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HalfMetalJacket said:

I feel like its a balancing point. Palantine are the most well armoured archer, so to compensate they aren't able to skirmish as often.

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He has downgraded the armour here to suit at least. I'd rather have less armour and more arrows, all the lower tier imperial archers are missing a quiver as well which means a lot of retreating in large battles.

Emergent gameplay is hurt because of the hamfisted way the clan system works right now. It's almost impossible to have relations with a clan member without also affecting relations will all members. All the clans property and also collectively owned so by saving a village you're only helping the clan, not the clan member who is responsible for that village. It might not help the player with getting fiefs, unless they let us join clans, but it would feel more natural if clans gave their members villages to be resposible for.

I assume part of the reason is down to villages being part of towns and castles because of the food system. If a castle is missing a village it will starve faster. They could solve this by adding much more villages to the game and have crummy remote villages that aren't tied to cities to give to upstarts like the player. Some villages are closer to castles and towns that they aren't tied to which could be owned by an enemy. What's stopping them from claiming ownership of that village?

This is very much needed, as it is because of bridges and rivers some towns are swarming with dozens of tiny parties of 4 or 5 that can't be caught but also can't escape. Those militiamen also ought to get off their arse and defend their villages, they'll starve to death without those villages. Sometimes it's only 50 or 60 troops doing the raiding but if you personally aren't there no one will stop them.

The Garrison Improvments mod does all this already, just with garrisons instead of militia so there's no reason it can't be part of the base game.

Yes, this has bugged me since Warband. Upgrading should a bit more involved than "*poof* you are a legionnaire now!".

Very good post. I appreciate that you gave the Palatine Guard 2 quivers, that's been bugging me for ages.

Some good suggestions but I always find that the mercenary parties feel like one trick ponies when you fight them one on one and using regular recruits slightly mitigates that. For example the Embers and the Hidden Hand never carry shields, the Legion have no archers, The Ghilman charge in without support etc. It would be good to see their trees get fleshout just a little bit like giving the Legion sagittarii and velites.

I've seen Sturgia come back after being destroyed by retaking their captial only to suddenly declare war on the Northern Empire who don't even border them while still at war with Vlandia. The Southern Empire did the almost exact same thing with the Khuzait. Baffling.

I, too, would really like it if when a faction declares war they also declare what they want and aim for it. For example The Western Empire wants Lageta back. They declare war, Garios creates an army and marches to Lageta and takes it and defends it. Then he either demands peace or, if he can't get peace, declares raids until his enemy accepts peace.

I'm reminded of how Stellaris currently does its border disputes, you can pay influence to make claims on your opponents star systems either at peace or upon declaration of war. At the end of the war you can only keep something that you claimed was yours beforehand. Not a 1:1 comaprison of course but there needs to be more to this than 'hi, we fight now'.

I like the idea of changing the leveling up system. Clicking and paying 100 denars to give someone armour that costs 50,000 denars when he only makes 20 a day while I'm wearing rags seems very primitive to me. Equipment can be seperate to level and it would be neat if troops had an equipment tier beside their skill tier so economics can be represented in how well the army is armed. Then you limit the equipment level to skill tier +1 to implement the training system so recruits can pick which upgrade to load up as.

The problem is that at the moment armies explode after one bad battle and are recruited in the thousands by the ai while recruiting is far more tedious far players. Until we get more options to preserve our troops like better retreating and buying back our captured troops more investment into my troops will make me more paranoid.

I think the conundrum, though, of recruits becoming archers by stabbing looters becomes less conspicious when we get training fields that actually do anything so hopefully we'll never have to march to war with recruits again. In Warband my training skills always beat the upgrades out of my recruits before we got to battle.

It would be flavourful if the Empire could get access to special auxiliary units in border territories or foreign conqured territories. Cavalry from the Khuzait territories, skirmishers from the Aserai, axemen from Sturgia and so on.

I like the idea of a levy though the rest of the recruitment system would have to altered somehow to fit round it. It would be nice if the levy represented a war resource that restricts constant wasteful war declarations. Lords would have to back off and let their towns recover if they want more recruits for the next war. The Light's Prosperity mod kind of approaches this. When you recuit troops they costs prosperity from the town and higher prosperity means high tier troops and higher quantity of troops, you can't return them to get prosperity back though.

I'd change the troop tier and recruiment system to represent the different social class and professional level of soldiers in fuedal armies as follows.

Levy - Levies can only be raised for war and are demobilised afterwards according to kingdom decree. You could pass a decree that forces levies to stay in service longer at the cost of settlment loyalty for example. These troops have their own tier list that can be upgraded but goes no higher than tier 3, are recruited at a tier appriopate to the level of training in the town and use weapons appropiate to their culture. They command pitiful wages, if any, and have fluctuating morale depending on decrees, leadership, state of events and settlement loyalty. Raising levies takes away prosperity which lowers tax income which can be brought back to normal by returning your levy alive not mention hurting your reputation if you keep getting everyones familes killed. Throughout a war some levies may offer to become regular troops by being upgraded into the relevent tree like bandits.

Men-At-Arms - These are troops you have right now in the game. They are your standing army who command good wages, have good morale and stick with you at all times. Recruitment should made more scarce to give a bit more room for the levies in the army but more should be done to make sure lords preserve these guys so that they can get levels and properly make up the highly skilled core of the army rather than be a pile of random units at random tiers.

Nobles - The nobility or otherwise the richest and most well equipped men in your army. Their recruitment could depend on your culture or decrees whether they work as elite soldiers for very high wages, are levied as their noble responsibility for war or give their services to the highest bidder or the most popular leader or all of the above. Typically to get these guys in any good number you need to own land as a vassal at the least.

For all this the prisoner system ought to be changed as well so all prisoners are ransomed directly to their employers and return to their homes when freed. This would help with retention of elite troops which otherwise dissappear as far as I know, maybe an alchemist turns them into the denars you ransom them for.

Ishtarin said:

That's not true at all. Infantry don't ever use spears outside of anti-cavalry work unless they're specialized falxmen or menavlions. Any infantry vs infantry fight devolves to swords, spear walls don't exist unless horses are already on top of the formation basically.

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Even menavlions always default to their sword instead of their menavlion. I'm not sure I've even seen one with his spear out yet.

The problem with spears is that missile troops are deadly in this game and one handed spears just don't give anything over other weapons. Combine this with combat AI that has no sense of personal space and there's no room for anything longer than a sword. Spearmen can't even strike from behind their allies because everybody squirms side to side, blocking their blows.

The primary time I see spears excel is when the enemy infantry are scattered widely or standing at rest with no other enemies around at which point they gain excellent knowledge of how and when to hit you with their spear as you ride past. They rarely do this when attacked in groups though as they have trouble picking a target they can hit.

I concur. I like fact we have custom weapons exist and I hope we get custom armour. I just don't like the smithing skill, there's no way that you naturally grind it during gameplay like you do combat skills or leader skills. It just interrupts the flow of play. I'd rather smiths be NPC's that we can commisions pieces from who have their own cultural specialties, skill level, wait times etc.

I agree. Give the players the option to choose how they start. The companion system has also been a serious annoyance to me as well, and I hope it gets reworked. There's a lot of room to improve like splitting companions into members and retainers which straight away demands a higher level of depth from the clan and party system. Retainers should be employees like surgeons and scouts and be hire per clan member as opposed to family and close friends. Something at least that's better than hiring a random murder hobo from the tavern and making him my brother.

hruza said:

Here:

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I'd rather see that in my game than the great wave of teal that keeps staining my maps.

Ninaran said:

They also sometimes just.. walk off the walls trying to attack people on ladders.

Also is it just me or can the AI troops just run into you and physically push me backwards off the wall for massive fall damage even if I hold forward against it while they're basically immovable objects?

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I admit I laughed when my men starting climbing up the ladders only to see multiple defenders, not accidently, but aggressively leap from the walls screaming to strike the men on the ladders. Just from experience I think when it comes to pushing you can push your allies but if your allies push up against something that can't be pushed like a wall or enemy then you get jostled in turn.

The Party AI Overhaul and Commands mod may be what you're looking for. You can't send your parties to towns as far as I know but you can command them to follow you, chase enemy parties at will (give them all your cavalry so they can catch fast parties.), manage their inventories and set parametres for recruitment, raiding, fleeing, garrison donation and such by talking to them.

The Improved Garrison mod also lets you make additional parties out of your garrison who can either follow you or patrol your fiefs, ideally defending them and mopping up bandits

I hope features like these get made standard since parties right now are like releasing animals into the wild and hoping they don't get eaten by a passing Khuzait horde.

The biggest problem is the battle AI. The observations of their idiocy are legion but suffice to say they are not very good at defending a castle. Just remember to look at how the gate defenders gather in a compact suicide cube and wait for the release of death.