Capturing and Defending a City/Castle without an Alliance

[MrDeity]

I've been playing for 777 days and I have over a million coin now and I'm clan level 5 with a party of over 200 soldiers. I still can't seem to capture and hold any cities or castles though. I don't want to become a vessel of the AI. I want to capture something myself and hold it myself, but despite possibly hundreds of hours, I still can't do it...

Is this game just not meant for a solo conquest player? Do I have no choice but to become an AI clan's vessel if I want to own my own cities? What's the trick?

[EnStorEn]

At the moment you are basically forced to work with an existing faction. That will change drastically in the future though.

[katzenkrimis]

Pick a faction that you don't like. Preferably one with a castle at the far edge of the map.

Execute one of their lords to start a war.

Begin castle siege to bait other lords into showing up to help defend it. Execute them every time they show up. Eventually they'll stop showing up and the castle will be yours. Their Kingdom will collapse.

Take as much of their land as you want.

Weakening them will cause other factions to jump at the opportunity to steal their land, too. So you have to watch out for that.

[MrDeity]

Tried that strategy already. The entire army inside the city eventually comes out to face me, weakening my army. Then another army comes from behind to finish me off before I can recover.

[Rampant Rabbit]

I've not tried this but..

If you have your companions leading their own armies, then you should be able to assemble a much larger force and stand a better chance fending off upset enemy lords.. But possibly not after next patch, if AI armies have more experienced troops. Which seems a bit cheesy if the AI faction's been losing lots of battles and their veterans have become poppy food.

(it's a pet peeve when the AI plays by different rules & has a different recruitment pool to me.. like Total War)

I guess this won't work if you can't assemble an army from your own companions though.

[Burglekutt]

my army AI does not climb all available ladders during a siege.. they focus on two or three of the four available where all the enemy troops have piled up to kill mine as soon as they get top side.. i'm on my sixth or seventh reload to take the same castle of only 88 men inside...with my 109 either being defeated or a lord or massive army comes by and wipes me out prior to beginning siege.

[Free Luigi M.]

Why can't you manage to take and hold a fief exactly? What are the problems you are facing?
Too hard to conquer? Too many enemies try to siege it after?

[MrDeity]

Originally posted by Rampant Rabbit:

I've not tried this but..

If you have your companions leading their own armies, then you should be able to assemble a much larger force and stand a better chance fending off upset enemy lords..

You can't form your own army unless you're part of an AI faction. It's really dumb... but I think if I could make an army with all of my parties without being aligned with any factions then I would not have any problems capturing and holding cities or castles. The whole point of this forum thread is capturing and holding a city or castle without having to ally yourself either as a mercenary or as a vessel for an AI faction.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Originally posted by Rampant Rabbit:

I guess this won't work if you can't assemble an army from your own companions though.

Yeah, that would be an issue.

In order to form an army, you either have to be a vassal of an existing kingdom, or king of your own. Even an mercenary working for a kingdom cannot -- despite the fact that adding parties led by your own companions doesn't cost influence. Being king of your own lets you form an army, but in order for you to have formed a kingdom you need a fief (e.g. one of Imperial culture if you're going along the Imperial quest line), so chicken/egg problem.

Now, if you have Trade 225+ there's that perk that should let you outright buy a fief, but unless you're playing with a mod that accelerates leveling, getting there will take some doing; and even *with* the perk, it won't work if you're a mercenary working for a kingdom so in such a case you'll need to either end the contract to go independent, or take the oath and become a full vassal.

[Bomada]

slaughter a faction wait for them to take a town wait piece out and garrison it very heavy or if its somewhere way far away from where they are just piece out usually not worth the effort for them to send troops to retake usually how i get my first fief this play through took one from battania that was way down in western empires eastern edge with 96 units pieced out and started my kingom haven't had a war dec yet and been over 100 days but its also garrisoned with 150 top tier troops would put more in it but then it looses food and says its starving don't have a bandit problem or nothin really wish the would change it to where you can max out your garrision without it going into negative food even if its a town and has thousands of food items in the trade still get the starving penalties

[Nikor]

Originally posted by SirDeity:

Originally posted by Rampant Rabbit:

I've not tried this but..

If you have your companions leading their own armies, then you should be able to assemble a much larger force and stand a better chance fending off upset enemy lords..

You can't form your own army unless you're part of an AI faction. It's really dumb... but I think if I could make an army with all of my parties without being aligned with any factions then I would not have any problems capturing and holding cities or castles. The whole point of this forum thread is capturing and holding a city or castle without having to ally yourself either as a mercenary or as a vessel for an AI faction.

If you follow the main quest line you can form your own kingdom, then you can form your own army.

I agree that it feels silly that you can't raise an army with your companions prior to this.

[MrDeity]

Originally posted by Nikor:

If you follow the main quest line you can form your own kingdom, then you can form your own army.

I agree that it feels silly that you can't raise an army with your companions prior to this.

I'd love to follow the main storyline, but where I'm at in the storyline I'm required to own a settlement before I can form my own Kingdom. Again, that is what this thread is about. It's a catch 22 because capturing and holding a settlement with only 1 party is nearly impossible.

[MrGuyper]

Hover around other faction wars like a vulture. Once someone takes a castle, the milita is usually dead and they won't leave much in terms defense. AThen run your sweet ass to the quest NPC to make start your "kingdom" and to reset all your wars.

Once you capture that castle and form your kingdom, unless you worked your friendship thang and got some family or vassals, you'll always be at war or extorted for money.

Balance of power is a big deal, and you're just the new kid on the block that even your "friends" will want to squash out of existance. Seems to be a numbers game ATM, so those endless trains of vassal armies with 30 recruits tips the power balance meter in the AI's favor.

At least you can start forming armies once you've got a kingdom. I recommend giving them your best troops so they don't run off and die.

[Bones Johnson]

An easy way to earn a fief without being a vassal is to attack targets of oppourtunity. Look for poorly defended places away from the factions main bulk of land - I've found that the AI really seems to like capturing castles/towns that are the furthest from their borders, and the one castle I managed to capture, only one big army showed up, and when it did I just left and waited for it to leave.

After you've captured it, if they try attack you, request to end hostilities with the faction. If you have a million denars, you should be able to buy peace (when I did it, I gave my guy 30 or so units of fine steel I had lying about). After I did that, they didn't hassle me afterwards, no starting a war with me or anything.

[wogle]

Even if you haven't formed a kingdom, you should be able to negotiate a truce with factions you're at war with by talking to an enemy lord. Before combat, one of the options should be to avoid bloodshed or something, which will lead to an option to negotiate a peace. It usually cost me between 50k-100k; if you can snatch a castle up (pay attention to garrison sizes) before a doomstack arrives, you can just pay off the massive army that shows up to retake it.

Do note that running your own kingdom isn't super fleshed out right now and there are a lot of bugs involved.

[Alhanalem [DD1 Community Dev]]

Originally posted by EnStorEn:

At the moment you are basically forced to work with an existing faction. That will change drastically in the future though.

This really isn't true at all. The key is to watch two warring factions. When you see one of them siege a castle successfully, attack a caravan or lord that belongs to the owning faction and then siege the castle. It will have minimal defenders and should be easy to take.

Once you've created a faction by doing so, my advice is to bribe the faction you attacked for peace when they come to take it back. Then marry someone- when you do the clan of the person you marry will join you with all their fiefs intact. This is how I got started.

That being said: Forming your own kingdom is supposed to be the most difficult path, and logically so. You're a nobody and you're rising to power and making a claim to a throne that existing faction leaders allready are fighting over.