Where's all the friendlies?

[Raziaar]

Okay, this is becoming frusterating. as I gain levels, I keep raising armies... have about 22 people(trying to save up for more people able to be in my army. I can never train my troops well, and they keep getting completely slaughtered, and I have to buy a whole new army after every battle.

Why? Because I'm facing battles against stacks and stacks of 30 or so sea_raiders, mountain bandits, forest bandits... ANd its starting to piss me off. Where are the friendly war parties? WHy are they not attacking these stacks? Why are they only generating in 14-20 stacks instead of the 30+ like the enemies are?

I'm frequently being chased around by a dozen 30+ stacks of enemies, and there's no way I can safely fight them.

Starting to get annoyed by it.


And I never see battles anymore. UNless its Vaeger vs swadian. The cowards that are friendly to me keep running away from the bad guys. I wanna be involved in battles that aren't just me with my troops! I wanna help people out

 

[Sir Prince]

The Vaegirs fight everyone else. The Swadians fight everone else. And all bandits, deserters, Dark knights, etc gight Vaegir and Swadia. Only you can join battles. My advice is to just fight river pirates until level 10. Also, I advise to READ THE STICKIED THREADS IN THIS FORUM! REMEMBER: STICKIES ARE YOUR FRIENDS! Also, put extra horse in your inventory (jsut use the cheapest ones, they can be lame) and it adds to your overall party speed. Aslo, use search and there are cheats.

 

[Thrag]

Larger stacks are managable, since only a portion of each army will appear when you enter the battle map. Each side will have a certain number of men present, plus a certain number in reserve that will appear as men get killed.

The number troops from each side that appear on the battle map is determined by the advantage value that is displayed on the pre-battle screen. Raise your tactics skill to increase the advantage. I didn't do this for a very long time in my game and I also kept wondering why so few of my troops were showing up for battles.

Also, to keep guys alive it really helps to use the various commands. Don't let them all rush forward and get strung out. Use hold position commands to get your guys into a group in a defensive position.

I usually go heavy on the archers since they will still whip out melee weapons when things close. A group of archers on a hill overlooking a nice open area in the threat direction works very well. They wlil stay in a group so any calvary rushing them will run into someone and get stopped and then slaughtered. I am able to keep my men alive pretty well with these tactics.

The only downside to the archer group is you have to be careful as you tilt around in the enemy formation since friendly fire can take you down. Try not to attack the guy your archers are aiming at (usually the one closest to them) since you may end up taking fire.

 

[Wanderer]

Not specifically to the question of friendlies, check out this thread as to ways to help clean up your training problems:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/viewtopic.php?t=1113

Now, what's going on with the friendlies? They have a threat evaluation system, and a spotting size. Remember, they don't have heros, so they have a base spotting distance, typically. (Only heros/perm char spotting counts in a stack).

So, most of the time, they don't see each other, the other half, the percentages are to far off, or the speeds are too different.

The rest of the time... I haven't a clue, I don't have the source, but I've inquired enough with Arm to get a clue on this.

Now, the best way to find a fight to 'support' is to follow manhunters around. They seem to be willing to engage just about anydamnedthing.

Luck.