SP - General The Homeless Noble Problem

[IntoLight]

In my current campaign, Vlandia has no fiefs left, but it still has a few clans, so there’s dozens of 10-30 soldier parties wandering around their former lands. This wouldn’t be much of a problem, unless you're at war with Vlandia(or any faction that ends up like this), and those parties start raiding villages and intercepting caravans, and they’re literally too fast for most noble parties to catch.

Yeah. The AI doesn't seem like it has a way to deal with so many homeless nobles. The player could take a party of cavalry and spend a few hours executing anyone they catch, but that runs the risk of cratering the player's rep.

They also seem to be able to freely enter enemy towns and recruit new soldiers from enemy towns and villages, which doesn't seem quite right.

This is also a problem with rebel factions. The AI doesn't seem that great at preventing rebellions(there are literally ten Diathma's Rebels in my current 1.5.6/1.5.7 campaign), and each time a rebellious town is reconquered, there's a dozen odd new homeless nobles leading tiny parties wandering around Calradia.

There’s two features that I think would be nice to have and would help alleviate this problem. The first would be the ability to give your clan parties specific orders, like ‘Patrol around Lageta’ or something, and for them to carry out that order until given new orders, and not have to worry about them ending up on the other side of Calradia or get called into an AI lord's army.
The other would be for high loyalty and prosperity towns to send out small 20-30 soldier patrols, maybe within a day’s ride of the town in question? Make the size, equipment, and number of patrols scale off of the town’s loyalty/prosperity/security, or lock it behind a town building, or do both? The soldiers could be the culture's basic mounted unit, or like a special 'mounted militia' unit similar to manhunters from Warband? I guess they should lie somewhere between 'strong enough to keep the region around the town clear of most bandits/homeless nobles', and 'weak enough to not really affect combat between normal nobles' ~100 soldier parties'.
Alternatively, they could make it more likely for clans to leave a faction that holds no land?
idk tho. Thoughts?

 

[Tryvenyal]

This wouldn’t be much of a problem, unless you're at war with Vlandia(or any faction that ends up like this), and those parties start raiding villages and intercepting caravans, and they’re literally too fast for most noble parties to catch.

The core of your issue is this. Best solutions to this I think is to auto-peace when one faction is out of holdings. Still loyal vassals could put down arms and stay in any town, the former ruler could become a mercenary and wait for the opportunity to join a rebel of his culture or something.

Patruls would be very good! Mainly for hunting criminals. THere are lots of suggestions for them on this forum, a wanted feature.