Garrison auto donation - We have to talk

[Tintenkobold]

First of, happy new year everybody!

So there is this new feature which automatically forces lords to donate soldiers to your garrison after a siege. It's causing me big head aches and I think it's actually bad game design the way it has been released.

I'm not sure if I'm playing this game differently than others though. I always make a very huge kings army (=lead by me) at the beginning of a war, crush as many important cities in the shortest amount of time I can, then I release 50 to 75% of the involved lords to hunt down enemies and besiege on their own. My own army acts like some sort of fire fighter then.

This results in my sieges becoming a total mess. For example yesterday I attacked the last remaining, kinda huge faction in my current playthrough. The first strike contained 6000 to 8000 soldiers, I'm not sure anymore. However, it doesn't matter, what causes pain is that after a very successful and very fast siege on their wealthiest and most central city, my lords donated 4000 soldiers to the garrison. For some reason, my son (in the army too) ended up having 900 soldiers after the siege, not sure how that happened. That's just insane. It will not only cause the city to suffer hunger and troops potentially dying like flies, it also results in my army becoming very weak. So I end up transfering all troops back to myself and donating them back to my army, only leaving some trash units in the garrison. This takes a considerable time for each siege and it's no fun at all. To increase the pain, there is another trap hidden here. If you leave the city and re-enter, your army will donate again. If you don't know it, all your hard work is gone. Finally, there is a cheat option here as you can repeat this process over and over again and harvest influence by donating soldiers back to your lords. So after doing all of this and avoiding all traps, I have to wait for the settlement to be voted for someone else or just don't enter it again with my army if I keep it myself.

From my perspective, this feature is half baked, it's bad game design and I would like to turn it off. But I understand why it's there, don't get me wrong.

Any thoughts on this? Does this wreck your nerves too? Is it only me with a strange play style causing this to bother me? Did I miss a setting to turn it off? Any comment from the devs?

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

That sounds like the exact opposite problem I had when I played to unification this time last year. Back then, if the player (as a ruler) owned the conquered fief, you'd have to exit/re-enter repeatedly to cough up a couple dozen troops but now, it seems, they're far more generous.

Too generous, given what you described. I don't think it's too much a problem for "normal" sieges with ~2,000 attackers versus ~1,000 (or less) defenders since the winning attackers probably won't overflow the captured city/castle, and I believe these numbers are (or were, last year) far more typical than the scenario you described, but there should be a cap imposed on how many troops A.I. lords contribute (say, no more than garrison's stated maximum?). Furthermore, since there's (yet another) Influence exploit here, capping the donation to just once (upon initial conquest) ought to fix it.

 

[Tongueless Orvar]

With my playthroughs lords tend to donate based on their traits. Generous lords give more while closefisted don’t really, negative traits give less troops. I usually don’t have armies of 8000 troops, so I don’t know if it’s really the same as what I’ve been through.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Maybe they just give % based on traits or something and because you have huge army they give way too much. If so, then that should be changed so it account for how many troops the fief can reasonably support and take evenly from army parties. I haven't used a army any where near that big so I have no personal observation of this.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

I did see an Aserai army stuff Sargot (that they captured) to full capacity yesterday, taking it with an army of ~2,000 or so and leaving it with a garrison of ~450. I actually bought the city from Sultan Unqid before he even put it up for vote, lol, at the relatively cheap cost of ~500,000 silvers, and with it were numerous Tier 4-6 units (including ~50 Aserai Master Archers and 63 Aserai Heavy Horsemen lol).

It was a mixed blessing, given it has made Sargot extremely expensive to uphold, but I decided to play risky and found a new country with the 2 cities and 2 castles I own and am awaiting the opportunity to use these troops to pay their bills.

It's been nearly 2 years and neither Vlandia, nor the Western Empire, nor Aserai, nor Battania are willing to proactively attack me lol.

I'm curious why; I know I've stacked these 4 fiefs tall with high tier troops (especially in the castles to take advantage of the wage discounts) but I was expecting to register as small fry/"free real estate" in the minds of the A.I..

 

[Tintenkobold]

I did see an Aserai army stuff Sargot (that they captured) to full capacity yesterday, taking it with an army of ~2,000 or so and leaving it with a garrison of ~450. I actually bought the city from Sultan Unqid before he even put it up for vote, lol, at the relatively cheap cost of ~500,000 silvers, and with it were numerous Tier 4-6 units (including ~50 Aserai Master Archers and 63 Aserai Heavy Horsemen lol).

It was a mixed blessing, given it has made Sargot extremely expensive to uphold, but I decided to play risky and found a new country with the 2 cities and 2 castles I own and am awaiting the opportunity to use these troops to pay their bills.

It's been nearly 2 years and neither Vlandia, nor the Western Empire, nor Aserai, nor Battania are willing to proactively attack me lol.

I'm curious why; I know I've stacked these 4 fiefs tall with high tier troops (especially in the castles to take advantage of the wage discounts) but I was expecting to register as small fry/"free real estate" in the minds of the A.I..

Haha that's a lot of text for a different story, but your first sentence shows what I observed. 450 is about 25% of your 2000 man army. So for my 8000 man army a donation of 2000 folks is stupid, but maybe confirms there is very simple math involved and no hard cap. I'm not too familiar with the rights of a medieval king but I would prefer that playing as a king I can decide what and how much should be donated.

 

[Urbanski]

It seems like an edge case which is breaking the game a bit. I mean 6k-8k soldiers for sieging a fief is pushing the boundaries for BL.

My issue is my party leaders donating all of their archers and best troops to the garrison each time we finish a siege. We're then left with no archers and trash tier troops...needs sorting.

 

[Tintenkobold]

It seems like an edge case which is breaking the game a bit. I mean 6k-8k soldiers for sieging a fief is pushing the boundaries for BL.

My issue is my party leaders donating all of their archers and best troops to the garrison each time we finish a siege. We're then left with no archers and trash tier troops...needs sorting.

Are you sure it's an edge case? I have seen pure AI sieges around 4 to 5k troops combined. Since every captured city belongs to me until voting begins, the same problem occurs. I checked garrisons of AI captured cities which stayed in my clan after voting. Completely full (500-600), a lot of high tier troops and a significant amount of horse units. Like you observed. It's especially annoying when you equip your own clan members with special troops but they donate 50% of them after the next siege. They go in strong and come out weak, easy prey for the enemy after the 1st siege already. That's why I lead my big army and do a lot of micro management since it's the only way to control the first days of a big war.

 

[Urbanski]

Are you sure it's an edge case? I have seen pure AI sieges around 4 to 5k troops combined. Since every captured city belongs to me until voting begins, the same problem occurs. I checked garrisons of AI captured cities which stayed in my clan after voting. Completely full (500-600), a lot of high tier troops and a significant amount of horse units. Like you observed. It's especially annoying when you equip your own clan members with special troops but they donate 50% of them after the next siege. They go in strong and come out weak, easy prey for the enemy after the 1st siege already. That's why I lead my big army and do a lot of micro management since it's the only way to control the first days of a big war.

Well having played the game for a long time I've never seen or raised an army much over 2k. Even adding every party in a large (ish) faction would only get 3-4k max. So 6-8k seems like an end of endgame number and you'd probably need to have a very large faction to achieve that?

I'd say an edge case is when the game is played at the extreme end of what is mechanically possible...this would seem to qualify IMO. I've seen screengrabs of players pulling 17-18k armies for an end of game family (faction) photoshoot but only once they have the whole map conquered.

Either way the garrison donation mechanic is very irritating and needs some work

 

[anoddhermit]

Maybe an easy fix would be automatically prioritize lowest tier troops for donations and cap it at 10% of max troops for the party.

I have definitely run into the issue OP describes, because I often enter/exit towns a few times due to forgetting to check things, resulting in excess donations. Could also have a cooldown of 1 hour maybe?

 

[Tintenkobold]

Thanks for confirming this.

Regarding my play style, I think I played it in a normal way. I just didn't murder every lord, I became rich with constant war, a lot of loot, smithing and convinced them to join my kingdom, which costed around 500.000-1.500.000 for each. So I ended up with a strength over 50.000 when I started to dismantle the last faction, holding 13 cities and 20 castles. So kinda end game, yeah. Hardest difficulty by the way, difficulty seems to play no role for most of the problems I came along in my recent experience.

 

[MArdA TaleWorlds]

Could you send us your save file where you are experiencing this issue? We would like to take a look.

To help you further and continue our investigation of the reported issue, we need your save file. With your save file, we can reproduce the issue much easier and faster. Location of save files: "C:\Users\username\Documents\Mount and Blade II Bannerlord\Game Saves" To send us the requested file, please use the ticket system on our website. You can find more info about the ticket system here. Thanks for reporting and sorry for any inconvenience!

 

[Tintenkobold]

I created a ticket with save files attached -> https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Ticket/Item/1395

I found 3 different scenarios:

Number 1 - AI only army manages to do it right (save file taleworlds1a)
Siege on Hubyar - AI only army - just unpause and let it run. Wait for all lords to leave after the siege to have a clear view on remaining troops. AI will donate ok-ish amount of troops, around 150-175

Number 2 - AI only army donates too much (taleworlds2a)
Siege on castle of southern empire - AI only army - just unpause and let it run. Wait for all lords to leave after the siege to have a clear view on remaining troops. AI will over react, donating around 450-500 and exceeding garrison max size

Number 3 - biggest player lead army I can create - AI donates 5000 troops(taleworlds2b)
Siege on castle of southern empire - player lead army - just hit auto solve. If AI does not donate at all, leave and re-enter castle to see the problem. Usually or when not auto resolving this happens without leaving and entering. AI in player army will donate around 5000 troops, that's nearly 50% of the 11.000 soldiers army, over reacting like crazy and exceeding garrison max size by 4.500. These 4.500 quickly starve to death.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Keep in mind that until recent versions your AI vassals wouldn't donate anything at all if the player was leading the army, so this problem is the result of a recent change.

 

[Tintenkobold]

Keep in mind that until recent versions your AI vassals wouldn't donate anything at all if the player was leading the army, so this problem is the result of a recent change.

Yeah, I know. That's why I said I understand where this is coming from. I would even say I prefer the old system because an empty settlement is an excellent bait to crush more enemies. Now I end up sorting and re-donating soldiers which takes like forever. If I don't, I lose 50% of all troops in my kingdom with every siege lead by me. That's worse than empty.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

Yeah, I know. That's why I said I understand where this is coming from. I would even say I prefer the old system because an empty settlement is an excellent bait to crush more enemies. Now I end up sorting and re-donating soldiers which takes like forever. If I don't, I lose 50% of all troops in my kingdom with every siege lead by me. That's worse than empty.

Eh, I prefer this problem to the old one since one of the things that really soured my first/unification playthrough was the whack-a-mole past the halfway-to-unification point and having to squeeze the lords like tooth-paste bottles for whatever they're willing to cough up.

Ideally, they should recognize garrison caps and stop once they're capped but I'm okay with having to do a little micro now and then since it means (in my limited observation because I've yet to fight any wars even with my character that's now a literal emperor based around Charas and Sargot lol) territories don't change hands too quickly, they have to really fight for them (theoretically), and I don't have to sweat NPC vassals conquering on my behalf in the future like I did last time.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Eh, I prefer this problem to the old one since one of the things that really soured my first/unification playthrough was the whack-a-mole past the halfway-to-unification point and having to squeeze the lords like tooth-paste bottles for whatever they're willing to cough up.

Ideally, they should recognize garrison caps and stop once they're capped but I'm okay with having to do a little micro now and then since it means (in my limited observation because I've yet to fight any wars even with my character that's now a literal emperor based around Charas and Sargot lol) territories don't change hands too quickly, they have to really fight for them (theoretically), and I don't have to sweat NPC vassals conquering on my behalf in the future like I did last time.

Yeah it's the wasting of troops and potential starvation spikes that's the problem. Should be fixable, give it 6 months or so

 

[Tintenkobold]

Maybe it's time for a specific suggestion from my side as I totally understand the problems with the old system and why the new system has been introduced. I would keep the settlement empty until voting is done. After voting, the clan owning the new settlement will try to donate troops in a meaningful way. This will prevent all clans from donating too much, it will prevent massive weakness of the army and it will cause some sort of responsibility of the new owner. This will weaken the owners troops but as long as they stay with the army they should be safe. If they leave, they are vulnerable, but they will try to stock up, that's already in the game. As a player, you can help them and donate them some good troops if you have a bad feeling about them. If they are not in your army and win a siege on their own, nothing changes as they would come out of that very weak no matter what and are responsible for fast recruiting anyways.

Does this make sense? I don't see many new problems or side effects, but I'm happy to read some oppinions. It's my best suggestion right now, not falling back to the old system but fixing the new one.

It also fixes 3 cheat methods which are possible right now:

- infinite donation back from garrison to lords for influence harvesting out of thin air
- Grabbing/exchanging troops with lords not in your clan which is not possible normally (for example snacking high tier troops)
- Artificially weakening kingdoms as you can basically empty nearly 100% of all troops with donation-exploits, then leaving the kingdom, join another or make your own and crush them without anyone to fight back against you at all. In theory, you can win the game very fast as long as you have enough influence to form a big army once. Using exploits, influence can be harvested easily to kickstart this. Not sure if I have time to try it, but maybe it's possible to win the game as soon as you successfully lead 1 siege in no time by combining all exploits together. Could be the fastest speed run option right now.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

Yeah it's the wasting of troops and potential starvation spikes that's the problem. Should be fixable, give it 6 months or so

Oh lord, I hope not so long lol. However, given I'm console bound, I'm afraid it might be that long at least lol.

Does this make sense? I don't see many new problems or side effects, but I'm happy to read some oppinions. It's my best suggestion right now, not falling back to the old system but fixing the new one.

That's essentially the same as how it used to be, and the main issue was there would be 0 (or close to zero) troops between city/castle conquest and vote conclusion (which had an inconsistent time frame; it could be done the instant the fief was conquered or it could take in-game days) and was one of the main culprits behind the intolerable whack-a-mole between my A.I. vassals and NPC vassals. Most notably, this wasn't so much of a problem for A.I. vs. A.I. (or, more specifically, A.I. led conquerors) because they'd spare some troops for A.I. monarchs (who are temporary owners) but never player monarchs.

Ultimately, I'm against your proposal because there's a clear moment of weakness that the A.I. will inevitably exploit unless the player baby-sits the captured fiefs (which ultimately undermines the value of vassals--A.I. subordinates/partners who can handle a situation while you're not physically there).

My suggestion is to just have the A.I. recognize the garrison cap and make it a one-and-done thing--they won't donate more troops after doing it the first time. Sure, the army will be weakened, but the whole point of an army is to conquer/protect castles/cities so it seems fine from that point of view. Besides, that creates an organic reason to disband/regroup and prolongs wars (or, rather, enables more war/peace loops) which is good for organically reaching later generations (which isn't a problem for me, since I'm still unskilled at the game lol, but is undoubtedly a problem for good players who rarely lose and know when they can take risks safely).

 

[Tintenkobold]

Instant vote after siege. Problem solved.