I really hate the lords...

So I'm attempting to get the Empire, which is already beaten up pretty badly, to take out the Dread Legion, I can get the lords to follow me, and then they all scatter like the wind even though collectively we could take the stack of 700.  I know this is a WB problem not a POP issue, but its magnified in POP due to the huge army sizes of the spawn armies.

Any tricks around this?  I try to sort of corral the lords by leading the legion into them, but I can never get enough close enough at one time for the fight.

Lure DL into another spawn, an army of other kingdom.

Also did you get Marius to follow you or was it only vassals? He (due to the size of his army) can play an important part in collective decision to run or not.

You can also try a very boring tactics when you lure a unique spawn into a group of vassals, wait for it to change its target (in the description: like "DL - following Lord So-And-So"), then keep preventing the target from running away by talking to him, taking a step aside, talking again, step aside, talking again etc. This way the target will stay at one place while the DL will be moving and will finally catch it.
Though they sometimes re-direct their attention from the target to you or another target in the last moment, so this tactics may take a lot of boring repetitive action (e.g. talking), save-loads and swearing.
But if you succeed in helping the hunter catch the prey, other lords will often decide to help their friend despite their previous intentions to run away.

You can kite Maltise to a Noldor Lord and earn an easy gem.

The best way to get a maximum number of vassals fighting the spawn army is the following:
Wait for a feast. Most vassals will gather there and sit ducks in the castle or town for some time.
Use this time to kite the spawn army just close to the town/castle. When the feast ends, all the lords leave the town at once.
If you are part/mercenary of the faction you can initiate the fight yourself and they will all help you (thus netting you also another victory counting towards the Defender or Pendor achievement), if you're not it is very unlikely that neither the spawn army nor a lord would initiate the battle, so in any case the spawn army will get beaten.

If you want to initiate the fight yourself and have enough vassals with you, you can alternatively make use of the difference in sight and reaction radii for night and day. Approach the spawn army with your friends during the night just up to the distance before they run away. When it dawns, both sight and reaction/intervention radius are increased. The lords will try to run away now, but are still within the daylight intervention radius, so will automatically join the battle on your side, if you engage the spawn army.

I'm considering just giving up on Empire right now as, unlike my last play, they are acting like complete idiots.  Weakest faction, but I could swing the balance so ok, would be fun, but I can't get myself marshal and every time we go to war the marshal will stop the campaign mid move, have another feast, and lose more land while everyone scatters.  Being 1/2 the lords have less than 100 troops they are getting destroyed everywhere they go.  Ethos was lost a while ago, they just lost Cez, I took it back myself, and now have 1200 Sarleons incoming, to my wounded 150 stack.

Lots of feasts and thats just about it.  Ferdsvain was eliminated very early in my game, so its basically D'shar and Sarleon who matter, and Sarleon is getting unstoppable.

I think, though I could be totally wrong, that it may partially depend on the lord himself. I am fairly late in my game, a heretic army spawned (700 troops) and immediately my lords rushed in to engage it even though individually hey were all around 200 troops.

hello, was gonna make a thread about something similar regarding a unique spawn.

since this is my first time playing PoP, ive been quite slow in the leveling and undertaking of thing (nothing like taking a small band thinking i could take some green 14 or so outlaws, just to get wrecked by a rogue knight, doh!) and while i had a nice struck of luck i n early game (a jattu army engaged wolfbode, i joined it getting knocked out in the first round... hey in my defense, i was level 9!) and yet i still managed to get the wolfbode capture, lucky me!

anyways, back to the main part, i joined the empire as a vassal to get a lady (too bad i cant elope without a castle now...) and we were doing well, but we have had a maltise spawn for a long time, and she had 1024 size army, with over 2000 prisoners!, at this point we got engaged in a two front war against sarleon and the d'shar and the d'shar where sieging Cez, so i thought, lets take maltise for a ride and have her clear the dshar from our lands!

and so i lead her 1024 strong army, against the 1400 strong army of theirs.... yeah, you are seeing what i didnt see

the d'shar won the battle and are now even stronger than ever and all of their lords have armies of at least 200 to 400 each... yeah smart move

the empire is done for
yey me?

Lords being able to add basically every prisoner to their army does become a bit nutty.  My first playthrough one of the empire lords was running around with 800 after I got him to help kill a unique spawn army.

Rajion said:

we have had a maltise spawn for a long time, and she had 1024 size army, with over 2000 prisoners!, at this point we got engaged in a two front war against sarleon and the d'shar and the d'shar where sieging Cez, so i thought, lets take maltise for a ride and have her clear the dshar from our lands!

and so i lead her 1024 strong army, against the 1400 strong army of theirs.... yeah, you are seeing what i didnt see

the d'shar won the battle and are now even stronger than ever and all of their lords have armies of at least 200 to 400 each... yeah smart move

Click to expand...

In such cases it's necessary to help the spawn manually and also try to "divide and conquer" by joining the fight after only a couple of lords joined it, win, then wait for a couple more lords to get to the unique spawn, join again, win again etc.
That usually turns out to be real fun and kind of unusual because your enemies fight on your side this time.  I still remember all the fights I had this way (Mystmountain army vs Sarleon, Noldor army vs Sarleon, Griffonsword vs Ravenstern, 2 adventurer companies vs Fierdsvain).

P.S. In my version of PoP adventurer companies were formidable forces of about 500 soldiers including nearly 200 hero/heroine adventurers so they really helped me in the fights.

Approaching at night with the a lower range of sight usually helps greatly.
Then, if an AI lord is caught by the army the others will join the fray and help fighting.

Another good trick is to approach at night and snare a smaller warband of the same faction into a lords range of sight just ouside the line of sight of the army and once they engaged the army into the fray - the other lords will join automatically if they´re close by.

It´s tiresome fiddling but can be fun but it usually leads towards the hard way (at least for me) which is grinding anything on the map on my own till you can field large enough armies to engage and annihilate even the strongest opposition without the useless AI units.

Just ensure to get an adept martial marshal and most of your problems are gone.

I am not sure about it, but the "flee/follow" decision of a lord is based on:

1) Your relation with that lord
So, work on relation, speaking to your lord after ach lord field battle will give you a +1/+2 relation. Speak with EACH lord after EACH field battle against another lord.

2) That lord army size
So, speak with your lords and give them troops. I think that the cap size army a lord can lead depends on that lord leadership, so increase that stat. Basically, any lord can lead at least 220/240 troops (after that I noticed that some troops leave the army, if i'm not wrong). So give them troops up to 220. Give to High Level Lords (or high leadership ones) up to 300/320 troops.

I'm pretty sure that the "combined army size factor" is not important in the "flee/follow" decision, but only the 2 above factors. So I think that your lords flee because they have a small army.

With a relation of 30+ and 240+ army, no lord flee from large army, they follow me in the fight with Eyegrim (750+) and so on (I have also 24 Charisma and 10 Leadership, and play at 101% difficulty, not sure if it is important in this).

Good luck.