Balancing Royal Units

[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.