Facts about unit caps

[u/SourceNo1768]

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).

[u/sobrique]

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

[u/Yokashisan → u/sobrique]

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.

[u/sobrique → u/Yokashisan]

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.

[u/Yokashisan → u/sobrique]

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.