It would be pointless. As every unit with armor would need it, so why not just add the cost of the trait to the cost of the armor and save yourself a huge headache.

I like getting rid of encumbrance, and I think other things should be streamlined as well. This is like getting rid of hero attributes (strength, dex, ect), they are numbers which affect other numbers in ways that are never explicit. I think there is a problem with initiative, since it is is a complete mystery what the numbers mean. What formula calculates how often a unit attacks? Does twice the initiative equal twice as often as half the initiative? This would tell us how good is a plus initiative bonus and how bad is a minus initiative effect. The numbers and mechanics in the game change frequently in ways that are only documented in patch notes, where even there it is often mysterious what is going on. 

I find the dumbing down complaint odd since I don't think anyone here can explain what the removed mechanic actually did in the first place, since it was a number that affected another number that functions in an unexplained way. I think the overall effect of encumbrance was to fret over actually using weapons and armor without some offset, to get too focused in numbers that the player never understands anyway. Actually, this concern is still there, except it is more direct with one less bag of numbers to juggle. Good riddance I say.

It seems to me that every problem this game has had iteration after iteration has stemmed from too much complexity to manage, on the player's side and the developer's side. It makes sense to me that changes at this point should be to simplify, because every change seems to have a cascade problem, where every game entity (item, hero, trait, ect) needs to be updated to match the new rules. It's a slow process waiting for the cascade, and the development cycle seems to be winding down, so I am hoping they settle in on something manageable soon so future changes are just adding more juicy content (quests, features, immersion niceties, ect) and less fiddling with balance cascades.

I'm finding that I really like the new system. It does simplify things a lot, and you can either like that or hate it. The main thing is it seems to be easier on the AI, at least thats how it looks to me, since it was really easy for me to make a unit that had great amour and stuff, but still had had high initiative, using muscle or strength, picking a warg or a horse, etc. I could min/max really well, but the AI can't and often seemed to have units with just terrible initiative, this seems to be less of the case in the new system.

That being said, clearly it needs some work, sorting out of redundant abilities and the like, but i feel confident that will get taken care of.

I agree that the current system is alright, although very buggy and unfinished. It does make unit design easier and upgrading much harder for the AI to screw up. The main problems are:

-Redundant and unbalanced abilities

-Weightless shields.

-Direct initiative penalties on armor.

1-2 are easy fixes but #3 is not so easily fixed. The problem is that there are 5 pieces of armor. Thus you have to apply the penalties in multiplies of 5. 6 really because breastplates have twice the defense as the other pieces.  Right now they get around this by just not having every piece give a penalty but this is abusable because you can just use the pieces without the penalties. This is also why leather now has no penalty. For instance if you give a unit a plate breastplate, chain boots and vambraces, and leather greaves and helmet they will have just -1 initiative. This is why I suggested a hybrid system above, although I guess as oothers have suggested you could just increase base initiative to 100 or something.

I would say that's because of bad implementation on both of those fronts (encumbrance/weight capacity, and horses.)

I guess I can live without it, but they really need a good balance pass on weapons and armor, starting with getting rid of the +initiative bonuses on weapons.

Also, making the initiative system less coarse by increasing base initiative would help a lot.

If that's your logic then why not add the cost of every trait to the production of all units and let them have all the traits, and be done with it.

duplicate

...because then units wouldn't be unique. A good trait is specialized and helps a unit to do a specific thing, thus differentiating units. A trait that is absolutely necessary and does nothing but tweak some stats is pointless.

I mean clearly it is unfinished and buggy, but its a beta, i don't think anyone can suggest that Stardock is going to leave it how it is, so i feel like complaining about the messed up traits at least it a bit of wasted breath, im sure they know about the issue and are working on it.

As for the issue of initiative penalties on armor. Yeah it can be gamed now, but honestly so could the old system, I could do the same kind of thing in it basically, using traits, and what i was trying to say was that the AI couldn't, so this system seems better overall for balance vs. the AI. Still, I think it would be easier overall if, for units at least, armor was just a single thing, that would be simple and also be better for the AI. Leave it how it is for champions though, but increase the number magic amours out there, I've seen plenty of magic boots and capes, a few magic hats and vambraces, but i dont think ive ever really seen a magic breast plate or the shin guards.

@mqpiffle - Yeah a good balance pass is needed, i mean i wish they could just make the AI better at everything, but this system seems easier than doing that. Also i think the bigger issue is balancing initiative vs armor, cus right now honestly I would i would much rather have better Init, than armor, getting to go first and hit first is a huge huge huge advantage, armor, especially early on however, seems pretty useless.

Also, just on another note, I don't really understand the complates about like Porcupiee getting to use the big ass mace, who cares? If you awesome caster is using a big mace to hit things, then shes spending time hitting stuff and not casting, as well as getting close where she can get hit back... even with the mace she doesn't do that much damage and... really, you're just doing it wrong.

I've been thinking this myself.  Armor pieces are fun in some games, but I'm starting to think they're not necessary or fun in LH.  And like you mentioned they could balance the initiative much easier with full suits, and maybe introduce a couple more armor types just for fun.  I've also been thinking that the armor proficiency traits should not be requirements, but rather give bonuses to using those kinds of armors.

Also increasing base initiative to 100 and increasing the bucket to something like 1000 would really help with balance.

Leather Armor > -3 init, 6 armor

Reinforced/Studded Leather Armor > -10 init, 13 armor

Chain Mail Armor > -20 init, 21 armor

Plate Mail (plates over chain) > -33 init, 30 armor

Full Plate Armor > -50 init, 40 armor

Yeah, i think that the armor pieces make the balancing of the game too difficult and it would be better to reduce the number of armor pieces from 5 (head, body, arms, legs and feet) to 3 (head, body and feet). This would make it easier to balance the armors and the magic helmets and boots could still be used.

I would replace the defense value with the physical resistance value to make armors easier to understand and to balance:

- Leather Armor: 16 % (body), 4 % (head) and 4 % (feet) = 24 %

- Chain Mail: 32 % (body), 8 % (head) and 8 % (feet) = 48 %

- Plate Mail: 48 % (body), 12 % (head) and 12 % (feet) = 72 %

- Leather Armor: - 8 (body), - 2 (head) and - 2 (feet) = - 12 initiative and dodge

- Chain Mail: - 16 (body), - 4 (head) and - 4 (feet) = - 24 initiative and dodge

- Plate Mail: - 24 (body), - 6 (head) and - 6 (feet) = - 36 initiative and dodge

- Wooden Shield: + 10 dodge, + 2 % physical resistance and - 4 initiative

- Round Shield: + 15 dodge, + 3 % physical resistance and - 6 initiative

- Kite Shield: + 20 dodge, + 4 % physical resistance and - 8 initiative

- Tower Shield: + 25 dodge, + 5 % physical resistance and - 10 initiative

- Leather Armor Proficiency: Reduces the dodge penalty to 0

- Chain Mail Proficiency: Reduces the dodge penalty to 0

- Plate Mail Proficiency: Reduces the dodge penalty to 0

The reason I'm not very happy about this expansion, is that it seems more of an overhaul than an expansion.

At this stage (second official addition to the game) I would have expected flying units, item crafting and all the things we never got with Elemental or FE. Instead, we get another rules overhaul. 

Granted, heroes at least needed the overhaul, and that's good, but when do we get expanded things (if ever)?

The full armor suits thing is something I have been playing around with for a while and it works but it is a drastic change to the way FE/LH works.  It goes back to most fantasy RPG settings in how armor works instead of piecemeal but some people like the ability to just put certain pieces on different units.  Personally I think you should have a setup like the following if you change to suits, armors would be the chest and legs pieces and would take up the chest, shirt, and legs slot.  Since all units have a base shoe of some sort it would not mes with the graphics if you did not include the boot, helm, or gloves graphics then freeing those art items for use in making different magical items.  Basically the sub pieces would have no armor value but be perfect for secondary values.  

Padded

Leather Armor 

Athican Leather Armor

Chain Armor

Light Plate Armor

Masterwork Chain Armor

Plate Armor

You could add sub armors levels where you can add chain/plate chest pieces only but then they count as full armors.  A chain shirt would count as chest and legs even though it is a chest item.  That's debatable but it could be added.  Personally I think this would be more beneficial than removing the encumbrance system.  Plus this makes it easier to add magic items to the game as then you don't have as many items to code.

I'd second the replacement of armor pieces with full suits for normal units.

Champs should remain as is- but I do think encumberance should come back for champs.

I think units and heroes should follow the same rules, because it is much easier to understand and to balance.

I think if you made the individual pieces unified as in the only thing that has encumbrance be just the main armor then it would simplify the system but not dumb it down too much.  So armor suits would have encumbrance but helms/gloves/boots would not or would be very low like 1 weight.  Weapons and shields could then be re encumbered as well such that you cold have the specific values and know if you have a light one hander you can wield a shield without a problem but with a maul it might be a lot harder.  Personally I like the idea of trained units having armor proficiences as well that increase their encumbrance levels appropriately but cost proportionally higher training costs.  Heavy armor training costs twice what medium armor does but gives 30 or 40 additional Weight and then make the base training time something like 40.  That and add in specific negatives for heavy armor so not everyone is wearing it.  You should not have a high dodge unit wearing plate armor that unbalances the game as high dodge should not have high armor as well.  You need to have to choose your defensive type whether it be resistance, dodge, or defense.  Having high values in each homogenizes your units.

i agree with the OP, weapons should be more balanced, if integration into the skills or with some other restrictions is questionable.

on the one hand, putting weapon proficiencies into the game would in the normal sense added some more skills, but this mastering would acquire additional levels only for using a weapon and less sometimes less leveling for skills.

one option would be to put together armor and weapon proficiencies (for example "Light Weapons & Armor", "Medium ...", Heavy ..."), one argument against this option would be, that you would automatically level for defense and offense items e.g. skilling your character for offensive and defensive purposes at the same time and so flatten the strategic choices a little bit.

another option would be to restrict certain weapon types (light, medium, heavy, etc.) to certain classes and to certain levels within these classes.

just my 2 cents

The game lost some "deepness" with encumbrance gone.

- In the unit design section i always pick all pieces of the best armor. Why not? there is no encumbrance...

- before i had to think over which piece of the armore should i use.

- weapons are the other problems. My mages walking with huge maces and still got +4-5 init

I cant understand, why change sometingh that fits and working, while there are nuch worse things in the game that needs an overhaul...

yeah, this particularly bugged trait i discovered yesterday. muscle and strength (also by the unit designs) have the same effect, but muscle cost three times more the materials .

I am getting the same feeling too. Probably none of those changes are bad by themselves, but too many of them together give the feeling of an overhauled game rather than an expanded game. We want the game to be better, not just different. 

So far those game mechanics have been changed (that I remember):

- Cities growth have changed from sovereign's prestige based to cities' food based. That change works, but perhaps it could have been made as an addition instead of a replace. Keep the Sovereign based growth as it was and then add the food's bonus. 

- influence has been replaced by Fame. Ok, I agree that was needed. But even in this case perhaps it could still be called Influence instead of renaming it and use Influence to recruit heroes. 

- Trained units maximum reduced from 7 to 6. 

- Heroes recruiting system changed. 

- XP reward system changed (or at least tuned)

- Heroes level up system changed. Again, that is positive, but the tree could have been introduced without removing the fun of random choices each time a hero levels up. 

The only thing that looks like a real addition is the unrest penalty based on cities, as it is not replacing anything. 

Yes, there are also many new monsters and the two factions, but they don't need half the game changed in order to de added. 

It's not that I'm against rules overhauls, if needed.

It's just that I had hopes for things that I felt were missing, since I thought that with TWO expansions they were going to come. Just look at what the Civilization team adds with each expansion. 

I mean dragons are still grounded?

I am not against overhauls either, but I do believe an expansion is about adding things not about changing existing ones. At least mainly.

The warrior tree and the defender tree have a lot of new abilities, but some of them are not balanced and most of them have too many prerequisites.

i feel with you, some of these changes were already argued during the FE beta and these change feel more like a overhaul than a true expansion. i wasn't sure at first to buy the "expansion" because i personally feld that these things were more of a refinement than an expansion. i bought the expansion nonetheless  because i hope for some more features to come in this "expansion", but if they continue to offer such improvements for such a price and naming it "expansion" then i doubt i will purchase further installations.

one gripe i still have is with the warfare research tree and the overall units. i want to see more meaningful additions to the research tree and not wanting to wait until mid or late game to research swords, axes, etc. ..... they feel like research filler or necessary things to do because otherwise you don't have much options regarding weapons and armor. but i feels silly to be waiting for the late game to have chainmail and some decent weapons. why do we have to research simple swords and some decent armor?! and seeing the turn duration for these research tree is disappointing.

furthermore i had hoped that they improve the game with more traits like age of wonders or / and add some more mysthical units to train with special abilities. after all this is a fantasy 4x game and sometimes it feels just more like a reguar 4x / civ-game (unit-wise!!!).

Personally, I'd like encumbrance back. Improve it, make it more gradual, have more impact but definitely back. Current system is a step back IMO and from what I saw, I'm not the only one who feels that way. Also, devs will try tons of stuff to try to balance items and units to new system which will result in tons of weird workarounds and make things less intuitive and messier then it was before. I just don't see the benefit of encumbrance removal.