Quote Originally Posted by GeneralHankerchief
I am against imposing any limitations on HRE army size/composition aside from the Historical Armies imposition that has been in place since the beginning of the game.

From an RP perspective, it makes absolutely no sense for the leader of a country to restrict the amount of armies in the field, especially if he is taking losses.
Well, I would not argue from a RP perspective. The proposal is entirely an OOC one to increase the challenge without having to have spawn excessive AI forces. If you want to rationalise it IC, we could think of the plague - which is about to hit - and the after effect of the cataclysm. After the fall of the Roman Empire, European armies seemed to get much smaller - reflecting the political disintegration.

My feeling is that our players, with a full stack historical army, could only be defeated by consecutively fighting 3-4 full AI stacks. Now, we currently have 12 armies. If they are full stack, then that means spawning 40-50 AI stacks. And even then, we probably would still win as no Chancellor would put their armies into such consecutive fights - they would keep them up to strength. And the AI is so slothful, it would not hit us 3-4 times consecutively.

The cataclysm has increased the challenge both by spawning more AI forces, but also by limiting our recruitment. In Outremer, we could have kept squatting AI armies but what was getting to us was attrition. After the cataclysm, that break of attrition will be much reduced and we will be earning a lot of florins.

We could think of ways to limit recruitment (doubling all our purchase and upkeep costs would be an obvious one). But curtailing maximum army size might do a similar job. Working with 14 stack player armies will introduce an element of danger. I still think players will comfortably handle full AI stacks. But we will have to be a bit more careful. And they can always combine forces if needed.

I guess it comes down to personal preference - I would rather have challenge by fighting with a constrained force than have it by fighting over the top enemy forces. I'm more interested in playing a "thin red line" than battling "endless hordes".

Quote Originally Posted by Cecil XIXI
I, for one, was every excited when I saw the mechanics for upgrading feudal levies. That's the kind of custimization that I like very much.
Well, when you PM me each Diet about upgrades, we could use that system for you!