Sieges, razing, governors, alliances, and land acquisition

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Please if the devs read this, make the following changes.

1. There needs to be a way to prevent soldiers from attempting to assault the walls. It wastes so many soldiers when I have siege weapons or if I go open the gate myself. I hate how I can't just make them assault the gate only or wait by the gate for me to breach it. I do not want them to assault the walls most times, and there should be a way to prevent my soldiers from attempting to take the walls.

2. There needs to be better ways to maintain loyalties and governors in settlements. Governors should be separate from your companion count. I should be able to either have one additional companion per castle and city or just have governors be their own thing with a separate count. Often, companions aren't good governors anyways so governors should be their on thing. Possibly, you could appoint someone from the surrounding towns as a governor. I want my companions for combat or leading armies. Having them hold settlements to keep loyalty up is such a waste.

3. There needs to be an easier way to get land in this game if you want to b independent from a kingdom. A good fix would be if as a mercenary, you could get land with your influence. It is impossible to get land without it being a rebel city unless you are a vassal.

4. A related issue is that you should be able to separate from a kingdom without losing all opinion and land. If you are a vassal and you want to start your own kingdom, there is no pathway for that.

5. There should be better diplomacy options for making alliances through marriage or other means. There should be an option to do a joint war and call in your allies if you are at war. It is impossible to not get crushed as a small kingdom if a large kingdom declares war on you.

6. Villages should be able to repel small armies without help. 12 soldiers should not be able to raze a village. IRL they would bet killed by the village peasants. Villages should have a population that gets converted to militia if the town is getting razed. I hate how when I am at war, I basically have to behead everyone so they can't make 12 man armies to raze my villages and decrease my food and loyalty. Another option would be for the castle or city garrison to be able to repel these raiders.

Please do something because these are major balance issues that heavily detract from game play. This patch is a step min the right direction, but I would love to see so much more. Keep up the good work!
 
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2. There needs to be better ways to maintain loyalties and governors in settlements. Governors should be separate from your companion count. I should be able to either have one additional companion per castle and city or just have governors be their own thing with a separate count. Often, companions aren't good governors anyways so governors should be their on thing. Possibly, you could appoint someone from the surrounding towns as a governor. I want my companions for combat or leading armies. Having them hold settlements to keep loyalty up is such a waste.
There are several policies helping very well, up to +3 or 4 daily loyalty.
 
2. There needs to be better ways to maintain loyalties and governors in settlements. Governors should be separate from your companion count. I should be able to either have one additional companion per castle and city or just have governors be their own thing with a separate count. Often, companions aren't good governors anyways so governors should be their on thing. Possibly, you could appoint someone from the surrounding towns as a governor. I want my companions for combat or leading armies. Having them hold settlements to keep loyalty up is such a waste.
their should indeed be a way to hire governors from the locals and these should not be counted as a companion or be usable in that way.
It would be good to select from a few templates for different roles (see @Strat videos). It is a chore to level the required skills on companions anyway. they are completely spread out over different skills.
 
1. There needs to be a way to prevent soldiers from attempting to assault the walls. It wastes so many soldiers when I have siege weapons or if I go open the gate myself. I hate how I can't just make them assault the gate only or wait by the gate for me to breach it. I do not want them to assault the walls most times, and there should be a way to prevent my soldiers from attempting to take the walls.
You can do this if you select the groups meant for the walls and give them different orders/turn off delegated command. Problem is there's no way of telling which group you are selecting without ordering a group to move and waiting to see which group does move which causes a mess (no highlight or anything when selecting a group in any situation, no group icons in siege battles). Also if you turn off delegated command for a group in a siege battle it causes other AI controlled groups to start behaving weirdly, running from one side of the battle to the other and so forth.
 
1. There needs to be a way to prevent soldiers from attempting to assault the walls. It wastes so many soldiers when I have siege weapons or if I go open the gate myself. I hate how I can't just make them assault the gate only or wait by the gate for me to breach it. I do not want them to assault the walls most times, and there should be a way to prevent my soldiers from attempting to take the walls.
You need to first set Delegate Command to Off (F6) at the Order of Battle screen and then directly place the folks far behind the lines and set them to stop and shield wall. The AI that will man the siege engines will ignore this of course which is fine. I'd love to see priority targeting by the AI using Siege Engines - the defenders on Ballista and Catapults seem much better and very deadly - the offensive siege engines not so much.
2. There needs to be better ways to maintain loyalties and governors in settlements. Governors should be separate from your companion count. I should be able to either have one additional companion per castle and city or just have governors be their own thing with a separate count. Often, companions aren't good governors anyways so governors should be their on thing. Possibly, you could appoint someone from the surrounding towns as a governor. I want my companions for combat or leading armies. Having them hold settlements to keep loyalty up is such a waste.
Forgiveness of Debts and one other policy have additions to Loyalty that at the very minimum can offset the -3 Culture mismatch, pair that with a proper Culture companion and taking some Perks you can "rebuild" a town. @Strat (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWXXAjBRaEpQdxKvDMexJBg) has amazing series and (meta)analysis on this very topic to hook you up though it should be much clearer.

All that said, I agree that a Governor should not count against your total Companions - hell I do not think Caravans should either. Being able to promote a notable would be good but I do not like the RNG around that and think the Companion model works (since you can train them - sort of) and not count against the top.

3. There needs to be an easier way to get land in this game if you want to b independent from a kingdom. A good fix would be if as a mercenary, you could get land with your influence. It is impossible to get land without it being a rebel city unless you are a vassal.

4. A related issue is that you should be able to separate from a kingdom without losing all opinion and land. If you are a vassal and you want to start your own kingdom, there is no pathway for that.
I disagree with these - and at the risk of invoking realism - I do think that leaving as a Vassal works appropriately and being a non-Kingdom landowner is more of a glitch than anything. Right now sniping a Rebel faction and Trade 300 bypass the Kingdom requirement but I actually think you should be forced to make a Kingdom versus what you can do right now and essentially build up a massive garrison and Companion force to promote to Lords.

That said, I believe Warband had an option to defect if you were slighted by not getting a fief, that should happen again if you lose a vote with the immediate option to Rebel/Leave with half the penalty. Something more immersive would be getting all the angry Lords who didn't get fiefs for X Amount of Council Votes could have the option to rebel similar to the Sect/Rebellion mechanic in the Diplomacy mod but I think that is far too ambitious for the core work that TW has left to do.
5. There should be better diplomacy options for making alliances through marriage or other means. There should be an option to do a joint war and call in your allies if you are at war. It is impossible to not get crushed as a small kingdom if a large kingdom declares war on you.
Two different thoughts here - agree either way.

1 - On marriages I do agree they should hold better sway. If I am married to the child of a King/Khan that should reduce the chance they will declare war on me since their child is likely to die. Maybe not a huge debuff but a significant one where outside of aggression or having a ton of bordering territory they wouldn't declare. I also think marrying other leaders should be allowed - and that you would just join their Kingdom and become Ruler upon their death. There should be a way to choose if they marry into your Kingdom or vice-versa so you can make strategic marraiges with Kingdoms that are getting curb-stomped and inherit their lands into your Kingdom and fight the war on their behalf.

And as an aside, I hate how unimmersive familial relationships are. No one seems to care about it and even my spouse doesnt seem to really care outside of the new introduction

2 - 100% agree we need *something*. At the very minimum I'd like a minimal truce period enforced but I think direct Alliances, Defense Pacts and Non-Aggression Pacts (somewhere in between the latter 2) would be great native additions.
6. Towns should be able to repel small armies without help. 12 soldiers should not be able to raze a town. IRL they would bet killed by the town peasants. Towns should have a population that gets converted to militia if the town is getting razed. I hate how when I am at war, I basically have to behead everyone so they can't make 12 man armies to raze my towns and decrease my food and loyalty. Another option would be for the castle or city garrison to be able to repel these raiders.
The auto-calc has been adjusted so many times already - the 1.8.0 beta patch really added better strategic theater-level cohesion between Armies so getting smashed by a combined 1800-man Army is still plenty realistic. It's balanced well enough as it is but I do like the idea of a hidden "emergency" militia value though you can argue the civilians are already levies as is.

Good thoughts overall even if I didn't agree
 
their should indeed be a way to hire governors from the locals and these should not be counted as a companion or be usable in that way.
It would be good to select from a few templates for different roles (see @Strat videos). It is a chore to level the required skills on companions anyway. they are completely spread out over different skills.
No there shouldn’t.

This has been and always will be a terrible suggestion.

A huge portion of the management side of this game is you don’t have enough bodies to do everything. Managers and stand-ins aren’t represented, but they are obviously still there.

Your Workshops still run

Your Garrison’s still hire troops

Your castles still collect taxes

As far as trusted inner circle, this should be limited with tough choice to make

Do I want a super party with lots of companions?

Should I go intelligence or cunning to cut back on the number of companions I need in my party?

Should I keep the max amount of parties which cost money, or should I run caravans that make money?

Do I marry my daughter to a companion clan and keep their them happy and stock their bodies, or should I keep her single and train her as a governor?

Having limited influence makes these intriguing choices. This game needs MORE of that, not less.

Should we have better ways to gain experience in most categories for our character and all family and companions? Yes, absolutely.

Should skill trees get a couple more adjustments to ensure all lines are multi-faceted? Yes, and it’s almost there.

Should management decisions be trivialized and we materialize armies, caravans, workshops, and governors in infinite amounts whenever needed? No, and I don’t understand why people advocate for it. You may not want all of that, but it’s all been asked for, and would completely crush all “span of control” progression and management the game is offering. This isn’t suppose to be a “your a god with a super bias set of rules” type game most are. If you want it to be, then mod it. But don’t compromise the base game
 
No there shouldn’t.

This has been and always will be a terrible suggestion.

A huge portion of the management side of this game is you don’t have enough bodies to do everything. Managers and stand-ins aren’t represented, but they are obviously still there.

Your Workshops still run

Your Garrison’s still hire troops

Your castles still collect taxes

As far as trusted inner circle, this should be limited with tough choice to make

Do I want a super party with lots of companions?

Should I go intelligence or cunning to cut back on the number of companions I need in my party?

Should I keep the max amount of parties which cost money, or should I run caravans that make money?

Do I marry my daughter to a companion clan and keep their them happy and stock their bodies, or should I keep her single and train her as a governor?

Having limited influence makes these intriguing choices. This game needs MORE of that, not less.

Should we have better ways to gain experience in most categories for our character and all family and companions? Yes, absolutely.

Should skill trees get a couple more adjustments to ensure all lines are multi-faceted? Yes, and it’s almost there.

Should management decisions be trivialized and we materialize armies, caravans, workshops, and governors in infinite amounts whenever needed? No, and I don’t understand why people advocate for it. You may not want all of that, but it’s all been asked for, and would completely crush all “span of control” progression and management the game is offering. This isn’t suppose to be a “your a god with a super bias set of rules” type game most are. If you want it to be, then mod it. But don’t compromise the base game
You make good points. I actually agree.
That said, the training of governor style companions could be more clear
 
You need to first set Delegate Command to Off (F6) at the Order of Battle screen and then directly place the folks far behind the lines and set them to stop and shield wall. The AI that will man the siege engines will ignore this of course which is fine. I'd love to see priority targeting by the AI using Siege Engines - the defenders on Ballista and Catapults seem much better and very deadly - the offensive siege engines not so much.

Forgiveness of Debts and one other policy have additions to Loyalty that at the very minimum can offset the -3 Culture mismatch, pair that with a proper Culture companion and taking some Perks you can "rebuild" a town. @Strat (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWXXAjBRaEpQdxKvDMexJBg) has amazing series and (meta)analysis on this very topic to hook you up though it should be much clearer.

All that said, I agree that a Governor should not count against your total Companions - hell I do not think Caravans should either. Being able to promote a notable would be good but I do not like the RNG around that and think the Companion model works (since you can train them - sort of) and not count against the top.


I disagree with these - and at the risk of invoking realism - I do think that leaving as a Vassal works appropriately and being a non-Kingdom landowner is more of a glitch than anything. Right now sniping a Rebel faction and Trade 300 bypass the Kingdom requirement but I actually think you should be forced to make a Kingdom versus what you can do right now and essentially build up a massive garrison and Companion force to promote to Lords.

That said, I believe Warband had an option to defect if you were slighted by not getting a fief, that should happen again if you lose a vote with the immediate option to Rebel/Leave with half the penalty. Something more immersive would be getting all the angry Lords who didn't get fiefs for X Amount of Council Votes could have the option to rebel similar to the Sect/Rebellion mechanic in the Diplomacy mod but I think that is far too ambitious for the core work that TW has left to do.

Two different thoughts here - agree either way.

1 - On marriages I do agree they should hold better sway. If I am married to the child of a King/Khan that should reduce the chance they will declare war on me since their child is likely to die. Maybe not a huge debuff but a significant one where outside of aggression or having a ton of bordering territory they wouldn't declare. I also think marrying other leaders should be allowed - and that you would just join their Kingdom and become Ruler upon their death. There should be a way to choose if they marry into your Kingdom or vice-versa so you can make strategic marraiges with Kingdoms that are getting curb-stomped and inherit their lands into your Kingdom and fight the war on their behalf.

And as an aside, I hate how unimmersive familial relationships are. No one seems to care about it and even my spouse doesnt seem to really care outside of the new introduction

2 - 100% agree we need *something*. At the very minimum I'd like a minimal truce period enforced but I think direct Alliances, Defense Pacts and Non-Aggression Pacts (somewhere in between the latter 2) would be great native additions.

The auto-calc has been adjusted so many times already - the 1.8.0 beta patch really added better strategic theater-level cohesion between Armies so getting smashed by a combined 1800-man Army is still plenty realistic. It's balanced well enough as it is but I do like the idea of a hidden "emergency" militia value though you can argue the civilians are already levies as is.

Good thoughts overall even if I didn't agree
Thank you for the youtube recommendation! It is very helpful. For the sieging mechanics, I do understand that tactic. I have done it before, but maybe I'm missing something. When I do as described and have them stand in front of the gate in a shield wall while I open the gate, when I then give them the command to charge, they try to assault the walls again. If I try to move them inside the gate, they just resume the shield wall and don't assault. Is there something I'm missing?

While there are policies that help with loyal, I find it very hard to offset in a food shortage or when I'm being raided (I mean duh right? more on that at the end) and I think there could be some more was to help balance loyalties. Maybe you could have events where you host tournaments in a town or passively donate money to keep loyalty high. Possibly if you build up enough renown to where towns people like you (or fear you) enough to not rebel. I know you can improve relations with villages so maybe there could be a loyalty system that encompasses what town and village notables think of you. The best way to fix this would be my next two points that tie in though.

You should be able to promote a village or town notable to governor. That way you don't get the culture difference and maybe even a little bonus loyalty for making it someone within the town or village. If it HAS to be a companion then yes governors and caravans should not count. It's ridiculous and hinders your ability to grow late game.

I would love the option to rebel as a vassal and take less penalties. It is currently impossible to stop being a vassal without HUGE opinion penalties which basically lead you to be in an endless war with whoever you were a vassal of. While buying land with high trade is an option, I just would like to see more options to acquire land. I feel as if this game makes it exceptionally hard to have an independent kingdom because as a small kingdom, you get crushed by other nations due to the lack of diplomatic options as we discussed. I MYSELF want to be the banner lord, but this game makes it extremely difficult to do so. There should be more ways to form a small kingdom and be able to maintain one. Additionally, companion limits are terrible late game. I need to be able to have enough companions so that I can raise several armies that will come to my aid against the AI which is much bigger and stronger than my. Also if I want companions to lead divisions in my army on top of that, the current companion limit makes that impossible.

I don't know how to fix companion limit issues, but maybe make it scale with how much land you have??? I just feel like the companion limit is so, well, limiting! Especially because everything requires companion. Perhaps you just make it so that each additional companion costs more to recruit, but not have a limit on the number? What are your thoughts?

I feel like there should be a way to spend influence as a mercenary on SOMETHING. The decay of influence is fine, but if I'm killing whole armies and taking a lot of prisoners to the point where I'm beating the influence decay, I think there should be something for me to spend it on. What do you think?

As far as town and villages getting raided go (which again would help with loyalty), I feel like there are two solutions. 1. the garrison in the town should be able to deploy to prevent raidings provided that the garrison has enough troops or 2. The village people should be some low tier militia (thinking realism retired soldiers and women with axes and pitchforks) with a population size that can defend themselves. It is TOTAL BS that an army of 12 comprised of low tier units can keep raiding my towns. Realistically, the castle or town garrison would go and stop this or the village people wouldn't just stand by and get slaughtered, they'd take up arms against 12 thugs and kill them. This basically makes it to where I don't have enough armies to suppress the raidings (because of companion limits) and every time someone gets ransomed or escapes, they raise an army of 12 and raid my cities. Only solution is to behead everyone and now I'm hated. A better diplomacy system could have other nations come to my aid to help defend my lands while I fight the big battles.

The hard part is that all of these issues feed into each other making it hard to solve one without addressing the rest. Hopefully a dev sees and makes some adjustments! Or the modding community will do it for them :smile:
 
No there shouldn’t.

This has been and always will be a terrible suggestion.

A huge portion of the management side of this game is you don’t have enough bodies to do everything. Managers and stand-ins aren’t represented, but they are obviously still there.

Your Workshops still run

Your Garrison’s still hire troops

Your castles still collect taxes

As far as trusted inner circle, this should be limited with tough choice to make

Do I want a super party with lots of companions?

Should I go intelligence or cunning to cut back on the number of companions I need in my party?

Should I keep the max amount of parties which cost money, or should I run caravans that make money?

Do I marry my daughter to a companion clan and keep their them happy and stock their bodies, or should I keep her single and train her as a governor?

Having limited influence makes these intriguing choices. This game needs MORE of that, not less.

Should we have better ways to gain experience in most categories for our character and all family and companions? Yes, absolutely.

Should skill trees get a couple more adjustments to ensure all lines are multi-faceted? Yes, and it’s almost there.

Should management decisions be trivialized and we materialize armies, caravans, workshops, and governors in infinite amounts whenever needed? No, and I don’t understand why people advocate for it. You may not want all of that, but it’s all been asked for, and would completely crush all “span of control” progression and management the game is offering. This isn’t suppose to be a “your a god with a super bias set of rules” type game most are. If you want it to be, then mod it. But don’t compromise the base game
While I understand the idea that there should be a management aspect to the game because as you say, you can't do it all. You have to select where you want you focus. I think that that works fine early and mid game, but late game it becomes very limiting. Who will lead my armies? Who will lead my divisions? Who will govern my cities? Who will make the money to offset all these expenses? Since everything requires companions and you get maybe 6ish late game, it becomes very hard to grow a kingdom. Going from a small kingdom to a large kingdom in this game is the hardest transition because you are so limited. Them maintaining a kingdom is even harder. Please check out the other reply I did where I addressed why this is such a big issue and tell me what you think. If you play a game like crusader kings 3 (I know a very different type of game, but bear with me), the higher up you go, the more vassals you are allowed to have which makes the transition from a small kingdom to a big one less cumbersome. I feel like there is some middle ground here where you still have to prioritize, but its not literally unplayable because of lack of resources.
 
You can do this if you select the groups meant for the walls and give them different orders/turn off delegated command. Problem is there's no way of telling which group you are selecting without ordering a group to move and waiting to see which group does move which causes a mess (no highlight or anything when selecting a group in any situation, no group icons in siege battles). Also if you turn off delegated command for a group in a siege battle it causes other AI controlled groups to start behaving weirdly, running from one side of the battle to the other and so forth.
Yeah I've tried this before, if you look at my other reply, its the first thing I mention. I just can't seem to get them to charge without them immediately returning to trying to assault the walls. Am I missing something?
 
their should indeed be a way to hire governors from the locals and these should not be counted as a companion or be usable in that way.
It would be good to select from a few templates for different roles (see @Strat videos). It is a chore to level the required skills on companions anyway. they are completely spread out over different skills.
Thank you for the recommendation!
 
Forgiveness of Debts and one other policy have additions to Loyalty that at the very minimum can offset the -3 Culture mismatch, pair that with a proper Culture companion and taking some Perks you can "rebuild" a town. @Strat (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWXXAjBRaEpQdxKvDMexJBg) has amazing series and (meta)analysis on this very topic to hook you up though it should be much clearer.
Thanks for the shout out!! I'll toss my two cents in - the only gripe I have with fiefs and management in general is the slow rate of XP gain for companions. They have adjusted XP gain for a lot of skills recently which made it much easier, but take melee skills for example - It's not hard for a player to farm XP since we can out-fight the AI very easily. However, a companion in combat even at the higher skill levels still make stupid choices and get destroyed. For example: fighting 1 vs 1 a companion with late game armor and 300+ skills makes them formidable. However, insert them into a 5 vs 1 and it's pretty much gg even against low tier enemies like looters. Swap a player into the equation with 0 combat skills and the worst weapons can still effectively win the 5 vs 1 because we don't just charge in to trade blows. We back up, flank, position, etc. but the AI doesn't do this, which usually means they get 1 - 5 kills and then get dunked on lol. This is just one example of how annoying it is to farm XP for companions, I have a whole list like tactics, leadership, etc. for companions.

I understand where others are concerned about with managing fiefs, but with a little bit of planning ahead of time it shouldn't be an issue to manage and maintain fiefs, even without a governor. Passing good policies pretty much eliminates loyalty issues and putting a good governor in place is just an extra bonus.
 
1. for sure, not having direct and full control of troops in siege is very annoying.
2. Agreed, I think an alternate way to control the fiefs would be good, like a marshal law or criminal solution. As is you need either matching fiefs to your culture or policies(as ruler), but both are limiting how you play the game with absolutely no payoff. Oh no, this number goes down and then this number goes down, unless you this number goes up oh wow what an interesting thing.
3. It would be good to have a player only settlement, but I doubt anything like that will get added in the base game. Otherwise, it's pretty easy to take fiefs IF you can manhandle factions on your own, which you can if you use the right troops and strategy.
4. Some means if breaking away with high relation lords would be cool, but again I doubt anything will be added.
5. Yeah, but I think TW just doesn't want players to finish the game so any reasonable ideas that would help finish the game are probably thrown out. It's just a loop of same wars, either steam roll everyone or it's a stalemate.
6. If you mean actual towns, the AI usually can't take them without large armies, but the army team ups may be changing this (good?). If you mean village raids, it depends on the villages militia, if it's been defeated they can't fight back. I agree though you should be able to pro actively replace a militia in your own village if you wish. Patrols that can actually defeat AI parties should be added too.
 
There are some cultures very reluctant towards forgiveness of debt 😉
Well not a problem when you are the ruler
And those reluctant ones belong further more to those who experience rebellions the more often 🤣
That’ s manageable, anyway …
 
1. There needs to be a way to prevent soldiers from attempting to assault the walls. It wastes so many soldiers when I have siege weapons or if I go open the gate myself. I hate how I can't just make them assault the gate only or wait by the gate for me to breach it. I do not want them to assault the walls most times, and there should be a way to prevent my soldiers from attempting to take the walls.

2. There needs to be better ways to maintain loyalties and governors in settlements. Governors should be separate from your companion count. I should be able to either have one additional companion per castle and city or just have governors be their own thing with a separate count. Often, companions aren't good governors anyways so governors should be their on thing. Possibly, you could appoint someone from the surrounding towns as a governor. I want my companions for combat or leading armies. Having them hold settlements to keep loyalty up is such a waste.

3. There needs to be an easier way to get land in this game if you want to b independent from a kingdom. A good fix would be if as a mercenary, you could get land with your influence. It is impossible to get land without it being a rebel city unless you are a vassal.

4. A related issue is that you should be able to separate from a kingdom without losing all opinion and land. If you are a vassal and you want to start your own kingdom, there is no pathway for that.

5. There should be better diplomacy options for making alliances through marriage or other means. There should be an option to do a joint war and call in your allies if you are at war. It is impossible to not get crushed as a small kingdom if a large kingdom declares war on you.

6. Towns should be able to repel small armies without help. 12 soldiers should not be able to raze a town. IRL they would bet killed by the town peasants. Towns should have a population that gets converted to militia if the town is getting razed. I hate how when I am at war, I basically have to behead everyone so they can't make 12 man armies to raze my towns and decrease my food and loyalty. Another option would be for the castle or city garrison to be able to repel these raiders.
1. Problem: An open gate can be close again. The AI seeks to do so at the earliest opportunity, even ignoring combat to do so. This can result in your soldiers being trapped between gates. Fix: The AI will not assault through the gate unless the gate is broken.

2. Your family members typically make good governors, but they also make good everything else. Having to decide which is more important to you is an integral part of the game.

3. Agreed. To get land as a non-vassal you can either become a criminal and siege (aka get rekt unless you cheat), wait for a rebellion to break out and race against the faction that the rebellion is against while hoping you have enough soldiers to take the town/castle (because you can't starve them out), or spend a frankly ridiculous amount of time to level up your trade and save up millions of gold to buy a settlement. You can't even encourage a rebellion, or cause a rebellion without being in charge of the settlement in question.

4. Agreed. Rebelling against your current liege is a time-honored tradition in feudalism. Giving back your land AND taking a huge opinion loss is probably one of the top 5 dumbest decisions that have been made in the development of this game so far.

5. Agreed, except for the impossible to not get crushed part. Smith-for-gold and keep a massive garrison of T2 imperials. Up to the limit if you can. Then you skirmish with the smaller enemies while running from the large armies until the AI gets tired and is willing the send you a peace treaty. If you do enough skirmishing, they'll even pay you.

6. I think you mean villages, and I agree. If you try to raze a village with a small force the village will rise up against you, but they won't do the same against the AI. Having to constantly run around fending off robber-barons is a dumb mechanic.
 
3. There needs to be an easier way to get land in this game if you want to b independent from a kingdom. A good fix would be if as a mercenary, you could get land with your influence. It is impossible to get land without it being a rebel city unless you are a vassal.
Sorry but I have to disagree with this one - It's actually not that hard to take land by yourself. I doubt anyone here is watching my current Tamerlane bandit play through (spoiler alert if you are), but I even did a WC with a single clan - no vassal, no recruiting nobles, no promoting companions, etc. And I was at war with everyone on the map from day 1 (No peace allowed). I'm not trying to say "git gud" but there may be some tactics you have not considered using before that are holding you back.
I do agree with you 100% on point 1 - I would love to have more control over units during a siege. I usually put everyone into 2 groups and control them that way, but there should be a better way to do it.
 
I’m interested if you have any clue.
One of the biggest reasons most people have issues taking a fief solo is they try to go after the one they want. Unfortunately it rarely works out that way - you have to take whatever you can get :smile: Usually waiting for a war to break out, then watching a siege take place. Even if the siege fails, the garrison and militia will be depleted and it's much easier to swoop in to take the fief at that point. I usually wait until a few battles have taken place, that way the kingdoms have lost their top tier troops and usually fighting with tier 1 replacements. Just a lot of little things that can add up quickly and make taking a fief almost trivial!
 
people have issues taking a fief solo is they try to go after the one they want
Completely agree, I've long forgotten the idea of getting what I want, I get what I can, this is enough anyway... and can still improve with the time passing (more fiefs, etc..)

But is that what you wrote which is your Tamerlane bandit play through ?
 
Thanks for the shout out!! I'll toss my two cents in - the only gripe I have with fiefs and management in general is the slow rate of XP gain for companions. They have adjusted XP gain for a lot of skills recently which made it much easier, but take melee skills for example - It's not hard for a player to farm XP since we can out-fight the AI very easily. However, a companion in combat even at the higher skill levels still make stupid choices and get destroyed. For example: fighting 1 vs 1 a companion with late game armor and 300+ skills makes them formidable. However, insert them into a 5 vs 1 and it's pretty much gg even against low tier enemies like looters. Swap a player into the equation with 0 combat skills and the worst weapons can still effectively win the 5 vs 1 because we don't just charge in to trade blows. We back up, flank, position, etc. but the AI doesn't do this, which usually means they get 1 - 5 kills and then get dunked on lol. This is just one example of how annoying it is to farm XP for companions, I have a whole list like tactics, leadership, etc. for companions.

I understand where others are concerned about with managing fiefs, but with a little bit of planning ahead of time it shouldn't be an issue to manage and maintain fiefs, even without a governor. Passing good policies pretty much eliminates loyalty issues and putting a good governor in place is just an extra bonus.

In my opinion there should be a separated "Management Tree" with all the governor perks. Why is it advantageous for a governor to be a decent archer or fast runner? And then being assigned as a governor should slowly level that tree.

To companion leveling, their xp gain should be greatly improved generally. The combat AI is a sad theme, often for the luck of the player in early game, I doubt TW will/can make it better. But they should.
 
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