archers, in general, can't survive long in melee. it's not their thing. besides, if a horse archer is in melee, something has gone sideways in the battle anyway.
I hate lancers, both in my army and fighting them. Horse archers, on the other hand, are quite handy. They are mid-leveled troops, very mobile, decent hitting power and pretty damned hard to catch. Foot archers are mid to high level troops with limited mobility, good-excellent hitting power and very easy to catch. I hired 17 khergit tribesmen when i started, now at lvl 18, i still have ~10 of them trained up to Vet Horse Archer. In the same span of time, I have gone thru many, MANY foot archers.
In the end, it all boils down to personal preference. I prefer mounted archers with some heavy infantry and a bit of heavy cav.
As for Cavalry tactics, no matter which faction, I just have them follow me and spread out then ride into the flanks of the enemy. I don't order them to charge until i have gotten the enemy infantry spread out a bit. 2-3 ride-by's often do the trick. They'll attack and scatter the enemy as you ride thru. And since they're following you, they rarely hang around to get mooshed.
I don't care much for archers, so I rarely use them. I keep some infantry about for sieges and stray enemies.
I run exclusively mercenaries until mid to late teens when I have the spare points to drop into training, then it's all about the faction troops. I have my own mod and have added champion troops to all factions.
Faction Army:
- 10 Swadian Templars (Knight upgrade)
- 10 Vaegir Knights
- 10 Nord Huscarls (Siege) OR 10 Rhodok Triarii (field)
- 10+ Khergit Cataphract (lancer upgrade) or Vet Archers
EDIT: I rarely run with more than 75 troops, including heroes.
The largest army size I have EVER had was in the neighborhood of 450-ish. Renown is cool like that. +1 troop per 20 (I think, may be 25) renown.
If that's not working, you could always boot jeremus, or whichever one is pissed at you, wait a bit and re-hire him. I generally only have 3-5 companions with me and I have companion interactions turned off in my game/mods so I don't have to deal with this foolishness.
There is a .txt tweak for turning off companion interactions, but it is NOT save game compatible. Can find that here fro future reference:
Nope. No way to change your answer. Best advice I can give wold be to just keep your party morale up around 85-90+ for around a week. This would mean pretty much non-stop fighting, but it should keep your party together until the angry companions cool off. If the upset companion does leave, just keep checking the taverns for him and re-hire him when you see him. He may or may not lose the gear you bought.
I did a quick change to morale myself. For every 100 points of renown, morale goes up by 1. So, if you reach 10k renown, your party will always be happy. Everyone wants to hang with the hero (party size) and everyone loves him (morale). The actual code change was easy, but took me a bit to get the game menus hooked up to display the renown effect on morale.
Custom settlements is a good mod, but like so many other great mods out there, for this and other games, they make changes I don't particularly care for. Also, I much prefer to do my own work.
@jik - yea, I followed that thread for a couple days. Some good info there.
Anyway, if it wasn't for the super, time consuming scenes, I'd prolly try to put this together. I'm not at all interested in the graphical side of modding.
I played on moderately easy settings for several months. Recently I have cranked it up to as high as I can with the built in options. It's good to start off on the easier setting to get the hang of the game. After you get used to how the game works and plays, crank that bugger up. Be warned though, a stray arrow can drop you like a bag of wet poop.
- Town/castle income is generated weekly which gives them a 'hiring budget'
- AI towns/castles hire troops on a daily basis. IF the center cannot afford the selected troop, no troops are hired.
- AI towns/castles generate 3000 xp every 2 days, which is distributed among the troops stationed there and then those troops are randomly upgraded.
- AI lords hire troops daily using their personal wealth. I have never seen an AI lord take garrison troops from a town/castle.
- AI lords train their troops in a similar manner as a player with the 'trainer' skill. (500xp per point of Trainer skill)
As for luck, the player starts the game with approx 200 and that decreases by 1 every 180 hours (7.5 days)
Now how exactly do they recruit? I mean how much money do they spend on recruits?
The same as the player, 10 denars per man?
And do they pay the same upkeep for their troops as the player does?
Lets see-
An ordinary village gives the player ~430 denars per Month.
The average AI lord will have 70 troops, and gets those 430 denars every Week right?
so within these 70 men are elites, regulars and recruits, averaging to about 1000 (maybe?) denars upkeep per month?
So with his income from the village against his upkeep payings and the recruitment costs, he should still be able to save ~400-500 denars per month + income when raiding?
When enemy lords raid villages, do they earn a large amount of income? I'd assume so.
So all in all the average Lord has a small + income.
There are recruit 'packages' that the lords use when hiring, they do NOT always hire raw recruits. The code selects the package, then calculates the hiring cost. If the hiring budget is greater than hiring cost, that package is hired. (took me a couple days to figure this out in the module system) As for lords paying upkeep, I'm not sure if they do or not. I have seen lords run off to villages, sit there for a couple game hours and leave. They may be collecting taxes or hiring troops. There have been a couple instances where i went to a village for recruits right after a lord left and no one was interested in joining. So, maybe the AI does occasionally visit villages for recruits. But as I said, I haven't paid much attention to that nor looked too deeply into the code to see what really happens there.
Towns have a much higher hiring budget than most lords, and noticeably higher than castles, mainly because of the caravans. I'm sure you've noticed that a cities prosperity goes up and down throughout the game. When a caravan leaves a city, IF it reaches it's destination, the caravan sells it's goods, reducing that cities wealth (and possibly prosperity). Once that is done, the caravan turns around to head home. IF it makes it back to it's home, then that city increases it's wealth (and possibly prosperity).
My thoughts, for simplicities sake, was to have minimal upgrades and put as many as I could in one place.
- Tavern
- Market place - 1 building, 3 stalls (1 each for Weapon, armor and goods)
- Troop Barracks - I already have this incorporated in my mod, but no scenes for it as I don't really need them. It just hires and trains the garrison.
- Stables - Probably should attach this to the Troop Barracks, which would mean adding a scene.
Would probably be best if Troop barracks and were pre-reqs for this one as horses are rather expensive to raise and maintain.
- City Walls
For simplicities sake, could make the vendors all menu driven with no scene for them. But to make it really exciting and dynamic, I'd rather have the marketplace
with the merchant stalls and the player would have to hire merchants. Possibly recruited from passing caravans or captured Caravan Masters.
If merchants are menu driven, that would only leave the tavern and city walls to build and scene. The tavern COULD be built with the merchant stalls, but no
merchants until they are hired.
Had a nifty idea LATE last night....
Is it possible, and how much actual work would be involved in making all those tiny village grow into actual towns?
My thought was to add the various town improvements to the menu for the villages, Tavern, Merchants, Town walls, etc. Adding them to the...