Balancing Royal Units

[Brandy Blue]

Balancing royal units in terms of cost, upkeep, recuitability etc. can be a problem. I've been considering the following for some time, but haven't got around to trying it.

1: Reduce upkeep of royal units to a pittance so they don't financially cripple factions like the Danes or Vikings.

2: Make them unrecruitable so their cheap upkeep doesn't make them a ridiculous bargain. I'm actually not sure how to make them unrecuitable, except to give them impossibly difficult requirements to recruit.

3: Possibly give the Vikings Viking Raider Cavalry or Royal Bodyguards for their royal unit when I play them. That way the royal family does not provide me with an uber army and I have to tech up to my huscarls like the Anglo Saxon factions do.

Any thoughts on the best way to deal with royal units?

[naut]

To make them unrecruitable in the building's required column simply do not place anything there. Raider Cav is an option, the other option would be to chage the Saxon royal units to huscarls (which they would have been anyway).

With the Vikings, I changed their AI behaviour from Barbarian Raider to Desperate Defense. This means they actually settle and do not stagnate like the Danes do on the main campaign. Secondly, I changed all the units so the Vikings actually face some resistance. (See my sig).

On the main campaign, change the Danes to Catholic_Expansive, this gives them a better chance at doing something. (Similarly with the Aragonese).

[Thermal]

Recruiting the bodyguard adds unit diversity (and some awesome troops) however they are too easy to recruit, you only need the first royal court don't you...?

Personally I'd just move them to a later place in the building change so there harder to recruit, and to combat lowering the upkeep, you could make them take 10 turns to recruit, or something.

[Belisario]

I agree with Thermal Mercury, bodyguard units need harder requirements to retrain. I would say the same buildings as their knight counterparts. I am not sure about make them a lot of turns to recruit but lowered their upkeep is a good option, especially for factions that don't have a large income.

[Thermal]

I agree with Thermal Mercury, bodyguard units need harder requirements to retrain. I would say the same buildings as their knight counterparts. I am not sure about make them a lot of turns to recruit but lowered their upkeep is a good option, especially for factions that don't have a large income.

Giving it some more thought, really long waiting times probably isn't sensible because if AI do recruit them they will be waiting forever. So perhaps not then.

[gollum]

Royal BGs are a huge issue - because they are units that the AI (and player) can't reject, they can have a tremendous economic impact by their maintenance costs, especially in the early stages of the game that expansion and cashflow are crucial. They are also very key, because since they are by default very capable, high end (for each era or totally) units they can make a tremendous impact in the early stages that units that can counter them (like reliable spears or heavy infantry) are not recruitable.

Many approaches can be tried in balancing them, for example one can make BGs of very low (or even no!) maintenance cost at all - this means that even Denmark, Aragon and Novgorod can expand in the early stages of the game as they are not drowned by the maintenance costs. However with such an appraoch its good to nerf the BG units statistically (ie close the gap between high and low end units) as otherwise thy can easily dominate the game. Also, this issue should be closely related with how muchother units and buildings cost, how much agr. money there is available etc.

Recruitability of BGs is also key: if they are available as in vanilla, then the player can and will replenish his losses on family member units and so gain an upper hand versus the AI that doesn't do them and frequently gets wiped out since he has no family members left. In addition this would make the player more careful in how and when he deploys his Royal nobility, which sets him in a more equal footing with the AI. So making them non-recruitable is a good option. If one judges that he wants them recruitable, then they are better made relatively easy to reach tech wise, otherwise the player may be the only one that enjoys the advantage of making them as thermal mercury says.

Size of the BG unit affects both strength and maintenance costs in MTW, so its best decided on from the beginning, before one goes on to balance the stats and maint. costs with it. As BB said in another thread a very small BG unit can be shot to pieces in larger unit settings and this is indeed a problem. CA preffrered that option in vanilla and so went for very high stats. Another option would be to make BG units of default size, (as for kataphraktoi boyars and mongol hc) but then one would need to nerf the exquisite stats of the knight units a bit. I think that this option is a good appraoch personally.