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Strat said:

Sorry but I have to disagree with this one - It's actually not that hard to take land by yourself. I doubt anyone here is watching my current Tamerlane bandit play through (spoiler alert if you are), but I even did a WC with a single clan - no vassal, no recruiting nobles, no promoting companions, etc. And I was at war with everyone on the map from day 1 (No peace allowed). I'm not trying to say "git gud" but there may be some tactics you have not considered using before that are holding you back.
I do agree with you 100% on point 1 - I would love to have more control over units during a siege. I usually put everyone into 2 groups and control them that way, but there should be a better way to do it.

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I have not watched this one yet, but I'll give it a look. What I am advocating for is more options. Vassal rebellion would be a good one. I had an idea that if I can beat the decay of influence by being an absolute God at war contribution as a mercenary, I should be able to vote to get a fief for my excellent service. Someone opposed that, and while I don't have a problem with looking for alternatives, I think that there should be SOME way to spend influence as a mercenary. The ways I know to get a kingdom are wait for a rebellion, declare war with massive penalties against a HUGE nation, be a vassal, or buy one after grinding the hell out of trade. Are there others I don't know about?

The Director said:

1. Problem: An open gate can be close again. The AI seeks to do so at the earliest opportunity, even ignoring combat to do so. This can result in your soldiers being trapped between gates. Fix: The AI will not assault through the gate unless the gate is broken.

2. Your family members typically make good governors, but they also make good everything else. Having to decide which is more important to you is an integral part of the game.

3. Agreed. To get land as a non-vassal you can either become a criminal and siege (aka get rekt unless you cheat), wait for a rebellion to break out and race against the faction that the rebellion is against while hoping you have enough soldiers to take the town/castle (because you can't starve them out), or spend a frankly ridiculous amount of time to level up your trade and save up millions of gold to buy a settlement. You can't even encourage a rebellion, or cause a rebellion without being in charge of the settlement in question.

4. Agreed. Rebelling against your current liege is a time-honored tradition in feudalism. Giving back your land AND taking a huge opinion loss is probably one of the top 5 dumbest decisions that have been made in the development of this game so far.

5. Agreed, except for the impossible to not get crushed part. Smith-for-gold and keep a massive garrison of T2 imperials. Up to the limit if you can. Then you skirmish with the smaller enemies while running from the large armies until the AI gets tired and is willing the send you a peace treaty. If you do enough skirmishing, they'll even pay you.

6. I think you mean villages, and I agree. If you try to raze a village with a small force the village will rise up against you, but they won't do the same against the AI. Having to constantly run around fending off robber-barons is a dumb mechanic.

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1. Do you know of a way to stop them from trying to assault the walls all together without just having them shield up outside the gate? For example, what if I want them to attack only the gate or charge through once I open the gate.

Strat said:

Thanks for the shout out!! I'll toss my two cents in - the only gripe I have with fiefs and management in general is the slow rate of XP gain for companions. They have adjusted XP gain for a lot of skills recently which made it much easier, but take melee skills for example - It's not hard for a player to farm XP since we can out-fight the AI very easily. However, a companion in combat even at the higher skill levels still make stupid choices and get destroyed. For example: fighting 1 vs 1 a companion with late game armor and 300+ skills makes them formidable. However, insert them into a 5 vs 1 and it's pretty much gg even against low tier enemies like looters. Swap a player into the equation with 0 combat skills and the worst weapons can still effectively win the 5 vs 1 because we don't just charge in to trade blows. We back up, flank, position, etc. but the AI doesn't do this, which usually means they get 1 - 5 kills and then get dunked on lol. This is just one example of how annoying it is to farm XP for companions, I have a whole list like tactics, leadership, etc. for companions.

I understand where others are concerned about with managing fiefs, but with a little bit of planning ahead of time it shouldn't be an issue to manage and maintain fiefs, even without a governor. Passing good policies pretty much eliminates loyalty issues and putting a good governor in place is just an extra bonus.

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Good to see you here! Yes, I checked you out on YouTube and you have some very comprehensive videos that greatly helped with balancing loyalty. What do you think about the idea of being able to appoint governors from the town, castle, or village notables once you reach kingdom size? Several have brought up the reason against it being that you can't have everything and that is the point. However, I maintain that the higher you get in in the game and the more land you get, there needs to be a more accommodating system for managing all the aspects of a kingdom. It can't just be me, my 6 friends, and my wife leading all the armies, managing all the territories, leading all the caravans, and leading all the divisions. It would be something similar to a crusader kings 3 feeling where the higher you get, the less you micromanage because the more vassals you have. Also do you have any thoughts on my other suggestions? I feel as if most of the issues I have are very intertwined.

niekdegrijze said:

their should indeed be a way to hire governors from the locals and these should not be counted as a companion or be usable in that way.
It would be good to select from a few templates for different roles (see @Strat videos). It is a chore to level the required skills on companions anyway. they are completely spread out over different skills.

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Thank you for the recommendation!

Julio-Claudian said:

You can do this if you select the groups meant for the walls and give them different orders/turn off delegated command. Problem is there's no way of telling which group you are selecting without ordering a group to move and waiting to see which group does move which causes a mess (no highlight or anything when selecting a group in any situation, no group icons in siege battles). Also if you turn off delegated command for a group in a siege battle it causes other AI controlled groups to start behaving weirdly, running from one side of the battle to the other and so forth.

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Yeah I've tried this before, if you look at my other reply, its the first thing I mention. I just can't seem to get them to charge without them immediately returning to trying to assault the walls. Am I missing something?

Earth Dragon said:

No there shouldn’t.

This has been and always will be a terrible suggestion.

A huge portion of the management side of this game is you don’t have enough bodies to do everything. Managers and stand-ins aren’t represented, but they are obviously still there.

Your Workshops still run

Your Garrison’s still hire troops

Your castles still collect taxes

As far as trusted inner circle, this should be limited with tough choice to make

Do I want a super party with lots of companions?

Should I go intelligence or cunning to cut back on the number of companions I need in my party?

Should I keep the max amount of parties which cost money, or should I run caravans that make money?

Do I marry my daughter to a companion clan and keep their them happy and stock their bodies, or should I keep her single and train her as a governor?

Having limited influence makes these intriguing choices. This game needs MORE of that, not less.

Should we have better ways to gain experience in most categories for our character and all family and companions? Yes, absolutely.

Should skill trees get a couple more adjustments to ensure all lines are multi-faceted? Yes, and it’s almost there.

Should management decisions be trivialized and we materialize armies, caravans, workshops, and governors in infinite amounts whenever needed? No, and I don’t understand why people advocate for it. You may not want all of that, but it’s all been asked for, and would completely crush all “span of control” progression and management the game is offering. This isn’t suppose to be a “your a god with a super bias set of rules” type game most are. If you want it to be, then mod it. But don’t compromise the base game

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While I understand the idea that there should be a management aspect to the game because as you say, you can't do it all. You have to select where you want you focus. I think that that works fine early and mid game, but late game it becomes very limiting. Who will lead my armies? Who will lead my divisions? Who will govern my cities? Who will make the money to offset all these expenses? Since everything requires companions and you get maybe 6ish late game, it becomes very hard to grow a kingdom. Going from a small kingdom to a large kingdom in this game is the hardest transition because you are so limited. Them maintaining a kingdom is even harder. Please check out the other reply I did where I addressed why this is such a big issue and tell me what you think. If you play a game like crusader kings 3 (I know a very different type of game, but bear with me), the higher up you go, the more vassals you are allowed to have which makes the transition from a small kingdom to a big one less cumbersome. I feel like there is some middle ground here where you still have to prioritize, but its not literally unplayable because of lack of resources.

LuciusDomitiusAurelianus said:

You need to first set Delegate Command to Off (F6) at the Order of Battle screen and then directly place the folks far behind the lines and set them to stop and shield wall. The AI that will man the siege engines will ignore this of course which is fine. I'd love to see priority targeting by the AI using Siege Engines - the defenders on Ballista and Catapults seem much better and very deadly - the offensive siege engines not so much.

Forgiveness of Debts and one other policy have additions to Loyalty that at the very minimum can offset the -3 Culture mismatch, pair that with a proper Culture companion and taking some Perks you can "rebuild" a town. @Strat (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWXXAjBRaEpQdxKvDMexJBg) has amazing series and (meta)analysis on this very topic to hook you up though it should be much clearer.

All that said, I agree that a Governor should not count against your total Companions - hell I do not think Caravans should either. Being able to promote a notable would be good but I do not like the RNG around that and think the Companion model works (since you can train them - sort of) and not count against the top.


I disagree with these - and at the risk of invoking realism - I do think that leaving as a Vassal works appropriately and being a non-Kingdom landowner is more of a glitch than anything. Right now sniping a Rebel faction and Trade 300 bypass the Kingdom requirement but I actually think you should be forced to make a Kingdom versus what you can do right now and essentially build up a massive garrison and Companion force to promote to Lords.

That said, I believe Warband had an option to defect if you were slighted by not getting a fief, that should happen again if you lose a vote with the immediate option to Rebel/Leave with half the penalty. Something more immersive would be getting all the angry Lords who didn't get fiefs for X Amount of Council Votes could have the option to rebel similar to the Sect/Rebellion mechanic in the Diplomacy mod but I think that is far too ambitious for the core work that TW has left to do.

Two different thoughts here - agree either way.

1 - On marriages I do agree they should hold better sway. If I am married to the child of a King/Khan that should reduce the chance they will declare war on me since their child is likely to die. Maybe not a huge debuff but a significant one where outside of aggression or having a ton of bordering territory they wouldn't declare. I also think marrying other leaders should be allowed - and that you would just join their Kingdom and become Ruler upon their death. There should be a way to choose if they marry into your Kingdom or vice-versa so you can make strategic marraiges with Kingdoms that are getting curb-stomped and inherit their lands into your Kingdom and fight the war on their behalf.

And as an aside, I hate how unimmersive familial relationships are. No one seems to care about it and even my spouse doesnt seem to really care outside of the new introduction

2 - 100% agree we need *something*. At the very minimum I'd like a minimal truce period enforced but I think direct Alliances, Defense Pacts and Non-Aggression Pacts (somewhere in between the latter 2) would be great native additions.

The auto-calc has been adjusted so many times already - the 1.8.0 beta patch really added better strategic theater-level cohesion between Armies so getting smashed by a combined 1800-man Army is still plenty realistic. It's balanced well enough as it is but I do like the idea of a hidden "emergency" militia value though you can argue the civilians are already levies as is.

Good thoughts overall even if I didn't agree

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Thank you for the youtube recommendation! It is very helpful. For the sieging mechanics, I do understand that tactic. I have done it before, but maybe I'm missing something. When I do as described and have them stand in front of the gate in a shield wall while I open the gate, when I then give them the command to charge, they try to assault the walls again. If I try to move them inside the gate, they just resume the shield wall and don't assault. Is there something I'm missing?

While there are policies that help with loyal, I find it very hard to offset in a food shortage or when I'm being raided (I mean duh right? more on that at the end) and I think there could be some more was to help balance loyalties. Maybe you could have events where you host tournaments in a town or passively donate money to keep loyalty high. Possibly if you build up enough renown to where towns people like you (or fear you) enough to not rebel. I know you can improve relations with villages so maybe there could be a loyalty system that encompasses what town and village notables think of you. The best way to fix this would be my next two points that tie in though.

You should be able to promote a village or town notable to governor. That way you don't get the culture difference and maybe even a little bonus loyalty for making it someone within the town or village. If it HAS to be a companion then yes governors and caravans should not count. It's ridiculous and hinders your ability to grow late game.

I would love the option to rebel as a vassal and take less penalties. It is currently impossible to stop being a vassal without HUGE opinion penalties which basically lead you to be in an endless war with whoever you were a vassal of. While buying land with high trade is an option, I just would like to see more options to acquire land. I feel as if this game makes it exceptionally hard to have an independent kingdom because as a small kingdom, you get crushed by other nations due to the lack of diplomatic options as we discussed. I MYSELF want to be the banner lord, but this game makes it extremely difficult to do so. There should be more ways to form a small kingdom and be able to maintain one. Additionally, companion limits are terrible late game. I need to be able to have enough companions so that I can raise several armies that will come to my aid against the AI which is much bigger and stronger than my. Also if I want companions to lead divisions in my army on top of that, the current companion limit makes that impossible.

I don't know how to fix companion limit issues, but maybe make it scale with how much land you have??? I just feel like the companion limit is so, well, limiting! Especially because everything requires companion. Perhaps you just make it so that each additional companion costs more to recruit, but not have a limit on the number? What are your thoughts?

I feel like there should be a way to spend influence as a mercenary on SOMETHING. The decay of influence is fine, but if I'm killing whole armies and taking a lot of prisoners to the point where I'm beating the influence decay, I think there should be something for me to spend it on. What do you think?

As far as town and villages getting raided go (which again would help with loyalty), I feel like there are two solutions. 1. the garrison in the town should be able to deploy to prevent raidings provided that the garrison has enough troops or 2. The village people should be some low tier militia (thinking realism retired soldiers and women with axes and pitchforks) with a population size that can defend themselves. It is TOTAL BS that an army of 12 comprised of low tier units can keep raiding my towns. Realistically, the castle or town garrison would go and stop this or the village people wouldn't just stand by and get slaughtered, they'd take up arms against 12 thugs and kill them. This basically makes it to where I don't have enough armies to suppress the raidings (because of companion limits) and every time someone gets ransomed or escapes, they raise an army of 12 and raid my cities. Only solution is to behead everyone and now I'm hated. A better diplomacy system could have other nations come to my aid to help defend my lands while I fight the big battles.

The hard part is that all of these issues feed into each other making it hard to solve one without addressing the rest. Hopefully a dev sees and makes some adjustments! Or the modding community will do it for them