4rd Strike Changes

[Jeannine Lander]

Forthose who don't know - lightning strike is an ability an army gets once you put 3 skill points into lightning strike skill tree that allows you to attack a single stack without allowing them to be reinforced by other nearby stacks while ambush does the same, but also puts the defender at a poor defensive position and it allows you the ambusher to bring reinforcements even when defender can't.

My suggested change would be to allow reinforcements, but have an increased reinforcement delay - so for lightning strike we have 25% increased delay on rank 1 and a 50% increased delay on rank 2 so I'd suggest changing rank 3 to increasing reinforcement delay by 100% - still VERY powerful, but still possible to survive long enough to get the reinforcements.

For ambush I would actually suggest the same - increase the reinforcement delay by 100% - that encourages the ambusher to actually push the attack, but it also gives a fun counterplay in that you need to try to survive ambush long enough for reinforcement to come save you.

Lightning strike and ambush are fine as they are (except 100% ambush defense with blue line in encampment stance is too strong). Teleport stance ambushes are not. Teleport stance ambushes are 100% garanteed. Other ambushes are not. Also if you are getting lightning strike used against you build stronger armies instead of multiple armies of trash moving together.

That's the entire point of BUYING the ability. If it were something that is available to you for free, you would have a strong case for seeking a change to Lightning Strike. However, since you have to purchase it, you can simply decide not to spend points on it at all. No one loses.

I also agree with the previous commenters. It's fine as it is. Getting Lightning Strike is a sufficiently large investment since it comes with a huge opportunity cost for a skill you might never even need.

The point OP brings up about counterplay is very important. That is why I think there should be another, mutually exclusive, blue line skill called "Rapid Reinforcements". Just as how Lightning strike skill increases reinforcement time culminating in LS ability, Rapid Reinforcements would reduce reinforcement time culiminating in instant-deploy. If the attacking army has Lightning Strike and the other reinforcing army has Rapid Reinforcement, the two will effectively cancel each other out.

Personally I am not really sure what CA should do with Ambushes and Lightning Strikes myself.

Which is one reason why I didn't try to fix it with a mod myself so far.

I don't like how random ambushes are. Good strategic decisions should simply be good strategic decisions and vice versa.

If the very same decision that is the best you could have made might turn around and bite you in the butt as the worst you could have done or the other way around, depending on the roll of a dice, then this always rubs me the wrong way in grand strategy games like Total War.

I would probably overhaul the entire thing if it was my job to fix it and many players who liked the random aspect it currently has wouldn't like the result.

And Lightning Strike is overall just not a very interesting skill.

It feels like a bandaid skill that has the purpose of allowing counter measures when dealing with large numbers of stacks the battles aren't really designed to handle.

I resonate with the idea of just turning it into a pure reinforcement delay skill. It would feel less cheap that way, while still furfilling the same purpose most of the time.

But I wouldn't exactly call that an "interesting" solution either.

I would be really curious about the possible solutions to the problem how uninteresting both of these mechanics are.

But so far I have not heard any.

I am honestly surprised to see people bothered by lightning strike in WH3. The AI so rarely clumps up armies in this game, and the new reinforcement system makes it so that if they do, you can usually attack one army at an angle that causes their reinforcements to come in at a horrible angle that you can easily take advantage of.

I should clarify that my issue is not defending against these abilities, but how easy they make the game and how much of an auto-pick they are in a head to head campaign. The power tier behind cutting off reinforcement completely is just a player crutch to help player get out of a hard situation or to just cheese and they become autopicks in head to head campaign.

Which single-player campaigns are you finding that lighting strike frequently comes in handy? I ask because I have found it a waste of points for the majority of factions in WH3, particularly at early levels, because it is so rarely useful.

For most factions, its an 8-point investment (beyond the initial campaign movement) and those points give you almost no strategic or tactical advantage other than the final point in lightning strike.

It was very useful in WH2 for sure, but it required 2 fewer points to acquire and it also didn't exhaust your troops. The AI in WH2 also consistently sent multiple strong stacks at the player which is behavior I rarely see in my campaigns in WH3.

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