Your party size? - How many horses?

[kharille]

Started what I hope to be my first complete playthrough a few months back. I'm just wondering how many horses and what your party size is? Sort of realized I should've been buying up cheap riding horses at every opportunity, and warhorses when I can afford them.

Finding it hard to catch lords with my 240 party size. Feels weird I must have maybe 130 horses. No herding penalty though.

Do you have an ideal party size in mid to late game?

[Urmel]

2 animals (cows, sheeps, horses) for every infantry is the maximum.

for max speed, you should have 1 riding horse (no sumpter horse) for every infantry
(some more to lvl up cavalry).

[Ruffio]

If you have a 240 party, you can have 480 animals. That include the horses your cav units, you and your companions ride on as well though. You will never be "really" fast with a huge party though, regardless how you trim it. You will never be able to chase down desert bandits and the like.

On the note of horses. I never buy horses. Just fight a lot and you will pick up a lot of horses from loot.

[Urmel]

lock the items you dont want to sell.
i always lock food (different food for better moral) and all horses.

if you have very much items, use the tabs to show only weapons, armor, horses...

[Dutchgamer1982]

my current party is size 202.

I have 6 family members and 6 companions riding alongside me.. leaving room for 190 troops

I have my troops as follows
75% infantry 25% melee
75% melee, 25% ranged
75% empire 25% auxiliary

army composition is :
9 imperial legionary : 3 batanian fian archer : 3 imperial cathaparc : 1 khuzait khans guard

at this army size I currently have :
106 imperial legionary (so I need to add 2 more of these to get back at my ideal army balance)
36 batanian fian champion
36 imperial cathaparc
12 khuzait khans guard

I always keep my horses filled to the maximum and of the best type (which for me means : fastest.
202 saddle horses, 138 askarat 12 wodan hotblood
(I have the breeding perk.. so every day I get a few new horses that I sell.. if chasing lords I just butcher them to get rid of herding penalty)
and I must sell all my prisoners before chasing bandits or I can forget having a chance to catch any..

I find the decreasing party speed as your army size increases idiotic... and a wrong feature..

my current topspeed.. at night.. (no prisoners in my inventory.. no herding penalty and with most the party speed improving perks is.. 4.7
at day it is 5.6
when I enter a forest or desert or snow.. well boy.. thats bad.. than it drops in the 2 or 3 range....

200 is not even a large army.... thats barely a small gang... legions were 10000 man strong.. and marched very very long distances... and even medieval armies were a few 1000 strong and did NOT move slow (the only slow part were the bulk of peasants drafted in the army not the core of professional knights and longbowman)
**
and yes what DID slow armies down was (at least in medieval times) was that troops would scavange along the way.. to gather food and resources.. .. both in their own as in the enemies villages.... farmers hated this.. their cattle got butchered.. zero regards how valuable that draft horse or that 1 milk giving cow was to them./. the seed for reseeding the fields next year alongside their own barely sufficient supplies to feed themselves this winter.. all stolen...
-> now you know why peasants cut of kings head when finally they could..
they would have their sons and husbands drafted for months on end to war.. leaving them unable to do the work in the fields
they would demand 10% of any harvest in theory but in times of war they would easely make that 80% as "war tax" and when did those lords NOT go to war??
and finally they would do NOTHING to prevent their "troops" or that of the enemy to come loot whatever..
(and it was quite common to also rape you and your daughters and burn down your house yes even by suposingly 'friendly" troops..)

but a professional army.. with supplies.. and enough horses to carry them all.. aka with a well equipped baggage train.. who traveled without mercenary's or peasants... could easely ride just as fast as a single man on a horse could..
likely faster.. due them having the stronger and faster types of horses..

[kharille]

Yeah, I'm running around at 4.5, maybe 4.6. Chasing a lord across maybe a day was painful. There was a great with a dead end where I could trap some nobles near.... Ataconia.

Running a deficit of about 3000 a day. I need to spend less time training up recruits and focus more on destruction. I got a lot of tier 6 cavalry idling in my main base in Epicrotea, far from the front. I think I lost maybe 40 imperial horse riders in one battle as the infantry took too long to join the battle.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by kharille:

Yeah, I'm running around at 4.5, maybe 4.6. Chasing a lord across maybe a day was painful. There was a great with a dead end where I could trap some nobles near.... Ataconia.

Running a deficit of about 3000 a day. I need to spend less time training up recruits and focus more on destruction. I got a lot of tier 6 cavalry idling in my main base in Epicrotea, far from the front. I think I lost maybe 40 imperial horse riders in one battle as the infantry took too long to join the battle.

I just toss a bunc of denarri agaisnt it and have any troops I hire instantly maxed out..

thanks to horse breeder perk + my over 300 horses in inventory.. thats a sizable income each day..
(I keep the wodans as I that can be long term even MORE profitable.. but it will take a while to replace all asilagat for wodans)

but each day I can sell at least 1 askalat.. for 5k each.. that more than covers my expenses..
the surpluss saddle horses I just kill.. only sell like 50-60 usually.. basicly worthless...

my 5 workshops (I have bought only silver workshops.. in multiple cities.. and tend to buy all silver priced under 100 I see and bring it to them...) gain me another 2k a day covering all my army expenses.. even leaving me a small surplus..)
-> I do have a rather high steward skill. which helps (almost 300 now)

I could make SO much more money capturing alleyways.. but I not want to go the path of the criminal...

I do not own any property yet.. and I have rejected every time somebody asked me as mercenary or to become their vassal.. but I am traveling around the land.. visiting every town, village and castle there is.. and talking to every nobleman and village leader I see.. and tossing them a bag of coin and doing a boardgame with them.. so they all like me by now...

trading is an afterthought.. at this point.. if I see tradegoods that are priced in dark red.. i buy.. if any in my inventory are dark green.. i sell... but no idea how much money that makes me...
by far most my money goes into smithing.. oh boy the millions wasted to buy equipment.. to melt down only to get a handfull of blueprints...

[kharille]

ah, smithing, did more of that in early game when I did some tax collection. Too busy running around trying to destroy the western empire as sturgia. With my cash deficit, time to get those 80 idling Khuzait guards, i'm sure chasing Western empire units at 5.8 would be more fun...

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by kharille:

ah, smithing, did more of that in early game when I did some tax collection. Too busy running around trying to destroy the western empire as sturgia. With my cash deficit, time to get those 80 idling Khuzait guards, i'm sure chasing Western empire units at 5.8 would be more fun...

should your income not have gone UP as you own fiefs??

I mean... sure you need to field larger armies... which ditto upkeep.. but you now get the complete output of 2 or 3 villages per castle or town owned.. + tax income?? does that not offset things?

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by kharille:

ah, smithing, did more of that in early game when I did some tax collection. Too busy running around trying to destroy the western empire as sturgia. With my cash deficit, time to get those 80 idling Khuzait guards, i'm sure chasing Western empire units at 5.8 would be more fun...

oh and there is always the cheesy way...
forest bandits : they are about as strong as fians (not fian champions) but cost only 8 upkeep, not 12.. which is cheap for a tier 4 unit...

[Urmel]

some siege armies give the fief stupid 200 or 300 garrison (super bad from TW, easy to fix).
so no, the income will not gone up.

most player dont know how to reduce garrison and disable auto recruit.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by Urmel:

some siege armies give the fief stupid 200 or 300 garrison (super bad from TW, easy to fix).
so no, the income will not gone up.

most player dont know how to reduce garrison and disable auto recruit.

thats wrong of TW...

if I presume the 200 size army is like the 6000 size armies in medieval times.
so basicly everything /30.

than a city would have 1000 inhabitants (as a large city back than had like 30000 inhabitants)

it would be kind of idiotic to have one fifth of a city working in it's "police force"

a city would make you lots of money.
-> every profession was limited.. guilds basicly limited the number of people with a profession.. and in turn these guilds did pay the lords for this monopoly.
-> to enter or exit the city or even city districts.. toll was due.. and it was quite common if you carried goods in the city.. to also demand a percenage of these as well before alowing entrance
-> markets were NOT allowed to be held.. unless with specific permission from the king.. ONCE a year.. and this often came with quite the amount of money...
***
all the land be owned by the church or by dukes.. who would have poor peasants lease the land for a lot of coin.. (and mind you these peasants would than also pay 10% of their harvest + any random wartax declared + have to serve in their lors army...

[Azunai]

You want riding horses for all your infantry to keep the speed as high as possible.

In my current run my party size is around 200 or so, nut in the previous campaign towards the end it was around 500 i think. But in thst part of the campaign that doesn't really matter since you're leading armies pretty much 100% of the time anyway.

[Dutchgamer1982]

in realistic medieval times.. a city would be 30000 people.
of which 50-100 would be working as guards.
**those would be paid about 4 gulden a month.
-> which was about twice what a tradesman and four times what a farmer would make.

a professional knight would not be paid but have his own land to exploit.. but would have about 25 guilders a month in income..
while a duke (responsible for larger oversight answering directly to the king) would generally have about 125 guilders a month in income
and the wealthierst kings MAYBE drew 500-1000 guilders a month in income.

about 15% of the population was "drafteble" but professional armies were a far smaller percentage.

so with city guards of 200 soldiers... that would be insane even on a 1 on 1 size..
villages should not even HAVE soldiers in them...
castles MAYBE may have 200-600 soldiers if we had 1 on 1 scale..

like your army should be larger.. the profit from villages way higher... etc..

[Azunai]

But real countries had more than 5 cities, 8 castles and 20 villages. So comparing in game stats and real world stats is going to produce odd results

[kharille]

I'm always at a deficit of about 3000 dinars. It was higher and I started to donate troops to offset. However there at some point in time I Epicrotea was sieged by the Northern empire, I managed to defend it with tier 5 and 6 troops. After that battle I ended up with about 400,000 denars.

Was gifting 5000 good to some Sturgian nobles when I met them, but now I'm back down 100k. Need to catch more western empire nobles and flog off all their hardware.

Guess I need to get used to running around with 200 horses. Its a pain when its a close battle and I got lots of wounded...