First, making wanderers into new Clans is a great ability and IMO has improved the player faction gameplay a lot. It's almost like a anti-bull button because no matter what other weird and unpleasant stuff the games diplomacy/relation/election/economy does, you can at least get a new clan every 500 influence. You guys want 5th war..... okay fine I'm save my influence for another clan rather then veto it. A veto is just temporary till the next smart-allec gets influence to ask for war (or peace) but a new clan will last forever (usually...). It's always your best play! I started making only female wanderer clans to try an even out the coupling for the next gen and it seemed to work pretty well. Most clans married and produced children. What I didn't count on was the epic man-stealing my female clan leader pulled, taking the lords from enemy factions into mine via marriage! Eventually I couldn't get enough women wanderers so I made them with men too, but at this point it was late game and it was pretty obvious we aren't going to take until the second gen to finish the map.
Passing policies ASAP like forgiveness of debts, trial by jury, tribunals and grazing rights really did a lot for stabilizing my faction! I was able you use diverse wanderers and recruited clans without having to match them to the fief culture. I didn't even clear hideout other then a first sweep when I first started the faction. The only rebellions I had were a couple times when the AI took a long time to siege fief and killed it's stats (maybe even decimated?) so it was already rock bottom. Of course the AI also immediately crushed the rebels and everything was honky dory afterwards.
I purposely started my faction taking my first town as soon as I got rank 4 to test the effect of making wanderer clans, since I know this is what many players do. It may have been better play to be a vassal or solo (make peace) clan and build up a collection of fiefs first, but starting this way worked out too! Of course being able to man handle the enemy faction with just 1 party is needed or obviously you can't do it. But with a full party of Khan's Guards, no mercy and no honor, you can do anything! I also started fighting the Khuzait ASAP at rank 1 so they were always weakened by the time I was rank 4. They never got to build up the dread 200 KG doom stacks. I started in Odohk as I think the edge of the map is best to start in. It seemed to work out, I didn't get any additional wars declared on me until I had overtaken all the khuzait land.
As usual, the perks Keen sight (225 scouting) and Mounted Patrols (225 riding) are an absolute all star! Even with your vassals occasionally making peace and letting out an entire faction of prisoners, the ability to round up and hold an entire faction (or several) is a great advantage! I don't know why, but the vassals never voted for peace with the Aserai or Vlandia until the end of my game when we actually had taken all their land. Nearly all of Vlandia and Aserai were in prisoner train for several years at least.
I got the 250 leadership perk (for the first time) to get an extra clan party, however by that time the whole appeal of clan parties was long gone. I would rather keep my clan members in town making babies, or in my own party as captains. I did send some poor smuks from the taverns out as parties though. I do think the general effect of leadership to recruit prisoners is pretty good though. In future game I'll probably leave Soc at 2 and raise Int instead.
Tactics is a weird skill. Even at 300+ tactics you can still lose a t6 unit when auto calcing a battle against and enemy 1/20th of your power. Not always, but just sometimes is enough to make this a bad idea. However, if you have a safe garrison (good food supply) to put your good troops in and take out a less special party, you can just auto calc lords, even equal in size without a care with tactics that high. So, while I think an option to choose what troops you use in an auto calc battle would be good, it's still handy late game.
To my surprise my first born actually got to be 18 at the end of the campaign and joined me for the last few sieges! His stats and level are kind of surprising to me! Too bad his skills are so low!
Just my map at the end. I probably will play around with this game more but it was kind of exhausting to finish the map....without taking anyone's head off.
One thing I didn't count on was that eventually my faction started often voting me to have more fiefs! Initially I kept only one fief as a base and used any other to raise clans as needed, reducing me back to only 1. But then a pleasant surprise when finally overtaking Battania, my faction gave me most of the towns. Although I had intended to just have 1 town, having multiple pit stops was actually pretty useful.
Passing policies ASAP like forgiveness of debts, trial by jury, tribunals and grazing rights really did a lot for stabilizing my faction! I was able you use diverse wanderers and recruited clans without having to match them to the fief culture. I didn't even clear hideout other then a first sweep when I first started the faction. The only rebellions I had were a couple times when the AI took a long time to siege fief and killed it's stats (maybe even decimated?) so it was already rock bottom. Of course the AI also immediately crushed the rebels and everything was honky dory afterwards.
I purposely started my faction taking my first town as soon as I got rank 4 to test the effect of making wanderer clans, since I know this is what many players do. It may have been better play to be a vassal or solo (make peace) clan and build up a collection of fiefs first, but starting this way worked out too! Of course being able to man handle the enemy faction with just 1 party is needed or obviously you can't do it. But with a full party of Khan's Guards, no mercy and no honor, you can do anything! I also started fighting the Khuzait ASAP at rank 1 so they were always weakened by the time I was rank 4. They never got to build up the dread 200 KG doom stacks. I started in Odohk as I think the edge of the map is best to start in. It seemed to work out, I didn't get any additional wars declared on me until I had overtaken all the khuzait land.
As usual, the perks Keen sight (225 scouting) and Mounted Patrols (225 riding) are an absolute all star! Even with your vassals occasionally making peace and letting out an entire faction of prisoners, the ability to round up and hold an entire faction (or several) is a great advantage! I don't know why, but the vassals never voted for peace with the Aserai or Vlandia until the end of my game when we actually had taken all their land. Nearly all of Vlandia and Aserai were in prisoner train for several years at least.
I got the 250 leadership perk (for the first time) to get an extra clan party, however by that time the whole appeal of clan parties was long gone. I would rather keep my clan members in town making babies, or in my own party as captains. I did send some poor smuks from the taverns out as parties though. I do think the general effect of leadership to recruit prisoners is pretty good though. In future game I'll probably leave Soc at 2 and raise Int instead.
Tactics is a weird skill. Even at 300+ tactics you can still lose a t6 unit when auto calcing a battle against and enemy 1/20th of your power. Not always, but just sometimes is enough to make this a bad idea. However, if you have a safe garrison (good food supply) to put your good troops in and take out a less special party, you can just auto calc lords, even equal in size without a care with tactics that high. So, while I think an option to choose what troops you use in an auto calc battle would be good, it's still handy late game.
To my surprise my first born actually got to be 18 at the end of the campaign and joined me for the last few sieges! His stats and level are kind of surprising to me! Too bad his skills are so low!
Just my map at the end. I probably will play around with this game more but it was kind of exhausting to finish the map....without taking anyone's head off.
One thing I didn't count on was that eventually my faction started often voting me to have more fiefs! Initially I kept only one fief as a base and used any other to raise clans as needed, reducing me back to only 1. But then a pleasant surprise when finally overtaking Battania, my faction gave me most of the towns. Although I had intended to just have 1 town, having multiple pit stops was actually pretty useful.
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