DO NOT GIVE OTHER PARTIES IN YOUR CLAN TOO MANY CAVALRY!

[professorchaos]

To begin with, I'm using other parties in my clan as storage for troops. I constantly lead an army made of the 4 parties in my clan and I could adjust their troops whenever I want. For some reason, I though storing cavalry in the other three parties would be a good idea, mainly because they have a chance to upgrade them and save me the warhorse. So I give them 30ish calvary each, and before I know it, 20 of them just vanished in all three parties. No, they are not starving because they are in my army and I have tons of food. No, they did not donate it to the nearest garrison because I checked and the garrison has no cavalry unit.

So my guess is, they think there are too many cavalry in their troops so they just dismissed them. Why would they dismiss horseman just because it's not their ideal troop composition?? This is just dumb.

Anyway, don't do this like I did. Give them 10 cavalry at most before this is changed.

 

[BuckleUpBones]

I’ve been caught out on this too but mostly when entering captured castle/town for the first time, or more precisely if you’re the first to enter, then you are striped of 5% or more troops (they are not deposited into player garrison). In these cases wait until some other clan enters first, let them donate, then go in after.

After knowingly this I haven’t lost any more troops from my clans since, could be this?

 

[D0c1]

maybe they hire imprisoned troops, go over party limit and cavalry deserts?

unrelated but this mod is helpful. very helpful.

Disable Companion Donations

This mod prevents heroes in the player's clan from donating troops to settlement garrisons.

www.nexusmods.com

 

[Apocal]

So my guess is, they think there are too many cavalry in their troops so they just dismissed them. Why would they dismiss horseman just because it's not their ideal troop composition?? This is just dumb.

They go over party limits due to recruiting. You occasionally have to corral them and swap out crap for cav/high-tier units or else it will keep happening.

 

[XxLOKIxX]

I have this issue too. It is because your companion donate high tier troop to every city you visit

 

[Agroplode]

They might not have money to pay upkeep or they have very low morale and troops will desert them. I have never seen them vanish.

You can eat horses if you dont have other foods, perhaps that is what they did ?‍

I take all troops from them before going into a settlement or only give them low tier troops. Today I found a mod that makes it easier to give order to Companion party, I will test it.

 

[professorchaos]

I’ve been caught out on this too but mostly when entering captured castle/town for the first time, or more precisely if you’re the first to enter, then you are striped of 5% or more troops (they are not deposited into player garrison). In these cases wait until some other clan enters first, let them donate, then go in after.

After knowingly this I haven’t lost any more troops from my clans since, could be this?

This could be an answer but I'm not sure. If they are just donating then as a king I could always access the garrison and get the troops back before assigning it to any lord. But if they are stripped away 5% and not donating to the garrison, then this is just confusing.

 

[professorchaos]

maybe they hire imprisoned troops, go over party limit and cavalry deserts?

unrelated but this mod is helpful. very helpful.

Disable Companion Donations

This mod prevents heroes in the player's clan from donating troops to settlement garrisons.

www.nexusmods.com

This could be a reason too. But why would they hire over limit in the first place, this should be changed. Also, I always wondered, when troops and prisoners are deserting (due to over limit or starving), what troops would desert first? Does it start with low or high tier first, or it's just random? Starting with low tier first sounds more reasonable to me.

 

[professorchaos]

They go over party limits due to recruiting. You occasionally have to corral them and swap out crap for cav/high-tier units or else it will keep happening.

Good point. Now I learnt to always reserve 5-10 open slots just in case they can't hold back the urge to recruit.

 

[Agroplode]

I think recruiting over the cap was fixed for 1.3?

 

[professorchaos]

I think recruiting over the cap was fixed for 1.3?

I don't think so, at least it's still happening to me

 

[Apocal]

I think recruiting over the cap was fixed for 1.3?

I don't think so, at least it's still happening to me

They had to rollback the fix:

Sorry but I have to revert that fix because it caused another bug (player could not recruit prisoners of defeated parties). We solve that bug (clan parties recruit from defeated parties and go over party size bug) wrong way so it is reverted for a time. Probably this bug is still happening. Will check it again and solve it when issues currently we are working on (some (10%) lords go bankrupt) are completed.

 

[Agroplode]

?‍

 

[Joe Friday]

This could be a reason too. But why would they hire over limit in the first place, this should be changed. Also, I always wondered, when troops and prisoners are deserting (due to over limit or starving), what troops would desert first? Does it start with low or high tier first, or it's just random? Starting with low tier first sounds more reasonable to me.

I too have wondered this. I think peasants and recruits should desert first.

 

[hruza]

As apocal said, companion AI recruits over the party limit and that causes troops to desert. First to desert are higher tier units -which cavalry usually is. But it affects all units, not just cavalry. It's known bug:

Companions that create army exceed the party size limit which causes his troops to desert constantly.

known issues

 

[mserhatbalik]

maybe they hire imprisoned troops, go over party limit and cavalry deserts?

unrelated but this mod is helpful. very helpful.

Disable Companion Donations

This mod prevents heroes in the player's clan from donating troops to settlement garrisons.

www.nexusmods.com

This.

I had multiple occasions where they lost units due to desertion. But I don't know why they intentionally go over their limit.

 

[Carnith]

I've had to keep eyes on party comp, because if they go beat the crap out of some bandit party with 30 peasants, they will hire ALL 30 peasants into their army, and the high tier units leave. I didnt have much of an issue of them over recruiting when they were in my army as I noticed they stopped recruiting at some point. Maybe a money issue? but I would try to curate their armies with recruiting units I wanted them to have, such as going in to the army, over recruiting on purpose to go into their armies and swap out troops.

 

[Bramborough]

I've had things like this happen too: clan companion party losing a large percentage of their troops that couldn't be explained by the usual culprits of garrison donation, over-recruitment, etc. I suspect it may be tier-related, rather than troop type.

On one occasion after a large battle, had a large number of good-quality liberated troops. Was able to top off my own party, and then to fill up a companion party in same army with all Tier 2+ troops. Upon entering a city immediately afterward (the battle had been to relieve a siege, and had occurred just in front of the gates on campaign map), that companion party dropped one-third of its soldiers. Not "about one third"; exactly one-third (27 of 81 troops). And no, they didn't go to garrison.

Just one anecdotal data-point, but this incident led me to believe that it was tier-related, because the companion party was in the very unusual (for an AI-led party) condition of having zero Tier 0/1 peasant/recruit troops in it. My hypothesis is that an AI-led party must have one-third of its party size reserved for Tier 0/1 troops. (or at least, that was the case at the time, I think occurred during beta 1.1.0 or 1.2.0 at latest, so could've changed since then in 1.3.0).

This could also explain OP's experience. As far as I'm aware, there are no mounted troops in game lower than Tier 2. So perhaps the companion's cavalry were dismissed not because they were cav, but because they were too high in tier to satisfy requirements of a hidden "AI party composition" formula.

Bottom line, I've simply stopped worrying about companions' party compositions, and I don't ever trust them with even middle-tier units. They can just sink or swim with whatever they recruit/promote themselves. Because even if I'm completely wrong with the specifics above, it's still pretty clear to me that there's some "hidden rules" for AI parties (including player's companions') that don't apply to our own player parties. If I don't know what those rules are, then any attempt to tinker with those party compositions inevitably leads to frustration.

 

[Old-Bull]

To begin with, I'm using other parties in my clan as storage for troops. I constantly lead an army made of the 4 parties in my clan and I could adjust their troops whenever I want. For some reason, I though storing cavalry in the other three parties would be a good idea, mainly because they have a chance to upgrade them and save me the warhorse. So I give them 30ish calvary each, and before I know it, 20 of them just vanished in all three parties. No, they are not starving because they are in my army and I have tons of food. No, they did not donate it to the nearest garrison because I checked and the garrison has no cavalry unit.

So my guess is, they think there are too many cavalry in their troops so they just dismissed them. Why would they dismiss horseman just because it's not their ideal troop composition?? This is just dumb.

Anyway, don't do this like I did. Give them 10 cavalry at most before this is changed.

I just commit myself to a faction and avoid all that mess.

When you can create your own armies you can hire companions, form parties, and assign your companions to a division. I have a cavalry companion with an all cav party, an archer companion with an all archer party, and an infantry companion with all the infantry, in addition to me with all the elite forces in a balanced army: 40 percent cavalry, 30 percent infantry, 30 percent archers.

The nice thing about doing it that way, if you want to chase someone down you just get close enough that they start to run from you, disband your army, and your cavalry general chases them down with an all cavalry party and all cav parties are damn quick. After you clean up the loot, you reform the army.

You never have to worry about your side losing cavalry when they're assigned to your army. You get to decide when to attack.