Dumb vassals

[ruudiluca]

How do I make my vassals take castles? If I suggest to my marshal that he takes the castle, he will go to the castle. If I'm lucky, he actually stands by the castle preparing his siege for 2-3 days. But then, he'll just abandon the siege for no apparent reason.

Any suggestions on how to stop my vassals being so dumb? I shouldn't have to capture castles all by myself.

 

[Ludial]

Yes, you should have to capture castles all by yourself, because vassals are dumb. You want something done right, do it yourself 

In all honesty, whether they take a castle is a bit random. The most important thing is to send more than one lord for every siege. If there's just one guy with a 100 blokes vs. a garrison of 150+, naturally he won't stay there. The other thing is to patrol (yourself) around the castle and make sure there's no random targets or big threats that could throw the besiegers off of their current job. It takes a bit of managing, but I would still suggest that you take fortresses by yourself. Building an army capable of that is not hard, and while your lords patrol the area, you shouldn't be bothered too much by annoying enemies.

 

[Filou]

After they started the siege for a bit you can suggest to storm the walls.  If the prepareations are complete he will start the fight, and any lords following him will join.  This way you can speed things up, and actually initiate assaults that the AI would otherwise not do.

 

[98cassandra]

I believe setting the campaign difficulty higher will make your vassals less likely to abandon a siege for no reason. But if you set your campaign difficulty higher, enemy vassals will also be smarter.