Mount and Blade General

My Gudrun run married Rolf and gave Matheld a town of her own. We joined the Nords and Matheld became a peer instead of a subordinate, and then Rolf joined another faction after a while.

Now that was an awkward family dinner.

I wonder if I should go bandit-hunting and sell their loot in order to get enough money to pay my troops, even if it's just so that I can read my book immediately afterward and spend the whole week reading it then sell it to a merchant.

Bandit hunting never hurts as long as you have the unit tiers and tactics to keep your soldiers safe.

I had a macro on my old keyboard that would set up huscarls bunched 10 paces ahead of sharpshooters and have everyone hold fire. It was amazingly simple and stupidly effective at keeping everyone alive.

And I am continually reminded of just how big an asset we players are in battles. Even when the fighting is well in hand for your allies, you should join the battle so it's over in an instant and the tied up troops can move on.

Ya my macro has the cavalry follow me and we just sweep through the flanks since enemy cavalry always throws themselves straight into my shieldwall and I don't have to worry about skirmishing with them.

Thankfully the war with the Khergits is over for the time being. Unfortunately, the Rhodoks are now enemies. So I can choose between attacking the Nords in the north, or the Rhodoks to the south. I'm nominally friendly to both because I want their troops in my army, but for now I have to fight them. I lost a lot of soldiers saving King Harlaus from Sanjar Khan, and filled out my ranks with nothing but Swadians for the time being.

ETA: I hate fighting beside the AI when I don't have the renown to take command of the full army. They dilute my forces so I can't bring everyone to bear, and they certainly don't have good tactics. Either I'm stuck doing my tactics with half my proper numbers while the other half hare off to die, or I charge in with them and we all fail.

edited 3rd Sep '16 7:41:35 AM by Journeyman

Well, my village got raided again >_< I'm trying to get this up to a prosperous town, you jerks!

Anyway, my financial difficulties were solved with a few battles against bandits, some ransoms, some loot selling, and a tournament that I won, and now I've got a pretty good army filled with a good number of cavalry. I do wish I could get enough troops to take a castle, though.

Anyway we fought a war against the Vaegirs, and I drove off a few attempted attacks on my village (which is where it got raided again), but we've still got Swadia to deal with, though I've beaten them I think twice now.

Wait, do the tactics commands actually do something? I normally just let my cavalry charge, which tends to result in the enemy breaking and getting chased down by my other dudes on horses, pincushioned by my archers, or clobbered by my infantry after they've been dehorsed.

edited 3rd Sep '16 2:11:54 PM by Balmung

Yes, they do. You can order your troops to hold an area, stand their ground, charge, retreat, follow you...

That's just in vanilla. You get into the Formations mod and anything using or modifying it . . .

Brytenwalda is fucking awesome for that. Seriously. Right from the start your units are set in formations and split up by category for you. They begin with infantry in ranks or a shield wall in the middle back, with archers screening them from the front in ranks (with skirmishing commands available so they either stand their ground or retreat from a closing enemy), and cavalry on the flank in a wedge formation. If you use the custom organization Warband gives you, the game detects what form of weapons the new organizational unit uses, and adapts based on that. So you can wind up with multiple skirmisher formations or twin shield walls. The best part? It all interacts with the Hold Position flag you can set from a distance. If you aim the flag at the approximate center of an enemy formation, the game will throw up the usual "Hold this position" message, followed on the next line by ". . . and attack (insert weapon type here) formation." Your units will track right to the enemy formation no matter where they go in the meantime, and do battle with them. If you win, your unit goes to the position your flag was set. If your army takes enough losses to trigger reinforcements, your soldiers will do an orderly retreat to hook up with reinforcements, then go back to the fight with fresh troops.

If you want your units to maintain formation, do NOT use the charge command. They will break ranks and fight as single units. Just get to high ground so you can see the battlefield, and use the flags to play it like a Total War game instead.

And Viking Conquest is even better for this because it includes the battle resizer that lets you "safely" double the battle size. It allows you to go as high as 750 units, but warns that anything above 300 is liable to cause problems. 300 is still enough for some crazy battles.

edited 3rd Sep '16 7:34:53 PM by Journeyman

I love how most of my battles now are just a horde of heavily armored cavalry smashing through the enemy and the infantry just come in to mop up xD

Anyway I really hate how I don't think I have enough men to successfully storm a castle. I'm tempted to try on a Sarranid Keep (we're at war with them again) but I'm scared that it'll fail.

How many men do you have? It works well if you have more men than the garrison does. Worst case, you could always find one the enemies have newly conquered. It should only have a token garrison til someone gets awarded the castle and moves in a real garrison.

That sounds incredibly micromanagey, especially given that on maps where the armies don't start facing each other, I tend to get without my own guys using magic AI homing powers to know that the enemy army is 56 degrees to the right, over three hills, so if I even tried, the enemy would probably be upon my army by the time I found them. Perhaps more importantly, I find that the default, general AI advance, works just fine against AI enemies. Something more tactical might matter if I ever did MP, but such is not the case.

Oh, I know. Long as you have numbers, quality, or both on your side, you are absolutely correct. In Vanilla. These upgrades are not one sided . . . the ENEMIES use the formations in this game, and if you have numbers on your side, they don't charge. They take up a heavily defensible position on a high point of their own and wait for you to come to them.

These mods are not for the faint of heart.

I have around 80, but most of them are high-quality.

You might be good, but grab and train others to mid ranks. Maybe forty more. They can soak up arrows and bolts for you.

80's all I can have right now xD

I usually find that to be good enough for sieging, at least if it's just a castle. You want more dudes for cities, though.

Alright then.

I think, the next time we fight Swadia, I'll go for the one castle that's closest to us that's still under Swadian control.

In other news, I captured two Sarranid lords, an Emir and the Sultan himself. Got around 14000 gold for the both of them, which I used to buy a new suit of armor, build an Ironworks, and commission a watchtower.

And yet Peshim will likely still be poor for whatever reason.

My siege strategy is to hold formation and hold fire just inside arrow range with a wall of huscarls and rhodok sharpshooters. Go off and make a sandwich. Come back and the enemy is just shouting and no longer shooting. March the army forward and fire at will. Once out of ammo, retreat. Rinse and repeat until the numbers are thinned out enough for you to feel comfortable rushing in.

If you really want to cheese the AI, after both sides are out of ammo, take a poleaxe and go up the ramp solo and thwack the guys as they line up for you while staying out of their range as they won't charge down the ramp after you.

I am actually hoping to upgrade the Nords in my party to Huscarls before I go in, that and some Vaegir and Khergit archers.

And now I'm doing a Royal sandbox run in Viking Conquest. As the King of Mercia. This is going to be boring for a while as I build up my kingdom, but then the wars are going to be cool.

Doesn't really need to be huscarls, just any unit with a shield. Rhodok spearmen work great given that they're holding pavises. The goal is to just absorb all the arrows with minimal losses and take advantage of the fact that the AI doesn't sortie

Yes, but huscarls are the best infantry in the game.