Stupid questions about making knights better

[Secret Master]

I've been working with abusing Only The Strong lately to create mega-leaders that can effectively massacre armies by themselves. It's going fairly well, and following a bit of advice I've seen posted online, I've been able to accomplish a lot. But as I progress through the Middle Ages, some issues have cropped up that I'm not entirely sure how to solve. Searching online has yielded contradictory information, so I could use some help.

1) Is there any way, aside from increasing knight effectiveness, to make knights better at killing enemies in the pursuit phase? By the time I get later in the game, I can just stack wipe enemies with 40 prowess/400% knights. But in the tribal era, when facing bigger enemy armies, I can't reliably stack wipe them in the early phase, so I'd like kill more enemies during pursuit. Since I've been using MAA for basically just siege equipment, I can't stack cavalry to do this. And when I play a culture or dynasty with access to gold from inflicting casualties on the enemy, it's annoying when knights inflict few pursuit casualties.

2) When Only The Strong is active, does Invite Knights, and the other terrain-specific recruiting decisions, guarantee knights arriving at court with a minimum of 12 prowess? I swear I've seen knights with lower prowess show up when I invite them, but I could be just seeing the scrubs at court and mistaking them for recent arrivals. If these decisions are not always inviting 12 prowess knights, it might change how I do things; I like having the option to recruit terrain specific knights in addition to the generic knight inviting decision, as I tend to burn through the knights in the early and mid game.

3) Is there any such thing as diminishing returns with siege equipment? As in, can you have too many siege MAA compared to fort levels, and be basically wasting some MAA to just shave a few lousy extra days off the siege timer? I'm asking because in my last game, I unified Africa. By the time year 1000 rolled around, I was cruising along with tech, but lots of my enemies had lousy tech and fort levels. Sure, when facing the Byzantines, I needed all the siege I could get to take down some of their fortresses in Sicily and Greece (don't ask why I was attacking them there when trying to unify Africa...), but I'd say about 75% of my sieges were against weak fortifications. I could have swapped some of them out for something like Sahel cav or whatever if I was up against diminishing returns in sieges.

4) It looks like Warriors by Merit is a waste if you gun Only the Strong and keep your martial constantly training commanders. Am I correct?

5) Is it worth continuously cycling inspirations to create weapons or armor to give away to high prowess (and young) knights to further boost their prowess if I have the money laying around? It seems like I always have someone with an armor or weapon inspiration hanging around court in addition to the generic decision. (I also loot a lot of weapons and armor.)

6) Are knights ever affected (their health or chances of dying in combat) by being in an army that is starving?

 

[void0x00]

3) the days need to take down the wall is proportional to the siege power, but when the siege is shorter than travel time, is that a kind of dimishing?

4) Warriors by Merit only release the gender restriction, while Only the Strong give you another requirement of 12prowess.
prowess per prestige stacks with prowess from material education,
only the strong give bonus to blademaster, but it wont make it more common, so i think they stacks well.

5) depends on what can you do with the gold, as AI rarely have high quality artifact, I never get enough from looting

6) I can't find anything related to supply in the the script knight_wounded in combat_phase_events/00_knight_phase_events.txt

 

[m0xxY]

I've been working with abusing Only The Strong lately to create mega-leaders that can effectively massacre armies by themselves.

Do you not think this to be an issue?

 

[OutsiderSubtype]

Based on some things I have seen online, I wonder if you would get more use out of Right to Prove than Warriors By Merit. Apparently Shieldmaidens are better in combat than the raw numbers would indicate, because of certain in-combat events they get.

 

[m0xxY]

Based on some things I have seen online, I wonder if you would get more use out of Right to Prove than Warriors By Merit. Apparently Shieldmaidens are better in combat than the raw numbers would indicate, because of certain in-combat events they get.

Have they fixed Shieldmaidens in 1.6?

 

[Wheem]

Do you not think this to be an issue?

Indeed. This is actually something that has largely kept me away from the game. Every time I play, I eventually end up going against some AI lord that picked up 2-3 perks in the Chivalry tree and has Champions/Knights that are cartoonishly absurd. They don't even really need a large number of stacked modifiers, like the OP is using; just Chivalry alone is overpowered enough in the early stages. A single Champion/Knight with a moderate level of prowess will make even expensive, high end Men-at-Arms look like a total joke in comparison. Battles become an absolute meat grinder even if you win, and aren't in any real danger of losing the overall war.

 

[Allen418]

Concerning item #3, I don’t think there’s properly a diminishing return for siege equipment in the same sense that term is used in business, where the profit of the next widget exceeds the cost of producing it. It’s siege progress, a fixed increase, versus a fixed target number, and each unit of siege equipment improves siege progress by a fixed amount.

There must be a minimum time, even if only a day, to complete a siege, so it’s numerically possible that an army’s siege equipment might raise its siege progress so high as to make that bonus greater than the target number, and only the minimum time is slowing down the siege, but given the numbers, bonuses in decimals versus a target of a 100 minimum, I think it’s not very likely a player exceeds this limit (but just a guess).

Personally, my strategic goal for sieges is to only be significantly faster than the other guy plus siege fast enough that I, as a player staring at a computer screen, don’t die of boredom waiting for the siege to end. And if that’s your strategy (or something similar) then it’s certainly possible to have too much invested in siege equipment, but it’s more strongly correlated to your competition and your patience than fort level, I think.

I’ll be curious to see response concerning item #1. Not in my experience, but I know there a lot of posters here that love knights.

 

[Secret Master]

Do you not think this to be an issue?

As I'm not addressing balance right now, the thought has not yet occurred to me.

Knights have always been a bit powerful, but I'm not ready to call them unbalanced or broken yet, as I'm not the expert. If I was the expert, I wouldn't be asking these questions.

6) I can't find anything related to supply in the the script knight_wounded in combat_phase_events/00_knight_phase_events.txt

That is helpful. That might further tip the balance in favor of knights.

 

[shrimpboom8]

3) Is there any such thing as diminishing returns with siege equipment?...

Each additional regiment saves less time than the one before it (assuming size 5 onagers against level 4 forts, the first saves 150 days, the second saves 50, the third 25, etc.). That being said, splitting up multiple siege stacks will greatly increase the speed at which you occupy territory, assuming you can defend them (each siege has a base progress of 1/day, though the progress is lowered if the army does not have effective siege weapons)

 

[Allen418]

Each additional regiment saves less time than the one before it (assuming size 5 onagers against level 4 forts, the first saves 150 days, the second saves 50, the third 25, etc.). That being said, splitting up multiple siege stacks will greatly increase the speed at which you occupy territory, assuming you can defend them (each siege has a base progress of 1/day, though the progress is lowered if the army does not have effective siege weapons)

True that. So if we measure the value of siege equipment in terms of days saved (which is a good way of thinking about it, I think) rather than only as a bonus to siege progress that could be interpreted as a diminishing return. Interesting.

 

[Secret Master]

Each additional regiment saves less time than the one before it (assuming size 5 onagers against level 4 forts, the first saves 150 days, the second saves 50, the third 25, etc.). That being said, splitting up multiple siege stacks will greatly increase the speed at which you occupy territory, assuming you can defend them (each siege has a base progress of 1/day, though the progress is lowered if the army does not have effective siege weapons)

Yeah, I was also thinking about carpet sieges and how the 1/day make them more effective in some situations.

There are two reasons I don't do carpet sieges more often. First, it's a waste to bother unless you can stack wipe the enemy. Second, I've noticed that either I'm fighting a small enemy that I don't need to carpet siege (just a few counties) or they are so large that I can't carpet siege them effectively, which means that in their far away lands they can hire mercs and raise a new army to come in and wipe my carpet siege forces.

 

[Evangeline]

In terms of inviting knights: I never get knights that way! Instead, go through the members of your court and look for any unmarried women. Then arrange matrilinial marriages for them and sort the potential spouses in the list by prowess. All the best knights will simply marry into your court!

 

[Secret Master]

In terms of inviting knights: I never get knights that way! Instead, go through the members of your court and look for any unmarried women. Then arrange matrilinial marriages for them and sort the potential spouses in the list by prowess. All the best knights will simply marry into your court!

I run out of women before my knights fill up.

 

[Evangeline]

I run out of women before my knights fill up.

Make sure all your current knights and other courtiers get married, then whenever the husband dies (which is frequent with bad prowess knights), replace them with the best knights before the women leave your court. You can also search for court physicians, choose a female one and find her a husband, etc. Make sure to give women jobs (e.g. court tutor), hire artisans, etc. to make them stay at your court and to increase their chances of getting pregnant (courtiers have better chances of offspring if they have a job). When their daughters become teenagers, find them high prowess husbands again. You can also increase your court splendor and choose the court attraction bloodline perk to get more guests and make people want to stay.

 

[Secret Master]

You can also increase your court splendor

Does this have a visible impact on attracting people to court? I can never tell.

For the record, though, I am usually either low tier (because I'm just poor, so I'm struggling in other ways) or top tier. I'm never in the middle, so I can't tell if there is a progressive effect.

 

[Dread Og]

2) When Only The Strong is active, does Invite Knights, and the other terrain-specific recruiting decisions, guarantee knights arriving at court with a minimum of 12 prowess? I swear I've seen knights with lower prowess show up when I invite them, but I could be just seeing the scrubs at court and mistaking them for recent arrivals. If these decisions are not always inviting 12 prowess knights, it might change how I do things; I like having the option to recruit terrain specific knights in addition to the generic knight inviting decision, as I tend to burn through the knights in the early and mid game.

I don't focus on knights at all so I'm not an expert but having a lot of female courtiers and matrilineally marrying them to high prowess men so they come to your court might be your best bet for getting good knights early in the game. It depends on how many unmarried high prowess men are out in the world but I think you should be easily getting 12+ prowess knights by doing this.

edit: This was already suggested. Maybe try and marry lots of courtiers to high fertility characters and this strategy can kick in after one generation.

 

[Dread Og]

Does this have a visible impact on attracting people to court? I can never tell.

Grand lodgings (+50 opinion for guest recruitment) and just searching for characters to recruit. Also drop the amenities back to 1 after mass recruiting if you want to save money again. But if you want early knights before you're Kingdom-sized then yeah this isn't an option.

 

[Secret Master]

Also drop the amenities back to 1 after mass recruiting if you want to save money again.

Ah, I hadn't considered this an option before because I figured they'd get pissed and leave.

So, I can raise amenities for a "recruitment year" and then let it lapse back to normal. Excellent suggestion.

 

[Dread Og]

Ah, I hadn't considered this an option before because I figured they'd get pissed and leave.

So, I can raise amenities for a "recruitment year" and then let it lapse back to normal. Excellent suggestion.

Let me know if they end up leaving because I do this to recruit for other court positions and they stay once they have the position such as physician, court artificer, or whatever I'm looking for. I've done this to recruit knights before and I'm pretty sure I see good knights for decades afterward but I'm not really paying close attention or doing it that often.