Power builds for obvious reasons have in many cases a significant advantage, but from my point of view this is not the key problem here and I don't want talk about balance.
I'm interested how come some factions have gold for such heavy armors for most of their units, since they have so small amount of caravans and shity short trade routes. Indeed amazingly!
My faction is very rich and has a perfectly organized economy, trade and logistics (cheating and exploiting with over 1000 CD keys), nevertheless this is not possible for us to produce such expensive equipment because in our case it is absolutely impossible to spend money so lavishly, but some factions, despite losing wars and territory, still have tons of gold for best heavy equipment.
Price reduction does not explain anything, because I'm not talking about neutral locations and I have a concrete point of reference.
God wills it again? Don't even try to make us fools because we all have eyes and see what's going on. Before you write a lie, think about this for a while, because here are people who can verify a lot of different things...
DRZ freefarmed all Strat long + castle and city capping gold up until they invaded NA from what I saw, several months ago, and they had every army decked out in Lordly Druzhina Plate with top tier MW weapons and champion heavy horses for what seemed like at least 20,000 troops. This was before the crafting price reduction. Note I quit strat before they did that so I'm not sure how high the reduction was.
Hospitallers have free farmed Strat twice as long, but once we rallied clans to fight at them during the Red Vs Green war we all had pretty similar gear, they had generally higher tier armor and weapons then LLJK, Chaos, TKoV, etc but not that silly. All we were able to afford in LLJK on our relatively close and infrequent trade runs were Lordly Cavalry Robes and whatever low/mid tier weapons we could scrounge up, with upkeep for 8k troops being a real bitch. At that point in time due to our general inactivity and lack of organization a reduction in crafting prices certainly would've helped a bunch, but our core reason for generally low equipment values was an unoptimized economy.
Now it seems due to the horrible stagnation/infrequency of PvP combat in strat, and the high gold returns in capping AI castles and towns (often with very suspect means), plus whatever this crafting reduction was, Strategus is pretty much at a disgusting state. Even medium sized clans, given enough "peace and prosperity" which is like 10 fucking months now probably except for 1-2 weeks of war in the middle there, are decked out in at least medium-heavy lordly armor. Clans that have been especially productive have endless supplies of champion heavy cav and literally, lordly plate armor, + masterwork danishes, glaives, poleaxes, elite scimis, etc etc.
On top of this, tons of players are Strength builds and this leads to people taking 8 or more hits on average to kill. The absolute worst is seeing endless amounts of players that are in full plate, with probable 24/15 builds, riding champion heavy horses with mw heavy lances. Once you dismount these guys, it turns into a 5vs1 of this idiot soaking nearly 10 or more hits, with tons of friendly fire from the mix of EU, NA, good and bad players, along with swarms of heavy cav continuously trying to lance you in the back.
Frankly, the recent Strategus battles I've participated in have been less then enjoyable. To me, they are starting to embody everything that turns me off about the mod. The effectiveness of strength builds, lordly heavy armor values, cav/melee hybrids, and the simply awful and stagnant politics of the clans that play Strategus.
Strat 2.0 never got full plate until the end of it, and that was only because of the hilarious bug where upkeep made you gain gold and all that other nonsense. On top of that, most clans seemed more interested in participating, war was abundant, EU and NA wasn't divided, and buying/outfitting armies wasn't some colossal pain in the ass. Strat 3.0's early game was dominated by MW Rus Bows 1 shotting people in peasant gear, now it appears to be dominated by full plate and endless heavy cav, all +3, endlessly griefing me by taking so long to kill and slaughtering my teammates.
Though the lack of cav awareness I see in all of these battles isn't gear related, just skill and it's depressing : \ Probably 1/4 of the deaths on my team it seems have been teammates walking from spawn to battle and being couched from behind, the side, sometimes even directly ahead, and it makes me rage a bit. Holy shit just swivel around with your "look" key whenever you feel exposed and you will turn what is nonstop ticket drain from couches to big jukes or maybe even big turnarounds on the scrub cav player by killing him and/or horse. Get some awareness!
Anyways, just want to point out that the flaws of Strat 3.0 are so glaring its kind of painful, and respect for all the clan leaders who have put up with the BS to get to this point in the game, and its probably a good feeling to be commanding armies so decked out in gear. Just hoping the devs go forward soon (or at least reveal/beta test the changes) they have in mind for next strat to get some actual feedback from the community and try to make it the best game they can.
