kingdom marshall Thread - Calradia: Imperial Age - Dragoon Edition mod for Mount & Blade: Warband

when you are king, you can chose a Marshall for your kingdom, not discussing being marshall of another king, here we talk about YOUR marshall.

granting one of your vassals as marshall can have serious effects, some are handy and others not so much.
The first and most clear effect, when you make one of your vassals marshall, you lose the ability to control your vassal's troops (not counting sieges), usually i find this annoying as they will either stand around doing nothing or move forward very aggressively. the vassals will still obey your commands (eg: go to khudan), assuming you have a positive relation with them, it's their troops in combat that do not follow your orders anymore.

another effect is that your vassals start holding feasts, this can be a great bonus as your vassals have their own relations, and feasts are a great way to increase these. The lords who hold a lot of feasts end up having a lot of friends and with that more people willing to help them in battle, if they cannot hold feasts it will have an impact on your empire cohesion and might result in villages getting raided when your vassals CAN stop this, but refuse to due to personal fueds withs the owner of the village.

it allso takes away responsibility for you to lead your army's all the time, considering you can always make yourself marshall again this is a great perk. often i find that my main army is sieging a place meaning that i do not have to build that siege tower myself, and can respond to more immediate dangers that will show up, but it might backfire as your marshall leads the army into disaster and you lacking the authority to take command instantly, and lead your own army's to victory. it's a double edged sword.
you can of course join in with the main army when the actual assault on the castle begins, and in this case (sieges only!) you have full control, in effect you did not have to stand there waiting for your siege tower to be ready.
In regard to this i noticed that aggressive marshalls will tend to move into the attack ignoring the defense, while defensive marshalls will rush to protect each and every village but hardly move out to attack. however.... thanks to the diplomacy mod, you can send a message (don't personally tell him, he wont call the army) to your marshall ordering him to siege a certain place, lets say reyvadin. and usually he does. an aggressive marshall will be to busy to follow your command and with that you have no control on what places he takes, so i find a defensive marshall to be best considering you can always order him to take the target you want in your kingdom.

in the end it comes down to two options, do you take full control of your army and lead them to victory or death, or do you allow others to do this giving you the freedom to do whatever needs to be done?

Personaly I choose to lead the armies of The Free People of Calradia, though when there is no war going on I hand down the Marshalship to my trust worthy and noble vassel: Lord Grainwad or Lady Augustina who will usualy just ride around hunting bandits whilst I travel with my brave companions doing quests for the local village elders and occasionaly obliterating an angry swarm of brigands.

Edited by: Archie_Duke

Someone wrote: though when there is no war going on I hand down the Marshalship to my trust worthy and noble vassel

Same. During peace time just so they organize feasts and get relations with each other. It can make a huge difference.
It reduces quarrels and causes your vassals to assist each other more often.

I did let "marshall Dodewaert" conquer the Khergits but that was mostly to test how he'd perform.
Considering there is no more Khergit Khanate i'd say he did a good job. It took him 2 months and lots of casualty's tough.
Interesting note, every time he did a successful campaign the next one more vassals would follow...

Usually when it becomes critical I make myself marshall and lead my men to victory, but later on when you have half the map there are just to many things to do, and because my army is mostly unstoppable I don't care to lead it anymore.

Someone wrote: Lord Grainwad or Lady Augustina

These two always get into fights with my other vassals, and especially Grainwad I have a grudge against, hes not the kindest guy around....

Edited by: shorun