Mid-Game on

[Thailand Express]

Hello all
Ive started 3 dozen or so games and the farthest Ive gone is about 380 days or so. Ive tried several mods and played around with TweakMB. I have settled on Open Source Mod for now, My problem comes with the sandbox is what do I do now that I have an army and my next level is a long way away.
Please give me some sugestions on what to do next.
How do you keep all the lords straight? How important are they?
Should I concentrate on the Persuasion skill?
Tactics skill from what Ive read is pretty worthless right?
How do I get the King to give me cities instead of villages and castles?
Does the AI in battles do anything more than slide left or right?
How do I maintain a 200+ army without it falling apart do to morale?
Should I rebell?


Ive seens lots of advice on how to start but very little on the mid to late game so.... help me past the what now bordom I keep falling into. Any help is appreciateed. It maybe that I dont reserach well and much is already been discussed but I dont know what to serach for exactly

Thanks
Thai

 

[Lord Brutus]

I am unfamiliar with Open source Mod so can't comment on that. Tactics is far from worthless. In a battle of enemy 130 versus you 100, having tactics of 3 greater than your enemy will even up the numbers in battle.
To get the King to give you cities, kiss his butt. Do missions for him. Talk to him after each time you defeat an enemy army, attend his feasts. When friendly enough, he will give you a city, easier if you were part of the army which captured it.
Maintaining an army of 200 in the field is virtually impossible, but also unnecessary. I seldom have a field army of greater than 84, but I will increase it with more infantry and archers if a siege is imminent.

 

[mnoel23]

It helps greatly if you're the one to besiege the city and take it over. Having high relationships with all the other Lords in your faction, and then asking them to support you, also works. The higher your renown, honor, and relations with all the Lords and your King, the higher your chance of getting land.

A 200+ army is unnecessary, I managed to take over a few castles and hold off 300 troops with just 20 Swadian Knights and 20 supporting troops before. I find an ideal number is around 40-50 elite troops, and you'll be able to handle anything.

 

[cheesybaps]

I'll give this a go as i'm approaching end game with 105 fiefs, 39 Lords, 3200 renown and lvl 40

best way to keep lords straight is the diplomacy mod, send gifts and repeatedly take the same castles from the enemy then allow them to retake it, sharing the plundered gold each time you capture with your vassals for +2 all round. Without diplomacy it requires alot of feasting and micromanaging to keep them all happy.

Are lords important? I've never called a campaign as they tend to f*ck up your tactics, I just plan where i want to take next and do it. where lords come in very handy is to defend your lands and garrison your hard won properties so you can forget about them and move on unless they bring in a high weekly rent/tariff then keep it for yourself.

Persuasion skill is important in getting lords to join your kingdom and persuading party members to stay when they're pissed of about sh*t. My persuasion score is 6 +1 from the skill book (remember never to read until late game when the skill is maxed) and i'm  doing ok

Tactics is far from worthless it controls how many soldiers you start with in each battle. Always a party skill but no reason why it shouldn't be 10.

as mentioned before 200 is way too many for an army. I like to keep around 90-100 heavy cavalry as a field army, has high movement speed and can take on anything. For a seige army you may require more, mostly sarranid master archers and vaegir marksmen to wear down their numbers and nord huscarls for the assault.

There is only limited benefit to serving a faction, this is a time for building up your renown, right to rule, honour and building positive relations with lords who you may want to recruit in the future, a very good way to do this is to release friendly captured lords ('i yield' 'congratulations on your victory'etc) right from the start - gives you +5 relations boost and honour, the arsey ones ('curse the day' 'your men are dogs'etc) should always be taken prisoner.

Once your RTR is 50-60 you should be looking to start your own faction. I kept conquering swathes of khergit land for the swadians and harlus kept giving them to me, when eventually he didn't i got no right to rebel so i had to renounce my allegiance and reconquer everything. My advice would be stick with a castle or whatever you can station troops in
and build +ve relations and work on your party's exp while getting to the required RTR, then pick a nice rich city that isn't right in the middle and gonna get raped by all sides, renounce your allegiance and take it. Like the look of wercheg for defensibility.

After that expand slowly, lords can be tricky at first to persuade but each one you do increases your RTR furthur making it easier. I never recruited a companion as a vassal, too valuable to lose. Never grant yourself a village only castles and towns. try to take on one faction at a time, send your companions on spy missions often to each faction and target lords that you are likely to have a chance with and use them to secure territory that you have captured. its tricky at the start but it gets easier.

Hope this helps, number one advice is get the diplomacy mod for dealing with the end game lord relations problems

good luck

 

[Thailand Express]

best way to keep lords straight is the diplomacy mod, send gifts and repeatedly take the same castles from the enemy then allow them to retake it, sharing the plundered gold each time you capture with your vassals for +2 all round. Without diplomacy it requires alot of feasting and micromanaging to keep them all happy.

In the Open Source Mod diplomancy mod is included, but I am still learnin how to use it. Sending gifts instead I did not realize you could do.

Are lords important? I've never called a campaign as they tend to f*ck up your tactics, I just plan where i want to take next and do it. where lords come in very handy is to defend your lands and garrison your hard won properties so you can forget about them and move on unless they bring in a high weekly rent/tariff then keep it for yourself.

as mentioned before 200 is way too many for an army. I like to keep around 90-100 heavy cavalry as a field army, has high movement speed and can take on anything. For a seige army you may require more, mostly sarranid master archers and vaegir marksmen to wear down their numbers and nord huscarls for the assault.

How do you take on a city/castle with 6-10 lords in it (ie 600-700 troops) without calling a campaign to get help? The last game I played as a Nord vassel every Swadian town/castle was captured but Suno and it was filled with Lords/troops.

....release friendly captured lords ('i yield' 'congratulations on your victory'etc) right from the start - gives you +5 relations boost and honour, the arsey ones ('curse the day' 'your men are dogs'etc) should always be taken prisoner. 

Do you keep them prisoners forever? This also contradicts advice Ive seen about never letting any Lord go or is this only for once you are your own faction? Can you recruit Lords from the prisoner ranks?

Once your RTR is 50-60 you should be looking to start your own faction. I kept conquering swathes of khergit land for the swadians and harlus kept giving them to me, when eventually he didn't i got no right to rebel so i had to renounce my allegiance and reconquer everything. My advice would be stick with a castle or whatever you can station troops in
and build +ve relations and work on your party's exp while getting to the required RTR, then pick a nice rich city that isn't right in the middle and gonna get raped by all sides, renounce your allegiance and take it. Like the look of wercheg for defensibility. 

RTR is something I'm trying to figure out right now.
I dont understand what you mean by "...no right to rebel"
As vassel you are recommending refusing castle/cities other than the first on or two to build up troops in?

  ...on spy missions often to each faction and target lords that you are likely to have a chance with and use them to secure territory that you have captured.

What do spy missions do exactly? When do you turn such Lord before or after you take said territory?

Hope this helps, number one advice is get the diplomacy mod for dealing with the end game lord relations problems

good luck
 

Thank you very much. You have at least given me search terms to use. The search fuction is useless if you ya dont know what to search for. Coming late to the paarty is allways hard, especially when there is information overload like there is on these forums.

 

[cheesybaps]

Hi Thai
Being a vassal should generally be a temporary employment as starting your own kingdom is really the start of the mid game. Depends where you are with regard to RTR and renown, if they are too low your priorty should be on raising them high enough to break away on your own.

I wouldn't worry about taking on cities with a very large garrison for the benefit of another faction, your ultimate goal is to be king of all calradia so think how is that going to help you. If you absolutely must, attack with large numbers of archers, order them to stand and fire until they have no ammo left, then retreat and start the seige again, aim is to wear them down until their numbers are low enough for you to assault with your infantry.

You are meant to be able to rebel against the king (and set up your own kingdom keeping all the fiefs you already hold) if you ask for a fief that you have conquered (by yourself) and he gives it to someone else. Didn't work for me so theres not much point in conquering a lot of territory in another kings name.

As far as prisoners go, they will eventually attract a ransom from their faction if you hold on to them, personal preference here but i don't take the nice ones captive for the relations and honour bonus. You cannot recruit prisioner lords.

Spy missions give you info about each vassals relation to their current king. So therefore if they have -ve relations with their current leige and +ve relations with you then they are good candidates to approach and make into your own lords (once you have estabilished your own kingdom)

Its all about becoming a faction of your own and conquering the map, whats your RTR and renown?

 

[Thailand Express]

I have been deleting at each restart, so from memory my in the last one was over a thousand or so ( was using tweakMB to give 50 Renoun for winning tourneys tho), my RTR has never been above 20 that I remember.

Going back to the prisoner thing. I ve always captured and ransomed lords because I hated losing honor to refuse.  But going back to the case of Suno in my last post does not tactical problem always present itself if you let them go?
Thanks for all the info, much appreciated. Your helping to tie together random info Ive been absorbing from this forum.

Thai