Snowballing is the obvious issue, but there's a lot of intricacies that make it such an issue.
For one, there's no limit to how big an army can get. So bigger factions have bigger armies, which helps them snowball harder.
Secondly, bigger factions are more attractive to AI lords. So they won't leave that faction and are more likely to join that faction. I'm pretty sure this is why many people report lords asking for 200,000,000 denars when you try to recruit them to your own faction.
Thirdly, these two combined mean that you're stuck with a max army size of about 700 (About 300 stewardship, 3 additional parties with 100 units each and the policies "royal guard" and "retinue" or whatever it's called that both give a bonus to the clan leader party size) units going up against armies of 1200. I was unlucky enough to get caught between two of such armies and ended up in a battle of 2,000 vs my 700.
Since you can't recruit enemy lords you can't increase your own army size. Since you can't increase your own army size, you can't destroy enemy armies twice your max size. Even if you do beat one you'll lose most of your units and have to start building up numbers and quality again. Since you can't beat their armies they'll continue to snowball and the lords will demand more and more ridiculous amounts of money from you in order to join your faction. Then the loop continues until that faction wins.
So essentially, if you want to win you have to really rush to grow your renown, your own faction and then become the snowballing faction. I reckon that'll honestly make it feel really easy though since the snowballing effect means that the other factions just won't pose a challenge.
Plus, I doubt it's even possible to grow your renown fast enough to manage all that before a faction starts snowballing.
For one, there's no limit to how big an army can get. So bigger factions have bigger armies, which helps them snowball harder.
Secondly, bigger factions are more attractive to AI lords. So they won't leave that faction and are more likely to join that faction. I'm pretty sure this is why many people report lords asking for 200,000,000 denars when you try to recruit them to your own faction.
Thirdly, these two combined mean that you're stuck with a max army size of about 700 (About 300 stewardship, 3 additional parties with 100 units each and the policies "royal guard" and "retinue" or whatever it's called that both give a bonus to the clan leader party size) units going up against armies of 1200. I was unlucky enough to get caught between two of such armies and ended up in a battle of 2,000 vs my 700.
Since you can't recruit enemy lords you can't increase your own army size. Since you can't increase your own army size, you can't destroy enemy armies twice your max size. Even if you do beat one you'll lose most of your units and have to start building up numbers and quality again. Since you can't beat their armies they'll continue to snowball and the lords will demand more and more ridiculous amounts of money from you in order to join your faction. Then the loop continues until that faction wins.
So essentially, if you want to win you have to really rush to grow your renown, your own faction and then become the snowballing faction. I reckon that'll honestly make it feel really easy though since the snowballing effect means that the other factions just won't pose a challenge.
Plus, I doubt it's even possible to grow your renown fast enough to manage all that before a faction starts snowballing.