Garrison and food mechanics - not welcomed in current form

[Iraeis]

For those not in the know, if your city food goes to zero, the city's militia and garrison will start to leave. In warband garrisons acted as a safe place where you could dump your top tier troops. With the food and desertion features in bannerlord this is no longer the case.

I dont think this feature needs to be removed entirely. I think the concept is good and well. However, I (and presumably others) enjoyed the security of having a place where we could dump our elite troops and not have them steal experience from upgradable troops. Mainly I think it just needs to be preventable, because city food supplies imo have just been too volatile. Have the garrison (and militia, optionally) draw food from the local stash would be a good way to fix this.

How are other people's experience with this? thoughts on how it has affected your gameplay?

 

[Worldsprayer]

wait your GARRISON leaves?

 

[Mabons]

Not only that, but your food is -6 because of prosperity but then prosperity is -6 because there is no food. What the actual ****, how are you supposed to get any food surplus if it's an endless chain like that.

 

[Dialectic]

I still have no idea how to improve the food. It makes me want to not have property in my war-torn kingdom. It probably also contributes to any snowballing that people are experiencing if lords' garrisons are getting eaten up by this food mechanic.

 

[Revenant342]

Had this happen where the villages feeding my castle half the kingdom away got raided while I was leading an army and my elite garrison starved before I could do anything about it.

It's even worse for the AI, you'll have whole armies just keep dumping good troops into a city that's losing 15+ garrison a day every time they swing by until they're left with nothing but peasants in their armies.

 

[seancockery]

I

I still have no idea how to improve the food. It makes me want to not have property in my war-torn kingdom. It probably also contributes to any snowballing that people are experiencing if lords' garrisons are getting eaten up by this food mechanic.

I once followed my lords army, he had 900 men and by the time he got to his target castle he had like 450 something men left. They all left him because he had no food. They really need to work on the food systems

 

[paladinx333]

The game produces a ton of militia if you want it or not. The exacerbates the food problems.

There is a mod on the nexus that prevents garrisons from starving. The militia can starve for all I care. I never asked for them to be made in the first place.

 

[Revenant342]

The game produces a ton of militia if you want it or not. The exacerbates the food problems.

There is a mod on the nexus that prevents garrisons from starving. The militia can starve for all I care. I never asked for them to be made in the first place.

The nice thing about militia is they're free and actually do pretty well in autoresolves, generally take out about 2 enemy troops assaulting for every one they lose. Haven't been able to tell if wall level makes a difference in that, but it definitely seems to when you're actually fighting on the map.

They also seem to affect the enemy's calculation in whether to siege or not at all, so if you stack militia buildings and kingdom policies you can get like 250+ militia for free in every city so the enemy won't even try to lay siege with less than 400-500 troops even if you have no actual garrison.

 

[The Luminary]

Fully upgraded castles should not have food problems for anything less than 400 troops and towns 700 unless their villages have been raided.

 

[Iraeis]

I am ok with the militia's performance as well. They are moderately effective while being essentially free. Maybe one way of fixing this is to have the city food situation affect the militia, but not your garrison (have them draw from your stash instead, maybe)

 

[Dialectic]

By removing a handful of troops from my garrison I got my -1 food to move to 0, so I assume they won't starve now. My guess is the idea here is to prevent the player from creating invulnerable castles and/or settlements too early. But I'm not sure how to raise the prosperity of the towns associated with my castle. By helping the village notables maybe? What if they never have quests? Or maybe killing nearby looters? Trading with the towns?

 

[Iraeis]

Fully upgraded castles should not have food problems for anything less than 400 troops and towns 700 unless their villages have been raided.

I own Epicrotea, it is fully upgraded and I have it on irrigation (not that the +1 helps much). Its got 200 militia and 0 garrison and the food situation is volatile at best. That's during peacetime. During wars against battania which owns the rest of the map at this point... well you can guess

 

[Iraeis]

By removing a handful of troops from my garrison I got my -1 food to move to 0, so I assume they won't starve now. My guess is the idea here is to prevent the player from creating invulnerable castles and/or settlements too early. But I'm not sure how to raise the prosperity of the towns associated with my castle. By helping the village notables maybe? What if they never have quests? Or maybe killing nearby looters? Trading with the towns?

I'm not sure what the point to that would be. If the player wants to, they can just sit at the castle with their party. So from this perspective the mechanic only seems to be limiting player freedom.

The other problem is that as you said, the mechanics are not transparent/available to the player to be controlled. The food situation of towns and castle seems to largely depend on the prosperity of the surrounding lands, which is impossible to control in a defensive siege.

 

[The Luminary]

I own Epicrotea, it is fully upgraded and I have it on irrigation (not that the +1 helps much). Its got 200 militia and 0 garrison and the food situation is volatile at best. That's during peacetime. During wars against battania which owns the rest of the map at this point... well you can guess

Absolutely ridiculous. Unless all 3 of your town's villages have been raided, it should not have food problems with only 200 troops. Terrible game balance and mechanics. No wonder snowballing is so prevalent.

 

[Revenant342]

Absolutely ridiculous. Unless all 3 of your town's villages have been raided, it should not have food problems with only 200 troops. Terrible game balance and mechanics. No wonder snowballing is so prevalent.

The garrison isn't the main source of food consumption or even close. A 100-man garrison eats something like 5 food a day. The biggest food consumer is based off of prosperity, which you have almost no way of controlling except for letting the place starve. Over time it'll pretty much grow unchecked until the place starts starving.

By removing a handful of troops from my garrison I got my -1 food to move to 0, so I assume they won't starve now. My guess is the idea here is to prevent the player from creating invulnerable castles and/or settlements too early. But I'm not sure how to raise the prosperity of the towns associated with my castle. By helping the village notables maybe? What if they never have quests? Or maybe killing nearby looters? Trading with the towns?

The basic food production for castles comes from surrounding lands, which seems pretty much set in stone, gardens, which caps out, and the number of hearths in bound, un-burned villages.

Hearths seems to grow about 1 per day and I haven't been able to get more than that even with the Stewardship perk that supposedly doubles town growth, which may not work. Getting raided drops it a lot, but it'll grow over time steadily as long as nobody burns it down.

The problem there is that it seems to cap out at +8 around 200 hearths or so. Like, my one castle has a village with 250 hearths and the other almost 500, but they both only give me +8. That's an issue because there doesn't seem to be any cap on the food *consumption* for castles based on prosperity. So eventually as the prosperity of castles grows, the food demand will inevitably, always exceed to food production and cause the place to starve.

 

[butterlord69]

I like the idea of starving out garrisons but it should be implemented better.
1. Make only the militia units be affected. OR;
2. Let us manually fill food in stash which the garrisons can use.OR;
3. Have a set number of garrison not be affected by food shortage but anything above the limit will.


In my game, I was part of northern empire who fended off the steppe retards' snowball early game. Now Aserai, Batannia and Vlandia have around 3-5k approx army (rest factions eleminated) and are fighting each other alternatively. I was waiting for Khuzaits to attack us again at some point and so I managed to stockpile a completely elite army of around 220.

Now when the Khuzaits attacked us, I am busy defending my villages because if I don't, it will stop producing food and my garrisons will starve out.

Basically some lord comes to raid, I beat him and imprison him. Wait in town to heal up and repeat again when another lord shows up. If their army ever shows up, my plan is to abandon everything and just go on a rampage raiding all of their villages. Lets starve to death together.

TL;DR: Please fix the garrison starving. Thanks.

 

[lysergicsid]

I like the idea of starving out garrisons but it should be implemented better.
1. Make only the militia units be affected. OR;
2. Let us manually fill food in stash which the garrisons can use.OR;
3. Have a set number of garrison not be affected by food shortage but anything above the limit will.


In my game, I was part of northern empire who fended off the steppe retards' snowball early game. Now Aserai, Batannia and Vlandia have around 3-5k approx army (rest factions eleminated) and are fighting each other alternatively. I was waiting for Khuzaits to attack us again at some point and so I managed to stockpile a completely elite army of around 220.

Now when the Khuzaits attacked us, I am busy defending my villages because if I don't, it will stop producing food and my garrisons will starve out.

Basically some lord comes to raid, I beat him and imprison him. Wait in town to heal up and repeat again when another lord shows up. If their army ever shows up, my plan is to abandon everything and just go on a rampage raiding all of their villages. Lets starve to death together.

TL;DR: Please fix the garrison starving. Thanks.

You're not having problems with the lords continuously escaping as you capture them also?

And yes, please fix garrison starving. It breaks the game right now.

 

[Iraeis]

You're not having problems with the lords continuously escaping as you capture them also?

And yes, please fix garrison starving. It breaks the game right now.

Honestly i have to agree that the volatile garrison kills my drive to play the late game. Your garrison can literally disappear faster than you can train new elites and so theres no desire to do so anymore. Without elites its impossible to get anywhere in the game.

 

[TrashMan]

For those not in the know, if your city food goes to zero, the city's militia and garrison will start to leave. In warband garrisons acted as a safe place where you could dump your top tier troops. With the food and desertion features in bannerlord this is no longer the case.

I dont think this feature needs to be removed entirely. I think the concept is good and well. However, I (and presumably others) enjoyed the security of having a place where we could dump our elite troops and not have them steal experience from upgradable troops. Mainly I think it just needs to be preventable, because city food supplies imo have just been too volatile. Have the garrison (and militia, optionally) draw food from the local stash would be a good way to fix this.

Indeed. Being able to CONTROL the stockpiles would be stellar. That way you can prepare for a siege. Or target enemy stockpiles before a siege.

 

[butterlord69]

You're not having problems with the lords continuously escaping as you capture them also?

And yes, please fix garrison starving. It breaks the game right now.

They do escape relatively fast from my dungeon. I own Poros and Onica castle and all the villages are close by. So, after a battle, I reach my city fast enough to put them in the dungeon.