Oh, my apologies then. I'm sure your family is lovely.
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[Updated with Part II] Observations, Feedback, and Exploits for the new Caravan System. [e1.2.0 + hotfix]
- Thread starter Bannerman Man
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Randlocher
Recruit
Thank you!
Something I just realized that I had overlooked before is that you can also do this for town militias. That is, totally pull your town's garrison out through the "Manage Garrison" menu and donate all of those troops to the town's militia. You will now not have to pay any wages for the garrison but still receive the same amount of protection. There are other added benefits from this as well, such as the negative "Garrison" modifier for Food Production being removed, allowing food stores to build up faster, and in turn increase the town prosperity growth rate.
There is meant to be a negative "Retired" modifier to your militia size that would cause this not to be sustainable, but it's non-functional at the moment so troops you add will stay there permanently. A word of caution though: once you donate troops to a militia you can never take them out again, so keep that in mind.
All of this applies to castles as well.
There is meant to be a negative "Retired" modifier to your militia size that would cause this not to be sustainable, but it's non-functional at the moment so troops you add will stay there permanently. A word of caution though: once you donate troops to a militia you can never take them out again, so keep that in mind.
All of this applies to castles as well.
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Sure, but won't most of them just desert anyway? You'd probably need to give the caravan 50 or 60 of your high tier troops to wind up with 30 after desertions. That's a pretty big cost and you'll never get those troops back. And they probably won't live all that long in the AI's hands anyway. Autocalc will steadily whittle them away and they'll start getting replaced with recruits again. At best, its just a temporary buff for the caravan.
Very interesting.
Are you sure about the "Retired" modifier not working at all? It may not actually pull already-existing militia numbers down (I haven't seen it do that either). But seems to me it is taken into account in the various tooltips showing militia growth rate when building them up. So kinda appears it's "half-working", at least.
If we really can plop entire garrison of no-wages troops into militia...wow, that's pretty big. Somewhat afraid to try it, lol; probably as soon as I shift all my garrisons over, they'll patch out this obviously-unintended loophole and I'll lose several hundred troops, lol. Gotta do it with at least one castle though.
One of the problems though is just how many bandits there are, I mean even if you destroy the hideout, often they just make another one a few minutes later. I remember clearing out 3 hideouts in a row like this, the second I took one out, another one would re-apear. I mean hunting down bandit parties in an area and wiping out a hide out, should prevent bandits from respawning for some time.
Also, I hate how there are 20 fricken bandit parties of like 3-4 bandits each. When they get back to a bandit hideout and there are other bandit parties there, they should "group up" to some degree and head out as larger parties. If the lords ignore them too long, they should actually form into large armies and start taking over settlements.
Also, I hate how there are 20 fricken bandit parties of like 3-4 bandits each. When they get back to a bandit hideout and there are other bandit parties there, they should "group up" to some degree and head out as larger parties. If the lords ignore them too long, they should actually form into large armies and start taking over settlements.
That's all nice info, now delete this thread before devs waste time removing this useful exploit.
But seriously why can't I give away troops if I want to? Everyone wants them and they are scarce, it makes since I should be able to do it and it enhances player agency.
PLAYER AGENCY
me want control and influence game world, ME, not AI, ME
But seriously why can't I give away troops if I want to? Everyone wants them and they are scarce, it makes since I should be able to do it and it enhances player agency.
PLAYER AGENCY
me want control and influence game world, ME, not AI, ME
Yeah, they will desert. It's not the most efficient way to do it, but it's just a numbers game. Think of it as buying speed and party strength. You might recruit 5k worth of mounted troops (not hard to do in Khuzait territory) and stuff them into your caravan. After the desertion is all said and done you're left with 2.5k of the original troops in a stable party configuration. Now, however, you're party is 0.6 speed faster and some % stronger than the original party because you've shed some of the weak foot soldiers. This amounts to a lower chance of bandits catching your caravans, and a smaller portion of bandit parties even willing to engage, resulting in higher odds of survival. If you can avoid losing your caravan for twice as long you've saved 18k assuming you go out and buy a new caravan immediately each time it's destroyed. It's actually a bit more because caravans have a period of delay before making money, and the fewer times you have to repeat it the less downtime you have. You could argue that those troops are better spent in your own party though, and you may be right. But if you've hit the cap, then all those recruitable troops sitting in villages are just going to waste anyway.
New caravan party distribution seems somewhat random at the moment, but I have seen it as bad as 21/30 foot archers to 9/30 cavalry. That party is doomed from the start unless you intervene because having that many slow tier 3 units means it will be caught sooner rather than later.
There are more efficient ways to get strong troops into your caravan, however, they are less time efficient. You can follow you caravan around and add troops 1-2 at a time until desertion brings them back to 30/30. This helps because say you add 20 units to that party distribution above; it's a 21/50 chance, or 42%, for a foot archer to desert on the first day (odds change fast as desertion happens so I won't list them). But, if you add just 2 troops you have a 21/32 chance, or 66%. Better odds.
The most troop efficient, but time inefficient way would be to follow them around until they get attacked, then swoop in and save them at the last minute. Follow them to the next town and donate the precise troops that you want to bring them up to 30/30 again. No wasted troops in this case.
This is all probably temporary though, because I have a feeling they will allow you to pay to improve your caravan as a feature in the end anyway.
That seems to be true. It will slow the rate that your militia grows below the cap, but won't remove any soldiers above the cap. Good catch.
If you want to play it safe, just give villager parties some troops. I was messing around with that earlier and even just a handful of troops made a HUGE difference to how afraid they were of bandit parties and by extension how quickly they got to town and back. Just sit in the town for a day and observe which villages are sending parties, then go out and distribute troops accordingly. You can even hire the villages own troops to give to them.
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I agree that there's a benefit, but i just don't think that it should be considered an exploit.
For one, It uses regular in-game mechanics. There's nothing cheaty there. You can already give troops to allies, so why not to your own caravans? As long as you're not taking them back, there's nothing to exploit. Second, it has significant cost to the player. High tier troops are pretty valuable and they don't tend to live long under the AI's control . So its not like this would just make your caravans immortal. They'll just lose those good troops eventually and become weak again. Thirdly, it doesn't violate the 30-man caravan rule. They said caravans could only have 30 troops, but they never said what kind of troops they have to be. There's no reason why a wealthy caravan runner shouldn't be able hire better quality troops.
Your example of following the caravan around and giving them a few troops at a time sounds more like a bit of emergent gameplay than an actual exploit. If the player wants to spend their play time babysitting their caravans that way, it should be totally allowable. Most players aren't going to want to do that anyway.
Right now that's what is missing heavily. Despite the fact that I can work my way up to a huge army, a strong vassal of a massive kingdom, even my own damn kingdom and banner itself... I still feel like I have very limited agency in the game beyond KILL EVERYTHING.
Kind of feels like a waste at the moment.
I know I used the term exploit loosely (I also used the word workaround) as far as caravans go, but I was also refering to using militias to bypass garrison wages. That part is an exploit. As far as whether or not TW wants you to be able to replace caravan troops with any troops you want, that's for them to answer. It's true that using the method I outlined above has a fairly decent cost to it (though I still think in the end you come out ahead, even using high tier troops). Stay tuned though, I've learned some more things and will update the post soon with an actual caravan exploit.
That's almost exclusively what this game is at the moment: a battle simulator. Kill everything is about the only thing on offer right now...
Which is so reminiscent of vanilla Warband. We had to wait for mods to make Warband more than "travel here battle this, now travel there and battle that."
TheWitchIzalith
Regular
Sounds to me like its just another element to Caravanning. Hunting them down once in a blue moon and offering them some Troops if they need it.
Realistically you wouldn't just forget about a caravan after setting it up, but that's exactly what players do in game. Since the exchange of money is digital. You never actually have to "see" the Caravan and its condition until it dies.
Realistically you wouldn't just forget about a caravan after setting it up, but that's exactly what players do in game. Since the exchange of money is digital. You never actually have to "see" the Caravan and its condition until it dies.
I've posted a second part in the original post.
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