Decreasing a garrison

[English_Knight]

Is there any way to decrease a town's garrison? I'm getting tired of this constant war with the Irish (and their overpowered troops) and all we need to do is take Donegal. The garrison used to be around 600, but, since the marshal will never listen when I suggest he attacks Donegal, it is now over 1000.

I noticed, right at the beginning of the game, Aberffraw had over 1000 garrison, but it's now only 600 or so. How can I decrease it back down?

(or, even better, how can I destroy the Irish!?)

 

[Caldric]

Those Gall-Obligha(sp) are hard bastages! They are the toughest infantry I have seen in the game. Off topic but I feel your pain if you have 200+ of these infantry mixed between Sword, Axe and Spear you are in serious pain to root them out. I specifically recruit these merc troops now for my French campaign and when I run out return to Ireland to recruit more.

They were horrific to beat taking Donegal and just meeting their armies in the field.

 

[English_Knight]

It's beginning to just get tedious and irritating. It was fun working out how to beat them before, but now every single Irish lord's army is composed of them and their spear counterparts entirely. I seem to remember reading that 1257 included "no top-tier armies"...and now it seems like every Irishman has state-of-the-art weapons and armour and can take on 10 men at a time.

Roger Mortimer finally began to lay siege to Donegal, but then decided to stop and gather the army...meaning the Irish came out of hiding and started raiding, forcing us to chase them all over Ireland. Continue ad infinitum, it seems.

 

[Warchild]

Nice! Maybe the irish won't be the first faction to be wiped out in every new game any more.

 

[English_Knight]

The Baltic factions have had it tough and a couple have been wiped out in my game.


I'm considering just leaving my faction to it and letting auto-calc win our battles. We have more men, so it should (eventually) work. I've also noticed it seems impossible to capture anyone right now. I've won countless battles against the Irish lords and they always escape. I used to have a healthy flow of ransom money. Will they ever run out of cash for troop-hiring?!

 

[Caldric]

In my game as the English it seemed the more we hurt Irish the stronger they became. Not until I became Marshall and used over 2000 troops did I finish off the Irish. Donegal was just a nightmare and we lost tons of troops LOL. I took Paris 600:600 troops and easily won I needed 2 3 times for Donegal mostly because of the Gall troops.

 

[oroboros]

The Irish soldiers are the same concerning stats as the default European ones which the English use, albeit even a bit worse armored in the lower tier units. The default European knight for instance is superior in armor (no great helms for the Irish) and horses (Irish knights have lots of coursers beside the warhorse) to the Irish Lucht Ritire (which is the Irish knight) as well as the European miles pro communitas is superior in armor compared to the Irish. The only thing the Irish have are the Gall mercenaries with their high tier armor (higher protect. than the default guisarmer, the same stats as the veteran surcoat from the miles pro communitas) and their Nordic axes, as Caldric said. And because of that they are a quite horrible force to encounter in the field. In autocalc they'll always lose against England because they have way inferior numbers than them. Just don't fight them, let them autocalc with the English armies and look for armies that are smaller than usual. And if you absolutely want to fight them I recommend to use a lot of Cymry, they quickly end the Gallic storm - in a siege place the Cymry in front of the walls (infantry in front of them, closer together) and let them empty their quivers, until not one of them has any arrows left, then order the infantry to charge and after that order everyone to charge and use yourself some guisarmer troops in your army, preferrably Nordic Brynvarin Gesturs if possible.

 

[English_Knight]

On that note, I thought I'd mention this:

whenever I order any of my archers to hold their position in a siege, they immediately draw their mêlée weapons. Whenever I order them to charge, they draw their bows. Is this a bug? It makes conducting sieges really difficult, especially when there are over 200 of these irritating bastards waiting for me.

 

[English_Knight]

Four days.....four days' worth of food left in Donegal and the entire army just leaves and goes home. My rage is barely containable.

 

[ntb_15]

It was fun working out how to beat them before, but now every single Irish lord's army is composed of them and their spear counterparts entirely. I seem to remember reading that 1257 included "no top-tier armies"...and now it seems like every Irishman has state-of-the-art weapons and armour and can take on 10 men at a time.

Hmm, i am not sure whether its the same with the lance recruitment system, but with the native recruitment system, the quality of troops that the ai lords carried around depends on the 'Campaign difficulty' setting in the options menu. Try lowering that setting, if its at high.

 

[oroboros]

On that note, I thought I'd mention this:

whenever I order any of my archers to hold their position in a siege, they immediately draw their mêlée weapons. Whenever I order them to charge, they draw their bows. Is this a bug? It makes conducting sieges really difficult, especially when there are over 200 of these irritating bastards waiting for me.

Haven't encountered this, but a few of my archers who are standing in front of the ladder/tower seem to enjoy a suicidal charge armed with just their butter knifes and right into the storming enemies.

Don't know maybe just order them to fire at will after you told them to hold position? I always order them to hold their fire before I move them as otherwise they will move-while-shooting which lasts for ages until they get where I want them to be and afterwards I order them to fire at will and it works.

 

[English_Knight]

I've noticed they seem to put away their bows if allied troops are too close to the enemies they are firing at. Maybe the few feet or space between them is too little for the AI? I know I could avoid hitting my allies when they are that far apart, but perhaps the AI can't...

 

[oroboros]

I've noticed they seem to put away their bows if allied troops are too close to the enemies they are firing at. Maybe the few feet or space between them is too little for the AI? I know I could avoid hitting my allies when they are that far apart, but perhaps the AI can't...

That's right, that they will do. That's one reason more to put archers behind infantry or place the infantry directly in front of the ladder/tower entrance so that archers don't get too close to the enemy and stop shooting, but the nearest archers will still be effected by the proximity of the enemy and they just stand their gaping holes into the sky with their cute bucklers raised. The same in field battles, always place your infantry at least 20-30 paces in front of your archers. In many siege scenes I relocate all my troops anyway to regroup them in some other place in order to increase their effectiveness.

 

[Caldric]

Is there a list of shortcut keys for all the formation commands? I am sure this is a silly question I have just learned through trial and error with lots errors. I sometimes lock up my troops and they will not charge if I threathened decimation!

Not sure if they change with Mods