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Questions on army production, town design, and others

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FrostyTheDragon

Peasant

Posts: 3

Joined: 19 Jan 2013, 22:25

KaM Skill Level: Beginner

Post 21 Jan 2013, 02:18

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.
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Da Revolution

Knight

Posts: 720

Joined: 13 Apr 2012, 12:07

Location: Near the inn

Post 21 Jan 2013, 09:18

Re: Questions on army production, town design, and others

Ok I'll try to respond on your points, but be aware that I haven't played TPR that much (mainly TSK).

1) Ballistas and catapults are removed from the Remake because of balance issues (and because they don't fit well in the game)

2) As far as I know bowmen are real beasts and you can easily mass them thats why I think you are right that its better to make bowmen instead of xbows.

3) Ratios have to be good on campaign because the AI has large armies. I don't think there is a "fixed" ratio where concerns will start, problems start when you are out of gold.

4) I advise having an army ready to protect yourself from possible attacks, but I don't know exactly about this since I didn't play campaign for ages.

5) Melee units can't be withdrawn out of combat, but ranged units can be moved at all time. If this is not the case its probably bugged or something (there are patches to fox several bugs in TPR)

6) I'm not sure if its worth using the town hall (its removed from the remake) because its not that hard to make militia (in barracks) instead of those rebels. However rebels are really worth it when facing a lot of horses since they got a quite good bonus against them.

7) The storehouse issue is quite big in TPR for example because the serve intelligence isn't very high. Another problem, you probably store everything so serves need to go into the storehouse quite often. I do advise building multiple ones in those campaigns, mainly next to production chains which produces a lot that needs to be stored. Several inns is needed for sure, you'll get at the point where you'll have for example 100+ serves (and all other citizens), its hardly possible to let them eat in one inn.

8) It has its pros and cons. Pros: its easier for space management and your farm will be able to harvest earlier because the first farm did plant the seeds already. Cons (especially at TPR, less on the remake): You've got the risk that they walk to the same field, this costs time. In the remake, where serves get a new job when their field is used, separated farms produce 29% more than clustered ones.

9) This depends on the amount of serves you have, but i advise double roads when playing TSK/TPR because serves aren't that smart. You'll get severe traffic jams if you don't.

I hope this was helpful.

Would be nice if someone who played TPR more would react as well.
"No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path" - Buddha
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FrostyTheDragon

Peasant

Posts: 3

Joined: 19 Jan 2013, 22:25

KaM Skill Level: Beginner

Post 24 Jan 2013, 03:14

Re: Questions on army production, town design, and others

Thank you for this information and I will be integrating it into the mission 7 videos. The wider roads especially helped in that mission (even though I only really applied it to the main road).

However, upon looking at the remake.... judging from the site information I saw, particularly on TPR's designated page, I thought the reason that the town hall and siege engines weren't in the remake was because they were stuff from TPR specifically (I think fish might fall into this category as well). I will try to do one of the missions in the TSK section of the game without any of the amenities provided by TPR at all, but I don't know which mission it will be.

Regardless, in mission 7 I decided to try not using the town hall and... well, I think I had the storehouse problem mostly under control (I was in control of 4 storehouses by the time it was over), but I made the mistake of trying to use 4 quarries on that mission. In the process, I actually used up the entire mountain of stone that the game allotted me. I made it through, but if I HAD been attacked and lost any buildings, I would have undoubtedly failed the mission. I also found myself in a situation where, for an entire hour of the nearly 3-hour mission, I was feeding my whole civilian population with just fish. (5 fishermen and the ability to gather a decent stockpile before my starting food ran out made it possible. I can guarantee that putting a storehouse nearby was flat-out necessary for this to work.)

In other words, I have a long way to go before I get into a solid system of distribution, town setup, and the like.

Mission 8 is basically going to mandate the control of a standing army - I've been put in the corner of the map and the starting announcement specifically says to build up. There's no water on the map, so I can forget about relying on fish again... but I do see a natural chokepoint where I can place my entire army, which gives me an indication where the vineyards need to go. (My understanding is that to military units, all food is equal - and that only the civilian population needs to worry about what type of food is available.)


Also, it's funny that you describe the serfs as not being very smart... as hands-off populations go, I find the serfs here to be smarter than the civilians in some of the more recent games, because at least the serfs have some idea of proper priorities. (The laborers aren't QUITE there though.)

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