Rellom’s Small Armies

RSA is a stolen concept from a couple of other mods, such as Professional Army, Decisive Battles and CK3 Tweaks for Crusader Blade.

This is the attempt to balance armies and battles, in a manner I personally find more attractive to play with. It was to begin with, meant for CrusaderBlade battles, but the more I tested it, the more I liked the outcome from the CK3 simulated results too, and tweaked it to be better balanced for both things.

Wars are won on the battlefield more often with it being more decisive, rather than sieging down 10 holdings. Armies of smaller rulers, won’t even be able to siege down the better fortified holdings anymore, but they could win battles on the battlefield. So the choice, when getting into an aggressive war, you should consider if you can siege your opponents holdings, especially the war goals.

It will make Kings & Emperors sweat in their seat, if they do not manage to get enough allies, or they chose the wrong MaA to train, while also have rulers around them, who did manage to find the path to strength – In other words, the world will be more shattered, but sometimes you will have a character do all the right things to control his domain and take advantage.

This leads to a more unpredictable world, and is an extension to UCS, but not necessary to play with one or the other.

Buildings

• Any files with (levies) definers are reduced significantly with 80 to 90%.

Men At Arms:

• Cap size by tier increased for higher titles – 0 for lowborn, 1 for barons, 3 for counts, 6 for dukes, 10 for kings, 14 for emperors. Making up for the loss of the levies for the biggest titles. (If they can finance it.) so they wont have their vassals dominating them too heavily.
• All stack sizes have been altered. Mostly lowered by 50-75% to make armies smaller overall, but with more regiments and stacks.
• Balance their cost and upkeep.
• Pursuit is higher, to make battles more decisive.
• Screen is lower, to make battles more decisive.
• A few changes to damage and toughness on some MaA.

Special Soldiers

• Reduced by 80-90% in strength.

Mercenary company

• Reduced by 80-90% in strength.
• Balance their cost and upkeep.

Holy orders

• Reduced by 80-90% in strength.
• Balance their cost and upkeep.

Garrison & Forts

• Slightly reduced how many men are stationed, thereby how many men you need to siege with, but overall it will be harder (even impossible, in some cases,) to siege well fortified cities and castles with the much reduced army count without some help from allies, especially for small rulers.

Innovations

• Some changes to give a higher cap to Men At Arms count, and balance the recruitment cost.

Lifestyle Perks

• Some changes to boost maintenance cost, Men At Arms limits and vassal contributions.

Casus Belli

• All vanilla Casus belli have been modified to allow winning wars on the battlefield more easily with a cap at 90% war score for attackers and 100% for defenders, where normal is capped at 50% for both. Which means, as an attacker, you still need to siege something, or take enough prisoners to get the war score to 100%, while a defender only needs to win enough battles to reach the 100%. (The game is hardcoded to say MAX at 50% in the war UI, but you can still make it go all the way up to 90/100% as intended.)
• Winning battles is giving 50% more to the war score compared to vanilla.
• Winning Sieges is giving 33.3% more to the war score compared to vanilla.
• Capping war goal percentage has gone up with 20% making wars less of a drag if you get the war goal.

I highly suggest to install:

• More Interactive Vassals – Emporos & Kingdoms will struggle without the help from vassals. This is making that possible.
• Border Disputes Mechanic – A nice little extra CB mod to make wars more fun.
• Great Empire Wars Mechanic – A nice extra CB mod to make wars more fun.

Patches

• Compatch for More Interactive Vassals, Border Disputes Mechanic and Great Empire Wars Mechanic through RSA + MIV + GEWM + BDM Compatch
• Compatible with SoW, CE, EPE through RSA + SoW + CE + EPE Compatch

compatibility

• Semi save compatible – MaA regiments already brought before you install this, will not have the correct stack size. Which means you would play with a standard 100 stack size in a saved game, but any new regiments would have the new stack size applied.
• Most issues can be avoided by putting this mod low in the load order, overruling other mods files that would change, vanilla buildings, MaA, defines, innovations, lifestyles and script values.
• Check my collection for more confirmed compatible mods.