Prevent factions from eliminating each other

Hi Guys,i love Prophecy of Pendor!I've been playing for awhile now and i have no complaints but 1.Factions can and will be destroyed in this game.Sometimes 2 or more factions will gang up on another faction and reduce them to near or total ruin.My goal is to fight all these factions eventually when i declare myself King and i'd like for each of them to remain in some shape or form.They may lose or gain territory but each one still remains fairly powerful and prosperous.

So here's my question,how can i give a faction that's about to be snowballed money or troops?I know as a mercenary i can help them out but unfortunately sometimes i'm indebted to some other faction as a merc and can't help out.On this particular occasion,even though i've chosen not to resign my contract with Fierdsvain specifically so i can help them,a very weakened Sarleon is about to get steamrolled by the combined might of Ravenstern,Fierdsvain and the D'shar.I don't have the troops to make much of a difference.I can help win a few battles but they WILL be steamrolled.

What i want is the ability to save a faction through the use of what amounts to a cheat.To be able to give any severely weakened faction money and/or troops so they can fight off they attackers and force a ceasefire.Factions may grow powerful in my game(which is desirable)but no faction is ever wiped out or weakens too much.So...any ideas guys?

Ctrl+alt+F4
Free all the lords from castles by breaking in. Take castles as a merc.
Not much else I'm afraid

Ctrl+Alt+F4....deliver blunt damage to all enemies.It doesn't give me the total control over the entire war that i would like but it would work!Would using this cheat in a Pendor game cause any issues?I ask because i think i read somewhere that the developers added a script that gives penalties of some sort if it detects cheating.

I like the idea of breaking into castles and freeing lords although i assume i'd have to be working as a mercenary or vassal of that factions enemies?Is it possible to disguise myself and sneak into a town without being the enemy of that towns faction?

Oh yeah,if you use cheats like ctrl+h and the rest, you will get warning and after having cheated in 3 battles, you won't get any of the PoP achievements.
I know, somehow, you know, I just happen to know, NOT from personal experience <_< >_>... that in prison breaks, the ctr+H cheat isn't detected and the ctrl+F9 isn't detected in battles either. I dunno bout ctrl+F5 and the rest.

About freeing lords, its best done when you are NOT an enemy of the faction the castle belongs to. You walk in, with all your equipment, pull out your two hander, talk to the prison guard, one shot him and get into the dungeons. Instead of having to fight six dudes with a lyre, a dagger and throwing daggers while sneaking in PLUS killing the prison guard which if you aren't super lucky/good/strong  you wont be able to kill before the rest of the guards arrive, which include high tier units and a castle guard as well.
So yeah, prison breaks against enemy factions are MUCH harder.

Xzayler....truly awesome advice.Thanks!

With what i know now i can take it easy and roleplay my game without worrying about factions disappearing.The game can last as long as i want it to last.

One last question,i was just going to test it ingame but i think i should leave this thread in a complete state so that anyone else who has similar concerns has the answers waiting for them.If i attack a prison guard and free prisoners without being hostile to that faction what will happen to my relationship with them?

Thats the beauty of it. Absolutely... Nothing.
But you will get put in jail for a couple days if you get caught, but even then, there is no relation penalty. This is a Native feature though, I believe.

Btw, I'm not sure how much freeing lords will help, but Lords seems to respawn in castles/towns pretty fast and gather an army in a couple of days, while they would sit in prison for ages.

Also, you can join any fight between lords and only get a 4 relation bonus/loss or maybe a bit more, depending on who you help) which is easy to get back. I tend to have positive relations as a merc when my faction is at peace. Helping villagers/caravans gives relation boost with the faction, around 4 as well I think. The battles are also very easy, villagers vs a small group of red brotherhood or bandits. Small parties or D'Shar Raiders are the only ones which can catch villagers by themselves. So you can just increse your relation with factions by helping their caravans and villagers, and then defeat them in a big lords vs lords battle.

Alright then,all my questions have been answered.Thanks again Xzayler!

If anything I said happened to be wrong, let me know. Save often. Lol

Ok,i'll give everything you told me here a try later today and post my results.

Hm.. I think that you dont really need to worry about it in the 2 games I had the Friedsvain(name? 1st game) got out of hand and soon had to fight a 3 front war which was too much for them and in the 2nd game the Sarleon got too powerful and about a month later had also a 3 front war and it was too much for them 2.

there will always be stronger and weaker factions and that is good because when you go rogue you need to do it in a weak faction or else you will get steamroled by an army of 2000-3000 troops in about a week.

Your absolutely right about that.What i wanted(and now have)is a way to control when a faction gets steamrolled.At the moment i'm playing as a mercenary and i don't plan on going beyond that for awhile.So i want to ride around the map and role play,doing quest and getting into wars and fights with all the factions

Now when i decide to start my own Kingdom then i'll let nature take its course.Until then i'll keep everyone alive so i can have the maximum amount of fun

Ok Guys,i did some testing and here's what i discovered.

If your not aligned with any faction you will face a small garrison when you attempt to rescue a prisoner.I haven't tested what happens if you try as a vassal or mercenary.The fights doable but probably only for high level players with good armor and weapons.I'm level 20,carrying a fast sword and spear,2 excellent shields and i barely pulled it off after 3 reloads.I got +5 to my relationship with the guy i rescued and no downgrade with the faction i attacked(D'shar.)

I also joined a battle between the Empire and D'shar on the Empire's side.The D'shar where defeated and i got -4 i think to my faction relationship with them.Did it again and the relationship went down to -8.I accidentally ran into a D'shar lord who gave me the option of getting back into their good graces for around 1400 Denars.Once i paid the relationship reset back to its original value of 0.

During one of the 2 battles with the D'shar i tested the ctrl+alt+f4 cheat(Knockout all enemies using blunt damage) and it caused a large number of the enemy to be knocked unconscious.I did it again to knockout the last of the enemy and win the battle.After a few ingame hours i got an announcement from the anti-cheating script giving me my first of 3 warnings.

Also,Xzayler was right.I tested the ctrl+h cheat(Heals Player Character)during my 1st attempt at the prison break and it wasn't counted as a cheat by the anti-cheating script.

So,if it means alot to you there are definitely ways to prevent factions from being destroyed.To do this the only cheat you will likely have to use will be ctrl+alt+f4 as some of the field battles will be unwinnable without it.

The most "evil" way of impacting a war is player timefreeze exploit. Point is that if you enter one battle, time "freezes" and no other lord, no matter how close is he, can't join. You can abuse this to create local advantage for one side.

BTW, if you are neutral, join any battle you see and be on winning side to gain after battle relation boost wit winning lords. If you go on bad terms with losing faction, don't worry, loot is usually enough to pay cost of forgiveness.

Good point placenick. I do thaat too. I wait for lets say a lot of D'Shar lord toattack a lord and join the fight after the D'Shar lords joined but before the empire lords can get into the fight. D'Shar lords tend to be fast on the map, faster than Empire lords at least. This way, we can beat Empire lord by lord in battles with huge advantages.

Telmazan said:

Ok Guys,i did some testing and here's what i discovered.

If your not aligned with any faction you will face a small garrison when you attempt to rescue a prisoner.I haven't tested what happens if you try as a vassal or mercenary.The fights doable but probably only for high level players with good armor and weapons.I'm level 20,carrying a fast sword and spear,2 excellent shields and i barely pulled it off after 3 reloads.I got +5 to my relationship with the guy i rescued and no downgrade with the faction i attacked(D'shar.)

Click to expand...

It's the same when you're aligned to a faction, it's one of the things I like to do to help out a faction.
As long as you're neutral to the prison guards you get no consequences whatsoever. You can even ask for villages to light a fire to help you out.

I even did a few prison breaks as the king of my faction to hinder the Fierds while at peace with them. The only difference from earlier in the game is that villagers don't want to light the fire anymore, which is not much of a problem at this point in the game since I can deal with a full set of defenders.

Honesty it feels like an exploit though... People should be able to recognize me at this point. It feels even weirder when playing a female character.

So that's what the "light a fire" dialog option is.I assume you should light the fire in the village closest to where the rescue will take place?

Yeah that would be weird,lol.I doubt i'll use this when i'm king unless there's still a faction i want to save or the war against me is going so badly that i'm the one about to be steamrolled.Filou,you could try wearing a different set of armor and full face helm when you attempt a prison break.It would then make sense that no one knows its you.

Shhh...this is actually one of my favorite ways to gain XP, honor, relation, and money in the early through mid game. If you pay an attached village 200 gold to light a fire, you only need to be able to deal with the prison guard and 1 other mid-tier soldier after you break out.

If a lord is in a prison cell, you can check the notes to see if they have any relatives (I think father/son, uncle, nephew relations all work) and go to their relative to get the quest to break them out of prison. You get the honor and relation from the rescue as well as quite a bit of money, XP, and relation from the quest giver. You can then repeat the quest as much as you want by finding another imprisoned lord.

Eh, one thing no one here mentioned is that any method you want, better aply it before the faction gets stomped. An empire down to one town and 2 castles will never recover unless you decide to join them and do a crusade to capture all lost empire lands. Why? Well, you can free the lords, but without all the fiefs they will sit still at an army of maybe 60 guys (if lucky, most will just do 30). ANd the only way to fix that is for them to have castles or villages or towns. And the only way to do that is to fight for that faction and give it back it's lands.

Another reason why you should not let the fction get stomped is that all of a sudden all their lords will defect and even those pathetic 30 units turn to 0 which is obviously worse.

Bottom line: You want all factions in, then make sure all wars stay in the 1 castle gained/lost margin (castles, not towns, they must not loose towns). Which is a bloody hard task considering how many wars these guys are having and the preference of marshals for attacking towns,

Well, you can always enable cheats and force the winning faction to rethink and force feasts over and over while you do merc work for the losing faction and retake castles/cities and free lords until it can get back up on its feet.

I got this in my game being the Marshal for empire, and sarleon is down to Laria and a castle.  I'm going to take the castle and just be horribly inefficient as Marshal