EPTOn October 03 2017 06:45 xDaunt wrote:
I'm not disputing what black arks can do. I've used them extensively in my campaign. My point is that they aren't good enough for what they cost, and it's not even a particularly close call. To put it in stark monetary terms, I lost one of my black arks at a point where I had 5 armies and 3 black arks. This black ark that I lost had only 5 corsairs on it. When it died, I had instant savings of nearly 6,000 gold per turn. There is simply no way that black ark is going to pay for itself in the late game when it costs that much per turn in upkeep. And again, for that price, you can have another army wandering around. You can talk about how black arks help speed up your campaign all you want, but nothing is faster at speeding up a campaign than being able to blitz through an opponent with two stacks instead of one -- even if the one is supported by a black ark. At the end of the day, black arks only provide fire support, some income bonuses, replenishment, and recruiting. These are all nice things to have. But they pale in comparison to having another stack that can march on the enemy and squash rebellions. Hell, black arks can't even garrison port towns, which just boggles the mind.
I'm not disputing what black arks can do. I've used them extensively in my campaign. My point is that they aren't good enough for what they cost, and it's not even a particularly close call. To put it in stark monetary terms, I lost one of my black arks at a point where I had 5 armies and 3 black arks. This black ark that I lost had only 5 corsairs on it. When it died, I had instant savings of nearly 6,000 gold per turn. There is simply no way that black ark is going to pay for itself in the late game when it costs that much per turn in upkeep. And again, for that price, you can have another army wandering around. You can talk about how black arks help speed up your campaign all you want, but nothing is faster at speeding up a campaign than being able to blitz through an opponent with two stacks instead of one -- even if the one is supported by a black ark. At the end of the day, black arks only provide fire support, some income bonuses, replenishment, and recruiting. These are all nice things to have. But they pale in comparison to having another stack that can march on the enemy and squash rebellions. Hell, black arks can't even garrison port towns, which just boggles the mind.
Guess our experiences differ. I can just say that I did 2 playthroughs with Dark Elves on legendary, first was without utilizing the Arks that much, the other was while utilizing them a ton in the early to early midgame, from which I draw my conclusions. From your earlier posts I guess you are more of an Empire player and you might therefore pay too much attention to gold per turn but since your armies don’t take damage from running on a deficit, low / negative income for Dark Elves is no problem. You don’t need 6k Gold a turn more if it means another location where you can raid which easily surpasses the 6k gold. Just from raiding one settlement you can get much more than that and 3 Arks allow 3 low tier stacks to raid 3 different locations. Do you take the battle loot skills? They really help a lot. With no way to fall back on, you also have to stop, so much for blitzing, even with 2 stacks. Either one hast to rest meaning you effectively use one stack now, or you let both rest. With the Ark I can push nonstop, never having to rest and depending on the province, I can even take it and kill rebellions with the garrison + the Arks abilities while my army roams freely around the surrounding provinces. If your counterargument about that is “I can just use my second stack for that”, the increased upkeep from the Ark is undisputable cheaper than the increased upkeep of the second stack + the cost of that second stack. Eventually you want more stacks of course, and unless you got 3 Arks sitting around, not grabbing treasure in the ocean / allowing you to raid of course they won’t pay off, but it’s the same for a stack that isn’t doing anything. Depending on the capital location, I can even take a province, continue to raid settlements with my stack and not even lose the replenishing / support of the Ark.
As I said previously, if used correctly that fire support you quickly cast aside is a unit wiper, make them clump up and fire away. Either that or you only raze / loot the settlements in which case the Arks are even more important because: replenishing and recruiting. It feels weird how you are talking about 2 stacks letting you blitz better I feel like that’s exactly the spot where you can’t deny the Arks superiority. When defending your homelands a second stack might be better, but on the offense I really don’t see it. What is always the problem when being on a very fast offensive? Supply lines. From your money descriptions it also sounds like you go way overboard with your armies, sorry for beating a dead horse but the Ark lets you easily win battles against much stronger stacks and therefore saving you money since you don’t need such expensive units. With the Ark you pretty much only need Dreadspears and Darkshards for a long time until you decide to conquer everything.
In my opinion, when trying to field elite stacks early on where cheaper stuff would be much more sufficient, you are doing something wrong (in terms of effectiveness ofc, I am not trying to tell you how to enjoy your game), also speaking in strictly monetary value.
Either our experiences are just totally different by coincidence, or one of us is failing to utilize the strategy he deems as inferior.
I agree on the port thing though, the fact that the Arks can’t take part in any combat besides the auto resolve on sea is weird. Though I stand by my opinion that there isn’t really any point in crewing your Arks unless you expect casualties you want to replace asap.
