a ranged mercenary you can buy from the Town Hall - and he would simply not break off from attacking units when in the base. I thought it was only melee units who couldn't break off!) Are there any non-obvious issues with specific military units where I need to beware?
6) I've claimed that if you're going to use a Town Hall, the rebels are your best bet as a hired mercenary. I haven't been afraid to use them as cannon fodder to distract whole armies from my bowmen and siege engines, either, since rebels cost the least out of anything in the game. Is this wise or should I be resorting more to the other mercenaries (or bothering with the Town Hall at all)?
7) I'm still unclear on the appropriate spacing for inns and storehouses for efficiency. Mission 7 is turning out to be a mission where having just the primary storehouse (I hadn't reached the other one yet by that point in the mission) causes unacceptable resource traffic jams (I see 'unacceptable' as being more than 3 serfs lined up at once, but I was running into lines of 7 or more in this situation). I have, however, already been using multiple inns, if only to keep a large amount of food available to my civilian population (I space those about a screen apart, keeping a 1024x768 screen resolution in mind). What's an acceptable distance and/or resource building limit before a second (or third, or fourth, etc.) storehouse is warranted?
8) When placing multiple farms, I don't give each one individual fields the way the AI seems to like doing. My strategy has instead been to have those farms surround one large field, with just enough space between farm and field to put a one-tile road to the door. (The same principle has applied to my vineyards.) Is this wise or do I need to be spacing the farms more widely?
9) Is it a wise idea to have a road be more than one tile wide? Or is it better to instead have multiple road paths to destinations (the way I HAVE been doing)? I don't count on having the stone to do both in most of these missions.
I'll incorporate these answers into my project as I get them, so if I get on a recording spree it may be a few missions before I properly integrate the suggestions and counterpoints into my play style. At the time of posting these questions, I'm working on mission 7's videos.
Basically, in order to provide some extra content for a video project I'm working on related to this game (a Let's Play - think of it as a walkthrough with commentary, although that's a slightly confining description) and perhaps improve the quality of my gameplay in said project, I'd like to request a few counter-arguments to some comments I already have made in previous parts. These points are as follows:
1) I commented in my videos for mission 5 that even for their ridiculous time and resource cost, the catapult and ballista were horridly broken in terms of game balance. (Enough to actually make me laugh, which is disappointingly rare.) How are they in this regard, in your opinion?
2) I made a claim in my videos for mission 5 that crossbowmen were useless, and that I would rather be building the lesser bowmen and saving the iron for pikemen. Should I bother with utilizing both tiers of units like this, or am I okay in sticking with just the higher-tier units?
3) I've said several times that my "ratios" for unit casualties in a mission have been very good. Some examples are 43 losses to 141 defeated in Mission 2, 202 losses to 275 defeated in Mission 4, and 170 losses to 441 defeated in Mission 5. At what ratio should I actually be concerned about army management?
4) In my videos for base-building missions to this point, I've been against keeping a standing army always active. Instead, I've been focusing solely on the economy and producing my troops on a "just in time" basis, rather than keeping them around and having to feed them. Will this remain feasible?
5) I've cursed several times over the issue of the unit AI. This relates less to civilian behavior and more to some of the boneheaded actions my military units have taken. (Mission 5 has a real gem; I tried scouting an area with a rogue - a ranged mercenary you can buy from the Town Hall - and he would simply not break off from attacking units when in the base. I thought it was only melee units who couldn't break off!) Are there any non-obvious issues with specific military units where I need to beware?
6) I've claimed that if you're going to use a Town Hall, the rebels are your best bet as a hired mercenary. I haven't been afraid to use them as cannon fodder to distract whole armies from my bowmen and siege engines, either, since rebels cost the least out of anything in the game. Is this wise or should I be resorting more to the other mercenaries (or bothering with the Town Hall at all)?
7) I'm still unclear on the appropriate spacing for inns and storehouses for efficiency. Mission 7 is turning out to be a mission where having just the primary storehouse (I hadn't reached the other one yet by that point in the mission) causes unacceptable resource traffic jams (I see 'unacceptable' as being more than 3 serfs lined up at once, but I was running into lines of 7 or more in this situation). I have, however, already been using multiple inns, if only to keep a large amount of food available to my civilian population (I space those about a screen apart, keeping a 1024x768 screen resolution in mind). What's an acceptable distance and/or resource building limit before a second (or third, or fourth, etc.) storehouse is warranted?
8) When placing multiple farms, I don't give each one individual fields the way the AI seems to like doing. My strategy has instead been to have those farms surround one large field, with just enough space between farm and field to put a one-tile road to the door. (The same principle has applied to my vineyards.) Is this wise or do I need to be spacing the farms more widely?
9) Is it a wise idea to have a road be more than one tile wide? Or is it better to instead have multiple road paths to destinations (the way I HAVE been doing)? I don't count on having the stone to do both in most of these missions.
I'll incorporate these answers into my project as I get them, so if I get on a recording spree it may be a few missions before I properly integrate the suggestions and counterpoints into my play style. At the time of posting these questions, I'm working on mission 7's videos.