Mount and Blade General

Right click without a shield. The way to fight more than one person at a time is always the same: don't. Maneuver around until you only have to face one weapon at a time. After that, make sure to time your strikes right, or you'll wind up killing one person only to fall to the next right that second. I've had that happen far too many times for comfort.

Awwwww yeah, loving my Swadian army, with its twelve knights. I took a forty man army to crush a 400 man Nord army and then took Tihr. I had 25 men afterwards. King Harlaus, of course, gives me dirt poor Haen as a fief, which is right in the middle of a warzone, but at least I got overlordship over Tihr as well. Right now, I'm the upstart noble half the other lords hate.

I also have five Nord lords, captured from previous campaigns, stashed at Tihr. Since they can't die, I end up fighting them over and over, so I've either always kept them with my army, or put them in a well-defended city.

edited 10th May '12 1:28:00 AM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

I've started operation Take Over Everything By Being a Huge Bitch. I've stopped being a mercenary for the Rhodoks, now that they own like 1/3 of the continent, and I'm now help Lady Isolla rise to power since the Swadians only have Praven left. I've converted one lord to my cause, and I took another castle, but the Swadians aren't giving me enough time to regather my troops.

I did hold that castle against an army of 350 with an army 30 (everyone was still wounded from the previous siege) plus the 30 garrison. All that was left standing at the end of that battle were 5 huskarls, who I assume were at the front of the breach the entire time.

I'd like for that one other lord to take over the defense of this city while I rebuild my army, but nooooo, I gotta keep coming back to chase off an army of 150 using an army of 50 recruits then yell at the castle defenders to let me take it because my pissed off recruits could totally mob the 17 of them.

Next time the castle falls and I have to retake it by yelling a lot, I'm giving it to myself and using it as a dungeon for stashing enemy nobles to just take them off the field so I have more time to actually get an army together again and go conquer stuff instead of defend stuff.

I didn't really think through the tactical ramifications of taking my first castles in the middle of the continent.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

There's a few lessons I learned from one of the mods that should actually be useful no matter what.

1.)Be mobile. Don't get stuck defending territory, take the fight to them. Take down what lords you can on the field first, so you don't have to defend the walls.

2.)If they're at the walls, grab your strongest units and take the fight to their territory. If they distract themselves on one of your settlements chances are they've left some of their territory wide open. If they take a town but lose three castles, you've won the greater victory.

3.) Troops are critical for you. Land is critical for them. Use this fact to your advantage, fight where you're strongest, run where you're weakest.

And one I figured out while just putzing around Warband: As a female character, it is a very good idea to think about making a nation for yourself at some point. It doesn't have to be permanent, it's more a tool to get control of villages, because Kings don't grant villages to female characters at all.

A village with a school and an attentive Mistress can reach 99 devotion pretty damn quickly, allowing that Mistress to potentially recruit either large amounts of low tier troops or small amounts of high tier troops in one go. So owning a handful of villages and taking care of them can solve the "I have to rebuild my army and I have to do it NOW!" problem.

Hey, should I get Napoleonic Wars DLC?

Also, With Fire and Sword's singleplayer is utterly broken, especially with silk trade...

edited 10th May '12 5:33:38 AM by onyhow

Give me cute or give me...something?

I managed to acquire villages from a king as a female character. Its not hard eventually they give land to landless vassels.

Apocalypse: Dirge Of Swans.

It's more difficult than it is for a male, at least. King: Dude, I'll give you this castle. Oh, and you get the village attached to it. Have fun!

King: Dudette, here's a lovely castle. What? You want the village too? Oh, I'm sorry, but I'm giving it to Lord You'renotagirl over there.

That's how it's generally been in my games. Unless there's landless lords looking for a revolt, I can usually swing the village and the castle as a Lord. As a Lady? Not so much.

I've officially gone and installed the Diplomacy mod and been having great fun with it, and I have upped my battle size to 250. We'll see if I can go even higher, soon.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

Probably, but be careful. You might hit a performance cap around 600, if not sooner. Even the best computers can't run much more than that, because the game itself wasn't meant for such massive battles.

250 seems to be my limit. Sometimes it works great, but if the enemy comes in for a full charge, I usually get about 30 seconds of lag until their line gets destroyed. I think i'll just keep it here because before, and after.

In other news, the kingdom of Vaegirs tried to start a war with us Swadian rebels for some reason. Not sure why, but they took one of my castles using an army of 1000 while looting like all my villages, and I had no chance of breaking that. So, once they pulled back to answer a war with the Nords or Khergites, I went around mopping up stragglers, took their king hostage, took back my castle single handedly*

, called my vassals to take one of their castles, and while they took the first castle back during that second siege, I single handedly took it back a day later again and they sued for peace. I made them pay me 4000 denars to stop.

Don't mess with Lady Ferret. She will fuck up your day.

edited 13th May '12 12:06:32 PM by ch00beh

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

Lady Gudrun single-handedly destroyed the Swadian peoples' land. They hold one castle and only one castle now, because she kept the pressure up, avoided their masses, and hit them one territory at a time until they were down. Now she waits for them to go to war, leave that castle undefended, and lose it.

Today in Days of Our Kingdom...

Shortly after taking over Swadia, pretty much everyone decided to declare war on us, or Lady Isolla got a little overzealous in trying to take back lost land. Then she had the bright idea of taking the marshalship away from me, and we lost Praven and a couple other castles, leaving Swadia with about seven castles, two of which were in a constant back and forth between me and the kingdom of Vaegirs. So it looks like once I renounce, Swadia will end up tearing itself apart due to janky leadership, but for some reason, I feel kinda bad about leaving Isolla hanging because the kingdom is such an underdog right now.

Anyway, eventually, everyone but Vaegirs settled down, Isolla got smart again and made me marshall, and we made a gigantic push into Vaegir territory but couldn't take much before they asked for peace. So then it became peace time and I went to training new recruits for my army for a bit while scouting out the land.

Basically, the castles that Swadia has are all around Dhirim, but Dhirim is owned by the Rhodoks. I assembled the troops and convinced Isolla to declare war, so we marched on Dhirim and laid siege. Had them wittled to about 200 soldiers left after about a week of siege (heavy losses on our side, abysmal morale, no food, but hey, gotta finish what was started) when suddenly Graveth comes in force and scares everyone off. I make one last push by myself and end up taking the city for about three hours before 700+ pissed off Rhodoks come to take on my 80 troops holding the wall. We managed to take down ~350 of them, then I got locked away, and now like half my heroes are chained up in Almerra castle and I only have mid-tier soldiers I'd been keeping in my garrison to back me.

Need to figure out a way to break them out. I don't think I can pull off a siege because I don't have enough trained archers to make it rain, nor do I have enough huscarls to break the shield wall. I tried breaking in, but the problem is that I keep getting caught and this game is awful when it comes to 5v1 because there's no good way of creating space.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

How many soldiers do you carry with you when you try breaking in? That works best when you're alone, or in a tiny party. Easier to sneak one person in than 20, you know?

That makes sense. I try to keep my army at around 80 at all times, so I guess I'll go drop off my men at the castle.

Speaking of which, I feel like I need a new castle to call my base of operations since my current one is right smack in the middle of the map, and therefore in easy striking range of every faction that may decide to call a war on me. Although, I guess it's convenient in that it's pretty much equidistant from all points, and I do really like how quaint my lord's hall is.

Decisions decisions.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

Just got this - once I got over the graphics, the gameplay is surprisingly engaging. I know modding is a big part of the community, though, so does anyone have any recommendations?

No, I'm not dead. I cannot die. My own assistants tried to kill me, but like Rasputin, I notice not the poison and laugh at their icepicks.

Diplomacy keeps the game mostly the same but adds a ton more stuff to the political side of the game. It's not really important until you start doing the marshal/rebellion/liege thing, though.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

It completely depends on what you want to do with the game. It also depends on which one you have. Are you on the original, Warband, or With Fire and Sword? I don't have W Fa S, but I can tell you what the mods for the other two are like.

Moun and Blade original seems to attract the fantasy modders who like magic or other gimmicky things. here's actually an unfinished but completely playable Star Wars mod for that one, for crying out loud. (Very fun, if you like Star Wars get it.)

Warband attracts the tactical modders. you'll get some terrifyingly big mods with lots of fun tools for making the game smarter and harder. You can go Brytenwalda, which takes you to seventh century Britain and drops you in the middle of a mess. You can go Blood and Steel, which combines fantasy with tactics and a double-factor difficulty system that allows you to customize your game to your own needs. There's others, like Prophecy of Pendor, Sword of Damocles Warlords, and Europe 1200, who up the difficulty in different ways as well.

It's completely down to what you want to do in the mod.

Started a new game in Warband tonight. Been going pretty well so far. Haven't lost a fight, helped defend a caravan, now just running around attacking groups of bandits.

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

Playing Native I take it?

PS. after a certain number of hours played, the graphics become part of the charm of the game.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

Plus there are mods that alter them. Whether this is good or bad is somewhat YMMV, but they do look shinier and much prettier, IMO.

Yeah, playing Native.

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

Remember, you can export and import characters, so there is never any reason to worry about rushing character development to start kicking other nations' butts. If there's a faction you wanted to help, and it gets killed, just develop your character to the desired stats and pocket change, go to the character screen, click on the image of your character, and hit the export character button. Make sure not to delete the save file for your game yet. Start a new game, name your new character the exact same thing as your old one, and then go back to the screen where you exported your character and hit the import button. You'll have your old character's stats and appearance, and every Denar in their wallet. You won't have their weapons, I don't think you get their renown or honor, but you'll deinitely be better off than a blank start.

edited 16th May '12 5:20:19 AM by Journeyman

When I played the factions were at a perpetual stalemate. Losing a castle, winning a castle, then declaring peace.

Apocalypse: Dirge Of Swans.

Does anyone know what happens if you capture a lord that's been declared treasonous in Warband? 'Cause pretty early in my game, one noble got declared a traitor. I think he was Swadian or something, but I can't be sure.

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.