Stooping the dark plague from ruining Calradia? And a few other questions.

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chokke

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So, around day 75, when I reached 50 vaegir appretiation to get the Ivory bow, I said that DK should advance onto the field. Which was a huge mistake.
For about 25 days they were relativly passive, took like two-three castles. Fair enough. So I started my own small kingdom, beeing already hateful against the swadians, I took one of their castles. I have now kept the castle filled with about 75 ivory guards, 50 highlanders and 75 arblesters and slowly and steady filled it up with about 500 tier 1-2 troops (tier 1 beeing weakest). But the problem is, during my own little turtling for about 100+ days, the DK has mass expanded (Oh god, RTS-terms :p ) and now own about 50-60 % of the castles and like 5 towns, and the other kings don't do anything, or maybe they are, not unusual that I see 5-6 lords of Swadian or Nords around one of their earlier castles now owned by DK, but they either get wiped out, or just cancel the siege. So what can I do with this? Not having any lords (using the elite force of Swadian, the wholy quartett [the four NPCs around level 30]), I only have roaming parties around my castles, so I don't want to take a town right away before I at least have one lord. But meanwhile, DK keep taking castles and towns. I sometime run into a DK, and they are still on about 500-800 troops, allowing the autocalc to just demolish me (heck, 150 DK from castle took out my 500 army (about 150 top tier kingdomtroops) with like 5 losses. Fighting them, would mean drop all my other NPCs, and take a bunch of archers, and start wacking, which is booooring.
So what can I do, turtlign their castles and let them take them back takes to long and is not fun at all :sad: ?

And for the other questions, beeing at war with swadian, I am unsure which cavalary I should go for? I got Praetorian (spelling) trained now, and prince seems to be a descent sidekick, but I feel I pay to much, for to little seeing their stats. Any other options? What about the Thanes?
And now I forgot the other questions I had.. God damnit :p
 
The DKs are difficult, but then they were always meant to be, which is why some people prefer no to let them invade at all. There are several methods of defeating them; have a look back through this forum for suggestions.

Fighting Swadian cavalry is easiest with Swadian cavalry, Thanes are well armoured, but slow. Vaegirs are faster but less well armoured than Swadians. If you are paying too much for them (cavalry are always more expensive) try putting skill points into leadership, whic will affect how much you pay for troops. You will need lots of top tier troops to defeat the Dark Knights though.
 
Pellagus said:
The DKs are difficult, but then they were always meant to be, which is why some people prefer no to let them invade at all. There are several methods of defeating them; have a look back through this forum for suggestions.

Fighting Swadian cavalry is easiest with Swadian cavalry, Thanes are well armoured, but slow. Vaegirs are faster but less well armoured than Swadians. If you are paying too much for them (cavalry are always more expensive) try putting skill points into leadership, whic will affect how much you pay for troops. You will need lots of top tier troops to defeat the Dark Knights though.
It's the dominance of DK that is the problem. Them beeing hard I don't have to much of an issue with, but it's the fact that it's litterly impossible for me, or any of the other kingdoms to do anything. As I see it now, I have two options. As said, go out with bunch of ranged and turtle the castles and let other kingdoms take them. Or I can scan the system info and see where the DK are invading and help defend with the same archers and not gain to much compared to the loss (those bastards don't even share the loot), and autocalc absolutly rape them, giving the DK even more troops cause of the large amount of prisoners :sad: .

And for the payment to cavalary. I know cavalary costs alot more then foot-troops, but what I ment with the overpayment is when I look at stats compared to price. Like for the Praetorian Commander, I pay like 36g/week and the stats are at 10 on the most important ones, whereas the prince cost like 51 g/week, and has like 7-9 in the same stats. So either there must be some difference I don't see to justify the cost.
Fighting swadian cavalary isn't the problem, but beeing unable to recruit them. I am unable to train them to become cav from scratch, so would have to be through the towns (nobles), but beeing at war, removes that option, so I am kind of forced to stick with my Praetorian as I see it.

Ah yea: I remember one of the other questions. When it comes to training low tier troops to the top tier. Let us say I bring 100 tier 1 troops and some cav (for the actuall killing) onto the field and win against mercenarys and bandits. After the fight, let us say that 20 of the tier 1 troops is ready for upgrade. Is it then faster to upgrade right as they are able to be upgraded, or wait till all the tier 1 troops are ready, then upgrade them all to tier 2 in a bunch and repeat the process? I usually let all my tier 1 get ready for upgrade. The logic is that I assume that having 9/10 troops ready for upgrade, the last troop get 10x XP from training for upgrade, and thus reaching full tier 2 faster, compared to having 1 lonely low tier stuck there while tier 2 races away. But is this logic correct?
 
chokke said:
now own about 50-60 % of the castles and like 5 towns

Really? :lol:  That's terrible, it is going to be a pain getting them back. The other lords will eventually be able to take some of the fiefs back; the autocalc is less severe in sieges.

You need to defeat them in the field and take them prisoner. It is gonna be a pain in the ass though.

chokke said:
Ah yea: I remember one of the other questions. When it comes to training low tier troops to the top tier. Let us say I bring 100 tier 1 troops and some cav (for the actuall killing) onto the field and win against mercenarys and bandits. After the fight, let us say that 20 of the tier 1 troops is ready for upgrade. Is it then faster to upgrade right as they are able to be upgraded, or wait till all the tier 1 troops are ready, then upgrade them all to tier 2 in a bunch and repeat the process? I usually let all my tier 1 get ready for upgrade. The logic is that I assume that having 9/10 troops ready for upgrade, the last troop get 10x XP from training for upgrade, and thus reaching full tier 2 faster, compared to having 1 lonely low tier stuck there while tier 2 races away. But is this logic correct?

I believe it's more efficient to upgrade all troops of one type at once, as you say.
 
Josef_the_Pretender said:
Really? :lol:  That's terrible, it is going to be a pain getting them back. The other lords will eventually be able to take some of the fiefs back; the autocalc is less severe in sieges.

You need to defeat them in the field and take them prisoner. It is gonna be a pain in the ass though.
It's not to hard to get castles from DK without knight in town, seems like castles are capped at 150 units so that would mean about 50-70 archers, but it's reeeeally timeconsuming and boring.
And all in all, one DK is sitting on about amount of troop equally to like 70 % of another faction..

So swadian cavalary is not able to train outside towns [nobles/elite]?

Lady moron is now at 808 troops, whereabout 600 is dark knights, and about 1000 prisoners. This is getting ridiciolus.
 
Some people would be drooling at the prospect of fighting that. :grin:

Eventually she'll get so bogged down with troops and prisoners she'll be moving too slowly to be any threat, other than to towns and castles. If you have all the other DK lords captured, you can concentrate on her. Try and lead a friendly lord or two with you, or equip companion lords with lots and lots of Lady Knights (you don't pay for companion lord troops) and lead a war party in to finish her off.

 
It helps if you can catch them assaulting a "easy to defend" castle. As you can see in one of the other topics, Grunwalder castle is one such. Steep and long ladder, two towers covering ladder. Between Dhirim and Cracow (not Vyncourt, the other one) is also another "easy" castle. I started my faction there and early on beat 200 then 300-strong armies of heavy Swadian troops.

Larkin (ugh) was assaulting Grunwalder when the Rhodoks had only 60 men in it to fight her 1000. I took 200 men (30 Ivory Sentinels and 100+ Cavaliers + others) and proceeded to slaughter 700 of her best men (Dark Knights etc) in two separate assaults. Given that there are only 6 Lords in the faction, it is easiest to shadow them and wait for them to make a bad assault choice, then fill them with elephant tusks.

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I also had Alyssa carrying all my Cavaliers for me (saves on upkeep). Problem was when she got to many, she became a bit arrogant and thought she could take on a Dark Knight lord (she can't, thanks to the autoresolve). Simply taking 200+ Heavy cavalry, attacking them head on, then retreating and healing wounded (with 10+4 surgery) also works, though it is a bit cowardly. More importantly, I think their Dark Pages etc tend to level up on your men, so when you kill their knights, more knights appear. At least it seems they always have enough knights to start a battle with 70% of them. (The siege is really the way to go - grab a repeating/siege crossbow - if there's a blacksmith it is even better!)

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Taking their castles back is easy enough, I think 120+ Ivory Sentinels (I mass these chaps) is enough for starting+1 reinforcement. Do the retreat-reassault over and over. On some maps, the defenders can actually come out (this is not sally, they come out the way your men would get in). In that case, it's like a reverse siege, as they will be coming down the ladder/siege tower. Take 30+ archers and 30+ Cavaliers, you can massacre the Dark Knights. Bunch up at the bottom of the ladder, and your archers will kill everyone who is stuck above.

On the field, the Dark Pages/Squires are dangerous with couched lance. On sieges though, they are much more manageable.

After some of the BEST field battles against them I feel sad that only the Dark Knights are capable of absorbing a full charge of nothing but Cavaliers. No matter how strong they are, even a full campaign of Swadia or whatever can't stand for very long when I take those guys away from Alyssa and send them in. It's only a matter of waiting for them all to die.
 
I was hoping that the moronic other factions would do something useful though. But I guess turtling the castles is the solution I guess. Go cheap rangers, unless there is a siegetower involved, then I can just throw in the towel.. As for the lords, considering they are carrying 800 troops, I would have to bring alooooot of units to beat that, and alot of units is expensive. So back to another question, one is unable to train swadian cavalary (the ranged hero doesn't count) from village-troops? At least I seem unable.

I took a look on the map and who owns what:

Khergit:
Tulga
Ichmur
Halmar
Narra
Asugan Castle
Sungetche

Rhodoks:
Veluca
Jelkala
Yalen
Jamiche Castle

Vaegir:
Curaw
Khudan
Reyvadin
Almerra Castle

Nord:
Sargoth
Wercheg
Nelag Castle

Swadian:
Dhirim
Suno
Praven
Uxhal
Ismarra Castle

KINGDOM OF MAN (me):
Rindyar Castle

The rest belongs to the DK, which if I am not mistaken two towns and 30 (!) castles. I think our retarded factions has taken like one or two castles back, but lost them right away.

Does troops in castles level now? Suddenly have fewer tier 1 and more tier 2 :eek:

And as a small sidequestion, is gold and gems used for anything useful, or just for money [selling]?
 
chokke said:
I was hoping that the moronic other factions would do something useful though. But I guess turtling the castles is the solution I guess. Go cheap rangers, unless there is a siegetower involved, then I can just throw in the towel.. As for the lords, considering they are carrying 800 troops, I would have to bring alooooot of units to beat that, and alot of units is expensive. So back to another question, one is unable to train swadian cavalary (the ranged hero doesn't count) from village-troops? At least I seem unable.
Hmm, problem is (1) DKs have a ton of good troops and massed elites in their armies (like a player would). The AI has a mix of men, and more importantly less people in a party. Then there's the autoresolve, where the DKs excel, thus allowing them to own everyone.

Hey, your castle is a very good one for defending. Not that it would help much (not much will) if the DKs come all at once. Larkin starts with 800, and her friends with 400 each, so that's thousands of Dark XXYY - too much to kill.

Yeah, you need to get Swadian Pages/Squires from Swadian towns. Only they turn into knights. GO butter up some towns and its easy to mass them. If, as I suspect, Swadia is at war with you, you're out of luck until you can get hold of one of their towns.

 
Heh, it's all been resolved. Allthough, with some tweaking. I made the sea raiders be way more numerous and be more parties. So it allowed me to train up ivory sentinels so I took Dhirim (which is now my capitol) and got nobles, which built up to be a cute number of cavaliers at the end.
On my training at sea raiders (around thir-Rivacheg) I see bunch of caravans getting sent back and forth. Which to my advantage allows me to take prisoners, which then turns into a nice army.
So, after Dark knights been rampaging Calradia, I managed to catch Lady jerkin off guard, which allowed me a victory with my siegeforce so she is now sitting unhappily in jail with one of her bretherns and I decline any offer to release her (don't take other lords as prisoners to gain repuation to steal them later on, so lots of honor to take from).
Also got the temple up in Dhirim, decleared war on those useless factions (khergits and rhodoks) to allow them to take castles I take from DK so Calradia can finally be somewhat closer to restored.

Can I use Gems or Gold for anything other then vendoring?
 
No, gold and gems are only useful as loot at the moment, though it would be good to include them as quest items needed for courting ladies - a bar of gold or a stupid poem, I know what I'd choose.
 
Well, they do say diamonds are a girls best friend...

Scene: Lord Bulba is courting his lady, Serinda.

"Milady, I have composed thee a poem..."

"No romance without finance my lord."

"I beg your pardon milady, prithee.."

"Bling mother****er. Or quit wasting my time."

/exeunts
 
Whats worse is that Ivory sentinels are being taken out of the peasant line and being made an upgrade for The IA. So once I finish up this rebal ****s just going to be worse.
 
Another Dark Knight related question - do they always succeed in taking lords prisoner? I'm a Vaegir vassal at the moment and they are cutting a swathe through our guys, and nobody has managed to escape when defeated yet... :shock:

 
Well, it would seem that they don't succeed at capturing lords all the time as I first supposed. Some dudes have definitely escaped their clutches.

They are bloody tough bastards, though...I was completely unprepared for the sheer extent of their menace.  :lol:

 
Yeah...I'm scared. Larktin has over 1000 men now and she's gradually taking over the whole map. Up to about thirty castles 100 or so days after the invasion. I have Ichamur and two castles. When the DKs hold all the other castles then Lartkin will come calling on me, and I don't think I can stop a thousand of those genetically enhanced combat supermen.

Interesting, very interesting.  :razz:







 
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