On my way to find glory and fame, my character accidentially Harald von Schattenberg has accidentially set europe on fire
As Niftyeye wrote in a different thread, the peaceful times are a problem with the factions being unable to nominate a new marshall. As Harald is a bit nefarious, he tried some different things to get around this peaceful stage, but wasn't successful after all. At first he tried to introduce a war by asking his fellow noble buddy von Riesch (yes, he joined the Kaiserthum
) and he directed him to the netherlands to provoke them. This wasn't very helpful, as nothing really happened. So Harald told himself, if nobody gives a vote to a new marshall, i shall try. My vote may be tiny, but it's the only one, and that means i have a 100% majority. So he rode up to some austrian noble bloke (Graf Bellegarde) and asked him who should be the next marshall in his opinion. After a bit of sneaking around the point, it got clear that
he wants to be promoted. SO i flatterd him a bit and said i would support him. I padded his shoulder, waved him goodbye and was angry that nothing really happened. Harald was disappointed and decided to join the french army, as they always got some action running. On his way to his Kaiser, he suddenly noticed that small white line informing me, that Graf Bellgarde was installed as the new marshall of austria. But nothing really happened, as the Kaiserthum was completely at peace. So Harald told Kaiser Franz to keep on with smoking weed and chilling on those lovely shielings.
After enlisting in the french army, he had some nice fights with the brits and prussians... and there was never any city attacked. Until Austria declared war on the french. It got really intense, as their nobles were well prepared. They launched a campaign with over 1500 soldiers and the french army hadn't a chance at all. They took over 2 cities in less than an ingame week, including the siege battles. If you have a battle of 1500 vs 200, it doesn't really last long "out of sight".
It think they were really pissed that i changed sides, and tried to give my character some lessons. But Harald thought... what was working once, could work twice, so he asked Napoleon himself who should be the next marshall, in the hope he'd declare himself. But that bloke was in a good mood and gave to job to his buddy Massena. Now that's one of the tougher maréchals. And the other ones are obeying his orders without ever asking a single question. Pretty impressive how Massena introduced the principle of discipline to the french empire in a short time like this. He gathered a force of 14 vassals and i had some good fun in several battles with 600+ men.
Armies/campaigns of those amounts of men are an unstoppable force, as they win their battles with sheer manpower, while having almost no casualties, even if they encounter a party of a king with 300+ men... yep, they mopped up Napoleon pretty badly. They fights are very, very short, so they won't lose enough men to be stopped, their party isn't eroded by losses.... they simply don't loose. As it may be historically correct to have an alpha strike like this, it's killing the game because of the ingame mechanics. With this setup, smaller countries will be gone in some ingame days. The Duchy of Warsaw and il Regno d'Italia are too small for forces like these.
There are 3 points where it'd be possible to change the behaviour. The first one is obviously to reduce the party size of the vassals to get campaigns which are smaller and easier defeated. But this is a bit pointless, if the player has 15+ cha, and can operate 150+ men. He'd be the supreme force on the battlefield by outnumbering his enemies. A different way to change the campaign behaviour and results would be to reinforce the city garrisons. Currently the cities have garrisons of around 200, and it could be raised to 500 and above without changing the result of that 1500 steamtrain campaign. But it'd erode the armies step by step, so at some time they will be defeated and the defending army/vassals will eventually match their size to chase them out of their country. Still, small nations, like Poland, Netherlands and Italy have no room to retreat, so they will be eradicated within the first few ingame weeks. Nations like russia and france have enough space to retreat and to have their vassals building up an army to counter those large campaigns.
The third possibilty would be to shorten the length of campaigns and the amount of vassals involved by script and lord behaviour. That'd keep also bigger nations from raiding countries on the other side of the map. I think the most logical step would be a combination... to increase the number of soldiers in city garrisons an to shorten the lengths and size of campaigns.
The next bug i ran into are cannons. If you have cannons in your army, they tend to change sides if you are helping some villagers being attacked by bandits. You get some red error code messages and than you'll eat some of your own artillery fire. While it's a nice twist that those bandits are intelligent enough to buy off your artillery, it's certainly not meant this way
Also, i wrote in a different thread about the boxing event in the arena. I found that it's a lot easier to beat up the opponents in a Bruce Lee style by simply kicking them. A kick always hits, regardless if your opponent blocks or not. And he also deals more damage, causing him to stagger back, and being open to the next kick. By kicking your opponent you can earn a lot of money without ever raising the str stat or iron flesh
So, if anybody wants to have some real fun and action in alpha 1.2, he should join some factions, ask a lord about who should be the next marshal, join his favorite country, jump in the trench an put on the most protective helmet he can get. It'll get pretty intense. In my game as a mercenary enlisted in the french army, Der Rheinbund is already close to extinction shortly after dealing with the invading force of Austria. And Massena doesn't look tired a single bit.