Quote Originally Posted by bovi
Free armies are wandering the land from the beginning, and some more pop up occasionally. If you send spies in advance of your army you will have a greater chance of spotting them so you can deal with them before laying siege.
I did. After 20 turns of running around, my spy had spied on every conceivable bit of the UK (except Ireland). He ended up in the city I wanted to take. Why do you think it took 20 turns

I had single unit cavalry scouts on either flank who rejoined the army at the end.

I had been engaged in the siege for 2 moves before they turned up. Either they came from some distance or they were newly recruited

Quote Originally Posted by bovi
But why on earth would you put every family member in one stack ? Eggs, basket, etc. You need to try a few times to get accustomed to how EB works... You probably rushed to the settlement too, tiring out your family members so they're no good in combat and get depressed?
Its not an unusual occurrence for me to put most if not all of my family members in one army especially if I'm short of cavalry which I was. My most common battlefield tactics don't involved using the cavalry to attack ANYTHING from the front since I prefer missile cavalry over melee cavalry. I also use cavalry en-masse (I send ALL my cavalry to attack a unit). Don't forget I was intending on a siege which is very infantry intensive. It's very rare for me to lose a family member with the tactics I prefer and then normally to artillery.

I didn't rush to the city either - were do you think all the mercenaries came from. It took 6 or 7 turns to get there hiring all the way. It would have cost a lot less in merc upkeep if I'd moved faster since I use mercs as assault troops and they cost less when they're dead.

The rebels appear to be WAY more organised than in RTW.

A question has just popped into the vacancy that is my mind - do rebels have the same economics as the other factions since there should be no feasible way for them to have such large armies with neither time nor infrastructure to support them (that's one thing about the old rebels who had lots of peasants - they were economically viable if utterly useless troops)