Too powerful to fight looters, not powerful enough to take a settlement.

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I wonder when to leave Vlandia and start my evil plan.
Right now I am at 138K gold, 158 Soldiers of heavily varying quality, 232 Influence and one very poorly located castle that I probably must give up.
 
Boar Champion said:
I wonder when to leave Vlandia and start my evil plan.
Right now I am at 138K gold, 158 Soldiers of heavily varying quality, 232 Influence and one very poorly located castle that I probably must give up.
Click to expand...
Well, you're a very long way off, I'd say.

Firstly, you need garrisons that you don't have to baby-sit so that they're unlikely to be besieged by anything less than 2,000 soldiers. Militia, despite being utter crap in gameplay, actually count for a lot in auto-resolves/A.I. battles so a general rule of thumb is that twice the number of defenders is necessary for the attacker to win without your intervention. Therefore, ~200 soldiers and 800 militiamen is a good garrison, but I'd recommend going further with soldiers because it'll also be your reserve army for when you inevitably take serious losses and setbacks, not to mention Militia growth is a daily passive so you might have to spend seasons for those hundreds of miltiamen to fill up.

Secondly, you need fiefs in a defensible location. Vlandia would not be my first choice to join because they're pretty much guaranteed to be difficult because they only have one direction to fear invasions from and you're highly unlikely to be granted easily defended fiefs like Galend, Jaculan, Ostican, or Rovalt and far more likely to be given hard to defend areas like Lageta, Ortysia, Marunath, Seonon, etc. and by the time Vlandia pushes deep into the Nahasa Desert or western Sturgia, they'll be so powerful that everybody will want to be at war with them (which can work out in your favor, but Vlandia's nobles might decide they ought to put you down first and expose themselves to their other enemies so it's a gamble). My advice would be at least 2 cities and an assortment of castles. Then, you can promote your companions into lords and grant them castles. But, before you do that, enact every law that increases loyalty so that you never have to worry about city revolts or culture matching ever again. In fact, as you prepare to betray Vlandia, pushing for terrible laws like Debasement of the Currency could be a big help, alongside repealing good laws that make them stronger and better able to secure territory.

Thirdly, you need money. Like, multiple millions of denars. You'll be in the red for years, possibly even a decade+, while waging a guerilla war for independence and gradually expanding your territory. Your garrisoned troops (especially high tier ones) will demand more money in wages than local taxes can afford by leaps and bounds, so you'll be dependent on battle loot to pay your bills but you can't always be winning battles and you won't always find the time to go to a city to sell your stuff (and can't really do it in enemy territory either) so it REALLY pays to have a huge reserve fund. THIS was my biggest weakness when I tried to start my own faction in the Nahasa Desert while breaking away from the Battanians. Since Battania had no interest in putting me down (for various reasons), that was actually the easy part; having enough money to pay my bills and tussle with Aserai was the hard part.

Finally, as a rule of thumb, it helps to compare your clan's military strength number against the total strength of your kingdom. The bigger a percentage your strength is relative to your home kingdom, the more secure your rebellion would be (not to mention it helps you win fiefs during elections since it's one of many factors besides proximity (+ other stuff) divided by total fief prosperity value). If you don't have at least 4,000 military strength, you'll be crushed way too easily and third parties will be chomping at the bits to take advantage of your vulnerable position. If you're around 6000+, you'll be half as strong as a large country, so you'll be in a much safer position.

Your Influence is NOT carried with you when you leave your kingdom (to start a new one OR defect--you may wish to consider defecting to Vlandia's enemies by the way, this could allow you to conquer some Vlandian home territory and make securing a corner easier) so don't worry about hoarding it. The real reason why you'd want thousands of Influence is control your noble democracy as the ruler of your faction; the more noble vassals you have, the more Influence you'll need to overrule their decisions. As a frame of reference (while having the policy enacted that reduces Influence needed for ruler clan to overrule by 20% or so), it costed me ~1-1,500 Influence to override ~10 noble clans when my kingdom was the size of the Aserai Sultanate; ~2,500 when I had around 20 clans and was the size of two and a half factions put together; and ~3-4,000 during the last stretches of the game. Thankfully, the amount of passive Influence I was generating also went up by leaps and bounds, from 15 per day early on to 65 or so per day at the end but Influence was, at times, scarce enough that I was forced to stamp laws or war declarations (or peace declarations, etc.) I didn't want so keep in mind how important Influence is as a ruler.

EDIT: And don't forget; homeless clans are given nearly always prioritized when granting fiefs, so don't waste your own resources taking a valuable city only for it to go to some homeless guy. Wait for some enemy castle in nowheresland to be taken first and then go for the city. Once everybody's homed, you can take advantage of proximity + being the conqueror + player bonuses to ensure you're continually expanding your territory.
EDIT 2: Another reason why you'll want millions of denars in reserve is to pay for multiple battle parties in your clan; they don't get discounts on wages unless their generals have the appropriate perks, so they can get really expensive, really quickly, on top of garrisoning more than ~200 troops per city/castle (with extra emphasis on the more valuable cities). And, until you're secure, you'll want to splurge to survive, but you'll need to get the money first. My recommendation is to shoot for 10 million denars in reserve if you aren't sure how much you'll need. Better safe than sorry.
 
Last edited:
Yoshioki Ouchi said:
Well, you're a very long way off, I'd say.

Firstly, you need garrisons that you don't have to baby-sit so that they're unlikely to be besieged by anything less than 2,000 soldiers. Militia, despite being utter crap in gameplay, actually count for a lot in auto-resolves/A.I. battles so a general rule of thumb is that twice the number of defenders is necessary for the attacker to win without your intervention. Therefore, ~200 soldiers and 800 militiamen is a good garrison, but I'd recommend going further with soldiers because it'll also be your reserve army for when you inevitably take serious losses and setbacks, not to mention Militia growth is a daily passive so you might have to spend seasons for those hundreds of miltiamen to fill up.

Secondly, you need fiefs in a defensible location. Vlandia would not be my first choice to join because they're pretty much guaranteed to be difficult because they only have one direction to fear invasions from and you're highly unlikely to be granted easily defended fiefs like Galend, Jaculan, Ostican, or Rovalt and far more likely to be given hard to defend areas like Lageta, Ortysia, Marunath, Seonon, etc. and by the time Vlandia pushes deep into the Nahasa Desert or western Sturgia, they'll be so powerful that everybody will want to be at war with them (which can work out in your favor, but Vlandia's nobles might decide they ought to put you down first and expose themselves to their other enemies so it's a gamble). My advice would be at least 2 cities and an assortment of castles. Then, you can promote your companions into lords and grant them castles. But, before you do that, enact every law that increases loyalty so that you never have to worry about city revolts or culture matching ever again. In fact, as you prepare to betray Vlandia, pushing for terrible laws like Debasement of the Currency could be a big help, alongside repealing good laws that make them stronger and better able to secure territory.

Thirdly, you need money. Like, multiple millions of denars. You'll be in the red for years, possibly even a decade+, while waging a guerilla war for independence and gradually expanding your territory. Your garrisoned troops (especially high tier ones) will demand more money in wages than local taxes can afford by leaps and bounds, so you'll be dependent on battle loot to pay your bills but you can't always be winning battles and you won't always find the time to go to a city to sell your stuff (and can't really do it in enemy territory either) so it REALLY pays to have a huge reserve fund. THIS was my biggest weakness when I tried to start my own faction in the Nahasa Desert while breaking away from the Battanians. Since Battania had no interest in putting me down (for various reasons), that was actually the easy part; having enough money to pay my bills and tussle with Aserai was the hard part.

Finally, as a rule of thumb, it helps to compare your clan's military strength number against the total strength of your kingdom. The bigger a percentage your strength is relative to your home kingdom, the more secure your rebellion would be (not to mention it helps you win fiefs during elections since it's one of many factors besides proximity (+ other stuff) divided by total fief prosperity value). If you don't have at least 4,000 military strength, you'll be crushed way too easily and third parties will be chomping at the bits to take advantage of your vulnerable position. If you're around 6000+, you'll be half as strong as a large country, so you'll be in a much safer position.

Your Influence is NOT carried with you when you leave your kingdom (to start a new one OR defect--you may wish to consider defecting to Vlandia's enemies by the way, this could allow you to conquer some Vlandian home territory and make securing a corner easier) so don't worry about hoarding it. The real reason why you'd want thousands of Influence is control your noble democracy as the ruler of your faction; the more noble vassals you have, the more Influence you'll need to overrule their decisions. As a frame of reference (while having the policy enacted that reduces Influence needed for ruler clan to overrule by 20% or so), it costed me ~1-1,500 Influence to override ~10 noble clans when my kingdom was the size of the Aserai Sultanate; ~2,500 when I had around 20 clans and was the size of two and a half factions put together; and ~3-4,000 during the last stretches of the game. Thankfully, the amount of passive Influence I was generating also went up by leaps and bounds, from 15 per day early on to 65 or so per day at the end but Influence was, at times, scarce enough that I was forced to stamp laws or war declarations (or peace declarations, etc.) I didn't want so keep in mind how important Influence is as a ruler.

EDIT: And don't forget; homeless clans are given nearly always prioritized when granting fiefs, so don't waste your own resources taking a valuable city only for it to go to some homeless guy. Wait for some enemy castle in nowheresland to be taken first and then go for the city. Once everybody's homed, you can take advantage of proximity + being the conqueror + player bonuses to ensure you're continually expanding your territory.
EDIT 2: Another reason why you'll want millions of denars in reserve is to pay for multiple battle parties in your clan; they don't get discounts on wages unless their generals have the appropriate perks, so they can get really expensive, really quickly, on top of garrisoning more than ~200 troops per city/castle (with extra emphasis on the more valuable cities). And, until you're secure, you'll want to splurge to survive, but you'll need to get the money first. My recommendation is to shoot for 10 million denars in reserve if you aren't sure how much you'll need. Better safe than sorry.
Click to expand...
X_X
 
Yoshioki Ouchi said:
Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day, China was built in 5+ generations, and you ain't gonna build a country without putting in the work and making sure your favorite child's ready to inherit it when you inevitably die of natural causes (I was only 49...). :razz:
Click to expand...
To be fair, I wanted a realistic medieval game, so I will take the challange.
 
Boar Champion said:
To be fair, I wanted a realistic medieval game, so I will take the challange.
Click to expand...
Me too. Did you play Warband previously? It was NUTS going through the ringer of that game (on PS4) lol, it definitely helped me get the right "frame of mind" for this game. And that was before I could disable auto-saves... oh the misclicks... :dead:

You might want to brace yourself for lulls where not much happens though, since a good part of the process is basically waiting for stuff to happen and touring to recruit/train fresh troops. Depending on how you go about business, you might find it a fairly peaceful and relaxing process until you actually go so far as to secede/rebel. I hope you've been busy making babies lol, they'll likely be grown up (18 by the time you're done this phase of the game.
 
Yoshioki Ouchi said:
Me too. Did you play Warband previously? It was NUTS going through the ringer of that game (on PS4) lol, it definitely helped me get the right "frame of mind" for this game. And that was before I could disable auto-saves... oh the misclicks... :dead:

You might want to brace yourself for lulls where not much happens though, since a good part of the process is basically waiting for stuff to happen and touring to recruit/train fresh troops. Depending on how you go about business, you might find it a fairly peaceful and relaxing process until you actually go so far as to secede/rebel. I hope you've been busy making babies lol, they'll likely be grown up (18 by the time you're done this phase of the game.
Click to expand...
I am looking forward to the Partners in crime perk, so I can recruit all the bandits and looters.
 
Boar Champion said:
I am looking forward to the Partners in crime perk, so I can recruit all the bandits and looters.
Click to expand...
Then you can quickly promote them into top tier normal troops, right? That might be a fun way to play. I'm still waiting on the 1.1.0 Beta patch to be complete and make it to PS4, so things'll likely get shaken up quite a bit due to perk tree rebalances and a lowered required XP to level it up. On the playthrough I've got paused, I'm trying to make my way through the financial sector to see if I can't BUY my way into power lol, so the rebalance will likely have a big effect on how that goes. Hopefully caravans will actually contribute to the Trade skill because it seems like what it really does is just level the Trade of the caravaners, not the player/owner.
 
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