SP - General Better Control of Caravans and Companions

[Grumpy181155]

Currently there is almost no control of Caravans and if a caravan is intercepted and my Companion captured he seems to appear in a random town and then just sits there waiting for me to come and get him moving again. To make it worse when I do travel to get him sometimes he teleports to a different town. If he can travel then why can't he make his own way to one of my own towns or castles and wait for me there and why can't I specify if I want more troops in the caravan guard? My suggestions are:
- have any companion who is captured and subsequently escape make his own way to one of my towns or castles, if I own any or to an allied town if I don't have any land holdings;
- allow me to choose the size of the caravan guard;
- allow me to create a caravan from the clan page if the companion is currently in my own town or an allied town;
- allow me to create a party and assign troops from the garrison to it from the clan page if the companion or clan member is in my own town or castle.

 

[Apocal]

and why can't I specify if I want more troops in the caravan guard

That, specifically, was a balance concern because it was easy to make nearly-uncatchable caravans that would easily beat anything back in the days of 90-man caravans. If you want more guards, there is the more expensive upgrade you can do at caravan creation. And it makes them faster as well, because more of them are mounted.

 

[Grumpy181155]

That, specifically, was a balance concern because it was easy to make nearly-uncatchable caravans that would easily beat anything back in the days of 90-man caravans. If you want more guards, there is the more expensive upgrade you can do at caravan creation. And it makes them faster as well, because more of them are mounted.

I understand that but surely the profitability of the caravan would be impacted because the wages for better or more guards would cost more and consequently reduce your profit. Also rather than actually choosing which guards the caravan had it would be easy to use a preselected ratio of mounted and foot guards and all I get to choose is the total number of guards and whether I wanted better quality or not. With 6 caravans operating I seem to spend a lot of my time running around trying to find my companions because they got mugged by some bandits.

Right now I am not 100% convinced that caravans actually are providing a profit based on the cost of a caravan with improved guards. They cost approximately $15,000 and some days don't actually make a profit while it seems that they average about $300 per day, roughly, so they would need to operate for more than 50 days before they break even and of course the game runs then you start to see some very large bandit groups running around. Maybe they do and maybe they don't. I haven't really checked.

 

[Apocal]

I understand that but surely the profitability of the caravan would be impacted because the wages for better or more guards would cost more and consequently reduce your profit.

It actually increases your profit, because the upgraded caravan's map speed is higher.

Right now I am not 100% convinced that caravans actually are providing a profit based on the cost of a caravan with improved guards. They cost approximately $15,000 and some days don't actually make a profit while it seems that they average about $300 per day, roughly, so they would need to operate for more than 50 days before they break even and of course the game runs then you start to see some very large bandit groups running around. Maybe they do and maybe they don't. I haven't really checked.

Don't worry, someone else checked and recorded the results:
(if it doesn't take the timestamp, just go to about 10:20 for the final numbers)

 

[Grumpy181155]

It actually increases your profit, because the upgraded caravan's map speed is higher.

That is good to know.

Don't worry, someone else checked and recorded the results:
(if it doesn't take the timestamp, just go to about 10:20 for the final numbers)

Very informative video. Thanks for the link. I don't think I wasn't clear enough with my earlier statement. My concern is not that they aren't making a profit but that they get mugged by bandits before they make back the cost of setting them up, particularly in the later game when bandit groups start getting larger. I noticed in my current game that early in the game the caravans seemed to operate for a long time before they would eventually get mugged but now that I am 22 years into the game muggings are happening much more frequently and I put this down to the caravan getting tied up by a small band or two and then one of the larger bandit groups moving in and annihilating the caravan which prompted me to make the recommendations I did in the first post. Even knowing what you have pointed out I still think they are good recommendations.

 

[Gandamula]

Use one of your castles to call him, set him as governor of this castle, wait a seconds, set him out and in again. He will appear in your castle card.

 

[Grumpy181155]

Use one of your castles to call him, set him as governor of this castle, wait a seconds, set him out and in again. He will appear in your castle card.

Thanks for the tip. I know there are workarounds but we shouldn't have to be using workarounds. The control for Companions should be better and Caravans could be better.