Where do you find battles?

[对不起我只会说英语]

I've been messing around with smithing, and caravans, and is all geared up (my companions are also geared up). I also think that I improved in in this game's combat from fighting tournaments and practice fights, but I can't seem to find a good battle to fight.

I usually try to chase down bandits, but they're faster than me recently and I don't understand why when I got a ton of horses with me. I am getting bored with the tournaments. I want to test out my crafted weapons!

[galadon3]

You can check what influences your speed by hoovering over your parties speed.
In fact you can have too many horses (if you have more then 2 per soldier, they count as herd, wich is a negative modifier to your speed), also prisoners and load will slow you down, high morale and having at least 1 horse per soldier speeds you up, also there are some scout-perks that can give you an edge.
Oh and the size of your party has an influence, you will likely not catch 3 fleeing desert-bandits with a party of 400.

[Urmel]

to much animals and you get a herde penalty that slow your party speed down
1 soldier = max 2 animals (hors, cow)

when you are clan rang 1, speak with a random lord and join the faction mercenary
you can always leave without relation loss

force enemy villages for recruits and supply to get some fights against easy militia

[Action Man]

Join a faction. You can be a mercenary or a vassal.

Mercenaries get paid based on the Influence they earn - you get Influence by winning battles, donating prisoners to dungeons, or troops to garrisons. Weaker factions that are at war with stronger factions tend to pay more. You can leave whenever you want at no penalty, but you forfeit any Influence you have left over.

Being a vassal means you 'officially' join a faction. As your faction acquires fiefs, you are in the running to get them. This can either be a gold mine or a gold sink, depending on how well developed the fiefs you get are, and the work you put into them.

I'd recommend starting as a mercenary. It's an easy way to amass money without the drawback of having to deal with the costs of being part of a faction.

[Karna5]

I don't like to join other people's factions or kingdoms. Instead, once I've worked up decent skills with bandits and tournaments, I hunt the map for a small faction. There are several minor factions which usually only have four members, and when I find one I tell them I'm going to kick their butt (exact wording escapes me).

This lets me war on a small faction which generally only has 20 to 100ish soldiers per party.

Once I beat one of that faction's people I take the hero as a prisoner and right click him/her to get the encyclopedia entry. The I click the clan icon to get the list of members, and I select a member and check where he/she was last seen.

Doing this I hunt down the four members of a faction, get into fights I can handle, and wipe out the faction by executing them all once they're all my prisoners.

I repeat this hunting down all the factions until I feel strong enough to pick a fight with a major kingdom. Because I'm not a kingdom of my own, I don't ever have to worry about the whole map warring against me.

In summary, I start with bandits (and I use Adjustable Bandits mod from Steam Workshop to triple the number of bandits on the map and in Bandit Lairs), and then I pick fights with small factions, and then I pick fights with one large faction at a time.

When I'm fighting the large factions I'm also gradually taking over their towns so that I have a base of operations. Generally they send armies of up to 600 against me during this phase while they try to take back their towns and castles, but that just makes things more fun.

For instance, if I have 50 or 100 soldiers, and Western Empire (or whoever) sends 600 soldiers against my castle, I hole up in the castle until I get the message I can ambush them. This gives a neat little mini-fight where roughly 50 of my side goes and smashes their siege engines, and the enemy gradually sends more enemies in waves. You can retreat, but I usually like to stay and fight all the waves which is around 200 of the 600.

At some point, though, even if I whittle the 600 down to 400, I need to sally out with my 100 soldiers to fight the 400 remaining. If I wait too long, the 400 gets reinforced back to full strength. The fights are super fun this way.

[对不起我只会说英语]

Originally posted by Urmel:

to much animals and you get a herde penalty that slow your party speed down
1 soldier = max 2 animals (hors, cow)

when you are clan rang 1, speak with a random lord and join the faction mercenary
you can always leave without relation loss

force enemy villages for recruits and supply to get some fights against easy militia

Ohhh thank you for pointing this out! I didn't even notice this. My movement speed improved after I hired mercenaries again.

[对不起我只会说英语]

Originally posted by galadon3:

You can check what influences your speed by hoovering over your parties speed.
In fact you can have too many horses (if you have more then 2 per soldier, they count as herd, wich is a negative modifier to your speed), also prisoners and load will slow you down, high morale and having at least 1 horse per soldier speeds you up, also there are some scout-perks that can give you an edge.
Oh and the size of your party has an influence, you will likely not catch 3 fleeing desert-bandits with a party of 400.

Yeah I had too many horses. I bought them since I wanted to increase weight limit from hoarding Hardwood. Thank you for pointing this out!

Originally posted by Karna5:

I don't like to join other people's factions or kingdoms. Instead, once I've worked up decent skills with bandits and tournaments, I hunt the map for a small faction. There are several minor factions which usually only have four members, and when I find one I tell them I'm going to kick their butt (exact wording escapes me).

This lets me war on a small faction which generally only has 20 to 100ish soldiers per party.

Once I beat one of that faction's people I take the hero as a prisoner and right click him/her to get the encyclopedia entry. The I click the clan icon to get the list of members, and I select a member and check where he/she was last seen.

Doing this I hunt down the four members of a faction, get into fights I can handle, and wipe out the faction by executing them all once they're all my prisoners.

I repeat this hunting down all the factions until I feel strong enough to pick a fight with a major kingdom. Because I'm not a kingdom of my own, I don't ever have to worry about the whole map warring against me.

In summary, I start with bandits (and I use Adjustable Bandits mod from Steam Workshop to triple the number of bandits on the map and in Bandit Lairs), and then I pick fights with small factions, and then I pick fights with one large faction at a time.

When I'm fighting the large factions I'm also gradually taking over their towns so that I have a base of operations. Generally they send armies of up to 600 against me during this phase while they try to take back their towns and castles, but that just makes things more fun.

For instance, if I have 50 or 100 soldiers, and Western Empire (or whoever) sends 600 soldiers against my castle, I hole up in the castle until I get the message I can ambush them. This gives a neat little mini-fight where roughly 50 of my side goes and smashes their siege engines, and the enemy gradually sends more enemies in waves. You can retreat, but I usually like to stay and fight all the waves which is around 200 of the 600.

At some point, though, even if I whittle the 600 down to 400, I need to sally out with my 100 soldiers to fight the 400 remaining. If I wait too long, the 400 gets reinforced back to full strength. The fights are super fun this way.

I still don't understand the difference between factions and kingdoms... Isn't something like "Vlandia" or "Battania" a faction? Or are they a kingdom? Also, I don't know what to attack without angering people too much. For example, last night I attacked a Vlandian Caravan (because I had nothing else to attack), afterwards, ALL of Vlandian cities got mad at me, lol. I don't want that since I have passive income from 2 of my caravans.

[Brax]

You don't promise faithfulness as a mercenary. And you can choose any time (right up until just before you're overtaken by a big bad strong enemy) to end the contract. Even at ridiculous points, you just say Oh I Quit!
Be a mercenary, take the battles you can manage to take, dump the contract just before an army you can't beat catches you. The devs changed up a lot of the AI for the early part of the game but never implemented a good system where if you double cross a friend, they distrust you. A mercenary in this game does not acquire distrust based on whom they serve

[Brax]

Originally posted by 对不起我只会说英语:

I don't want that since I have passive income from 2 of my caravans.

Your trade caravans WILL eventually be captured. It's best to make peace with that and not expect them to ever make a strict profit - they are there to make you a certain amount of money per day to partly offset the cost of fronting your army

[对不起我只会说英语]

Originally posted by Brax:

You don't promise faithfulness as a mercenary. And you can choose any time (right up until just before you're overtaken by a big bad strong enemy) to end the contract. Even at ridiculous points, you just say Oh I Quit!
Be a mercenary, take the battles you can manage to take, dump the contract just before an army you can't beat catches you. The devs changed up a lot of the AI for the early part of the game but never implemented a good system where if you double cross a friend, they distrust you. A mercenary in this game does not acquire distrust based on whom they serve

Hi bro. How do you exactly be a mercenary? I thought I was already a mercenary by attacking brigands for people, and other quests..

Originally posted by Brax:

Originally posted by 对不起我只会说英语:

I don't want that since I have passive income from 2 of my caravans.

Your trade caravans WILL eventually be captured. It's best to make peace with that and not expect them to ever make a strict profit - they are there to make you a certain amount of money per day to partly offset the cost of fronting your army

Will I be able to break them out at least? Lol. I have attachment to my companions you know.

[Brax]

Originally posted by 对不起我只会说英语:

How do you exactly be a mercenary? I thought I was already a mercenary by attacking brigands for people, and other quests..
- - -

Will I be able to break them out at least? Lol. I have attachment to my companions you know.

Being a "Mercenary" is a mid term part of the game where you work for a kingdom but are not a vassal - You choose to be a mercenary by talking t any lord in the army you want to work for.

- you get the same "renown" rewards for battle as a "Vassal" but they decay over time

[Brax]

Originally posted by 对不起我只会说英语:

Will I be able to break them out at least? Lol. I have attachment to my companions you know.

You can if you find the party they are prisoners of, but you don't need to - they will eventually escape by themselves.

[对不起我只会说英语]

Originally posted by Brax:

Being a "Mercenary" is a mid term part of the game where you work for a kingdom but are not a vassal - You choose to be a mercenary by talking t any lord in the army you want to work for.

- you get the same "renown" rewards for battle as a "Vassal" but they decay over time

Ahhh! That. Alright. I did try to talk to Lords, but they kept rejecting me 😥 as for being a "Vassal", I did get offers lately (after winning a lot of tournaments), I just never accepted them as I wasn't ready for large scale wars (I have less than 50 people in my party, we're small).

Originally posted by Brax:

Originally posted by 对不起我只会说英语:

Will I be able to break them out at least? Lol. I have attachment to my companions you know.

You can if you find the party they are prisoners of, but you don't need to - they will eventually escape by themselves.

Well, this is at least good news. At least they're not dead.