Can't even complete the tutorial, what even is this?

[Snake]

I got to the part where you go to the southernmost part of your de jure realm, trying to reclaim it in war.

I win the initial battle with the enemy army, then I lay siege on the capital, but the garrison inside is almost as big as my siege army and the siege progresses at a ludicrously low rate of something like 0.7.

The defeated enemy army doesn't disappear, even though their soldier counter goes to zero. About a hundred of them leave to the neighboring area, make a round, rally a hundred more men along the way, then come back to my army. I keep winning the battles, but my army grows smaller every time.

The enemy armies keep doing those loops across the enemy lands, always coming back with 150-200 new soldiers out of thin air, within just a few days.

My own armies don't give me levies to rally at anything close to a similar rate, I get maybe 5 soldiers per week, what the actual hell?

Eventually, my besieging army is defeated, however I don't get a 100-man remnant pawn on the map like the enemy does and it's game over, even before finishing the tutorial.

In case I'm missing something REALLY big, what on good god's earth is going on with this ridiculous game?

[Snake]

Just watched this video of a tutorial playthrough on Youtube and the outcome of the battle looks nothing like what happens to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12_soMaOLyg

The guy won the siege easily because the enemy army that he defeated when entering Desmond never came back. On my game, the same army pawn just keeps looping through the neighboring areas of Desmong and keeps coming back every week, bringing another 100-200 soldiers with it, until my army is faded to the point where I can't even advance the siege anymore.

Did Paradox somehow bug their tutorial with some patch? What is going on here?

[luckysyno]

I just tried to reproduce your problem but failed. If you just do what the tutorial tells you, you attack with 1200 troops he defends with 550 troops. After the first battle he will have some troops left over and suicide into you a couple of times. Leaving you with 800 troops to finish of the siege without a problem. The weird thing is that you only get 0.7 siege progress, it's a level 3 fort at the start, you should have 1.0 siege progress.
Some of the things that could have gone wrong:
Did you declare war on someone else before starting this war and deplete your troops that way?
Did you remove the commander from your army or switch to someone else than yourself as commander?
Did you embark your army and then attacked your neigbour from the sea, resulting in a massive disadvantage for the first battle?
Did you wait several years before starting the war, thereby giving the AI enough time to increase the size of its army, get enough gold to hire mercenaries or get an alliance?
Since the fort level seems to be higher than 3 my best guess is you let the game run for a while (several years) prior to the attack.
To solve this problem you have several options:
1 Hire mercenaries (They can be found in the Military view (F3 on pc))
2 Marry one of your brothers off to get a strong alliance
3 Surrender or White Peace and try again when you are stronger

[Snake]

I did what the tutorial told me and I had just around 800 soldiers, I believe, before the battle with the enemy army.

I haven't done ANYTHING other than what the tutorial told me. My battle-skilled king was at the head of the army. I did not engage with anyone else before that.

You cannot advance time because the tutorial keeps you pause-locked up until the declaration of war and the rallying of your troops.

I might quickly click through the tutorial on a new save and see if the same bug happens, because honestly, that looks like a bug to me.

Also, it's not a suicide attack when he can gather 100+ fresh soldiers in just a few days. A couple of weeks into the siege, he just killed my army off entirely.

[Snake]

This is my situation after the initial battle. The enemy army is back within just a few days after being reduced to zero, with a fresh 400 men.

https://i.imgur.com/nWdsuJz.jpg

When I went in, I went in with a fresh force of 16XX men.

The AI just mustered 400 men out of thin air within days. The garrison strength is the same as before, at 484 defenders.

[luckysyno]

The army numbers in the video you posted are a little different from the numbers you will have since the video was made on a different patch.
In CK3 it is typical that after a battle some of the enemy soldiers survive and come back to fight again. For me the battles looked like this
Battle 1 : Me 1200 Enemy 550
Battle 2: Me 900 Enemy 350
Battle 3: Me 800 Enemy 170
Battle 4: Me 750 Enemy 60
After the fourth battle the siege was finished, which took something like 6 months.

[Snake]

It worked this time around for me as well. I honestly have no idea how, despite the dice rolls during combat, a tutorial setup can play out so differently.

[JimmyTheSnake]

LOL My king died during the tutorial. Don't sweat it. It's so inconsequential. Basically combat works like this:

1) You have an army.
2) The enemy has an army.
3) When the two meet in the same area, battle commences.

When you besiege, it's not like a total war game or anything else where you are going to have to fight a garrison. The garrison is just a mechanic. Just keep besieging, and the enemy army will rout, build up a bit, re-attack, until the siege is over. Sometimes the enemy army won't even be present as they are away fighting another way, or they just got decimated and can't regroup yet.

You're not going to have a perfect understanding after or during the tutorial. It's just a very basic introduction to mechanics. Just get it over with, then move on. This game is all about doing whatever TF you want. Everyone says to start with a big kingdom, but I found as a newb it was much easier starting as a small tribe. The biggest thing you need to consider in planning an empire in this game is how powerful are your immediate neighbors. (Aside from the traits for your character.)

Another tip - just forget about ironman mode while you're learning. It's so pointless. You have so little idea of what you're doing that you'll get frustrated. Just play with it disabled and save constantly. Save, declare war, see what happens. Save, change out a council member, see what happens, etc. Just go nuts like a monkey in a control tower pushing every button in sight. Eventually you will start to understand the pace and flow of the mechanics. It's just different from many other war/strategy games.

[JimmyTheSnake]

Eventually if you stick with the game, what you described about the tutorial is exactly why you'll love this game. It's very fluid and a true sandbox.

[Snake]

Great that I had to go and watch an hour-long video tutorial on Youtube, to be able to figure out that the reason the enemy troops kept coming at me is that the game differentiates between "routed / turned to flight casualties" and "fatal casualties" that are outright killed in battle.

The routed portion of casualties simply return as a soldier pawn on the map after the battle, and this is never explained anywhere in the tutoria.

If this is the Paradox game with the best tutorial made, I'm pretty happy I didn't play their other games much at all.

[Azunai]

IIRC the tutorial ruler starts with one martial tree almost fully unlocked, but it's random which of the 3 trees he has. one of the three has a bonus to sieging i think, so that may be the difference between the video and what you got.

anyway, your best bet is probably to save up some cash and hire a regiment of siege engines as men at arms ASAP. it's almost pointless to siege down castles without siege engine units

[JimmyTheSnake]

Stay the course. You will eventually like it.

[mabo404]

Yeah, I followed the tutorial to-the-letter, and ended up with insufficient troops to lay siege, and then an army of 2,000 invades my homeland.
I give this product a 0/10. Do they understand the meaning of the word TUTORIAL?
So let's just check my options, and how it makes me feel about making a purchase on this game. Do I:
1. Replay the provenly-broken tutorial to check if there is any more tutorial education after the siege
2. Just assume that the tutorial had nothing else to teach me, thus potentially missing a lot of information about the game, and just leap into my first proper free-form game?
3. Call it quits, and deny this company my purchase.
Gosh, let me see if options 1 or 2 get any votes at all. This is gonna be the least democractic election ever.

[PDX-Trinexx]

Originally posted by mattboesen:

Yeah, I followed the tutorial to-the-letter, and ended up with insufficient troops to lay siege, and then an army of 2,000 invades my homeland.
I give this product a 0/10. Do they understand the meaning of the word TUTORIAL?
So let's just check my options, and how it makes me feel about making a purchase on this game. Do I:
1. Replay the provenly-broken tutorial to check if there is any more tutorial education after the siege
2. Just assume that the tutorial had nothing else to teach me, thus potentially missing a lot of information about the game, and just leap into my first proper free-form game?
3. Call it quits, and deny this company my purchase.
Gosh, let me see if options 1 or 2 get any votes at all. This is gonna be the least democractic election ever.

Please check the age of a thread before replying to it; it's preferred that you make a new thread entirely if it's been more than 6-8 months since the last post.

Regarding learning to play, if you're still caught up on something after the tutorial, then we have a thread on our forums here[forum.paradoxplaza.com] with more detailed breakdowns to act as a sort of advanced tutorial.