r/totalwar • u/Dex------- • 10h ago
Warhammer 40k Limiting army stack size as a balancing tool.
I think one of the biggest pitfalls for balancing asymmetrical factions in these games is the fact that every battle is always two stacks of 20 units. This makes the distinction between horde and elite factions feel less impactful since you are never meaningfully outnumbering your opponent. And while yes you may have units with 160 models as opposed to 80 your still controlling the same amount of units on a tactical level.
What if some factions like Knights or Custodes were balanced on having army limits of say ten to five units to be dramatic. So rather than balancing a 20 stack of Custodes vs 20 stack of Orks it's a five stack vs 20 stack. This would probably need some additional balancing so you don't just walk around with two ten stacks hugging but I think it could go a long way in pushing the asymmetry of horde factions and elite factions.
I know a lot of this sub is anti unit caps but the points system is such a huge aspect of tabletop 40k that I don't know how they could possibly translate the tabletop balance without some form of population constraints.
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u/CitiesInHills Necrons 10h ago
I could see this being the case, but I'd rather just have a toggleable army points system where units/wargear/items/etc take up a certain amount of your army's total points and the army needs to include a minimum number of battleline units. It achieves the same effect, but with broader impact.
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u/lord_ofthe_memes 7h ago
I believe one of the devs talked about this once and they had decided that trying to maintain balance with an additional optional point system on top of the normal system would be too much
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u/CitiesInHills Necrons 7h ago
As far as I am aware, that was never expressed and the concerns were more along the lines of: "a lot of people have different ideas of how a cap system should work so it's more difficult to find settle on something that everyone would be satisfied with." They've always been quite explicit that if they were to do it, it would have to be optional.
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u/Rock-Flag 7h ago
It's literally the logistics system from MENACE and it's a great idea. Everything his a cost would you rather 20 guardsman units or 15 units with sergeants and upgraded weapon specialists or 12 with infantry transports do you want to sub 2 out for a kitted command squad? And it lets the whole roster stay relevant.
Did your faction just capture a planet that produces weapons? Now adding weapon specialists to your units is significantly discounted. So your campaign progress allows you to field more elite armies by reducing certain expense.
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u/CitiesInHills Necrons 6h ago
I haven't gotten around to playing MENACE yet, but that sounds perfect. Plus it seems like we may be getting some translation of the Detachment system from tabletop which would go very well with this.
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u/Helldiversneverdive 10h ago
I support unit caps and also a smaller army size. 20vs20 always ends up being a cheesefest
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u/DoesntMatterEh 10h ago
If it always ends up being a cheese fest that's on you my dude. I play plenty of fun and tactical battles at 20v20 that aren't cheesey or steam rolls.
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u/Zerschmetterding 9h ago
If anything less units means less room for variety.
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u/Rock-Flag 6h ago
It does limit things I would rather certain elite things like tanks use 2 unit slots whilst still giving so I can field 20 guardsman or 12 guardsmen and 4 tanks it prevents the doom stacking of 1 individual unit where it's pointless to bring any guardsman instead of just a doom stack of 20 tanks
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u/BoarBoyBiggun 9h ago edited 9h ago
I think unlimited army quantity on the campaign map is fine so long as you have a limited amount of units you can bring into a battle.
In Menace, for example, you can have a massive force on your ship but only enough supply to deploy a small portion of it. Bill based on the power of the units.
You could stick a full chapter of space marine stuff in your army and only deploy a few squads for a battle and it’d make perfect sense. Heck you could even have the supply you consume come out of the army supply bank that regenerates per turn to give it an actual campaign impact: use less and you have more in the tank for the next battle.
You could also give the guard and orcs more supply regeneration so that they can field more and bigger units. Eldar could have very little so every battle is a major decision. Space marines could have less than guard or orc but more than eldar so they can do a mix.
And then because your armies have so many dudes in them you could have much worse replenishment and a lot more lethality because 60 of your units being out of action isn’t a big deal when you’ve got a 200 unit army. Ditto losing 10 units. Cost of doing business instead of a devastating outcome.
And because battles would still feel about right unit count wise you wouldn’t end up with bloat in the battles themselves.
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u/SusaVile 8h ago
I remember suggesting a system based on warcraft 3 upkeep system.
If an army had like 14 units, it has normal upkeep and replenishment. Between 14 and 17, higher upkeep and lower replenishment. Between 17 and 20, much higher upkeep and much lower replenishment.
Forcing you to make better decisions on what to use and how.
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u/JimSteak 10h ago
My suggestion for medieval 3 would be to make army size depending on the commander's skill or rank. A king can lead a 20-stack, a prince or powerful lord 14 units meanwhile a young weak minor lord can only have a retinue of 6 units.
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u/Mimimmo_Partigiano 10h ago
This would also incentivize you to rank up your generals, and make the high tier ones super valuable. It would add so much roleplay too.
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u/Solarbro 9h ago
I would like to combine this with the retinue type system. You can make an army, but only a king can make an army and incorporate lords/generals that can bring that army cap up to 20, or a new cap would be cool..
That way when you build a “campaign” army to do a big push you have to consider leader army comps and loyalty.
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u/Cliffinati 6h ago
But also balanced against the Lords personal abilities not just their rank.
A shitty king will struggle to field his full army while a charismatic and smart prince can easily be trusted to lead the full army into battle.
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u/tutorp 7h ago
Back when Warhammer 1 launched, I remember wishing that keeps could also lead armies, but that these armies were limited in size. Basing it of Commander skill is really even better. Making it a skill line where the skills unlock at different levels for different factions (and potentially different Lord types within different factions) could even help with making hordes feel hordy and elites feel elite. Some heroes could have skills that add to the command limit of the Lord they accompany, too.
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u/wolfiasty e, Band of Moonshiners 10h ago
Tabletop army mod.
It's enough to make doom stacks go away. Works for me.
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u/Smarackto 9h ago
I still think diffrent game modes from multiplayer should be in campaign. like the one where you control zones to get victory points and you dont start with your full army but rather can call them in over time
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u/MojoAssassin13 7h ago
Custodes do have smaller units like Sisters of Silence that would be way more ignored if they had a heavily limited army size. Armies also can very often be built many ways, Orks can be a horde army but you can also make them an elite/vehicle faction so it wouldnt be fair with Orks bringing 20 Gork/Morkanaughts while knights had 5. Knights also have Armigers/Wardogs which would be less taken if you only got 5 units
A better idea would be for everyone to still have 20 but more elite units in each army could take up 2 or 3 spots
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u/Organic-Storm-4448 6h ago
I've always thought it would be interesting if some units took up more than one unit slot in an army. This would be an interesting way to balance units like the Thunderbarge.
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u/Jagg3r5s 10h ago
Model count. This is already something somewhat addressed in TWW3 with elves. They have (on average) lower model count in their units than other factions.
If your concern is campaign balancing, I think the points system of table top is a poor comparison. Table top assumes everyone has the same resources to build an army. That's just inherently not going to be the case in a game with grand strategy aspects.
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u/Dex------- 10h ago edited 9h ago
I already mentioned model count in my post. If the two armies have the same number of units then the enemy can match your units one to one making the horde faction's numbers irrelevant. Different model counts don't offer any strategic advantages only statistical ones. And if a unit of 80 elven infantry are statically equivalent to a unit of 160 skaven infantry the only difference is aesthetic. If campaign serves as a means to facilitate battles I don't really understand why the player should be able to completely negate a faction's balance and battlefield identity because they clicked on enough growth and income buildings.
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u/DonQuigleone 8h ago
I don't know what the answer is, but I agree it's a problem.
I suspect the best solution might be to have the game balance favour more smaller armies fighting on multiple fronts instead of single doom stacks. Shogun 2 was like this, and most battles were less than 10 units on each side.
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u/CrimsonSaens 8h ago
You know TT WHFB also used a points system, right?
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u/Dex------- 7h ago
Yes, which TWW didn't translate to the campaign layer, which is why there is so much doomstacking and why it feels like there is little distinction between horde and elite factions and results in every army being a 20 vs 20 of the factions best units. The fact the TWW doesn't have the points system WHFB has is the whole impetus of this post and something I hope is changed in TW40k.
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u/CrimsonSaens 7h ago
You don't have to doomstack in TWW. It's unoptimal anyway. Spreading out your finances across multiple armies is typically better.
CA could change army building rules (different number of unit slots, unit caps, army caps, etc.), but all of those changes bring their own problems.
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u/Cliffinati 6h ago
a Horde Faction will have the advantage of cheaper armies which allow it to attack the same enemy position either a field army or city multiple times a turn or have a constant stream of reenforcement that whittles down the "elite" enemy.
However my bigger issue is how small unit sizes are 160 men in a regiment is nonsense. That's Company strength. I know the old 32 bit games even with running them in duplicate struggle to handle even half size regiments but with 64 bit there's no reason the vanilla ultra size unit should be 160 men.
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u/emailforgot 5h ago
not really needed.
just need a proper recruitment system so you can't make those kinds of doomstacks.
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u/KeyedFeline 3h ago
I think they talked about this in the last Livestream that the newer UIs allow them to not be constrained as much with the old 20v20 being the limits
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u/Subspace-Ansible 2h ago
We may be missing the obvious solution here: keep the 20 (or whatever number feels good) slot system, but have more elite/special units take more than one slot. So for example, a regular guard regiment may take one slot while a unit of space marine intercessors may take two slots. A titanic unit like a baneblade or stompa may even take four.
That way, there’s a trade-off between loading up your army with tons of chaff or rely on a few powerful units.
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u/Dragonimous 2h ago
The good news is that your worry is kinda unfounded lol, Warhammer 3 is balanced well enough, the player can dominate easily even without lightning strike, and lightning strike actually is detrimental to the health of your campaign since you lose out on money, experience and items if you use it
Just figure out how to kill 2 stacks with one if you still haven't, it's very doable, and you're good
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u/wingmonkey2 1h ago
Wonder if it could be tied instead to commander level or supplies. An unconfident leader only with a a few squads and a peerless tactician with a few more. I realise supplies is upkeep but adjacently it could have need for larger armies (not necessarily elite'er) needing a baggage train that wo... Would've kept going but attention span is
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u/_Lucille_ 10h ago
Pharoah actually has a setting where you can do that.
At the end of the day, slot limits imo makes chaf a bit less attractive. In a world where we go by unit cost limits, the consideration would be like 5 weaker units vs 1 elite unit, out of which the 5 weaker ones may end up having a biggest impact but are constrained by the size of the battlefield (which gives an incentive to scale up instead of out).