So, who is the *cheater* in this situation?

[Fearghus The Killer]

So, I'm taking Ravenstern down, marshalling a 2,000 man Fierdsvain warband, besieging Poinsbruk which is garrisoned with 650 with a half-dozen Ravenstern peasant armies running around the town like cockroaches.

Suddenly, Obrist Heynrich, who apparently was "hiding" within the spires of town attacks me. He's got his original force and a month's worth of prisoner recruits totalling about 2,000 men. I only have 170 left in my force. I'm a bit flabbergasted because none of my allies join to defend me, but I think it might be because they are in siege mode (?). Of course, there's no way I'm bothering to fight this guy alone. I quit and reload to right before I siege and attack him instead.

Say what? Same result, none of my guys join the fight. Something isn't right. Reload again. This time I stray away from town, my warband following, and attack the closest Ravenstern lord. All the other Ravenstern lords nearby join in AND Obrist's army joins in, and none of my warband join the fight. That would be my 170 vs. about 3,000 this time around...

Quit. Reload. I wander out toward Alden castle for a minute, then back to Poinsbruk to besiege the town. Obrist is over by the bridge this time, and I notice it says that he is *following* me. Not Konnigur, or any of the other half dozen guys in my warband with more troops...just me.

I don't normally use cheats, but I hate to say that when the AI seems to be attempting to cheat me out of concluding a pretty decent campaign, Ain't got no time for that. Ctrl Alt F4 made Obrist's army a feast for the crows.

Of course, I got the "cheat warning" flash screen. I don't care. I'll do it again if the AI doesn't allow me to fight by the game conventions.

This happen to anyone else, where your warband won't join the fight against a spawn army?

 

[Madame de Pompadour]

Obrist is not hostile to most major factions IIRC. Nothing wrong with game rules, just your misunderstanding.

AI does not help you to fight against parties they aren't hostile to.

 

[Serazu]

For reasons stated right above, you are the cheater.

 

[Fearghus The Killer]

Obrist is not hostile to most major factions IIRC. Nothing wrong with game rules, just your misunderstanding.

AI does not help you to fight against parties they aren't hostile to.

Ahh, I see. Except there's no reason he should be hostile to me since we haven't met. I believe the Mettenheim are auto-hostile to player character from day one just like heretics or bandits or Dawn Knights.

 

[Serazu]

They are. It's written down in a menu screen.

 

[Berkona]

The only thing I don't get is if your with a warband and they see you get attacked they should be rushing to your aid to assist you. If you are by yourself well you shouldn't attack unless your armies are equal.

 

[Egaldor]

Lord 1: Hey look, our marshall is being atacked by an overwhelming force but our  combined forces would be far superior. Should we help him?
Lord 2: No its ok. They are hostile to him.
Lord 1: But...
Lord 2: It's written down in a menu screen

 

[Alavaria]

Same if you are 100 with Noldor and Sarleon and Alderian starts beating up Ulric, you can't join the battle on any one's side.

 

[Fearghus The Killer]

The only thing I don't get is if your with a warband and they see you get attacked they should be rushing to your aid to assist you. If you are by yourself well you shouldn't attack unless your armies are equal.

You would think. That's what I meant by game conventions. This guy is a special character hostile only to you. How he ever gets undone Idk, I've had more than one playthrough of PoP and this hasn't come up before. I'm reasonably certain I've used NPC lords before to take on all the unique spawns including Mettenheim.

Warband alone has enough built-in **** moves trying to keep things evened up. A unique spawn *invading army* only hostile to you who has been gobbling up villagers but is neutral to all NPC lords, that's an additional **** move one would never consider. If I could find something in the so-called lore that would explain it, I'll buy it. But for now, **** move gets dicked with a cheat. My conscience is clear.

 

[Fearghus The Killer]

The only thing I don't get is if your with a warband and they see you get attacked they should be rushing to your aid to assist you. If you are by yourself well you shouldn't attack unless your armies are equal.

Usually by day 500 I can take on anything on the map solo, including besieging any castle or town.

If I had 300 knights with me at the time (and not 170 huscarls. archers and fodder) I would have fought him, might have taken a few *trickster* retreats and healing time but I'd keep hitting him and eventually win. I read in the wiki that this is the largest spawn army.

 

[damesh]

Same if you are 100 with Noldor and Sarleon and Alderian starts beating up Ulric, you can't join the battle on any one's side.

Not quite the same.  His vassals weren't friendly to both parties.  In OP he said he was at war with Ravenstern and attacked a Ravenstern lord, but because his troops aren't hostile to Oberst, who joins the battle before his vassals could, they don't attack.  They're still hostile to Ravenstern and shouldn't care that some kibitzer joined on Ravenstern's side.  That is some BS.

 

[xdj1nn]

well, it's no news that the AI doesn't play by the same mechanics as the player. So, if you take a massive spreadsheet of how things happen in the game you'll notice that the AI cheats 100% of the time by being allowed to not need wealth for way too many things, for having an infinite and invisible source of insta-elite recruitment, etc... In PoP exclusively they also gain access to elite troops 100% of the time, and their garrisons, by in-game economic calcs, should be impossible to maintain.

Then you have the special "bandits" called "armies" that have 2 or 3 ranks of pure stats roflstompers with access to better gear and infinite spawns, you got the hero "bandits" that spawn with massive armies that even in your wildest dreams you could possibly manage to amass. Then there's the fact that they don't need to feed their armies...

So, AI is constantly cheating, pretty much, yet the player has access to a brain that can avoid retarded AI behavior, or even exploit it. For that matter, yeah, the game finds balance by implementing cheap mechanics so the AI can remain "challenging", but to me that's just ridiculous. Floris, for instance, managed to make all mechanics influence AI as well as the Player, so there things make more sense, and you need real strategy at times to beat the AI. Unfortunately it isn't as rich with lore or features like PoP, whilst PoP lacks the depth of game mechanics you can find in other mods and focuses too much on power-gaming and meta-strategy (meta-strategy would be doing the same thing at every play through to even stand a chance, like a mandatory course of actions/strategy, if you skip some steps, you'll get botched until you manage to go back and do them, or if you find any exploitable loop that allows you to recover from skipping said steps.)

I've had, what, around 15 PoP playthroughs, 5 of which I've never had the patience to finish because of repetitiveness. In every single one of them, I've got stuck at some point trying to remain true to my RPing, and then had to resort to pure meta power-gaming at some point to unstuck myself and be able to progress... So if you cheat, well, here are news for you: it doesn't matter... You might be cheating to be able to avoid meta power-gaming, or you may be cheating to avoid tricky situations that look more like a glitch than a feature (like the one you've mentioned). Yet, as you've seen, most people will still call you a cheater and sort of look down on you because of it.

There's a list of features that I've seen in other mods that would do incredible improvements in PoP, but more often then not people here will either be against it, or they'll claim the game became too easy for them (that happens when there's only a single way to play it, but the devs like to narrow it even more and make it only possible to progress in the game with a single strategy while making any alternatives even more impossible to achieve)

In my book you're not cheating, yet, everytime I feel to need to cheat, and I do it, I lose the will to play the game and insta-quit... I mean, the current trial play I'm doing with PoP I'm unable to stay within the game for more than 10 minutes before getting bored to death, and I'm not even cheating...

 

[lconracl]

snip
Warband alone has enough built-in **** moves trying to keep things evened up. A unique spawn *invading army* only hostile to you who has been gobbling up villagers but is neutral to all NPC lords, that's an additional **** move one would never consider. If I could find something in the so-called lore that would explain it, I'll buy it. But for now, **** move gets dicked with a cheat. My conscience is clear.

Obrist Heynrich comes from Mettenheim Renegades and has negative relations for example with:
Kingdom of Pendor
D'Shar Principalities
Noldor
Mettenheim
Barclay
Jatu
Mystmountain Tribes

If you are not able to take him down by yourself, wait till you start your own kingdom and attack it with your own lords.
If you really want to defeat him now, join forces with one of his enemies e.g. Noldor should have a fun with shield-less infantry (his core units).

 

[Egaldor]

Or just get a bunch of ravenstern archers / EACs and pwn him

 

[Fearghus The Killer]

If you are not able to take him down by yourself, wait till you start your own kingdom and attack it with your own lords.
If you really want to defeat him now, join forces with one of his enemies e.g. Noldor should have a fun with shield-less infantry (his core units).

Like I said, I'm reasonably sure I've fought him before with NPC help, probably later game during one of my own Kingdom playthroughs. In current game, I'm hoping he respawns. 300 mounted Knights and some some Silvermist Rangers ought to fix his problem.

 

[Fearghus The Killer]

So, AI is constantly cheating, pretty much, yet the player has access to a brain that can avoid retarded AI behavior, or even exploit it.

Everything you've written here...EXACTLY. A lot of my strategy is based upon anticipating the AI directing the NPC lords to do the same things over and over.

I was reading somewhere on the boards a guy who thinks using high surgery is like a cheat, or an exploit, and I wanted to ask him if he got to sit back in his castle and rebuild his army in 2 days after getting wiped off the map...

In my book you're not cheating, yet, everytime I feel to need to cheat, and I it it, I lose the will to play the game and insta-quit... I mean, the current trial play I'm doing with PoP I'm unable to stay within the game for more than 10 minutes before getting bored to death, and I'm not even cheating...

I consider myself a pretty experienced player...countless hours over 7-8 years. I've never used a *cheat* that destroyed an army before so I probably felt a little guilty about it. I just wanted the b.s. to go away so I could continue the game on schedule. I want to do more advanced knighthood quests, tryout more rune weapons, etc., and not have to spend 2-3 game weeks trying to rebuild my army and run down my companions like a noob.

 

[wookdaddy]

Meh. I wouldn't worry about what other people consider "cheating" dude. There are no rules. The people that bash you for cheating are lame anyway, it's impossible to lose this game no matter how you play it. I'd rather occasionally reload sometimes by my own rules, than ruin all fun just to play for a much longer period of time. There's no fun in grinding for the sake of grinding. It becomes easier as the game progresses no matter how strict one is. I think it's garbage too that you're leading an entire factions army and they don't join in because they aren't "hostile" to a foreign commander attacking their leader. If somebody attacks their marshal they would all fight them in any realistic situation. That part needs to be changed by the devs; it doesn't make sense.

 

[Zephromonia]

Then you have the special "bandits" called "armies" that have 2 or 3 ranks of pure stats roflstompers with access to better gear and infinite spawns, you got the hero "bandits" that spawn with massive armies that even in your wildest dreams you could possibly manage to amass.

Really dude? You must have not played your play-throughs very far if you think that you could never possibly amass comparable armies to the Heroes. Hell, I've been playing my play-through on and off and still have a maximum size of about 500 give or take a few tens. It is perfectly possible to beat almost any special army with 300 army cap. The only armies you need i big army cap to beat are the 3 seers, the special demon dude, the Snake queen ***** and the Noldor lords.

 

[Paltmull]

snip
Warband alone has enough built-in **** moves trying to keep things evened up. A unique spawn *invading army* only hostile to you who has been gobbling up villagers but is neutral to all NPC lords, that's an additional **** move one would never consider. If I could find something in the so-called lore that would explain it, I'll buy it. But for now, **** move gets dicked with a cheat. My conscience is clear.

Obrist Heynrich comes from Mettenheim Renegades and has negative relations for example with:
Kingdom of Pendor
D'Shar Principalities
Noldor
Mettenheim
Barclay
Jatu
Mystmountain Tribes

If you are not able to take him down by yourself, wait till you start your own kingdom and attack it with your own lords.
If you really want to defeat him now, join forces with one of his enemies e.g. Noldor should have a fun with shield-less infantry (his core units).

Wouldn't it make sense if, when joining a faction, your relations with minor factions changed to match those of the faction you joined? I mean, if Obrist Heynrich attacks you when you're a lord of a faction; shouldn't that be considered a declaration of war on that faction?

 

[lconracl]

snip
Warband alone has enough built-in **** moves trying to keep things evened up. A unique spawn *invading army* only hostile to you who has been gobbling up villagers but is neutral to all NPC lords, that's an additional **** move one would never consider. If I could find something in the so-called lore that would explain it, I'll buy it. But for now, **** move gets dicked with a cheat. My conscience is clear.

Obrist Heynrich comes from Mettenheim Renegades and has negative relations for example with:
Kingdom of Pendor
D'Shar Principalities
Noldor
Mettenheim
Barclay
Jatu
Mystmountain Tribes

If you are not able to take him down by yourself, wait till you start your own kingdom and attack it with your own lords.
If you really want to defeat him now, join forces with one of his enemies e.g. Noldor should have a fun with shield-less infantry (his core units).

Wouldn't it make sense if, when joining a faction, your relations with minor factions changed to match those of the faction you joined? I mean, if Obrist Heynrich attacks you when you're a lord of a faction; shouldn't that be considered a declaration of war on that faction?

Player is working hard to befriend Noldor (Mattenheim, Barclay ...), got nice +40, then ... decide to join Empire.