Companions suck

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Maximum997

Squire
(I think they are just procedure generated becouse devs was too lazy to think about them.)

1. There are a lot of them, good? BAD! Becouse their names are so similar and 90% of them just useless(about this next) so you need to click on every single one to find a good one.
So just click on them, write the names on piece of paper and forget. Right? WRONG! Becouse the game can spawn another one with better stats, so after some time you should click on every single one again, then again...

2. 90% of them are just useless.
I even dont speak about guys with two 50 50 skills.
The most useless are warriors. My husband is an elite warrior with 200+ weapon skills and the best gear in the game. And guess what - i almost never see kills from him. May be becouse actual battle takes one fkn minute of actual fighting.
And 90% of them are low lvl noobs or warriors.
The next useless - engineers. Becose AI will never ever let you build siege equipment. "But he can make your sige engones bulid faster!!" I have 100 in this skill. And guess what the bonus is? Freaking +10%. They can be kinda useful as governers(may be). But you can hire only few of them, so i dont think so.
Guys with tactic - kinda useful, when you make them a partyleaders. Atleast this skill matters.(may be)
The next are surgeons. +10-20% to your healrate is good.
The most useful are scouts. +View distance is really good(if you are not a scout yourself) And 120 scout guys can add like 70% to your basic view distance. And it is really helpful.
And the best is your wife\husband. It increase your party size with high Steward skill and give you the best gear in the game.

May be there are can be good traders to caravans. But i never saw a trader and caravans was nerfed so who cares.

3. Their focus points are all over the place. I got 120 scout guy and guess what? He had 30 skillcap. Becouse his focus points and stats was in charm, leaderships and weapon skills.
And you CANT see their focus points and stats before taking them.
So offtem you see guys with 120 bow and 30 skill cap, but with 20 polearm and 150 skillcap.

4. May be it is a bug, but for some reason my surgeon and scout just never grow their main skills. Only thing they can lvl up is riding and athletic. (And you can increase their wepon skills to lvl up. Just go in tournament, make it 1 v 1 against him and block his hits for a one hour.)

5. Who decided that you cant lvl up companion that isnt in you party. Just show me that man. So i need to create army to find this party,then take all his troops,then disband party,then lvl up him, then create party and give him all his troops again.
So your companion tactic is:

Click through tons of useless morons
Find a scout guy
Then get a wife\husband with best gear and Steward
Click through tons of useless morons again
Get a surgeon
And just spam tactic guys for another parties. So they can beat looters a little bit better.
And dont forget about clicking through tons of useless morons
 
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Companion implementation was clearly very rushed/poorly thought out. I don't know if TW will get around to fixing it, they seem pretty busy making nerfing xp and money gain.
 
Having companions in your party sucks since day 1. Only Roguery guys are somewhat useful, because they boost amounts of loot from the enemy. Also, they are evil and don't complain about everything you do. Healers always have wrong set of perks and 1-2 Intelligence :party: . Scouts - Forest Lore perk is personal, so I guess it doesn't work on party members? I prefer to level up scouting myself, as gives a lot of free skill points just by travelling. Same goes for tactics: until level 200 all perks are party leader. And again, its better to level up it on my main char, as I already invested in cunning for scouting...
 
What on earth are you ranting about? How does game prevent you from building siege equipment? If you refer to enemy destroying your siege engines, well here is the tip -when your engine is finished, click on it and you can remove it from the map. Rinse and repeat with all your siege engines and once they are all build, place them back so all of them start shooting and not getting destroyed piecemeal.

As for uselessness of other companions

-you can make them lead armies and then tell them to join you for free. You can easily double your army size limit like that (you need to be part of a kingdom to do that).

-they spawn with you on quests and help you in fights there.

-you can send them to do quests for you, although that might still be bugged.

Even the companion with no skills would be very valuable.

Randomization and random generation of companions is great. In Warband after first playthrough or two you would know every companion in the game and you would head strait for combination you like. There were even spreadsheets on the net with how to max your companion size. Now you actually have every play trough different.

Their focus points are not all over place, they use templates that are profession and ethnicity specific. You can clearly see which companion is which just by looking at their skills before hiring them. Some are foot archers, some are horse archers, some are heavy cavalry and so on. Plus they are divided in to warrior and support types.

You can always level your companions and rise their skillcaps with focus points. Companions level the same as player, they don't get XP from kills like in Warband, they level by rising their skills by using them. So let them do what they can level easily and you will get focus points to spend.

Only Roguery guys are somewhat useful, because they boost amounts of loot from the enemy.

There is no way currently to use companion roguery skill for that. Roguery is leader skill so only one who leads the army counts. And that's basically the player, because AI parties don't collect loot of course.
 
Is it just me or did the last patch (Main branch) decrease the quality of companions?
In my first two campaigns, I was able to get somewhat decent companions that I could kit out with stuff I couldn't use myself. E.g. my surgeon was able to ride a better horse than me off the bat. Or my scout was able to use a good bow I looted. Heck, I even dumped some companions and found new ones once I understood the impact of each perk.
What I mean is that it seemed like most of the companions had quite developed skills to begin with and really shined in some others making them specialist surgeons, scouts, engineers.

Started a game yesterday and the vast majority of companions is so bad. Now most of them have between 2 and 4 skills, and the rest of the skills are all 0. I cannot even equip my scout with a bow or let him ride a better horse than me?! Am I now supposed to even babysit the progression of my companions? It takes forever to progress my own riding skill.

I really liked to give my companions some good loot that I could not use for myself, they should at least start with a skill level of 40 across the board to give you some freedom to customize them. Then have specialized skills to give them some individual personality.
 
-when your engine is finished, click on it and you can remove it from the map
WOW really? I didnt know that! Tnak oyu master of the game! Wow. (sarcasm mod off)
Becouse they will spawn 1000 man army even before you can finish first catapult. I killed them. And right after building first catault they send another 1000+ army.

BTW catapults are totaly useless. I saw how it throw all bolders and get like zero effect. Didnt destroyed even section a wall, didnt kill anybody.

BTW2 WHO was that moron who decided that you cant lvl up companion that isnt in you party. Just show me that man. So i need to create army to find this party,then take all his troops,then disband party,then lvl up him, then create party and give him all his troops again.
As for uselessness of other companions
May be read topic again, then again, then again, and then thinkm and only after that answer.
 
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It's not as bad as the OP made out, but...
The repetition in Warband's companion system was bad for a game with so much replayability, so randomization is a win. But the companions I get right now are so SHALLOW. I want to see a mix of Warband's way and random creation, it can't be that difficult to create random companions that have some personality.
Some companion skills can't be levelled at all (by now, I'm sure TW get to this) and overall progression was so slow before 1.1. And while the new patch makes levelling easier, companions became even more shallow, heaven forbid they get a skill outside their exact specialty like all RL people and all good RPG characters have. If a player in pen&paper sits down on the game table and hands over a template like this I just shake my head. TW tries to fix a flawed (not bad, learning-by-doing is a nice idea) skill system by tweaking the NPC's instead of the skill progression. I don't like it at all, so unfortunately there is plenty of reason to keep complaining.
 
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