[Updated with Part II below original post]
Since the patch, I've been tailing one of my caravans to see how it operates, and I've noticed some things that I think are worth commenting on.
At first, I thought that caravans were not replenishing troops after being attacked because the caravan party seemed to stay in a half filled state. This turns out not to be the case, but I don't think it's working exactly as intended.
Caravans appear to recruit troops from the following two sources:
So, as caravans need to find Watchmen, and Watchmen only make up a small portion of tavern recruits across the map, it takes a long time for them to return to full capacity, if they are even able to at all before being destroyed.
Also, when purchased, caravans start with roughly half a party of cavalry (the type of units depends on the town culture of origin). This affects the rate at which they travel, speeding them up overall. As your caravan is attacked and numbers dwindle, there are very few viable cavalry recruits to replace ones that are lost in battles, slowing your caravan down overall over time and making it easier to be caught.
[Method outlined in Part II is much better. Will leave this up in case the other method is patched out]
However, there is a work-around/exploit at this point. When your caravan is stationed in a town, there is a small red bar that you can click at the top of the UI to the left of the notables bar. This will switch the notables bar with one containing non-noble parties currently stationed in the town (i.e. caravans, villagers, and militia). If you click on your caravan you can choose to "donate troops" to your caravan. Using this, you can donate units from your own party to easily bring them back up to full capacity, and you can donate past full capacity. If you give them large amounts of horse archers and cavalry they will temporarily exceed max capacity until desertion brings them back to 30/30. Desertion is, however, randomly selected, meaning usually you will end up with fewer low value Armed Traders and a higher proportion of cavalry. This greatly speeds up your caravan and makes enemies less likely to attack it.
Exhibit A:
When you create a caravan it is immediately parked in the current town, allowing you to do this trick right away. You can also sell them extra horses once they exit in order to speed them up even further (until they sell them). Caravans don't seem to keep any extra non-pack horses in inventory purely for speed, so this is only a temporary boost.
Now this is probably the worst part of the exploit. I found you can also donate troops to both villager parties and village militias using this method. This works well to prevent villagers from getting attacked en route to towns and essentially gives villiges a garrison. These troops are permanent and free of wages, meaning that you can stack as many troops as possible in villages without drawbacks and not fear raids ever again. There is apparently a negative modifier to militia size for villages to keep them at the proper size, but this appears to be bugged at the moment.
[Works for towns and castles as well; see edit below]
Exhibit B:
So finally, I want to point out one final thing. From the e1.1.0 patch notes:
[More detail in Part II]
Exhibit C:
Well, that pretty much wraps it up. Sorry for the long-winded post and thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
EDIT: Oh, and also Armed Traders lack any points in bow skill even though they are archers. If caravans are intended to fight, now might be a good time to give them some points in it. [Turns out, this may not matter; see Part II below]
EDIT 2: This exploit also applies to town and castle militias. You can see my comment on it here.
I feel obligated to say BE WARNED: Once you donate troops you cannot get them back out again. If the devs patch this soon you may lose any troops you shifted from garrisons to militias.
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[PART II]
I found a post on Reddit that discussed similar methods to the one I outlined above. In the comments of this post, a user mentioned you can access the troop management window for your caravan through the Keep menu, bypassing the need to donate troops at all.
So, to add whatever troops you would like to your caravan use the following steps:
You now have a caravan consisting of only the troops you want. So, which troops are best? Generally high tier cavalry, as the only factors that seem to be taken into account by autoresolve currently are tier, and whether or not they are mounted. This post on Reddit discusses how the autoresolve calculations work on a code level. To simplify, the formula boils down to this:
So, by sticking to purely high tier cavalry you will greatly increase your caravan's battle capabilities. This is great, however, it is more important to survivability to avoid getting in fights in the first place. Here, high tier cavalry win again, as they are faster than foot soldiers and deter more powerful enemies from giving chase. I haven't delved into the code to find out what exactly the AI accounts for when deciding whether or not to attack, but I can offer three separate examples of the power meter vs. 78 looters (the enemy only chased in the first example).
It's only a marginal improvement from case to case, but it will deter some extra percentage of stronger enemies from trying to engage, and again avoiding fights is the best way to keep a caravn alive. If anyone has actual numbers/formulas on what the enemy factors in to decide whether or not to chase I'd love to see them.
Lastly, I know this has been posted about before, but bandit parties have a quirk with their behavior which makes them take into account units in hideouts as reinforcements when deciding to engage, even though those units don't actually join them in battle. This can trap caravans into battles they otherwise wouldn't get into and whittle away units over time. Here is a video illustrating this issue:
Since the patch, I've been tailing one of my caravans to see how it operates, and I've noticed some things that I think are worth commenting on.
At first, I thought that caravans were not replenishing troops after being attacked because the caravan party seemed to stay in a half filled state. This turns out not to be the case, but I don't think it's working exactly as intended.
Caravans appear to recruit troops from the following two sources:
- The freed prisoner pool after a battle, same as the player. This in effect fills precious party space mostly with low value peasants (technically part of the watchman tree), weakening the overall party strength. You will occasionally see them pick up Armed Traders captured from other caravans.
- Taverns in towns include recruitable Armed Traders, Thugs, and the Watchman/Mercenary line. These are recruitable by the player, but I think they are intended to be recruitable for caravans as well (maybe not thugs). However, it seems caravans will only recruit from the Watchman line, not Armed Traders. I saw my caravan pass up many towns with available Armed Traders and not recruit a single one. That may be an oversight, or just exceedingly rare.
So, as caravans need to find Watchmen, and Watchmen only make up a small portion of tavern recruits across the map, it takes a long time for them to return to full capacity, if they are even able to at all before being destroyed.
Also, when purchased, caravans start with roughly half a party of cavalry (the type of units depends on the town culture of origin). This affects the rate at which they travel, speeding them up overall. As your caravan is attacked and numbers dwindle, there are very few viable cavalry recruits to replace ones that are lost in battles, slowing your caravan down overall over time and making it easier to be caught.
[Method outlined in Part II is much better. Will leave this up in case the other method is patched out]
Exhibit A:
When you create a caravan it is immediately parked in the current town, allowing you to do this trick right away. You can also sell them extra horses once they exit in order to speed them up even further (until they sell them). Caravans don't seem to keep any extra non-pack horses in inventory purely for speed, so this is only a temporary boost.
Now this is probably the worst part of the exploit. I found you can also donate troops to both villager parties and village militias using this method. This works well to prevent villagers from getting attacked en route to towns and essentially gives villiges a garrison. These troops are permanent and free of wages, meaning that you can stack as many troops as possible in villages without drawbacks and not fear raids ever again. There is apparently a negative modifier to militia size for villages to keep them at the proper size, but this appears to be bugged at the moment.
[Works for towns and castles as well; see edit below]
Exhibit B:
So finally, I want to point out one final thing. From the e1.1.0 patch notes:
This minor detail makes quite a big difference in practice. One thing I noticed while following my caravan around is that it poorly judges the danger it's in. Smaller/weaker bandit parties will now travel to engage with a caravan that passes it, but the caravan continues forward like nothing is happening. They meet and get into battle. This would be fine, except bandits travel in packs, and now your caravan is pinned in place for others to pile on into the battle. It's fine for weaker parties to try to take down your caravan, but caravans need better detection when someone is chasing them so they don't get trapped so often.
[More detail in Part II]
Exhibit C:
| 
|
EDIT: Oh, and also Armed Traders lack any points in bow skill even though they are archers. If caravans are intended to fight, now might be a good time to give them some points in it. [Turns out, this may not matter; see Part II below]
EDIT 2: This exploit also applies to town and castle militias. You can see my comment on it here.
I feel obligated to say BE WARNED: Once you donate troops you cannot get them back out again. If the devs patch this soon you may lose any troops you shifted from garrisons to militias.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[PART II]
I found a post on Reddit that discussed similar methods to the one I outlined above. In the comments of this post, a user mentioned you can access the troop management window for your caravan through the Keep menu, bypassing the need to donate troops at all.
So, to add whatever troops you would like to your caravan use the following steps:
- Create a caravan or track down an existing one.
- While the caravan is stationed in town (it will be upon creation), go to the Keep menu and click on the portrait of your companion to speak to them (press "Talk").
- Click "Inspect Troops" in the dialog window.
- Take all troops, or just non-cavalry troops (Armed Traders), out of their party and add whichever troops you want. Click done.
You now have a caravan consisting of only the troops you want. So, which troops are best? Generally high tier cavalry, as the only factors that seem to be taken into account by autoresolve currently are tier, and whether or not they are mounted. This post on Reddit discusses how the autoresolve calculations work on a code level. To simplify, the formula boils down to this:
[(2 + Tier Level) * (10 + Tier Level)] * (0.02) * (1.3 only if unit is mounted)
This formula is used to determine the "Power Level" of each troop individually. The term on the right means that cavalry get a flat 30% bonus to power. From there the algorithm basically faces off units from either party one vs one unitl a winner is determined. Click through to the Reddit post if you want to see the calculations in more detail. Skills and formations do not seem to affect the strength of a unit in autoresolve at this time.
So, by sticking to purely high tier cavalry you will greatly increase your caravan's battle capabilities. This is great, however, it is more important to survivability to avoid getting in fights in the first place. Here, high tier cavalry win again, as they are faster than foot soldiers and deter more powerful enemies from giving chase. I haven't delved into the code to find out what exactly the AI accounts for when deciding whether or not to attack, but I can offer three separate examples of the power meter vs. 78 looters (the enemy only chased in the first example).
| 29 Armed Traders |
| 17 Armed Traders, 7 Caravan Guards, 5 Veteran Caravan Guards |
| 29 Khuzait Heavy Horse Archers |
Lastly, I know this has been posted about before, but bandit parties have a quirk with their behavior which makes them take into account units in hideouts as reinforcements when deciding to engage, even though those units don't actually join them in battle. This can trap caravans into battles they otherwise wouldn't get into and whittle away units over time. Here is a video illustrating this issue:
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