War of Nobles mechanics

[Zlodey]

Allright. How does it work? Do noble house that arent getting any help from player get some buffs or something? Because I keep fulfilling war quests, keep defeating many enemy armies, protect settlements on the side, but every time house I side with keeps losing land as result of war. WTF?

[McGrits]

It is not the noble war mechanic that is getting you, it is the town raiding mechanic that is hurting you. The Town radiing mechanic works for all end game crisis.

Essentially, an enemy faction (noble, goblin/orc or ancient dead) will send multiple groups of raiders to a town/city/castle. These raiders will first target an outlying support location such as defense towers, lumber yards, copper mines, vineyards, etc. The raider will light the location on fire, stay a moment and then head back to its origins (other towns for noble faction and camps for orc/goblins, I am not sure for undead). You can interrupt this action by killing the raider group before it lights the fire and for a short time after the fire starts. The raiders will keep getting sent and targetting the town outskirt locations and heading back to camp until they are all turned into ruins. Once the outskirts are all ruins, the raider group will target the town itself and set it on fire. If you do not stop this last fire, then the town will either switch ownership or be raised to the ground.

Note, the noble faction you are trying to support will be sending raider groups to the enemy factions towns too.

[Zlodey]

Well, I got that part. But why "my" noble house keeps losing while I destroy enemy armies in the field?

[happy]

Originally posted by Zlodey:

Well, I got that part. But why "my" noble house keeps losing while I destroy enemy armies in the field?

probably because your house targets that one far far away castle while the enemy just targets the cities right next to their own domain.

your house's raiding parties either get attacked since its very far or simply just take 5x the time to get there, hence are 5x less effective.

[peterebbesen]

Originally posted by Zlodey:

Well, I got that part. But why "my" noble house keeps losing while I destroy enemy armies in the field?

Because you are only part of the war effort.

1) Not all noble houses are created equal. How much of a fight they can put up depends heavily on their number and type of settlements and which military buildings they have attached to the settlement. Everything else being equal, the side with more or better military units walking around will tend to do better.

2) Geography matters a lot too - are there any obvious locations that the wandering troops of each noble house will be funneled to or not? The targeting AI will usually pick nearby easily accessible roadbound targets, and the fewer of those it has to choose between the more likely that the AI will be sending enough troops to overpower whichever defenders are in the general vicinity and burn the settlement attachment, then ultimately take the settlement itself.. (And sometimes, despite having obvious targets, the AI chooses somewhere far away, but that's just how it goes.)

3) Just where are the noble houses located compared to eachother - is there one that is both geographically and roadbound "in the middle" such that it is not only most likely to be targeted by both opponents but also easy to get to for them? If so, unless it has more settlements than the outher houses and great military buildings, it is probably going to end up a loser even with your active help.

4) Which other forces do the noble houses have to deal with? They still deal with wandering bandits, undead, and greenskins spawned by map locations that come near their settlements. Depending on the map this will hurt some houses much more than others.


If you want "your" noble house to win the war, it helps a lot to pick one that isn't an underdog to start with.