Lords need to be subject to the same restrictions as the player

Kingdom lords' armies need restrictions on the number of prisoners and the number of soldiers their party can have.
Too many times do I see one lord with a reasonable sized army fight another reasonable sized army that has 100+ prisoners.  After the prior defeats the latter and rescues the prisoners, he now has an absurdly sized army.  Each lord should have a limit set on these two numbers the same way the player does via the prisoner management skill, leadership skill, charisma attribute, and renown measurement.  Each unit in the game has a skill and attribute measurement for these things.

The actual size and experience of each nobles army and garrisons needs to be dependent on observable variables such as personal wealth, renown, fiefs, etc.

Lords never take care of their fiefs yet they have enormous personal wealth.
They need to defend their fiefs and should have to run about to collect the taxes from their fiefs as the player does.  It would make which fief belongs to which lord all the more important.  It would also make the nobles come out of hiding more.

Defeating a nobles army should be a huge blow to that noble.
Defeated lords who manage to escape just respawn with a new army.  Ideally, the new army would be subtracted from the lords garrisons or personal wealth and if he does not have enough of either, he should have to run around to his factions villages and recruit his units.  Those units would be of very low experience but would increase over time.  At the least, a noble who respawns should have to sit around for a great deal of time before he regains an army.  Their is too much looting, sieging, and fighting going on anyway.

Agreed on all points. However, that's a lot for the game (and Armagan) to keep track of. Lots and lots of work. Probably working towards it, at least part of the way, though.

Not true to the mass wealth. King Ragnar had a HUGE army at one point and -785K debt... when i have even 1K i lose most my army, wtf?

DamienZharkoff said:

Not true to the mass wealth. King Ragnar had a HUGE army at one point and -785K debt... when i have even 1K i lose most my army, wtf?

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Don't think lords suffer from desertion. I'm pretty sure armagan's aware of the incompetence of the AI at maintaining morale and suchlike.

Jon Snow said:

that's a lot for the game (and Armagan) to keep track of. Lots and lots of work.

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Lemme revise a little . . .

Kingdom lords' armies need restrictions on the number of prisoners and the number of soldiers their party can have.

Keep the number of units and prisoners to each noble's army reasonable.  If you have to, place a universal limit on each noble's army.

To go along with this, have each faction favor its own units for rescuing over others if possible.
Hell, transform other factions' units into wealth, renown, or first tier soldiers of the nobles if you must.  Its unbelievable that a noble would have more units of a different faction than his own.

The actual size and experience of each nobles army and garrisons needs to be dependent on observable variables such as personal wealth, renown, fiefs, etc.

At least base the size and experience of the noble's army on his starting renown and wealth and keep it close to this level unless he gains more fiefs.  What type and the number of fiefs a noble has would be an excellent variable for his army size to be dependent on.

Lords never take care of their fiefs yet they have enormous personal wealth.

Lords do too much raiding, sieging, and looting.  Most of their time should consist of fief management.  At the least, have nobles spend a large amount of time in between campaigns inside castles and towns near their fiefs.  When you ask what they are doing, have them respond "I am managing my fiefs" instead of "I am resting" unless they just finished a campaign.

Defeating a nobles army should be a huge blow to that noble.
When a noble is defeated, a great deal of game time should pass before he regains his army and goes back to raiding, looting, and sieging.

I would be more than happy with these and I would think them much less difficult to implement.

Also, why do nobles never have any food in their inventory?

Art Falmingaid said:

Lords do too much raiding, sieging, and looting.  Most of their time should consist of fief management.  At the least, have nobles spend a large amount of time in between campaigns inside castles and towns near their fiefs.  When you ask what they are doing, have them respond "I am managing my fiefs" instead of "I am resting" unless they just finished a campaign.

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Actually nobles did spend most of their time on campaigns and tournaments and very little time on managing their property, most of these duties were done by servants who probably had much more experience and education in such tasks anyway.

What is missing fighting amongst Lords of the same faction, right now they act more like military commanders who care more about their nation then their personal property, Lords should act very differently fight each other over a lot, refuse to follow king if relationships are bad, refuse to follow other Lord which they don't like and even siege his castle while he is away (BTW we need much more castles but small ones which could easily change owners).

We are also missing wives of the Lords and a chance for a Lord to get killed in battle leaving open an option for another Lord to marry his wife and claim his lands, of course other Lords can't allow that and we have more fighting. 

Most powerful Lord could even attempt to overthrow the king!

possibly part of the problem is that nobles do not possess the same superior intellect as some (and i stress, some) of the players, thus they have certain advantages such as larger parties and more time in the field to help them keep up and so they actually provide a challenge

Perhaps there could be some sort of limit on the lords (higher than the player, but still less than infinite. Maybe 200 or something similar) for troops, and then towns, villages, and castles would offer a bonus to max army size. Really, my problem isn't that lords have such huge armies, it's that the player is pretty limited in comparison. Say a town gives a +50 to max army size, for both player and AI lords. A village would be +10, and a castle +25. Or it could go +25, +5, and +10.

yeah the player is limited, but i dont really consider it a problem, ever seen what 50 top tier troops can do to a lord with 250-300 troops?

Do Lords troops upgrade? This could be nice solution since starting army could be filled with recruits and easily beatable by the player even if greatly outnumbered by the time they gather experience there wouldn't be that many left unless they wait in towns/castle and train them for few months.

Ivan Bajlo said:

Actually nobles did spend most of their time on campaigns and tournaments and very little time on managing their property, most of these duties were done by servants who probably had much more experience and education in such tasks anyway.

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My idea stesses gameplay, not realism.  If we were doing that, then YOU would not have to run around to your own fiefs because you would have a servant to do it for you, too.  Since you don't have one, the NPC lords should not either.

I must also stress the number of troops and prisoners NPC lords can have is absurdly high.  Its dumb.  Just today I saw an enemy lord with 300+ prisoners.  That is level 60+ prisoner management for players, which is not even possible.

GuardianAnubite said:

Perhaps there could be some sort of limit on the lords (higher than the player, but still less than infinite. Maybe 200 or something similar) for troops, and then towns, villages, and castles would offer a bonus to max army size. Really, my problem isn't that lords have such huge armies, it's that the player is pretty limited in comparison. Say a town gives a +50 to max army size, for both player and AI lords. A village would be +10, and a castle +25. Or it could go +25, +5, and +10.

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Yeah, that sounds good.  Something like that.

Lemme expand that a little
Base max army size for any noble is 30 whether they have a fief or not, with faction leaders base size of 50.  Each town gives +50, each castle gives +20, and each village gives +3.  Place some sort of arbitrary universal limit on NPC party prisoners, like 1/3 their total number of troops.

Sanjar Kahn and the Kings limit would be 100 with 33 prisoners.

Town lords' limit would be 80, which is pretty darn close to how they start now, and they could have 26 prisoners.

The lords who own a castle and its village troop limit would be 55, again close to what they start with anyway, and could capture 16 prisoners.

Other lords usually have around 3 villages.  That would be 39 with 13 prisoners.

Kraven said:

yeah the player is limited, but i dont really consider it a problem, ever seen what 50 top tier troops can do to a lord with 250-300 troops?

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Yea. I just tried with the Rhodoks. 70 units of top spearmen and crossbowmen were attacking 300 nord troops.

I set the archers on top of a hill, and the infantry a little lower to cover them. The nords came, completely killed all my "Amazing to tier troops" and didn't lose too many men. Yea, amazing what top tier troops can do.

EasyCo506 said:

Kraven said:

yeah the player is limited, but i dont really consider it a problem, ever seen what 50 top tier troops can do to a lord with 250-300 troops?

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Yea. I just tried with the Rhodoks. 70 units of top spearmen and crossbowmen were attacking 300 nord troops.

I set the archers on top of a hill, and the infantry a little lower to cover them. The nords came, completely killed all my "Amazing to tier troops" and didn't lose too many men. Yea, amazing what top tier troops can do.

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With nords, the key is to scatter em, best to put all troops on charge, and charge ahead of your men to try and scatter them up some. Also be sure to pick off their archers so their footmen have no backup or a bit less backup against cavalry. Scattering them will enable your mounted troops to charge through, and prevent them from gang raping any of your men like they tend to do even when they are grouped. I just went 145 rhodok men under lord glumar (Sp?) vs 39 of mine + 68 villagers. We won with only 2 farmers dead, 3 wounded because of the scatter technique

Also heres a new one. Castle siege, enemys KO you but you haven't lost 1 troop, instead of the AI making fights via played rounds (You know, put you as spectator) you automatically lose. You also can't "Sally out to meet their forces" like the uber NPCs get to. at that the archers will just sit there forever and will rape you the moment you go out there, but at that, if you withdraw from boredom, again, you lose!

How come the F***ing enemy lords can sit there and show up multiple times in castle defense, and their troops NEVER auto retreat when the lord goes down, but for you, 1 KO and your gone for good in castle defense/raids?

This is BEYOND unfair

But what do I do when I am playing as the rhodoks, as in, no cavalry at all? Do I still lead a charge?

Kraven said:

yeah the player is limited, but i dont really consider it a problem, ever seen what 50 top tier troops can do to a lord with 250-300 troops?

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That is still absurd, though.  Just absurd.

Art Falmingaid said:

To go along with this, have each faction favor its own units for rescuing over others if possible.
Hell, transform other factions' units into wealth, renown, or first tier soldiers of the nobles if you must.  Its unbelievable that a noble would have more units of a different faction than his own.

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This is starting to bother me more and more.  I am a vassal of Sanjar Kahn, and now the Khanate's armies all move as slow as the other factions because they keep rescuing unmounted units.  At least convert rescued enemy faction units into first tier units of the lord's factions or into neutral units like mercenary swordsmen or mercenary crossbowmen.  Just something.

Kingdom lords' armies need restrictions on the number of prisoners and the number of soldiers their party can have.

Keep the number of units and prisoners to each noble's army reasonable.  If you have to, place a universal limit on each noble's army.

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Please oh please do this one!  The Khanate had war declared on them by the Nords. The nords have been at war with several factions for years now, and it seems every single lord in the Nord army has 200+ units!  Arrgh!

I haven't even read the thread; the moment I saw the title I thought "That gets my vote!".

Seeing armies trot about in the 2-300's when the most the player can resonably achieve after lots of leveling and fighting is around the 80-90 mark is... well its unfair

I'd also like to suggest changing the reknown per man to 20 instead of 25 as 5 additional men per 100 renown seems a better number than 4.  But that may just be personal preferance.