Taking and holding land as a loyal vassal

[kittehs]

What are the strategies of helping a faction conquer the map when playing as a loyal vassal?  Generally in my games the expansion effort loses steam after we take a few cities. We can take fiefs but not hold them. Our garlrisions small and way too many enemies for our battle depleted lord armies to handle.

My current strategies are

1) Build a prison tower and imprison every enemy lord i come across that.

Or

2) Provide own garrision at great cost to newly conquered towns and castles.

What do you guys think?

 

[Gambino]

if you prison them, you'll lose ALOT of honor , because everytime an offer comes and you reject you'll lose honor..

and i dont suggest garrisons, you can do that and keep the upkeep low by buying enterprises at every single city in calradia, that income from them can remove the upkeep from your huge garrisons or atleast decrease the upkeep..

i play sword of damocles were villagers automatically move from villages to garrison your castle/town  and theres  a constable i talk to him he sends a recruiter to bring 50 recruits to a certain castle and he trains them up too, so i cant exactly advise you here.

 

[kevindrosario]

if you prison them, you'll lose ALOT of honor , because everytime an offer comes and you reject you'll lose honor.

You don't have to reject though. What I do is imprison every lord I can and accept any ransom offers. That still keeps a LOT of their lords in prison and out of the fight without me losing honor.

and i dont suggest garrisons, you can do that and keep the upkeep low by buying enterprises at every single city in calradia, that income from them can remove the upkeep from your huge garrisons or atleast decrease the upkeep..

I think he meant provide the garrison even for towns and castles that he doesn't receive. So once the town or castle is awarded to someone, he would no longer have to pay the upkeep. But yeah, it would cost quite a bit of coin to pay for recruiting and training a decent garrison for all of the towns and castles even if you didn't have to worry about upkeep.

 

[Woopzilla]

I usually dump most of my low tier troops into newly captured places. It's the number that matters rather than the quality.

You want a huge number to act as a stalling mechanism to allow you to arrive with your main forces and join the siege battle. That's why I pack them with militia/skirmishers and low end troops which aren't a big drain on your finances and it also helps keep up the 'Battle Advantage' so your garrison spawns with more if its higher.

Also, I usually improve relations with border villages of both kingdoms in order to be able recruit these bulk troops (for the garrison or replenishing my army).

Other than that, you could just dedicate yourself to patrolling the area.

Grabbing huge amounts of land and overstretching will cause you to lose land. It's currently occurring in my game where I decided to take Curaw and Wercheg on a whim (from the Khanate who held them)... but they are too far away from our Rhodok/Swadian located kingdom to hold. Slow expansion is the best.

I'm also using Diplomacy Mod 4.2 for 1.153 right now which also helps your kingdom from completely imploding by capturing too much land. The treason indictment spam that you get in 1.153 native doesn't seem to be occurring anymore (I'm at day 400+) and it greatly improves the game (I also used TweakMB to change fief assignment to only have a max negative impact of -2, again, just to make sure the treason spam stuff doesn't happen).

Diplomacy allows you to hire garrisons for cities remotely and you can send troops from one city to another to fill their garrisons too... so you could prepare a huge number of troops to move the second you capture something without having to sacrifice numbers from your main army.

 

[omegaweapon]

i remembered a good tactic for such a situations,
enemy AI work like this, they will try to attack the weakest spot in your kingdom, so if you have a castle with 1 looter (as defender) and 5 city with 400 garrison (recruit) they will go for the castle, even if its very far.

another note: if you don't leave any unit to defend the castle, enemy capture it without building siege tower and ladder, so even if you don't intend to get the castle as your fief, just leave 1 unit to defend the fief, this ensure that ally lords have enough time to defend the newly captured fief.

 

[Persnychite]

My character is usually lucky enough to be Marshall for my faction and thus is leading the campaign so these comments assume that.  If you are not Marshall your options involve attempting to influence whoever is or your liege to behave more rationally.

Also this is all Native, I am not familiar with any mods.  As Woopzilla observed, it is the number of troops not the quality that has the greatest effect on the attack vulnerability computation for a fief.

Also NEVER raid villages, which should not be a problem if you are playing as an honorable character.  Furthermore I visit every one I have a chance to in my travels and chase off bandits when they are infested.  As a result, I can recruit from 80%+ of the villages on the map even if I am at war with their faction.

Whenever practical, I will go to one of my towns and assemble powerful, quick field armies to whittle-down the enemy forces wherever they may be found.  It's always nice to take down an enemy ruler as this reduces the chance of a massive attack by that faction.  Rulers are the one type of captive that I may be willing to keep in a prison tower despite a ransom offer or two, the others I always accept.  If I capture lords with a high relationship I will always let them go with the aim of having a better chance of recruiting them later.

After a successful siege, if I have enough "disposable" troops (rescued prisoners, recruits from the tavern if a town, recruits from nearby villages, other undesirables in my party, and etc.) to garrison the captured fief on a short-term basis, I won't request (assuming that I don't even want it) the fief and garrison it with those and call that well enough.  If you do not request the fief after capture you only have one time to load the garrison.

If I do not have enough of such troops and/or do not have the excess troop capacity to shop around and acquire them from towns/villages for a single add -- and would be willing to have the fief awarded to you, I would request it.  This will give you the opportunity to continue adding/subtracting from the garrison until the fief is awarded to someone.  So you can run around and recruit and build the garrison over a more extended period.  Once again, the caveat -- you may end up with the fief so there is that consideration.  But if you would be willing to take it this would be the default.

In either case, if the resultant garrison does not give me sufficient confidence, I will ask various lords participating in the current campaign to "go to" the fief.  Most of them may even hang around and possibly defend it for a while.  For this I give preference to lords without any fief or only hold fiefs which are not endangered by current enemies, or whose fiefs are pretty close-by.  Unless planning to end the campaign, I will stash those who are beaten-up with low healthy troop counts here.

If I am planning to besiege another town/castle I will prefer something close by and a ladder-siege if there is any worry about the recent acquisition.  Otherwise I will call off the campaign and let the assembled host run around and harass any enemies they encounter and/or protect their holdings.

 

[kittehs]

Thanks for the input all. I have a different problem now though. My fellow lords armies are severely depleted even the king is running with only 140 men. My siege strategy involved using other commanders men as fodder. I autocalced my way to victory over 2/3rds of the map. But now there are no more warm bodies to throw at the enemy...

 

[Persnychite]

Join the other lords in battles and transfer some of your troops to them by adding those troops to the "Rescued Prisoners" recruiting pane.  Anything that you leave there will be taken by the other lords on your side in the battle when you are done.

 

[Wise_Old_Enemy]

Swadian Militia are easy and cheap to train in large numbers.  They are weak but they have crossbows and they are both ranged and infantry.  They can deter weaker lords from instantly besieging a castle during the early days of an occupation.  By the time they get a serious force to the area, you might be able to replenish your real army. 

If you have good leadership and an army of about 150, you can simply bring some mix of swadian knights and khergit lancers and wipe out their whole counter attack (I know it's unfair, but so is their counter attack).  After that you can continue the offensive. 

Another thing to remember is certain cities/castles are harder to take.  For example, if you try to take Dhirim you'll be picking a fight with the Swadians and the Rhodoks for sure, and maybe every faction on the map.  Over time you'll realize what places make what people mad, and you'll learn to take them at opportunistic times when the faction(s) that care about them are weak or locked in alliance with your faction. 

Also, certain castles are much easier to defend.  I like Senuzgda Castle, because I can spread my Rhodok Sharpshooters throughout the courtyard and walls, and hide myself and my infantry at the bottom of the stairs, and watch the enemy get sniped one by one as the get to the top of the ladder.  I use it as a kind of base of operations for the middle region of the map, so that reinforcements are always nearby(although it does annoy Swadia, but their sieges are pathetic).  If you can maintain a base with an unusually large garrison fairly close to the offensive, you'll have a better chance of keeping territory.  I know it can be hard though.  Good luck. 

 

[Empiro]

The trick is to just let enemies take them. You can conquer way faster than the AI, and easily take 3-4 castles in the time they can take one of yours. If AI lords' armies are depleted, call off the campaign and give them time to recover. Once the enemy take a castle of yours, they'll quickly leave the castle with a skeleton defense, and you can easily take it back all by yourself.

On actual defense, the key is to keep large, powerful garrisons at a few key points, and not to try to defend everything at once. Your garrison troops should be a mix of the lowest tier and the highest tier. The low tier troops act as cheap deterrence and delay. The high ones will do the killing, and should also be at the top of the list (so they spawn if you join in combat).

If a castle of yours is besieged, race over to the nearest garrison with a small party, and grab your best troops, then go defend the castle under siege. In battle, just stand next to the ladder and spam overhead attacks. Between this and your superior troop quality, you should be able to hold against a much larger party.

 

[kittehs]

I am having a slight problem retaking castles though since I am role playing a Vaegir lord with all Vaegir army. I only recruit mercs or hire prisoners. Hpw do you take castles efficiently with lpw causulties as Vaegirs ? Can Marksmen sub for sharpshooters when clearing the walls ?Can I use Vaegir Veterans and Guards as a cheap Nord replacement for assaulting the infantry once Marksmen eliminate the archers ?

 

[omegaweapon]

I am having a slight problem retaking castles though since I am role playing a Vaegir lord with all Vaegir army. I only recruit mercs or hire prisoners. Hpw do you take castles efficiently with lpw causulties as Vaegirs ? Can Marksmen sub for sharpshooters when clearing the walls ?Can I use Vaegir Veterans and Guards as a cheap Nord replacement for assaulting the infantry once Marksmen eliminate the archers ?

well the problem is the lack of shield but their archers are very good

 

[Mods]

I'm playing as a loyal vassal and the only way I find to make some progress is to put about 50 soldiers in each holding you conquer, otherwise some cocky lord with 40 soldiers will start sieging them again and it's frustrating as hell to gain 30 controversy for losing a castle you just got all by yourself that belongs to no-one

 

[kittehs]

I am having a slight problem retaking castles though since I am role playing a Vaegir lord with all Vaegir army. I only recruit mercs or hire prisoners. Hpw do you take castles efficiently with lpw causulties as Vaegirs ? Can Marksmen sub for sharpshooters when clearing the walls ?Can I use Vaegir Veterans and Guards as a cheap Nord replacement for assaulting the infantry once Marksmen eliminate the archers ?

well the problem is the lack of shield but their archers are very good

Yeah I just found out. Took some marksmen to siege khergit castles and they performed admirably. Great at clearing enemy ranged troops but not as good against shielded infantry as Rhodok Sharpies. My plan now is to use marksmen to wipe out all the archers by attacking retreating and repeating. Then charge with Vaegir Guards once enemy ranged is dead and only a few heavy infantry remain

 

[kittehs]

I'm playing as a loyal vassal and the only way I find to make some progress is to put about 50 soldiers in each holding you conquer, otherwise some cocky lord with 40 soldiers will start sieging them again and it's frustrating as hell to gain 30 controversy for losing a castle you just got all by yourself that belongs to no-one

I have slowed down my expansion plans. Slow planned advance actually makes sieges enjoyable. I started a new game and also notice that the kingdom stays united longer when i let the king run the affairs vs personally conquering everything on their behalf. Lot fewer defections because king has time to consolidate and feast. Very fast conquests ruin a kngdom almost as badly as losing  fiefs.