Sara The Fox and other NPC questions

[Monglor]

I've had Sara with me pretty much since the start, she hasn't upset anybody, she hasn't complained, all things are good. But I'm not sure how to make the best use of her as a fighter. At the moment I am basically trying to turn her gradually into a sword and shield wielding knight sort of trooper, but that really doesn't feel right. Given her stats and skills is there a way to make her viable as light armoured infantry? And are light armoured infantry ever viable, or should I just seal her up in a tin can and plonk her on a fat horse? If she's unencumbered, armed with a fast weapon and a fast horse, will she have a chance in a fight?

Also beyond this does anybody else have any tips regarding the NPCs in this mod? I've built up, more by luck than anything, a good group that doesn't seem to antagonise each other at all and that doesn't complain at my methods, but I'm wondering what the best course of action is with them. Should I pay out the masses of cash and turn them into knights themselves, or let the NPCs worry about that?

Should also add this is a fantastic mod. I steered clear of it in favour of others early on as I was put off a little by the fantasy elements. This was a huge mistake which I'm glad I eventually corrected. 

 

[Landwalker]

I've taken to using my group of NPC companions into what essentially amounts to my characters Companion Cavalry.  I gave them all reasonably good armor, shields, and heavy warhammers, stuck them all on horses, and just went nuts.

As part of an experiment, I decided to also try to only have cavalry soldiers in my group.  So I was rocking around with my eight companions and about ten cavalry soldiers of various types ("rescued" adventurers, a valkyrie, a sword maiden, a sword sister, a few squires-at-arms, etc.), and I actually had some fantastic luck with that.  Unfortunately, decent-tier cavalry troops are pricey as hell, so I don't think that would be viable on a large scale.

Cheers.

 

[Monglor]

I've taken to using my group of NPC companions into what essentially amounts to my characters Companion Cavalry.  I gave them all reasonably good armor, shields, and heavy warhammers, stuck them all on horses, and just went nuts.

As part of an experiment, I decided to also try to only have cavalry soldiers in my group.  So I was rocking around with my eight companions and about ten cavalry soldiers of various types ("rescued" adventurers, a valkyrie, a sword maiden, a sword sister, a few squires-at-arms, etc.), and I actually had some fantastic luck with that.  Unfortunately, decent-tier cavalry troops are pricey as hell, so I don't think that would be viable on a large scale.

Cheers.

Yeah I've had wallet issues with that plan too. I took a bunch of the red dudes (only been playing a couple of days, not learned the names yet) and trained them all up as Knights, didn't take long and soon I had forty of them in assorted states of training, from squires on up. Ouch, said my finances. Luckily I was soon called to the campaign and, having brutalised some green bloke armies in the open field, my army was mercifully (for the sake of the wages) cut down to size storming a castle. Bit of a shame essentially using my best troops as pin cushions that way, but so it goes. Having an all cavalry force did make my army staggeringly fast on the map too.

The expense of the big cavalry really hurts, but so far I'm only really familiar with the armies of the red and blue nations, somewhat with the greens, and I haven't really found a decent anti-cavalry solution yet. I used to have an army of troops working their way up the red army infantry like, but they never made it very far before knight-heavy armies beat them down.

Currently I'm working on building a block of archers which I shall screen with a small force of heavy cavalry. I'm not too optimistic about this though as there seems to be so much heavy cavalry around that the archers are going to have to get real good real fast or get shish-kebabbed on lances.

 

[Landwalker]

I haven't really hit upon an effective anti-cavalry approach, either.  In fact, the best solution to cavalry-heavy enemy forces I've found is simply having cavalry of your own -- that's the only situation in which I've managed not to get horribly bloodied by D'Shar (brown) forces.  I don't know any way to deal with a cavalry-heavy force with an infantry-heavy army of your own, though.  None of the factions (as far as I've encountered) really have stand-out spearmen.  Sarleon (the red guys) has some halberdiers high up their unit tree, and the Empire (yellow) have pikemen, I think, but I don't know how effective either of these are against cavalry opponents because I haven't really tried that out yet.

From a purely hypothetical standpoint, you should be able to achieve some success by having a good-sized amount of quality missile troops, be they archers or crossbowmen, defended in melee by polearm heavy infantry.  They would, at least theoretically, prevent the archers from getting run down by cavalry or chewed up in melee, and allow the archers to either shoot the horses out from under the enemy cavalry or, heck, even shoot the horsemen themselves.  Unfortunately it seems like the type of plan that would require a certain degree of numerical superiority, and none of the low-tier units are really up to the task, so I'm not even that sure whether or not it would be financially preferable to having a smaller but highly mobile cavalry force.

Cheers.

 

[Monglor]

Yeah getting the Sarleons to cough up halberds is slooooow going. What I tend to do with them is just pack their footmen together so they can't be mown down. I find no matter the unit the best defence against cavalry is to stick together, but that's sort of a general thing. Problem of course with this is that it dramatically reduces the effectiveness of archers. I'm not opposed in principle to throwing down with numbers on my side in a fight, but because the game considers leading thirty peons as the same as leading thirty knights, there's not a lot of options. Least not until I get my army size up. It's sixty at the moment, which is sort of in that annoying middle ground where you can't quite just roll up to a Lord and punch him in the nuts, but everybody else runs away. Harumph. 

 

[Maeglin Dubh]

Having trouble with cavalry in 1.21?

Empire Heavy Pikemen. Accept no substitutes.

 

[Michiko]

Sara the Fox in my game has a sword and shield and a crossbow + bolts in my game. I won't say it's the best for her, but I wanted her to participate in the long-ranged style of my army without having to train Power Draw. She started off with throwing, but she wasn't getting any kills due to the nature of my army, therefore levelling only from shared exp; very slowly.

So far it's worked great.

I'll post a thread about my anti-cavalry strategy, cuz it's off-topic here, and also I already wanted to make a thread on it anyway. Screenshots and all.

 

[Lord Kehm]

I've taken to using my group of NPC companions into what essentially amounts to my characters Companion Cavalry.  I gave them all reasonably good armor, shields, and heavy warhammers, stuck them all on horses, and just went nuts.

As part of an experiment, I decided to also try to only have cavalry soldiers in my group.  So I was rocking around with my eight companions and about ten cavalry soldiers of various types ("rescued" adventurers, a valkyrie, a sword maiden, a sword sister, a few squires-at-arms, etc.), and I actually had some fantastic luck with that.  Unfortunately, decent-tier cavalry troops are pricey as hell, so I don't think that would be viable on a large scale.

Cheers.

Yeah I've had wallet issues with that plan too. I took a bunch of the red dudes (only been playing a couple of days, not learned the names yet) and trained them all up as Knights, didn't take long and soon I had forty of them in assorted states of training, from squires on up. Ouch, said my finances. Luckily I was soon called to the campaign and, having brutalised some green bloke armies in the open field, my army was mercifully (for the sake of the wages) cut down to size storming a castle. Bit of a shame essentially using my best troops as pin cushions that way, but so it goes. Having an all cavalry force did make my army staggeringly fast on the map too.

The expense of the big cavalry really hurts, but so far I'm only really familiar with the armies of the red and blue nations, somewhat with the greens, and I haven't really found a decent anti-cavalry solution yet. I used to have an army of troops working their way up the red army infantry like, but they never made it very far before knight-heavy armies beat them down.

Currently I'm working on building a block of archers which I shall screen with a small force of heavy cavalry. I'm not too optimistic about this though as there seems to be so much heavy cavalry around that the archers are going to have to get real good real fast or get shish-kebabbed on lances.

To hold up a sizable cavalry force like that, you'll have to be on constent raiding parties on villages, which really doesn't help if you want to switch factions later. I used to have to dish out five thousand a week to keep up my Valkyrie force until I switched to Ravenstern.

 

[SXIII]

My anti-calvary solution is based on archers. I have at leat 1/3 to 50% archers in my army combined with infantry and some calvary for chasing down the last few enemy horsemen. What I do is order my infantry and horsemen stand close and position my archers 10 paces in front of them (preferably while being on a hill). My ranged troops tend to weaken or kill most of their first wave and if anyone gets close enough my infantry and calvary automatically attack the enemy and break their attack -> enemy gets killed.