[Help] Vassal levies raised too long

You can't really do anything about that penalty, as far as I know. Try to plan your wars in a smart way, so that you don't need your vassals' troops longer than necessary. Also keep in mind that the penalty starts small and grows over time. If your vassals are happy otherwise, a bit of that penalty won't be to bad.

As for the troop numbers, that's only at the beginning of the game. With more province improvements these numbers will grow over the course of the game.

Luan,

Yeah, the levies are intended to start small. If anything, it appears they get way too big over the course of the game.

Even during the early 17th century, most independent military units (i.e., the ones that did most of the fighting and maneuvering and taking and holding towns, only periodically coming together into larger bodies) were smaller than 10K.

If you disband and send them home, the penalty reduces gradually over time until it goes away.

If you disband and immediately reraise levies, you may round up more men that are freshly trained but the penalty won't have time to go down.

Luan Miguel said:

Another small point: the number of troops in general very small in this demo, it is normal? with 70k or so troops appear later on in history (CK1 in the year 1066 there were already huge armies).

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Hmm, largest medieval battles were no more than 40k for one side (except some big battle vs Ottomans and Arabs and in eastern Europe). Only few medieval battles were really big in numbers:
Battle of Manzikert (1071) Byzantine-Seljucs had ca. 40k for each,
Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) Castile/Navere/Arragon-Almohads ca. 70k vs 120k
Battle of the Kalka River (1223) Kiev-Mongol ca. 20-30k for each,
Battle of Kulikovo (1380) Moscow-Golden Horde 40-70k vs 90-150k
Battle of Kosovo (1389) Ottomans-Serbia ca. 30k each
Battle of Ankara (1402) Timurid-Ottoman both sides are unknown exactly, but were huge (like 100k each)
Battle of Grunwald (1410) Teutonic Order-Poland/Lithuania ca. 30-40k each
Siege of Belgrade (1456) Hungary/Serbian-Ottoman 60k vs 70-100k

To be Fair

To be fair... medival battles always had the ability to be surprisingly large. Look at pre-medival times and Alexander the Great. The opposing Persian armies were reported to number from 220-240 K. So... its not like the infastructure wasn't there to generate the armies... mayby just fractured loyalties... who knows. Of course the report of Persian troop numbers was by Alexander's personel historian, so one might expect dramatically exagerated numbers. Said my piece. Late. :happy:

alexelliott83 said:

To be fair... medival battles always had the ability to be surprisingly large. Look at pre-medival times and Alexander the Great. The opposing Persian armies were reported to number from 220-240 K. So... its not like the infastructure wasn't there to generate the armies... mayby just fractured loyalties... who knows. Of course the report of Persian troop numbers was by Alexander's personel historian, so one might expect dramatically exagerated numbers. Said my piece. Late. :happy:

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And Xerxes was said to have invaded Greece with a million men, but the fact is that during this period there just wasn't the level of organisation or political control to keep that many men in arms.

nyah said:

And Xerxes was said to have invaded Greece with a million men, but the fact is that during this period there just wasn't the level of organisation or political control to keep that many men in arms.

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Still, it is accepted now that he had around 300-500k men, which is achievable by state of the same size only near the end.

And the main problem is how fast numbers change from thousands to hundreds of thousands in just three centuries, while, for example, France and England were fighting at the times of game end still with something like couple dozens of thousands, while in CK2 they would fight like 200k vs 200k

europe had a LARGE population drop after all the infrastructur eof the romans fell, and all the deseases(1/3 dead from black dead anyone?). also, it was a logistic pain in the butt to keep large armies feeded and under control. generally they only gahtered in massive armies when a battle was to be fought, otherwise going in several smaller groups.

dont worry about the size of the levies. levies of 10k become MUCH more common later in the game, with powerhouses as the HRE having over 100k once crownlaws rise, provinces are developed and realms are expanded. even in my current ERE game where i am still a decade or so before 1100 i can already raise over 50k of levies.

If you die (long rein and big prestige offsetting the raised levies when you're old), it gets reset and it's 0 for your successor. Just saying.

I wouldn't worry too much about raising your vassals levies.

When I first started playing I was ghastly turned off by having to levy forces from my vassals and suffering a opinion hit.

But once you start playing enough, you'll know you should just raise troops if their opinion of you is high enough. And raise troops anyway if YOU don't like them enough

Guys that have +50 opinion of you are clear recruiting grounds for ur troops don't worry, just recruit them for long lasting campaigns. Unless your planning on fighting a 10+ year war, they wont even reach 0 opinion and no risk of rebellion.

Guys you don't like should always be recruited in hopes that they will revolt against your rule and you can take away their titles for they are filthy traitors

And if you are battling for titles of one of your vassals, always, raise his troops too, because after the war his opinion of you will be much more than the negative from the raised levy amount.