Strategus battle : provide stats per DEFAULT

[Butan]

Actually you can choose to not show what your character informations are when you enlist into a strategus battle.

I can see the reason why: some wants to keep their build a secret, but it really doesnt help those who command the roster and is a detriment to the composition of said roster.


TLDR argumentation :

(click to show/hide)

Even when you say in the info panel / briefing "PROVIDE STATS" or "People providing stats will be prefered", there is still always a lot of players just ignoring it and most of the time you cant ignore the mass of them if you want to max out for your battle (except for some really well appointed and big battles/siege where applicants are practically flooding your teamspeak) and if you dont know each players of cRPG you will accept players on only 2 (or even 1) conditions : teamspeak presence and a good level.


There is three main things this lack of information causes, and they are all linked together:

- you cant be sure of the numbers of every classes your battle will possess, thus having to "adapt" (in a bad and unnecessary way) your tactics to what you will have, or ask unadapted people to be a part of a strategy they cant properly fit in.
- you cant choose a specially geared army for fear of not having players capable of handling a particular array of items: a specialized army of, say, pikemen + hoplitles wouldnt fight at peak efficiency and a lot of players would rage at such a choice of weapons, because you couldnt know that they had no WPF in said polearms.
- you then have to buy every kind of weapons (and armors at a lesser degree) profusely to be sure there will be no shortage of anything or your players will be gimped as soon as you ran out of a certain gear and you wont fight at maximum battle capacity.



Being able to "roleplay" a certain kind of army as a leader of strategus battles, or just gearing armies to deal lots of damages to certain armies composition, THAT, would give STRATEGUS an enjoyable STRATEGY orientation.


After fighting in a hundred of strategus 4 battles, I can tell that they almost all look the same. The only thing that saves them is that they still retain a certain randomness in their outcome (good/bad leadership, individual skills, enough/insufficient gear, geography) and that you still encounter the same adrenaline-fueled fights, ganks, duels (with even more "echo" to victory or defeat!).


Something that saves them, and also gives them too much predictability, is the fact that lots of high stakes battles/sieges are primarily made of the members of the most important factions at war: this leads to roster being made by people who know each others, their build, and how to fight together. It also means that you can almost predict that a battle against a roster made of a majority of greys will have 1H/Shield ( ), and if the roster is made of fallen you will see a lot of Archers ( ).

Its a good thing because they will use their army composition (if a good leader is online) effortlessly and with much impact, but also causes the army composition to somewhat stagnate and all the epic battles, with nords/druzhina/bashis/greys Versus GK/Fallen/HRE/Mercs/kapikulu will have a somewhat same feeling. Not necesserally a bad thing, but there is at the moment no "alternative" and no way to clearly compose your army according to your need.

Providing stats per default will give the roster's leaders the option to really control its army and not just pray that everything comes together naturally. You will still have to accept some "unwanted" classes when you dont have max roster but that wont prevent leaders from applying more general strategy to the army comp.

If this option become automatic, tomorrow, you will be able to form armies of crossbowmen and 1H/Shield to defend castles;cavalry armies to roam the plains; pikemen and archers armies to delay and control hard fought area; 2H heroes armies to attack aggresively; etc...

You will be able to combine all classes according to YOUR idea of what you need, and gear your troops accordingly.


I think this will enhances the game at a little "privacy" cost of people's build.

This will only enlarge the game's choice and will not prevent the classic army composition of every classes in the game that we see today.

It will still be risky to form such specialized armies because there isnt an infinity of high-level high-skilled players that you can count on in every classes of the game but I am sure, and when I say sure, I mean because I WANT TO DO THIS NOW BUT CANT, that if this becomes a reality people will take that risk and it will add to the fun of the game.

[Butan]

After seeing gingerpussy post :

5. Alt characters. probably this idea have been mentioned for a long time and i was agreeing with the Devs that no Alts should be used in Strat battles. until now.
After i came back i see a lot of changes, armory and ladder for one. Basically now it don't mean anything that u are playing with your Alt char instead of main. but implementing that you can fight (choose char) when applying for battles would be nice. The main reason is that it would bring FUN into strategus for the players.

yeah FUN why ? think about tactics. example. So in a strat battle you need 10 % ranged or 20 % or whatever but think of the possibility if you can manage exactly how many archers in this battle, or how many cav ?  With a ALT char i dont mean the skip the fun char. And in all fairness the player have leveled up that Alt char as well. Personally i dont have much to gain by this cuz i only have a lvl 28 2h Alt, rest is skip the fun and main char. but i know alot of people have many alts. I think this would bring back people to the game.

example battle. 50 vs 50 you army have 500 horses and a overload of pikes. ofc you ask for Cav players and pikers. with this implemented i think we could even see specialized armys.

I think having alts allowed in strategus (even STF, seriously, why not?) would have a great sinergy with the automatic provide stats and GREATLY enhances strategus in terms of fun (for the fighters) & strategy (for those behind the plans).

Do it now devs!