BattleMaster Community
BattleMaster => Development => Feature Requests => Topic started by: Indirik on August 28, 2013, 07:04:54 PM
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Title: Sanity Check for Peasant Mobs
Summary: When peasant mobs are formed, the final calculation of mob size should be checked against the enemy forces in the region. If the calculated mob isn't big enough to pose a threat to the enemies, it should be discarded without ever being formed. Or the peasants that would have been in the mob can flee to a different region.
Details: Peasant mobs are a joke. You can fight hundreds, or thousands, of peasant militia, and they can't even scratch your armor. Or you can have a tiny "mob" stand up and try to fight entire armies of 2,000 soldiers. It's kind of ridiculous. Instead, when the calculations are complete to determine the mob that forms, it needs to be given a sanity check. Compare it to the force of enemy soldiers in the region. If it doesn't reach some minimum fraction of the number of enemy soldiers, the mob should never even form. (Or perhaps they can instead flee the region.) This will reduce many ridiculous situations that form now, such as 20 peasants facing off 1,700 soldiers, or 30 peasants stopping 700 soldiers from looting.
This could be combined with a change to actually put a few teeth into peasant mobs, thus ensuring the lack of pathetically small mobs, and that the mobs that do form are actually a force to be dealt with, and not regarding as "a few more points of cohesion".
Benefits: Less chance of many ridiculous situations from occurring, such as those listed in the Details above.
Possible Exploits: It may be possible to find a way to abuse the system to let the loot counters build up enough to trigger huge mobs all at once. But if we make peasant mobs actually a bit dangerous again, then this may not really be a problem. Also, some people may try to take advantage of this by holding a significant portion of their troops out of the region until the militia pops, and then move troops in to clobber the mobs. But then again, this will help break up blob armies, so maybe it's not really a bad thing after all.
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Definitely needed. Along with reducing their overall frequency and increasing their strength, this should make looting to bring up peasant mobs less of a go-to strategy for completely depopulating a region.
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It would also prevent the incident like possibly prompted Indirik to post this here, where a tiny peasant mob prevented two armies from fighting, spoiling a surprise attack and potentially causing the side that should have won to lose, as it allowed the other side an extra turn to bring in troops.
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Well, this wouldn't necessarily prevent that. But it would ensure that the peasant mob was more than 21 starving rogue peasants.
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It would also prevent the incident like possibly prompted Indirik to post this here, where a tiny peasant mob prevented two armies from fighting, spoiling a surprise attack and potentially causing the side that should have won to lose, as it allowed the other side an extra turn to bring in troops.
I can understand your frustration in that situation, but I also think it's kind of cool based on your description. Life is unpredictable sometimes. I remember reading about an epic battle from Roman history where the Roman army was clearly dominating and should have easily won, and suddenly their General was killed by his own soldier whose wife he had seduced. It changed the outcome of the battle and the course of history.
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I dont know if this is already in place, but it might be necessary to reduce the incremental effectiveness of looting when there are too many looters in the region (that arent stopped by militia). Would be a bit overkill if a large army could drive one region rogue per day during a campaign. This could go hand in hand of peasants getting more and more angry by the aggressors for each looting rather than blaming the current government.
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I can understand your frustration in that situation, but I also think it's kind of cool based on your description. Life is unpredictable sometimes. I remember reading about an epic battle from Roman history where the Roman army was clearly dominating and should have easily won, and suddenly their General was killed by his own soldier whose wife he had seduced. It changed the outcome of the battle and the course of history.
No. It makes not even the vaguest of sense. If one army has spent a lot of effort in setting up a surprise attack on another, they are, in no way, shape or form, ever going to toss that plan aside, risk losing the battle and get hundreds of their own troops slaughtered just so they can join up with their enemies to kill 21 peasants. No.
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No. It makes not even the vaguest of sense. If one army has spent a lot of effort in setting up a surprise attack on another, they are, in no way, shape or form, ever going to toss that plan aside, risk losing the battle and get hundreds of their own troops slaughtered just so they can join up with their enemies to kill 21 peasants. No.
A peasant militia caught in the middle wouldn't make a distinction between Army A and Army B. They'd attack both and you'd have no choice other than to fight back. You might not even know who was attacking you and why, you'd just see someone coming at you with a pitchfork. You certainly didn't know what was happening on the other side of the battlefield. You're pissed off because you got ambushed while trying to ambush somebody else. ;)
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21 peasants caught on the field between opposing armies, each composed of 800+ soldiers? I doubt the armies would even notice they were there, let alone have any effect on the battle.
It makes no sense whatsoever that it happened. It's merely a quirk of the battlefield that can only account for a certain limited number of circumstances. Edge cases will always produce whacky results.
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Ok, I yield.
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I support the idea of retweaking peasant mobs. Peasant growth is so slow that those slaughtered senselessly cause rebuilding to be a pain.
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This is probably the biggest reason looting is so effective, the realm can't repair the region due to its population being destroyed.
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For what its worth, this has been live for a couple weeks now.
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For what its worth, this has been live for a couple weeks now.
So 30 peasants can't stop 700 men from looting anymore?
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If 30 peasants show up, they'll probably still stop 700 men from looting. But only 30 men *shouldn't* spawn as a militia anymore. If they do, it should be considered a bug. For 700 men, there should be no less than 350 peasants spawning as militia. Basically, you shouldn't see peasant militia arise with a number less than half of the occupying force's numbers. Militia were also given a slight increase in strength so they shouldn't be cannon fodder anymore, but are still weaker peasants still.
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So looting will still drive population down at the same rate?
But instead of frequent small groups of militia, we will have less frequent and bigger groups?
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If 30 peasants show up, they'll probably still stop 700 men from looting. But only 30 men *shouldn't* spawn as a militia anymore. If they do, it should be considered a bug. For 700 men, there should be no less than 350 peasants spawning as militia. Basically, you shouldn't see peasant militia arise with a number less than half of the occupying force's numbers. Militia were also given a slight increase in strength so they shouldn't be cannon fodder anymore, but are still weaker peasants still.
Does this mean enemies can now loot for longer until they see peasants gather or does that have nothing to do with it?
It sounds like occupying forces can now slaughter peasants pretty quickly since they will spawn in larger quantities.
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It sounds like the idea is that you won't get the nuisance mobs of irrelevant quantities of peasants that spawn, block everything, and are a nuisance for everyone. So you will be able to loot for longer, until the resentment builds up enough that a very large group spawns. Not only will the groups be larger, but their stats got buffed so they will actually be able to do some damage. No more suicide charges of 700 peasants killing 1 soldier and wounding 2 more, while 600 of them get slaughtered.
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Indeed. We don't want overpowered peasant militia, but we don't want pointless peasants either. Please do keep us informed on how you notice peasant militia fights going and if you think they're better balanced or should be further adjusted. There is some randomness involved as well, so don't judge everything by 2-3 battles.
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Why don't we post maybe 30 battles or so involving this new militia unit somewhere to see what changed? We can discuss it more thoroughly by doing so I think.
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Have these changes been implemented? Because a little while ago Niselur's army ended up facing 2 or 3k cs of peasant militia. If this is the norm it will make the scorched Earth warfare we've seen so often in Battlemaster a lot harder to execute which has its advantages but also some drawbacks.
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Yes it's implemented, scorched earth is still very effective, but with substantial risk attached now
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Have these changes been implemented? Because a little while ago Niselur's army ended up facing 2 or 3k cs of peasant militia. If this is the norm it will make the scorched Earth warfare we've seen so often in Battlemaster a lot harder to execute which has its advantages but also some drawbacks.
How many peasants was that? If you get to kill them purposefully, it's still scorched earth.
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Have these changes been implemented? Because a little while ago Niselur's army ended up facing 2 or 3k cs of peasant militia. If this is the norm it will make the scorched Earth warfare we've seen so often in Battlemaster a lot harder to execute which has its advantages but also some drawbacks.
For what its worth, this has been live for a couple weeks now.
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How many peasants was that? If you get to kill them purposefully, it's still scorched earth.
About 1000 peasants I believe. They had 2.5k CS.
When there were only 1k CS left, they were hitting for less than 100 still. So they are still somewhat useless lol
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In a recent battle in Itaufield, there was a 522 peasant mob, rated at 1164 CS. They faced off against about 800 Astrum soldiers.
The mob hit for 248 damage, taking down 10 Astrum soldiers. 401 of the mob were killed by 8600 damage.
So they are better than they were, but still not a huge threat to a large military force. Which is what they are supposed to be. You will take damage against them, and they will wear you down. If a defending army were to come in and attempt to drive out the invaders in combination with the peasant mod, then they could potentially swing the balance of the battle.
We may find that they still need a *little* bit more punch, though. The low CS/man for the mobs, combined with the spreading out of hits with the new combat system tends to really dilute their hitting power.
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We may find that they still need a *little* bit more punch, though. The low CS/man for the mobs, combined with the spreading out of hits with the new combat system tends to really dilute their hitting power.
Not sure how drastic this would be, but why not give them a volley or two? Making them range 1 or 2 mixed infantry would give them a small boost to their attack (a turn or two before being slaughtered) while keeping them largely fodder.
Slings, hunting bows, even atlatls could be easily possessed by peasants.
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Or the classic pick up the nearest rock and throw it. These *are* peasants, not lightly trained soldiers.
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Its still feels like it fails the sanity check to me. Strength-wise is fine but what group of peasants is going to fight against a group of professional soldiers nearly the same size? It requires a bit of a larger army for scorched earth policy but otherwise the best way to take out a region for an entire war is a couple days of looting, regardless of the type, so you can kill enough of the peasants it goes rogue, starve, then such a low pop it can't recover for months or loot (little bit longer method) until you kill however many you want once again making it months to recover. Scorched Earth is a great way to take out a region for the entirety of a war because its powerful (which makes sense), is the easiest option available (doesn't really make sense unless its a long time of looting), and the fastest (doesn't make sense, it should be faster to convince people through at least brutality to follow you than it is to kill thousands upon thousands). An option that should seem like a better idea when doing this with border regions is to take it over and give it away to a third party outside the war so it can't be took back, but currently scorched earth is the best possible in all circumstances except for the exceptionally rare Darka-CE war although the move wasn't done to deny the enemy holding over the region since it had already been trashed I believe but to prevent passage which only works in really rare circumstances like this.
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Or the classic pick up the nearest rock and throw it. These *are* peasants, not lightly trained soldiers.
Slings were a commonly used hunting tool by peasants, that is why they became a military weapon to start with, since most men (in the relevant cultures) had some experience with their use. I couldn't really say about javelins/bows. There is no technical reason peasants couldn't make them and use them for hunting, but I have no idea if they did during the period or not.
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Ooo, crazy idea but what if we varied it based on region type.
Rurals, mountains and Badlands would be your default with mostly weak infantry, maybe a few MI with range 1 or 2.
Woodland regions have peasants with a range of three and decent damage but crap armor. They are all set to withdraw after minimum casualties. Mess with a bunch of hunters from the back woods and you've got yourself a guerrilla resistance to contend with.
Cities and Townslands have the potential to have powerful infantry mixed in with the peasant hordes representing the body guards of wealthy merchants and lesser nobles. Perhaps this will only happen if you've been stealing tax gold.
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Against smaller armies at least, you can really notice the difference and it's working pretty well. The Nothoi raid in Riombara, albeit it also included one failed attack by Riombara, seemed to got really whittled down after a while by the constant peasant militias. They still did some damage, but they had to leave after a while.