Whats the biggest city garrison size you've seen?

[2s1ckk]

I've just seen one at 2431!  Vaegirs dominating the map, but me, the Andrean Kingdom, Sarranids and the Swadians have all just declared war on them. I thought: hey, lets grab an easy city or two... then i saw the garrison size 

 

[rbcarter101]

ive never seen anthing lower than 600... Highest is around 500, usual around 300 or 400

 

[RomanGuy]

2000 is about the highest I've seen.  It's up to the developers, but I would really like to see this changed.  The city garrisons should only be around 500 men, and castles at around 250, above 1000 men and it requires every lord in the kingdom to take one city and at 2000 it is absolutely impossible to take the city. 

I can barely afford to garrison castles and cities with a few hundred men anyway, so how is the AI affording this many men?

 

[2s1ckk]

The AI obviously don't respect national economic values: I have two lords with only a castle each, no village, and yet they have a treasury of 3-4k and 100+ men in them. Work that out 
Although I do agree, that is too much. The only option I have is to either sacrifice my entire kingdom to take it or wait and vainly hope the AI tries to take it and weakens them

 

[Caba`drin]

AI don't pay upkeep on their troops, they only pay a modified recruitment cost. Their income/spending is very different from the players (as it should be--you don't see them running around setting up enterprises or trading, do you?) so it isn't best to try and compare it to what you as a player are capable of doing. (If they were similarly restricted, by food, morale, wages, it would get far too easy for the player......or the whole NPC AI system would need to be revamped completely.)

Directly to the topic, yes we have increased the garrison sizes, in an effort for a more balanced game. It takes more of a commitment to take towns and castles, rather than them going "willy-nilly" from one side to another every week. Sieges are meant to be tiring affairs, perhaps needing multiple attempts to take one center. This is change from Native--you aren't imagining things.

That said, as in all things, we are open to feedback and input on how it feels in game (you all are actively playing much more than we are--or at least more than I am)...

 

[2s1ckk]

Yes, I know that the AI lords work differently, but I wasn't versed as to how, so thanks for the enlightenment

Although, I must say, anywhere over 1000 I feel is a little excessive. Maybe you, Duh or Monnikje should start a poll, to gauge the community's opinion?

 

[Smarmellows]

Hope you guys increased the number of city reinforcement waves for garrisons that size, default would only accommodate about 500, after the city and keep battles are over the extra 1,500 just end up as prisoners. Would help if the city street battles were changed to have reinforcement waves like the walls, starting you at/near the gates and working your way inwards.

 

[2s1ckk]

Yeah that would be cool. I think that would require a few new scenes though, unless you meant to use the current ones. I don't know how well that would work with there only being ~5 spawn points in the street scene.

 

[Scully]

There should indeed be a max amount of people you can have in a castle at one time.

 

[stian]

I kinda like the challenge, lure out the some of the lords, and then having to attack the city multiple times for it to fall, Nords last castle had 560 in garrison, and well over 700 with the lords, and their last town held more then 1200 (I let all my swadian lords fall with, was just 140 left whem they went on with all their lords, and I took it myself with ~150 men.

Tactics

 

[2s1ckk]

lol I don't think that would work very well with twice that number though. Will be interesting to try and take it, seems a bit more like native, pre-warband

 

[Ogrecorps]

Directly to the topic, yes we have increased the garrison sizes, in an effort for a more balanced game. It takes more of a commitment to take towns and castles, rather than them going "willy-nilly" from one side to another every week. Sieges are meant to be tiring affairs, perhaps needing multiple attempts to take one center.

With respect to the attempt at historical accuracy by making sieges intimidating affairs, the attackers also had a lot more tools at their disposal: disease, sedition, and starvation. I've never bothered to try to starve a city out - if I have enough troops to keep them from sallying forth then I have enough troops to go get a bunch killed in an attack and recruit some more, making that tool useless. Having such huge garrisons almost requires the player to pick the strategy that will allow them maximum kills with minimum losses which to me, is a legion of Rhodok xbowmen since starving them out requires far too much time invested. Regardles of a garrison's composition, 150 xbowmen will tear apart the enemy ranged troops - unless you're fighting Rhodoks, of course - then perhaps allow one's melee troops to meet theirs equally, without getting shot in the flanks.

In the end, what I think enlarging the garrisons has done is simply draw out the missile phase of any siege assault: more time spent killing their ranged troops with yours then more time killing their melee troops with your ranged troops, then finally whittling all that down to numbers your melee troops can handle.

I guess I'm having a particularly bad reaction to this because I don't want to have any vassal at all ever which means I'm going to be attacking cities with an army of like 200 which will almost certainly cause them to charge out and wipe the floor with me - what 2,000-man garrison wouldn't? If attackers had more tools at their disposal - poisoning water supplies or killing/injuring officers/lords to keep them or their troops out of the battle, launching a disease-ridden cow corpse over the battlements, sneaking the gates open at night to force a large-scale battle in the streets with fewer defenders in the first wave and smaller than usual waves of reinforcements - then I could support artificially-inflated garrisons. Right now it's a team effort to attack but not a team effort to defend.

Idk, maybe I'm taking an unreasonable approach to running my own kingdom and just need to shape up, get me some vassals...

 

[Smarmellows]

Directly to the topic, yes we have increased the garrison sizes, in an effort for a more balanced game. It takes more of a commitment to take towns and castles, rather than them going "willy-nilly" from one side to another every week. Sieges are meant to be tiring affairs, perhaps needing multiple attempts to take one center.

With respect to the attempt at historical accuracy by making sieges intimidating affairs, the attackers also had a lot more tools at their disposal: disease, sedition, and starvation. I've never bothered to try to starve a city out - if I have enough troops to keep them from sallying forth then I have enough troops to go get a bunch killed in an attack and recruit some more, making that tool useless. Having such huge garrisons almost requires the player to pick the strategy that will allow them maximum kills with minimum losses which to me, is a legion of Rhodok xbowmen since starving them out requires far too much time invested. Regardles of a garrison's composition, 150 xbowmen will tear apart the enemy ranged troops - unless you're fighting Rhodoks, of course - then perhaps allow one's melee troops to meet theirs equally, without getting shot in the flanks.

In the end, what I think enlarging the garrisons has done is simply draw out the missile phase of any siege assault: more time spent killing their ranged troops with yours then more time killing their melee troops with your ranged troops, then finally whittling all that down to numbers your melee troops can handle.

I guess I'm having a particularly bad reaction to this because I don't want to have any vassal at all ever which means I'm going to be attacking cities with an army of like 200 which will almost certainly cause them to charge out and wipe the floor with me - what 2,000-man garrison wouldn't? If attackers had more tools at their disposal - poisoning water supplies or killing/injuring officers/lords to keep them or their troops out of the battle, launching a disease-ridden cow corpse over the battlements, sneaking the gates open at night to force a large-scale battle in the streets with fewer defenders in the first wave and smaller than usual waves of reinforcements - then I could support artificially-inflated garrisons. Right now it's a team effort to attack but not a team effort to defend.

Idk, maybe I'm taking an unreasonable approach to running my own kingdom and just need to shape up, get me some vassals...

I can agree with your perspective while at the same time I agree with the decision to inflate garrisons, it's more or less trying to deal with a native problem. I don't like cities switching sides too willy nilly either, but there's probably better ways to deal with it. The most obvious would be to completely change the way siege assaults on cities work, and you have some good ideas. Sneaking in and provoking a street battle instead of the initial wall battle, is one, would make city sieges much more fun. Though to address how often they can switch sides it might be better to change the campaign AI's decision making process for siege targets. IMO they should attack the closest possible target, not necessarily the weakest. Taking a castle on the other side of your opponents kingdom and neglecting the border is kind of.. well, dumb.. but then the game doesn't simulate supply lines so you don't get punished for diving deep into enemy territory. I'd prefer the AI to fight for the areas where their kingdoms meet, fighting over strategic border castles and then the cities as they encroach upon them. Instead of inflating the cities with super massive garrisons, give them a modestly large one, pretty much what vanilla already does, 300-500 men, but change the AI's behavior to focus on border centers.

Slight editing here...
Trying to clarify, if the problem is the PLAYER switching cities too easily, conquering them left and right, then a 2,000 man garrison wont stop that. As it has been said, you just get into an archer war to wear the garrison down. A change in behavior rather than numbers would address that problem, since likely the player is outnumbered, especially by at least a 500 man garrison, have the AI sally so the player can't just wear away at the AI since the player can complete a battle in a split second game time where the AI has to auto-calc for several days.
If it's the AI war bands switching cities left and right, then another change of behavior is in order.. plenty of mods now change the way the marshal AI works and what he targets, have him go for the closest possible centers, as I stated above, make the cities a lower priority since inevitably the marshal will lose many men there and possibly the war, if he gets his entire war band destroyed.

 

[Mithrur]

and is there any possibility for a player to edit those huge garrisons?

 

[rbcarter101]

dont think so, though Im sure in the codes theres a way. But in-game, theres no way.

 

[2s1ckk]

Update: Praven now has a garrison of 3485!!!11 

 

[Snarko]

I guess I'm having a particularly bad reaction to this because I don't want to have any vassal at all ever which means I'm going to be attacking cities with an army of like 200 which will almost certainly cause them to charge out and wipe the floor with me - what 2,000-man garrison wouldn't? If attackers had more tools at their disposal - poisoning water supplies or killing/injuring officers/lords to keep them or their troops out of the battle, launching a disease-ridden cow corpse over the battlements, sneaking the gates open at night to force a large-scale battle in the streets with fewer defenders in the first wave and smaller than usual waves of reinforcements - then I could support artificially-inflated garrisons. Right now it's a team effort to attack but not a team effort to defend.

I like the idea of being able to poison water supplies or something similar. Could have it come with a price tag (poison isn't free) and lower your standing with the town, as well as lower prosperity. Of course you should also lose honor.
Not sure how to handle castles, they work a bit differently.

 

[2s1ckk]

IMO, I would go for the sneaky night attack, maybe via betrayal from within. Historically, more sieges ended due to betrayal than being purely overran. This could work for cities and castles. The water supply idea could also be applied to both castles and cities; everyone's gotta drink, right?

 

[Stildawn]

I think the size of the garrison should reflect in here somehow... I dont know, but the garrison needs a place to sleep, needs food and entertainment etc... So the more you have the costs should increase... Or perhaps just have a limit to how many you can put in the garrison and perhaps link that number to buildings that can be constructed to increase the capacity?

I also think that somehow food stores of a castle or town combined with the garrison size should reflect on the seige time... Like a recently conquered castle wouldnt have any food stores, so if someone put a huge garrison in there and then another faction seiged it... They should start to starve real fast...

Also... Perhaps when a place is seiged the defenders number start to drop slowly...

 

[Ogrecorps]

I think the size of the garrison should reflect in here somehow... I dont know, but the garrison needs a place to sleep, needs food and entertainment etc... So the more you have the costs should increase... Or perhaps just have a limit to how many you can put in the garrison and perhaps link that number to buildings that can be constructed to increase the capacity?

I also think that somehow food stores of a castle or town combined with the garrison size should reflect on the seige time... Like a recently conquered castle wouldnt have any food stores, so if someone put a huge garrison in there and then another faction seiged it... They should start to starve real fast...

Also... Perhaps when a place is seiged the defenders number start to drop slowly...

*Support* Now place it in the Suggestions thread.