SP - General Armies should have a defined objective upon forming, shouldn't be so random.

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When you form an army it asks for an objective, you can say "Siege fief" or "defend fief". Or maybe "engage (enemy noble's) army". Then you pick your nobles and pay a one time influence cost. You can't add cohesion or more nobles after that. It will form at a friendly city, not just out on the fly like everyone has GPS. Once all the parties meet, everyone stocks up and the army then automatically sets out to the destination that was locked in earlier. Whether it's player or AI, it automatically moves to the pre-planned target.

Having a specific plan before forming could introduce a new aspect to relations as the goal of your army will factor into how much other lords will want to participate. Currently that would just mean more or less influence to recruit them, but it would a nice touch if nobles could outright refuse to join an army if say they they are friends with the owner of the fief you intend to siege.

Once you set the objective and call the army, as I said, everything is locked in. It will form, march to its destination, and attempt to complete it's intended mission. Even if the fief it planned to siege suddenly has some extra troops, it will still attempt to siege it. These are supposed to be warriors who care about things like honor and legacy... they should be willing to take on riskier odds than 3 to 1. If a sieging army is taking heavy losses, perhaps they can retreat their remaining forces so they don't necessarily have to commit to a full loss of troops, but can at least make an attempt and do some damage.

It just feels off to have armies bouncing around and basically only getting into fights they have overwhelming odds to win. It should be more like a noble from one kingdom has a mortal enemy from another kingdom, and he's going to take his most prosperous fief come hell or high water. So every campaign season he summons an army and sieges that fief regardless of how many of his men have to die to do it. I would like more personal types of conflict like that rather than just randomly bopping around looking for unguarded castles in Timbuktu.
 
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You had me at the "armies forming with a main objective" part but the rest is awful, sorry man but no military commander with a brain cell would willingly destroy his forces like this for such petty reasons.

It may have happened a few times in history because of bad leadership, insuficient intel or the enemy just outplaying them and forcing a decisive battle on their terms but that wasn't the norm at all.

Most of the times armies would have a general campaign plan the leadership traced for that season that they would try to follow closely but also adapting to enemy movements as needed and one trying to get an advantage over the other side doing their best to deny battle unless they were mostly certain of victory since it's quite hard to force someone to stand their ground and fight if they have no will to do so.
 
You had me at the "armies forming with a main objective" part but the rest is awful, sorry man but no military commander with a brain cell would willingly destroy his forces like this for such petty reasons.

It may have happened a few times in history because of bad leadership, insuficient intel or the enemy just outplaying them and forcing a decisive battle on their terms but that wasn't the norm at all.

Most of the times armies would have a general campaign plan the leadership traced for that season that they would try to follow closely but also adapting to enemy movements as needed and one trying to get an advantage over the other side doing their best to deny battle unless they were mostly certain of victory since it's quite hard to force someone to stand their ground and fight if they have no will to do so.

I think you are thinking I'm saying something that I'm not. I don't want an army to just go suicide into overwhelming odds. I would love to have a "campaign season" style situation... I just really hate the "form army in random location and run around like a chicken with it's head cut off" strategy. A looser itinerary would be fine, I just want there to be a little bit of an outline that they stick to.

Maybe instead of picking a single objective you will select an area for the army to go to, and how long you want to be there for, and once it reaches this location scouts will give you reports on the nearby targets and you can pick the best one(s). Cohesion shouldn't constantly be refilled so the army can just wander around. Would also be nice if a faction waits on peace votes until after it's current armies finish their season more or less so you don't get armies forming right as peace is called.
 
I´m all for purpose for AI armies. Before forming an army, they should set a goal, calculate a targetpower for achieving it and if they can't form an army with desired power thay should scrap the "form-army" plan for now, or re-evaluate the goal. they ofcource should not ruch blindly into a battle where the odds are dire. They can allways reevalueate the goals and find more usefull ways to use their force.
 
I´m all for purpose for AI armies. Before forming an army, they should set a goal, calculate a targetpower for achieving it and if they can't form an army with desired power thay should scrap the "form-army" plan for now, or re-evaluate the goal. they ofcource should not ruch blindly into a battle where the odds are dire. They can allways reevalueate the goals and find more usefull ways to use their force.

Yeah I'm not saying they have to march off a cliff, just stick with an objective instead of constantly switching. I have seen armies form and do absolutely nothing because A) they pick some target on the other side of the map B) they keep switching their targets and just walking back and forth C) they aren't even at war...

As far as the last one, I'm not against nobles grouping up in times of peace to build relations and whatnot, but it should probably come in the form of a feast or festival. You'd still form it like an army, spend influence to call nobles to a town, but then you and all the nobles will build relation the longer you are in a party, and AI will use it as an opportunity to find mates and so forth.
 
Defined objectives for armies would be a good idea, but do you know what I'd like even more? Defined objectives for wars, like "take castle(s) X". Then, armies could still either pick the main war objective as their destination, or pick another goal to besiege. (There should be some flexibility in this system, I think, allowing armies to deviate from the planned course of action to defend a besieged holding, which happened all the time in my case.)

The reason why I'd like that is that once you've done a bit of conquering, the lords will just arbitrarily declare wars which don't make sense strategically, leading to a neverending sequence of exchangeable wars on several fronts. With defined wargoals, these wars would be more meaningful because they would be "The war for X Castle" instead of "just another war we declared because we could".
 
Defined objectives for armies would be a good idea, but do you know what I'd like even more? Defined objectives for wars, like "take castle(s) X". Then, armies could still either pick the main war objective as their destination, or pick another goal to besiege. (There should be some flexibility in this system, I think, allowing armies to deviate from the planned course of action to defend a besieged holding, which happened all the time in my case.)

The reason why I'd like that is that once you've done a bit of conquering, the lords will just arbitrarily declare wars which don't make sense strategically, leading to a neverending sequence of exchangeable wars on several fronts. With defined wargoals, these wars would be more meaningful because they would be "The war for X Castle" instead of "just another war we declared because we could".

Though it´s a bit of topic, I agree! This might deserve a suggestion-thread of it´s own?

Some questions worth thinking of is what "War far Castle X" would mean, beyond lebeling the war in a hopefully immersive way?
Who desides the wargoal? The successfull vote-starter or the king? What would it mean in terms of AI committment/agenda?
 
Though it´s a bit of topic, I agree! This might deserve a suggestion-thread of it´s own?

Some questions worth thinking of is what "War far Castle X" would mean, beyond lebeling the war in a hopefully immersive way?
Who desides the wargoal? The successfull vote-starter or the king? What would it mean in terms of AI committment/agenda?
yes I like this logic as well, war goals make a lot of sense. This could be combined with the army goal suggestion, but I would add more broad goals to the army, like defend, attack or raid. As a king you should have the option to send a messenger to an army to change their goal.
 
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