Where are my soldiers? Bannerlord

[marcelluswallace]

When i help the kings army in battle with my 200 men strong army, i at least only command in battle 10 soldiers. Where is the rest? Does the a.i. command the rest of my troops or why do i have only 10 soldiers under my command?

 

[monoolho]

Depends on battle size. Say you use a 200 battle size - it should be around 100 for each side (not counting tactics bonuses), so from the 200 men army, only 100 will be fielded at one time, and out of that, it's all calculated according to the lords' bonuses, so each gets a portion of soldiers - your tactics skill and overall manpower within the army is not that huge, so you only get a small portion of your soldiers with you. When X amount of soldiers are incapacitated, a reinforcement wave should arrive, and proportional soldiers will arrive with more men - say you had 10 men, now 8 of your men come around, as well as 30 from an ally lord, and so on until all the reinforcement waves are depleted, an army retreats or all the soldiers over the 200 battlesize have been called to the battle.

It should be proportional according to the battlesize you choose, so have that in mind. And remember to config the amount of reinforcement waves you want (1-5 or infinite, I think are the settings). Having endless waves is very cool, but makes the battle feel longer and your health may not be enough to survive it, so keep it in mind. Also may take quite a hit on your pc. But having 5 waves might be good for those 5kx5k battles, where you have a gap to regroup, change the outcome of the battle or even save/run away accordingly (less realistic, maybe, but useful nonetheless). That's up to your tastes, though.

 

[marcelluswallace]

Ok so i did not understand the system at least. What means for example 200 Battle size? Is it that 200 soldiers of both sides are the Maximum in the map? So at the beginning from every army spawn 100 men? And the rest ist reinforcement?

 

[marcelluswallace]

Can i manually call the reinforcement or comes it automatically for example every 5 minutes?

 

[marcelluswallace]

So lets say my tactic Skill allows to have 10 percent of the soldiers of the battle and for example that would be 60 men, and i have 5 waves setting, so i start with 10 men and get every Wave 10 soldiers reinforcement?

 

[marcelluswallace]

Thanks for your help!

 

[monoolho]

Can i manually call the reinforcement or comes it automatically for example every 5 minutes?

Battle size means the maximum amount of soldiers in the scene, so a Battle Size of 200 means that at most, both sides will field enough soldiers to reach this number, e.g. 100 for each side for instance. Since i think this is the smallest battle size possible.

The reinforcement wave comes when enough troops have been incapacitated (killed, knocked out or retreated), not sure on the number, but basically when the in-field soldiers numbers reach about 50-70% (in this case, when, out of the 200 soldiers, about 75-100 have been killed or routed), so a reinforcement for the losing side comes, and if they "turn the tide", killing more off, the other side's reinforcement comes, and so on and so forth until the max amount of waves is reached, or there are no more troops to reinforce.

I might be off in my numbers because it has been over a year since I played the game, and i just started again with very small battles, but the general idea remains the same, the mechanic is the same.

 

[LyonExodus]

So battle size is the Maximum amount of units that can be present in a map. So if you and the enemy had the same amount of units (1000 each)
then both of you would get 500 starting units. Assuming we play on 1000 size

now how can you impact the way the starting troops you get are selected? In the menu there are 3 options: One will prioritize higher levels / Another will prioritize lower levels / and the last one will use your party screen ( the one you use to upgrade troops ) from top to bottom.

if you use the last one you can change the order of the troops you want to prioritize in the party screen.

with this said:
Lords/Companions will always be given a spot and need to be present from the very start of the battle.
Then troops will spawn depending on type
So if you have 250 units of each of the 4 macro types then you are going to get: 125 infantry / 125 archers / 125 Cavalry / 125 horse archers.
The reinforcements will start coming in after you lose enough troops, or you have killed enough enemies that you basically end up using their reinforcement slots to spawn units for you.
The reason why you are getting less troops to control when joining an army or an ongoing battle it's because when the army as multiple parties the spawning troops will be taken from all of them. with larger parties getting to field more troops than smaller ones.

The mechanic is very complicated and i will never be capable of giving it the justice it deserves but this is how it works in a broad way.

 

[monoolho]

So lets say my tactic Skill allows to have 10 percent of the soldiers of the battle and for example that would be 60 men, and i have 5 waves setting, so i start with 10 men and get every Wave 10 soldiers reinforcement?

I think it's more or less this, if you have a limited set of waves, if infinite, it will keep on bringing troops. However, as other lords' troops get killed, the amount of soldiers you field increase, so let's say all 3 lords have 200 men each in the army, by the 4th wave all their men get killed off, then all your remaining troops come, instead of a fixed number of 10. It's all calculated mid-battle, so it keeps things varied, I think.
You can also configure how troops spawn in - by the order in your party screen (from highest to lowest), by level (more skilled or less skilled first) or a proportional mix of levels(iirc). I left mine at proportional because it seems more fun, but you can config it to your taste (remember, lowest skill troops get killed off more easily greatly diminishing your numbers and killing off potential level ups)

Lords/Companions will always be given a spot and need to be present from the very start of the battle.
Then troops will spawn depending on type
So if you have 250 units of each of the 4 macro types then you are going to get: 125 infantry / 125 archers / 125 Cavalry / 125 horse archers.
The reinforcements will start coming in after you lose enough troops, or you have killed enough enemies that you basically end up using their reinforcement slots to spawn units for you.

The mechanic is very complicated and i will never be capable of giving it the justice it deserves but this is how it works in a broad way.

What he said!

 

[marcelluswallace]

Ok that ist an interesting mechanic with this tactic skill, at last consequence it means that when this Skill ist too Low, you cannot turn Battles for example 1300 enemies against 1000 allies to your Victory because your influence in the Battlefield ist too low and the a.i. calculates that the 1300 vs 1000 will win. Am i right?

 

[marcelluswallace]

Thanks to all of you for your answers! You helped me already a lot

 

[LyonExodus]

Tactis is mainly an AI stat.

what i mean by this is that the most common advantage you get from tactics is when you sim battles. So what i am saying is that you shouldn't try to sim battles if you don't have at least 200 tactics.

But if you are trying to get prisoners like bandits for example than simulating is better since there is no fleeing mechanic there. All enemies will either get wounded or die. So if you don't have mace wielding troops you can get some bandits to then convert into noble units with the veterans respect perk

but i honestly never bother getting over the 75 perk for it since i tend to never simulate. And with the right commands you should be able to win most fights even when outnumbered at least 2:1 (depends on the quality of both your troops and the enemy)

 

[marcelluswallace]

And that ist what i mean, so when you join a fight with having a low tactic skill that for example from 1000 allied soldiers you only command 20 because the rest of your troops is commanded by the a.i. and the enemy has got 1300 troops, you cannot turn the battle to victory. Only when you would have full control of all troops, either by fighting an independent battle without other allied troops or having such a high tactic skill that you instead take control over the allied army and then you will be able to turn a misadvantage relation of troops to victory with good tactic playstyle? That means you only can join allied battles when the allied army is stronger than the enemy. Battles where the enemy is stronger by numbers you cannot win with tactic..

 

[LyonExodus]

You can control all troops only if:

you are the ruler of the faction
You have created an army and the leader of the faction is not part of the fight.

What you are describing doesn't seem to have anything to do with tactics skill. just the Vassal/mercenary mechanic and how they work when you join an ongoing fight or an AI created army

But yes, it will be very hard for you to turn a losing battle into a victory if you can only control a few troops. Altough archers and Horse Archers are the best type to control in that situation.
i am pretty sure that if you are a vassal and join an army then you can choose what formation of troops to control but you can't as a mercenary.

it's the ups and downs of the mechanic, unless you have a strong position in the kingdom you have to mostly obey orders on the field and can only give them to a few.

 

[marcelluswallace]

Thanks to all of your answers!