I agree, IMO they need to
1 not be allowed to hire a disproportionate amount of mercenaries, they're for everyone, the worst factions getting 8 of them is stupid.
2 Have far less money and be punished for not paying all expenses day to day, especially the merc payments. Can't pay= Go away! As is, they have too much hidden money and other cheats (intentional or bugs) so they never are motivated to change factions.
3 They need to defect to the players faction equally or by an equal mechanic as the AI. This means if AI gets them instantly for free, the player gets them instantly for free too. Tw has a horrible design of making the player spend days of campaign time to obtain something the AI is given instantly, remotely and at no cost.
4 remove any recruitment calculations that change based on how many clans a factions has and/or any cap put in by TW. IF the player wants to legitimately recruit every clan (or most) they should be able too. If not they have no purpose in the game. As id the recruitment calculation becomes unreasonable for normal play once a certain amount of clans join the players faction.
5 Some way for unrecruited, unwanted and persistently defeated clan and factions to actually be removed form the game so that in a very long game there doesn't become state that causes problems because of too many parties.
6 Making peace with feif less faction should be solely to the player as a ruler. As is vassals constantly waste influence voting to make peace with defeated factions, letting out dozens of prisoners who then recruit all of your own troops and attack you again.
As is though, defeated faction mostly become a loot delivery service for you vassal clans as they will catch most of them often enough to get rich off of it.
However it takes too long for them to get to this point.
1 not be allowed to hire a disproportionate amount of mercenaries, they're for everyone, the worst factions getting 8 of them is stupid.
2 Have far less money and be punished for not paying all expenses day to day, especially the merc payments. Can't pay= Go away! As is, they have too much hidden money and other cheats (intentional or bugs) so they never are motivated to change factions.
3 They need to defect to the players faction equally or by an equal mechanic as the AI. This means if AI gets them instantly for free, the player gets them instantly for free too. Tw has a horrible design of making the player spend days of campaign time to obtain something the AI is given instantly, remotely and at no cost.
4 remove any recruitment calculations that change based on how many clans a factions has and/or any cap put in by TW. IF the player wants to legitimately recruit every clan (or most) they should be able too. If not they have no purpose in the game. As id the recruitment calculation becomes unreasonable for normal play once a certain amount of clans join the players faction.
5 Some way for unrecruited, unwanted and persistently defeated clan and factions to actually be removed form the game so that in a very long game there doesn't become state that causes problems because of too many parties.
6 Making peace with feif less faction should be solely to the player as a ruler. As is vassals constantly waste influence voting to make peace with defeated factions, letting out dozens of prisoners who then recruit all of your own troops and attack you again.
As is though, defeated faction mostly become a loot delivery service for you vassal clans as they will catch most of them often enough to get rich off of it.
However it takes too long for them to get to this point.
DO you know what versions and how many days you had for clans to defect? In the recent versions I had not a single clan change factions by the time the map was complete. I think they simply have too much resources (or cheats/ignored mechanics) to run out of money in a timeframe that fits the game. I know TW has said they should run out and defect, but if it doesn't happen in the time it takes to paint the map, it's not a functioning mechanic.lords defect after a while so there a just a few left already.