A Use for Tracking?

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Has anyone ever found a practical use for tracking? Even without Borcha starting with 3 levels, I've never found a use for it and thus never give anyone points in it. Rationale:

1. Any time I need to find a specific party (like a find-bandit quest), the tracks are overwhelmed by the other bandits that are usually in the area.

2. If I'm looking for an unspecific party (say if I'm looking to farm sea raiders), there's usually a very small preset area where I can find them, so tracking is unnecessary.

3. AI party behaviour is really predictable so if I'm looking for a party that zooms outside my spotting range, I just head in the same direction.

 

[AreJohn]

How's it not useful? It shows how recently a army has been nearby and allows you to decide whom to go after without even knowing their existence two minutes ago.

 

[Skuadak]

There is this one quest which almost isn't possible to do without tracking (forgot the name, "Track the bandits"?). Also potential and usefulness of skill is probably way bigger if you play with realistic saves. I never do so, so I'm not sure, tho.

edit:
Right, it's "Follow Spy".

 

[Vraelomon]

Every once in a while you get a quest to follow a spy. You'll want some tracking for that 
I never saw what purpose tracking had at higher levels though 

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

How's it not useful? It shows how recently a army has been nearby and allows you to decide whom to go after without even knowing their existence two minutes ago.

If a party is more than 2 hours away it's nearly impossible to catch unless they stop to raid and are larger than you, and the likelyhood of a party being between 1 hour away and visible is too small for to justify putting points into it IMO. I can imagine it'd be useful for spotting those tiny lategame parties if they try to raid your land, but other than that I can't think of any applications.

There is this one quest which almost isn't possible to do without tracking (forgot the name, "Track the bandits"?). Also potential and usefulness of skill is probably way bigger if you play with realistic saves. I never do, so I'm not sure, tho.

That's the quest I was mentioning. The problem is that it's usually given in towns that have dozens of bandits around anyway, and the quest-specific one can sometimes be too far away to track (sometimes their tracks aren't even visible from the town because they took a weird detour).
I always thought tracking might be useful for cav-only parties, but I've never tried that kind of build.

I never saw what purpose tracking had at higher levels though 

Yeah, after level 3 you get really tiny bits of information that are probably useful once per campaign. Even the wiki doesn't make it clear what you get in later levels.

 

[Foeurdr]

You really need a high tracking skill to be effective in that quest, since it's the lone track from 1 person it's easy to recognize it, no bandit group are this small, but still that's a real pain to do.
Sometimes I use it to know where the marshall went after he send me in mission.

 

[Timesitheus]

Well, I find it really useful. I always give few points of tracking to one of my companions. It just gives me greater understanding whats happening in the world without having to guess things ("Where did they go? I think they went this way... oh wait") I find it allows me to find enemy and friendly parties and where the action is very quickly. I try to answer your points and tell how I see it:

1. Well, I don't do the tracking quests. I find them to be pain in the butt.

2. Yeah, they are usually at some specific area, but unless I play Floris or some other mod that gives huge amounts of bandits, I still need to do atleast little bit of searching. And I think finding bandit tracks and following them instead of just randomly guessing where they are is better. Plus many times I can't catch them before night comes in and my spotting range becomes shorter. Without tracking I would have lost many bandit parties.

3. Yes, you can usually guess what settlement the army is going to siege next, but other than that I don't find their behaviour really that predictable. I mean I don't instantly know where all the enemy parties are and tracking really helps me understand the situation. I had numerous situations where I know there are enemies nearby but don't know where exactly so I just follow some tracks I see and encounter a battle for example. Without tracks I would have to guess things and I don't really like guessing. 

 

[blainedeyoung]

Tracking gets much more useful at high levels.  It will tell you if the trail is a bandit, war party, or traders. 

I use it constantly to find bandits to capture and ransom. 

Frequently, it's necessary to track down a particular lord like they're going to give you a quest reward and anyone in the kingdom will tell you they're between this place and this place, so you go there, find their tracks, and follow them.  I do that all the time.

If a party is more than 2 hours away it's nearly impossible to catch unless they stop to raid and are larger than you, and the likelyhood of a party being between 1 hour away and visible is too small for to justify putting points into it IMO. I can imagine it'd be useful for spotting those tiny lategame parties if they try to raid your land, but other than that I can't think of any applications.

Even when I have a large army, I'm still the fastest army on the map because most groups don't have pathfinding or high morale.  But for most of the game, I'm not carrying around a large army and I catch lords in no time. 

 

[Don Leo]

I use tracking all the time. I use the Perisno mod though but even then.

I use it, for example, to figure out if an area needs more patrols or not. If I see multiple tracks of different sizes belonging to different bandit parties, it probably means I need to clear some stuff out there and maybe put a lord on that fief. If I don't do this, then the fief won't grow in prosperity. If it doesn't get richer, it makes less money then it could be making. If it makes less money then I get less money. If I get less money I can't pay for certain things like units or upgrades. I still can pay for them, just less. If a lord owns the fief, he gets less money so his party is smaller because he can't hire as many troops. (Yes it is decided by how rich the lord is it seems.)

A day or two after a war declaration I pay more attention to the tracks in my territories. If I see a fat track or war party track, coming from enemy lands, it's probably a raider. Pitiless, debauched and other bad lord personalities will go off raiding by themselves. You'll notice the same few dudes constantly raiding your stuff. If I see their track, I follow it or I send someone there to deal with it. That's one lord by himself. The way I understand it, the more lords you defeat, the more morale drops the enemy kingdom gets, the closer they get to declaring peace. So one lord by himself is a cheap and easy blow to their morale. This guy now has to go and recover and my lands are protected and churning out money to get more and better troops.

I'm not sure if this is in native or not but sometimes you send stuff out and it gets captured by a bandit group, so I track the group. Maybe a better example: my lord gets defeated and captured near an area. I go there, find the X on the map. The X means battle. Whatever arrows go out of this x will have my dude as a prisoner. It's easier to defeat a prisoner holding party in the open field than it is to besiege a castle or go through the hassle of breaking them out of it. This lord now likes me better, I have this lord in the field (after he recovers) so his party will add to enemy war damages or prevent war damages on my lands.

You see, tracking is a vital skill to have when need to work with the deep intricacies of the game. When playing on maximum hardcore difficulty or even average difficulty. When money is tight, wars are plentiful (I got attacked on 5 fronts at one point) and you need to choose your actions carefully. When the game becomes about specific choices, that's when it gets epic. Not just "get full cav army and steamroll" but "do I siege this castle and let my fiefs be raided... thus losing money and a long period of no recruits from those fiefs, or do I leave this castle for what it is, protect my fiefs, but not take the castle, not give the enemy lords negative relation with their king and thus creating quarrels that lead to internal struggles,... or do I ignore both these and go for something else?"

You see, taking a castle means you take away fiefs of one or more lords. If the castle belonged to lord A and it had a village belonging to B, then I take the castle and neither A and B have fiefs (unless they have more than just those). Fiefless lords get -1 with their king per day (or is it -3? Whatever they start complaining at some point). Then, when the king gives them fiefs after all, the king loses relation with all the other guys who didn't get a new fief.

When you understand these intricacies, you now realise that taking a castle just to let them recapture it later, means you're stoking a feudal fire that makes the lords of that faction start hating each other. Their unity drops and you'll see smaller campaign groups because they don't want to cooperate with each other. This means easier small open field battles which your lords or you yourself can easily win.

The tracking skill plays a major role in this and that's why I have a dedicated tracker going 10 on this every time.

 

[Indreams]

I just realized I've never made much use of high level tracking. My end game play has Klethi with 8 tracking. It's fun seeing all the tracks, but there aren't many strategic applications.

Although, when you are looking for bandit camps, some level in tracking is very good. Bandits usually make a trip to their camp, and you can follow their track to them.