Castle just got 203 new empire peasant recruits, how?

[oledid]

Hi

In one of my playthroughs, I got a notification that "X troops deserted from Y castle". A castle that was full of 407 top-tier troops, mind you.

I loaded a save before it happened, went to the castle, and after a couple of in-game days, the castle suddently received 203 new empire peasant troops, making my high-tiers randomly desert, because it went over the garrison limit by 203.

What can cause this? Is it just a random insertion of peasant troops into my castle? Or can a companion have been so kind as to donate these wonderful new recruits?

Vanilla 1.4.0.

 

[oledid]

Don't remember if it was actually 203, but it was over 200 something something

 

[Lesbosisles]

NPC Lords can add troops to your garrison. Somehow they always drop peasants...

 

[oledid]

The only npc lords I have are companions. And I did not see any of them visiting the castle at the time. And they were all at max party size even after it happened.

 

[oledid]

I have 1 town and 3 castles on that save. All bought via trade perk. No kingdom.

 

[Virthuss]

Same issue here, and it's been discussed on the steam forums as well. The problem is that at some point, they fill the garrison and the good troops desert...

 

[Neofenris]

What I noticed is that peasants are not coming from lords but from Villagers from nearby villages.
Sometimes some village will have their population ( hearths) increase like crazy (3000+) at this point there will be villagers groups of 200+ (mine was 199 to be exact) that will go to cities to sell their goods ( walking so extremly slowly it's painful to watch btw ) BUT sometimes for unknown reason a villagers group will enter the city and instantly join the garrison ( I don't remember if they do sell their goods before joining the garrison, I don't have my save to check it up)
When a lord/caravan/villager group enter a city there will be an icon next to the city name to show their presence, this icon will disapear as soon as the villagers join the garrison and the villages will send new groups to sell their good since the previous group will never return ( just like if they were attacked on their way)

I don't know why this is happening, it happened to me last time after I sucessfully sieged a high prosperity city without raiding the very high population villages associated, the city I raided was Varcheg, the villagers from one of two villages near Varcheg ( can't remember the one it was) joined the garrison of Revyl and I was on 1.4.1 at that time and my playthrough was at 850+ days I had my own kingdom thanks to the sandbox kingdom tier 4+ option.

EDIT : added some details +
I usually love to have peasants in garrison because of how autobattle works and the very low wage (1gold/peasant) BUT when they join a garrison like this they do not care about the garrison limit. What happened to me is the same thing as OP. I had lot Tier 5-6 noble units I was saving in my garrison (543/544) and then the peasants joined, It extended the limit, I wasn't even aware of it and then BOOM a pop up saying my units were deserting in my garrison....how painful ! thankfully I had a backup save and I could search for the reason and identify it. I camped the city and as soon as the peasants joined I put them in my army the dismiss them.
Hope this helps

 

[Bannerman Man]

Anyone have any screenshots they can post of this happening? Either of the villager party just before they enter a settlement to join or a picture of the garrison with them included.

@Neofenris What's interesting about what you're describing combined with what oledid described is that villagers typically don't ever visit castles. That a villager party would even enter a castle in the first place to join the garrison is strange.

Here's one explanation for what could be happening: when you as a player disband one of your clan parties in the menu, the party doesn't just disappear, they travel to the nearest allied fief and merge their troops with the garrison. So maybe when a villager party is in the process of travelling to a town to sell goods and one of the fiefs involved changes hands, instead of the villagers switching sides or switching destinations, they get a call to disband their party and so they travel to the nearest allied fief to merge their troops with the garrison. That would explain why it would happen after a siege, and why they would have reason to enter a castle as described by oledid.

Maybe the fact that large 200+ villager parties walk so slowly makes them particularly susceptible to this because they are almost always in the process of travelling somewhere.

 

[benefactr]

Yeah this seems like something recently to start happening. Never noticed it happening before then a few days ago the message about troops deserting my castles garrison started happening. I just have to get over there and dump some peasants out.

 

[Neofenris]

@Neofenris What's interesting about what you're describing combined with what oledid described is that villagers typically don't ever visit castles. That a villager party would even enter a castle in the first place to join the garrison is strange.

Here's one explanation for what could be happening: when you as a player disband one of your clan parties in the menu, the party doesn't just disappear, they travel to the nearest allied fief and merge their troops with the garrison. So maybe when a villager party is in the process of travelling to a town to sell goods and one of the fiefs involved changes hands, instead of the villagers switching sides or switching destinations, they get a call to disband their party and so they travel to the nearest allied fief to merge their troops with the garrison. That would explain why it would happen after a siege, and why they would have reason to enter a castle as described by oledid.

Maybe the fact that large 200+ villager parties walk so slowly makes them particularly susceptible to this because they are almost always in the process of travelling somewhere.

Well in my case I am speaking of the city of Revyl, it is the op who is speaking of a castle.
But a villager party joining a garrison because a fief changed hands seems plausible, but it should happens with small fast groups too even if in a lower amount than big groups ( because of speed and travelling time), so far I don't think anyone reported small groups of 20-30 peasants but I might be wrong.
(I saw this issue some times ago on steam forum as well)
I don't have my 1.4.1 save anymore so I can't give any screenshots, right now I'm playing 1.4.0 but if this issue happens again I will make sure to take screenshots and post on the forum

Edit : some typos and removed some useless unrelated things.
Also I think TW in a recent patch adressed the hearth issue by reducing by half the growth rate of villages so the issue might be harder to replicate

• We spotted a 3x inflation for hearths over 15 game years. The daily hearth increase for villages was changed to 0.5 from 1.

 

[oledid]

I can confirm that I have large 200+ villager parties roaming around from several of my villages. A lot of hearths since no one can declare war on me and raid me, because I cannot create a kingdom yet. But this also means that none of my fiefs have changed hands recently.

 

[Bannerman Man]

Well in my case I am speaking of the city of Revyl, it is the op who is speaking of a castle.

I know, I was just trying to connect the dots between both of your experiences and figure out why villagers would be going to a castle in the first place, as was happening in the case of OP.

In any case, mystery solved I think. When a villager party takes too long to reach it's destination, the game will sometimes create a new party under certain circumstances. Once the old villager party finally reaches its destination it gets the signal that it's been replaced and obeys the command to disband. It does this by travelling to a nearby allied fief and merging with the garrison, similar to a player's companion party, while the new villager party heads back to its associated village after delivering goods.

The slow walking speed of 200+ villager parties probably causes them to get "lost" and replaced more often than their speedier brethren. It's also way more noticeable when it happens with a large party than a small one. Here is an example of what's happening:

I stood in front of the gates of enemy town Epicrotea, blocking the path of various hostile parties trying to enter until I noticed two villager parties from the same village show up. I then moved and let them enter. Upon exiting from Epicrotea, one party headed to Mecalovea Castle to disband and one headed back home.

Heading Home​

Disbanding​

And here are the garrisons of Mecalovea Castle before and after the villager party enters (Ferth is of Sturgian culture):

Garrison Before​

Garrison After​

Maybe the game should check to see if the garrison is at capacity before merging the peasants with it so desertion doesn't become a problem. As you pointed out though, the hearth growth rate has been lowered, so there will probably be fewer gigantic villager parties roaming the map in any new campaigns from this point on, making this event somewhat more rare.

As a side note, I checked what happens to a bound villager party mid-journey when their fief changes hands. They switch sides and pick a new destination without missing a beat.

 

[Neofenris]

Omg that's some serious quality post, thanks a lot for all the explanations and the screenshots everything makes sense.
Imo devs should definitely add a check for garrison capacity and also look at the food stock to avoid starving and/or set peasants to be the first to desert to not affect either militia or garrison, however does this event just create units out a thin air ? Or is there a penalty to hearth in a village when the game decide to create a new party of peasants to sell goods ? On a related note I always asked myself if killing villagers party will affect the hearth of the village, I know raiding does, but not sure about villagers party. Maybe we could somehow temporary and locally mitigate this by buying all the items stock of a village so that there is no need for villagers to go and sell goods ?
Thanks again for all the explanations.

 

[Bannerman Man]

Omg that's some serious quality post, thanks a lot for all the explanations and the screenshots everything makes sense.
Imo devs should definitely add a check for garrison capacity and also look at the food stock to avoid starving and/or set peasants to be the first to desert to not affect either militia or garrison, however does this event just create units out a thin air ? Or is there a penalty to hearth in a village when the game decide to create a new party of peasants to sell goods ? Maybe we could somehow temporary and locally mitigate this by buying all the items stock of a village so that there is no need for villagers to go and sell goods ?
Thanks again for all the explanations.

No problem ! I enjoy doing these kinds of investigations.

When a villager party is created, half of the size of the party is taken out of the hearth value of the village. So a 30 villager party spawning would subtract 15 hearths from its village. If bandits keep destroying villager parties it will start to eat into the village's hearths. No idea what the formula is for deciding the size of villager parties, though. I also don't know the exact circumstances under which the game decides to spawn a new party.

Yeah, if you buy out all the goods, the village will have to spend a few days building its stock back up before sending a party out again. It would probably work, but it might be hard to catch before it's too late. Good idea though!

 

[paladinx333]

I had this happen once at Oristocorys Castle. I did not have a kingdom and I was not a vassal. The peasants just appeared out of nowhere and they ate up all the food. Fortunately I had the mod that prevents garrisons from starving and I was well under the troop cap. When I was able to return to the castle I added them to my army and then disbanded them into oblivion.

This was before version 1.1 so this has been a bug for a long time. No one should EVER get added to my garrisons unless I add them myself. With food being such a pain in the ass, the addition of random troops is a huge problem.

 

[Lesbosisles]

Maybe the game should check to see if the garrison is at capacity before merging the peasants

Well, it shouldn't merge peasants with the garisson at all

 

[Neofenris]

No problem ! I enjoy doing these kinds of investigations.

When a villager party is created, half of the size of the party is taken out of the hearth value of the village. So a 30 villager party spawning would subtract 15 hearths from its village. If bandits keep destroying villager parties it will start to eat into the village's hearths. No idea what the formula is for deciding the size of villager parties, though. I also don't know the exact circumstances under which the game decides to spawn a new party.

Yeah, if you buy out all the goods, the village will have to spend a few days building its stock back up before sending a party out again. It would probably work, but it might be hard to catch before it's too late. Good idea though!

That's really good to know, so it's possible to destroy food stock from city/caslte by both raiding villages and slaughtering the party of villagers.

I think I read somewhere on the forum ( I might be wrong I did not observe that one consistently during my gameplay) that for villages, hearth was a bit like prosperity for town, the more your villagers are able to trade with town the higher the hearth count and the higher the number of villagers in party.

So in theory killing villagers and raiding villages should make new party smaller than previously and protecting them should increase them ( I don't know if an already existing party can grow or if it need to get replaced)
I don't know for sure if buying either directly from villagers party or from village will have the same effect than villagers selling to town, I tried to always buy everything from my owned villages/villagers in my game but since the effects don't seems immediate it was hard to know if it was working or if it was just a growth rate. (Also I wonder if buying work horses from villagers will affect their carry capacity and therefore their move speed on map, so far I did not noticed any changes)

But from my observations it seems that high hearths will increase villagers party size (since I only noticed 200+ villagers in 3000+ hearths count), give a higher militia count although only a few digits and also give more food stock to associated city/castle, making it easier to garrison units and militia.
Also buying buying from villagers/villages will make the stock food of the associated city drop (it will go up again if you sell the food to the town yourself)

Managing villages is tedious but I find it pretty funny to roleplay and hunt each and every nearby looters party, protect them from raids and watch their population grow by the day, I really wish there were an option to just inject money into the villages to increase their growth/militia, build watchtowers or housing, a bit like caslte/city management.
(I'm really considering installing garrison/patrols mods to protect villages if this don't get added to the vanilla game)

 

[Bannerman Man]

Well, it shouldn't merge peasants with the garisson at all

Yeah, that's probably preferable haha. Maybe they could just return to their home villages and add themselves back to the hearth total.

It's neat that there's a procedure for disbanding parties though, even if this isn't the best scenario for its use.

 

[Neofenris]

Also if you complete the quest 'Landowner needs XXX's pasture' I noticed that sometimes the 2 herds of peasants or either one of the two, will not go back to the village but instead join the closest castle's garrison in the same way as previously described.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

Yeah, that's probably preferable haha. Maybe they could just return to their home villages and add themselves back to the hearth total.

It's neat that there's a procedure for disbanding parties though, even if this isn't the best scenario for its use.

Why on earth would they make them merge with garrisons? If they want to make them disband, then they should either just vanish or go back home to their village and disband.

This is a good example of one game system conflicting with another one. On the one hand you've got garrison limits and food issues keeping garrison sizes down, and on the other side you've got peasants adding themselves to the limited garrison while also reducing the hearth count in their villages and reducing the food supply for the garrisons.