Bandit Parties

[Ziame]

Oh my. I have this tendency to increase bandit sizes in party_templates.
I discovered the enlisting feature - I dreamt about it, seriously.
Now they all follow Grigoriy. All I can say is

 

[Dargrim]

I've come to a conclusion that not everyone seems to like the idea of bandit leaders (i'm ok with them).
So, maybe some of moder folks here post an easy solution to turn them off or reduce the number of black khergits.
I think such option would satisfy everyone.

 

[Mattk50]

The bandit leaders are fine, they just need frequency and size turned down, and some missions relating to them would be great too. The black khergits though are tier 7 troops in a third of all the desert bandit population, and its ludicrous.

 

[Dargrim]

You can always change them with Morgh's editor.

I'm thinking about it myself. I liked them better with their yellow sarranid armor.
Looks better on them , at least for me.

 

[oh_no]

I just did this for my new game, switched out the ranged weapons with less deadly versions (mountain bandits with hunting crossbows are still dangerous, but so much easier than their normal 64p crossbows), gave them all weaker armour (except for sea raiders) and expanded the variety of their equipment.  That, along with the modified simple_triggers in the release thread, has made bandit armies a more feasible target.

 

[Dargrim]

I've changed armor on the black khergits.  Gave them veiled helmet, khergit elite cavalery armor and some lamellar boots.
now they look as they should.

And of course I removed elephants ( LOTR ??? ) and gave those guys normal horses.

 

[Johnnyseven]

Me and my slaver army are loving the black khergits, our maces crush through their armor and they bring a lot of money at the ransom broker.

 

[krnja21]

And of course I removed elephants ( LOTR ??? ) and gave those guys normal horses.

Never tried Morgh's editor but this sounds like a great idea, is this difficult to do? I just open the editor delete the elephant and put in any horse and it will work, just like that? Or is it more complex than that?

 

[oh_no]

That's basically about it.  The editor does present you with a lot of information though, so give yourself sometime to figure out exactly what you're looking at.  Also, you'll have to start a new game in order to see any changes.

On another question, has anyone figured out by what mechanism exactly the Black Khergit spawn into bandit groups?  I'm intending to give each bandit type their own tier 6 unit, but I'd like to know how they spawn so I can keep them with the Steppe bandits.

 

[Caba`drin]

On another question, has anyone figured out by what mechanism exactly the Black Khergit spawn into bandit groups?  I'm intending to give each bandit type their own tier 6 unit, but I'd like to know how they spawn so I can keep them with the Steppe bandits.

I'm pretty sure they're simply part of the Steppe bandit party templates.

 

[oh_no]

I've looked at all the party templates and the Black Khergit are absent.  They're still spawning in my game, but only with Desert Bandits for some odd reason.  Is there also a particular party template that the Bandit heroes use?

 

[Caba`drin]

Just double-checked: I literally see no place where they are added to any party/party template in the current developer code.

I do not know if that is a change from the 2.5 release or what's up. Someone who either may have made a change, or is responsible for troops/party templates (monnikje) is likely going to need to give a more informed answer.

 

[oh_no]

Huh, interesting.  I guess for the time being, I can just change the Black Khergit into something Sarranid related and hope I don't end up turning the desert bandits into some kind of killing machine.

 

[Muglos]

My game is literally being overrun by Bandits. Caravans and Villagers are being obliterated left and right. Deserters are chasing away any faction lord all the way back their Castles and towns.

The only resistance that anyone is putting up against the Bandits are the Manhunters and even they are slowly losing a war of attrition. It's almost impossible to move around without being attacked  by deserters or mountain bandits in the Rhodock territory as their isn't a lot of space to maneuver around the mountains.

Is there a way I can turn sizes of the bandit/deserter parties back to the way they were in 2.4?

 

[oh_no]

I don't think tweakMB lets you change those values at the moment, but I think Morgh's should let you set the party size for each of the bandits (the option is there, I just haven't gotten around to playing with it yet), and there's also a file you can use to reduce the number of bandit parties following a leader to 4 instead of 8.

 

[Caba`drin]

My game is literally being overrun by Bandits. Caravans and Villagers are being obliterated left and right. Deserters are chasing away any faction lord all the way back their Castles and towns.

The only resistance that anyone is putting up against the Bandits are the Manhunters and even they are slowly losing a war of attrition. It's almost impossible to move around without being attacked  by deserters or mountain bandits in the Rhodock territory as their isn't a lot of space to maneuver around the mountains.

Is there a way I can turn sizes of the bandit/deserter parties back to the way they were in 2.4?

I don't think tweakMB lets you change those values at the moment, but I think Morgh's should let you set the party size for each of the bandits (the option is there, I just haven't gotten around to playing with it yet), and there's also a file you can use to reduce the number of bandit parties following a leader to 4 instead of 8.

And a quote of a quote to get you to my answer to this previously:

Um, is there a bug with the bandits?  I just saw a forest bandit army of almost 500 men, with a Swadian lord as prisoner and at least 100 others.  This army was going around slaughtering villagers, manhunters, and caravans, and even scared away the King of Swadia and a few other lords who were following the Marshal.  Bandit armies should not top 100 men, or maybe even less.  I hope this is being changed/fixed, this not fun.

No, this is as designed. If you can believe it, their armies were bigger in early rounds of 2.5 beta. We haven't reached a balance yet. You can edit this quite easily, however with "Morgh's Editor"...see my response here Changing AI party sizes.

And the direct answer:

The easiest way would likely be to use Morgh's Editor and edit the file party_templates.txt to increase the number of each troop type that will spawn when those templates are called. (This will also increase the number of troops that are garrisoned in towns and castles) The templates in question are kingdom_x_reinforcements_a through _f (where X is the kingdom number).

This would also work for folks wanting to shrink new bandit parties--make the number of bandit troop types smaller. The templates have obvious names here, too.

Template suffixes:
_r is for the revised troop tree
_e is for the expanded troop tree
no suffix is for the native troop tree

 

[ruralvirginian]

I do have a question regarding the bandits in general.  What are they representing?  When I think of "bandits" I picture brigands, highwaymen, klephts, heyduks, etc. but the various bands were generally under 100 and never uniformly armed like the bandits in Floris. The Sea Raiders make sense to me as they are representative of the Viking mauraders - but who are the desert, taiga, mountain and forest bandits?

 

[krnja21]

I personally consider desert and taiga bandits as tribes, unwilling to submit to the will of the monarch, it makes sense to me, but for the mountain and forest ones i don't have an explanation 

 

[dragonchris]

could always think of them as rebel and barbarians.

 

[Muglos]

Maybe they're just looters who were fortunate enough to survive a few confrontations with the locals and scavenged better gear.

I hope I don't run into a forest bandit lord named Robin Hood