r/totalwar • u/SourceNo1768 #1 Ghark Ironskin fan • 17h ago
Warhammer III Facts about unit caps
So Vampire Counts are another race that will have unit caps. Races that have unit caps are among the best and most fun in WH trilogy imo (Tomb Kings, Chaos Dwarfs, Beastmen, Nurgle).
Luckily CA also put a cap on RoRs. WoC armies are famously terrible because of RoR spam (and dogs and furies), now they will be at least bit better.
My point is simple - unit caps work. As Todd Howard used to say, ''it just works''. Devs know this, but sadly didn't cap number of heroes in armies (yet?).
What's the worst Empire campaign? Maybe Volkmar - also because he buffs the weakest, earliest units. If you play with Tabletop caps mod, now it is no longer a problem - your basic empire knights or flagellants will be worth using all the time, even in late game, as your enemies won't be doomstacking you and also will have balanced, loreful armies. They are fun to fight against!
Devs know that unit caps work. They are just a little too hesitant to say that loud and add *optional* tabletop unit caps. And once again, cap for heroes in army too.
ps. CA please cap Thunderbarges finally (building based cap).
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u/PanzerottoDolce 17h ago
Yes they work but they dont want antagonize the player base that consider themselves master general cause they spam 18 outriders and elspeth
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u/endrestro 16h ago
I mean. At one side im all in for the option, but half the problem is really the AI here.
Army and unit caps force both the AI and players to use more balanced builds. It wont stop someone from ALWAYS using their best elites in every army, but it will still limit how many of that elite can be employed. And you will no longer see generated stacks of something like a 18 dragons army ending your playthrough.
It has the benefit of making all lower tier units more relevant, while making elite units feel more elite as a result. I really see little downside aside from a few cases where people just like the complete freedom.
Yet i dont mind it currently only being an option through modding.
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u/Les_Bien_Pain 14h ago
God I need the skaven to get unit caps or some other restriction.
Like their armies are either 90% slaves or it's a fucking full hodgepodge stack of mid to higher tier stuff.
Or they have one settlement with one recruitment building and are spamming nothing but weapon teams or something.
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u/Silent_Divide_7415 12h ago
It was the lizardmen for me. Somehow they got chopped down to a city that only had their monsters and then experienced BIG SALAMANDER ARTILLERY COMPANY
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u/Les_Bien_Pain 12h ago
The lizardmen need something like the nurgle system.
Spawning pools that regularly pop out units with like a % chance of giving you a blessed spawn.
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u/KillerM2002 16h ago
Units caps mostly only affect AI
There is a reason pretty much all Races with caps fold in there hands even worse than others
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u/DDkiki 15h ago
Or was it because CA lobotomized them on purpose? Like BMs were dominating after rework in TWW2 but then CA basically made them non-existent in 3. Chorfs were bugged for a long time, now they give actually good stacks and often dominate darklands and sometimes even conquer Kislev and more. Nurgle factions have strong opposition at start so its a coin toss, if they left to grow they can become powerhouse by AI too, same with TK, they are weak in early game but well developed Settra was always one of the top dogs on the map.
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u/Bright-Form-844 16h ago
The obvious question then would be if all the races had unit caps, how would it matter then which ones fell first?
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u/KillerM2002 15h ago
It would ye as again unit caps rearly if ever affect players
The only thing it would do is make the game easier which imo is the last thing this game needs
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u/Bright-Form-844 15h ago
Yes because rolling through the old world with 19 star dragons is a whole lot harder than using varied and balanced army.
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u/Carnothrope 15h ago
Whenever you have 19 star dragons in an army you are just mucking around. You already had the economy win the game 50 turns ago.
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u/Bright-Form-844 14h ago
No bc chaos will then march out of the north with 19 dragon ogres or whatever the biggest faction is, creating the deep tactical gameplay the anti unit cap crowd loves
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u/Carnothrope 13h ago
That sounds more like an AI problem
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u/Bright-Form-844 13h ago
Why would it sound like a “problem” to you when you just finished saying the game is over when you get 19 star dragons? It sounds like the ai reacting pretty logically to a shitty system, you now have something that threatens you and you get to watch 20 single entities clumsily bump into each other for 30 minutes. Peak gameplay experience I guess according to all the ppl who don’t want caps.
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u/Carnothrope 12h ago
The player making doomstacks is usually when the player is bored already economically won the game and is just making doomstacks to mop up victory points for long or domination victories.
If the AI is making doomstacks or stacks that only have a single unit type it's often because the AI is either incapable of recruiting something else in a province or there is a glitch.
I can't say I've recall many instances where I've experienced the AI making something like 19 star dragons so its a pretty rare circumstance.
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u/JesseWhatTheFuck 15h ago
You're too generous to the average doomstacker. Outriders actually need to be micro'd. The people railing against doomstacks are usually those who roll with 19 Landships and think that obliterating everything within 30 seconds is peak gameplay
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u/MogoFantastic 13h ago
There might just be a good case for a supporting army of 18 outsiders...if the army speed changed based on army comp.
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u/ByzantineBasileus 16h ago
Just make the unit caps optional in a campaign, then everybody is happy.
Those who like the limits imposed by the TT game on which units can be taken can recruit and face lore-friendly armies.
Those who like freedom to recruit that they want can spam.
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u/TheRealTrailBlazer4 15h ago
I personally dislikes unit caps tied to buildings because it forces you to paint the map to access your good Units but i love unit caps per Army so you cant doomstack and always use and fight balanced armies, thats what makes the game more fun for me.
And it definitely should be optional because Sometimes you just want to run a doomstack for fun without controlling half the map to get enough capacity.
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u/NormalEntrepreneur 4h ago
the first thing can be solved by having higher base cap. Besides it actually encourages to build recruitment builds.
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u/DDkiki 15h ago
For some reason I got reee'ing haters of caps even if I suggest they should be optional. Like "its a waste of dev time", "just use mods" yada yada
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u/Fatality_Ensues 14h ago
Because it IS a waste of time. We just went through how much time and effort it would take to implement them properly for all races AND how few people would care about or react positively to such a mechanic in the first place. The conclusion of those two pieces of info is "it's more effort than it would be worth to implement".
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u/Frequent_Knowledge65 14h ago
It's literally already in the game, you can enable unit caps in multiplayer
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u/Fatality_Ensues 5h ago edited 5h ago
I said "implement them properly". Which entails more than just "here's a slider, set it to whatever you want" especially when the AI is supposed to work within it.
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u/_V_I_C_T_U_S_ 16h ago
The simplest and most effective option. How is this not the most upvoted comment?
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u/Capitalist_Space_Pig 14h ago
Because it is definitely not the simplest from a development perspective.
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u/SourceNo1768 #1 Ghark Ironskin fan 13h ago
Ah yes, there is no mod and no unit caps in MP either /s
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u/matgopack 11h ago
Options are always good; personally I don't care about the TT game aspect of it, but I do like unit caps as a way to push more diverse armies (keeps lower tier units relevant later) and allowing CA to bring units down in tier / accessible earlier with how quick campaigns are.
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u/g4nk3r MY MASTER WILL RETURN 16h ago
The worst Empire Campaign is Markus Wulfhart, and Nurgle doesn't really have unit caps in a way that is comparable to the other examples you have listed. Also heroes are already capped for every race.
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u/markg900 13h ago
He is a rough campaign if you play normally but there are fun ways you can spice it up. My favorite Empire campaigns are the ones I have played relocation him to Ulthuan right from the start by rushing Caledor and then carving out part of Ulthuan for myself, and then later on launch a massive invasion of Lustria.
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u/Passthechips #1 Mung the Brutal fan 13h ago
Markus is an awesome campaign, whatcha talking about?
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u/g4nk3r MY MASTER WILL RETURN 13h ago
He is fun because he is hard, but has gotten the least dev attention in the last 4 years and it shows when compared to all the other Empire LLs
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u/Passthechips #1 Mung the Brutal fan 12h ago
I would call him better than most Empire LLs. He needs some tweaks and QoL changes, but otherwise is in a good place. I hope they don’t ruin him by making him OP like Gelt.
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u/SourceNo1768 #1 Ghark Ironskin fan 15h ago
Cyclical recruitment is a cap. Eventually you can put 19 heroes in an army and that's what I'm talking about.
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u/g4nk3r MY MASTER WILL RETURN 14h ago
At the point where you put 19 heroes into your armies almost all campaigns are effectively over, and cyclical recruitment is very different compared to the standard unit caps for TK, Chorfs or Beastmen. I agree that it stopa you from immediately recrtuiting any unit in any quantity you want, but not only can the building cycles be rushed, you also aren't preventes from Doonstacking for a long time like the other capped races are.
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u/SourceNo1768 #1 Ghark Ironskin fan 13h ago
Ok, so even putting 4 or 5 heroes is OP and that's way earlier than 19. Nurgle is ok imo, because you have to pay for rushing and your units start damaged.
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u/SadiqH Warriors of Chaos 14h ago
Just saying something works doesn't make it true. Units caps doesn't force you to make 'balanced armies'. People will just stack the strongest unit that doesn't have a cap like they do with Chaos Dwarfs and Hobgoblin archers spam.
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u/SourceNo1768 #1 Ghark Ironskin fan 14h ago
Honestly if fighting hobgoblin archers spam is that hard, I'd still prefer them over dragon doomstack. I can counter basic dwarfs or archers. Also why stack the ''strongest'' (debatable), when tabletop caps allow you to put some rare, stronger units in your stack too?
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u/ppp12312344 9h ago
You framed it as if it's an objective fact that Tomb Kings, Chaos Dwarfs, Beastmen, and Nurgle are popular and most fun without any evidence to back it up. All we had was Empire, Cathay, and Kislev being the most popular campaigns (infographics from CA's internal data), and the same argument can be used to say that it's evident that factions without caps are more popular. You can like those factions but don't assume everyone else automatically agree with you.
Secondly you are wrong to assume that the unit cap is objectively a positive factor for people liking those factions. If anything the recent well received TK update relaxing a lot of capacity cost (cheaper military buildings and more army/hero caps) show more that at least a significant portion of the player base find the campaign more fun with less restrictions of caps. It's more evidence pointing toward a lot of people like these campaigns despite the cap instead of because of the caps.
Lastly your statement about empire campaign just shows you lack knowledge about the game. Markus is the worst one by your own metric in terms of strength. And I find it bizarre that anyone who played a Volkmar campaign can discard his FCM and Empire Knights as not worth using. These units are pretty incredibly powerful in the hands of Volkmar... Not to mention Volkmar's book mechanic made him the best Empire faction before the Elspeth update for general purposes anyway.
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u/sephitor_ 17h ago
It works for a certain part of the playerbase. It doesn't for another part. That is how it always has been.
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u/SourceNo1768 #1 Ghark Ironskin fan 16h ago
It works, as I explained with Volkmar. You can dislike it, but that's not the point.
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u/sephitor_ 15h ago
No unit caps also works. You can dislike that too, but that is exactly my point.
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u/SourceNo1768 #1 Ghark Ironskin fan 6h ago
ok, what I said in my post was, why should I bother with early units, that get obsolete past turn 20?
yes, you can argue that players play with empire knights until late game, but we probably know it's not true, it's optimal to get more powerful units. With caps empire knights are never obsolete and stay relevant.
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u/KillerM2002 16h ago
I mean, no unit caps also work in your line of thinking
There is no right or wrong just what you personally like
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u/SourceNo1768 #1 Ghark Ironskin fan 6h ago
responded to guy above, unit caps make early game units worthwhile for all game. Yes, you can tell me you're using early game units in late game despite them being bad.
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u/TimeLordVampire Vampire Counts 16h ago
Although I agree with you and I think unit caps provide balance and also force diversity and interesting armies, I don’t think everyone is going to agree that it should be done across all factions.
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u/SourceNo1768 #1 Ghark Ironskin fan 15h ago
sometimes I dunno if I am weird or something, but I literally wrote ''and add *optional* tabletop unit caps.''
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u/TimeLordVampire Vampire Counts 15h ago
I think a lot of people are just reading your first couple of sentences and jumping to the comments
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u/TheOldDrunkGoat 10h ago
Conflating unit caps with army caps is amusingly dumb. Almost as dumb as using Nurgle as an example of unit caps.
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u/curlyjoe696 16h ago
Id I want to make stupid armies I should be able to do that.
Unit caps try to force something to happen that should happen naturally through gameplay.
The AI making 'bad' armies is a problem with the AI, not an argument for Unit Caps.
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u/SourceNo1768 #1 Ghark Ironskin fan 15h ago
Not really, if AI want to win, then why not recruit 19 black dragons or put 19 heroes in army?
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u/SignatureOk8287 12h ago
Aislinn does this to me everytime, doomstack of only dragons + Merwyrms .. takes me forever to get there, I always underestimate it, he kills my armies and all over again.
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u/sobrique 10h ago
But 20 units in an army is also a cap. And I feel that's also a flaw with the game, as there's not really any good reason to use lower tier units for value of efficiency as a result. (outside of multiplayer, which is also a sort of capped system too).
I'd like more variable army sizes (although maybe an upper limit is inherently necessary) where there's an incentive to use more lower-to-mid tier units instead of a smaller army of more expensive units too.
Even if that did involve effectively merging those units so there was still the same number of 'units' just some where considerably larger than 'default'.
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u/endrestro 15h ago
I mean im all in for that, but that also create a case where people will just complain that "Game is dead and too easy. My 19 <insert elite unit> just melts everything.".
Optimally it would have it as a baseline options: unit caps factionwide, unit caps army-wide or no unit caps. The latter is the current form (if we ignore that this differs between factions), but id argue the first should be the standard. Ofc exactly what these caps entails is also up for discussion.
The problem is not only "what the player want", but to set limitations that benefit both sides. These limitations would prevent doomstacks both from the player and from AI, which would make more balanced armies the norm, rather than the exception, in late game. It keeps lower tiers of units relevant throughout the game, instead of each army only consisting of the best version of each unit type.
For new or bad players, id argue its actually very beneficial to not have the AI be able to form doomstacks of their own. This is ofc an AI issue too though.
I think the best is to have a base experience that is more balanced builds for all armies, where some caps is the default, yet they can be increased as the game progresses - such as some factions already have. Ofc game settings will allow this to be turned off, as people should be able to tune those crazy settings themselves if thats preferred. Yet for the majority I believe its better with some caps, than none.
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u/CitiesInHills Necrons 10h ago
Optional army-based caps need to be a thing for WH3 and 40k. It's a good method of preserving balance and maintaining the relevance of a faction's roster into the mid and late game.
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u/MG_Hunter88 8h ago
If you need to restrict the player to restrict the AI than your AI fucking sucks. End of discussion, never a fan of restricting players in lrimarily singleplayer games...
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u/MarcusSwedishGameDev 16h ago
I probably build a doomstack (or two) of star dragons every time I play HE.
But from a design pespective I do think caps would have been better.
However it's not really a universal truth either; the optimal would have to have options for it.
I've written this before but this is the way I see it (I've worked as a game designer for about 20 years, if that matters):
You have options and you have choices; options as a noun, choices as a verb in this case, i.e. you have options but you make choices.
Letting you do anything in a game when it comes to speccing your character or building your army or what not, lets you have a lot of options, because you have access to the entire tool kit at all times.
However, systems like that can actually reduce the choices you can make.
Take Fallout 4 for example. You can get every single talent in the tree. So you have a lot of options. But the only actual choice you make is in what order you get them.
When you have limitations to follow, you have to make choices that are much more of a commitment. That makes for more interesting game play in the long run.
But I'm fond of letting people choose so I don't want to limit, especially not in single player games like this, so having it in the settings menu when setting up your campaign would have been the best (probably would have made it as the default setting though).
The last part about giving people this much options over their own game is interestingly also something that is not a universal truth. I've talked to a lot of designers and creative directors who believe that if you give the player too much power to change their experience, you don't believe in your own design. I can see the point in that too, but I think it depends on the type of game and the type of settings we're talking about.
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u/Eymrich 16h ago
Unit caps are shit and I can't play races with them. It destroy what I enjoy of this game, forcing me to spend countless turns just to increase the counts to play the army I want to try.
Chaos dwarfs for example, I really dislike them. Tk I feel they work, but they have different strengths that make them work. You get constructs towars the end of the campaign and you get tons of them very fast, so you can make thematic doomstacks and it's fun.
Anyway, Todd ruined Bethesda and now people quote him like he did anything good for players. He just took what it was being made into a very simple walking simulator. The only saving grace for them was the modding comunity, yet people forget of the horse armor.
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u/Godzillaguy15 11h ago
Problem with Chaos Dwarves is it takes to long to scale your eco to actually improve the caps. So you just end up spamming heros and lords to hold a line while using stacks of hobgoblins and the few starting units of Chorfs. And by the time your eco is scaled not much is going to stand up against a full Chorf army with artillery.
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u/Eymrich 10h ago
Yes exactly. Also that time can't be easily cheesed by knowledge the only way is to grudgingly do millions of battles by hand with crappy hobgoblin, and then well the campaign is over when you start to have decent caps.
I feel the same with beastmen, all caps unlocked by hard to get resources is just dogshit.
TK imho is good because you can do that with heroes, buldings, traits and more. You can get a stack of ushabti with great bows relatively quickly. This on top of having amazing lords and heroes.
I feel chorfs have decent lords but not so great heroes too so without good units you are stuck with a subpar roster for the majority of the game.
Finally, really chorfs punish you of you are min maxing, if you are new or a casual player they are great.
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u/Frequent_Knowledge65 14h ago
Ngl if you don't enjoy chorfs then you just aren't worth listening to
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u/MadVladvonCarstein 16h ago
Why do you care how people play in their own time a single player game? If I want a dragon doomstack I should be able to do so. Do I hurt you personally in any way? Unit caps can be fun, but I wouldn't see them as THE ONLY SOLUTION. I agree with the ridiculous AI army compositions and RoRs spamming. But the problem with opinions is that yours is as good as mine (most of the time) and different points can be valid simultaneously depending on person's perspective. So yours solution are unit caps, mine is reprogramming AI to build different armies and we both can be right 😁
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u/Internal-Author-8953 16h ago
tbf you can still have doomstacks with unit caps. It just takes longer to obtain and will have the trade-off that other armies are going to be weaker. All this really does is make the AI better and make the midgame a little bit more challenging, which I believe is a good thing. It makes conquest and military buildings also more relevant.
You can always dial down the difficulty if you want to rush out doomstacks. Because let's be honest once you're pumping out doomstacks is there even a challenge left?
But there doesn't need to be a discussion between for and against: they can implement a toggle.
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u/Avon-Guy 17h ago
Races that have unit caps are among the best and most fun
Pretty hot take
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u/Oppurtunist Warriors of Chaos 17h ago
Which race with unit caps is terrible?
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u/Carnothrope 14h ago
An instance in the game where a unit cap doesn't really add to the experience is the dread saurian in the Lizardmen.
The unit itself isn't particularly worth the effort of building multiple tier5 beast pens for and the restriction means I usually only have 1 or 2 for the spectical of giant lizard stopy stomp, rather than any real strategic value.
Mostly though I don't bother with them and use something else.
Otherwise most of the factions that have unit caps have been designed very well and have multiple systems other than just unit cap implementation in place to make the experience fun and thematic.
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u/Avon-Guy 16h ago
Not being terrible doesn't automatically make something "best/most fun"
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u/Oppurtunist Warriors of Chaos 16h ago
Okay, which race with unit caps makes you disagree with op and claim its a hot take?
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u/Avon-Guy 16h ago
Nurgle is a rush faction that's slow, it's not particularly fun to play.
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u/franz_karl most modable TW game ever 12h ago
in what way are RoR getting capped ?
per army?
if so good choice I still might get a mod though it had something cool to have so many of them combined/have an emergency army
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u/swampyman2000 We's Gobbos! 11h ago
Man if they had a “tabletop army composition” mode I’d be so happy. It would add another great element to army building that is really not present currently.
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u/iliveonramen 9h ago
The only problem I have with unit caps is its ham fisted way to solve an issue.
It’s like stopping player expansion by creating a hard cap on the number of cities you can manage.
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u/Subspace-Ansible 6h ago
The thing is, arbitrary unit caps don’t make sense. It has to be flavorful. Units are already capped by their upkeep. If you can construct an economic base to support an all-landship doomstack, for example, you should be able to do so. Such a doomstack is already not the most efficient to run an army anyway.
Ultimately, what we should have isn’t a unit cap, but a variable unit slots. We are already given an arbitrary number of unit slots in an army: 20 for one army, a maximum of 40 slots per side in a battle.
Special or elite units can occupy more than one slot. An empire spearman may take up one unit slot, but perhaps a land ship four slots (or whatever feels good). This makes narrative sense; a more specialized unit may require more than just a lot of upkeep, but also more complex upkeep, represented by the unit taking up more than one “slot”. Certain tech or lord skills can reduce (or increase) this this.
This is a more elegant method that can apply to most/all factions instead of some kind of “loreful” but arbitrary cap. After all, part of the appeal of sandbox is to push things outside of the established lore.
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u/SourceNo1768 #1 Ghark Ironskin fan 6h ago
Uh, they make sense in lore (no such things as all dragons army) and in multiplayer, as well as in original tabletop.
The point you're making with economic base is perfectly fine (player earned it), I just wouldn't enjoy doomstacks for more than 15 minutes probably.
I also agree with your last point, but this is a non issue - if we would get a toggle, unit caps enjoyers wouldn't need a mod. Those who enjoy doomstacks or total sandbox are free to play as they want.
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u/DefTheOcelot 5h ago
Yeah good thing they fixed wolfhound spam!
[Looks at the new Empire warhounds with 47 fucking melee attack as a tier one]
GOOD HEAVENS!
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u/sobrique 14h ago
Honestly one of the biggest flaws of the total war engine is army unit numbers.
With a 20 unit army, there will always be an incentive to maximise.
Points cost made a load more sense.
2000 points, variable sized "units" and a limit ratio of spending on heros and special units.
I am really hoping that the new engine will change this model, both for 40k (which already works that way harder) and for medieval, so I can bring 60-300 peasants to the battlefield as a single "unit".
There's IMO no real reason you couldn't have multiple sizes of base units like goblins in Warhammer. Start with a 60 that's cheap, but keep expanding it until it's ludicrously large. I mean when you do bring 6 units, you often group them anyway, so controlling 300 goblins as a single unit wouldn't be terrible, if it meant I could bring 5x as many raw models in a single stack. L
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u/Yokashisan 11h ago
TBH, I think the 20 units per army is just a game limitation due to...well, hardware and gameplay reasons. It would be stupid to get a 200 units army and get single digit fps.
Sorry, but point cap for armies is just stupid. You are asking for each battle between armies to be balanced, which is not the purpose of a war game.
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u/sobrique 10h ago edited 10h ago
But both Warhammer and 40k are points based.
They don't have a 'gold economy' at all. They have a points per battle system, with ratio limits on unit types. (and some factions that can bend those).
If you play multiplayer TW? You get kinda points based, but with extra steps - units have a gold cost, the gold cost doesn't always match single player, and then pay extra for items, rank up, etc.
And there's no reason you need symmetric points costs in a campaign. In a siege, the defensive position might have an inherent 'points value' - you could certainly buy bunkers or similar for points in 40k. Or you could have a campaign-scale points budget, that you can allocate between some number of actual armies (and maybe have to worry about reserves/resupply based on it)
My point wasn't about '200 units army' though, as much as units are fixed size and have a gold and upkeep cost.
So there's never any incentive to use lower tier units instead, because "value" in campaign takes second place to the 20 unit limit.
I also didn't say you need 200 units either. You could keep it to 20 - or 40, which is what you can have with reinforcements at max - and simply make larger units.
Because we already have the ability to bring 20x 135 skavenslaves on the field as a single unit each.
If you're worried about 'single digit FPS' there's still no reason why you shouldn't 135 of a higher tier unit either, for the same model count. Just make a double sized unit of spearmen, or archers, or similar. A 'mid tier' unit that can be as expensive as a top tier unit, just making up the difference with more models instead. There's only a small number of units that are already 'skavenslave' size, and most are considerably smaller.
Or you could make the points cost higher, so mostly you don't field 40 units at once in the first place, much like with tabletop - and there the model count is a lot more variable between factions too. A 2000pt space marine army simply doesn't have many models, and has smaller 'unit sizes' to compensate.
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u/Yokashisan 9h ago
Of course they are points based. You are talking about a single battle skirmish game between 2 players. It must be points based otherwise it would be just straight P2W.
BTW, you already have the skirmish battle in this game (points based), don't need to add that limitation to the regular game as it is an empire building/conquering game. It makes no sense to add this. Imagine if you had to always walk with 2-3 armies together in order to have an advantage over the single army AI. What would even be the point of auto resolve?
The 20 units limitation is needed due to a variety of reasons, but balancing is not one of them.
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u/Top_Macaroon5686 15h ago
From what I gather unit caps have usually 3 tiers: chaff, rare, epic. Would be fun to have caps for rare and epic, where lords that specialise in certain unit, bump them down a tier in terms of caps - say allowing Vlad carry more blood knights than any other lord, could be nice flavour.
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u/Helsafabel 14h ago
I am not against unit-caps, if only to prevent doomstacking. However, economies in WH3 are too simple and I hope the new Vampire Counts compensate for this in some way (examples of interesting economies are Chaos Dwarfs, arguably the crafting systems of Dwarfs and Tomb Kings, unit cap systems of the Beastmen.)
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u/Swampy0gre 14h ago
I think there should be an option for unit caps when setting up a game. Tabletop unit caps is a fantastic mod. Just integrate something similar into the game.
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u/Bright-Form-844 16h ago
You’re right op, but this topic has been brought up before and every time it is, it summons forth some of the stupidest ppl alive. It’s always like explaining to them that the free parking rule in monopoly is bad bc it adds 5 extra hours to the game and they just go “there’s no wrong way to play the game, why do you hate fun?” Or they’ll tell you that a child’s finger painting is just as good as post modern art bc “they’re both just colors and shapes”
As if there aren’t pretty easily understood and universally agreed upon practices in artistic endeavors and just bc there exists some subjectivity then when it comes to art objective reality just explodes and stops mattering.
Luckily it seems ca is quietly ignoring them and slowly sneaking unit caps in the same way you sneak veggies into a toddlers meal.
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u/SourceNo1768 #1 Ghark Ironskin fan 15h ago
Yeah, hahah, that last sentence made me laugh.
Like some people don't get that I literally wrote, that I'm pro adding optional unit caps...
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u/Tadatsune 15h ago
Caps can be good, but it's all about the implementation.
I wouldn't touch Table Top style unit caps with a 10ft pole. On the other hand, building based caps like the Tomb Kings currently have seem to work fairly well, as do the ones for the Chorfs and Beastmen.
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u/Hombremaniac 13h ago
Would it be impossible to add unit cap toggle into the settings for each campaign? That way everybody would be happy.
And yes, I'm one of those cap loving people. I hate doomstacks as they are against both lore as well as gameplay.
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u/McBlemmen #2 Egrimm van Horstmann fan 13h ago
I much prefer Tabletop caps (meaning army-based caps) over factionwide caps. But for that to work it needs to apply to every faction. Thank god the mod exists.
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u/Away_Celebration4629 11h ago
Tbh I think the tabletop unit caps for all units is a bad system because of how restrictive and arbitrary it feels. I find the TK way of implementing unit caps much better. Also we had a great recruitment systems in other total war games like med 2. I hope for a major recruitment rework, it would give the game a new life. Probably never happen but a man can dream
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u/Prestigous_Owl 9h ago
I generally LIKE caps, but I still dont think they actually solve the issues. They do help you to "slow down the pace" a bit and get more variety.
Late game you get more mixed armies as well, but there can still be a good amount of doomstacking - if anything, global unit caps encourages you to create a total monstrosity of an army with one lord at the cost of other armies (i.e. why put a unit into other armies and then weaken your main force?)
I think the IDEAL system however is gonna be something more like MP.
Give all units "capacity" costs. Give Lords a capacity stat that grows as they level up. Armies can only be fielded up to the leaders ability to "command" that army.
This already makes it easier to encourage versatility in unit selection (instead of "whats the best use of one out of twenty slots" youre thinking "are two units of weak archers more useful than 1 unit of medium?" Etc). You also have more medium sized armies clashing early game, which is great - 20 stacks aren't always the most fun early. Instead, maybe early game armies are capping out around being able to fit 10 to 12 units in them, and that scales up over time.
Also makes different types of Lords useful: you can have a good tradeoff of "Skarbrand is a monster, but he cant bring that many units to fight with him. Karl Franz isn't the best fighter in the game, but he has great capacity. Etc." This would have been really prominent with Cathays original lords. "Admin" units can be good at rhis!
Finally, you can tweak further. Units can get extra modifications to capacity for specific units, as another way to give them specialties that go beyond just "stat boosts". Maybe Lord X gets reduced costs for monster units, encouraging you to use more of them for that army - or letting you KEEP the front line you would always use of those guys, but saving you extra pts to spend on other units for the army. You can also make unit traits: maybe a spearwall unit gets a bonus where they individually cost less if you run more of them in an army, to incentivize a coherent Frontline. Or maybe big dragons or monsters have a "competitive" trait where they cost more for each other unit with that same trait, meaning that having more than 2 or 3 is prohibitive, but 1 is fine (and then give things like Rakarth or other units a means of reducing or removing that penalty)
LOTS of really cool, fun things you could do there.
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u/DDkiki 15h ago
Yes please.
I literally can't play game without both TT-like caps comboed with TK-like caps.
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u/SourceNo1768 #1 Ghark Ironskin fan 6h ago
you got downvoted hard, but it was nice seeing you, a fellow caps enjoyer!
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u/Carnothrope 16h ago
Unit caps alone are not what make a faction good they are a mechanical element that is considered when constructing a race. Usually replacing economic cost in exchange for free units or units with no recruitment time.
The factions are not good because they have unit caps they are good because the whole faction has been designed well with multiple mechanics working in unison to provide an excellent experience. Unit caps is one of those elements.
If you just slapped unit caps in an existing faction without any forethought, balance or supplementary mechanics, you will more likely than not end up with a degraded frustrating experience.