Rejected: Improving Weapons/Armor

[JeVondair]

Summary:  I did not see this in the list of rejects so please correct me if I am wrong, but this would just be an option in a city region with a blacksmith under the Unit Orders tab where, in addition to the training option, you can also pay gold to improve your troops equipment.


Description: As written, I envision being able to sit in a city and slowly improve the quality of my soldiers equipment the same way we can improve their training. Equipment damage should be at zero before work can begin, but otherwise works the same way training does.


Benefits: Allows you to improve your unit without loosing it and/or loosing your captain


Downsides: Realms with crappier RC's might not be encouraged to build better ones I guess. I'm not good at this.

[Vita`]

I think this is one of those old frequently-asked, frequently-rejected items.

[JeVondair]

I just double checked. It has yet to be added to that list.


What do I win?  ;D

[Vita`]

So it isn't. Could've sworn I've seen this before and rejected, but perhaps it wasn't listified :P Anyway, I insist this would be too much imbalance for troops and recruitment centers. Recruit more troops of better equipment or use a magic scroll for temporary improvements.

[JeVondair]

Even if it was really slow and expensive? I understand the potential for imbalance, but have a hard time thinking how probable that might be. If it functions like training, or even at a lesser gold/reward ratio thereof, nations at war would not be able to make much good of it, especially if it could only be done where blacksmiths are present. We separate weapons from armor so players now have 4 ways to improve thier units (training, cohesion, weapons, armor) Even for realms at peace, if you got your unit to 100s across the board, it would be a one time use. The minute you add new troops, just like with training and cohesion, the value depreciates. Besides, it gives nobles in peaceful nations something to do once training and cohesion are maxed.


It may seem small, but I wouldn't underestimate how much players like to get 'perfect' units.

[Vita`]

Because I'm quite certain I've seen this asked before of Tom and Anaris, and rejected. Improving weapons/armour is a fundamentally much different operation than some training sessions, both in terms of realism and game balance. Recruitment center quality needs to remain the primary source of troop equipment quality.

Besides, it gives nobles in peaceful nations something to do once training and cohesion are maxed.

Agitate their governments for war.

[JeVondair]

Agitate their governments for war.

If this isn't my singular purpose in BM, then IDK what is.

[Anaris]

Specifically, allowing arbitrary increases to troop equipment that just costs gold & time would be yet another way that large, wealthy realms could too easily snowball and become unstoppable.

[Chenier]

Specifically, allowing arbitrary increases to troop equipment that just costs gold & time would be yet another way that large, wealthy realms could too easily snowball and become unstoppable.

I don't mind things being as they are, but I'm not sure I follow this argument. Small realms are usually stuck with a few !@#$ RCs, because they can't afford to constantly renew them to get good ones, while large realms can afford to have so many RCs that scrapping some more or less regularly for better ones makes sense. In other words, wealthy large realms are the ones that are most likely to already have great RCs and thus not require any means to improve their units.

[Vita`]

Uh, you are aware of the change to recruitment center quality, such that a small realm without many quality centers is much more likely to generate a quality center than a large realm with many quality centers?

[JeVondair]

Is that why whenever I use the new consultant function the numbers are always crap?

[Vita`]

If you already have lots of centers, especially quality centers, in your region and realm, then yes.

[Chenier]

Uh, you are aware of the change to recruitment center quality, such that a small realm without many quality centers is much more likely to generate a quality center than a large realm with many quality centers?

Either this code is too new for me to have seen any impact from it, legacy RCs outweighing new RCs by a metric crapton, or its effect is insufficient to counter the sheer resources available to large realms. When I piloted infrastructure programs in large realms, I'd often order the destruction of 1 RC per week, and from a pool of 30 or so it was easy to target the worst centers while also considering the costs (according to how many RCs that region already had). I would never dream of such scale projects in small realms. Small realms, when they get "meh" centers, they tend to keep it because resources are sparse and you might end up paying all that gold just to get worse. Range 1 MI and range 2 archers, for example, tend to stick around much longer in small realms than in large realms (in realms that actually care about such things). I haven't been a lord in a while, though, but I haven't seen anything to suggest this code has had much impact.