Does the AI get instant armies?

[Warlord-616x]

im recruiting every prisoner i can get my hands on, recruiting every serf i come across from every town and village in the region, i have been executing those of one faction while imprisoning the other (with letting the occasional go if i think i can turn them later) and ya this is a losing proposition when i have to fight battle after battle with no breaks for an indefinite length

 

[Bannerman Man]

If you guys read this part specifically:

We know this escaping thing is disturbing. When new heroes are added to game these probabilities will be decresed very much. Currently there is no replacements so it is risky to reduce daily escape chance to 2.5%s this can cause kingdoms to lose lots of settlements after losing one big army battle.

You can see they are aware it's frustrating, and it's just a work-around to prevent snowballing while they implement the other features.

Also +1 to him for taking the time to go find dev responses, the real MVP.

Haha thanks. If y'all aren't already, you should really be following mexxico. He puts out a ton of info all the time.

 

[black_bulldog]

If you're playing on the 1.3 beta, this issue isn't as bad, look at what Bannerman Man posted above. Also +1 to him for taking the time to go find dev responses, the real MVP.

Even if the rate of escape has been lowered it's still happens way too easily especially in dungeons. I get that we shouldn't be able to keep lords out of action indefinitely. But I had a lord I who escaped after 2 days, and guess what he literally shows up 3 days later with an army of 50. That's very frustrating.

 

[Bannerman Man]

it's super annoying, and it breaks the economy for the player since it means endless loot. RIght now I have a daily deficit of -6K denars and it doesn't matter since I'm just slaughtering their lemming armies and taking all their loot endlessly. My biggest problem right now is finding towns with enough money in Ye Olde Pawn Shop to dump all the bloody rags in.

If you feel like this is too exploitative just stop taking loot. Take the food and maybe a nice sword or helmet and just dump the rest. This game requires some self-restraint right now to not throw everything out of whack.

 

[Blood Gryphon]

Haha thanks. If y'all aren't already, you should really be following mexxico. He puts out a ton of info all the time.

I've actually gotten to talk with him on forums about a few bugs. He absolutely is watching the forums and actually fixing reported issues, but he needs the feedback to be coherent enough to solve them. Two issues he actually fixed that we discussed are, companions recruiting captured troops (mostly peasants) over their party limit thus causing their high tier troops to desert and he listened to the feedback that we never get to defend castles mainly because the sacrifice rate to get in was too high (they just reduced this ). I highly suggest to everyone to post in the appropriate forum in the format that they request and you will see they actually utilize this information.

 

[HerrStarr]

Yes they seem to be coming back a little to fast still.. but in bata i have seen the game is much harder then what is was with the changes they have done and i am all for that. .. i have seen they come back with less than 40% of there size so they can not join an army right away .. and with influence a little harder to keep they could lose alot of that by the time they rebuild ...

Harder or grinder? No irony here, i'm seriously asking.

 

[Bannerman Man]

But I had a lord I who escaped after 2 days, and guess what he literally shows up 3 days later with an army of 50.

If they actually keep escaping after 2 days it might be a bug. Otherwise it's just one time bad luck. The snippet of code is literally right there.

 

[Bannerman Man]

I've actually gotten to talk with him on forums about a few bugs.

And I've done the same about companions' caravans haha! You're right, the devs are more responsive to feedback if it's not sandwiched between two insults. They're human.

 

[black_bulldog]

If they actually keep escaping after 2 days it might be a bug. Otherwise it's just one time bad luck. The snippet of code is literally right there.

Maybe idk but it's very frustrating when it happens.

 

[Bannerman Man]

Maybe idk but it's very frustrating when it happens.

They know. Give it time.

We know this escaping thing is disturbing. When new heroes are added to game these probabilities will be decresed very much. Currently there is no replacements so it is risky to reduce daily escape chance to 2.5%s this can cause kingdoms to lose lots of settlements after losing one big army battle.

 

[mexxico]

companions recruiting captured troops (mostly peasants) over their party limit thus causing their high tier troops to desert and he listened to the feedback

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.

 

[durbal]

If you feel like this is too exploitative just stop taking loot. Take the food and maybe a nice sword or helmet and just dump the rest. This game requires some self-restraint right now to not throw everything out of whack.

Do I stop taking XP too? Where's the right balance for how strong my party or economy can be versus an enemy? Do you kinda see the issue I'm getting at? I'm not amassing tons of money and my overall income on a weekly basis is probably a net even right now. I'd prefer to just actively guard my settlements and allow their prosperity to increase so that I can match my troop expenditures for defending the settlements with the income they provide. But I really can't, since active defense in order to actually have hearths/prosperity increase over time costs more than they can provide on their own due to the endless zombie waves of respawned troops.

The core issue is that the player needs a good garrison and an elite army to stop the endless waves of respawning lords, and this requires lots of money that can only come from that loot. Although I applaud the tightening of the economy, war being more devastating, etc. it's important to point out that this is also a large part of the reason lords are going bankrupt -- they cannot farm loot and plunder as well as a player, and in the current economy the income from loot and plunder is too high compared to passive income sources. Prosperity is also tanking across the board for different reasons, but a prime one is that villages are raided and settlements are sieged on cooldown because there is never a break (even in AI vs AI) from lords getting captured and going to raid or join an army to siege right away with their freshly-respawned army. There's no time for prosperity to increase.

 

[Warlord-616x]

i dont take the loot anymore anyways as its not worth my time cleaning it out of my inventory lol

 

[Bannerman Man]

Do I stop taking XP too? Where's the right balance for how strong my party or economy can be versus an enemy? Do you kinda see the issue I'm getting at?

Sure, I understand the frustration, as do the devs. The only answer I can give right now is to: live with it, find a mod that helps, or put the game down for awhile.

Prosperity is also tanking across the board for different reasons, but a prime one is that villages are raided and settlements are sieged on cooldown because there is never a break (even in AI vs AI) from lords getting captured and going to raid or join an army to siege right away with their freshly-respawned army. There's no time for prosperity to increase.

You don't have to tell me about prosperity haha, I'm seeing the same things you are and we're discussing it in other threads. Most of the latest fixes are just temporary to plug holes while they a) work on long term fixes, and b) implement the rest of the features. And that's ok. The game is hugely complex and patching one thing often means breaking another because the game's mechanics are in a constant tug-of-war with each other.

 

[Blood Gryphon]

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.

No problem, thanks for keeping us updated. Best of luck finding a solution .

On another note, can i ask what are the rate ranges now that the 25% reduction to the enter sieged castle to defend cost is in effect? Also safe to assume AI lords are still not considering that option (is this the plan going forward)?

 

[artemis_entreri]

so whats the solution? how do you keep up with the ai when it just keeps showing up with army after army and your **** army only gets a handful of new recruits at each new settlement you visit, but whom quickly come depleted, and if you travel further out the ai automatically declares war on you with all the remaining factions because it automatically detected that your blood was in the water?

ive been fighting for rl days straight just to keep what i have and im no closer whatsoever.

Only solution in my mind is to use Mods, cheats or both. I'm using both now as the grind of continuously fighting off every lord on the map was too much for my weaksauce.

 

[ProsteCech]

Wouldnt it be possible to respawn the lords with 1% health with them needing to regen to atleast 50% till they can go out of the settlement? That way them spawning with units wouldnt be that much of an issue cause they will be out of action for a brief period after being released. If they had escaped from a dungeon or a party they would respawn with 100%.

 

[Earth Dragon]

I think lords that were defeated in battle should respawn with 1% health so they have to spend sometime healing up.

Again though, that is just going to cause more issues. I feel putting them on a timer where they are not on the map at all, then they pop up with an appropriate retinue of “recruiting and training” they did when in hiding.

this is the best solution to avoid snowball issues and whack-a-mole issues

 

[drallim33]

If you capture lords and place them into a dungeon their chance of escape is extremely low and i believe they said on average are captured for 20-26 days.

This is completely false, I think you just made those numbers up.

Best case numbers outside of a dungeon are 22.5% escape chance per day. That's best case. In a dungeon it's 7.5%. That's not "extremely low".

If you managed to capture a prisoner right next to a castle and deposit them immediately it would be an average of 13.3 days imprisonment. But if you have to travel some distance which you almost always will it is lower.

Here's the average imprisonment time assuming they spend a number of days outside prison and the rest inside:

Days outside en route to dungeon	Average days before escape
0	13.3
1	11.3
2	9.7
3	8.5
4	7.6
5	6.9
10	5.1
100	4.4

But there is no minimum time, many of them will escape almost immediately.

Number of days before reaching castle	Percentage of lords escaped en route
1	22.5%
2	39.9%
3	53.4%
4	63.9%
5	72.0%
6	78.3%
7	83.2%
8	87.0%
9	89.9%
10	92.2%

So most of the time you're going to lose half of the lords before you even get to a dungeon. If you are attacked while or just before trying to siege an enemy town and the siege takes five days, 70% are going to escape and respawn right near you with an army ready to attack you again.

This is silly, if they are going to respawn with free armies then there should be a minimum time before they can escape, like ten days guaranteed imprisonment after which the chance progressively rises. Or if half of them are going to escape before you can even get to a dungeon then it should take them a while to get their act together.

 

[Bannerman Man]

This is completely false, I think you just made those numbers up.

Those numbers come directly from a dev (it's actually more days than he said originally):

So with 1.3.0 if you place your prisoner to one of your walled settlements escaping chance of prisoner will be 3.75% daily means nearly 25-30 days of average prisoned time.

Are you on e1.3.0? If you think the chances are incorrect open a bug report for it.