Maximum Potential Bonuses

I wanted to open the discussion on a topic that annoys me greatly. Permanant circumstantial bonuses.

Some examples of what i mean are:

Impulsive trait, from strike garrison
Bonus defense from blacksmith/armorer/etc
Bonus initiative/HP/defense/attack from city enchantments

These bonuses have several attributes in common. They're gained only on units that are built under certain circumstances. They're "free" (there's no downsides or maintenance costs), they're permanant, and they're not backwards compatible - units that aren't born with them, can never get them.

I don't like things like this, because they shove the player towards a certain playstyle - of gradually building up one superpowered fortress, and producing everything from there. This slows down the pace of the game a lot, i feel. If you don't play like that, you have to live with the constant nagging feeling that you're doing it wrong, your troops aren't good enough, and maybe the enemy has these advantages which you don't.

I find myself playing in the same manner every game, otherwise i feel weak. And when i want to go out and kick ass, i don't enjoy spending 100 turns building barracks and blacksmiths and the like, first

It's not helped by the fact that these bonuses make a huge difference. Free defense can be granted to things like juggernauts and spiders, which normally can't wear armor. And the free Impulsive trait is pretty much essential for good ranged units, their effectiveness without, and with it, is like night and day.

They're not just little things that can be overcome. They're what i call "Potential" bonuses - they increase the unit's maximum potential. And unit with blacksmith-enhanced armor has a higher maximum power than any unit without it. when they wear the same equipment, one is clearly superior. and unless the other guy gets a armor tier ahead (a lead which can't last forever) the enhanced one will always be better.

I think the effect that these have on the game, is not good. it's probably too much to hope for change now as they're an established part of the game, but a girl can hope This sort of micromanaging and minmaxing is the domain of heroes, not average joes. You don't search the world for the finest legendary dwarven blacksmith, so you can stick him in an assembly line and make him crank out 10,000 breastplates. Legendary artisans make singular, legendary items. for singular, remarkable people, not for armies.

What i'd ideally like to see done, are to have them converted into things that aren't so unattainable. An example of a good bonus is the increase in starting level, from the war college. Any unit built in that town is clearly superior because it's a level higher. But any other unit can just do a bit more fighting to get to the same level. it's not out of reach. With the armorer, things like reductions in metal/labour cost for armor works too. Perhaps an advanced blacksmith could allow you to equip units with plate armour when you only have the tech chain (perhaps at a significantly increased cost). That's a powerful bonus, but one that can be overcome eventually by researching plate armour.

The city enchantments could be converted into buffs. Instead of giving permanant bonuses to anyone built there, they could give similar (perhaps stronger) temporary bonuses, to friendly units in and around the city, possibly out to a fairly wide radius. This would be a positive change imo, as you'd actually use these spells strategically, rather than casting them on your elite fort and forgetting about it. You'd be carefully choosing which army buffs would be most effective against an encroaching group of juggernauts, or a swarm of magnar slaves, or loose raiding parties running around pillaging things.

An alternative idea, one i like less but which would still be an improvement, is to keep these potential bonuses, but make them more available. For example rather than only applying enhanced armor to units made there, you could also bring along units built in other parts of your empire and have them be upgraded with the enhanced armor. Thus when you decide to go to war you can actually dedicate your entire empire to the burden of making an army, and have them all pass through the big armory city on their way to the frontline.

What does everyone else think of these concepts? What do you think permanant bonuses bring to the game? do you think they're a positive or negative force? would you rather see them redesigned?

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I never really thought about the specific bonuses your talking about being a problem until your post. These being mechanisms already implemented would make them difficult to redesign but I think it should be possible to tone some of them down ( for instance, make the level 3 town bonus which gives 10% HP boost to all your troops available only once).

The more you play the more you standardize some strategies to make them effective. Now that does mean you will usually want the best troops you can at a given time, but that does not necessarily means that you will always have them at that time, which compells you to build less powerful units or meat shields to go along with your elite troops when you launch an offensive. For exemple, you're not going to wait for a fortress to be a strike garrison to start producing archers. This bonus is a free shot but comes later in the game. Before reaching it in one of your fortresses, you can design archers with high initiative that will stay relevant throughout the game.

I have to agree that the armorer bonuses shouldn't exist on units don't have any armor (especially Juggernauts), but again in this specific exemple, the real problem is that stackable accuracy and high damage output early-mid game make them oneshot pretty much any unit the AI send you until very late game. I think Jugs are hard to balance, because trogs don't really have access to range units, so they need to fill up that weakness convincingly.

The armorer bonus really needs stacking to be effective and it is its stacking that makes it interesting as a priority building in a fortress.

It's true that some abilities and upgrades should stay as the monopoly of heroes and not "average joes". Although in your exemple of the dwarven blacksmith, you can imagine that his knowledge, his know-how, once accessible will be studied, copied and used thus making it available for your heroes and your troops.

I see a lot fo people swearing by the construction of fortresses on essence tiles. I usually don't (they come as the icing on the cake if the tile as high material). +1 hp or +2 fire attack is a nice little edge you can get but again is not critically unbalanced. When you have companies of units over 90HP (they usually don't die) or dealing 80+ damage (they bring enough crushing damage), the difference is hardly noticeable. I'd rather have my units sooner with -1 initiative (and my fortress having more construction capabilities), than having to wait 10 more seasons or spend gildars to speed training up. It's basically a choice you make when you decide to build a fortress.

Overall I'm ok with these "Permanant circumstantial bonuses", I think they bring variety and depth to the game.

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