Kinda stuck, could use some advice

[The Red Baron]

Basically I've got to the point where I've been playing for a while and amassed an army of 70 (ish) men, all various types of units. However, I am at a bit of a loss of what to do now.

I am already the thing above mercenary for Ragnar, Kingdom of Nords (I forgot what its called but its the one where you have been awarded a village etc.). Money is just being raked in at the moment because all I can do is loot villages. Literally though, that's all I can do... My army moves too slow to be able to chase down enemy army's, bandits, looters, deserters or pretty much anything else that shows up on the map, they just run away and I can never catch them. So I thought this would mean that I can start sieging castles and towns but everyone I look at has at least 170 guys in it! What am I supposed to do with 70 against 170+ guys!? I'm pretty sure I will get slaughtered and I don't want to end up with 0 troops again.

I seem to be trapped in some un-advancing state, I know I definitely need more men in my army, so I am sinking as many points into leadership as I can but it doesn't come anywhere close to what I need... Nor can I get any renown whatsoever because I can't catch anything to kill!

Surely I am missing something here? Or am I doomed to pillage and burn villages for the rest of my days? Please help me out

[lionhart]

The next step is definitely to take a castle (or even better a city if you can manage it). 70 against 170 might seem like impossible odds, but you can do it in stages: besiege the castle, kill as many of the garrison as you can, then retreat and come back a few days later. A garrison of 170 can be ground down to nothing with three or four consecutive sieges.

Better still, pay attention to the ebb and flow of the wars between kingdoms. Whenever the Nords take a castle from one of their enemies, the other kingdom will try to take it back a few days later. Just sit with your army near the castle and watch what happens. If the other kingdom retakes the castle, the garrison will be much weaker than it was originally, and that leaves an opening for you to rush in and grab it for yourself. The important thing is to be in a position to act quickly when the opportunity arises.

[lionhart]

By the way, the reason why it is so important to have a castle (apart from the income it gives you) is that the castle is where you put all the extra troops that you don't need in your party. Once you have a castle, you can leave most of your troops in the garrison, and just take 30 or so into the field to fight bandits. Your party will move much more quickly on the map with fewer troops, and you wil also get more renown for winning battles.

[Miiiiiiiiiiiiike]

Well, if you want to deal with bandits, loose some of your troops.

If you want to seige castles, go ask other nobles "There is a poorly guarded fort...". If you are worthy enough they will accept and go over there to seige the fortress. You can then join in the siege. You can't ask nobles to seige the fortress if it is already being seiged. For instance, if you ask one guy to seige it, and he begins seiging before you have time to ask others, well you won't be able to.
Of course it doesn't mean you will get the castle. But over time, you will be granted more feifs.
One of my characters has 3 villages, 3 castles and a town and I've only ever taken part in a couple of seiges. This has taken over 1300 game days though.

Don't pillage villages. Gets you no friends. I've never looted a village.

Before you do seige a castle, have a quick look on the army composition of the castle. If you have say 70 Swadian Sharpshooters and they have a mix of recruits, knights, infantry and a few archers you should win he seige. Of course, when you do seige the nobles of the seiged castle typically rush to the castles aid during the time that you are making seige weapons or trying to starve out the castle.

Quick question, roughly how many days have passed?

[Asphe]

Originally posted by The Red Baron:

Basically I've got to the point where I've been playing for a while and amassed an army of 70 (ish) men, all various types of units. However, I am at a bit of a loss of what to do now.

I am already the thing above mercenary for Ragnar, Kingdom of Nords (I forgot what its called but its the one where you have been awarded a village etc.). Money is just being raked in at the moment because all I can do is loot villages. Literally though, that's all I can do... My army moves too slow to be able to chase down enemy army's, bandits, looters, deserters or pretty much anything else that shows up on the map, they just run away and I can never catch them. So I thought this would mean that I can start sieging castles and towns but everyone I look at has at least 170 guys in it! What am I supposed to do with 70 against 170+ guys!? I'm pretty sure I will get slaughtered and I don't want to end up with 0 troops again.

I seem to be trapped in some un-advancing state, I know I definitely need more men in my army, so I am sinking as many points into leadership as I can but it doesn't come anywhere close to what I need... Nor can I get any renown whatsoever because I can't catch anything to kill!

Surely I am missing something here? Or am I doomed to pillage and burn villages for the rest of my days? Please help me out

Too big. Your army's obviously too 'fat' to chase the rats. If you want to hunt bandits, just yourself and companions should be enough to do the job. If not... practice. Why chase them... when they can do the chasing?

Too small. When you plan to take a town or castle, count the number of archers. The AI likes to parade their elite troops on the battlements for you to shoot at. So shoot them ^-^. In fact, you can then just shoot/retreat (to avoid morale loss, show your troops who's the best and run to battle, get yourself knocked out... retreat with no morale loss).

Attacking a town/castle this way is by far, the fastest way to level troops too... just make sure you have archers...


You've fallen into the trap where you think that "This hammer doesn't work, I need a bigger one". This is a painful one because the AI CHEATS. All the AI lords recruit troops out of thing air and you will always, always be out numbered. You need to find a different strategy.

[The Red Baron]

Thanks a lot, I shall attempt to siege a castle hopefully with the help of another lord.

Originally posted by Miiiiiiiiiiiiike:

Don't pillage villages. Gets you no friends. I've never looted a village

I usually only do it it the faction I am at war with, (currently Swadia) I figure if they hate me anyway I may as well profit from their villages (and my how I've profited.. seriously im f*kin rich), they do really hate me though, I think I'm close to -70 with them :D.

Originally posted by Asphe:

Too big. Your army's obviously too 'fat' to chase the rats. If you want to hunt bandits, just yourself and companions should be enough to do the job. If not... practice. Why chase them... when they can do the chasing?

Nothing ever chases me :( Currently we are only at war with swadia and all of their generals are apparently ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ they just run from me. Same goes with bandits etc.

The problem is circular because I need to siege a castle to be able to dump my troops their, but my army isn't really big enough to siege a castle. My only two choices seem to be: 1). Get rid of most of my troops so that I will move faster on the map and can chase things. or 2). Attempt to siege a castle and probably loose most of my army anyway. Unfortunately I dont have many archers, I have a few well trained footmen like Huscarls etc. but most of my army is cavalry. I think I will try to siege a castle, although I can see it being like that scene in troy when the greeks first attempt to take the castle and get slaughtered by the archers on the walls.

Also I am on day 97 Miiiiiiiiiiiiike :D

[lionhart]

The real trap you have fallen into is that you are afraid of losing your army, so you don't want to do anything except attack bandits and caravans that you can steamroll with no losses. You can't play like that. You need to start taking bigger risks if you want to make any progress.

I know it probably seems like it took forever to build up your current army, but as the game progresses it becomes much easier to acquire troops, for several reasons:

- The trainer skill makes it possible to level up recruits very quickly. You and your companions should all invest points into training.
- You can recruit troops from the prisoner pools of any lords or castles that you defeat.
- If you are really in a bind you can always hire mercenaries, since you have a lot of money.

So yeah, go ahead and throw your troops into a big battle. You might lose them, but you will get them back a lot faster than you think.

[The Red Baron]

Ok here's what happened, I tried to attack a castle, when I was halfway through building the seige tower we made peace with swadia so the siege was cancelled. Very pissed of, I headed straight to the next castle of a different faction, attempted to siege it, then around 10 (literally 10!) enemy generals with a combined force of 800 men against my 70 showed up, I surrendered, got taken prisoner, lost a lot of money, my entire army, and some of my decent gear. So I thought "Oh well, how hard can it be to build back up". So i spent the last 30 minutes attempting to hire some villagers, getting 2-3 at a time and then getting murdered by khergit horsemen and all these other bandits. I am pretty pissed, every time I go to a village I go to the centre to try and get their quest but they never have any, and whatever troops I can get just get slaughtered by looters and bandits. I am fast loosing interest in this game :(

After a day of fun I have decided this was probably a waste of £15. I just can't get anywhere in this game.

[Paperclip *PIRX*COP*]

Okay, so it sounds like you're already a vassal of one of the factions, correct? But you don't have an army big enough to defeat a castle at this point? Then one way to get around this problem is to join in on someone else's campaign. If the marshal of your faction invites you to come along and help out, be sure to do that and follow him and the rest of the other lords to battle. You won't get any castles out of it of course if it's just a field battle, but that's okay, just join them anyway. Some other times, your Marshal (who is commading your faction's combined army) will decide to attack a castle. But will you get the castle if he wins? Probably not either.

You should also be alert and keep looking at the notifications that come up at the bottom of your screen. When it says

"Castle [X] is under seige by Lord [Y]".

And Lord [Y] happens to be a member of your faction, then head over there immediately and help him. Even if it's just him attacking by himself and not part of a group of Lords doing an assault, join in and scale the castle walls with the rest of them. It doesn't matter if you have only one man, or five men, or five thousand men with you, just go over there and jump in to help out -- if he succeeds, he will get his castle.

So what's the point of doing all that work if you're not getting anything in return? Well, you are getting something, indirectly. You're earning their goodwill. By helping everyone out and being a good "team player" to your faction, the lords will like you better and notice you're an asset to their group. Eventually, there will be more lands and castles that will be available to hand out later on. At that point, go around to all the lords of your group and ask them to support you so that your king will award it to you. The trick is to wait until the land/castle is something that YOU WOULD LIKE to have. Key word. Don't just automatically ask for land just because you don't have any, especially if it's just some poor, burnt out village with no income that no one else wants and is just so far away at the other end of the map where it's really hard to get to and defend. And be sure to turn it down if the King offers something messed up like that to you. Only look for Castles or Towns that you would personally like to have for yourself.

When something like that becomes available, go to all the lords of your faction and ask for their support so they will recommend to the king that you get that land/castle. Remember all the help you've been giving them before even though you weren't getting anything in return? They remember that, and now it's their turn to return the favor. But what about the other lords that you didn't help directly? They may still be inclined to support you anyway IF you don't have any land of your own -- and this is why it's very important to reject any offer of land that the king may offer you if you don't really want it anyway. Because by having no land, a lot of the lords + the king may say, "we should help this guy out, he's very poor and is worthy of our support because he's a good guy.". So there you go, you didn't have to fight for it, and it may take a while, but you eventually get awarded your very own castle (or major town, with the huge monthly income that comes with it). And in the meantime, your troops were getting a lot of training due to all the battles by helping everyone else out before that. No chasing bandits or running after enemy armies necessary.

Originally posted by The Red Baron:

My army moves too slow to be able to chase down enemy army's, bandits, looters, deserters or pretty much anything else that shows up on the map, they just run away and I can never catch them.

If you REALLY want to speed up your army's movements, here are some pointers you may want to consider:

1. Increase your Pathfinding skill every chance you get. Get it as high as you possibly can. Every level bumps up the speed in which you travel by 3%.

2. Pay attention to your army's morale: if they have very low morale, some of your troops will tend to walk really slow because they don't feel like following you around anymore. But because of this, the rest of your army that does move faster WILL ALSO have to slow down so that the slowpokes don't get left behind. And so the movement of your entire army is affected and hurt as a result. Consequently, if their morale is very high, then everyone is excited to follow you around and can't wait to get to wherever you need to go, and your army actually gets a boost in speed due to it. Always make sure the morale is as close as possible to the maximum.

3. Don't carry unnecessary stuff in your itinerary. Having a ton of extra armor, weapons, gear, stuff to sell and a bunch of other junk will slow down your army as well because someone has to carry all those around. Items and inanimate objects don't walk on their own, and so your army gets encumbered with having to lug all of that extra stuff in your inventory. On the other hand, you need to make sure you don't run out of food either, because if that happens you'll get a huge penalty to your army's morale (see #2, above).

4. Armor: if your troops and companions are wearing heavy armor, they have extra protection and are stronger in battle overall. But it also means they will move a lot slower because that's the downside to it. If you want them to move faster, you and all your compaions should be wearing light armor only, and only have troops that are skirmishers and light infantry, not heavy infantry. Heavy infantry like the Nord Huscarls are wearing heavy armor and will tend to travel slow.

5. Horses. Give horses to all your companions. Note that some horses are faster than others, as well (check their stats). Make sure your entire army is composed of only cavalry if you want to specialize in having a fast-moving army -- dismiss your entire infantry if you have to. If their speed is still not fast enough for your taste, then also get rid of all your Swadian and Vaegir Knights and Sarranid Mamelukes (those are heavy cavalry and as a result wear heavy armor for both themselves and their horses, and travel slower than the other cav units as a result). Only keep skirmisher horseriders with you if you really want to max out your speed.

If everyone in your group is riding horses -- guess what? You'll be moving quite fast. And bandits will not be able to get away because those guys are just on foot. Needless to say, you should be riding a horse as well, because as mentioned above, even if there's only ONE guy on your entire group that's not on a horse but everyone else is, then the entire army has to slow down just for that one guy.

[mikzephyr998]

Caravans are typically in your party size range or my personal all-time favourite big bands of searaiders. But many of the responders above are right, its a game about reputation, makke some friends in the factions that will vote for you when you need support. One of best ways to do this is to rush to their aid if they are being attacked, you'll also notice if you help the marshall in a siege and then tak to all the other lords that helped they'll remember you and your rep with them will increase. So help out your faction for a while or ....strike-out on your own and start your own kingdom......or go political and play some lords off against others for the kings favour etc, maybe get married to a prominent lord's daughter. What makes Mount & Blade is that there is so much you can do, and when you've conquered the world of Calradia download some mods from Taleworlds forum including some of our favourite fantasy settings like Lord of the rings or Game of Thrones.

[Miiiiiiiiiiiiike]

Originally posted by The Red Baron:

I usually only do it it the faction I am at war with, (currently Swadia) I figure if they hate me anyway I may as well profit from their villages (and my how I've profited.. seriously im f*kin rich), they do really hate me though, I think I'm close to -70 with them :D.

But then the village dislikes you, and it is impossible to recruit troops from a village with a negative relation. But, if that's how you make ends meet, well thats how you make ends meet.

Originally posted by The Red Baron:

After a day of fun I have decided this was probably a waste of £15. I just can't get anywhere in this game.

You probably needs to sink a good game year into the game before you can really start reaping the rewards of the game through castles, towns etc.

Typically when I play (which is by no means the only way to play) I spend the first 200 days being an independent trader, making money by buying/selling goods, setting up enterprises in towns, catching bandits and doing odd quests for nobles and the like. By the time I have a few enterprises for weekly cashflow I would seek to be a vassal with a faction I am strong with, and go on from there. Running around with other nobles, helping them out in skirmishes and castle seiges. I would not expect to take a castle singlehandedly for quite some time.

This isn't a game which can be completed in a few hours. It's like a RPG. It takes time to level up your character, get money, and gradually take over the world.

So start another character game, and try again now that you have more knowledge about the game and have had a trial run. I did that on my first time I played.

[TheWolfDrone]

I tend to like raiding the villages of an opposing faction really, great way to pile in money and be able to keep armys going for years upon years. I also tend to like waiting for the people I am currently with to attack a place and work on getting a few of them to love me, I am talking usually haveing 40-80 relationship...Which yes can take alot of time.... Though when we raid and capture a place i tend to wind up getting it if I want it.
I am currently playing the Gekokujo mod, have been for awhile really. I would recomend it to be honest as the villagers actually turn into more or less, an army filler rather. You have to spend money ( 300 per person ) to hire much better troops in the citys/ castles. So in turn, it may take a little bit longer to get an army in that mod, it just feels so much better.....Not to mention the addition of ( Excuse me the name of the mod is missing from my brain currently I guess) a mod in it allows the fight to continue even when you die. So your people do not suddenly turn into children who have lost all theyre years of experiance and just fall onto peoples dam swords.

[Red Bat]

Download a mod, specifically Floris. Honestly I don't see how people can get 200+ hours purely on native and not get bored. It's a great game, but there really isn't much to tide you over after 50+ hours without a mod or two.

Anyway, even in native, 70 elite troops can often beat one of the weaker garrisons. They don't even have to be that elite. I've managed to take a castle within 2 weeks before (And I've repeated this to prove it wasn't a fluke!) with mostly mid tier Rhodoks, and Nords are a little better at sieging than Rhodoks.

Generally when I get bored being a vassal, I'll end up either leading a rebellion with the claimant, or I'll start my own faction once I see that every other faction is currently at war.

[TheWolfDrone]

You know something....Not once, in all my time playing have I ever helped a claimant.....Never even looked into how it goes down or the perks of doing it....Holy crap I have to do this now..... Great and wise Azaz, tell me what happens in this way? :D

Though yerp, you can seriously do even 50 v 200 if you want. Sadly in vanilla as said above, it is missing alot that mods really flesh out and improve on some things. Floris, Gekokujo, and ( sorry I know im about to butcher this so bad......) Brytenwalda? Idk cant remember name of it lol. I always hated how the vanillas way of takeing over castles and such was. I admit, for the first 10 -20 hours or so, climbing a wall, makeing that push through the line was fun as hell..... Now that I am likely 2K + hours in ( Steam lies trust me, dam thing never records my hours right ) Its beyond boreing and I need to play mods.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Originally posted by TheWolfDrone:

I tend to like raiding the villages of an opposing faction really, great way to pile in money and be able to keep armys going for years upon years. I also tend to like waiting for the people I am currently with to attack a place and work on getting a few of them to love me, I am talking usually haveing 40-80 relationship...Which yes can take alot of time.... Though when we raid and capture a place i tend to wind up getting it if I want it.
I am currently playing the Gekokujo mod, have been for awhile really. I would recomend it to be honest as the villagers actually turn into more or less, an army filler rather. You have to spend money ( 300 per person ) to hire much better troops in the citys/ castles. So in turn, it may take a little bit longer to get an army in that mod, it just feels so much better.....Not to mention the addition of ( Excuse me the name of the mod is missing from my brain currently I guess) a mod in it allows the fight to continue even when you die. So your people do not suddenly turn into children who have lost all theyre years of experiance and just fall onto peoples dam swords.

you can set-up battle conintuation using TweakMB in any mod/Native, though the majority of popular mods already incorporate some variation of it. I like the one that gives you control of a random soldier when you get KO'd until you either win, retreat, or run out of soldiers in your army (allies can't be controlled).

[Oleh]

Wait until your faction declares war on another and take part in the seige of a castle or town. This should thin out your men slightly but level up the rest (increasing your map speed), gain you some reknown and improve your relationship with other lords and your leige lord. Be patient, war is always round the corner.