Kingdoms fall way to easily

[Nicolite]

I’m only about 7 hours into my current play through and the Northern Empire already has 3/4 of the map. What I’ve seen that doesn’t help this is how lords spawn with no troops in a bandit infested area, I think this could be helped if the lord spawned in a town,castle,or village instead of a open field. Another reason for this is the AI doesn’t seem to understand defending, they put minimal people in garrisons and then almost never protect their castles and towns. Honestly it’s the only issue I have with the game other then that I love it, but god it ends way to quickly because the AI isnt given a chance to actually fight back.

 

[WarTorn87]

Agreed completely. Lords need some sort of guaranteed bodyguard when spawning, cities need stronger garrisons, perhaps some sort of AI bandit hunters roaming (not too many obviously).

And the faction snowballing is definitely an issue.

 

[Faenwulf]

Seeing as the early game is a longer Grind than Warband this needs to be addressed ASAP.

 

[Captain Obvious]

Yep, completely agree. I think lack of peace deals (to what I've seen) doesn't help.

 

[0nchen]

I've been playing for about 100 days.
Almost all lords (all from 2) of my faction have less than 20 units, are permanently captured by bandits and can't build up anymore.

This leads to the fact that all other factions can take all fiefs without any problems.

 

[CinnamonStickk]

Yeah it's downright sad to see a little notification in the bottom right telling you that a faction leader has been taken hostage by looters.

 

[Bramborough]

I don't know the details (not sure anyone non-dev really does at this point), but I somewhat suspect that clan mechanics may be somehow affecting this phenomenon of lords running around with extremely small parties. I even had a lord come by and jump into a bandit fight with me all by himself. With the clan system, individual parties are conceptually part of larger whole which can come together to form an army. So AI lord behavior is going to be a little different than what we saw in Warband. Apparently one manifestation of this is their propensity (with almost certainly unintended effects) is that they don't stay behind walls to rebuild their individual party, because they see themselves as part of a larger clan out in the field. Meanwhile, lords' normal aggressive behavior in aggroing nearby bandits remains in place...with rather suicidal effects.

I dunno, maybe this isn't the problem at all. Just speculation on my part.

 

[froechrissi]

Does anyone know whether the developer console might help?
I'd love to give some cities to the dying kingdoms, but I haven't found a suitable command yet. Otherwise, the game is just boring... after 17 hours, almost everything belongs to Battania and S. empire, all others are on their way to extinction.