Fewer bandits

The number of rebel units popping up all over the map seems to be toned down considerably. Just a thought.

Well that's good to hear.

Agreed.

In Rome I was getting sick of having to fight hundreds of rebels in one province alone for no apparent reason.

Yup, but they still appear without apparent reason. I've had half-stacks appear in 140% happiness regions, and even some in 180%, castle-controlled ones.

They also have the same problem they had in MTW, namely that sometimes you'll see brigands out-teching you by far. Bands of chivalric knights in 1100 when all you can muster is spear militia are... problematic to deal with :)

I always thought the generation of bandits was tied to the number of non-garrisoned troops in the province - nothing to do with the happiness levels?

So you can have 200% happiness but you'll still get brigands/bandits if you have no troops in the province outside of the town/castle.

yea/nay?

In the 1300s, at least, IMHO it would be totally appropriate to have scads of teched-up bandits and brigands overrunning much of France (and some places elsewhere). Historically, that's what really happened.

This happened because during the Hundred Years War, there were no true state standing armies--almost all units were raised by powerful individuals to serve the king. The nobles who raised the troops bore most of their cost until they got their hands on some good loot. Thus, most campaigns consisted of pillaging the countryside instead of taking fortified places, which is one reason the war lasted 100 years. When a campaign ended, the kings would dismiss their armies, but because most campaigns were unprofitable for both sides, many of the soldiers still hadn't been paid and the nobles hadn't gotten any return on their investment. Therefore, whenever England and France declared a truce, all the mercs just kept on doing what they'd been doing--pillaging the countryside, mostly in France--just to be able to eat. Then when the next campaign started, they'd flock to the banners again as very experienced troops, hoping for something better than peasant loot :medievalcheers:

This became a HUGE problem for France. The mercs-turned-bandits couldn't be stopped because there was no national army, and most of the nobles who'd be in the national army in wartime were leading the brigands in peacetime anyway :). The brigands were thus strong enough to rob the pope (who lived in Avignon then) with impunity. The problem was so bad that France declared at least 1 crusade and got involved in the Spanish succession wars simply as a way to lead the mercs out of the country and hopefully get them killed :D.

Anyway....

I've always wondered if the TW games take this sort of thing into account when they have bandits pop up. Are the merc units you disband today the bandits you'll have to kill tomorrow? It would be cool if that was true.

I noticed in the descr_strat.txt that you could edit the bandit and pirate spawn rate, just like in RTW 1.5.

I don't have a problem with teched up bandits per se, but I do cringe when said tech is absolutely not available anywhere in Europe, and with High/Late units popping up in Early :)

I gotta also offer that in my limited time playing on the campaign map as the English with the spawn_brigand value at about 60, all the rebel stacks I've seen pop up in my range of vision have all been lead by named characters. Haven't seen any nameless captain rebel stacks yet.