It's best to help the other factions with Zann sieges even though it's something you wouldn't do in a normal game of Mount and Blade simply because the Zann are OP at autoresolve from their numbers and they can easily get out of control if you don't fight the siege battles.

If you want to take stuff back from the Zann as long as it has less than like 800 garrison troops your party should be able to do it. Towns you will probably need vassal help though.

Use yr own household troops. U can give yr own amours and weapon to them. They should be the best troops you can have.

Zann invasion is not a challenge at all and has never been.
You don't even need to lift a finger for them to be ganged up by all the factions that they declared war against in a matter of several months.
Don't forget they only have seven active lords (and a bunch of dumb patrols that can't conquer fiefs or anything like that) against roughly a hundred and their territory is stretched very thin across the map (=extremely ineffective logistics).
Only their 2 waves of invasion during the 1st week are scripted to be massive.

Originally posted by Mindeveler:

Zann invasion is not a challenge at all and has never been.
You don't even need to lift a finger for them to be ganged up by all the factions that they declared war against in a matter of several months.
Don't forget they only have seven active lords (and a bunch of dumb patrols that can't conquer fiefs or anything like that) against roughly a hundred and their territory is stretched very thin across the map (=extremely ineffective logistics).
Only their 2 waves of invasion during the 1st week are scripted to be massive.

What are you smoking? They get a ton of free patrols and their generals each spawn with 2 escorts making them the most OP vassals in the game. They typically destroy Tolrania if the player doesn't intervene and without player interference you will never really see the Zann lose much territory. When they form into a host they have about 5000 troops which is more than enough to autoresolve all of the roughly 1k garrisons that most factions have.

Originally posted by President Fraser:

What are you smoking?

*sighs*
Just teleport somewhere on the mountain, camp there for several months and watch.

As for escorts - even together with them Zann only have the power of ~24 lords which is still against 100+ (a lot of rich lords of other factions have escorts too).
And they're still scattered all over the map, unlike lords of other factions.
And their patrols only spawn once.
Zann is incapable of destroying anyone unless that faction was already weakened by other factions. The best they can do is desperately try to survive when they're assaulted by at least 6 enemy marshals from 6 different directions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE8fnO3ufBo
An example of how Zann invasion unfolds during 11 months (I wanted 1 year, but forgot it started in the beginning of July, not June).
It's a pretty average case where, on one hand, Zann were lucky because Tolrania&Maccavia&Reich and to a lesser extent Valahir just wouldn't stop fighting each other, and Elintor decided it's the right time to declare war on Falcons, and, on the other hand, Falcons' persistence contributed a lot to Zann's demise.
The only faction that Zann destroyed was... Aroulo. I still have no idea what on Earth their AI forgot on that island.

Here are the .txt files that should fit the last version of Perisno, BUT with the majority of messages/events suppressed (so that you don't have to constantly click "yes", "continue" and so on).
For farther zooming out edit
map_max_distance = 175
in module.ini.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xLo5teyBd7xfDTbnv0hE7ihAmECqYZZI

I was wrong about several months (I didn't take into account that in 0.9 Zann was allowed to make peace, unlike in 0.8 where they were forced to fight to the end), but if anyone believes that without your interference Zann has even a slightest chance to expand uncontrollably and conquer the world, feel free to make your own timelapse using these files (backup normal files before replacing them).
Don't use "infinite camp" in cheats since it's so fast it practically disables AI because the engine just doesn't have time to process everything, use either regular camp or ctrl+space.

Originally posted by Mindeveler:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE8fnO3ufBo
An example of how Zann invasion unfolds during 11 months (I wanted 1 year, but forgot it started in the beginning of July, not June).
It's a pretty average case where, on one hand, Zann were lucky because Tolrania&Maccavia&Reich and to a lesser extent Valahir just wouldn't stop fighting each other, and Elintor decided it's the right time to declare war on Falcons, and, on the other hand, Falcons' persistence contributed a lot to Zann's demise.
The only faction that Zann destroyed was... Aroulo. I still have no idea what on Earth their AI forgot on that island.

Here are the .txt files that should fit the last version of Perisno, BUT with the majority of messages/events suppressed (so that you don't have to constantly click "yes", "continue" and so on).
For farther zooming out edit
map_max_distance = 175
in module.ini.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xLo5teyBd7xfDTbnv0hE7ihAmECqYZZI

Maybe my Zann have been unnaturally lucky, most of the time in my games a preliminary gangbang from 3 fronts leaves Tolrania almost dead by the time the Zann invasion happens and all this new territory is very easy for the Zann to take. My problem isn't necessarily that the Zann achieve world conquest because I find this is more common with the Hakkon and Drachen.

My real problem is probably that Tolrania is underpowered given its position which gives the Zann an advantage in replacing them. Tolrania should really be more like Swadia in vanilla, where it has a terrible strategic position but great tactical troops. Instead its troops are mostly mediocre and it doesn't have enough nobles to fight wars on multiple fronts.

I guess my problem with the Zann is that they are one of the factions that are pretty much guarenteed to reach late game along with Reich, Elintor, and Hakkon.
It's not that Zann are Op (unless they recruit nobles), it just that Perisno end games are too predictable.

Originally posted by President Fraser:

I guess my problem with the Zann is that they are one of the factions that are pretty much guarenteed to reach late game along with Reich, Elintor, and Hakkon.
It's not that Zann are Op (unless they recruit nobles), it just that Perisno end games are too predictable.

A lot is defined by random diplomacy.
In 0.8 Hakkon had bigger chance to start at a state of waging 2 wars at the same time (not counting Kuu-lan) and they would often be destroyed, while Drahara that used to have better starting opportunities would dominate the world in the absolute majority of players' games.
One small starting change and everything is different.
Small factions like Geldar or Kuu-lan have even more predictable fate.
That certain imbalance between 6 main major factions was created for the same reason why small major factions were added: to make gameplay choices more different and the state of the world more realistic (since in rl there is no balance at all between countries). Like, you want an easy game? Join Elintor. Want a harder game? Join Tolrania. Want something very hard? Try to save Geldar/Kuu-lan/Cretas/etc.
As for the troops - they, on the contrary, were made as balanced as possible from the perspective of quality/upkeep ratio. I guess certain imbalance here would be realistic as well (e.g. like infamously useless Fierdsvain archers in older versions of PoP that still costed a lot and were hard to train, or insanely overpowered for their level/upkeep Cobras and Snake Cult Armsmen), but I wanted all the troops to be equally useful, just with different pros and cons.
Compare Tolranian Archers to Elintoran Rangers - pretty much the same armor and health, ~25% lower ranged damage but ~50% lower price, easier to train but with no further potential (unlike ERs that can still be upgraded - after earning a lot of experience - into Crimson Rangers).
If anything, Tolrania does have pretty good tactical troops, troops that are fast&easy to train even by only using Trainer skill (=> i.e. no risks of losing them in battle until they reach high tiers), troops that are cheap but still decently armed&armored (morningstars and high-damage bows) and pretty good when used tactically (i.e. not just F1F3). Famous Swadian Knights are more of an overpowered F1F3 troop type than good tactical troop, imo.
Geldar is more similar to Swadia in this regard - horrible starting conditions, hard to save, but has some of the best troops in the mod (i.e. Geldarin Dukes).

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ do like what i write on my thread lmao Zann not that hard to defeat even they're outnumbered you 5.k vs 1.k i still win easily.

Well, I think the hard part to against Zann is lord defect or treason would increase the number of lords of Zann. As I see Tolrania has also being defeat in the early period. After Zann came Elintor would be the next.

Well not sure im maybe a month or two in and eltinor ( im a vassal married to the princess) made peace with them pretty early then ganged up on tolrania and they are now dead and gone, I dunno maybe the king will make a comeback somehow can that even happen in this mod I forget. But zann is still by far the most powerfull besides maybe the valhar but they seem to just chill on there island mostly.

Really??? How come in my game, Zann is too strong to NPC kingdom. Of cause they are not that strong to player of in combat game. But if there is no player involve Tolrania and Elintor will defeat at the end. Zann somehow will attack this two kingdom first, while Tolrania may also being defeated by Elintor and Maccavia before Zann is came.

So I killed the hordes off but the zann still have a like 3000+ death ball rolling around when they are at war with anyone they even added some tolrania lords to there own. The big issue is the spearhead armies that have like 200-500 men in them is there a way to get rid of the spearhead armies?

Yep zann attacked the last eltinor city and I went on defense with them we had 656men vs 4362men managed to hold out and kill over 3000 of them like 3240 but it was not enough I got captured they took the city but then the other eltinor lords took it back but still how do you stop a 4000+ man horde

But Elintor and Tolrania would still be fallen. Specially if you are lord from a kingdom and it does not have war with Zann. Or sometimes it somehow does not let you to help in defending battle. It would be good if we can choose to help defend siege or ignore.