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Yeah, only request for castles or towns as fiefs. Lords will just beeline for villages to raid and it becomes a periodical loss of income if you have Skilled Craftsmen in it.
They are also extremely hard to defend as you the defender will spawn with farmers in your army while the enemy gets their proper army. Not to mention, everyone is dismounted which means all elite cavalry become nothing more than regular grunts.

It may not be true technically but ingame its pretty obvious to me.
Had like 100 Ravenstern Footman and 100 Ravenstern Archers with 900+ Recruits. Never received any attack from the AI even though its the weakest town.

Meanwhile if I have something like a 500ish garrison of Rangers, Kierguards, Man-At-Arms, Wardens, Footman/Archers. Their marshal army always beelines towards me.
The above recruit spam costs way less than this elite garrison so its an obvious choice.

Too bad the wages don't scale like that formula as 1 Legionnaire's wages > 10  Recruits' wages so having tons of recruits is still better economy-wise.

I just keep reusing the same character for each playthrough through import/export with enough gold for enterprises, companions and decent equipment. I mostly hate the early game as its just endless battles with bandits to get gold and levels if I was using a new character so I just skip straight into troop training and battles as a mercenary captain.

As for playstyle, I use a melee character with maxed Pathfinding and Surgery as these skills are invaluable. I tend to strictly keep to using faction troops at all phases in the game, causing me to suffer as some factions simply aren't designed to be fielded with just their commoners (*cough*Sarleon, Fierdsvain*cough*). I highly value extremely fast to train troops like the Ravenstern troop tree over elite units, churning massive armies out in days. The only elite units I use are the free auto-generated Knighthood Order garrisons. As I use a standard army composition with balanced infantry/archers/cavalry, those 32 autogenerated Knights are just the right number for my armies, more so if I have multiple fiefs with KHOs. As such, I never have to manually recruit nobles.

Latis the Darkgryphon said:

Aetavicus said:

Is there any particular reason that Sarleon Man-At-Arms train slower than equivalent infantry, Kierguards and Legionnaires? Generally in strategy games, the faction with the weak individual units have the fastest production rates to compensate which is why I've always thought that Sarleon should be the fastest faction to train, considering their very weak commoner troops. However, that does not seem to to be the case as Ravenstern takes the top spot for overall training efficiency while Sarleon is only fast at producing their mediocre longbowmen. Not to mention that Man-At-Arms seem to be worst then their equivalents in my experience, with a sizable portion of them armed with Awlpikes spear weaponry which is not handled well at all by this game.

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Sarleon follows the culture of old pendor, their army has been outdated and long year’s war is weaking this kingdom as well, both Ravenstern and empire has the lore of university or scholar, so they have more advanced army.

Beside sarleon has the best noble knight, best of the best among all factions, even stronger than many KOs, that’s enough to cover all the “weakness” of sarleon, even sarleon’s commoner troops are not that worse tbh.

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Well if your kingdom is truly ancient, then your training processes should be pretty quick no? Faster production times due to not needing 'advanced technology' and having time-tested training processes. On the gameplay note though, by simply changing Sarleon Armored Footman's level from level 21 to level 20 will make Man-At-Arms have equivalent training speed to other factions and I don't see any drawbacks from this in my opinion. Sarleon MAA would still be the weakest commoner "core" infantry simply due to how their weaponry is setup and unit stats, at least from what I've experienced in game.

Unless of course, the design intent is to also have "slow core infantry training speed" be a weakness for Sarleon to counteract the strengths of their knights in addition to all the other weaknesses. Hopefully, the new commoner cavalry will be enough to cover this gap since I tend to mainly use a single factions' troops even before vassalage.

Is there any particular reason that Sarleon Man-At-Arms train slower than equivalent infantry, Kierguards and Legionnaires? Generally in strategy games, the faction with the weak individual units have the fastest production rates to compensate which is why I've always thought that Sarleon should be the fastest faction to train, considering their very weak commoner troops. However, that does not seem to to be the case as Ravenstern takes the top spot for overall training efficiency while Sarleon is only fast at producing their mediocre longbowmen. Not to mention that Man-At-Arms seem to be worst then their equivalents in my experience, with a sizable portion of them armed with Awlpikes spear weaponry which is not handled well at all by this game.

My main point is that creating knighthood orders is too cheap for what they offer in my opinion. Instead of thinking about what it might cost, it has become a no-brainer decision for me to put down an order in every fief I own simply because it wouldn't cost me much. Heck I even dismantle current orders and create new order types without much thought at all.

And while KHO in PoP may not be gods like Swadian Knights, they are still an extremely powerful tool as not only are they near the top end of player-usable troops, they also introduce the heavy cavalry type to the player's toolset, something which is very uncommon in the mercenary phase. Furthermore, they are even more powerful than the "regular" heavy cavalry such as factional knights.

Maybe if it cost significantly more, something like 100k denars and 50 honor, I may start actively thinking on which orders and where to place them but as it is now, everywhere will do.

@Latis the Darkgryphon
I don't think you understand my post.
My point is that I could make Knighthood Orders in every fief I own starting from vassalage with just a small fee of 20k denars and 10-15 honor and have a free supply of 32 KHO Knights for each of those fiefs. This would cause me to entirely ignore using the standard faction noble troop tree such as Sarleon Knights. After all, why would I waste time and money to train these troops when I have free supply of KHO Knights incoming. Imagine if I have 4 KHOs in 4 fiefs (for the super cheap price of 100k denars and 40-60 honor), thats 128 free knights + 208 throughout the whole game, for what possible reason could I need to train Ravenstern/Sarleon/Pendor Knights, assuming I'm a normal player and don't get my knights slaughtered?

There just isn't a phase in the game where I'm going "Lets use some normal knights", instead its "Lets make a KHO instantly for free troops". No significant investment needed, the creation cost is way too cheap for these orders.

@k0nr@d
Ahh, so you designed these troops to not be used by the player. I see

I have been wondering what do people think about the progression between noble troops into knighthood orders?
To me, it feels like creating and setting up Knighthood Orders is too cheap causing me to forgo noble recruitment entirely. There is never a phase in the game when I'm purely using Sarleon/Ravenstern knights for instance. Instead I would invest a paltry 20000d and some honor to create a chapter that auto-generates KHO troops for free throughout the whole game, not to mention these KHO troops are superior to factional knights.

I feel like the ideal progression should be that when becoming a vassal, the player starts to train and actively use a force of factional knights and only in the later stages of that phase, does he invest significantly into creating Orders that will upgrade his knights. As it is now, as soon as I enter the vassal stage, I just instantly create KHOs as the cost is so cheap and start using KHO troops, forgoing the faction noble tree entirely. Does anyone else think that this is an issue?

I feel like this mod would benefit by having more ways to diversify the higher-tier troop trees of the different factions in order to make them distinct so that players have incentives to pick certain factions for reasons besides their commoner troops.  To achieve this, I would suggest restricting the creation conditions of Knighthood Orders to specific factions only.

Ravenstern = Silvermist, Raven Spear, Dragon, Falcon
Sarleon = KotEG, Lions, Clarion Call
Empire = Shadow Legion, Shadow Wolves, Phoenix, Immortals, Radiant Cross
DShar = Windriders, Scorpion Assassins, Eventide
Fierdsvain = Dawn, Valkyries, that new Order in 3.9
Pendor = Griffon (Exclusive)

Players can create any of these chapters as long as they are of their respective culture or if a specific faction has too many (Empire  ), have them locked into locations or companions/claimants.
As for Pendor players, they have to conquer these orders' home locations in order to create them, rather than just having Qualis as a requirement.

These would resolve inconsistencies such when I am a Ravenstern vassal for instance and yet I can create Shadow Legion Centurions with a Qualis Gem no matter how little sense that makes.
It would also give incentives for picking specific factions as players can get access to the creation of these knighthood orders easily.
For Pendor kingdoms, it would give them a strategic objective to undertake as they have to decide which faction/towns they should prioritise, as conquering these towns will grant access to these KHOs.
The current system already facilitates this idea to an extent, with certain KHOs locked to locations/culture (ie Clarion Calls) but it could definitely go more along this direction.

Oh I see, changing their unit type seems logical with all the cavalry options Sarleon has now. Any information on what kind of infantry the new Squires will be?

You only lose relations with the king when you renounce your oath and take all your holdings.  That shouldn't matter anymore once you are running your own kingdom. As for other lords, to be safe I try to get them over 50 relations to be able to recruit them. As you take more and more lands of their original faction, the relations requirement gets lower.

Just a small query regarding unit balance in the new version depending on current information from the wikia and changelog.
It seems that the new Sarleon Cavalry is going to have the role of medium cavalry with them equipping the red Coat of Plates armor and having Red Caparisoned Hunters. Would this cause them to overshadow the Squires of the Lion by surviving longer as the Squires are only equipped with lightly armored surcoats and hunters?  If so, it would be strange for anyone to upgrade Man-At-Arms to Squires of the Lion when instead they could be getting Sarleon Cavalry from the Armored Footman.

Do note the stats of the Squires seem to be higher but I can not tell whether this will help overcome their armor deficiency.

The new winged helmets for the Valkyries are a step on the right direction. There actually needs to be a whole lot more of these kind of designs as many Knighthood Orders are named after winged beasts (ie, Falcon, Griffon, Dragon, etc).

That's not the point though, the point is that you have to own Poinsbruk UNLIKE other similar non-Pendor faction-based secondary Knighthood Orders.
Unless of course if the intention is to purposely keep Ravenstern's exclusive KHO capabilities lower* than that of Sarleon, otherwise this arrangement is just very weird.

*Lower as in harder to get

Since Knights of the Raven Spear are getting changed to be upgradeable from Ravenstern Knights now, following the trend of the Knights of the Clarion Call, should they also get similar creation conditions as the Clarion Call? These said conditions being that one either needs to own Poinsbruk OR be a vassal of Ravenstern/have your kingdom follow Ravenstern culture.

I feel like this would be a good change to bolster Ravenstern's KHO variety as in 3.9, they would only have two "exclusive" orders that require their faction knights and one of them is under a huge restriction. Then we look at the comparison, Sarleon. Sarleon also has two but in their case, they are NOT restricted by location, being able to create Clarion Calls or Lions anywhere they like as long as the player is of Sarleon culture. Other factions like D'Shar and Empire also enjoy these benefits though theirs is limited by a less strict restriction, Qualis Gems.

There is also no need to bring other location-based KHOs into these as Dawn or Radiant Crosses for example require Pendor Knights instead of specific faction Knights, furthermore Pendor has a HUGE selection of KHOs to choose from.

I think Griffon needs the additional aesthetics more than any other KHO in my opinion. They are the "loreful" order that you have to revive but yet they look generic as hell.

For relations, I'm not sure about the actual timeline but it seems like the old Pendor has already fallen centuries ago. Most if not all Lords should have already forgotten what the Pendorian troops look or fought like and would think that your Pendor troops are your own household troops similar to what many Lords already have.

Also, I'm not talking about mass recruiting them from the beginning but instead at the vassal stage, which is like halfway throughout the game.

Aetavicus said:

How about adding another option to the steward to allow recruitment of Pendor Recruits when you are a vassal. This new system could reuse the systems for noble recruitment and knight conversion (Eg. Sarleon Recruit convert into Pendor Recruit).

It seems wrong that the majority of the game passes without being able to use the titular faction's troops reliably and meaningfully in combat. Not to mention, Pendor has a gigantic troop tree that just begs players to explore and use it. Combat in early-mid game are the most meaningful but the Pendor troop line is not utilized at this phase. Farmers can only be gotten in prisoner trains and in small amounts, unsuitable for replenishing casualties.
Once a kingdom gets going, individual armies mean very little as you will be marshaling multiple armies, reducing the impact and flavor of finally having a Pendor army.

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*Quote for reference

@Latis the Darkgryphon
That is a very out-of-the-way path though, it takes up a lot of time (which I feel shouldn't be necessary) just to get some commoner troops of the titular faction.
After a few serious battles, you have to do the whole process over again which makes it untenable in regular gameplay. Roleplay is fun and all (I have done it the way you described) but I would prefer if the Pendor faction gets integrated with the actual overall game more cohesively.
Perhaps for the mercenary captain phase, players should utilize the different faction troops in order to explore the game but when you become a vassal, I would prefer a reliable way to gain those recruits. After all, for lore reasons, you are the heir of Pendor, surely you or your family has some techniques to train Pendor troops else how you explain the sudden appearance of the Pendor troop tree when you become king.

How about adding another option to the steward to allow recruitment of Pendor Recruits when you are a vassal. This new system could reuse the systems for noble recruitment and knight conversion (Eg. Sarleon Recruit convert into Pendor Recruit).

It seems wrong that the majority of the game passes without being able to use the titular faction's troops reliably and meaningfully in combat. Not to mention, Pendor has a gigantic troop tree that just begs players to explore and use it. Combat in early-mid game are the most meaningful but the Pendor troop line is not utilized at this phase. Farmers can only be gotten in prisoner trains and in small amounts, unsuitable for replenishing casualties.
Once a kingdom gets going, individual armies mean very little as you will be marshaling multiple armies, reducing the impact and flavor of finally having a Pendor army.