<FEEDBACK> Citizen Militia is too POWERFUL!

[Bedwyr]

Just saw that the disband and weekly pay for the citizen militia is effectively non-existent, is this intentional or a bug?  1 gold to disband each unit, and 0 weekly pay showing.

[Vita`]

Let's have an ambiguous answer!

As I recall from Anaris first implementing looting-based peasant spawns, one of the early issues was their demanding gold. So he implemented the changes you see now. So then I update Citizen Militia and thus you see what you have now. So, it is intentional behavior as-is.

HOWEVER! Perhaps Anaris didn't notice, but Tom had implemented code years before before Tim's peasant changes that would easily allow excluding peasants from militia. It is literally a 4-character change to prevent Peasants from being included in the listed regions (and for generals' disband option, they are not included). If there are no objections, I'd like to switch the Disband page to not include peasant units (and go inspect every other instance of militia to see if it needs updated to include or exclude Peasants).

Peasant units are formed in three ways, to my awareness.

• Angry Peasants - Formed when there are less soldiers in the region than an incoming troopleader and the region hates (or disdains, or is indifferent, it scales and involves randomness) that troopleader's realm. Of the three options, should form the smallest total amount in a region when generated, all else being equal.
• Peasant Mob - Formed when the peasants realize no one is coming to save them from looters and form their own defense. Of the three options, it should form the medium total amount in a region when generated, all else being equal.
• People's Militia - The citizen militia discussed here. Of the three options, it should form the largest total amount in a region when generated, all else being equal.

Considering these are all created in moments of high passion (angry peasants), desperation (peasant mob), and desperation mixed with loyalty (citizen militia), I can't imagine a lord saying 'alright folks, back to the fields!' without considerable force. As it is, they go back to work naturally as no battles occur and their passions cool.

Also, sidenote: militia don't add to region population when disbanded (peasant militia do though). Should they?

[Zakilevo]

At the moment, with the new regional buff changes, that negative 50% or so production reduction really is just a joke. You can just build back up in no time if you have enough courtiers and TLs performing various work.

I think there should be a week long cooldown after the last peasant militia disbands from their region or the option itself should only be available once per character so the same ruler can't call upon peasants over and over.

As for militia being added back, they really should just disappear instead of being added back to the region. That way production won't recover as easily since it takes a lot longer to recover from production damage.

[Bedwyr]

In all honesty, they are way too powerful at the moment.  I'm not sure what the best way to balance them is, but it's more than a little crazy now.

[Ketchum]

As someone who is General fighting against Peasants for many times in many battles by now. I think this Peasants Militia is still way too powerful. Here's my feedback, excuse my emotional outburst in some of them as it is frustrating to keep figure out ways to beat them every time new changes coming up. Oh well, this is testing island...

Even if we kill those Peasants, I recall someone told me that Birth Rate on this South Island will repopulate the region quickly. In this way, we will be going war for many years and with no result. Is that what we all want? War for eternity or till some of us grown bored and paused? It is demoralizing to keep attacking Peasants and have many dead Heroes. Not to mention I saw Citizen Militia in one of the scouted region of Taselak, and yet they can call Citizen Militia in Taselak city. Is that intended behavior? I thought if they already raised Citizen Militia, they should not be allowed to raise another one. Or is it because the latest Citizen Militia changes, so that earlier Citizen Militia is unaccounted for.

[Zakilevo]

In all honesty, they are way too powerful at the moment.  I'm not sure what the best way to balance them is, but it's more than a little crazy now.

They should not exist on South Island in general. It defeats the purpose of the island. Also, South Island is more of an exception where the capital has close to 100k population. Not many cities in the game has population close to the three cities on South Island.

It is very difficult to deal with them.

I am sure Vita` doesn't want to make them go away but at least for South Island, it really should be removed.

Also, can we please test new features somewhere else before implementing them especially when they are so game breaking as this feature?

[Zakilevo]

If this feature is indeed going to stick around on SI, then it should be disabled while your region is being taken over.

In order to take a city, you now have to slaughter everyone in the city literally.

[Vita`]

Ensure you're talking about events since the last announced update, when they were adjusted. A good rule to go by is that, all other things being equal, you should win against peasants of the same CS as your army. Taselak has high population and high quality RCs in their favor. RC quality (or existence at all) and population influence citizen militia to a large degree. A realm on EI tried calling citizen militia and still lost their battle. And now some replies to various comments...

It's not only a production hit anymore, but also a control and morale hit. It can also be made into a regional buff itself, but I'm not yet in the practice of doing that. It can be converted later, allowing the changes to even stack on each other the longer they are around.

I'm ignorant of any differences in SI's birth rate from other continents, but it could very well be so.

If they called citizen militia while others existed, that is (most likely) a bug. There were some quirks as the first-called citizen militia had to be manually tweaked to 'Peasants' unit type to enable their going back to work over time. And Endelee was forgotten and had to be adjusted later too. Also, if there are very few (say, under a 100 or so) actual citizen militia in the entire realm, there's a chance of it being available. Old code had calling citizen militia always available if under around 100 realm-wide militiamen. I changed it to scale and have a small chance of being available at around 100 or so realmwide citizen's miltitia and a greater chance if around 5 or so.

I don't really make decision decisions of what goes away or is created or is disabled for a continent, though I certainly advocate my own views. I mostly fulfill the huge list of things already written as TODO or FIXME code comments, have been broken and not working, approved feature requests on bugtracker, and approved feature requests on the Feature Requests forum. This particular instance is of something that had been broken and was re-enabled and then, with angry peasants, updated with the looting-based peasant changes, with actual amount generated being the primary difference.

Past incarnations of the War Island fought for much longer for control of the island than has passed thus far.

Finally, I would remind of the words from the front page: BattleMaster is also a game under active development. New features are being added and gameplay and balance are constantly tweaked to improve the game further.

[Zakilevo]

Finally, I would remind of the words from the front page: BattleMaster is also a game under active development. New features are being added and gameplay and balance are constantly tweaked to improve the game further.

Thought tests were first done in test islands then ported over to stable islands after being tested to a satisfying degree?

Or am I smoking crack and all changes apply to all islands equally these days?

[Vita`]

It depends on the level of the change really. For most things, they get applied universally and always have. Testing is where much larger features are tried out. Like sailing. And the next update should see quite a few of the differences between stable, testing, and war island ironed out. At this point, most of testing differences are either related to sailing, regional buffs, looting, seasons and some old disabled features.