Battle of the Battalions, Endgame: Which Battalion was Best?

[haarhaarhaar]

Massively enjoyed this thread, thanks for hosting!

I know that our sample size for scores wasn't huge, and I at least was getting pretty subjective by the end, but it's really great to have a wider pool of user experience data behind this huge mechanic in the game. Things like Alliance Youths being definitively the worst, and Immortal Corps the best, are fun takeaways, and I'm sure there are other cool things in the data as well (for example, my eyeball analysis says AM > CF > VW > SS by quality of battalions). Really appreciated all the effort you went to!

[lenticular]

Thanks to everyone who contributed here, and an extra thanks to First Mate for all the effort of running it. It was a fun thread to participate in, and the combination of having to explain my own thoughts and reading what everyone else had to say has really helped to consolidate the way that I think about battalions in this game. I'm confident that whenever I end up doing my next run of Three Houses, I'll be making better battalion choices than I would have been otherwise.

I also think that the final list that we ended up with is pretty solid. Definitely not perfect, but by and large it looks about right. If a new player came to me and asked which battalions were worth using, I'd not hesitate to point them here. And that's about as good as we could have hoped for, I think. I'm fairly sure that my gradings were a little eratic and incosistent at time, since I didn't keep a full list of the scores that I gave, so had to go back and check whenever I thought that two battalions should get similar scores to each other. I'd intended to go back and do some last minute corrections for that sort of thing, but real life ended up getting in the way of that, as it so often does. But I think that having scores from several different people helped to minimise the effect of that sort of thing, leading to a very solid final list.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Just want to echo everyone else; thanks once again for running this, First Mate, and thanks to everyone else who participated. It was fun! I think the list turned out pretty solid, and while there are always things you can quibble, that's rather inevitable when scoring things that don't compete on even terms (e.g. how to weight availability is very much not an exact science).

[SnowFire]

I will say...  on a slightly different note...  if any future ROM-hackers doing 3H rebalances stop by, some general feelings for battalions-to-buff.  (I don't think anything really needs nerfing - the best stuff is iconic like Lord Battalions, so Working As Intended.)  While some of the late-joining garbage is basically irredeemable (if made to join in C3, it'd just be adding clutter and distraction), I think low-scoring Paralogue battalions are clearly an accident, and a safe spot to buff to make some interesting choices.

• Church Soldiers is the worst offender.  Considering that Mercedes can get a (horrible) unique Bow in Azure Moon that deals physical damage, and the name sounds rather militant, I think this should have been a hybrid battalion with +5/+5 PAtk / MAtk like Edmund (rather than the +3 MAtk in reality), and upgraded to B-Authority (joins too late to care about C-Authority niche).  In theory, it could make a dual-threat Bow / Magic Mercedes more usable, although in reality the bow is still just gonna be a meme.  In reality, the main use would be on a ground-pounder or hybrid unit that wants to run Resonant White Magic, a niche that is never covered currently, and about the only way to tempt people to care about the RWM gambit.
• Cethleann Monks is just outclassed.  The easy way to fix it is to give it Macuil-style stats as a generic mage battalion, but given that the flavor is looking for something heal-ier and support-ier, maybe just give it +20 Avo?  Dodgetank grounded mages isn't really a niche that exists but it can try to carve out some territory there anyway.
• Sauin Militia & Varley Archers get the easiest, most boring fixes: give them more damage.  It doesn't need to be huge, just +4 is probably acceptable and keeps low damage a key weakness, but +0/+1 is just unusably awful.
• Bergliez War Group..  rather than making them a Goneril Valkyries clone (like what everyone wants), I think leaning into their status as lopsided for one stat might be okay.  Let 'em have +10 Atk like King of the Lions in exchange for garbage Everything Else.  They still won't be good but at least have some niche for units that only care about squeezing out attack, like Grapplers with Hit+20 perhaps.
• Gaspard Knights should probably have some goofy gimmick that combines Gwendal & Ashe.  They already have +5 Hit, maybe lean into these being the armor knights that are actually accurate and make that +20 Hit, interesting for the Deadeye-sporting Ashe?  Could also make them the Crit-Tanks too.
• Holst's Chosen just shouldn't been a C-Authority battalion with so little time left.  Upgrade it to B, and to avoid being too similar to Goneril Valkyries, emphasize mixed tanking more by adding +7 Res or something (and better Charm since it's B-Authority).  It wouldn't help THAT much but it'd be something.
• Almyra Mercenaries is in a very weird spot.  I get that its gimmick is being E-Authority and thus ready to go on even Silver Snow Cyril.  But if it's buffed any further, it becomes absolutely insane for NG+ runthroughs.  I don't think anything can be done without also throwing NG+ balance in the garbage.
• Mockingbird's Thieves I gave a bit higher score than others IIRC, so I think it's okay as-is as a jack-of-all-trades master-of-none one.  And if buffed, such builds risk becoming the Perfect Battalion, so best be careful.  I'd suggest knocking the Avoid from +10 to +15 to accentuate that Yuri seems themed as a dodgy boi and for synergy with Duelist's Blow, which keeps its weaknesses in power but allows it to keep up with some of the other dodgy grounded battalions.
• Hevring Prayer Troops  problems aren't really fixable since they're due to the extremely late join-time gated by a really tough Paralogue.  I guess you could nudge up some stats even more but its strengths / weaknesses are still going to be the same.

Edited December 20, 2022 by SnowFire

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 12/19/2022 at 9:10 PM, SnowFire said:

I don't think anything really needs nerfing - the best stuff is iconic like Lord Battalions, so Working As Intended.

IMO the "simple" fix here is, bump it up to requiring A-rank Authority, but let the Lord character it's associated with use it at any Authority level. Same for the other battalions - Ingrid should be able to use Galatea Pegasus Co. right away, even if other units have to wait until B-rank. It makes sense that they'd have an "affinity" for each other - Ingrid might even know the names of the fliers working for her family.

Otherwise, I like most of the fixes you proposed. More broadly, I would've wanted to see more magical gambits (particularly on hybrid battalions), as well as stuff like Sacred Shield on other routes, but that might be asking for too much.

Oh! Before I forget, I wanted to explicitly thank @haarhaarhaar, @SnowFire, @lenticular, and @Dark Holy Elf for their enduring participation in this undertaking. I couldn't have done it without y'all. Seriously, I'd just be shouting into the unanswering void, and that just gets awkward after a while. So, thanks.

[Dark Holy Elf]

7 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

IMO the "simple" fix here is, bump it up to requiring A-rank Authority, but let the Lord character it's associated with use it at any Authority level. Same for the other battalions - Ingrid should be able to use Galatea Pegasus Co. right away, even if other units have to wait until B-rank. It makes sense that they'd have an "affinity" for each other - Ingrid might even know the names of the fliers working for her family.

 

I really like this idea (I know I've seen it before... possibly from you, I forget!) because yeah, it'd (a) allow the lord battalions to be properly balanced, (b) it'd be a neat way to slightly guide certain PCs towards certain builds without forcing them. And flavour-wise it just makes so much sense. Jeralt's Mercenaries could also be buffed a bit and given a higher rank, as Byleth's battalion.

I'd want some of the PCs who don't currently have personal battalions to get them (Dorothea, various staff members), too.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I really like this idea (I know I've seen it before... possibly from you, I forget!) because yeah, it'd (a) allow the lord battalions to be properly balanced, (b) it'd be a neat way to slightly guide certain PCs towards certain builds without forcing them. And flavour-wise it just makes so much sense. Jeralt's Mercenaries could also be buffed a bit and given a higher rank, as Byleth's battalion.

I definitely didn't originate the idea, but I may have advocated for it in the past. And yeah, it would provide an innate synergy between certain units and battalions that doesn't currently exist. I could see units such as Ingrid, Flayn, and Hapi benefiting big from this.

Yeah, Jeralt's Mercenaries are very strong for E-rank. Bump up the Charm to +3, and they'd make sense at D-rank. Of course, then you're cutting out one earlygame option for your students with E-rank Authority. Tough call.

2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I'd want some of the PCs who don't currently have personal battalions to get them (Dorothea, various staff members), too.

Hm... should the Opera Co. Volunteers count as Dorothea's "personal" battalion? If they did, then being able to use them at any Authority rank would be nice. But they come super-late, and Manuela can pick them up too.

Speaking of which, the Hannemanuela paralogue gives the player Indech Seord Fighters and Macuil Evil Repelling Co., well before the player can use them. Hanneman has the Crest of Indech, so should Indech Sword Fighters be his personal? The Attack boost is wasted on him, but early Retribution could be a niche. And if Manuela gets Macuil Co., that would shore up her magical damage quite nicely - but it's a weird fit, as she has no Crest of Macuil.

In terms of characters who pretty clearly lack a personal battalion, there's Shamir, Gilbert, and Alois, who all join with generic "Church of Seiros" battalions, and whose paralogues provide similarly generic rewards. For Shamir, it'd be cool for her to bring something like a C-rank "Dagda Snipers", with the Poisoned Arrows gambits. With Gilbert, I'm not sure about the theming, but it should be B-rank and give high Prt boosts (maybe another source of Impregnable Wall)? Finally, Alois. We know he's trying to learn Magic, so what if they were a B-rank hybrid battalion offering Resonant Ice? And give them a punny name, like "Frigid Mercenaries".

[Dark Holy Elf]

12 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Hm... should the Opera Co. Volunteers count as Dorothea's "personal" battalion? If they did, then being able to use them at any Authority rank would be nice. But they come super-late, and Manuela can pick them up too.

 

Opera Co Volunteers also aren't even available on CF, so that'd be a bit weird. (Same with Ferdinand and Caspar's battalions, I suppose.) I'd rather she just gets a battalion from her paralogue like everyone else.

 

13 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Speaking of which, the Hannemanuela paralogue gives the player Indech Seord Fighters and Macuil Evil Repelling Co., well before the player can use them. Hanneman has the Crest of Indech, so should Indech Sword Fighters be his personal? The Attack boost is wasted on him, but early Retribution could be a niche. And if Manuela gets Macuil Co., that would shore up her magical damage quite nicely - but it's a weird fit, as she has no Crest of Macuil.

 

I actually thought it was the reverse: Indech Swordfighters are Manuela's, Macuil Evil Repelling is Hanneman, which actually comes up if you only have one of them recruited (since as usual, you don't get the battalion associated with the unrecruited character). Not 100% sure about this though (I checked the wikis; one supports my memory and one contradicts it). It's a bit of a weak association regardless since these battalions are also storebought... arguably they parallel things like Shamir's Seiros Archers and Alois's Holy Knights of Seiros.

I like your ideas for the other ones.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 1/30/2023 at 11:34 AM, Dark Holy Elf said:

Opera Co Volunteers also aren't even available on CF, so that'd be a bit weird. (Same with Ferdinand and Caspar's battalions, I suppose.) I'd rather she just gets a battalion from her paralogue like everyone else.

True enough point! And, I don't think it's very controversial to say that Ferdinand and Caspar should've gotten access to some kind of respective paralogues on CF. The shortest route also decided to take the most paralogues from us...

On 1/30/2023 at 11:34 AM, Dark Holy Elf said:

I actually thought it was the reverse: Indech Swordfighters are Manuela's, Macuil Evil Repelling is Hanneman, which actually comes up if you only have one of them recruited (since as usual, you don't get the battalion associated with the unrecruited character). Not 100% sure about this though (I checked the wikis; one supports my memory and one contradicts it). It's a bit of a weak association regardless since these battalions are also storebought... arguably they parallel things like Shamir's Seiros Archers and Alois's Holy Knights of Seiros.

I will have to check this one, next time I play. Although, usually I pick up both teachers, with the one exception being BL (I picked up neither, so I could fight them post-skip), so getting one but not the other would be... a choice. Maybe on asingle-gender playthrough?

On 1/30/2023 at 11:34 AM, Dark Holy Elf said:

I like your ideas for the other ones.

Many thanks! I definitely like the concept of theorycrafting battalions for each unit, although the game has done most of the work for us already. And if this project has taught me anything, it's that I can't possibly take the position of "not enough battalions, we need more!"

[Dark Holy Elf]

3 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I will have to check this one, next time I play. Although, usually I pick up both teachers, with the one exception being BL (I picked up neither, so I could fight them post-skip), so getting one but not the other would be... a choice. Maybe on asingle-gender playthrough?

I've occasionally done it just because, at least on Maddening, the green unit version of Hanneman/Manuela is quite a bit better than the recruited version, so having one of them as a green unit does make the map a bit easier. Of course the map is absolutely doable with both of them at base stats as recruited units, but still, it's a thought, especially if you know there's at least one of Hanneman/Manuela you aren't planning to use in any capacity (and you don't care about their free intermediate seal). Check out unrecruited Manuela's stats on this map, for instance:

3 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

And if this project has taught me anything, it's that I can't possibly take the position of "not enough battalions, we need more!"

Too true. Though I think culling a bunch of the total chaff and making one or two extra new ones that have real thought put into them would be a fine trade.