AI levies

[Eliadan]

Don't know if this has been addressed somewhere, but I couldn't find the answer. I'm fighting Lombardy as Emperor of Carpathia, my troops number in around 40k and the troops of Lombardian King around 25k. However, shortly after I declared war on him (deposition of anti pope), his number of realm levies jumped to around 30k even despite that he was quite hated in his realm.
How is that possible I ask? If I'm not liked well enough, there is no way my vassals will give me levies, and I'm pretty sure he didn't have absolute crown authority. After losing some soldiers to attrition and stuff, he actually managed to outnumber me and overpower me in the end. It seemed that his reinforcement rate was also much higher than mine.
So how is it possible that an AI ruler can raise so much levies when he has negative opinion with all his vassal? Mind that he had probably 4k demesne levies, 20k+ was from vassals. I even had his predecessor killed before I started the war (new king was a 10 year old).

 

[kviiri]

You can hover over the "realm levies" in character screen to see a breakdown. I think there's two likely options:

1) mercenaries/holy orders, 5K is nothing unusual for a decent kingdom.
2) the vassal opinion improved when you declared war - I think there's opinion modifiers for defending against other religions, at least.

 

[Eliadan]

But we are both christians. I even had him excommunicated. And as I said, when I hovered over the realm levies, it said vassal levies 20k+ and from demesne some 4 or 5k...retinues also very little

 

[kviiri]

But we are both christians. I even had him excommunicated. And as I said, when I hovered over the realm levies, it said vassal levies 20k+ and from demesne some 4 or 5k...retinues also very little

Did you check before AND after? Mercenaries and the like only show up when actually hired, of course.

 

[Iron Chariots]

Did you check his wealth before and after declaring? As mentioned before, mercenaries are the most likely explanation.

 

[gdj]

"Defending against foreigners" is an opinion modifer that will always trigger when one independent realm is under attack. "Defending against infidels" only triggers against enemies of a different religion group. Furthermore, the holder of the title you are fighting for will have a severe "defending my title" modifier towards his liege if he is a vassal. That´s usually more than enough to raise the number of levies by quite a lot, and the larger the realm is, the more notable the effedt becomes (because the ratio of vassal levies vs. demesne troops is higher).

 

[Eliadan]

That could be a reasonable explanation as to why he has to many troops all of a sudden

 

[gdj]

It´s actually surprising how few people know this. The opinion modifiers are always in place, but ig guess most people just don´t see it because

a) they don´t look at the realm levies before and immediately after the DOW
b) they primarily attack realms that are already embroiled in a different war, thus the modifiers are already in place, and your DOW won´t change the numbes anymore

Regardless, if you attack a large AI realm that is at peace, expect some 20% more enemy levies than the numbers would have suggested before your DOW.