Critical bug with vassalage in MP game.

[Alex351]

Hello!
I playing Scotland in MP game and attacked Andalusia from France through the Pyrenees. But I ran into the following problem. On the border of Andalusia is its vassal who did not join the war. And there is nothing I can do to him, there is simply no option to declare war on him. Andalusia has a dozen vassals, and only on the border does the vassal not fight.

Player Aelfred, who plays for Andalusia, is a brilliant tactician, and I think he deserves an award. I consider it impossible to play MP game with such a bug.

[Aelfred]

I formed this vassal the same turn as your army moved into the territory so they did not have time to join the war, they did so the following turn. It's a cheap trick (I did it for the free units new vassals get) but I don't know if it's a bug as such.

[Alex351]

I'm glad you answered Aelfred. But it's still a critical bug. If a vassal is instructed not to go in war, then nothing can be done to him after the start of the war. You can only enter his territory, but there will be no supplies there and it is not possible to attack him. I tested it in hot sit mode.

[Pocus]

Indeed, the bug has been reported elsewhere and is now fixed. No ETA for the patch though, as the DLC is closing in (there will be a companion patch with the DLC and it will be huge!)

[Alex351]

Thanks Pocus, we'll be waiting for the DLC.

Why can't diplomacy be applied at the end turn after the armies move and battles?
This would greatly complicate the lives of the "tricksters", who like to transfer their attacked territories and go to in vassalage.

[Pocus]

There will always be people in multiplayer who find exploits—it's a losing battle from the start. You can talk to SuitedQueens (DarkSavant on Discord), a very good player who documents them (though I believe he doesn't use them in multiplayer). Diplomacy is a complex phase of request matching, executed at the beginning of the turn, so it happens before any movements and directly results from the previous turn’s orders. This means it changes all diplomatic statuses before any other action, not at the end of the turn. I'm almost certain that moving it to the end of the turn would trigger major side effects far worse than what's currently happening.

[Alex351]

I don't see any reason why can not do diplomacy matching at the end of a turn and cancel requests that are no longer relevant. Of course, this will make it difficult to deal in an unstable kingdom. And that's right, who want to do business with a ruler who does not control the situation.

[Alex351]

Field of Glory Empires & Field of Glory Kingdoms great games with huge potential for multiplayer, but unfortunately the "tricks" of diplomacy greatly hinder and scare off new players.

[SuitedQueens]

There will always be people in multiplayer who find exploits—it's a losing battle from the start. You can talk to SuitedQueens (DarkSavant on Discord), a very good player who documents them (though I believe he doesn't use them in multiplayer).

Yea, I posted a turn order a long time ago, as well as buffer logic. This one is rarely useful in Single Player, because the goal is to snowball to victory ASAP. I think its okay to use this trick in MP, because Empires/Kingdoms always favors attacker due to how easy it is to hop over the regions to reach to the weak points i.e. blockade Provincial Capitals and wreck conquered regions by Pillage (undo dozens of turns of work).

[Alex351]

I don't take single-player games into account, computer to be too honest, and always willing to put up with unfavorable terms. You can declare war on him and wait from him to offer to pay.

I agree that the attacker has an advantage over the defender and the defense of the city should be increased from a direct assault at least in the first couple of turns. There are a lot of options increase defence, for example: add a general to the garrison (randomly, from the courtyard, governor), make the size of the front dependent on the size of the city (reduce in small towns), add a bonus to the defense in the first turns, add a penalty to the attacker if he makes an assault on the move, etc...

Just disrupting the attack, when the mercenary army went up into the mountains, met a new vassal of its enemy there and decided to wait a couple of turns without supplies until war was declared, this is the way to nowhere. In my case, it was also impossible to declare war). And there was no other way for me to cross the Pyrenees here. Oponent could have easily defended this mountain, but he chose a different path.

[SuitedQueens]

I don't take single-player games into account, computer to be too honest, and always willing to put up with unfavorable terms. You can declare war on him and wait from him to offer to pay.

I agree that the attacker has an advantage over the defender and the defense of the city should be increased from a direct assault at least in the first couple of turns. There are a lot of options increase defence, for example: add a general to the garrison (randomly, from the courtyard, governor), make the size of the front dependent on the size of the city (reduce in small towns), add a bonus to the defense in the first turns, add a penalty to the attacker if he makes an assault on the move, etc...

Just disrupting the attack, when the mercenary army went up into the mountains, met a new vassal of its enemy there and decided to wait a couple of turns without supplies until war was declared, this is the way to nowhere. In my case, it was also impossible to declare war). And there was no other way for me to cross the Pyrenees here. Oponent could have easily defended this mountain, but he chose a different path.

In Empires I often abused Insults and a few gifts to build up relationships with 2/3 of the world to 100 really quick, then Declare War on them, and after about 10 turns send them Humiliate requests while fighting on multiple fronts. Its a bit harder in Kingdoms to do early with a small nation mostly due to SAU limitations.

Size of the frontage already depends on the highest priority structure. Most of the time it will be 6, but from time to time 8 and rarely more than that. Remember that Assault command always triggers on the first available target including the starting region if takes more than 1 Move Points to move out.

What does that mean? Fortify the frontal regions heavy and try to not create Provinces from the border regions since Provincial Capitals are easy to blockade. And if opponent moves on top of provincial capital on the first turn WITHOUT Assault command - you can actually assign general to the garrison. On top of that strong garrisons can auto block weak reinforcements stacks.