The whole "Companion Lords start with 10 Leadership" thing

[imgran]

Please take that out.  I understand why it's there for the sake of a quick start but please get rid of it.  The exp boost gives you enough of a quick start already, and Half the point of the early game is developing your followers.

New Lords should be weak.  You SHOULD have to marshal your forces and have to fight battle-seasoned Lords at peak strength at less than a 1 to 1 advantage.  I can't think of a single reason why your companions need to become lords with 10 leadership, and especially now that trainer seems to be a 1 character skill rather than a stacking skill and PS, PD, PT and Shield are gone, it'd be nice to have a few more things to spend their skill points on while they're developing anyway.

 

[Steffenximus]

If they don't have 10 Leadership at start, you'll have to invest a lot of exp in them in order to get them to this skill level. Otherwise if you make them directly lords, they won't stand a chance against any other enemy lord, which sucks and lacks realism.

 

[imgran]

Dunno, sounds pretty realistic to me.  Novice lord v. veteran lord, who do you think is supposed to have an advantage?.  Nothing you couldn't take out as a group, so do some group battles to up the experience of your army for awhile.

Now, what's unrealistic is 300 man armies coming out of nowhere less than 4 days after assigning one of your followers a village.

Also, again, with rapid exp gain, the "burden" of giving your lords 5 or 6 Leadership is not particularly onerous, and quick start or not you ought to be prepared to put a little prepwork into building a kingdom -- or deal with the consequences for not doing so when your inexperienced lords come out subpar.