Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[EuchreJack]

Fighting bandits is always worth it. They're worth cash you get from looting them, their gear is worth cash after you sell it, they're worth cash as prisoners and fighting a lot of them constantly helps keep your morale up between big, meaty battles of note. Once you've taken down 3 or 4 bandit groups that are at 40+ size, selling all that loot is easily 5k or 6k in cash.

Honestly, gear should depreciate in value the more of it there is just like trade goods. With selling gear from battle most other economy in the game is semi-irrelevant. Yeah you need cash flow to cover the spots between battle. But once you start fighting big battles against lords, you're looking at 10k - 14k per battle in just gear sales. Kinda nutty.

Not to mention that you can break down the garbage weapons for smithing components, or has that changed?

[Rolan7]

You sure can, though you'll mostly get wood and crude iron.  A lot of weapons grant better material like steel, but it's probably better to sell those (unless they're your only source of quality materials, a perk choice I can't believe the game lets you make).

Scrapping junk weapons eventually becomes a waste of precious stamina, but it's pretty useful early on.  It can even teach you new parts!  Rarely, though.  Most new parts come from smithing top-tier items.

@Scriver
lol the army AI is pretty weird sometimes.  I do like that you can see their current mission because otherwise they might seem completely insane.

[nenjin]

Fighting bandits is always worth it. They're worth cash you get from looting them, their gear is worth cash after you sell it, they're worth cash as prisoners and fighting a lot of them constantly helps keep your morale up between big, meaty battles of note. Once you've taken down 3 or 4 bandit groups that are at 40+ size, selling all that loot is easily 5k or 6k in cash.

Honestly, gear should depreciate in value the more of it there is just like trade goods. With selling gear from battle most other economy in the game is semi-irrelevant. Yeah you need cash flow to cover the spots between battle. But once you start fighting big battles against lords, you're looking at 10k - 14k per battle in just gear sales. Kinda nutty.

Not to mention that you can break down the garbage weapons for smithing components, or has that changed?

Yeah, forgot to add that.

[scriver]

I decided to try it out and Imperials also give gifts no, I got the two-handed sword Justifaiarcarriari. Which is a bit strange because why would Imperials gift weapons they don't use?

[nenjin]

I'm on Day 400 something and Lageta has changed hands at least 16 times. Currently it's BACK in the hands of the Western Empire.

[nenjin]

Muwahaha, I'm so delighted to have them all enjoying the hospitality of the dungeons of Sargot yet again! They must be mad because I slew Derthert in battle, because this latest war has drug on forever.

[scriver]

I just want to say again how much I love that they bothered to put camels in the game (even though I never use them of course, gotta go fast). I wish there was a super secret mount that was a camel that was actually the best mount in the game, just because that would be funny.

I also wish there was llama cavalry. We need a Sunset Invasion dlc for this game, call in the llamalry

[Urist McScoopbeard]

How is the Banditlord life anyhow? Worthwhile?

[nenjin]

It appears thusly to me:

-Roguery improves bandit-class troops, prisoner conversion times, raiding outcomes and time, sneaking into enemy cities, stuff that makes your notoriety go away quicker, etc...
-Banditry takes the form of raiding, obviously, and about 3 or 4 different criminal quests in cities that drive up your criminal notoriety with the culture.
-So you raid and do quests which make you persona non-grata to a given culture, bugger off to somewhere else and do the same until your notoriety goes away. Not especially different than Warband TBH.

I dunno, in general, as long as you have a parent culture you don't fuck with and will give you safe haven, it largely seems like regular Bannerlord except the troop type you get all your benefits for will never wear above medium grade armor, use crossbows or field heavy cavalry. I dunno, maybe there's truly bad ass bandits like in Warband but Mountain/Sea/Forest/Steppe/Desert bandits are mid-tier troops and unless you're completely overwhelming your opponent, a standard army with heavy cav and enough arrows is gonna make mincemeat outta it.

But I'm planning on a run of that kind at some point none the less.

--

For my game, I now own both castles adjacent to Sargot. Were it not for Charas, Vlandia would be completely blockaded behind Battania territory. The Battania AI followed my lead and gobbled up all the castles and territories near Sargot.

I want Charas to fall to close that loop, but the real prize is Jaculan. 4 villages! Among the Battania clans, only now are others starting to get up to 3 fiefs, which I've been at for a while. I could have claimed a lot of different fiefs the AI has taken over, but decided to strategically just hoard influence for the siege, capture and voting on Jaculan. Once you have more fiefs than other clans, your chances of continuing to get more are pretty much zero, so I've been bidding my time. The Battanian AI has tried to take Charas about 3 times now, one of which I participated in but we got chased off by a massive army. So I'm thinking I'll need to spearhead the effort the take Charas, let someone else claim it (otherwise I'd be at 4 fiefs), and then take Jaculan and hopefully win it. Shame you can't spend more than 200 influence on one action. I'm sitting on almost 700 now from the near constant warfare and not really spending it.

At one point we were at war with 3 kingdoms simultaneously. We'd been at war with Vlandia, then the Western Empire declared war to try and take back Lageta, City of Woe. Almost immediately after they declared war, Sturgia, like a Hyena at the edges of a fight, also declared war on us. Within about a day in game time, 2 castles and 4 villages across Battania were being raided or sieged. It's like all three AIs decided to pounce at the same moment. With so much influence I figured fuck it, we have to get a peace treaty with at least one of these. So I got one for the Western Empire pretty easily actually. A day later Sturgia agrees to pay a pitiful tribute to make peace as well, so we're back to just Vlandia.

I ride back to my fiefs because one, then two of them are being raided. All told I end up killing 5 separate armies totalling ~550 troops back to back to back as they keep running in trying to raze the same village I keep defending.

Shit be kinda nutty. But in general, I can walk away from most fights of equal numbers at a 10 to 1 kill ratio on realistic battle difficulty. Overwhelming amounts of heavy cav and lots of missile support makes mince meat of most armies. At least until reinforcements become part of the picture. Then things get very messy. It's easy to flank and surround a single foe in a 1v1 fight. But in big massed battles with lots of reinforcements, there's technically no flanking. Just a big mass of people dying like crazy on both sides.

As I get further and further from Battania proper, it's getting more annoying to get troops. I've been trying to run a thematic-ish army of mostly Battanian troops. I eventually gave in and also started recruiting Vlandian Crossbowmen and Cavalry, because:

1) they're "my people" now
2) crossbows absolutely fucking destroy. Battanian massed arrow fire is disgustingly strong, but it's even better with crossbow bolts mixed in. I can win most engagements without actual infantry. Vlandian Sharpshooters and Fian Champions are tough in meleee, they've got heavy gear and can take an infantry charge just fine. They just shoot until the enemy closes, engage in melee, then my cavalry just smashes into the whole pile and we win.
3) Battanian cavalry is, sadly, their weakest troop type. And since my war with the Vlandians I'v ended up with so much heavy cav as prisoners I figured, why not supplement the one real weakness of the Battanian roster?

Now I'd say my army is 25% Battania cav, 20% Vlandian Cav, 10% Imperial and random assorted Cav, 30% Crossbows and Bows and 15% infantry.

Monetarily, I'm around 200k gold most of the time. I'm now making FU money from post-battle loot, the kind of money where you can buy 90% of what's being sold with even caring what it costs. And yet, I lose anywhere from $1-$2k every day in upkeep because of funding garrisons. Is this what it's like to be the elite super rich? Constantly in debt but you don't care because there's always new money coming in?

Brother and Sister are all now grown up, maxed out on companions for the mean time. Kinda a shame that arranging marriages for your family essentially loses you family members in some (all?) circumstances. I tried to marry my brother to the widow clan leader of the clan my wife came from (RIP Eregon.) He ended up leaving my clan and joining their's. Maybe that's because he was marrying the clan leader, or something....? But it seems plausible that arranging marriages can't earn you new clan members, only lose them. Kinda sad, was looking forward to whole family trees going on with my clan. As it is everyone in my clan is going to be 100% focused on their work instead of their personal lives Maybe when my kids are grown up (son and daughter now) things play out a little differently.

The noose is starting to close around Vlandian, and soon my RP backstory for the Rhodoks (a fusion of Vlandian and Battanian culture that resulted in crossbow wielding forest people) will be complete! But it's balanced on a knife's edge. All our neighbors are looking for the slightest sign of weakness on our part to pounce. If the WE is happy to keep fighting over Lageta and wasting their time on that rather than attacking into the flank of Greater Battania and my fiefs, then I can continue to focus on grinding Vlandia down and defending my turf. Vlandia lost about 20% of their holdings at this point and were it not for Derthert's enormous clan they'd probably not have the #'s to stop us.

[scriver]

Brother and Sister are all now grown up, maxed out on companions for the mean time. Kinda a shame that arranging marriages for your family essentially loses you family members in some (all?) circumstances. I tried to marry my brother to the widow clan leader of the clan my wife came from (RIP Eregon.) He ended up leaving my clan and joining their's. Maybe that's because he was marrying the clan leader, or something....? But it seems plausible that arranging marriages can't earn you new clan members, only lose them. Kinda sad, was looking forward to whole family trees going on with my clan. As it is everyone in my clan is going to be 100% focused on their work instead of their personal lives Maybe when my kids are grown up (son and daughter now) things play out a little differently.

Your brother is 100% supposed to be able to become married and not join another clan, or at least that's how it worked before. I haven't used the vanilla marriage offer thing for a bit so I don't remember exactly how it worked, but I think it might have to do with how you offer it in the "bartering screen". Likely clan leaders can not be married out of their clans either though.

Nowadays I just use a mod that let's me use a tavern meny option to set up marriages for my family members. I pretend they have actually invented messengers in the M&B universe or whatever so I don't have to run around finding all these people myself. With the mod I'm using you can choose whether to marry in or out of your family (presumably paying or getting paid a spouse price depending on which).

[Mephansteras]

Nice.

My new game in the current version is going all right. Playing a Battanian lady and seeing similar stuff to everyone else. Although we've mostly been fighting over Sargot so far, which has been given to me twice and reconquered fairly quickly both times. I just haven't had the resources or time to get its garrison beefed up before another seven or eight hundred strong army rolls up.

But I was also given a castle nearby that used to belong to the WE, so that's all right. Right now I'm trying to rebuild all my stuff because I foolishly took a quest from the king to go raid villages. It went...poorly, after I got sandwiched between two forces and left with no way out. So, RIP all those troops and all my money after I ransomed my companions back.

And before I got things fully recovered from that I was part of a big army that got stomped by an even bigger army. It was a painful hour or so in real time.

But I'm building back ok. Getting new troops isn't too bad since I spent a while doing quests in a bunch of the Battanian towns to build up good will with the notables. I think I just need to build up stronger this time so that I'm ready to actually try and hold Sargot next time we take it.

[Uristides]

So I just got this on a whim because I was really feeling like getting back to Warband but at the same time tired of dealing with its shortcomings.

First thing I noticed is that the early game progression feels way off. Bandit groups are just way too small and fast, which wouldn't really be a problem, except they are way more scared of you as well. Instead of the 3 ~10-man strong bandit groups ganging on my party, which could be really bad for me, they just scatter in different directions and I'm left chasing down just one of the groups for a whole morning, hoping that I can raise enough money for the next round of wages. And the same applies inside battles, you let your archers loose too soon and they killed 3 bandits before they could get in reach of your infantry? Welp, they are now running away, you'll only get loot for the 3 you killed and the remaining group is too small and fast for you to chase down again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Getting a ton of palfreys really helped at least being able to chase bandits, but still there's the problem that the groups are just too small and cowardly to be profitable/fun.

OTOH city/village quests are much more varied and fun than in WB. It only worries me that I'm barely 10 hours in and it's already starting to feel really repetitive.

[nenjin]

OTOH city/village quests are much more varied and fun than in WB. It only worries me that I'm barely 10 hours in and it's already starting to feel really repetitive.

I mean, your experience with Warband should reflect this. It's a repetitive game.

What opens up in the later game is:

-The main quest
-Lots o' companions
-Joining a kingdom
-Merchant economics with shops, caravans and manual trading
-Raising a family
-Mass scale warfare and sieges
-Owning and managing fiefs
-Weapon crafting

That's pretty much it.

The early game is what it is for the reasons you mentioned; troops have morale, looters have shit morale and shooting a handful of them before engaging in melee causes them to break. It doesn't really matter if you're fighting 5 or 50; as long as you're stronger as soon as they take any real losses they're going to bail. Higher tier bandits hang in there a bit longer, and actual armies longer still. But generally in my experience, if you want a knock down drag out fight, you either have to be the weaker opponent or there need to be such numbers that there's reinforcements. Morale is always in play it just seems less obvious when there are 200 foes on the field and 20% of those are fleeing. More obvious when it's 20 looters and all surviving 15 decide to flee.

[feelotraveller]

I don't bother with troops or companions at all until after I have 2-3 workshops and have gotten a good spouse.  That way the bandits beeline for me.  Nom, nom.  If I miss all the routers it's easy to just engage them again since I have so much more speed than them.  Even more so if fleeing before combat when the group is too big  .

At a certain point I'll pull the trigger and build to the 20 needed for the main quest (companions first) and move on to the next stage of the game - with 20ish in the party many more village quests open up.  It's a bit different to warband where adding companions started pretty much immediately and a bit the same of not adding troops to the party until absolutely neccessary.

[nenjin]

I don't think companions had an upkeep cost in Warband. It's been a while so I don't really remember.

My strategy, specific to the character I've been trying to play since early access, was to go Control + Bow, and grab some beefy quivers and a starting bow.

Then I'd spend oh......at least a few in-game weeks taking out groups of looters up to around 15 in size. It's kinda rough at the start with low bow skills but you very quickly skill up your riding and shooting, and the loot is fairly good for the starting game. Once I've got a few thousand denars to play with, I recruit a scout and a surgeon, give them mounts and throwing weapons or bows, and continue to do the same while I start buying up profitable trade goods. I'll keep this up for a while until I can afford a workshop or two, and usually the last thing I need to do for the main quest is recruit up to 20. Then we're fully underway.

In EA this didn't used to work so well. Looter Team 6 had such great aim with rocks they'd headshot you from bow range with them, and fight pretty much to the last man. Now, their aim is pretty poor unless you get really lazy kiting them, and break pretty easily so you can switch over to your one hander and ride them down and make some melee skill points.