For those who have never been a warlord before:
You become a 'warlord' when you have no alliegance to a king and still hold land.
There's a few things that bother me about how the warlord system is setup at the moment.
First, I can see how kings won't deal with you when you're just starting out and you only have a few castles. The kings see you as a mere lord and clearly not their equal. That should change as you accumulate more castles/towns. The kings in this game will refuse to even consider a peace treaty with you, even if you have 19 castles and they only have 1 left. To the end they see you as a mere lord holding lands for yourself.
So my first suggestion would be to elevate your status to that of a king after you've taken something like ~5 castles for yourself with no alliegances.
The second problem I have with being a warlord is eventually you kind of max out. You reach a point where you can't take anything else because the moment you try to siege a castle in the northwestern part of your lands you lose two castles in the south eastern part. Once your empire grows large enough you simply can't be everywhere at once and sieges come from all sides.
The kings in this game defend their lands on all sides through their nobles. They can have ~20+ armies patrolling their lands and defending against foreign threats.
So my second suggestion is, once you've gained 'king' status, you should be able to detach your heroes from your army and let them lead armies of their own. Your heroes could eventually become your nobles and help defend the land!
You become a 'warlord' when you have no alliegance to a king and still hold land.
There's a few things that bother me about how the warlord system is setup at the moment.
First, I can see how kings won't deal with you when you're just starting out and you only have a few castles. The kings see you as a mere lord and clearly not their equal. That should change as you accumulate more castles/towns. The kings in this game will refuse to even consider a peace treaty with you, even if you have 19 castles and they only have 1 left. To the end they see you as a mere lord holding lands for yourself.
So my first suggestion would be to elevate your status to that of a king after you've taken something like ~5 castles for yourself with no alliegances.
The second problem I have with being a warlord is eventually you kind of max out. You reach a point where you can't take anything else because the moment you try to siege a castle in the northwestern part of your lands you lose two castles in the south eastern part. Once your empire grows large enough you simply can't be everywhere at once and sieges come from all sides.
The kings in this game defend their lands on all sides through their nobles. They can have ~20+ armies patrolling their lands and defending against foreign threats.
So my second suggestion is, once you've gained 'king' status, you should be able to detach your heroes from your army and let them lead armies of their own. Your heroes could eventually become your nobles and help defend the land!