[2022] Stupid questions about making knights better

I've been working with abusing Only The Strong lately to create mega-leaders that can effectively massacre armies by themselves. It's going fairly well, and following a bit of advice I've seen posted online, I've been able to accomplish a lot. But as I progress through the Middle Ages, some issues have cropped up that I'm not entirely sure how to solve. Searching online has yielded contradictory information, so I could use some help.

1) Is there any way, aside from increasing knight effectiveness, to make knights better at killing enemies in the pursuit phase? By the time I get later in the game, I can just stack wipe enemies with 40 prowess/400% knights. But in the tribal era, when facing bigger enemy armies, I can't reliably stack wipe them in the early phase, so I'd like kill more enemies during pursuit. Since I've been using MAA for basically just siege equipment, I can't stack cavalry to do this. And when I play a culture or dynasty with access to gold from inflicting casualties on the enemy, it's annoying when knights inflict few pursuit casualties.

2) When Only The Strong is active, does Invite Knights, and the other terrain-specific recruiting decisions, guarantee knights arriving at court with a minimum of 12 prowess? I swear I've seen knights with lower prowess show up when I invite them, but I could be just seeing the scrubs at court and mistaking them for recent arrivals. If these decisions are not always inviting 12 prowess knights, it might change how I do things; I like having the option to recruit terrain specific knights in addition to the generic knight inviting decision, as I tend to burn through the knights in the early and mid game.

3) Is there any such thing as diminishing returns with siege equipment? As in, can you have too many siege MAA compared to fort levels, and be basically wasting some MAA to just shave a few lousy extra days off the siege timer? I'm asking because in my last game, I unified Africa. By the time year 1000 rolled around, I was cruising along with tech, but lots of my enemies had lousy tech and fort levels. Sure, when facing the Byzantines, I needed all the siege I could get to take down some of their fortresses in Sicily and Greece (don't ask why I was attacking them there when trying to unify Africa...), but I'd say about 75% of my sieges were against weak fortifications. I could have swapped some of them out for something like Sahel cav or whatever if I was up against diminishing returns in sieges.

4) It looks like Warriors by Merit is a waste if you gun Only the Strong and keep your martial constantly training commanders. Am I correct?

5) Is it worth continuously cycling inspirations to create weapons or armor to give away to high prowess (and young) knights to further boost their prowess if I have the money laying around? It seems like I always have someone with an armor or weapon inspiration hanging around court in addition to the generic decision. (I also loot a lot of weapons and armor.)

6) Are knights ever affected (their health or chances of dying in combat) by being in an army that is starving?  

m0xxY said: Do you not think this to be an issue?

As I'm not addressing balance right now, the thought has not yet occurred to me.

Knights have always been a bit powerful, but I'm not ready to call them unbalanced or broken yet, as I'm not the expert. If I was the expert, I wouldn't be asking these questions.

void0x00 said: 6) I can't find anything related to supply in the the script knight_wounded in combat_phase_events/00_knight_phase_events.txt

That is helpful. That might further tip the balance in favor of knights.  

shrimpboom8 said: Each additional regiment saves less time than the one before it (assuming size 5 onagers against level 4 forts, the first saves 150 days, the second saves 50, the third 25, etc.). That being said, splitting up multiple siege stacks will greatly increase the speed at which you occupy territory, assuming you can defend them (each siege has a base progress of 1/day, though the progress is lowered if the army does not have effective siege weapons)

Yeah, I was also thinking about carpet sieges and how the 1/day make them more effective in some situations.

There are two reasons I don't do carpet sieges more often. First, it's a waste to bother unless you can stack wipe the enemy. Second, I've noticed that either I'm fighting a small enemy that I don't need to carpet siege (just a few counties) or they are so large that I can't carpet siege them effectively, which means that in their far away lands they can hire mercs and raise a new army to come in and wipe my carpet siege forces.  

Evangeline said: In terms of inviting knights: I never get knights that way! Instead, go through the members of your court and look for any unmarried women. Then arrange matrilinial marriages for them and sort the potential spouses in the list by prowess. All the best knights will simply marry into your court!

I run out of women before my knights fill up.  

Evangeline said: You can also increase your court splendor

Does this have a visible impact on attracting people to court? I can never tell.

For the record, though, I am usually either low tier (because I'm just poor, so I'm struggling in other ways) or top tier. I'm never in the middle, so I can't tell if there is a progressive effect.  

Dread Og said: Also drop the amenities back to 1 after mass recruiting if you want to save money again.

Ah, I hadn't considered this an option before because I figured they'd get pissed and leave.

So, I can raise amenities for a "recruitment year" and then let it lapse back to normal. Excellent suggestion.