Help With Late Game, Questions

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Captain Ralh

Recruit
Hello, hope anyone reading this is doing well!

I've come to kind of a halting point in my campaign. I've sided with Vlandia, become a vassal with decent influence, a few castles and a town. I have awesome wealth and my character is progressing nicely. I am able to maintain parties and armies without much trouble. Derthert and I have a great relationship and our families have married into each other.

My problem is that it seems the Vlandians, Battanians and Western Empire are always at war back and forth but any progress made is always reclaimed by them. We are at a state of constant tug of war for border castles and towns. Always ends in one of us declaring peace with no real progress being made or the loss of what we had previously taken. Recently they've been taking Sargot and Chardas, but we usually muster up and take it back. There lies the problem, that's all we've been doing. No real ground is ever being made. The rest of the kingdoms are doing their own thing but us three seem to always be in this back and forth struggle.

I can raise a decent army, usually around 1200~ men and take a town or castle, but then that's it. No real momentum is ever carried by the other lords of my realm.

What's the play here? What needs to be down to make a good push and really weaken one of these factions? Vassals of the Western Empire royally pissed me off last war and I executed a handful of their lords, that was not a wise move now they seem to be more aggressive.

I guess my question is: How does one take down Battania or the Western Empire in this kind of situation? Is there a specific town or region to take? The vassals of Vlandia and I are all on pretty good terms, can't say the same for the Western Imperials though.

Thoughts?
 
When you're a vassal, you're always going to be stuck in an eternal tug of war until you do something yourself to tip the balance. Ultimately, the game has been fairly well balanced to keep factions alive, so you have to break this.

Firstly, look out for clans in other factions who have no land. They can be bribed to join you relatively cheaply. Additional clans = additional troops for your faction - and to get a faction going, it's going to need troops. These days the kingdoms are passive, they struggle to take cities, and tend to take castles and lose them straight away. So a decent troop strength advantage helps your kingdom hold what it takes, as well as replace it's armies when it loses them. Think of it in terms of tower defence games. Where numbers matter.

Secondly, look at policies that help your kingdom build and maintain armies. You're going to want your kingdom to create and sustain 3 or 4 armies at once. So it's all about influence influence influence.

Thirdly, foster good relations with your enemies. Release them and definitely don't kill them. They're going to raid your land if they hate you, costing you money and recruits. And again, when we're talking Ai armies, it's all in the numbers.

Fourthly, don't be afraid to spend a lot of influence on votes. I tend to try to take a few cities or castles, then try to buy peace - even a peace that costs money - it allows you to build up what you've taken. This part will become easier once Derthert dies - you're going to be voted leader, and at that point you can make peace with anyone for influence alone. Soon enough your lords will declare war again, but it just stops the constant capture and loss that goes on. - You can't be everywhere at once, and it gives you a moment to build up garrisons and repair your economy, allow your parties to replenish etc.

Or you could just kill every lord you capture. Soon enough they won't have any to face you.
 
In my experience as a vlandian vassal in a few games, if you go hard against the enemy and run down all thier parties and take down thier armies, vlandia with do a decent job of expanding and taking fiefs. I won't be as good as they could do, but it will be more fiefs and expansions. Now by design there is a point where the amount of fiefs a faction has versus how many parties they have is lop sided and they will become more passive, voting for peace more and war less. This is just the anti snowballing stuff. I don't know how viable it is to try and get clans to join your faction as a vassal, I've never tried it. I view the slowing down of the faction as coinciding usually with the time for me to break off on my own. I usually only want to be a vassal to raise leadership (nowadays not needed) and once it's at 150 or 175 I break of and stay a solo clan and expand on my own. I don't make a kingdom right away, I make use of the solo clan ability to make peace directly to make peace and war as I want to until I have a large area under control.

But back to you question, I say focus on taking down all thier parties and armies, let the AI do the siege stuff and don't worry about it too much. If you can't catch them don't be afraid to cut some clan parties lose or switch troops for more speed bonus. I always make horse archer parties even if I'm a vlandian vassal, because the map speed is really useful!
 
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I guess my question is: How does one take down Battania or the Western Empire in this kind of situation? Is there a specific town or region to take? The vassals of Vlandia and I are all on pretty good terms, can't say the same for the Western Imperials though.

Thoughts?
Have you tried burning down Battania's villages?

If not, you should consider it. Raiding Battanian villages is uniquely strong because they have some of the four village towns that take a massive penalty to loyalty when all four are raided and often suffer rather severe starvation due to those villages driving prosperity (food consumption) sky high. That in turns puts them into a situation where they are likely to rebel, even with Battanian lords and governors in charge, once the garrisons start getting stripped. Generally the Battanians will be strong enough to quickly deal with a rebelling town but it will occupy an army for the better part of about 10-20 days. It will also pull lots of parties and armies towards their interior, rather than allowing them to mass near the border for easy and quick army mustering.

Alternatively, you can wait until Vlandia forms an army and goes to siege some Battanian settlement, then immediately take your army and besiege one of their "core" towns, nothing near the border. It doesn't matter if you can't take the town because, ideally, you'll catch the Battanian relief army at a point where it will either dither or outright spin right around to go scare you off rather than relieving the real objective. Sometimes they'll even run out of cohesion and disband before they reach you.

If the war is running long and you suspect that it will end soon enough, form an army, take the town and just squat in it. A player's army is powerful enough that the AI won't even consider besieging the town much of the time.
 
Have you tried burning down Battania's villages?

If not, you should consider it. Raiding Battanian villages is uniquely strong because they have some of the four village towns that take a massive penalty to loyalty when all four are raided and often suffer rather severe starvation due to those villages driving prosperity (food consumption) sky high. That in turns puts them into a situation where they are likely to rebel, even with Battanian lords and governors in charge, once the garrisons start getting stripped. Generally the Battanians will be strong enough to quickly deal with a rebelling town but it will occupy an army for the better part of about 10-20 days. It will also pull lots of parties and armies towards their interior, rather than allowing them to mass near the border for easy and quick army mustering.

Alternatively, you can wait until Vlandia forms an army and goes to siege some Battanian settlement, then immediately take your army and besiege one of their "core" towns, nothing near the border. It doesn't matter if you can't take the town because, ideally, you'll catch the Battanian relief army at a point where it will either dither or outright spin right around to go scare you off rather than relieving the real objective. Sometimes they'll even run out of cohesion and disband before they reach you.

If the war is running long and you suspect that it will end soon enough, form an army, take the town and just squat in it. A player's army is powerful enough that the AI won't even consider besieging the town much of the time.
good plan, except raiding villages will lead to heavy penalty on relationship, crime rate
 
Hello, hope anyone reading this is doing well!

I've come to kind of a halting point in my campaign. I've sided with Vlandia, become a vassal with decent influence, a few castles and a town. I have awesome wealth and my character is progressing nicely. I am able to maintain parties and armies without much trouble. Derthert and I have a great relationship and our families have married into each other.

My problem is that it seems the Vlandians, Battanians and Western Empire are always at war back and forth but any progress made is always reclaimed by them. We are at a state of constant tug of war for border castles and towns. Always ends in one of us declaring peace with no real progress being made or the loss of what we had previously taken. Recently they've been taking Sargot and Chardas, but we usually muster up and take it back. There lies the problem, that's all we've been doing. No real ground is ever being made. The rest of the kingdoms are doing their own thing but us three seem to always be in this back and forth struggle.

I can raise a decent army, usually around 1200~ men and take a town or castle, but then that's it. No real momentum is ever carried by the other lords of my realm.

What's the play here? What needs to be down to make a good push and really weaken one of these factions? Vassals of the Western Empire royally pissed me off last war and I executed a handful of their lords, that was not a wise move now they seem to be more aggressive.

I guess my question is: How does one take down Battania or the Western Empire in this kind of situation? Is there a specific town or region to take? The vassals of Vlandia and I are all on pretty good terms, can't say the same for the Western Imperials though.

Thoughts?
the issue is your clan is not strong enough to tip off the balance amoung these kingdom

my advice is , wait for a rebellion town or city, then you take it, and decalre self independence
 
good plan, except raiding villages will lead to heavy penalty on relationship, crime rate
Yes, there is a relationship penalty, but (for the player) core Vlandian territory produces enough troops to sustain them, so you don't need to care what some random Battanian landowner or village elder thinks of you.

For the latter? I assume you mean the Security penalty but since it is Battania's town, that's a benefit up until it is yours. And that's when you stop raiding the villages.
 
Yes, there is a relationship penalty, but (for the player) core Vlandian territory produces enough troops to sustain them, so you don't need to care what some random Battanian landowner or village elder thinks of you.

For the latter? I assume you mean the Security penalty but since it is Battania's town, that's a benefit up until it is yours. And that's when you stop raiding the villages.
I found the raiding and savage/sack after siege penalty is too high
you only make very little money , but you drop huge relationship,
eventually you want to capture the town and declare self independence, then it takes very long to recover and bring prosperity back

I think it's better to capture more lords and put them in your town prison, the escape rate is very low in recent game release, like may be 10%, it used to be 70%+ to escape, I think , lol which make no sense


I still with the game can provide like "Marshall" positions, otherwise, being a vassal is just boring in late game
 
I found the raiding and savage/sack after siege penalty is too high
you only make very little money , but you drop huge relationship,
eventually you want to capture the town and declare self independence, then it takes very long to recover and bring prosperity back
Uh...? The point isn't to make money or friends, the point is to weaken the other faction. Battania specifically because they are uniquely vulnerable to raids.
 
Hello, hope anyone reading this is doing well!

I've come to kind of a halting point in my campaign. I've sided with Vlandia, become a vassal with decent influence, a few castles and a town. I have awesome wealth and my character is progressing nicely. I am able to maintain parties and armies without much trouble. Derthert and I have a great relationship and our families have married into each other.

My problem is that it seems the Vlandians, Battanians and Western Empire are always at war back and forth but any progress made is always reclaimed by them. We are at a state of constant tug of war for border castles and towns. Always ends in one of us declaring peace with no real progress being made or the loss of what we had previously taken. Recently they've been taking Sargot and Chardas, but we usually muster up and take it back. There lies the problem, that's all we've been doing. No real ground is ever being made. The rest of the kingdoms are doing their own thing but us three seem to always be in this back and forth struggle.

I can raise a decent army, usually around 1200~ men and take a town or castle, but then that's it. No real momentum is ever carried by the other lords of my realm.

What's the play here? What needs to be down to make a good push and really weaken one of these factions? Vassals of the Western Empire royally pissed me off last war and I executed a handful of their lords, that was not a wise move now they seem to be more aggressive.

I guess my question is: How does one take down Battania or the Western Empire in this kind of situation? Is there a specific town or region to take? The vassals of Vlandia and I are all on pretty good terms, can't say the same for the Western Imperials though.

Thoughts?
I have noticed the same things.

I think one thing to improve for the AI is :
- make less sieges
- PUT defenders in taken castle/towns !!!
- protect new towns/castles

When the AI takes a castle they put like 50-70 defenders, so the ennemy AI comes and take it back lol
This has no end lol !!!

Taking a castle should have several steps :
- preparing a hudge army
- PREPARE some troops to put a decent garison in the place
- take some time to defend the place

AI usually takes the castle, let it with 62 defenders, and forget it... it is normal that the ennemy comes back ASAP :wink:

So as player, I try to fill this role.
Sometime just staying in the castle when you see an army coming to besiege is enough to make them forget it.

Anyway, the AI would better defend its castles rather than being "brave and honorable" and raiding villagers/caravans, rather than defending its possessions... :smile:

So at a point, it looks the game cannot end... indeed

Personaly, I forget castles : cost toooooo much and problems of food.
Towns can be a good wealth source (not all, some seems to be definitely in depression lol)
Castle are a often at strategic points, this is ok, but they are a ruin to keep up.

And quickly cause it is not the topic but militia should be able to be turned off, in some case you have a positive grow which won't stop before problems of food happens...
 
In my experience as a vlandian vassal in a few games, if you go hard against the enemy and run down all thier parties and take down thier armies, vlandia with do a decent job of expanding and taking fiefs. I won't be as good as they could do, but it will be more fiefs and expansions. Now by design there is a point where the amount of fiefs a faction has versus how many parties they have is lop sided and they will become more passive, voting for peace more and war less. This is just the anti snowballing stuff. I don't know how viable it is to try and get clans to join your faction as a vassal, I've never tried it. I view the slowing down of the faction as coinciding usually with the time for me to break off on my own. I usually only want to be a vassal to raise leadership (nowadays not needed) and once it's at 150 or 175 I break of and stay a solo clan and expand on my own. I don't make a kingdom right away, I make use of the solo clan ability to make peace directly to make peace and war as I want to until I have a large area under control.

But back to you question, I say focus on taking down all thier parties and armies, let the AI do the siege stuff and don't worry about it too much. If you can't catch them don't be afraid to cut some clan parties lose or switch troops for more speed bonus. I always make horse archer parties even if I'm a vlandian vassal, because the map speed is really useful!
Hello, about your coment about getting vassals in your faction :

The territory is so vast that, at a point, you need to convince vassals (some possess towns or castle, which avoid sieges) to join your faction. Because you cannot be everywhere and control everything, you also need more armies to defend extended territory.

This become more "easy" when the vassal is in a faction that has suffered a lot (almost no towns/castle remaining, or heavily reduced lands), but still it costs money for the barther :wink:
But at that point, my character had reached the age of 42, far enough in the game I guess.

See you.
 
AI usually takes the castle, let it with 62 defenders, and forget it... it is normal that the ennemy comes back ASAP :wink:

happens...
You can use that strategic advantage, you know they won't resist that juicy castle that you don't ever want to own, plan accordingly and you will end up with 10s of thousands of dinars in both prisoners and loot + a relationship boost with future allies and that sweet charm leveling. Wars are longer and more drawn out, it is a good thing, it is an opportunity for you to power build yourself and plan your eventual kingdom location and vassals.
Unless you want to support an existing king, then army up prison their lords with no ransom and they will be weakened enough for you to draw the remaining army to a fake siege that might translate to a real one if the battle went heavily in your favor. Build siege engines, store them as soon as their built and use them all once, it is a great way to teach your engineer, have less casualties in your war score and add a sense of grandeur to your sieges.
 
Hello, hope anyone reading this is doing well!

I've come to kind of a halting point in my campaign. I've sided with Vlandia, become a vassal with decent influence, a few castles and a town. I have awesome wealth and my character is progressing nicely. I am able to maintain parties and armies without much trouble. Derthert and I have a great relationship and our families have married into each other.

My problem is that it seems the Vlandians, Battanians and Western Empire are always at war back and forth but any progress made is always reclaimed by them. We are at a state of constant tug of war for border castles and towns. Always ends in one of us declaring peace with no real progress being made or the loss of what we had previously taken. Recently they've been taking Sargot and Chardas, but we usually muster up and take it back. There lies the problem, that's all we've been doing. No real ground is ever being made. The rest of the kingdoms are doing their own thing but us three seem to always be in this back and forth struggle.

I can raise a decent army, usually around 1200~ men and take a town or castle, but then that's it. No real momentum is ever carried by the other lords of my realm.

What's the play here? What needs to be down to make a good push and really weaken one of these factions? Vassals of the Western Empire royally pissed me off last war and I executed a handful of their lords, that was not a wise move now they seem to be more aggressive.

I guess my question is: How does one take down Battania or the Western Empire in this kind of situation? Is there a specific town or region to take? The vassals of Vlandia and I are all on pretty good terms, can't say the same for the Western Imperials though.

Thoughts?
I would highly recommend getting the diplomacy mod. I was worried at the start that my game will crash because of mods so i only use this one and it is a game changer and i have not crashed when using it is features. In your case it would help with non-aggression pacts after each war of a default 100 days (You can change that number in options) and the option to ally to one side if you have an amazing relationship with the leader. (It add much more then this, like messengers, so you don't have to run around the map to contact people, Donations to your clans, War exhaustion, expansion diplomatic penalties for you and the Ai)
Hope this helps
 
You can use that strategic advantage, you know they won't resist that juicy castle that you don't ever want to own, plan accordingly and you will end up with 10s of thousands of dinars in both prisoners and loot + a relationship boost with future allies and that sweet charm leveling. Wars are longer and more drawn out, it is a good thing, it is an opportunity for you to power build yourself and plan your eventual kingdom location and vassals.
Unless you want to support an existing king, then army up prison their lords with no ransom and they will be weakened enough for you to draw the remaining army to a fake siege that might translate to a real one if the battle went heavily in your favor. Build siege engines, store them as soon as their built and use them all once, it is a great way to teach your engineer, have less casualties in your war score and add a sense of grandeur to your sieges.
Agreed, you know their next target... :wink:
 
There was a comment above about getting vassals to join your faction when you are not the leader. I tried this in my current game where I am Khuzait. I recruited 2 lords to join us.

Knowing that the lords won't stick around without territory I donated a castle back to the kingdom each time I recruited a lord, knowing that it would be voted to give it to the lord with no lands. They got their lands, they stayed with us for about the length of one war, then they defected (I think back to the original faction, although not sure). They took their lands with them. When we were at war with the faction they went to I prepared an army and took the land I gave them back. Then when it was voted on the kingdom voted to give it to someone else besides me. So I lost the money I paid to recruit them, I lost the land I donated for them, and we got nothing. I assume it was a case of those lords liking me, but not Monchug.

Don't recruit lords until you become clan ruler. Of course at that time it is harder to recruit lords because you have been constantly fighting them (lower relations) and there is less time between wars (if any) to go out recruiting.
 
There was a comment above about getting vassals to join your faction when you are not the leader. I tried this in my current game where I am Khuzait. I recruited 2 lords to join us.

Knowing that the lords won't stick around without territory I donated a castle back to the kingdom each time I recruited a lord, knowing that it would be voted to give it to the lord with no lands. They got their lands, they stayed with us for about the length of one war, then they defected (I think back to the original faction, although not sure). They took their lands with them. When we were at war with the faction they went to I prepared an army and took the land I gave them back. Then when it was voted on the kingdom voted to give it to someone else besides me. So I lost the money I paid to recruit them, I lost the land I donated for them, and we got nothing. I assume it was a case of those lords liking me, but not Monchug.

Don't recruit lords until you become clan ruler. Of course at that time it is harder to recruit lords because you have been constantly fighting them (lower relations) and there is less time between wars (if any) to go out recruiting.
of course, only recruit lords after you declare as ruler

I rarely have lords defected, the only time I have is -100 negative relationship, because somehow one lord is always opposing my decisions , so every opposing would cause relationship drop, but initially the relationship when they first join the kingdom should be very high

only recruit lords when relationship is above 20-30, then once they agree to join, it will boost up to 100, then they would almost never betray you
 
If you are constantly fighting in wars its hard to get relationships much over 20. As a ruler though, if you give them a castle or something it can increase relationships by as much as about 50 points. I generally don't have lords defect once I'm ruler.

However, as I had not tried recruiting lords prior to becoming ruler I thought I'd give it a shot. Seemed to make sense that you could recruit lords easier in the early game since you haven't fought them as much. That might be true (not sure) but I definitely wouldn't do it again since they defect much easier. Anyways, when you say 'of course, only recruit lords after you declare as ruler', that implies it makes sense, so people should know this. But too much in the game doesn't make sense, so it was worth a try. I was responding to Ananda's post where he said he didn't know how much good it would be to try to recruit lords as a vassal.
 
If you are constantly fighting in wars its hard to get relationships much over 20
Just defeat them and release them for +relations when you're at war. Keep track of who has no fief and release them, hold or ransomed the others, or not. You actually don't lose any relations for attacking them in the field, only for raids an siege on thier fiefs. You can change you clan's setting so they are less likely to raid too.
 
I can raise a decent army, usually around 1200~ men and take a town or castle, but then that's it. No real momentum is ever carried by the other lords of my realm.

Thoughts?
My suggestion would be to muster the largest army you possibly can, use all the influence for more clans to join in and for cohesion to last longer... and keep taking fiefs whenever they're distracted or have suffered losses. Take two castles and a city, if you can. They will probably easily retake one castle, but they'll find it difficult to retake all the stuff you took from them. On top of that, remember to capture all their lords, stash them inside a castle you own and which is safe from sieges - that will make it easy for you to use influence to end the war immediately after you've taken what you could.
After that, let it all stabilize for a bit. Eventually you will eradicate the opposing faction.
 
Uh...? The point isn't to make money or friends, the point is to weaken the other faction. Battania specifically because they are uniquely vulnerable to raids.
The biggest problem here is that Raids have a ridiculously oversizerd influence on warscore and they are more likely to offer great peace terms before you can take the town.
 
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