Levelling troops and higher tier recruits

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I'm finding almost impossible to level up troops in the current 1.3 beta and i end up with an army full of recruits. I manually attack looters but they always end up killing an insane amount of troops, like attacking a 20 looters party with a 40 men party ends with more than 20 losses on my side if i don't run interference, very few get only wounded.
The other thing that grinds my gears is that the few troops i manage to level up tend to die more than recruits in battle. I recently started a new playthrough with sturgia and i'm really struggling to get a semi-decent party, when i join armies with my full party my troops just get deleted, i didn't manage to get a single t5 unit yet because they just die and when the army gets disbanded i find myself with 10 to 15 units, the majority of which are just recruits.
I play on realistic and i don't really want to lower the difficulty because it just doesn't feel right to make my troops take less damage than the enemy.

In my previous Vlandia playthrough i didn't have such an issue (sturgian units seem more susceptible to death), it was not easy to get a good party but at least around day 400 i could field a pretty stable high tier army, to the point i started to recruit only t3+ from villages and towns completely ignoring everything below t3 .
In sturgia the best i could find are some sporadic t2 units and they are very rare, about noble units i probably found 3 or 4 warrior sons. I'm starting to think it could be a problem related to faction, i noticed that prosperity in sturgia is really low compared to other factions, Varnovapol is the town with the highest prosperity with only around 3k while other factions have 5k+ prosperity on more than one town, same for villages which have max 400 hearts while i saw some 700+ for other factions.
I admit that this playtrhough is still in the early stage but i don't recall having such hard times playing with Vlandia, Battania or Empire.
 
I agree that the process is boring and frustrating and I really hope that passive training is part of the plan for the future. That said, I haven't had as much of a hard time against looters myself, although I was using Khergit recruits in one playthrough and Battanian recruits in the other.

Just ordering to charge seems to yield an easy victory as long as I have at least one recruit for each looter, and both Battanian Woodrunners and Khergit Tribal Warriors or how they are called completely shred looter parties. With recruits I get 4 deaths in a 20 vs 20 battle at worst. And just for clarity's sake that's on max damage. So I am not really sure what is going on. Perhaps Sturgian recruits are particularly bad? I don't see how they could be THAT bad though, I will have to test that myself.
 
I order to charge too as i did with other factions troops but the outcome is quite different, there's seems to be a guaranteed kill for each looter i fight if i don't distract the enemies. Perhaps there's something wrong about their gear, or maybe is a matter of weapon reach since they use axes while vlandians recruits use spears.
 
I'm playing my 3rd play through on 1.3 (max difficult settings) and I'm not have this issue myself.

My 2nd play through was with Sturgia and admittedly they're probably the hardest faction to do well with for a number of reasons. I'd really only side with them if you want an extra challenge.
 
My plan for most army compositions that aren't Khuzaits going forward is to level heavy ranged units like Imperial or Vlandian Crossbowmen and maintain a detachment of light cavalry fresh from a village.

In particular, the Imperial Crossbowman is about as heavily armored (if not more so) than some faction top tier infantry and leveling up they will shred looters before they are put at personal risk. They also come with a shield! Vlandians are better in that their Tier 5 Crossbowmen come with a shield, but for Imps only Tier 6 get them.

Heck, if I need to level more of them I just put the veterans in the "infantry" formation and have them stay back while the newer guys destroy looters with sustained volleys. My only problem with this system is that I need to constantly find groups of looters over 15 to make any headway - the larger the better if I want to level a bunch of troops.

As for leveling base recruits against looters, it helps to equip a big shield and stand in front of them to draw the attention of 4-5 looters. While they begin to wail on you, the charging recruits can get some free hits in without fear. But the charge has to come quick, otherwise you will be shredded by all those cheap knives attacking your heavily armored arse.
 
if i don't run interference,
You have to run interference, ride ahead and turn most of them so only a part meet your troops at once. It's annoying because they will start to rout and you recruits won't catch them..... and so you have to attack them again on the map and click through all the bull**** (sometimes accidentally getting them to surrender....).

For now I highly suggest only raising Ranged units or Horse archers (recruit good prisoners of inf and Cav though), but I know that can be unreasonable for some factions that don't have t2 archers.
Also not all recruits are equal, some seem to go down way easier, possibly little difference in their weapon reach. Personally I feel vlandian recruits do poorly because of spears being very very bad on foot.

We really really need warband quality SURGERY and a means to quickly max it out before we're in war all the time, like we had in warband.
As it is now, loosing even 1 tier 5 unit is such a loss that it's better to re-load the game and do the battle again. Obviusly I'm very controlling of my troops in battle and basically never ever let them run wild and always exploit getting in a favorable position and provoking the stupid AI into running into my fire squad (good old Viking Conquest start) and only bring the cav with me to to attack archer from behind. Anything else is death city and a trip to looter vile.
 
In particular, the Imperial Crossbowman is about as heavily armored (if not more so) than some faction top tier infantry
They can also very conveniently handle most infantry in melee. What few make it to the shooting line, especially if you combined them with some mounted archers as a distraction.

Heck, if I need to level more of them I just put the veterans in the "infantry" formation and have them stay back while the newer guys destroy looters with sustained volleys.
I do something similar myself - either use one formation made up of companions (high tier armor, shields and one handers), or get a small formation of higher tier infantry to charge first, followed by the recruit rabble.

A few horse archers send first always helps, though. Seems AI really doesn't like anything on the flank or behind them, even if it's a force that can't meaningfully do much damage (in case of going against enemy Lord's party).

My only problem with this system is that I need to constantly find groups of looters over 15 to make any headway - the larger the better if I want to level a bunch of troops.
Oy vey, is this the most unfun part of "whack-a-looter-lord" right now or what.

Spend in-game weeks grinding looters to get a decent fighting force. Fight an awesome field battle or a siege. Realize you have to spend more weeks replacing the losses no matter how well you handled the fight. Pray to RNGesus that sufficiently large looter parties spawn nearby because there are no other viable enemies to engage right now without guaranteed unit loss (or even reasonable upgrade-to-loss ratio for recruits).

We need far more variance to bandit parties.
 
How are you losing so much men against looters? Sturgian recruits beats them 20 vs 20 without loses usually... Realistic and challenging difficulty.
 
Only playing on 2/3 here, but I also never had any problems like that when manually fighting looters. When things go south I loose maybe one or two recruits, but thats it. I don't use much tactics too I think...I just let them come at me, training for my archers or companions. And when I need to level up a lot of recruits I send the infantry against them sooner...thats it.
Also there are a lot of higher units to recruit, especially later in the game when relations might be better with some notables. So I don't find that I have to constantly fighht looters to level my units...just now and then when I have unusually high number of recruits.
 
I'm finding almost impossible to level up troops in the current 1.3 beta and i end up with an army full of recruits.

Sorry, but i disagree. Maybe you can try to recruit some prisonners as see warriors to build an 'almost' efficient shield wall, then hire some archers or crossbowmans at the beggining. Fight against regular armies for a max xp gain. U will have a lot of casuality, but it's war; and maybe that's the point i agree with : it's very hard to have troops from only one nation >> at the very beggining<< . it's look like more of a mix of mercenaries and prisonners. Then, when you have a casttle or a city, u can manage your garrison and keep with you only your favorite troops, pure breed.
 
How are you losing so much men against looters? Sturgian recruits beats them 20 vs 20 without loses usually... Realistic and challenging difficulty.

Difficulty setting perhaps? There's the option for how much damage you take, and your men... makes a drastic difference.
 
Difficulty setting perhaps? There's the option for how much damage you take, and your men... makes a drastic difference.
Player's troops will die on easy? On realistic and challenging maximum difficulty they are good enough at dealing with looters.
 
How are you losing so much men against looters? Sturgian recruits beats them 20 vs 20 without loses usually... Realistic and challenging difficulty.
I just lost a battle to an army with 100 peasants.

I had 70+ Tier 2 or better Troops and we got routed.

I even redid the battle 5 times and had the same result.
 
I just lost a battle to an army with 100 peasants.

I had 70+ Tier 2 or better Troops and we got routed.

I even redid the battle 5 times and had the same result.
I don't know how it possible... I'm playing on maximum difficulty and defeating three 1200 armies in a row continuously with my 620 men, losing about 20 ppl. Try to add more ranged units and cavalry...
Hmm, I'm starting to think that difficulty settings may be mixed up...
 
Try to add more ranged units and cavalry
That's the whole point of the post. I can't find any troops that are not recruits in villages and i'm having a very hard time levelling those recruits up because they die too easily. I don't like to have a mixed culture party so i won't recruit prisoners.

defeating three 1200 armies in a row continuously with my 620 men, losing about 20 ppl
Are you playing khuzaits? Because as far as i know horse archers are kinda cheaty, i've seen some reformist video in which he can dispatch 600+ men army with a 80 horse archers party, taking only 8 losses
 
I don't know how it possible... I'm playing on maximum difficulty and defeating three 1200 armies in a row continuously with my 620 men, losing about 20 ppl. Try to add more ranged units and cavalry...
Hmm, I'm starting to think that difficulty settings may be mixed up...
Talent?

I put my forces on a hill. Infantry a few paces on front of the archers. I then took the cavalry and went after the enemy Horse Archers.

I think we killed 10 of the 15 horse archers.

My only guess is that my archers were too busy shooting at the horse archers to see the mass of infantry marching at them. Or they used most of their ammo shooting at Horse Archers. Either way, the infantry clashed and we died.

Not sure if there are advanced commands I should have used for my archers to target infantry.
 
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