I fail to understand how a faction with NO (i.e. ZERO, NADA, ZILCH) fiefs for over an in-game year, can still exist, have funds to hire numerous mercenary companies, muster several armies to besiege castles from opposing factions, and where every single clan leader when spoken to "is happy with my current liege blah blah blah..."
I have THREE such factions in my current game.... with no way to stop the stupidity except go ultra bad guy and decapitate them all, Highlander style.
Can this level of stupid AI programming even be explained?? When Warband had a extremely well working method of Kingdom destruction when all fiefs were taken?? I mean, it's not like the developers have to think outside of the box, or create a new design for this CLEARLY LACKING mechanism to be introduced to the game. Just look at the Warband code FFS.
Just wipe out the Lords. Don't worry about the mercenaries. There is several ways ways of winning. Depending on if you got birth and deaths enabled. If you do then these are the options
1. Wipe out lords over 38 years old. After 38 lords can't have children. E.g. they all die of old age.
2. Wipe out all the women/ keep them locked up till they are 38 or older. Can do this with the men but generally more men in the kingdoms.
3. Follow the Queens of hearts example and chop off their heads
If you got birth and deaths disabled then can only do option 3. Unless you got extra mods such as disease or starve mod. Then lords can randomly die if they run out of food or get sick.
I Don't see any issue with this current system. Having it eliminate kingdoms after a year or when it suddenly switches from winter into spring is a bad idea.
You create your own kingdom and start with 1 fief. This gets captured/ rebels and then you get eliminated if it takes a year or until the clock ticks over to spring.
You generally spend a season in jail if you get captured and put in a town/ Castle plus it takes a season to recruit enough men to re take a fief. If you get captured and shoved deep in energy territory then keep getting captured then you gonna be struggling to get another fief. Plus once you do that kingdom going to be marching armies to just come take it straight back
The never ending cycle of taking a fief to then not be eliminated because your kingdom is new