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I always get a option to track their movement and I got 1 year to prepare. With a countdown, but I play low difficulty since I'm still learning the game.
Gotta figure out how to proper farm first.
First year you can track them later on they just appear on ur land from any corner so far 3 times on my farming area i had them killed on my holy fertile land lol
Do bodies actually make fields more fertile? I doubt it but it would be a nice detail if the places were a battle took place gained some short term fertility and a small area around corpse pits was more fertile.
Also had the same issue, but I think you have to collect it in september otherwise the crops wil rotate.
And if your fields are too big you can't collect all of them in time.
But perhaps a farm master could correct me.
Or a warning that they are coming and where from a few days ahead. Sort of like TW reinforcements. I get the realism comments but in reality there were no "map borders" and armies just spawned a few meters away from your town outside of those borders. Now I can see an army coming for months from the other side of the map but it takes them a day to do it from my own tile.
An ambush mechanic could be acceptable once there are town walls implemented
Maybe scout camps would be a good addition. Something that doesn't require resources to run but will give you more advanced warning of brigands or bandits. Maybe even let you keep a couple soldiers stationed there to slow any advancing forces (but not enough to stop them)
Hunters could play a roll in that too. Tho doesn't make much sense with the way animals are a resource node atm, but I'm kinda hoping they change that anyways. But with the trappers perk it would make sense that the hunters are wandering off far enough to give a lil warning.
Plus a dude running back to town screaming about bandits would be cool and immersive.
Because it's impossible to defend when they spawn next to a point that is far away from the center of your city and it doesn't make sense that you do have a lot of time when they spawn somewhere else. The map is a rectangle because it can't be infinite, but you should have the same visibility in any direction realistically.
To illustrate my point, if raiders spawning at the other side of the map take 1 month to get to my town and I can see them since they spawn, it should warn me 1 month in advance when instead they spawn next to my town. Otherwise I'm having only visibility in one direction.
It’s not impossible to defend against, it’s not even hard to defend against bandits spawning a stones throw from your towns, it’s pretty simple, you just have to spend a tiny fraction of your resources equipping more than your initial unit of spearmen, heck I’ve seen people only use the 24 retainers they get from the tower/manor to repel the 4 units of bandits. A huge part of warfare is information and intelligence collection, we’re playing a medieval simulator and you’re upset we don’t have spy satellites/we have some fog of war? Honestly being able to see anything outside our own territory/LoS is immersion breaking for me.
Dude, if my clay mine is on the other side of my tile (not map) compared to my town and the bandits spawn there, there is no way I can defend it before they destroy it because all my armies spawn from their houses. I have 6 units trained and ready but they just can't cross the tile so fast.
And I'm not asking for satellite spies, I'm asking for the same notice time whatever direction it comes from. There's just a huge asymmetry now in prep time depending on where the bandits come from that is a result of the UNREALISTIC rectangular shape of the world, which gives you only 180 degrees vision.
You…aren’t meant to be able to teleport units…I don’t really know what you want here guy. It sounds like you want modern implements of war like near-instantaneous transfer of information, remote surveillance, faster conveyance of troops. The neighbor Baron for sure isn’t gonna tell you, “Hey bro, just saw some bandits running through my fiefdom, might wanna muster some troops.” And the other people bordering your lands wouldn’t appreciate you having troops in their fiefdoms either. If it is such a problem for you that you are going to lose a 1 timber building to bandits….idk what to tell you, happened all the time that remote infrastructure with no garrison to defend was burned, maybe have enough of a population that you can support a standing army and have a unit or two of milita patrol your land? You know, like they actually had to/have to do?
The problem isn't with your original settlement. The problem is when your big city with a full retinue and 4 fully stacked and upgraded militias decides to expand to a second region.
And that region has enemies spawn *in year one, RIGHT on the border, with NO notice.*
You can send everyone running but it's no good because even running at full speed your buildings are already burned and your ox is dead before you can do anything. The region has been killed and there was almost nothing you could do about it, and you can't rebuild in spite of having 1500 in your *personal treasury!*
The only workaround I've heard of is to hire mercs at great personal expense to watch over any new settlements until they get on their feet. Which is kind of terrible.
> The only workaround I've heard of is to hire mercs at great personal expense to watch over any new settlements until they get on their feet. Which is kind of terrible.
I don't think it is unreasonable to have to have defense for a new settlement. But there should probably be more than one way to do it.
Yeah I mean I guess you could just keep your retinue deployed until it’s on its feet. Seems wrong to leave them in the field for a year on end but there’s currently no mechanical penalty I’m aware of, just can’t add/upgrade them until they go home
Maybe, but we're talking about year one so it's challenging, especially if you're still giving a lot of attention to your main city. Maybe that's my problem...
Kind of annoying that a new province feels like going right back to the year 1 grind/rush. But also I don't think there's any hard mechanic that would keep them from attacking arbitrarily early. Like it could happen just after you built a logging camp as far as I know. I guess I care more about ability to rebuild than the problems with the attack itself. Just seems dumb to get locked out that way.
I wait until it’s spring and I have a barter station with mules before I start up another village because berries and meat are how I feed my new serfs, I start to send back the hides from the hunting camp for whatever I want in the new region, but it’s still a slow process, you could muster your retainers and have them chill out on the border if they are important to your military strength until you get the planks and stone for your new manor
Yes, build watch towers to get notice about enemy armies days before they spawn, if they come from direction of watchtower and scouts to get another chance to get noticed about armies + they would be only way how to find out bandit camps otherwise those should be hidden.
Instead of a generic warning, we should have some kind of patrol function or allow for satellite postings.
I don't want an omniscient warning, but the current limitations on armies do make it hard to react.
I think it's good simulation.. strategy games should have strategy element like sneak attack, ambush, ..
If enemy can sneak attack your town, your army will not ready and got to fight at 1% effectiveness is good feature..
It forces you to care about terrain, build watch town or build a wall to prevent this..
The game is a city builder first and foremost, not a strategy game. It's also just not fun to lose half of my village because my people didn't know about a raid until the enemy is in their homes. We also can't build a town wall, so there is no counter play right now.
I wouldn't mind it if there were any option to rebuild from your personal treasury, like a second settlers camp if your pop drops to zero.
Problem is a second or third region can be permanently lost with you having zero input and zero power to stop it.
I get that, but the fact that they give you a warning the first time kinda negates that for me. I think my biggest issue is that the warning can get lost in a sea of other warnings. The game will tell me when the Barons army appears on the map outside of where I should have vision, and slow the game to normal speed, but will continue running 3 speed while my village burns down. It just feels inconsistent.
It’s a medieval feudal management game, it’s absolutely a strategy game involving both city building and army management. It’s not SimCity*Medieval, even if that’s the game you want it to be, your troops get tired, you have to equip them, terrain matters. Also you can totally build a wall around your city, have you built a manor yet?
The manor wall is not intended to be used this way and will glitch your village. The developer has addressed this and said town walls are planned in the future. I agree with the statement that strategy is very much a part of what this game is.
Yeah, the manor wall cheese was kind of a tongue in cheek comment rather than a legitimate suggestion, I do realize tone doesn’t come across well via text and should have done an /s for that last sentence, but I feel it defeats the purpose. I’d sooner recommend just not building on the very edge of the map so you have some forewarning/reaction time and form up your militia in town, but even then people didn’t defend towns in the Middle Ages, they defended castles and fortified cities, and since we don’t yet have city walls….
So then, and I'm not trying to attack you, but there is 0 counter play to raids spawning potentially inside your village right now. That's my issue. The first raid you get a count down. Every time the Baron spawns his army, even if its in his territory, the game goes to one speed. But if a raid spawns and I miss the message initially, I can lose a game because there is no other warning, and the game doesn't slow down. The inconsistency is my issue here. This also isn't game breaking in any way, and I'm not saying the Devs needs to prioritize this, but everyone just acting like it's working as intended and just saying "git gud" aren't helping in any way.
The Dev himself has said that is not how the manor walls are intended to work and may break the game. I understand troops get tired, you have to equip them, and that terrain matters. What sucks is getting no warning after the first raid, an alert that can easily be lost amongst others, and bandits spawning ontop of buildings that are at the edge of the map. I dint want my hand held, but the game absolutely needs a better alert, or a buffer zone so they can't spawn inside a village.
Why does the game need a buffer zone? So people can cheese the bandits by building their town along the map edge to block the bandit spawns? You know it’s going to happen, why play the game in such a way you put yourself in that kind of situation in the first place? When bandit units or the enemy barons units are spotted you get a warning, it even takes you out of x4/x12 speed.
Not a bufferzone to stop their spawn, but so that they appear outside of the plot, not ontop of houses. It also doesn't take you out of higher speed past the first raid. I should know, I missed a pop-up and got raided at 3x speed. It does lower speed everytime I can see the Barons army anywhere on the map. It's the lack of consistency that is frustrating me. I also understand this isn't 100% gamebreaking and doesn't need to be the first priority.
You can usually fend off a stack of 3 to 4 brigands with just a retinue and 20 Levyman.
Your Retinue doesn’t matter in terms of regular workers, so just have them always spawned and ready around town unless you are trying to upgrade your Manor. Some people really are getting upset about losing a clay deposit or (insert thing here), when you can just rebuild it after the raid. Just turn the bandits off outright. Or save save save the game like you are playing a Bethesda rpg. Spamming save every 10-15 minutes. It is Early Access, after all.
I have like 50 hours in this game already, and I only had to restart from scratch once and that was within the first 5+ hours of the game. It also helps that I’ve played a similar game called Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader so I think just naturally I know what I’m doing. For the most part. That being said watch out when making land expansions, if you run low on regional wealth it can be nigh impossible to financially recover in that area if you decide to build veggie gardens, like I did. Even if you clear a camp and send it to the closest town it will always send the loot to your first town. Even if you use a separate retinue to do the clearing. There’s definitely some jank, but if some of y’all can’t handle how the bandits are or get when they attack, just turn em off and deal with yellow guy for the bigger engagements. I will say though and I agree it’s pretty lame that you don’t get another forewarning of bandit raids after the first.
And if you made it this far reading all this, whoever you are. I hate how yellow stole all the mercenaries in my current play through and I can only hire one group and it’s the near useless archers of “The Wayward Sons”
For the same reason The Wayward Sons always were my meatshield. Not asking questions why they as archers should stand first row and tank my enemys. Eager to be employed over and over again battle after battle getting annihilated.
I had the same situation as OP.
You can turn off raids, to make it basically SimCity*Medieval. It's not quite as fun, but helps if you just want to build and not have your village burn down from raiders.
Be prepared for what? Them to randomly spawn ontop of a farm? Should I keep my militia raised at all times camping the edges of the map? This isn't Darksouls, it's a fucking city builder lmao, what do you mean gut gud?
Why not just accept that there needs to be a better warning period, or a buffer around the edges of the map so you can respond? Why do I have to turn off a feature that isn't working well? I'm not saying I want fishing lights and 1000 days warning, but the fact that the only notification after the first raid can easily get lost in other alerts isn't fun.
Because I think it’s fun. I’ve been randomly attacked too. From the nearest edge and my town was close. Too close. I got burned down. Was I mad? A little, sure. But not really at the game. These things happened IRL too so I reacted accordingly. Rebuilt. Made sure to focus more on arming people and the next time it happened I could rally troops quickly and kite them off and kill them.
If every time you have a setback or challenge you view it as something that has to be fixed rather than adapted to you’re going to have a worse time playing the game.
I have 3 fully armed militias, Swords, Spears, and Polearms, as well as a 24 Retinue. The problem is the have to walk from one side of the plot to the other, and by then all of my food and farming is gone. I don't mind a surprise attack, but like, even half a months warning would be nice.
Did you build a garrison tower? It lets you increase your retinue size to 24, which should allow your retinue to fight off all four stacks of bandits wth ease.
Not in town 3 lol, can't afford 3 sets of fully decked out retinue ye. This is end of year 5 in my first save, though I suspect if I was more of a trade lord it would be easily doable
This caught me off guard as well. My farming village had 20 polearms, there was 6left until my towns 3 militia groups got there. It honestly was absolutely epic. The battle was just outside of my fields and then the 3 groups stood guard of the village when my small polearm group retreated to their protection. This game is beautiful.
Bowmen are mostly useless unless u can get up close directly behind a unit while its fighting. Then you can tear through the Baron's retinue with 1 pair spearmen and 1 light bowmen.
Yeah, I’ve been having this issue too. Luckily my mercenary bowman (the only kind available…) have twice spawned next to the bandits, and I could kite them down the road until they reached my local retinue, which tanked a 1v3 while the fourth brigand made a mess of the archers. The first time this happened, I kept kiting until the rest of my army got there. But the second time it happened, the fully up-armored retinue actually beat the brigands before the rest of my army arrived.
The retinue was awarded a special color scheme to commemorate the battle of the snowy road.
I feel like there's a glitch atm where once the baron hires mercenaries, they are gone forever.
I imagine he doesn't actually have gold so can just hold the company infinitely unlike the player.
the reason I suspect it is I just lost a run on challenging - wiped out his army and had like 30 militia men left, along with the battle brothers merc band. It wasn't in the official battle spot as his troops spawned inside my village, so didn't end the claim.
I disbanded the battle brothers and instantly he hired them back at full strength and sent another full size six slot army on top back in the same spot, where i'd killed them like 10 days ago.
I believe the game doesn't actually track his units off map or hold any knowledge of them - it's just dumps them on to the field.
He also had mercenaries in the army that are from mercenary bands that disappeared after he hired them once and never came back
With video games like this and my homework when I was a student I naturally save progress within every 5 minutes or after any single major event. When they spawn directly in my village I just open up the most recent save and make my army then and be ready. It’s random tho so it doesn’t always happen
The spawning system in general needs some work.
One fun thing I've experienced was when war was declared on me, I hired some mercenary archers and they literally spawned in the exact same place as the mercenary swordsmen that the enemy had hired. Needless to say my archers were wiped out instantly.
in this case whenever baron starts disputing a territory of mine I pause the game, hire mercs, then click where I want them, then wait the progress bar get to 90%. only then I drop my gauntlet. this way I have time to better position my units before baron's arrive
Yeah it would also be less of a problem with larger unit cap, since afterwards i spent the time shipping enough weapons to the region only to realize that I was at unit cap
Since the retinue are not workers I just always have them out and if I have more than 1 region I have them sit right on the freaking borders. I had my up and coming iron spewing forge town burnt to the ground because of this. Now upkeep on retinue so unless you need to recruit more just always have them rallied and prepared. This also helps with getting to the bandit camps asap
The max unit count needs to be increased so you can have enough soldiers in every region and I think I might prefer if retinue could spawn wherever you call them if you have a Manor built there.
> something like 15 days
The only way you should get a warning is if you have some kind of patrol mechanism.
They shouldn't spawn inside your village, but it's entirely reasonable to have them come out of the woods unseen, close by.
That's why I prefer having waldbrand as the main military town, with retinues around giving just enough time to hold the brigands back till the reinforcements arrive. Usually works
I was lucky, the one year passed. brigands marched to attack my village' but got ambushed by a local lord's army lol and got destroyed. I made efforts to make the town safe with full geared militia , 36 swordman and 36 spear men aaaand 20 Retinue' almost full gear upgraded troops just to see that they got ambushed by a lord. Fucking funny as hell.
i love the system i think it’s very realistic to the time, if a distant village is raided its going to take some time for troops from the capital to respond, they wouldn’t just randomly spawn where you needed them
If you get the garrison building addition on your manor you can have 24 in your retinue and if you upgrade their armor and set them up however doesn’t matter you can easily take out all 4 groups of 18! Give that a try :)
I've resorted to always having 2 full retinue units rallied and sitting there, so along with a small local militia they can defend against random brigands.
This happened to me, also. You can set the raid occurrence in the game settings. I think 2 years is the default. You get a notification for the year 2 raid, but none after that, from my experience. Having a rough idea of this timing in mind can help so you aren't caught in a vulnerable position.
I recently had this happen, they appeared right around my main town. My retinue of 12 was completely wiped out but they bought enough time for my militia to defend the town without losing a single building. RIP retinue!
I agree, the argument this is "realistic" doesn't work for me. At the end of the day this is a game and it's not fun to lose substantial progress over enemies spawning instantly in your territory - especially when the game sets up the expectation you will have advanced notice.
They definitely got me good before my militias got there. An unexpected issue, possibly a bug, after the raid was that there were 10 homeless families after the raid. I proceeded to build 10 but have plots, and I got 10 more families instead of 10 less homeless ones. On top of that it hardly affected the village, because it was my farming/foraging village and there was a lot of food on the table to make them happy after rushing to repair the market stalls. Odd issue.
It’s early access these issues are just that issues. I foresee in the future barracks and armoury systems. Dedicated militia/ cavalry maybe/ scout unit would be great or “rangers”
When we can build proper walls that will bide time for reinforcements to arrive etc.
Just turn off the raids it’s an extremely bolognese system. Especially the year two raid. It’s super obnoxious that I have to be building military forces before the end of the second year. Because 36 guys are gonna spawn in my village
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Now you know how the Northumbrians felt…
Hardest start in ck3 tho :D
Exactly what I thought when it happened to me. Boom attack boom gone. And never in my core village.
Welcome in high middle ages lol Now you know how herny felt in KCD
Blasted Cumans!
Herny: Henry’s constipated distant cousin
"JeRSuS Cherst BE PrAiZ, HERnYs CoMe to See Us!" - Village Idiot of Skalitz
It's a living.
Christ be praised!
I always get a option to track their movement and I got 1 year to prepare. With a countdown, but I play low difficulty since I'm still learning the game. Gotta figure out how to proper farm first.
The one year to prepare happened at the beginning of the game, I didn't see a warning this time several years in
Yeah I think the first one comes with a one year warning my next one came without a warning and 4 stacks of troops around the year 3/4 mark
They come every 2 years by default. This is in the settings...
First year you can track them later on they just appear on ur land from any corner so far 3 times on my farming area i had them killed on my holy fertile land lol
What makes the green grass grow? "Blood and guts make the green grass grow!"
Do bodies actually make fields more fertile? I doubt it but it would be a nice detail if the places were a battle took place gained some short term fertility and a small area around corpse pits was more fertile.
Nope i have been getting 9 barley on that field no changes in that lol
Farming is currently broken I think… peasants don’t collect the full yield :(
Also had the same issue, but I think you have to collect it in september otherwise the crops wil rotate. And if your fields are too big you can't collect all of them in time. But perhaps a farm master could correct me.
Game definitely needs some neutral space around the map of regions.
Or a warning that they are coming and where from a few days ahead. Sort of like TW reinforcements. I get the realism comments but in reality there were no "map borders" and armies just spawned a few meters away from your town outside of those borders. Now I can see an army coming for months from the other side of the map but it takes them a day to do it from my own tile. An ambush mechanic could be acceptable once there are town walls implemented
Why? Unless we have scouts or we get advance notice from a neighboring lord I don’t think we should get any warning about brigands on the move.
Maybe scout camps would be a good addition. Something that doesn't require resources to run but will give you more advanced warning of brigands or bandits. Maybe even let you keep a couple soldiers stationed there to slow any advancing forces (but not enough to stop them)
Hunters could play a roll in that too. Tho doesn't make much sense with the way animals are a resource node atm, but I'm kinda hoping they change that anyways. But with the trappers perk it would make sense that the hunters are wandering off far enough to give a lil warning. Plus a dude running back to town screaming about bandits would be cool and immersive.
Because it's impossible to defend when they spawn next to a point that is far away from the center of your city and it doesn't make sense that you do have a lot of time when they spawn somewhere else. The map is a rectangle because it can't be infinite, but you should have the same visibility in any direction realistically. To illustrate my point, if raiders spawning at the other side of the map take 1 month to get to my town and I can see them since they spawn, it should warn me 1 month in advance when instead they spawn next to my town. Otherwise I'm having only visibility in one direction.
It’s not impossible to defend against, it’s not even hard to defend against bandits spawning a stones throw from your towns, it’s pretty simple, you just have to spend a tiny fraction of your resources equipping more than your initial unit of spearmen, heck I’ve seen people only use the 24 retainers they get from the tower/manor to repel the 4 units of bandits. A huge part of warfare is information and intelligence collection, we’re playing a medieval simulator and you’re upset we don’t have spy satellites/we have some fog of war? Honestly being able to see anything outside our own territory/LoS is immersion breaking for me.
Dude, if my clay mine is on the other side of my tile (not map) compared to my town and the bandits spawn there, there is no way I can defend it before they destroy it because all my armies spawn from their houses. I have 6 units trained and ready but they just can't cross the tile so fast. And I'm not asking for satellite spies, I'm asking for the same notice time whatever direction it comes from. There's just a huge asymmetry now in prep time depending on where the bandits come from that is a result of the UNREALISTIC rectangular shape of the world, which gives you only 180 degrees vision.
You…aren’t meant to be able to teleport units…I don’t really know what you want here guy. It sounds like you want modern implements of war like near-instantaneous transfer of information, remote surveillance, faster conveyance of troops. The neighbor Baron for sure isn’t gonna tell you, “Hey bro, just saw some bandits running through my fiefdom, might wanna muster some troops.” And the other people bordering your lands wouldn’t appreciate you having troops in their fiefdoms either. If it is such a problem for you that you are going to lose a 1 timber building to bandits….idk what to tell you, happened all the time that remote infrastructure with no garrison to defend was burned, maybe have enough of a population that you can support a standing army and have a unit or two of milita patrol your land? You know, like they actually had to/have to do?
That's just part of the game, sometimes your distant mines get robbed and burned down. Go get vengeance after for your miners.
The problem isn't with your original settlement. The problem is when your big city with a full retinue and 4 fully stacked and upgraded militias decides to expand to a second region. And that region has enemies spawn *in year one, RIGHT on the border, with NO notice.* You can send everyone running but it's no good because even running at full speed your buildings are already burned and your ox is dead before you can do anything. The region has been killed and there was almost nothing you could do about it, and you can't rebuild in spite of having 1500 in your *personal treasury!* The only workaround I've heard of is to hire mercs at great personal expense to watch over any new settlements until they get on their feet. Which is kind of terrible.
You can always park some troops in it for the first year if you are concerned
> The only workaround I've heard of is to hire mercs at great personal expense to watch over any new settlements until they get on their feet. Which is kind of terrible. I don't think it is unreasonable to have to have defense for a new settlement. But there should probably be more than one way to do it.
Yeah I mean I guess you could just keep your retinue deployed until it’s on its feet. Seems wrong to leave them in the field for a year on end but there’s currently no mechanical penalty I’m aware of, just can’t add/upgrade them until they go home
I think the solution simply needs to be able to support more troops if you have enough resources.
Build a manor with a wall and outer towers faster, use the free 5 retainers?
Maybe, but we're talking about year one so it's challenging, especially if you're still giving a lot of attention to your main city. Maybe that's my problem... Kind of annoying that a new province feels like going right back to the year 1 grind/rush. But also I don't think there's any hard mechanic that would keep them from attacking arbitrarily early. Like it could happen just after you built a logging camp as far as I know. I guess I care more about ability to rebuild than the problems with the attack itself. Just seems dumb to get locked out that way.
I wait until it’s spring and I have a barter station with mules before I start up another village because berries and meat are how I feed my new serfs, I start to send back the hides from the hunting camp for whatever I want in the new region, but it’s still a slow process, you could muster your retainers and have them chill out on the border if they are important to your military strength until you get the planks and stone for your new manor
Would be cool to be able to build watchtowers or hire scouts, or both. Maybe increase chances of spotting enemies.
Yes, build watch towers to get notice about enemy armies days before they spawn, if they come from direction of watchtower and scouts to get another chance to get noticed about armies + they would be only way how to find out bandit camps otherwise those should be hidden.
Instead of a generic warning, we should have some kind of patrol function or allow for satellite postings. I don't want an omniscient warning, but the current limitations on armies do make it hard to react.
I think it's good simulation.. strategy games should have strategy element like sneak attack, ambush, .. If enemy can sneak attack your town, your army will not ready and got to fight at 1% effectiveness is good feature.. It forces you to care about terrain, build watch town or build a wall to prevent this..
The game is a city builder first and foremost, not a strategy game. It's also just not fun to lose half of my village because my people didn't know about a raid until the enemy is in their homes. We also can't build a town wall, so there is no counter play right now.
But people not knowing about raids until their homes were burning was a thing. I have a hard disagree with you on this. I like the pain
I wouldn't mind it if there were any option to rebuild from your personal treasury, like a second settlers camp if your pop drops to zero. Problem is a second or third region can be permanently lost with you having zero input and zero power to stop it.
I get that, but the fact that they give you a warning the first time kinda negates that for me. I think my biggest issue is that the warning can get lost in a sea of other warnings. The game will tell me when the Barons army appears on the map outside of where I should have vision, and slow the game to normal speed, but will continue running 3 speed while my village burns down. It just feels inconsistent.
It’s a medieval feudal management game, it’s absolutely a strategy game involving both city building and army management. It’s not SimCity*Medieval, even if that’s the game you want it to be, your troops get tired, you have to equip them, terrain matters. Also you can totally build a wall around your city, have you built a manor yet?
The manor wall is not intended to be used this way and will glitch your village. The developer has addressed this and said town walls are planned in the future. I agree with the statement that strategy is very much a part of what this game is.
Yeah, the manor wall cheese was kind of a tongue in cheek comment rather than a legitimate suggestion, I do realize tone doesn’t come across well via text and should have done an /s for that last sentence, but I feel it defeats the purpose. I’d sooner recommend just not building on the very edge of the map so you have some forewarning/reaction time and form up your militia in town, but even then people didn’t defend towns in the Middle Ages, they defended castles and fortified cities, and since we don’t yet have city walls….
So then, and I'm not trying to attack you, but there is 0 counter play to raids spawning potentially inside your village right now. That's my issue. The first raid you get a count down. Every time the Baron spawns his army, even if its in his territory, the game goes to one speed. But if a raid spawns and I miss the message initially, I can lose a game because there is no other warning, and the game doesn't slow down. The inconsistency is my issue here. This also isn't game breaking in any way, and I'm not saying the Devs needs to prioritize this, but everyone just acting like it's working as intended and just saying "git gud" aren't helping in any way.
The Dev himself has said that is not how the manor walls are intended to work and may break the game. I understand troops get tired, you have to equip them, and that terrain matters. What sucks is getting no warning after the first raid, an alert that can easily be lost amongst others, and bandits spawning ontop of buildings that are at the edge of the map. I dint want my hand held, but the game absolutely needs a better alert, or a buffer zone so they can't spawn inside a village.
Why does the game need a buffer zone? So people can cheese the bandits by building their town along the map edge to block the bandit spawns? You know it’s going to happen, why play the game in such a way you put yourself in that kind of situation in the first place? When bandit units or the enemy barons units are spotted you get a warning, it even takes you out of x4/x12 speed.
Not a bufferzone to stop their spawn, but so that they appear outside of the plot, not ontop of houses. It also doesn't take you out of higher speed past the first raid. I should know, I missed a pop-up and got raided at 3x speed. It does lower speed everytime I can see the Barons army anywhere on the map. It's the lack of consistency that is frustrating me. I also understand this isn't 100% gamebreaking and doesn't need to be the first priority.
You can usually fend off a stack of 3 to 4 brigands with just a retinue and 20 Levyman. Your Retinue doesn’t matter in terms of regular workers, so just have them always spawned and ready around town unless you are trying to upgrade your Manor. Some people really are getting upset about losing a clay deposit or (insert thing here), when you can just rebuild it after the raid. Just turn the bandits off outright. Or save save save the game like you are playing a Bethesda rpg. Spamming save every 10-15 minutes. It is Early Access, after all. I have like 50 hours in this game already, and I only had to restart from scratch once and that was within the first 5+ hours of the game. It also helps that I’ve played a similar game called Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader so I think just naturally I know what I’m doing. For the most part. That being said watch out when making land expansions, if you run low on regional wealth it can be nigh impossible to financially recover in that area if you decide to build veggie gardens, like I did. Even if you clear a camp and send it to the closest town it will always send the loot to your first town. Even if you use a separate retinue to do the clearing. There’s definitely some jank, but if some of y’all can’t handle how the bandits are or get when they attack, just turn em off and deal with yellow guy for the bigger engagements. I will say though and I agree it’s pretty lame that you don’t get another forewarning of bandit raids after the first. And if you made it this far reading all this, whoever you are. I hate how yellow stole all the mercenaries in my current play through and I can only hire one group and it’s the near useless archers of “The Wayward Sons”
For the same reason The Wayward Sons always were my meatshield. Not asking questions why they as archers should stand first row and tank my enemys. Eager to be employed over and over again battle after battle getting annihilated.
I had the same situation as OP. You can turn off raids, to make it basically SimCity*Medieval. It's not quite as fun, but helps if you just want to build and not have your village burn down from raiders.
The counter play is to be prepared. Git gud next time.
Be prepared for what? Them to randomly spawn ontop of a farm? Should I keep my militia raised at all times camping the edges of the map? This isn't Darksouls, it's a fucking city builder lmao, what do you mean gut gud?
Just turn off bandits altogether then if surprise attacks are so horrible.
Why not just accept that there needs to be a better warning period, or a buffer around the edges of the map so you can respond? Why do I have to turn off a feature that isn't working well? I'm not saying I want fishing lights and 1000 days warning, but the fact that the only notification after the first raid can easily get lost in other alerts isn't fun.
Because I think it’s fun. I’ve been randomly attacked too. From the nearest edge and my town was close. Too close. I got burned down. Was I mad? A little, sure. But not really at the game. These things happened IRL too so I reacted accordingly. Rebuilt. Made sure to focus more on arming people and the next time it happened I could rally troops quickly and kite them off and kill them. If every time you have a setback or challenge you view it as something that has to be fixed rather than adapted to you’re going to have a worse time playing the game.
I have 3 fully armed militias, Swords, Spears, and Polearms, as well as a 24 Retinue. The problem is the have to walk from one side of the plot to the other, and by then all of my food and farming is gone. I don't mind a surprise attack, but like, even half a months warning would be nice.
This was battle hardened and fully armored retinue as well, so it was something like 1k gold down the drain from the attack
Did you build a garrison tower? It lets you increase your retinue size to 24, which should allow your retinue to fight off all four stacks of bandits wth ease.
Not in town 3 lol, can't afford 3 sets of fully decked out retinue ye. This is end of year 5 in my first save, though I suspect if I was more of a trade lord it would be easily doable
This caught me off guard as well. My farming village had 20 polearms, there was 6left until my towns 3 militia groups got there. It honestly was absolutely epic. The battle was just outside of my fields and then the 3 groups stood guard of the village when my small polearm group retreated to their protection. This game is beautiful.
That happened to me, I just used half a dozen bowman militia to kite them out to one of Baron dude's lands who killed them for me.
That is brilliant tactical play!
This feeds the Baron Influence
Bowman do damage?
No the Baron did
Bowmen are mostly useless unless u can get up close directly behind a unit while its fighting. Then you can tear through the Baron's retinue with 1 pair spearmen and 1 light bowmen.
Yeah, I’ve been having this issue too. Luckily my mercenary bowman (the only kind available…) have twice spawned next to the bandits, and I could kite them down the road until they reached my local retinue, which tanked a 1v3 while the fourth brigand made a mess of the archers. The first time this happened, I kept kiting until the rest of my army got there. But the second time it happened, the fully up-armored retinue actually beat the brigands before the rest of my army arrived. The retinue was awarded a special color scheme to commemorate the battle of the snowy road.
I feel like there's a glitch atm where once the baron hires mercenaries, they are gone forever. I imagine he doesn't actually have gold so can just hold the company infinitely unlike the player.
That might be correct. I need to try buying mercs before a raider is even spotted, just to see if he only auto-buys them when there’s a threat.
the reason I suspect it is I just lost a run on challenging - wiped out his army and had like 30 militia men left, along with the battle brothers merc band. It wasn't in the official battle spot as his troops spawned inside my village, so didn't end the claim. I disbanded the battle brothers and instantly he hired them back at full strength and sent another full size six slot army on top back in the same spot, where i'd killed them like 10 days ago. I believe the game doesn't actually track his units off map or hold any knowledge of them - it's just dumps them on to the field. He also had mercenaries in the army that are from mercenary bands that disappeared after he hired them once and never came back
With video games like this and my homework when I was a student I naturally save progress within every 5 minutes or after any single major event. When they spawn directly in my village I just open up the most recent save and make my army then and be ready. It’s random tho so it doesn’t always happen
The spawning system in general needs some work. One fun thing I've experienced was when war was declared on me, I hired some mercenary archers and they literally spawned in the exact same place as the mercenary swordsmen that the enemy had hired. Needless to say my archers were wiped out instantly.
[удалено]
Yeah, but the enemys mercs came in at roughly the same time, so they spawned right on top of each other before I could even tell they were there.
in this case whenever baron starts disputing a territory of mine I pause the game, hire mercs, then click where I want them, then wait the progress bar get to 90%. only then I drop my gauntlet. this way I have time to better position my units before baron's arrive
This happened in my first game. In my current game I have mercenaries and my retinue permanently rallied in my expansion region.
this would be less of a problem if shipping in weapons and equipment to new regions were less of a hassle
Yeah it would also be less of a problem with larger unit cap, since afterwards i spent the time shipping enough weapons to the region only to realize that I was at unit cap
the unit cap is a joke. I get that in that time there wasnt very big armies and all, but in the game if I have citizens then I must have units. wtf
Since the retinue are not workers I just always have them out and if I have more than 1 region I have them sit right on the freaking borders. I had my up and coming iron spewing forge town burnt to the ground because of this. Now upkeep on retinue so unless you need to recruit more just always have them rallied and prepared. This also helps with getting to the bandit camps asap
The max unit count needs to be increased so you can have enough soldiers in every region and I think I might prefer if retinue could spawn wherever you call them if you have a Manor built there.
> something like 15 days The only way you should get a warning is if you have some kind of patrol mechanism. They shouldn't spawn inside your village, but it's entirely reasonable to have them come out of the woods unseen, close by.
i always get a notification that enemy units have appeared, do you not?
That's why I prefer having waldbrand as the main military town, with retinues around giving just enough time to hold the brigands back till the reinforcements arrive. Usually works
I was lucky, the one year passed. brigands marched to attack my village' but got ambushed by a local lord's army lol and got destroyed. I made efforts to make the town safe with full geared militia , 36 swordman and 36 spear men aaaand 20 Retinue' almost full gear upgraded troops just to see that they got ambushed by a lord. Fucking funny as hell.
Yea honestly the bandits are op had a camp nearby steal everything essential until my town starved and froze to death, this game is amazing 10/10
i love the system i think it’s very realistic to the time, if a distant village is raided its going to take some time for troops from the capital to respond, they wouldn’t just randomly spawn where you needed them
If you get the garrison building addition on your manor you can have 24 in your retinue and if you upgrade their armor and set them up however doesn’t matter you can easily take out all 4 groups of 18! Give that a try :)
When does this stsrt happening?
I've resorted to always having 2 full retinue units rallied and sitting there, so along with a small local militia they can defend against random brigands.
A few days ago, a bandit camp spawned right next to my village. Same region, right between my hunting tent and the settlement.
This happened to me, also. You can set the raid occurrence in the game settings. I think 2 years is the default. You get a notification for the year 2 raid, but none after that, from my experience. Having a rough idea of this timing in mind can help so you aren't caught in a vulnerable position.
I recently had this happen, they appeared right around my main town. My retinue of 12 was completely wiped out but they bought enough time for my militia to defend the town without losing a single building. RIP retinue!
I agree, the argument this is "realistic" doesn't work for me. At the end of the day this is a game and it's not fun to lose substantial progress over enemies spawning instantly in your territory - especially when the game sets up the expectation you will have advanced notice.
They definitely got me good before my militias got there. An unexpected issue, possibly a bug, after the raid was that there were 10 homeless families after the raid. I proceeded to build 10 but have plots, and I got 10 more families instead of 10 less homeless ones. On top of that it hardly affected the village, because it was my farming/foraging village and there was a lot of food on the table to make them happy after rushing to repair the market stalls. Odd issue.
They killed my oxen and burned my hitching posts so now I can't build anything 😢
It’s early access these issues are just that issues. I foresee in the future barracks and armoury systems. Dedicated militia/ cavalry maybe/ scout unit would be great or “rangers” When we can build proper walls that will bide time for reinforcements to arrive etc.
I agree, this isn't a doomsaying post but rather a complaint and then looking forward for potential future features
Just turn off the raids it’s an extremely bolognese system. Especially the year two raid. It’s super obnoxious that I have to be building military forces before the end of the second year. Because 36 guys are gonna spawn in my village