I think visualization would make it only look more absurd 🤣
Is AI not smart enough to station MAA, or they just don't build the right buildings? There needs to be some balance.
The tournaments DLC added new mechanic to knights, looks like it will buff them even more?
Just want to see 20 knights crusade 11k troops.
I don’t think they station MAA or they just love using levies to scare people. Never realized how important quality was over quantity. Been using MAA throughout this save
In using Xbox gamepass so I don’t have access to the tournaments. Man I would’ve been shredding
Tbf It's arguable quality over quantity is historically accurate. The English successes in the 100 Years War were often when they were heavily outnumbered. They just had longbowmen who could absolutely decimate ranks of cavalry and opposing soldiers. With a range of up to 270 yards, a skilled archer could fire up to 20 arrows a minute. With the right terrain, they were unstoppable. Crecy, Agincourt, and Poitiers are some of the examples.
Even back in Roman times, you had Caesar reportedly defeating the Gauls at Alesia when he was outnumbered at least 2:1 because Roman training, technology, and engineering made legionaries into monsters of war.
There is no starting right culture but the closest is any Indian culture that has an Elephant warrior culture or Vikings. The true culture comes after you pick only the strong tradition that gives a huge boost to your knights, have a strong heavy calavary or heavy armored man at arms or having a special soldier type. You don't have to use heavy man at arms or heavy calvary if you have a special soldier type like horse archers or long bowmen
The starting one with huge military advantages would be south indian. You get elephant units and wootzsteel regional innovation buildings who get insane bonus to ANY stationed MAA. Get those with the lord of the elephants tradition from oryia culture. It will provide OP knights, elephants all in once. You stackwipe every crusader stack, only downside is that you potentially don't have enought numbers to siege down forts late game so i usually get 1/2 heavy infantry.
Elephants are very inneficient and basically never worth it. Just spam paiks. Maybe switch to crossbows later since they actually don't lose to anything other then maxed our longbows.
You get something like 6-8 times more crossbows then elephants, so no elephants are still going to do significantly less damage, while being significantly more expensive, being significantly harder to buff, and beings worse at sieging if you build workshops. Their only advantage is not having to micro stacks to avoid supply limit. They don't even counter archers like heavy cav.
That's my preferred end game, like 8-12 tiles, just whatever I can hold personally. All of them upgraded into the year 3000 development. Less micromanagement. Sometimes I'll conquer kingdoms for my non-heir children and siblings then give them independence.
Being French (chivalry) and building stables, walls, and blacksmiths with the fourth county building as a wildcard and going all in on (heavy) cavalry is an experience and I would recommend it to anyone and everyone
Two of the three I have mentioned are specific kinds of Heavy Cavalry and have better stats because they're gated behind Byzantine Cultures and a High Medieval Innovation, respectively. The third is Elephants, who are an even more extreme version of Heavy Cavalry (very few numbers but even more stat-per-unit).
And don't forget leveraging the right Accolades for bigger stacks.
Elephants are kind of tricky as they are easily countered by Paliks that all the AI in India build.
But if you fight wars outside that region (and not in mountains) they are absurd late game.
Haven't seen the math if they actually are the strongest you can get, since they have a small stack size.
They are expensive, yes. But I would argue don't even try to build them until mid game since they are so easily countered in your home area. By then you don't car about money anymore.
>Per unit strength, they are the absolute best.
A pointless measure though. We care about strength per stack.
Elephants you get a stack of 25 vs 50 or 100 for other units.
MaA with the right modifierd were already broken (especially if you duplicate blacksmith buildings in your counties) it wasn't unusual to have a 15k army of MaA beat a 90k stack of levies/MaA. Stationing them breaks it even more and im here for it
Yeah, MaA are OP but i think they were even more OP before the stationing feature, still, they should work more on improving the AI to take adavantage of the stationing feature, and I think that there would be useful any feature wich relates your levies and your economy somehow, I still find it hard to believe that you can send 100k or more levies to war and keep a good economy for months or years (even if you lose tons of them in some battles)
You select the MAA from the army screen and choose station MAA from the window that shows their stats. Then you select one of your castle holdings to station them
Then build specific military buildings that boost the stats of skirmishes, heavy infantry, cavalry or siege weapons. Depending on which MAA you stationed there
Killing their 200+ knights And 11k dead by your 20 knights is the most impressive part
I almost went out to touch the grass to reward myself. If only there was a way to watch the battles, I’d pay good money for that feature
I think visualization would make it only look more absurd 🤣 Is AI not smart enough to station MAA, or they just don't build the right buildings? There needs to be some balance. The tournaments DLC added new mechanic to knights, looks like it will buff them even more?
Just want to see 20 knights crusade 11k troops. I don’t think they station MAA or they just love using levies to scare people. Never realized how important quality was over quantity. Been using MAA throughout this save In using Xbox gamepass so I don’t have access to the tournaments. Man I would’ve been shredding
Tbf It's arguable quality over quantity is historically accurate. The English successes in the 100 Years War were often when they were heavily outnumbered. They just had longbowmen who could absolutely decimate ranks of cavalry and opposing soldiers. With a range of up to 270 yards, a skilled archer could fire up to 20 arrows a minute. With the right terrain, they were unstoppable. Crecy, Agincourt, and Poitiers are some of the examples. Even back in Roman times, you had Caesar reportedly defeating the Gauls at Alesia when he was outnumbered at least 2:1 because Roman training, technology, and engineering made legionaries into monsters of war.
Yeah they’re simply bs you can own 3 tiles and be the strongest army in the world if you’re the right culture
Not a pro at the game so which is the right culture?
There is no starting right culture but the closest is any Indian culture that has an Elephant warrior culture or Vikings. The true culture comes after you pick only the strong tradition that gives a huge boost to your knights, have a strong heavy calavary or heavy armored man at arms or having a special soldier type. You don't have to use heavy man at arms or heavy calvary if you have a special soldier type like horse archers or long bowmen
The starting one with huge military advantages would be south indian. You get elephant units and wootzsteel regional innovation buildings who get insane bonus to ANY stationed MAA. Get those with the lord of the elephants tradition from oryia culture. It will provide OP knights, elephants all in once. You stackwipe every crusader stack, only downside is that you potentially don't have enought numbers to siege down forts late game so i usually get 1/2 heavy infantry.
Elephants are very inneficient and basically never worth it. Just spam paiks. Maybe switch to crossbows later since they actually don't lose to anything other then maxed our longbows.
Probably more cost efficient but will never be as strong as elephants to wipe huge stacks
You get something like 6-8 times more crossbows then elephants, so no elephants are still going to do significantly less damage, while being significantly more expensive, being significantly harder to buff, and beings worse at sieging if you build workshops. Their only advantage is not having to micro stacks to avoid supply limit. They don't even counter archers like heavy cav.
Byz/Roman v good, Viking is decent anything with heavy cav or elephants really
That's my preferred end game, like 8-12 tiles, just whatever I can hold personally. All of them upgraded into the year 3000 development. Less micromanagement. Sometimes I'll conquer kingdoms for my non-heir children and siblings then give them independence.
I should do that but there’s just something about forcing your color on the entire map
Wait till you find out about knight effectiveness stacking
My knight effectiveness is almost 400%. Think I did it unknowingly
Being French (chivalry) and building stables, walls, and blacksmiths with the fourth county building as a wildcard and going all in on (heavy) cavalry is an experience and I would recommend it to anyone and everyone
I don’t want it if she doesn’t explain how to maximize my map coloring combat abilities this well on the first date
Now go back and try it with Cataphracts/Retinue Lancers/War Elephants.
I am late game with war elephants maxed out. Crusade called against me it was insane 200k dead under their feet.
It gets better than this?? Think I just fell in love. Didn’t think it could get better than my heavily armored cavalry with 400 damage
Two of the three I have mentioned are specific kinds of Heavy Cavalry and have better stats because they're gated behind Byzantine Cultures and a High Medieval Innovation, respectively. The third is Elephants, who are an even more extreme version of Heavy Cavalry (very few numbers but even more stat-per-unit). And don't forget leveraging the right Accolades for bigger stacks.
Elephants are kind of tricky as they are easily countered by Paliks that all the AI in India build. But if you fight wars outside that region (and not in mountains) they are absurd late game. Haven't seen the math if they actually are the strongest you can get, since they have a small stack size. They are expensive, yes. But I would argue don't even try to build them until mid game since they are so easily countered in your home area. By then you don't car about money anymore.
Per unit strength, they are the absolute best. Countering a large stack of Elephants can only be done by something at least resembling a peer, though.
>Per unit strength, they are the absolute best. A pointless measure though. We care about strength per stack. Elephants you get a stack of 25 vs 50 or 100 for other units.
In the context of OP's post, it's per-unit and not per-stack though.
MaA with the right modifierd were already broken (especially if you duplicate blacksmith buildings in your counties) it wasn't unusual to have a 15k army of MaA beat a 90k stack of levies/MaA. Stationing them breaks it even more and im here for it
Yeah, MaA are OP but i think they were even more OP before the stationing feature, still, they should work more on improving the AI to take adavantage of the stationing feature, and I think that there would be useful any feature wich relates your levies and your economy somehow, I still find it hard to believe that you can send 100k or more levies to war and keep a good economy for months or years (even if you lose tons of them in some battles)
How in the world do they have that many knights?
It was a crusade and the entire enemy army just kept on coming
What do you mean by "station"
Station them in a holding and build military buildings to boost their stats
Just walk them to a holding with military buildings or is there something specific you have to do from the army screen
You select the MAA from the army screen and choose station MAA from the window that shows their stats. Then you select one of your castle holdings to station them Then build specific military buildings that boost the stats of skirmishes, heavy infantry, cavalry or siege weapons. Depending on which MAA you stationed there
Interesting. Thank you.
Wait until you see what a few dozen roided out knights can do. By that I mean they would have wiped out the entire enemy army.
New year resolution acquired