The new update introduced a few new things that got me really excited about possible future mechanics.

 

First of all, the airship, or more specifically being able to recruit with the lord outside friendly territory.

I absolutely love the fact that as the dwarf I can recruit 1 advanced unit while on the march in enemy territory. 

 

I REALLY hope this concept becomes a main-stay in a future total war title. 

 

What I mean is that every lord has the ability to recruit 1 unit globally without the double recruitment cost or time penalty. Meaning while on the march I can slowly still add units to my army, and even new superior ones.

 

As my campaign very often devolves down to me still using my early game army almost the entire campaign through, and then never really ever recruiting midgame tier units. As all my funds go towards upgrading my buildings, as my armies are fighting almost 100% of the time, never really stopping to upgrade units.

 

And to top that off, I hyperfocus so much on growth > income > garrison buildings, that during the midgame I still run around with my starting units, and then just upgrade to the late game units, completely skipping the midgame units. 

 

I’m not playing on a low difficulty either, I specifically designed the game to make the AI as harsh and brutal as possible, they attack from all sides, threaten every single border and leave you no time to sit around. Which is fun, however I can’t upgrade my units or build recruitment buildings because everything has to feed the perpetual war effort.

 

I’d love it if unit recruitment was intertwined with economical buildings. So growth buildings provides a based recruitment line, as does income, garrison, research (research is a new branch) and a race campaign mechanic specific line (so for example a skaven food building or oathgold as dwarves). That way mid game and advanced unit recruitment isn’t left for the super late game.

 

So in very short what I'm saying is, for a future total war game:

  1. Allow armies to globally recruit 1 unit with a 1 turn recruitment time at the standard recruitment cost each turn.
  2. Remove recruitment buildings, and enable the economy and defense buildings to recruit units instead.
  3. And ofcourse, reduce the recruitment time of all units to 1 turn, less skipping turns waiting for units to be recruited and more action!


Down bellow is a very rough sketch of what I mean, don’t focus too much on the specific units. But the main point is that there are no longer economically dead buildings slots that provide no empire bonusses except the recruitment of a unit that you don’t really have the time to recruit.