Currently the scale of enemies goes like this:
Looters and Bandits - Can be Soloed by lvl 1s
Steppe Bandits/Sea Raiders/Deserters - May kill off your recruits early on but unlikely to be a threat once you get past about lvl 5/6 with a decent party
then we skip to:
Lords - Parties of 100 - 150 troops, most of which are at least regulars with a decent amount of elites. Occasionally have less than 100 troops, but will often have allies nearby anyway.
Kings - Parties of 150+ troops
At about level 10 you reach a point where you can't catch those slippery looters, yet you can't actually fight lords armies (unless you shadow your own guys and let them do all the work) until the late teens (smaller parties of 50 - 100) or mid twenties (the proper parties of 100+ guys).
I think it would be a good idea if there were small "Patrols" of 40-60 regular troops (2nd tier at most, not much cav) that belonged to factions (so they don't gank starting characters) and are not lead by Lords. They could just walk around their factions territory and borders and would fill the slightly boring gap between joining a faction and actually being able to attack enemy lords.
Note: I play on the highest difficulty, so this may be a bit biased.
Looters and Bandits - Can be Soloed by lvl 1s
Steppe Bandits/Sea Raiders/Deserters - May kill off your recruits early on but unlikely to be a threat once you get past about lvl 5/6 with a decent party
then we skip to:
Lords - Parties of 100 - 150 troops, most of which are at least regulars with a decent amount of elites. Occasionally have less than 100 troops, but will often have allies nearby anyway.
Kings - Parties of 150+ troops
At about level 10 you reach a point where you can't catch those slippery looters, yet you can't actually fight lords armies (unless you shadow your own guys and let them do all the work) until the late teens (smaller parties of 50 - 100) or mid twenties (the proper parties of 100+ guys).
I think it would be a good idea if there were small "Patrols" of 40-60 regular troops (2nd tier at most, not much cav) that belonged to factions (so they don't gank starting characters) and are not lead by Lords. They could just walk around their factions territory and borders and would fill the slightly boring gap between joining a faction and actually being able to attack enemy lords.
Note: I play on the highest difficulty, so this may be a bit biased.