Greetings, emperors!
Last time I introduced the Battle Honours system and how your troop slots earn experience through combat. Today I want to talk about the first reward for reaching Tier 1, Equipment Loadouts.
When a troop slot becomes Blooded, you unlock the ability to customise its stats through an Equipment Loadout. You have a budget of 10 points to spend however you choose across your troop’s stats. At Tier 3 Elite that budget grows to 13 points. Spend points on one stat and you have fewer for another. Take a negative modifier on a stat you don’t need and you free up extra points to invest elsewhere.
The stats you can adjust are: Melee Value (MV), Armour Value (AV), Ranged Value (RV), Shock Value (SV), Resolve (RSV), Hit Points (HP) and Movement. Most of them cost 1 point per step. Hit Points costs 2 points per step, since an extra hit point is a significant survivability gain. Movement costs 3 points per step, since mobility is extremely powerful. You can increase a stat by up to 15 steps, and reduce it by up to 5 steps.
For combat stats like MV, AV and SV, each point adds or removes 5% of the troop’s base value. This means the same investment has a proportionally equal effect regardless of the troop type, but the absolute numbers differ. A point invested in Cavalry MV (base 30.0) adds 1.5, while the same point on City Guard MV (base 6.0) adds 0.3. The improvement is equally meaningful to each troop type.
HP and Movement work differently. Each point simply adds or removes 1 directly, since these stats don’t scale with troop type.
The first time you adjust a loadout for a troop slot, the entire session is completely free. You can experiment, redistribute and change your mind as many times as you like before closing the screen. Once you close it and commit, any future changes cost 2 Imperial Influence per adjustment. Choosing a Troop Trait for the first time is also free, but changing a trait later costs 10 Imperial Influence. You cannot make any loadout or trait changes while your empire is in combat, so plan ahead!
Imperial Influence recovers slowly over time, meaning repeated redesigns are a real strategic commitment rather than something you do casually.
Now, here is where it gets interesting. Because SV and RSV are part of the loadout budget alongside MV, AV and RV, you are not just deciding how tough or how hard-hitting your troops are. You are deciding what kind of fighter they are. This creates some very distinct archetypes:
A high SV, low RSV unit terrifies the enemy but can be broken itself under sustained pressure. High risk, high reward.
A high RSV, low SV unit is almost impossible to demoralise but doesn’t frighten anyone. The grinding, immovable style.
A high MV and SV, low AV and RSV unit is a glass cannon. Devastating when the battle goes your way, catastrophic when it doesn’t.
A high AV, low SV unit is physically durable and hard to kill, but the enemy won’t lose any sleep worrying about it.
These choices interact with your troop traits as well, which I will cover in my next post, the final piece of the Military Tradition system.
The figures I’ve mentioned above may be adjusted during playtesting, but they should give you a good feel for how the system is designed to work.
If you’re enjoying this series, please consider wishlisting Imperium Sine Fine on Steam! Every wishlist genuinely helps.
Cheers!