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[Folly]

So... Mountain Bandits. The Battanian variety.

They seem a tad bit tough....

3 of them managed to kill 6 and injure 2 versus a 114 army + my band of 16 in autobattle.
The 114 army is just some random noble I happened to be near.

Mountain Bandits tend to have good bows and the skills to use them, which can make an absolute mess against unshielded infantry in tight formations. Best to either slowly advance with a shield wall, or charge with a spread formation.

Autobattle however is completely ridiculous. I've seen looters end with better than 2 kills each when facing 10:1 odds against tier 3+ units.

[Dostoevsky]

I'll confess to having a hard time identifying who is who (tbh I haven't tried much because I've been focusing on the early game w/o getting involved in anyone's wars.) I assume any minor faction noble belongs to one of the nations, based on their banners, so attacking one of them is the same as acting the nation, no?

Incorrect. There are clans which are not aligned with any of the major factions. These guys run around the map with their warband fighting against major factions and recruiting soldiers just like the player. They may have names like "Vaols of the Ember" or "Istus Karakhergait" or "Pippin of the Woodsfolk" and they will only mention a clan and a culture alignment when you mouse over them.

Ah, thanks. Feels a bit odd to just declare war on them out of the blue since they're not hostile by default, but I'll look into that.

Mountain Bandits tend to have good bows and the skills to use them, which can make an absolute mess against unshielded infantry in tight formations. Best to either slowly advance with a shield wall, or charge with a spread formation.

Autobattle however is completely ridiculous. I've seen looters end with better than 2 kills each when facing 10:1 odds against tier 3+ units.

I thought mountain bandits had javelins, not bows? Highwaymen (higher rank type) have warhorses and javelins. Javelins are no joke, though. It seems like any troop with a ranged weapon (except for maybe rocks) can fare pretty well in autobattle. I somehow managed to get an army that consistently never lost men autobattling looters (just wounds), but haven't accomplished that against any other bandit type. And it's a crapshoot as to who I lose - just as likely to lost a top-tier troop as a low-tier one, feels like.

All that said, I'm enjoying it. Being able to have my army operate on their own in battle and just joining in is good fun.

[JimboM12]

now that the memory leak has been patched and i dont have to worry about save corruption, ive gotten super addicted. I added a few mods already:

singleplayer rebalance mod (from the taleworlds forum, theres a few floating around now, but this is the og) which adds better rewards to tournaments, random bonuses when you level up skills and a way for leaders to gain xp from keeping morale up daily.

hideout party limit removed 50: makes it so you can bring up to 50 people into bandit hideouts. as a leader build, i felt this was a natural conclusion until they allow me to chose who comes with or increases the number on their own. flooding the enemy camps is kinda cheap but also kinda fun.

improved smithing: reduces/gets rid of the stamina system for crafting at a smithy, increases "research" chance when smithing to unlock new weapon parts and bonus chances to quality of crafted weapons depending on you skills.

ive been doing bandit raids and building up a force of empire troops while looking for companions to build my clan. i intend to level smithing on the side and forge custom ceremonial blades for all of them. meanwhile ive been doing a little trading on the side where i can and ive built my chest to 14k. once i find a city to make my homebase im going to look into making a caravan.

[scriver]

Two good things to report: 1. Passive shielding is back! And I don't mean just that you can block from the wrong direction if your shield is in the way. Now shields on your back protect you from arrows again and as long as you just keep a shield on your arm it will keep any peasant's thrown stone that hits it instead of you from damaging you (and it look really neat when they bounce of it )

2. This is not a confirmation, and it might have been because I ran the second one over with my horse or something. But I just killed two looters with one stroke of my two-handed axe.

Also, Falxes and two-handed axes are ridiculously OP. At least against looters and bandits and tournamenteers (which are like 98% of all I've battled so far). Of course, falxes are awesome, so that's alright with me. I've never felt as much as an avatar of death literally reaping my harvest of life's-wheat.

[Folly]

Do companions make effective use of short/fast weapons? Or is it better just to kit them out in the biggest longest blades possible?

[Cthulhu]

Companions don't make good use of anything in my experience, and they level up abysmally slowly.  I haven't seen any use for them, their skills are pretty low to start out and don't get much better.

I went with a Khuzait character.  Khuzait horse archers kind of ruin the AI behavior and make any fights with infantry easy.  They break off into big blobs to chase your archers who they can never catch, turn when they see the line troops, and get chewed up one blob at a time.

[nenjin]

99.9% of companions seem to get base 60 in the combat stats, and 60 in one or two other stats like Riding, Roguery, Scouting.....

So not super high, and slow to level, but higher than the player starts with. You'll know an intended combat monster when they have 120 single hand skill.

[Dostoevsky]

99.9% of companions seem to get base 60 in the combat stats, and 60 in one or two other stats like Riding, Roguery, Scouting.....

So not super high, and slow to level, but higher than the player starts with. You'll know an intended combat monster when they have 120 single hand skill.

Guess I've gotten lucky then? I have: Urgil the Lucky (90 in all melee, 75 bow, 60 other); Ariada the Wanderer (150 in one/two, 170 polearm, 100+ in ranged & riding, 90 athletics); Litka the Shieldmaiden (150 one, 200 two!, 140 polearm, 100 bow/throw/riding/athletics, 80 crossbow); and a healer with 60s.

No idea if companion names/backgrounds are set v. random, but that serves as some illustrative. Note that the better fighters there have no good noncombat skills, though - Urgil's got tactics and the healer's got healing (of course), but the others have nada.

They can level really slowly, but I just noticed -- leveling is based on gaining skill points, not amorphous XP. Chances are they won't be using noncombat skills much, especially if they have no skill to begin with, but at least you can give them some SP by letting them do a bunch of refining/smelting?

[nenjin]

And what's the deal with their recruitment cost? Two "The Healer" NPCs, same med skill, same all skills I think. One wants 2k denar for their services, the other wants 800. I've seen this multiple times now.

I get the sense there's supposed to be more to companions than what we have now. At least I hope so. They're so generic beyond the back stories (even met one whose backstory text literally says "Generic backstory.") If they're going through the effort of randomly generating names and features, the might as well go the extra mile and randomize their stats in some meaningful way too.

[JimboM12]

ideout party limit removed 50: makes it so you can bring up to 50 people into bandit hideouts. as a leader build, i felt this was a natural conclusion until they allow me to chose who comes with or increases the number on their own. flooding the enemy camps is kinda cheap but also kinda fun.

actually, scratch that, this as a necessity against some of the more established bandit camps. especially fucking forest bandits, for real, archery is op. it doesn't help that most recruit level infantry do not start with shields, even crappy ones made from scrap wood, meaning i lose a ton per forest bandit camp. if you plan on raiding bandits in their camp grab this mod

[milo christiansen]

Are there companions that hate each other, or can you just pick up whoever? I always hated that Warband effectively had two fixed parties.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Are there companions that hate each other, or can you just pick up whoever? I always hated that Warband effectively had two fixed parties.

Not sure, I've only ever had a companion confront me when I paid some bandits to piss off so I didn't have to fight them.

[nenjin]

ideout party limit removed 50: makes it so you can bring up to 50 people into bandit hideouts. as a leader build, i felt this was a natural conclusion until they allow me to chose who comes with or increases the number on their own. flooding the enemy camps is kinda cheap but also kinda fun.

actually, scratch that, this as a necessity against some of the more established bandit camps. especially fucking forest bandits, for real, archery is op. it doesn't help that most recruit level infantry do not start with shields, even crappy ones made from scrap wood, meaning i lose a ton per forest bandit camp. if you plan on raiding bandits in their camp grab this mod

Yeah. Mountain Bandits can be nasty, but Forest Bandits are seriously nasty in the early game, because of the lack of shields and honestly, good armor.

Might try out the hideout limit mod. Haven't tried a Forest Bandit one yet, but the only trouble I've generally had with the Mountain Bandit ones is the duel due to my own suckiness. I can generally just give my guys the charge order and they will clean everything up mostly on their own.

Now Sea Raider bandit camps.....whooo.....watching 2 Sea Raiders cut down half your guys before dying is pretty demoralizing.

[JimboM12]

whats funny is i think the mod was intended gameplay behavior because when you get to the end and the boss appears, your crew of 50 will make an enclosed circle around you and the boss w his backup. so when you deny him a duel, he gets mobbed instantly. quite satisfying to watch.

[milo christiansen]

There is an autoblock mod, an autoblock mod! Oh happy day, an autoblock mod!

And it works pretty well too. Just like Warband, you hold the block button and it shifts your weapon/shield as needed to block directional strikes.

I still suck at melee, but now I suck a whole lot less.