Can we control our clan parties yet?

[Kingofmetal]

I didn't see it in the patch notes for 1.5.8 but I thought it was coming soon?

Can we control where our companion parties go? Such as telling them to patrol an area, raid or not raid, don't join non-clan armies etc.
Not being able to do this is one of the more frustrating aspects of the game and the reason I've taken a break for a while.

Not trying to diss on TW, the patch notes look like a lot of cool stuff and I appreciate their effort. But for me controlling clan parties is an essential part of the gameplay.

 

[Antaeus]

I always assumed the lack of fine grained control over your subject companions was to mimic feudalism... like Edward IV couldn't control the Neville family, or even his own brothers - they owe you a percentage of income, and will come to your banner in war if they're not otherwise engaged, And if you wanted them to stay put, you give them a fief, but otherwise they're their own self governing landless lords. At least that's how I rationalised it.

I seem to remember my parties keeping mostly to my fiefs. But its been a while since I let them roam alone. My parties tend to be in a permanent army with me to build my leadership and influence.

Maybe a better mechanic might be to give governors with garrisons zones of control, where they can engage parties within a certain distance of the walls... but that's a whole other mechanic that I'd like to see to give castles more purpose.

 

[Kingofmetal]

Different medieval societies had different practices though. Mongol armies were able to coordinate and follow directives over huge distances. I'm expecting fine grain control over everything they do but I think it would be reasonable to tell them to patrol a broad area, generally adopt a defensive or offensive posture, things like that. Certainly medieval lords were able to tell their retainers to do general tasks like that.

It would be less of a problem they didn't often engage vastly superior armies and get captured. The process for getting a follower back after they are captured is tedious and time consuming. I'm an adult with a career and responsibilities, spending inordinate time babysitting followers after they are captured is boring gameplay. Maybe if their was a feature to tell them to return to a clan owned fief and start recruiting a new party?

I agree with you that I often have my companion parties in an army with me. But when they lose many people I let them lose to recruit, because recruiting is time consuming and tedious as I stated above.

 

[Tiberius Decimus Maximus]

I always assumed the lack of fine grained control over your subject companions was to mimic feudalism... like Edward IV couldn't control the Neville family, or even his own brothers - they owe you a percentage of income, and will come to your banner in war if they're not otherwise engaged, And if you wanted them to stay put, you give them a fief, but otherwise they're their own self governing landless lords. At least that's how I rationalised it.

I seem to remember my parties keeping mostly to my fiefs. But its been a while since I let them roam alone. My parties tend to be in a permanent army with me to build my leadership and influence.

Maybe a better mechanic might be to give governors with garrisons zones of control, where they can engage parties within a certain distance of the walls... but that's a whole other mechanic that I'd like to see to give castles more purpose.

It would still be nice to at least suggest where to go and what to defend, though. They can calculate whether it's worth it or not, and respond accordingly.

 

[Antaeus]

It would still be nice to at least suggest where to go and what to defend, though. They can calculate whether it's worth it or not, and respond accordingly.

Oh I agree. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to be able to tell my parties to patrol this frontier or guard my villages.

But I just don't know if this is how the devs see parties as functioning. I get the feeling there is some resistance in their reporting lines to making the game more Governance style RPG in that sense.

 

[Pensaci]

Nope. But the map icon is a good step forward at least.
One thing kinda werid to me is that, so there is already a difference between family members and companions, but the party is just a singular thing.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

No, just some bug fixes, stuff nobody cared about and 5x more new bugs!
Oh I'm playing it on a new unmoded game to find bugs, but I'm gonna be grumpy about it!

 

[Ferisko]

I seem to remember my parties keeping mostly to my fiefs. But its been a while since I let them roam alone. My parties tend to be in a permanent army with me to build my leadership and influence.

In 1.5.7 I made a trader and bought quyaz and the castle next to it, then made two parties. While not being in a kingdom they patroled 24/7 my fiefs. It was cool because no having borders with W.E made aserai go to war with khuzait more

 

[a_ver_est]

I didn't see it in the patch notes for 1.5.8 but I thought it was coming soon?

Can we control where our companion parties go? Such as telling them to patrol an area, raid or not raid, don't join non-clan armies etc.
Not being able to do this is one of the more frustrating aspects of the game and the reason I've taken a break for a while.

Not trying to diss on TW, the patch notes look like a lot of cool stuff and I appreciate their effort. But for me controlling clan parties is an essential part of the gameplay.

Having a fine control of your kingdom/clan parties has been discarted, it will be delegated to the AI which is absolutely disapointing.

What we will have is the possibility to set a 'stance' to each party defence/agressive/normal... nothing else. These clan micromanagement will be released by middle febrary or somewhat later.

I still hope that someone considers changing this decision and they finally release something similar to WB model, but ... in the end probably the story will repeat again and some mods will be a must like WB vanilla + diplomacy become in 'de facto' vanilla.

 

[Gandamula]

And sadly the mod who I used to control parties is outdated,now it's a non usable feature, having parties to spend money, recruit looters, merge with other armies , or give good troops to other faction Castels is a waste of money and patience

 

[Monkey]

Statement regarding Plans for Singleplayer and Engine II

Warriors of Calradia, Today we will be sharing an update for some of our current singleplayer and engine related priorities with you. As a general note, stability and performance will continue to be a top priority for us. Beyond that, you will find some of our other goals listed below. Please...

forums.taleworlds.com

• Player Clan Party AI directives

Not that it's outlined in cronological order or anything, but it comes right after:

• Pillaging conquered towns & castles

Maybe we'll see something in 1.5.9. And maybe they'll even go further and provide means for the faction leader to direct the faction's clans, either directly (orders) or indirectly (incentives and rewards). There's still a lot of room for improvement on bringing player faction leadership to be on par with AI leadership. At this moment AI faction leaders "cheat" too much (they don't need to chase clan and mercenary leaders in order to attempt to recruit them, for example). It's way, way harder for the player to manage a faction than it is for the AI. Couple fighting wars in multiple fronts with tackling conspiracy quests and resolving village and settlement issues and it becomes a nightmare. We need to be able to order or direct our clan's parties and our faction's clans' leaders around somehow.

 

[GMBarak]

Hi, I posted it in the bugs section, please excuse me for posting it here as well.

Taleworld mentioned being able to have more control over your parties in next patches, the most annoying things which it would be great to have control for:

1. chase/don't chase anyone - just join the army immediately once given the command.
2. reinforce (or not) our clan fiefs (contribute troops to garrison)
3. reinforce (or not) allied fiefs (contribute troops to garrison)
4. avoid combat/preserve troops
5. stay close/far from me/our fiefs.
6. attack bandits - yes/no
7. siege enemy fiefs - yes/no
8. do quests yes/no
9. recruit or not
10. recruit prisoners or not
11. upgrade and hire poisoners (yes/not)
12. sell prisoners at town (yes/not)
13. how much food to have (100/200/300...)
14. reinforce our fiefs only with low rank troops.
15. if allowed to take troops from our fiefs and at what level
16. focus on speed - be quick so can outrun enemies (yes/no)
17. join other clans army (yes/no)

I am using my clan parties as my elite troops warehouse and what I do right now to avoid them contributing my best units to other clan fiefs which I conquer is: right before the attack on the fief:

1. Take all their troops to my party and leave only 1 troop party with them.
2. Attack and Capture the fief
3. Give them back their units

 

[Gandamula]

Yes we can. And very well with this mod.

 

[GMBarak]

Hi Gandamula, I want to thank you and say that we the players, appreciate you modders work very much. and also Taleworld for enabling these mods.