Having recently discovered this series of games, I am very impressed. The games are quite challenging(sometimes frustratingly so) and have some good variety.
I am however having a couple issues.
Mount and Blade(original): Kergit armies. It seems the only way to actually beat Kergit enemies is to exploit the way their AI interacts with the edge of the battle field. They seem to always run circles around their opponent, but when they hit the edge of the map they don't automatically turn around or anything. They just get stuck and infantry can cut them to shreds. I typically find that I suffer only a couple casualties per battle if I use the above tactic. Otherwise, their fast horse archers plink you to death over forever.
With Fire and Sword: I feel that this one is my favorite setting, and I love that you can actually do some formations, but its soooooo hard to get established in this game. Even average gear costs a ton of cash and there is very little you can do early on to make money. It takes forever just to get above 30 soldiers so you can raid villages without the villagers fighting back. And no type of enemy has any decent gear drops. Even deserters have little in the way of useful gear. Its a painfully long slog to get decent gear, and insult to injury if you get captured you lose your weapons.
Grey Templar wrote: Having recently discovered this series of games, I am very impressed. The games are quite challenging(sometimes frustratingly so) and have some good variety.
I am however having a couple issues.
Mount and Blade(original): Kergit armies. It seems the only way to actually beat Kergit enemies is to exploit the way their AI interacts with the edge of the battle field. They seem to always run circles around their opponent, but when they hit the edge of the map they don't automatically turn around or anything. They just get stuck and infantry can cut them to shreds. I typically find that I suffer only a couple casualties per battle if I use the above tactic. Otherwise, their fast horse archers plink you to death over forever.
With Fire and Sword: I feel that this one is my favorite setting, and I love that you can actually do some formations, but its soooooo hard to get established in this game. Even average gear costs a ton of cash and there is very little you can do early on to make money. It takes forever just to get above 30 soldiers so you can raid villages without the villagers fighting back. And no type of enemy has any decent gear drops. Even deserters have little in the way of useful gear. Its a painfully long slog to get decent gear, and insult to injury if you get captured you lose your weapons.
Mount and Blade Warband is basically M&B original with added features. Don't waste money on the original, just buy that one.
Regarding Khergits, I really have no trouble with 'em. Just make sure your infantry are well upgraded and you'll win. Nord Warriors tear even the largest Kerghit bandit parties to pieces. And by the time you actually have to make major offensives against the Lords in wartime you'll have the troops to counter them.
Haven't played With Fire & Sword but I think I'd prefer warband anyways.
Currently running a Nord Vassal who focuses on hard hitting Two-Handed weapons. I can crush pretty much any unit in 2-3 blows. I'm lord of Berglen, Narra, Thir, and a couple of castles south of that Swadian city that starts with a D. The nords basically rule all of Swadia and a fair bit of Khergit and Vaegirs. The Swadians have 3 castles left.
The Khergits are the only other real threat to the Nordic Empire, they are certainly the biggest faction after the Nords. I'm looking into wiping out most of the other factions and then turning on King Ragnar. I SHALL RULE!.
My party is built of Jeremus, Ayalyn, Deshavi, Baheshter, Ymira, Firentis, Bunduk, & briefly Mattheld. Mattheld was a mid game pickup and although see was a great warrior she disliked both my medics. And a good party CANNOT be without a medic at hand.
It does seem that Nords are the best foot soldiers. First play through I went with them and through fighting Sea Raiders I quickly got a small but very lethal band of Veterans and Huskarls.
I have heard that Warband is better, but I got the original for a song.
Warband is by and large the best, especially with the WHFB addon, but if you have the original and like SCI-FI, then the Star wars galactic conflict will be fun.
My preferred character build is a heavily armoured Nord Tank with heavy armour (the brown leather over mail NOT plate armour, because it looks more like a Viking), TWO Huscarl shields (so I can stand in the shield wall) and the biggest and nastiest feth off bardiche or Axe I can find.
I form my infantry into a dense shield wall formation with multiple ranks. Huscarls in front, weaker infantry at the back. Archers/Crossbowmen typically stand at the rear on a hill or a flank, where they will not be attacked, and
Where possible I try to anchor my flanks in terrain, by positioning the formations in woods (trees and rocks will bring a charging horse to a screeching halt) or on steep hills (Hills slow cavalry to a crawl).
When the battle begins I tend to lurk at the rear of the shieldwall to shelter from missile fire. When gaps open up in the line, I lunge forward and use my 2 hand Axe to smash enemy shields to splinters (with sufficent Strength and Powerstrike you can destroy shields in one blow, and Kill in one blow when it is not blocked).
I can kill dozens upon dozens of enemies in a battle this way.
Cavalry charges are easily absorbed by a sufficiently dense shieldwall.
If you are having trouble with Khergits, then the answer I found was Rhodok missile troops, they have the range of the the Khergits, with superior accuracy, damage and armour, they can even down a fair few in the opening salvo when the enemy cavalry forms a missile at the start and charge headlong into you.
I tended to have one of the fastest armies on the map... I get about a 75/25 ratio of Swadians that are upgraded to knights, and then the horse archers for running around with. One of the major plusses to the Swadian knights is that they are basically the same as the "Man at arms" in sieges, which is very handy, as capturing people is a great thing to get more stuff in the game
Defensively, there's not much that can beat the Rhodok Crossbowmen, provided you can keep the melee away from them.
My character personally runs around in the heaviest armor he can get, with a Hand and a Half sword, lance/shield combo
What mods do you guys use? I like the Floris pack because it adds a bunch but doesn't turn the core gameplay completely on it's head.
I also spent a whole bunch of time in Crpg back when it was new, but apparently my character is lost in the warp and weave of the internet and I don't want to go back to being a broke ass peasant.
Are there any mods that make the game a bit more accessible? I love a lot of the game's concept and what it seems to be trying to do, however the mechanics are super opaque and it plays with all the grace of a drunken hippo. I'd love to play something like what it seems to trying to be, but I'd rather feel like I'm playing the game than wrestling with it.
Against the Cavalry heavy forces I simply plant my Infantry in close order behind a hill (So they cant hit me on their way to my men) and then put my archers right behind the tight infantry.
The cavalry hit my wall if infantry and get mushed while the archers pelt anything like mad.
I take my cavalry and ride around for a while to get enemy cav trying to hunt me down, when the infantry have less to deal with I ride right past the infantry while the enemy cav hit them and become slain.
Usually thats when I order a general charge of all my forces as they spread out and hunt the survivors.
I usually win all my battles against cav doing it this way.
As for mods my favourite are the Warhammer mod, the Floris Mod and the samurai one.
I just replayed the demo (I'd play it ages ago when I didn't have a mouse and it was impossible with the touchpad of course.)
Really fun, especially getting a small force of guys together and charging a gang of looters. I can imagine it becomes really engaging when you've got a proper army.
One thing that bugs me though is the sort of "made up" kingdoms. I'd like to play in a more historical sort of setting. Is there a mod or version for that?
Edit: Nevermind, I found two mods for it at least - one does a "realistic" medieval Europe from 1257, which looks cool and another does a Dark Ages British Isles, which is right up my alley. Has anyone played Brytenwalda or Anno Domini?
Chongara wrote:Are there any mods that make the game a bit more accessible? I love a lot of the game's concept and what it seems to be trying to do, however the mechanics are super opaque and it plays with all the grace of a drunken hippo. I'd love to play something like what it seems to trying to be, but I'd rather feel like I'm playing the game than wrestling with it.
The game is pretty simple.
1. You go and hire swadian peasants
2. Go to nearest town/village/lord and ask for quests or beat some forest bandits
3. Now to you got your 100 man swadian knight army (you could use sword sisters too but women suck because no helmets).
3.1 Siege a town/castle and start your own brodom.
4. Profit. (tbh you are propably in serious financial issues at this point)
Da Boss wrote: I just replayed the demo (I'd play it ages ago when I didn't have a mouse and it was impossible with the touchpad of course.)
Really fun, especially getting a small force of guys together and charging a gang of looters. I can imagine it becomes really engaging when you've got a proper army.
One thing that bugs me though is the sort of "made up" kingdoms. I'd like to play in a more historical sort of setting. Is there a mod or version for that?
Edit: Nevermind, I found two mods for it at least - one does a "realistic" medieval Europe from 1257, which looks cool and another does a Dark Ages British Isles, which is right up my alley. Has anyone played Brytenwalda or Anno Domini?
I played Brytenwalda a few years back and there were a lot of annoyances. Like, lots of poor spelling and grammar, obnoxiously anachronistic dialogue (I'm talking about internet slang, not just little mistakes) and a system where your troops got easily exhausted after just a little bit of fighting. If they've fixed all of that, then it's probably decent.
Hmmm. I will probably try it out just for the celtic flavour of it, since it's one of my favourite historical periods. But I was thinking of disabling all the changes they made to warfare because they mostly worked to make it "more realistic" but I'm okay with a more easygoing gameplay experience.
The game is half price on steam right now, so I picked a good day to pick it up! Chuffed.
Hmm...I'd heard of Brytenwalda, but was hoping it was set in the mid-Saxon period ~ 800 - 950 during the time of King Alfred and the many Viking invasions. Are there any mods for the Viking invasions?
Just a question as a Medieval warfare "fan/history nerd"- is Mount and Blade's medieval combat at least semi-realistic? Because I'm REALLY tired of how in both War of the Roses and Chivalry you can just slice clean through plate armor by either using hollow edges or just swinging your sword. Or how bladed weapons are lethal at all with the blade end being used in combat between knights, and not being half-sworded.
And is combat actually fast, and not WOTR's incredibly inaccurate and stupid system of telegraphing attacks and spending over a second winding up attacks like a novice.
I've killed more people with a well timed stab using a sword then hacking them to death. Against a well armed opponent you have to get a good few blows in with an sword to kill them, and I have done plenty of occasions where I have done hardly any damage on a swing.
Damage is dependent on the speed of your attack. If you are stationary or slow moving the attack will do little damage, none if the target is well armored.
If you have plate, you'll take little damage from individual attacks.
Couched lances do the most damage of any weapon.
Edit: I just noticed the Export Character feature. Would this allow me to move my Mount and Blade character into Warband?
Grey Templar wrote: Damage is dependent on the speed of your attack. If you are stationary or slow moving the attack will do little damage, none if the target is well armored.
If you have plate, you'll take little damage from individual attacks.
Couched lances do the most damage of any weapon.
Edit: I just noticed the Export Character feature. Would this allow me to move my Mount and Blade character into Warband?
I'm not sure if you can move characters from one to the other, but you can definitely copy the stats and import them into a Warband character of the same name. 'Export Character' creates a editable text file, so even if the formats are different you'd only need to create a new character on Warband, replace their stats and money with the values of your non-warband character, and import him back. It should be noted that nothing else except your character's stats, exp, money, and face-gen values are exported; the character's current equipment, followers, army, faction, or anything else will NOT be carried over. For equipment, at least, you can enable cheats and use the item browser to give your guy the same kit, but everything else will have to be done from scratch.
My first game was a bit of a disaster, with me not focusing on earning money early enough, and then getting beaten up by every band of outlaws I came across.
So I started again. Despite a nasty head wound, Seán Ó Cinnéide is doing okay this time around- got my first horse! And a mighty army of 14 dudes.
This was accomplished mostly by hovering around the edges of wars, preying on defenseless refugees and clergy moving to help the victims. So I guess Seán is a bit of a brutal bastard, as reflects his celtic religion.
It's pretty cool that they make you choose a religion and a motivation, helps to keep me on track. I've decided that Seán is a bit of a religious fanatic, dedicated to destroying the monasteries and showing the village weaklings that the new God they worship is false. Helps that ransoming clergy is profitable!
Still, this game is really unforgiving. But extremely fun!
I've experienced a game breaking bug that renders ALL settlements on the map invisible but for the name. Villages, towns, Burhs...
Anyway, after a false start in Bernaccia where I lost a battle and was crippled very early on (broken leg) with what appeared to be a permanent penalty to my stats with no way of healing it, I rerolled and went to Centware and Suth Seaxe ( South and South east of London). After a series of bounty hunting missions I managed to scrounge up 2000 gold to buy a "Rich Saxon Sword" from a "Mystic Merchant". It has about 35 or so base damage, and when mounted it does up to 40 damage! Very useful for the early game.
I picked up a couple followers, Eadwine a peasant hunter (with no Bow ) and a priest, who kindly donated his donkey to me. I finally have a Mount, and I'm now able to take on Bandits.
The Town and villages in the south seemed to run out of quests, and so I'm moving north to Bernaccia. I think I may just enlist in a Bernaccian army and spend a few (in-game) months just passively traveling around with the army and earning wages until I have enough to buy some acres of land and businesses in Towns to earn rent. Maybe I'll spend the time painting my actual Anglo Saxon models for SAGA. The Bernaccian's are the largest faction and are at War with multiple enemies at once so I'll at least be guaranteed to see regular action.
Well I just picked up Warband. I heard it was better, but man, nobody said it was 10 times more awesome!
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: I've experienced a game breaking bug that renders ALL settlements on the map invisible but for the name. Villages, towns, Burhs...
Anyway, after a false start in Bernaccia where I lost a battle and was crippled very early on (broken leg) with what appeared to be a permanent penalty to my stats with no way of healing it, I rerolled and went to Centware and Suth Seaxe ( South and South east of London). After a series of bounty hunting missions I managed to scrounge up 2000 gold to buy a "Rich Saxon Sword" from a "Mystic Merchant". It has about 35 or so base damage, and when mounted it does up to 40 damage! Very useful for the early game.
I picked up a couple followers, Eadwine a peasant hunter (with no Bow ) and a priest, who kindly donated his donkey to me. I finally have a Mount, and I'm now able to take on Bandits.
The Town and villages in the south seemed to run out of quests, and so I'm moving north to Bernaccia. I think I may just enlist in a Bernaccian army and spend a few (in-game) months just passively traveling around with the army and earning wages until I have enough to buy some acres of land and businesses in Towns to earn rent. Maybe I'll spend the time painting my actual Anglo Saxon models for SAGA. The Bernaccian's are the largest faction and are at War with multiple enemies at once so I'll at least be guaranteed to see regular action.
That's the same mod I'm playing. I've switched off most of the "realism" upgrades, because I'm fine with playing a less realistic, more streamlined game. I just want the setting of Medieval British Isles. And it does that extremely well! The architecture and fighting styles are really well represented I feel.
Da Boss wrote: That's the same mod I'm playing. I've switched off most of the "realism" upgrades, because I'm fine with playing a less realistic, more streamlined game. I just want the setting of Medieval British Isles. And it does that extremely well! The architecture and fighting styles are really well represented I feel.
Yes I did that. In my first battle, I suffered a broken leg and it crippled my stats, apparently permenantly.
I've got a head wound that has lowered my Int, but I am looking for a way to cure it. Dunno if I'll manage to, though. Seems pretty mean to give you penalties like that and no way to rectify it, even if it is more realistic. It would also be realistic to have my dude die of cholera, but it wouldn't be fun!
Da Boss wrote: I've got a head wound that has lowered my Int, but I am looking for a way to cure it. Dunno if I'll manage to, though. Seems pretty mean to give you penalties like that and no way to rectify it, even if it is more realistic. It would also be realistic to have my dude die of cholera, but it wouldn't be fun!
Apparently you can drown...Theres an option in the Camp "Mod Options" to disable it.
I dunno, the guys that made this mod were pretty realism obsessed. For example, you can randomly fall over backwards if you're walking backwards during a fight. So I figure it might be crossing a river, or wading through water, or on ships.
Can you hunt deer and steal cattle in the normal game? Because you can do that here. I'm not sure if I want to start raiding villages for cattle just yet- though I've already made a faction hostile to me by insulting their Abbot, so I might go raid them a bit. Seems like it would be lucrative, and it's very "in period"!
You can steal cattle in the base game, but cattle are a very... frustrating thing to steal.
You cant sell live cattle is an annoying thing. You can only sell the beef. And quest wise they're only good for villager and army requests. And they're a royal pain to herd around. One nice feature of Fire and Sword is that cattle follow you in that game.
If you can get them near a city with a high beef price its a good money maker. But I only do it if I get cattle when I loot a village. Only stealing cattle isnt worth it.
In the base Warband whenever I get cattle from looting a village I just leave them there. Far more trouble than they're worth, I get a lot more profit from the slots the meat takes up, and it doesn't last very long as food.
EDIT: I also dread the times when the army marshal requests your attendance on a mission; it almost always requires me to secure X cattle from somewhere. Driving cattle from settlement to settlement is annoying enough; driving them towards an army that's constantly on the move is even more painful. I also never take up cattle quests given by elders and guild leaders, even if it means waiting up to a few in-game weeks for a new mission to become available, or writing an entire settlement's missions off entirely.
There are mods that change it so cattle will follow you. I know Prophecy of Pendor includes it, and I would expect Floris' Mod Pack would as well (since that one seems to have everything).
Grey Templar wrote: You can steal cattle in the base game, but cattle are a very... frustrating thing to steal.
You cant sell live cattle is an annoying thing. You can only sell the beef. And quest wise they're only good for villager and army requests. And they're a royal pain to herd around. One nice feature of Fire and Sword is that cattle follow you in that game.
If you can get them near a city with a high beef price its a good money maker. But I only do it if I get cattle when I loot a village. Only stealing cattle isnt worth it.
In the Brytenwalda mod Im playing the cattle do follow you. And you also get a prettty decent amount of loot, 2 beef and 2 hides per cow, which for 5+ cows amounts to roughly 1000g. Its a good early game alternative to pillaging villages. You dont have the strength to confront enemy bannermen, and looting a village takes so long that the local forces respond before you can escape. But stealing a herd of cattle only takes an hour or so so you can get in and out quickly.
Also, my "game breaking" invisible towns bug seems to have fixed itself when I logged in today.
Tannhauser42 wrote: There are mods that change it so cattle will follow you. I know Prophecy of Pendor includes it, and I would expect Floris' Mod Pack would as well (since that one seems to have everything).
I tried out the Floris mod again the other day, and realised why I didn't quite like it: they tried to improve the look of battlefields, but hit the point where it's not finished enough to be as playable as the vanilla battlefields, but not good enough to stand alone regardless. For example, they've added a LOT more plants and foliage, but they haven't made it clear which ones are and are not solid objects. You end up fleeing a group of enemies into some plants, riding through half of them, and suddenly having your horse collide with and rear up at one of the exact same plants that was arbitrarily solid. That's killed me more times than anything and it's genuinely frustrating; at least when you die at other times it can be because you didn't pick the fight well enough, or you were foolhardy, but this time there's nothing to blame but the game itself. There's also the fact that in some battlefields there is far, far too much foliage and most of it is, for reasons unknown, ridiculously tall, bulky, and completely blocks your view, even when mounted. The AI can shoot you through it all because it knows where you are, but you often can't return fire because you can't see a thing; the same goes for them shooting into it and you shooting out. The colour palette is also dark and dingy as hell, which suits cities and towns but not so much sunny fields. It's difficult to know where the grass ends and a river begins until you're already swimming in it because the colours are so similar.
I've noticed that in Brytenwalda. I disabled the vegetation, so that goes some way to alleviating the "not being able to see the enemy" problem, but I've still noticed random intangible trees here and there, and maybe even a few invisible "walls".
Grey Templar wrote: Man, I just had 2 EXTREMELY epic battles in Warband(which I got last weekend)
I had a force of about 50 Man-at-arms/Swadian Knights vs over 600 Nords(about 8 nobles in an army) that dared lay waste to my village.
I wiped them out. Heavy Cav are OP. I got over 200 renown for that series of battles.
Then I did the same thing to the Kergit Khanate although they only had about 300. My character went up 2 levels in this series of battles(22 to 24)
Both times I lost only 3-5 dead and 15ish wounded.
A couple days after each battle a cease-fire was declared with the faction in question.
Oh, I hate that. You're singelhandedly kicking a Factions arse, destroying their armies, taking their lords prisoner, raiding their villages and capturing their castles and towns...Then you King signs a peace treaty.
Another thing I dislike is that your fiefs eventually become quite spread out and haphazard.
Also, its annoying that the only way to request you receive a village is to go to the king personally and say "I want X", and only if its at the top of the list for what fief will be doled out next. Sure, when you conquer a town or castle you can ask for it, but the adjoining villages don't come with the package.
Has anyone ever gone rogue and established their own indepedent kingdom? Ive never actually got that far. How do you do it? Can you hire Lords as Bannermen?
Yep, you name a kingdom and use companions as lords. When you are good enough other factions lords will join you etc and you run a faction like the AI lords would. Accept vassals and wage war etc.
I never become a vassal. I raid and fight other lords until my army is big enough to solo a castle or town then I fight to establish my rule.
My companions are sent across the land spreading word of my validity and right to the throne and I fight the angry lords who have beef with me (all) after killing their armies in my travels.
Out of curiosity, what happens if you are already a lord of an existing kingdom and you decide to strike out on your own. Is there anyway to keep the lands you currently own? Or are you forced to take them back?(IE: do I need to degarrison before I do something?)
You loose your stuff because in order to create your own kingdom you must not be affiliated with another. So you go tell the king you no longer wish to serve him THEN you can create your own kingdom.
So becoming a vassal is somewhat a waste of time.
I think anyway.
So yea you lose your fiefs. Leaving you with the money and troops you can carry.
Also, what happens when you get married? What are the basic mechanics that it offers. This game is frustratingly vague on how stuff actually works and you're forced to basically derp around with it.
I'm currently engaged, but her father is also the marshal and won't call off the muster to have the wedding
I snuck away to get married and did it illegitimately. I had defeated her father many times in battle and even fought for her honour but it was not enough. So we got married in an empty hall with just my companions to see.
No idea what the benefits are besides having a lady at the keep. Maybe it helps with legitimacy?
From the vague descriptions it sounds like they can do stuff politically.
On a side note: Does anyone know what factors influence your chances of successfully sneaking into a town or castle? I'm never successful and have to fight my way out and there isn't a sneak skill anywhere. Is persuasion the relevant skill?
I think it's your agility skill that governs sneak chance. I've had a quest to get into a castle, rescue someone and get out.
Currently playing as a vassal of the Nords. Almost killed Swadia, They've got 2 castles, I have a town (Suno) and two villages (One near to Sarnoth and the other down near the Rhodoks.
The Swadians are just down to raiding towns, I'm trying to pick up peasant women for sword sisters, but I always get them going on kamakaze missions by themselves.
Grey Templar wrote: I only did that in Fire and Sword, and it just tags you as X faction rebels.
Does anybody know what happens if you go independent in Warband?
In Warband, you can declare your own faction. It's pretty neat at first, but the ruling side of it gets to be a major hassle. Trying to keep the nobles from snapping at each other whilst keeping the kingdom running. Mods like PoP make it more interesting though.
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Doctadeth wrote: I think it's your agility skill that governs sneak chance. I've had a quest to get into a castle, rescue someone and get out.
Currently playing as a vassal of the Nords. Almost killed Swadia, They've got 2 castles, I have a town (Suno) and two villages (One near to Sarnoth and the other down near the Rhodoks.
The Swadians are just down to raiding towns, I'm trying to pick up peasant women for sword sisters, but I always get them going on kamakaze missions by themselves.
Does anybody know what happens if you go independent in Warband?
You are considered a traitor is already a vassal. If you are not you can take any castle with your existing warband and declare yourself king. This creates a new faction with you as monarch of your own castle and nothing else, the next task will be to defend this castle from several factions lining up to take you down, beat them and over time you will win respect and be able to expand.
3. Now to you got your 100 man swadian knight army (you could use sword sisters too but women suck because no helmets).
The aforementioned Sword Sisters, avoid upgrading to them. As a rule rescue all the peasants you can, send the men home and keep the women. Men become regular mercenaries and are thus expensive, women become female mercenaries which ias a straight tree from peasant woman to Sword Sister. This tree is good because the warriors on it are cheap, right up to Camp Defender. Stop there, while Sword Sisters are also undercosted for what you get you need Camp Defenders more.
All the female warriors are vulnerable, peasant women most of all as they have nothing but dagger and farm tools, however experienced women quickly pick up missile weapons and armour use them as well as men, but only take a fraction of the pay. Sword Sisters return to melee combat and thus become vulnerable again. Sword sisters can have helmets, though its not guaranteed, the real problem is that they have very fast unarmoured horses. This means they hit hard and do a fair bit of damage, far more than you pay for them, but they also tend to die. This is a problem because recruiting women is difficult and the main advantage of women is that they are underpaid, which means you want them long term. Camp defenders on the other hand have no helmets, but do have chain mail and crossbows, and are 16th level for which you pay only 7 denars a week, which is a very good deal. Try and get as many of them as you can, when you get a castle garrison them to reduce their losses and cut garrison costs.Its not a bad idea at all to have a garrison almost entirely of Camp Defenders it wont cost much and will defend very well. Keep some men there for melee work, preferably Nords though you could upgrade some Sword Sisters for garrison purposes, they do quite well when not mounted on their suicidally fast horses and are still a low cost option.
Otherwise bolster your main armies missile block with them, you will be glad for having them if you keep them all alive and shooting and doing far more damage than their pay because level 16 crossbow-women rarely miss and hit like thunderbolts.
Combining both together: as an independent recruit women because you will have cash problems if you dont. Level them all up to Camp defender and get a core of elite troops both foot and missile, cavalry optional, before taking your first castle. Leave the girls there as garrison, and carry on, defending your new lands and leveling up any more girls you find before sending them to your capital as Camp Defenders. Keep your army elite, and by recruiting as many females as you can keep it cheap. This will see you through the tough initial stages of your new kingdom.
Grey Templar wrote: Man, I just had 2 EXTREMELY epic battles in Warband(which I got last weekend)
I had a force of about 50 Man-at-arms/Swadian Knights vs over 600 Nords(about 8 nobles in an army) that dared lay waste to my village.
I wiped them out. Heavy Cav are OP. I got over 200 renown for that series of battles.
Then I did the same thing to the Kergit Khanate although they only had about 300. My character went up 2 levels in this series of battles(22 to 24)
Both times I lost only 3-5 dead and 15ish wounded.
A couple days after each battle a cease-fire was declared with the faction in question.
What are your difficulty settings? I can sometimes have trouble keeping 3-5 dead and 15 wounded against a single other Lord's force. Settings are automatically set to their easiest (you take 1/4 damage, your allies take 1/2 damage) when you start.
What are your difficulty settings? I can sometimes have trouble keeping 3-5 dead and 15 wounded against a single other Lord's force. Settings are automatically set to their easiest (you take 1/4 damage, your allies take 1/2 damage) when you start.
This could explain a lot of the posts here, I set my gameplay to 100%, no more no less. I find melee combat very difficult, training is problematic even against novice opponents, in fact I dont see much difference between them. I level up through horse archery (with light crossbow) its the only way I can really fight until I get a lot of armour.
Just had the biggest battle ever in Warband, literally something like 500 troops on both sides, Basic Nord vs swabia on a plain. The poor Swadians got slaughtered, stuck on foot troops.
We lost about 50 people all up, wounded were about 150. Enemy dead was about 350 and wounded was another 130/140. Captured three quarters of the lords.
Reading in on this discussion made me want to play Warband again. So I installed Brytenwalda (which despite playing the game for ages never knew about. I guess the mod nexus doesn't carry it or something) and yeah, that's a pretty expansive mod. It has its faults, but I can deal with those. I would say the issues I'm having with it sort of just come down to the scale of the map (which leads to the constant spamming of "some guy you've never heard of fighting for a kingdom you can't pronounce fought some other guy"). That and I don't understand why at the end of every week I have to pay for the upkeep of my troops then on top of that the exact same amount for "ship crews". Uh, I don't own a ship and already pay through the nose when using a privately owned one. The annoying thing being that for all the options the mod has there's no way to turn it off in game.
Ireland seems the place to be if you're after bandit fights to keep up morale. The problem with that, like in the base game, is that unless you have a mounted force you can never catch the buggers. One force of forty troops doesn't move at the same speed as another unmounted force of the same size for some reason (probably down to troop quality, but still). However in that case though Ireland tends to be all right as the Sea Raiders expy are fine to come to you instead of always running away.
Ah, and just because of Fire and Sword; great, castles have gone back to being useless again in the early game. In Fire and Sword you never had to travel more than a day to find a trader due to all the castles having markets. Its a feature I sort of miss having in the other games. Missile troops which don't suck were nice too (though the arrow nerf is just the mod I think). You can pelt a guy with a shield all day with arrows and you'll sure as hell run out of the things before you actually damage him. That's an issue to do with the silly shield coverage mechanics of the game (aim for a guy's legs and you'll still hit his shield), but still, it'd be nice if the guy staggered or something once in a while. They only seem to be viable when the enemy's running at you initially without their shield up, which is fine as archers are supposed to be far away, but it makes horse archery with a short bow pretty useless. =/
Its nice to know that the developers of Brytenwalda are working on an official mod for Warband involving Vikings.
Edit:
Oh and does Brytenwalda have any sort of readme which explains what the features of the mod menu actually do? "Realism Upgrade" doesn't explain much.
Yes, its very hard and not overly like fantasy. But it certainly looks cool. Taking my Lizard swarm and fighting hordes of Tomb King undead legions is fun, along with sea battles, all the other races and the ability to fight IN a lords army is great.
Phew! Just looted my first village. Got a lot of stuff for no losses, but then the lord rode out after me, caught me, and I had to sacrifice 5 of my men to cover my retreat. I don't want to make a habit of that. But now to sell all my loot! I reckon if I can keep this up I'll eventually be rich enough to start getting my force all mounted up, which I think will make us much more effective raiders.
Edit: Oh, wow. I totally see what you mean about cavalry being powerful. I decided to spend pretty much all my money from the raid on seven cavalrymen. The next battle I ended up in was my 24 dudes against 49 outlaws. We totally slaughtered them with very little loss. If I can keep up this level of victory, this could work out really well. My army is really expensive now (3000+ per week) but my earning potential is a lot higher.
Outlaws, bandits, and the like aren't very strong at all. Anything approaching a real soldier will carve through them like butter.
The only bandit types that are a real threat are Sea Raiders. They're basically on the level of Nord Warriors and Footsoldiers. But they're a good way of getting some decent armor early on. They drop chainmail and byrnie suits so if you're hurting for armor early on they can be a good target just to get suited up, but you'll take some losses. On the other hand, they give a good amount of XP for both you and your troops.
Cav is good for short fights. But you just wait till the battles are in the 800 men strong area per side and the enemy infantry start swarming the field.
It will get to the point where your big fight has moved to the center of the map and reinforcements pour into it. Arrows rain from all sides and unless you have lots of infantry the cav will be cut down and slaughtered.
Its better to have cav under your command to hit enemy archers and lure enemy forces to give chase while having your infantry as a block.
But early game against unorganized small forces Cav is great and will get you much wealth.
If you can hire man hunters its great too because (you will notice in time) certain weapons like maces etc will wound enemies for capture more often than kill, giving you plenty of prisoners to sell. Plus they are on horse back. Good to have early. You get them by freeing them from Bandit forces.
Swastakowey wrote: Cav is good for short fights. But you just wait till the battles are in the 800 men strong area per side and the enemy infantry start swarming the field.
That's why, if you want to be cheap/dirty, you set the battle limits real low, dash in on horseback, kill a few "retreat", charge in, kill a few and "retreat" ad nauseam
Swastakowey wrote: Cav is good for short fights. But you just wait till the battles are in the 800 men strong area per side and the enemy infantry start swarming the field.
That's why, if you want to be cheap/dirty, you set the battle limits real low, dash in on horseback, kill a few "retreat", charge in, kill a few and "retreat" ad nauseam
That defeats the purpose of testing your skill, roleplaying and in general having an ounce of risk in your tactics. It seems no different to cheating really
If you take a stray axe or bolt to the head your plan will be foiled though.
Even then though, I still find a combined arms approach works best in the long run.
My girl's been playing Red Dead Redemption, and I've been getting set to paint up Shadows of Brimstone - between the two it's got me hankering for some Western action; downloaded the 1860 Old West mod. I tried it way back when, but things have changed a lot. It's not the most polished mod, but it's still a ton of fun. Messed around a bit in my first game as Union Settlers, protecting towns from bands of comacheros and apaches and skirmishing with plains indians. Now I think I am going to start a new game and join the Union proper, and raise a cavalry regiment to raid the Confederates.
In case anyone is curious, it's a pretty hardcore deviation from standard Warband - armor is barely a thing, guns are key and there are apparently even deployable cannons and gatling guns. Haven't gotten to the point of using those yet, but I am eager. It's most of the US, all the way down to northern south America; the factions are Union, Union Settlers, Plains Indians, the Confederacy, Mexico, and the French Colonies.
Battles are pretty dangerous, a couple of hits and you are dunzo, but if you find cover and deploy your troops properly you can slaughter the enemy. I had a battle against the Plains Indians where my settler sharpshooters deployed behind a breastwork and we had 3 wounded to 86 enemy killed.
Fire and Sword is sort of like that as well. A couple hits from a gun and you go down, although thats less because armor isn't effective and mostly because you can never actually afford real armor.
Grey Templar wrote: Fire and Sword is sort of like that as well. A couple hits from a gun and you go down, although thats less because armor isn't effective and mostly because you can never actually afford real armor.
Armour is still effective against melee attacks though. I used a Dragoon/Cuirassier breastplate. Gave reasonable protection against melee (Armour Rating ~30), but didn't slow you down too much.
For weapons I used a saber and a dragoon's carbine. Not as much damage or range as a musket, but reloads very fast. With a high proficiency you can mow people down very quickly. Accurate head shots are always lethal.
Does anyone know if installing the Warhammer Fantasy mod will delete the vanilla saves? Like you install it, and then after you un-install it then the saves for your vanilla game will be gone?
None of my mods (including the fantasy one) have changed my saves, you should be fine. They all save in different areas anyway. My samurai mod save can only be seen in the samurai game and warhammer one in the warhammer one etc.
Grey Templar wrote: Hail to the king. My fledgling kingdom has two castles that were formerly Rhodok.
Even though I have no vassals currently I'm kicking the Rhodok's butts, probably helps that Swadia is also at war with them.
Nobody else has taken offense at my existence, yet.
And I just looked through all the achievements. References FTW!
I literally fell over laughing when I got "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"
Thats great. Watch out though, rhodoks are scary in a siege as their crossbow heavy armies rain bolts into your defenses.
You make companions vassals as they are trusted and so on. Just give the better combat dudes fiefs and keep an eye on them when they start. Because they are careless with their forces. But in time they will grow strong.
Yep, I gifted a few hundred soldiers to the first vassal and when I checked up on him he had 30 men left. I gave another 100 and he just ruthlessly used them up against bandits and deserters from random areas of the map. But they dont do it for long as some of those soldiers start being garrisoned.
It also seems that the best thing to do is not immediately give a newly captured castle or town to somebody right away so that a small garrison gets automatically generated.
I didnt know that, im doing a new game right now so ill give it a shot.
I only just learned how to use a lance properly last night too, crouching. I used to do well hitting my enemies with the lance but crouching is far better.
After so many hours I still learn how to play haha
And yeah, I found out that mechanic by accident too.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I'm kinda annoyed by the rather arbitrary distinctions between what sieges require you to make a tower and which only require ladders.
I kinda wish it was a defensive upgrade where you could make your castle/town require a tower. Just call it bigger walls.
Just be glad you're not playing Brytenwalda. The "walls" are little more than 10ft palisades. You can take a running leap over them and not even stub your toe.
Well I now control roughly the southern half of the Rhodoks original territory. They recently sued for peace.
I also had a Kergit and a Sarradin lord come and join up after getting banished. And dat Sarradin lords daughter looks mighty fine
They were a little pissy till I captured enough land to give them some fiefs.
And now that I am lord of a city, castle, and 2 villages I'm actually making several thousand denars a week even with a part of well over a hundred.
I find it a little weird that lords keep their factions soldiers when they join you. You give a Sarradin lord a Rhodok castle, and suddenly its full of Sarradin troops. Now I've got quite the eclectic mix of troop types.
Dang it, Had to reload my save game after both the Vegaers and Rhodoks declared war and started messing with my city. I'll see what happens but its probably a lost cause.
A fault in the base game, but was solved somewhat in Fire and Sword, is that yes, the besiegers only have one way to access a fortress. So yeah, one guy in a set of plate armour can hold off an entire army by just standing in the breach. Fire and Sword has multiple ladders and the option to just blow a hole in the wall to remedy this (I think there's also an option to have the gates open as well). Fire and Sword also has grenades... "Oh look a bunch of guys all packed in moving slowly up a ladder". ..."Oh crap they all have rifles".
I tried out the 1860 mod, but its just a bit too unpolished for me to stick with it. The pricing system makes no sense most of the time for one. Its nice that they didn't go faction overload like Brytenwalda at least. The twenty shot pistol that you can find is pretty cool too (I just fire it wildly into a mass of troops then switch back to a revolver rifle and tomahawk. Screw reloading it though, that thing has a speed rating of 2- even slow loading muskets have a rating of 30). As with the base game I doubt the mod really picks up till you start taking forts. I played the mod for a while, but I'm finding that the open field battles become a bit dull. Trying to take a wood fort or city could be cool, but I'm more likely to go back to Brytenwalda before that happens due to how unfinished the mod feels.
Yeah, multiple sort of helped. But then again, everyone has guns so its pretty much a wash as you can just pick off the melee troops before they make it up.
Youknow I don't think guns fit with the series too well. They're a good concept, but the implementation isn't up to scratch. The NPCs still act like guns aren't one hit kills so run about either trying to melee everything, or stand five foot from one another firing wildly. What's the use at trying to take a castle up some ladders when all the defender has to do is stand at the top volley firing at you? Napoleonic Wars feels a bit different in that each side is controlled by a player, so you can actually put together formations and not have one side just massing about wildly. Hmn, actually I think I may have another shot at that expansion now, though the last couple of times I played it all I can think about is the useless admins and the number of trolls.
Well in F+S you can actually tell your guys to line up.
I managed to semi-recreate the pikeblock formations that existed at the time. A square or line with the first rank made of pikemen and the subsequent ranks made of gunners.
Its pretty good at stopping cavalry charges.
It is kinda of annoying that the AI doesn't use any tactics though, other than walk towards you in a line and then charge.
Played Napoleonic Wars again. Yup, still a lack of admins and too many trolls. That and for the love of god I wish so many idiots didn't play sappers and just waste all the build points on bloody plans (that behind the scenes bit from The Lord of the Rings where Legolas puts a thin stick to brace against a massive door comes to mind). Oh, and if I'm building you defenses, would you mind both not jumping all over them as they're being built and also shooting the guys that are trying to stab me as I try and build the things? Heh, yeah, either the quality of player has gotten worse or I just played on servers where the people closish to me knew what they were actually doing (a siege game I just played there where one side was bots controlled by a few players had the commanders forget to tell the bots to leave the spawn area...).
Wyrmalla wrote: Played Napoleonic Wars again. Yup, still a lack of admins and too many trolls. That and for the love of god I wish so many idiots didn't play sappers and just waste all the build points on bloody plans (that behind the scenes bit from The Lord of the Rings where Legolas puts a thin stick to brace against a massive door comes to mind). Oh, and if I'm building you defenses, would you mind both not jumping all over them as they're being built and also shooting the guys that are trying to stab me as I try and build the things? Heh, yeah, either the quality of player has gotten worse or I just played on servers where the people closish to me knew what they were actually doing (a siege game I just played there where one side was bots controlled by a few players had the commanders forget to tell the bots to leave the spawn area...).
Theres nothing wrong with the playerbase itself.
What you're describing is the dichotomy of organised Clans with a leadership hierarchy and communication vs chaotic public games where everyone's a stranger and nobody communicates.
If you joined up with a Clan and attended scheduled events, you'd probably enjoy it more.
I've got my forces up to about 62 dudes right now. It seems to be pretty much the level where I can confidently raid isolated villages.
I've got to say, I really love how this game sort of gets you to model the tactics of a medieval warlord fairly well- raiding isolated settlements, taking hostages, all that. It's just awesome. Soonish I'm going to try my luck at conquering my first castle, though I'll have to wait til the lord is away so I can slaughter his garrison. The part of the island I come from has a cut off and isolated holdfast. Would be cool to conquer my home town
Playing Brytenwalda, I've amassed a fortune of 50,000 gold by raiding villages. But it's a mad scramble to maintain my fortune as my party, a mere 60 men, costs 2000 per week to maintain. Damn are soldiers expensive in this game. I have to raid at least one village a week.
A couple of heavy class infantry, ~5 light cavalry, ~10 medium infantry, 30 light infantry/recruits, a handful of mercenaries and about 15 or so heroes/named characters. The vast majority are equipped of the Heroes are equipped to fight in a shield wall - spears, shields, swords axes etc. It works quite well actually because I have a solid core of ~15 people who can never die, and I have a well rounded party skill wise (path finding, tracking, spotting, looting, foraging, the 3 medical skills etc). But its expensive.
I'm trying to become self sufficient enough by buying businesses, so that the regular income covers the expenses for my troops but its slow going. A couple Lords who own the towns in my faction and/or the Guild Masters dislike me due to failed quests (the Brytenwalda Oswald, Lord of Bebbanburh and King of Bernaccia - so the Guild Master there won't deal with me until I raise Oswald disposition above 0).
I have a brewery in Loidis. Bebbanburh is a lost cause (-9 disposition with the Lord). I'm trying to improve my relation with the Guild Master of Eoferwic, but he keeps giving me missions to track down Bandits and I keep failing those missions (the Bandits are nowhere to be seen).
Looks like I'm going to have to go further afield and buy businesses in towns that belong to neutral factions. Problem is if my Faction ever declares war on them, I'll lose access to my business. Currently I'm escorting a cattle herd from Scotland to Cornwall on behalf of a Scottish Guild Master.
Huh. I thought the super high wages were normal - mine are about 3800 per week for my 70 dudes. Which means I always have to have an eye on profit when I'm out and about, and village raids are basically mandatory, as well as cattle thievery. I don't mind that too much, because I reckon it's in character!
I mean, you can get up really high if you've got nothing but knights or huscarls.
Currently my little army of about 100 guys with 15 knights, 10 sergeants, 35 infantry, 25 crossbows, and the rest in characters and new recruits is only running me around 1500.
Once you have a town of your own you can basically kiss losing money each week goodbye. Even my town with poor prosperity is giving me around 3000 a week.
On a side note, anybody know what exactly effect town prosperity? It seems like a factor thats quite outside your control. And when a town gets conquered it seems like the prosperity takes a hit, but you can't develop the town in any way to improve it.
Heh, well the good thing about this game I suppose is that battles tend to reduce the cost...
My first siege hasn't gone TOO badly, but I had to fight 3 battles against the enemy force that sallied out at me from inside. Now I'm down to 50 dudes, and 87 inside.
Screw ever trying to find the bandits in those quests. No really, turn on cheat mode and set it so you can see all the parties on the map. Where do the bandits spawn? Miles from where you're told to find them. They run about this wide perimeter rather than going anywhere near the quest giver most of the time, either through just being set to do that, or fleeing from the local garrisons. So if you ever want to actually find the buggers you'll have to have luck, or just cheat. Heh, and even if you do come across them you still need to catch up with them (ie running across half the map waiting until the enemy hits a piece of terrain it can't move across and has to back track).
As for wages I'm hesitant to ever attack a village. I find it just serves to piss off the local lord and create enemies. That's fine when you have a faction on you're side, but when going it alone that's just asking to be steamrolled by a larger force. Rather I tote about with a smaller party and just try and do as many quests as possible (in the case of Brytenwalda the guild master quests to hunt down bandits in Ireland are great for cash. The Scotti raiders are common and most of the time want to fight you. Once you're done farming them you can go after their base then hand in the quest). To me its more about building up renown and getting in the good books of as many lords as possible, so by the time I ever do join a faction I'm already well respected. Its no use in having a hundred elite troops when you don't have the income to support them or anything to actually use them on. Better to just be a dogsbody for a while, then by the time you do join up with a faction you just need to buy up a load of mercenaries (all that quest money which you aren't spending on upkeep goes to buying businesses that trickle in the cash).
IIRC prosperity is down to how much you interact with the town/village. So positives would be doing quests for them and in the case of villages buying produce. Not only that though, you have to make sure that caravans and villagers are making it to the settlement. Negatives would be anyone trying to make their way to the settlement being attacked (which is somewhat difficult to manage given that caravans comes from all over, though villagers at least just go to the nearest down), or the place being besieged or raided. You can offset these by having lords patrol around the area, or in the case of Brytenwalda, splitting your party and having the other group do patrols. Mind you can build mills in villages to improve prosperity, and guard towers to warn you of attacks. I'm not sure if buying businesses in towns has an effect, but it probably does. Trading necessary goods to a town may effect its prosperity, but I'm not sure on that front, I just know it works for villages.
Edit:
Oh and to me its suicide to go it alone. The other claimants are pissed off enough with the competition when they have a load of land, they certainly wouldn't be happy when some upstart without a village to their name tries to climb the ladder. Like I've said, I endear myself to as many lords as possible, even joining a faction so that by the time I leave it the leader's pretty chuffed with me. When you do make a move you won't have everyone wanting you dead straight away, firstly because you've made friends, and also because of the load of renown you'd have, plus right to rule through companions. You want to be entering the race from as strong a position as possible or you'll just wind up with a single army going up against dozens. Plus, well a bonus of making friends is that any disgruntled lords from other factions that you endeared may well join up with you. That and if you level up companions and build up garrisons, you can then give them those fiefs and make them lords, then have a pretty strong ally on your side compared to some low level lords.
I'm just getting to the point where I can take on enemy Lords with a party size comparable to my own...~40-80 men.
The way I like to fight battles is to find a good defensive position like a steep hill, I park my archers on the summit and form a shieldwall of infantry at the foot. When the enemy charges, I dismount and either take a place in the shield wall, or I run around the rear of the enemy shield wall and use a 2 hand battle axe to hack them apart in the back. On battlefields with lots of flat open terrain, I stay mounted (Heavy North Horse) I use my sword to launch hit & run attacks. Enemy spears are fething annoying though.
I'm pretty much an 11th Century Anglo-Danish Huscarl.
Balanced Rich Saxon Sword.
1 Thick Round Shields (best quality I can find so far).
A named Round Shield called "King's Round Shield".
and a named battle axe called "My Wife".
The King's Shield and the Battle axe I obtained by raiding a bandit lair - in Brytenwalda there are lots of special dungeons scattered about the map. The My Wife axe is a beast - 50 dmg, weapon reach 100, speed 86. Its the best "dane axe" I've found so far.
Well my little empire now controls all the Kingdom of Rhodoks, and I've got half their lords and their former king sitting in my dungeons. Not sure if there is anything else you can do with them, nobody is going to ransom them.
I also control Praven, Suno, and the west most city in the Sarranid kingdom. Plus all the attendant castles.
Its very annoying though. I try to equitably distribute all the newly conquered territory, but I can't raise the opinions of my lords without being biased towards one or the other. the only option that doesn't appear to piss anyone off is to give it all to myself.
Playing for 2 says on the Floris mod. Swadia has lost all but 3 castles despite me being the bane of Nordic Nobles. My Dye works have been in liquidation due to constant warfare and i have only been able to sustain my 120 strong army through slave trading. I have left the service of Swadia so as he can offer me nothing for my service.
For the first time in 90 game days, I will receive a paycheck from my assets.
Its pretty cool, the bandits have huge uprisings and warlords rally large bands of bandits to take on lords etc.
Huh, I didn't realise you could take kings captive, they tend to just run away all the time. In the base game you're pretty much stuck with any lords you have left over from a defeated factions until you release them. I remember the Nords only existing as a faction through one prisoner one of my vassals refused to just let go (it'd be nice to dictate vassal's prisoner doctrine). A bonus of some of the mods though is being able to execute lords, but that just leads to a drop in relations with the others (still in the mindset that nobles are apparently above being killed).
There's no hope for pleasing everyone unless you want to micromanage things. I find by the late game that unless you just steamroll through the last faction your vassals will start dropping off through you not being at their hand and foot every minute. Hopefully by that point the enemy's been taken down to just a few keeps and villages so any opposing lords won't be able to rally too much of an army. The late game is weak though, to the point that I'm not sure the developers really put much effort into it. I've taken every last piece of territory on the map yes still been fighting dozens of enemy lords endlessly. They don't seem to want to quit, even when its just a bunch of guys with one man armies running about the map. Even worse of course when the last faction member's been taken prisoner and all you can do is wait for the guy to eventually run away to actually win the game (or just say screw it and count it as a victory).
The Swadians don't seem to be too tenable a faction. Smack bang in the middle of the map I find they wind up fighting a war on multiple fronts most of the time. The same goes for the Khanate as well I guess. When making a move to take over a kingdom I'd rather go for one which doesn't share too many borders, particularly the Vaegirs, just so that the invading forces are only coming from one direction.
On the subject of loadouts mine typically is: a one handed axe with as long a reach as possible (and failing this a sword, I prefer axes as they just swing instead of stabbing), a shield, and a longbow (though I find that I rarely use the things due to how quick the enemy closes). On my last playthrough though I went for a one/two handed long sword and three throwing weapons to see how that'd turn out. All right for bandits, but when you start tackling big armies with shields, a horse and shield are important I find. Personally I'd prefer to play the game on foot, but horses give a lot of oomph. They just maximize your killing ability so much as you kite enemy forces picking off stragglers, though issues somewhat develop through being miles away from the foot force for most of the battle. I guess if you stuck with a formation unmounted gameplay could be more viable, but I do find the command interface to be a bit finnicky if your character's trying to actively fight at the same time. Napoleonic Wars does have commander battles which take you out of the fight a little at least if you want to go for that playstyle exclusively (heh, though personally even then I'm not the general on the hill miles away from the battle types. I wind up sitting behind the troops sniping, but most of the time just get shot for being too close to the lines anyway. ...Or the enemy plays cheaply and charges a bunch of sailors with cutlasses into the lines ¬¬).
They do have a higher chance of escaping it seems, but you can definitely capture them.
Another funny thing has happened. When I made one of my followers a lord, he picked the same banner as King Ragnar. They both have the same banner at the same time. Its kinda funny.
As for loadouts, in Mount and Blade I used a lance all the time, but Warband's lance mechanic, while more realistic, is much more difficult to use. So I ditched my lance for just carrying a Morning Star, Shield, and a siege crossbow for when I'm taking castles.
I've also come to the conclusion that the best horse for a heavy knight type is the Sarranid Charger. Its the best compromise between maneuverability and heavy armor. Plus its damn sexy looking.
Nah the steppe charger is the best horse, solid speed (for heavy cav) great maneouver and high charge, which means infantry have trouble bogging you down.
The thing is, even the slow horses will one hit someone once you have even a half way decent polearm proficiency, so you may as well take the best all round horse you can get.
Krellnus wrote: The thing is, even the slow horses will one hit someone once you have even a half way decent polearm proficiency, so you may as well take the best all round horse you can get.
Funnily enough, that's the same argument for taking the most armoured horse you can get.
Which is why you stand at the edge of the map like a git and nullify that momentum. Lances can't do much if the rider's endlessly running into an invisible wall.
...Ok I'm clutching at straws trying to find a way in which unmounted warriors trump cavalry. Come on. Oh right, guns. =P
Personally I prefer lighter horses with as much speed as possible as I hate the Eastern horsemen just running rings about me. They're horses are so fast that you can hardly make it into melee without twisting and turning for ages (or like I said, sticking them up against a map border). I'd rather be too fast for the enemy to hit than a behemoth who can't chase don't their enemies (ok its a select scenario, but in general I like being quicker than everyone else so I can just go ape-gak kiting whole formations of troops). ^^
Wyrmalla wrote: Which is why you stand at the edge of the map like a git and nullify that momentum. Lances can't do much if the rider's endlessly running into an invisible wall.
...Ok I'm clutching at straws trying to find a way in which unmounted warriors trump cavalry. Come on. Oh right, guns. =P
Personally I prefer lighter horses with as much speed as possible as I hate the Eastern horsemen just running rings about me. They're horses are so fast that you can hardly make it into melee without twisting and turning for ages (or like I said, sticking them up against a map border). I'd rather be too fast for the enemy to hit than a behemoth who can't chase don't their enemies (ok its a select scenario, but in general I like being quicker than everyone else so I can just go ape-gak kiting whole formations of troops). ^^
Eastern horses is why I like to pump points into horse archery and become a mounted archer, except you aim for the horse. The horse is a much larger target; it's usually unarmoured - if they're able to run rings around you; and the rider becomes a huge target once he's unhorsed.
On the topic of lances, I've tried using them early on but the enemy can block, parry, or manage to somehow dodged and swing under just as often as I can take them out. It's frustrating to somehow miss skewering a bandit with a 240-range lance, but then be hit by his 70 range axe as you ride past. I much prefer using Great Long Axes whilst mounted. Just don't forget to switch weapon mode, as it defaults to polearm mode (which looks pathetic and out of place, as well as being useless unless you want to take prisoners due to it dealing blunt damage). The ranges of them are very respectable, and whilst they can only swing three ways (although one of them is pretty much pointless) they shatter shields like nothing and deal heavy damage as you ride past, especially with speed bonuses. They're also less unwieldy than lances, and you can be more accurate with them.
If you load up on horses in your inventory your speed should pick up, after killing 300 steppe bandits I loaded up on horses and now im pretty fast for a 110 strong army.
Someone mentioned infantry trying to be superior
Well in floris mod for warband, polearms do extra damage against cavalry. Unless you use cavalry right they cant dominate the field. They simply become kebabed when they ram the enemy buy various pole arm weapons. So I use them to flank their formations (yes they use crude formations) and take out their archer lines.
Lame horses in your inventory also slowly heal over time if you have points in Wound Treatment, so stocking up on them can give you a cheap speed boost early on and end up providing some decent horses later (they can't get any other prefixes, though; when healed they just become a normal version of their breed). Only lame horses can be healed this way, however, so swaybacks will always be swaybacked.
Since I rely on slaves for money I have a small area for exceptional loot, a small area for food and the rest is simply for horses.
Automatically Appended Next Post: If you use archery I just discovered what that box on the field is... your inventory. So you can leave arrows/bolts etc and even spare shields and then load up on them as you need it in battle.
Swastakowey wrote: Since I rely on slaves for money I have a small area for exceptional loot, a small area for food and the rest is simply for horses.
Automatically Appended Next Post: If you use archery I just discovered what that box on the field is... your inventory. So you can leave arrows/bolts etc and even spare shields and then load up on them as you need it in battle.
Yeah, the inventory is really helpful... provided you can remember where it is when you need it.
Nothing like riding around the battlefield trying to remember where you started the battle so you can replace your shield or restock on arrows.
Why do horses give a speed boost? Well because they're pack mules of course. I think that after a set number they stop giving the boost due to you not having enough troops to handle them properly, but that might just be something I invented. In Brytenwalda some horses directly give you bonuses rolls, not quite in the behind the scenes manner that the base game handles it.
A cool thing about the floris mod which has helped me a few times, is when you fall in battle it will continue until you want to leave.
If you cant fight the next battle due to being wounded, you can fight the battle as one of your companions (representing their command etc). You can actually do this at any time too.
I have to start using the inventory so when my second shield breaks I can go back for another.
Well, I took the castle, but I guess all that rep stuff was important after all! I'm being attacked by dudes from East Anglia, which means they had to cross the entire Irish Sea just to feth with me, which is impressive. I fought some really epic battles to break a seige and then to defend against an army of 286 with my garrison of 69, just managing to hold on so far. Includes driving off several 50 strong armies. So now me and my companions are all bloodied and exhausted, and I need to head north to friendlier cities to trade prisoners and buy more mercs, but I know when I do that my settlement will be besieged again! Oh well. The good news is my village has converted to paganism, so if I can just survive this bit, fight off those who attack me and maybe take another fort or something, I can double my problems! Life was easier as a raider.
The good news is that sieges take a while so even if your place gets besieged you have a little bit of time to haul back over there. Especially if you have a decent garrison.
It seems to me that a garrison of 60-80 is just as effective as a garrison of 300. Have a dozen or so elite troops to hold the breech and ton of archers to shoot them as they approach.
Note: It might be a good idea if we all head our posts with the name of the Mod we're playing, to avoid confusion.
Brytenwalda. Well, my faction Bernaccia (the Northumbria region) has conquered 2 Burh's and a town, destroying the faction of Gotoudin in the south east of Scotland. I'd had one of Gotoudin's 3 Lords as a prisoner for going on a month now (the lazy bugger just doesn't want to escape) and with his faction destroyed I decided I might as well execute him as no one was going to pay the ransom. The only feedback I noitced was that I took a 25 point reputation hit down to 60. Not a big deal, as I'd had about 85 rep.
4 days later I attended a Feast, and to my horror found that 4/5 of my faction's Lords now despised me, even ones who I'd previously had extremely good relations with (30+). So thats 4 days of progress I'm going to delete by reloading an earlier save.
Moral of the story:
DON'T EXECUTE LORDS.
On the bright side, I've just gotten married, though I still have no town or Burh to call home just a single measly village. It is deep within our territory far from our borders though, so at least its rarely raided and easily defensible.
Also, 2 TINY factions in Wales and another small faction in Cumbria have bizarrely declared war on us out of the blue, which is GREAT NEWS because I now have a a formidable army of 250 men that gobbles up 5000g every week, my coffers were down to 25,000 and I was worried that without an ongoing war I'd have no villages to raid and caravans to rob as legitimate targets of war. I'm going to try my luck at laying siege to a town and a burh in Cumbria and see if my Lord (Brytenwalda Oswald) will name me as the owner if I'm the one to capture it.
Oh, and BEST OF ALL... After winning my 5th tournament or so in Bebbanburh, I was awarded with a prize: a "Wolf Skin Lorica" armour!!! This thing has Body Armour 65 and Leg Armour 10! My armour stats are now:
Head: ~36
Body: 86
Leg: 10
I have finally become the walking armoured tank that I loved playing in the Native game.
My skill with the "Dane Axe" (2 hand battle axe) is such that I can singehandedly defeat a cavalry charge. My axe has a reach of 100 and a dmg of 50, so one well timed sweep at an oncoming horse will kill it outright.
In the Bayeux tapestry, a visual record of the ascent of William the Conqueror to the throne of England, the axe is almost exclusively wielded by well armoured huscarls. These huscarls formed the core bodyguard of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings. The Bayeux Tapestry also depicts a huscarl cleaving a Norman knight's horse's head with one blow
Brytenwalda:
All that advice about reputation and keeping people friendly?
Yeah, turns out it's not a great idea to get to reputation -45, snub anyone who offers you the chance to be a vassal, and then grab a kingdom of your own.
Seems that provokes even neutral factions to line up to attack you. Currently fighting three kingdoms simultaneously, and I think I'm going to have to abandon my kingdom and flee into the wilderness soon, because I can't hold out much longer. All my elite troops are getting slowly ground down and the new recruits just aren't up to the challenge they are facing!
Da Boss wrote: Brytenwalda:
All that advice about reputation and keeping people friendly?
Yeah, turns out it's not a great idea to get to reputation -45, snub anyone who offers you the chance to be a vassal, and then grab a kingdom of your own.
Seems that provokes even neutral factions to line up to attack you. Currently fighting three kingdoms simultaneously, and I think I'm going to have to abandon my kingdom and flee into the wilderness soon, because I can't hold out much longer. All my elite troops are getting slowly ground down and the new recruits just aren't up to the challenge they are facing!
If it's anything like Prophecy of Pendor, you have to build up a stat called "Right to Rule" before you even consider starting your own kingdom. Whether or not that stat is Pendor-specific or a part of M&B to begin with, I don't know.
Da Boss wrote: Brytenwalda:
All that advice about reputation and keeping people friendly?
Yeah, turns out it's not a great idea to get to reputation -45, snub anyone who offers you the chance to be a vassal, and then grab a kingdom of your own.
Seems that provokes even neutral factions to line up to attack you. Currently fighting three kingdoms simultaneously, and I think I'm going to have to abandon my kingdom and flee into the wilderness soon, because I can't hold out much longer. All my elite troops are getting slowly ground down and the new recruits just aren't up to the challenge they are facing!
If it's anything like Prophecy of Pendor, you have to build up a stat called "Right to Rule" before you even consider starting your own kingdom. Whether or not that stat is Pendor-specific or a part of M&B to begin with, I don't know.
Yeah, upgrading your Persuasian skill and Charisma, and giving "speeches" in Town's can give you points towards Right to Rule IIRC. I think I'm at 4 RTR. My Persuasion is lvl 3.
People... People offering for you to be a vassal? Ah, yeah try playing as a female character. Damn, how I'd love for someone to offer me vassalage. Ok, only to tell them to go screw themselves of course (so far I'm eyeing up the faction which controls the northern half of Scotland as a stepping stone to taking over, but want to play off more people first). I kind of have a thing for playing the least likely ruler. IIRC my current character is female (in native that means you need double the amount of renown as males to do anything) who also had a father who was a vagabond (his village turned Christian on him so he fled to the hulls), who lived herself as a poacher, and is a pagan (ie everyone bar two kingdoms hate you). It makes the slog longer, but feels good to just say "well screw you guys" to everyone for snubbing you as you begin to take over. Yeah, how'd you like your new Pagan queen bitches? Ah right, I took over, refused your swords of vassalage and allowed you all to join a single faction then executed every one of your asses one by one so I was the only noble left in the whole isles (...she also evidently has a crazy streak to her).
Right to rule is from the base game, as youknow, its kind of what gets you on your way to taking over. Its mostly about showing that you're a noble (even if of low blood), so things like marrying and lords joining you. Of course if you don't want to go down that route you can get it by sending out companions to speak about you (though there's only so many companions, so eventually you'll have to find other means). Yes, Brytenwalda also allows you to make speeches to townspeople and probably other means too. Personally I tend to get away by just having a high reputation with factions and their lords so that they don't want to go to war with me on a personal level. I might not have their respect as a monarch, but they don't want to declare war on a friend. That doesn't prevent all wars naturally, but it does if you don't want to marry some random or go down the road of micro managing a gak ton of lords (eugh, I really hate having to deal with those guys. Hey if you don't like it in my faction because I don't want you asshats having all the land which I bloody well just took from you then go jump in someone else's bed. Be mindful though that sooner or later I'll be knocking on their door too, and whilst I may be rather trigger happy about performing a bit of medieval surgery on lord's necks at the best of times, traitors have that kind of handling as a cert).
Hmph, now I'm sort of wishing that you could mount Lord's heads on spikes outside your keep, or send them to their monarchs as warnings.
Right to Rule is part of vanilla Warband, and is required in fairly large amounts before any existing faction will even entertain the possibility that your kingdom could amount to anything. It's pretty much impossible to get anything about your kingdom recognised without it, and trying to start a kingdom without it just makes you a huge target.
I have only about 20 right now, and had even less when I founded my kingdom. Nobody became even remotely aggressive till I was well established with 3 towns and about 6 castles.
Ok, I reloaded and replayed the lost 4 days of progress. Sadly this time around instead of winning the super powerful Wolf Lorica Armour as a reward for the tournament at my wedding feast, I won a Greek armoured horse (high armour, high charge, but very low speed and maneuver.) I already have a very good and fast horse so I gave it to one of my men.
Also this time around it was an Irish faction that declared war on us for some bizarre reason, not Wales like last time.
And as I'm writing thus just now Lindisware (east Anglia region I think) just declared war on us which is excellent for me as they have just one town and two burhs I think, and they're directly on our southern border so hopefully I'll be able to take the town and I'll be granted ownership.
Oh, and I'm on a quest to find the legendary sword Hrunting (Beowulf s sword) . I need to find need king Arthur's horn and the lyre of taliesion.
Da Boss wrote: Brytenwalda: All that advice about reputation and keeping people friendly? Yeah, turns out it's not a great idea to get to reputation -45, snub anyone who offers you the chance to be a vassal, and then grab a kingdom of your own.
Seems that provokes even neutral factions to line up to attack you. Currently fighting three kingdoms simultaneously, and I think I'm going to have to abandon my kingdom and flee into the wilderness soon, because I can't hold out much longer. All my elite troops are getting slowly ground down and the new recruits just aren't up to the challenge they are facing!
If it's anything like Prophecy of Pendor, you have to build up a stat called "Right to Rule" before you even consider starting your own kingdom. Whether or not that stat is Pendor-specific or a part of M&B to begin with, I don't know.
Right to Rule is a core part of Warband. If you enable cheat mode, you can find it under the character report section and modify it.
Also, I'm currently playing the Perisno mod. Lord of the Hakkon Empire with two towns to my name(The Emperor hates me.) I have an entirely mounted party of top rank troops for the faction nobles. each castle is garrisoned with 186 top rank troops, and 360-odd mixed rank troops respectively. Currently trying to sue for peace with the faction the empire is warring with on the borders so my villages stop getting raided. All in all I'd recommend it. It's got it's flaws, I.E. The troop system. (Cavalry are still too good on the charge with lances.), but it adds a degree of low fantasy to the game. Which I like.
After conquering the Gotoudin in the south of Scotland, Lindisware then declared war on us. They had just 3 Warlords, a town, a burh and 5 villages vs our 10+ Lords of Bernaccia, so the result of the war was quite predictable. Despite a surprise attack on Caer Daun that took the burh, we were able to counter attack after I retook it when I rode around the country rallying our Lords and telling them to lay siege to their lands (they were trying to sneak off to a feast in Bebbanburh). Despite a great deal of personal heroics on my part (I personally killed ~ 150 enemies in a series of sieges) and a lot of politicking persuading at least half our Lords to back my claims to fiefs, my King Brytenwalda Oswald kept the town for himself and two villages, and shared the rest of the land among his cronies. The greedy b******. He now owns two Towns and 5 villages. I just have two measly villages.
Our empire now stretches all the way down the east coast from the Firth of Forth in Scotland (Gotoudin) to Lincolnshire (Lindisware) and we have factions declaring war on us left right and centre, even tiny factions with just one or two Towns/Burhs.
For a while we were at peace, so I decided to resume my quest for Hrunting, the legendary sword of Beowulf. After an epic (boring) quest that took me from Scotland to Wales to Ireland to Wales again and then back to Scotland, I've finally obtained it! Its definitely the best sword I've found so far.
dmg: 42 swing / 25 thrust
speed: 85
reach: 97
I've also purchased a ship, and I've disbanded most of my army (250 > 60) so that I can go raiding in Ireland and hopefully make my fortune once again, as I spent a lot of money developing my two villages and purchasing Businesses (two breweries and a tannery). Two small factions declared war on Bernaccia out of the blue ("Declared war to curb Bernaccia's growing power" so there will be easy pickings and villages to raid as legitimate targets of war.
After conquering the Gotoudin in the south of Scotland, Lindisware then declared war on us. They had just 3 Warlords, a town, a burh and 5 villages vs our 10+ Lords of Bernaccia, so the result of the war was quite predictable. Despite a surprise attack on Caer Daun that took the burh, we were able to counter attack after I retook it when I rode around the country rallying our Lords and telling them to lay siege to their lands (they were trying to sneak off to a feast in Bebbanburh). Despite a great deal of personal heroics on my part (I personally killed ~ 150 enemies in a series of sieges) and a lot of politicking persuading at least half our Lords to back my claims to fiefs, my King Brytenwalda Oswald kept the town for himself and two villages, and shared the rest of the land among his cronies. The greedy b******. He now owns two Towns and 5 villages. I just have two measly villages.
Our empire now stretches all the way down the east coast from the Firth of Forth in Scotland (Gotoudin) to Lincolnshire (Lindisware) and we have factions declaring war on us left right and centre, even tiny factions with just one or two Towns/Burhs.
For a while we were at peace, so I decided to resume my quest for Hrunting, the legendary sword of Beowulf. After an epic (boring) quest that took me from Scotland to Wales to Ireland to Wales again and then back to Scotland, I've finally obtained it! Its definitely the best sword I've found so far.
dmg: 42 swing / 25 thrust
speed: 85
reach: 97
I've also purchased a ship, and I've disbanded most of my army (250 > 60) so that I can go raiding in Ireland and hopefully make my fortune once again, as I spent a lot of money developing my two villages and purchasing Businesses (two breweries and a tannery). Two small factions declared war on Bernaccia out of the blue ("Declared war to curb Bernaccia's growing power" so there will be easy pickings and villages to raid as legitimate targets of war.
Man, you've got me wanting to play Brytenwalda now.
Anyway. Downloaded Brytenwalda, and installed it. Created a Christian Noble born Blacksmith and his personal Banner bearer. Will report on his progress as I make it.
Perfectly, yes. Some mods on there might not have .exes and so would need manually installing, but that usually just consists of unzipping the mod into Warband's Module folder.
You will have to bear that most mods were not created for the current version of Warband (1.60 or 1.61, can't remember) though, and it's unlikely that many will be updated to it, especially Brytenwalda considering that the team behind it is working on Viking Invasion now.
My king is turning out to be a right greedy b******. Despite spending more time feasting than prosecuting wars and taking territory to expand our kingdom, he's gifted himself 2 towns and 7, yes, SEVEN villages.
Meanwhile I've been travelling the entire length of Britain, raiding villages, fighting Lord's, laying sieges and overall taking the fight the enemy. I even travelled to Ireland to raid the territory of two Irish clans that declared war on us (Bernaccia) out of the blue (I made 25,000 gold from cattle and selling captive outlaws).
Or the guy you put as administrator or whatever you call it.
Never saw the option come up anywhere.
Then yea its definitely the wife.
She will tell you if you have enough for a feast in the inventory etc. Just go woo one and steal her hand in marriage. Easier than getting friendly with her dad too. Plus you may get to fight for her hand.
Its on my to-do list. I've actually chosen one, and her dad likes me, but she's not super keen.
Nobody seems super keen actually. You think the guy in charge of half of Calradia would have women falling all over him, but noooooo we gotta snub him!
Grey Templar wrote: Its on my to-do list. I've actually chosen one, and her dad likes me, but she's not super keen.
Nobody seems super keen actually. You think the guy in charge of half of Calradia would have women falling all over him, but noooooo we gotta snub him!
Win a tournament, learn poems, dedicate tournament win to the nearest babe you see (babes love a tournament victor). Then when she is interested she will ask to see you at night. Then one poem at a time win her heart.
After a few weeks you can marry, consummate the marriage and see her when feasts are needed.
Ultimately a very shallow marriage. But first you must dedicate your tournaments to the females.
Got this game a week ago, now I'm sitting on Castle Yruma which was the last bastion of the Vaegir and my first piece of land. Thankfully my neighbors are friendly. What am I supposed to do now? I was hoping to use this as a jumping off point for conquest without ever swearing fealty to anyone but 109 soldiers isn't enough to take on a kingdom.
Any suggestions?
Now I'm wasting time running down desert/steppe bandits with an army of women. Which is fun. My 30 Sword Sisters and 8 lesser ranked ladies VS 132 Steppe Bandits on horseback, very entertaining. Had my horse shot from beneath me 4 times during that battle. Lost 6 sisters.
Brytenwalda:
Well, I got flattened. Tried to recover from it, but ended up loading an earlier save. Pretty difficult! I need a sustainable way of "training" a group of basic troops up, so that I don't spend so much on wages.
Hi. I've been playing Mount & Blade for a while. I have recently found the Warsword Conquest mod and have started a Chaos campaign to a good start. Any advice on how to go about playing?
Huh, didn't even notice that. Well they'll be getting a hell yeah from me. Ooh, and in time for Christmas too.
It looks like just a development and refinement of the mod. The features are all still there, but things like religion have been streamlined (no longer twenty different variants of Christianity versus Paganism). Looks like the player models are better, and they've stuck on a fancy lighting effect. There's new buildings as well from the looks of it, but I hope those are in with the original mod's ones as well (particularly I'm wonder if we'll be seeing the craggy bushes that were everywhere in the mod. They really fit what the North of the country's like). Sea battles seem to be the focus, so its nice that they've added in things like waves rather than the flat pane of water that Warband and Napoleonic wars suffer from (I wonder if that came from this expansion or is based on something from the sequel that's in development). That you can fend off raiding parties as they come in to land on the beach is pretty cool, especially now that I'm wondering if you can set up some siege weapons and try and take the ships out before they even land. It looks like the same game, and to extent mod, just with a bit more oomph. What kind of candle it holds to the sequel I don't know, but I'm hoping that it'll be a stop gap as far as quality goes (and that with some monetary backing it'll fix Brytenwalda's issues, notably floating crap everywhere, quest bugs, and through wanting to appeal to a slightly more general audience, perhaps less of a language barrier, or at least a more streamlined number of factions- I don't want to be spammed by thirty different country's messages every hour).
Edit: Eugh, but can we have some decent female armour models please? Brytenwalda didn't even bother including ones for most of the outfits, notably you could run about with a male naked body and a female head. Just for variety and to have more to dress up companions with. Its not so bad with the heavier armour, particularly platemail, but I'd rather not be limited in what to outfit a companion with due to her suddenly growing a bulge between their legs. ...Ok now I'm wondering if the Pictish sets are still in (not for any particular reasons to do with bulges, nah, the agility boost for having you tackle out was cool. That and walking into a feast wearing a loincloth and covered in war paint surely would ruffle the lords the wrong way, I'm thinking the Gaulish senators from the series Rome here).
Damn, I didn't even know that another company was making that. Its an early access game, so I wouldn't be touching it for a while, but I'm wondering how it plays at the moment. If its just an expandalone I wouldn't think they were shaking things up too much that it'd take massive amounts of time to make. Funny, I've played the series for a while now and neither had I heard about Brytenwalda or that Caribbean game (well it is rather new).
Wyrmalla wrote: Damn, I didn't even know that another company was making that. Its an early access game, so I wouldn't be touching it for a while, but I'm wondering how it plays at the moment. If its just an expandalone I wouldn't think they were shaking things up too much that it'd take massive amounts of time to make. Funny, I've played the series for a while now and neither had I heard about Brytenwalda or that Caribbean game (well it is rather new).
There is another game coming out which is a NEW game (not an expansion) which is gonna be a massive overhaul update. Cant remember the name.
The Caribbean is fun. Ship battles, boarding assaults. Cannon and gun are are fun to have. Orders are more advanced. A lot of focus on trade and so on.
Just some glitches that somewhat let it down.
The coolest part, for me, was having my musket men line up as I was attacked and ordering a volley fire. Also throwing grenades into a bunch of sailors trying to board my boat was fun as well.
Wyrmalla wrote: Huh, didn't even notice that. Well they'll be getting a hell yeah from me. Ooh, and in time for Christmas too.
It looks like just a development and refinement of the mod. The features are all still there, but things like religion have been streamlined (no longer twenty different variants of Christianity versus Paganism). Looks like the player models are better, and they've stuck on a fancy lighting effect. There's new buildings as well from the looks of it, but I hope those are in with the original mod's ones as well (particularly I'm wonder if we'll be seeing the craggy bushes that were everywhere in the mod. They really fit what the North of the country's like). Sea battles seem to be the focus, so its nice that they've added in things like waves rather than the flat pane of water that Warband and Napoleonic wars suffer from (I wonder if that came from this expansion or is based on something from the sequel that's in development). That you can fend off raiding parties as they come in to land on the beach is pretty cool, especially now that I'm wondering if you can set up some siege weapons and try and take the ships out before they even land. It looks like the same game, and to extent mod, just with a bit more oomph. What kind of candle it holds to the sequel I don't know, but I'm hoping that it'll be a stop gap as far as quality goes (and that with some monetary backing it'll fix Brytenwalda's issues, notably floating crap everywhere, quest bugs, and through wanting to appeal to a slightly more general audience, perhaps less of a language barrier, or at least a more streamlined number of factions- I don't want to be spammed by thirty different country's messages every hour).
Edit: Eugh, but can we have some decent female armour models please? Brytenwalda didn't even bother including ones for most of the outfits, notably you could run about with a male naked body and a female head. Just for variety and to have more to dress up companions with. Its not so bad with the heavier armour, particularly platemail, but I'd rather not be limited in what to outfit a companion with due to her suddenly growing a bulge between their legs. ...Ok now I'm wondering if the Pictish sets are still in (not for any particular reasons to do with bulges, nah, the agility boost for having you tackle out was cool. That and walking into a feast wearing a loincloth and covered in war paint surely would ruffle the lords the wrong way, I'm thinking the Gaulish senators from the series Rome here).
I didn't even know you could play as a female characters in Brytenwalda? It certainly didn't come up as an option for me when I started.
Calrad's meant to be a Rome expy right? I'm wondering if they'll distance themselves from the real world nations which the countries in the first game were based. That and sort out the geography a bit (tundras right next to desert). its looking good so far, but I can't help but wondering what the system requirements will be. All those new models are sure to play hell with performance once you start throwing out 150 (or more) a side battle lines. At least I'm seeing much more variety in the building models, or well just better ones. Is the game supposed to be the founding of the empire or its downfall? In either I wouldn't mind seeing some expy of the Goths or the like involved, but by the looks of it they're keeping to the established factions and their styling from the original.
@Shadow Captain Edithae
Yeah you can play as one, but a lot of the dialogue still refers to you as male. For one the battle cry things use a male voice. Its the same as the base game where it takes twice as long to get anywhere, but supposedly lords respect a woman more because of how far they had to climb (I think that's just the dev's way of saying that you have more renown already, so lords will of course respect you more, not a new mechanic). There's a smattering of armour types with female models, but a lot of them default to the male one. So you can find a few per tier, but everything else looks pretty odd on your character (to the point that if you do find a good set of armour which doesn't have the right model then I'd say turn on the cheat menu and sift through the sets till you find one at the same level which does). They really didn't put the effort in in that regard, but its not like it isn't a male orientated game, so I guess why bother (bar all the five or so female companions that you have to be careful how you kit out).
IIRC its like the second option on the first character creation menu. =P
Not like the period really had many female warriors, but I'd certainly want to see them accommodated in the expansion. Women did fight then, perhaps not as part of raiding parties, but they'd take up arms when their settlement was being attacked. Hmn, maybe I'm a little too influenced by the comic Northlanders with all its female protagonists sticking it to Christian values ("get back in the kitchen"). Actually having read that series I kind of have a view of the period which I'd like to see emulated, but the devs might tone down all the violence somewhat (yup, a military sim is toned down in comparison to a comic, who'd have thunk it).
Ugh, the AI....when the AI takes over after you get knocked out, I swear they send your troops in one guy at a time, it's the only thing that explains such brutally high casualty rates
motyak wrote: Ugh, the AI....when the AI takes over after you get knocked out, I swear they send your troops in one guy at a time, it's the only thing that explains such brutally high casualty rates
Assuming you mean in vanilla M&B, this is the reason why so many mods include things like Death Cam, and having the fight carry on after you're knocked unconscious. The vanilla game incurs such a tremendous, arbitrary penalty for you being knocked out (especially compared to an AI Lord or leader being knocked out, which doesn't really have THAT big of an impact at all) that it's rare you'll find a mod that doesn't have an option to have battles carry on afterwards. The effect of getting knocked unconscious in vanilla is comparable to when the Battle Droids all de-activate in The Phantom Menace after the control ship is destroyed; it's utterly ridiculous.
Wyrmalla wrote: Not like the period really had many female warriors, but I'd certainly want to see them accommodated in the expansion. Women did fight then, perhaps not as part of raiding parties, but they'd take up arms when their settlement was being attacked.
Crappy armour models and assets for player characters aside, Women are already accommodated in a reasonably historically accurate way as NPC fighters.
There are various female named characters who can be recruited, some of whom are already warriors. (these might represent the eponymous "Shield Maiden" figures of Norse mythology).
Theres a Peasant Woman unit, who appears in villages during raids, and can be recruited and promoted to Camp Follower, Defender, Soldier's Wife etc.
Theres a "Shield Sister" unit in the native game.
Besides, I don't thinks the armour assets defaulting to male is particularly problematic. A woman, wearing full body armour (especially that of the Middle Ages with all the layers of cloth, leather, chainmail and fur), will be pretty bulky anyway and have a silhouette closer to that of a man. When I play female characters (I used to play a female Khergit Bandit "Queen"), I'm more annoyed by the hair disappearing when I wear a helmet.
The voice defaulting to male is stupid though, they should definitely address that. Thats a blatant bug/oversight.
Its the same as the base game where it takes twice as long to get anywhere, but supposedly lords respect a woman more because of how far they had to climb (I think that's just the dev's way of saying that you have more renown already, so lords will of course respect you more, not a new mechanic)
Well that is historically accurate for the period.
Female characters in Mount and Blade should get a bonus modifier for renown, so they gain renown faster and become famous quicker than male characters. That would reflect the shield maidens of Norse mythology better - they were so famous and so remarkable because they were women. That would go some to offset the difficulty in obtaining vassal ships from the king.
Hmn, maybe I'm a little too influenced by the comic Northlanders with all its female protagonists sticking it to Christian values ("get back in the kitchen"). Actually having read that series I kind of have a view of the period which I'd like to see emulated, but the devs might tone down all the violence somewhat (yup, a military sim is toned down in comparison to a comic, who'd have thunk it).
No, I'd rather not see the base game Mount and Blade game(s), and the new Viking Conquest DLC follow that comic book like stylized aesthetic/world . I quite like the pseudo historical accuracy of Mount and Blade (little to no fantasy style weapons and armour, female combatants are rare etc), and having lots more warrior-women running around would undermine that. But as a Mod? Absolutely. No reason why some creative Modder shouldn't play around with the art assets, or to invent some Norse Shield Maiden style characters and units, or even make entire factions of warrior women. That might be a cool unofficial addition for the Viking Conquest DLC - fantasy style shield maidens and valkyries from Norse mythology.
I think the appeal of Shield Maidens in Norse mythology stems from the fact that real Shield Maiden's in history were so rare in the first place. Historically, it was so unusual and rare for woman to act as professional warriors that it was recorded and stands out in the historical record. These historical figures, these Shield Maidens stand out so much and are so memorable in Norse mythology because they were so unusual for the time. If (professional) warrior-women really were common place and nothing unusual for the time, it would undermine the bravery of those shield maidens because it wouldn't be so remarkable anymore. Those women were all the more brave for taking up arms because they were women.
That said, in my current Brytenwalda playthrough I've got at least 3 women characters in my party, one an archer, and two equipped as "shield maidens". All the named characters, male or female, in my party are mounted but can dismount and fight in the shield wall when necessary (bar the archer).
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Wyrmalla wrote: What do you do when you're knocked unconscious? Ctrl + Alt + F4 of course. =P
You can stand still and by a backseat commander, but I find it rarely works. Why do nothing at all when the Ai spends forever actually doing anything? The player can run about the place kiting whole armies as their own side just miles about for an hour taking pot shots. In Brytenwalda you can have the Ai at a standstill just by not ordering them to attack. The other side will sit in their defensive position all day waiting for you to come to them, and well heaven forbid you somehow die before you give the order for your own side to break cover and attack. Its not so bad at the harder difficulties, but I find that you really need to be active, both through ordering your troops to charge and retreat, and being bent as hell lopping off heads from the saddle. Heh, and never auto resolve. You can outnumber the enemy twenty to one yet still manage to lose a handful of troops to an inferior enemy force. If you really can't be bothered fighting someone then just load up the map and cheat the enemy to death, but never trust the random number system the game apparently has for auto-resolving battles or you'll wind up losing guys.
I find a hill. Put archers at the top and infantry at the bottom.
I ride with my cav and find the enemy position (if they are the kind of AI that sits there). All you need to do to get them to charge is by dealing damage. I dotn use archery or anything so I send the cav in to die. Sometimes I die to enemy archers doing this but since the cav never survive more than a few battles I try make their attacks count.
This makes the enemy come to me and lure them back to my defensive lines where my archers can pound the enemy before the battle starts.
I have it set up so that my men dont charge stupidly when I die, instead holding their ground relying on the archers to pick off any distant enemies.
Works well against all armies. Needs no auto resolve and the only downside is cavalry dont end up living long. But thats fine, you can use them up before you have to pay them their wages and save money.
When I say male armour on women, I'm fine with the metal parts being the same, but its obvious that women don't have massive muscly arms... It doesn't take much to resize a model so isn't clearly that of a bulky guy, but the quantity of outfits in games would mean more time than most would be bothered with given the lack of female warriors.
I play as a woman who's father was an outlaw, and she herself was a poacher and before that an urchin. That and she worships a faith nobody cares about any more (though that's specific to Brytenwalda and doesn't have an effect on renown). If there's one person who is unlikely to be a noble then its her. Though that kind of lifestyle however is perhaps more fitting with those cultures which respect a warrior's skill over what their blood is (though I doubt many even then would respect someone so low as that lady until she spend a good while pallying up with the lords. ...Even if she does prefer just beheading them).
Heh, I was referring to a few select stories from the series Northlanders, not it as a whole. Northlander's is supposed to be a realistic take on that whole period of Norse culture, and its far ranging enough that it included a few stories involving women (ie one where some wives take up swords while the men are away Viking, only for the enemy to spend most of their time slagging them off instead even bothering to fight them properly). Though yes, it is a comic book. Whilst women, however rarely do turn up, do have a load of representation, the inevitable response of most of the men is to be sexist git of course. So I wasn't saying that there should be an even number of female warriors with men at all, or well even if they should appear in higher numbers than they already do. Rather my point in the bit you quoted was more to do with showing a grittier world than what Mount and Blade typically does, but that's not something really seen (ie like comparing a series like The Pacific to a Napoleonic line battle style game like Bolt Action. Difficult to show off all the lovely swearing, gore and war crimes, or rather the human side of events).
Certain armor does have very broad shoulders and upper arms. Particularly whatever Rhodok Sergeants wear.
I think part of the problem might be that the armor doesn't conform to an underlying body but instead each suit of armor has its own body shape underneath.
Just have a male character put on a dress. He'll suddenly have a female body.
Ok now I get you. And thanks for clarifying the comic thing, that sound like something I'd really enjoy. I think I'll see if I can get that on my Kindle.
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Grey Templar wrote: Certain armor does have very broad shoulders and upper arms. Particularly whatever Rhodok Sergeants wear.
I think part of the problem might be that the armor doesn't conform to an underlying body but instead each suit of armor has its own body shape underneath.
Just have a male character put on a dress. He'll suddenly have a female body.
Brytenwalda has a "Pictish Woman Warrior" armour piece.
When you wear it, you magically transform into a blue tatooed woman wearing a bra and underwear.
Needless to say, going semi naked doesn't make for very effective armour, so all my female followers/heroes wear proper leather,fur or chainmail armour.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Downloading volume 1 of north Landers now.
On a side note, I'm painting some anglo saxon miniatures for SAGA.
Its an oversight and really not difficult to fix if you want to make a hack and slash job of it (just overlay the female mesh on the male one and move the vertices to align with that. Hey I said it wasn't a good job, but Bethesda get away with all the time). Like I said though the devs clearly don't think as many players would have female characters, or bother what their female companions look like, so they just left them using manly bodies. In a game where if you don't wear the same type of shoes with the right set of armour you wind up not having any shins, I doubt something like female meshes were of massive import. =P
@ Shadow Captain Edithae
Its a series published by Vertigo. Come on Vertigo's awesome! Heh, that and the writer also wrote DMZ, which has to be one of the best military comics I've ever read (in so much that its about civilians and guerrillas living inside a demilitarized zone. Said DMZ just happening to be New York during a second American civil war. Yup). Go pick up any old volume of it, the whole series takes place over a couple of hundred years of history, charting the early Norse folk all the way up to the post Christian days through a load of mostly unrelated short stories (typically a volume in length). If you're just going to dip in though either the first book or last are the way to go. The first being a single story about a warrior returning home to reclaim his inheritance (the intending to bugger off back to the middle east to spend it and leaving his homeland to rot), and the last charting the settlement of Iceland, charting the rise and fall of a single family, and having the message that things just have to change to survive (the series as a whole shows Christianity's effects on the region, where those stories set during the early period are all about killing Christians and knicking their stuff, but by the end of it the Norse themselves are Christian and the followers of the old gods are either shunned or nonexistent).
Oh and yeah, my mates who play Saga have been passing that series about themselves for the past few months. I lent it to one of them, but they all keep wanting to read it. It kind of made me want to make a few one off Vikings to play some Skirmish games with, but yeah, I don't need distractions when I'm already working on way too much Fallout stuff. It'd be fun to see what I could manage in a medieval setting rather than a post-apocalyptic one, but knowing myself I couldn't just make a few warriors, it'd have to be a village, some standing stones, and a load of deer to hunt, among other crap. =P
Something which confused me is why there's a male and female version of the Pictish Warrior outfits. I mean not separate models, which there is, entirely different items. Its not like a single armour set can't have a models assigned to it based on sex, so why doesn't that? Its either some factor which I don't know about, or the person who made those particular sets doesn't know how to implement armour properly.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:Historically, it was so unusual and rare for woman to act as professional warriors that it was recorded and stands out in the historical record.
So if no female warriors are mentioned, we automatically assume they didn't exist, yet when they are mentioned, they must have been exceptions, because they were mentioned? That sounds a bit problematic, if I may say so.
How many records do we have about female medieval mercenaries or knights? In the majority of cases, we've heard of them not because they were women but - just like with the men - because of what they did. Just to provide one example: no-one gave a gak about Claude des Armoiselles being a female mercenary captain, and the only reason we know of her at all is because she got sued in a German court. Similarly, how come that we've had female combatants levied for the War of the Roses, yet such names never saw any mention anywhere else except on a muster roll? Right, maybe it was just because someone didn't care about some peasants, and they failed to achieve something great. Just like, maybe, a lot more female warriors were forgotten because, just like the vast majority of male warriors, they got killed in a fairly unglorious way rather than seeing their name become legend. Not everyone can be a Rusla, after all. Thusly, perhaps we see a fairly small amount of records because at the time it was indeed not considered to be anything special all by itself - at least for their own culture, for if gender is mentioned as something special, it is of note that this is usually pointed out not by the chroniclers of the side said warrior fought for, but by the ones she fought against (= culture clash). Undoubtedly, ideas about gender roles still differed heavily between individual nations as well as eras.
Admittedly, this is only partially relevant to the Vikings, but you've got to ask yourself whether such a perception of history is truly objective rather than influenced by contemporary "common knowledge". Just like with a lot of early archaeological findings, where gender used to be identified based solely on the objects the grave contained - a practice (and results) that should be reconsidered after newer osteological investigations.
In truth, I believe the actual amount to be higher than popular opinion suggests, but also lower than how some "extreme" proponents of gender equality would interpret it (where I've sometimes seen ratios go as high as fifty-fifty). Undoubtedly, the entire topic is somewhat controversial and loaded due to tying into a contemporary social struggle, so we need to be careful not to fall prey to conclusions drawn "reflexively" by both extremes of the modern argument (in this case: rare exceptions vs 1:1).
In game terms, this means that I would like to see female warriors as an everyday sight rather than something special and unique limited to companion characters, special units or other NPCs, whilst at the same time avoiding an equal representation that avoids to pay respect to considerations such as probable alternate roles (household keepers, mothers). Say, 15-20%? This would seem to be in line with the aforementioned osteological findings, at least from the few graves I've read about.
Obviously the above is merely my own collective interpretation of the things I've read as well, and history/archaeology itself is still heavily divided over the issue, especially as new findings keep popping up, challenging established views. It certainly isn't as clear-cut as a lot of people make it out to be!
Grey Templar wrote:Certain armor does have very broad shoulders and upper arms. Particularly whatever Rhodok Sergeants wear.
I was generally satisfied with what I had in M&B, though I have to admit a slightly more obvious differentiation (meaning: any differentiation) would be appreciated, at least on some sets. The chest doesn't matter much because you could just claim your character binds off her breasts, though usually the heavy padding or rigid plate do a good job at hiding your gender anyways. But the width of the torso (shoulders, sometimes hips) and the arms could have used improvements. I'm curious to see what they'll do in the expansion about this, though it's never been a major concern for me with the current graphics. In M&B II, it could be more important, as improved visuals warrant more detail.
Wyrmalla wrote:Something which confused me is why there's a male and female version of the Pictish Warrior outfits. I mean not separate models, which there is, entirely different items. Its not like a single armour set can't have a models assigned to it based on sex, so why doesn't that? Its either some factor which I don't know about, or the person who made those particular sets doesn't know how to implement armour properly.
If the male version is a completely bare torso, maybe the leather bra provides a single point of armour...
By the way, thanks for making me aware of this upcoming expansion, dakka.
Phew! This game is challenging. I couldn't hold on to my fief, so I let it go, and focused on raiding and pillaging. I pillaged a fort multiple times, and now my rep is at -90!
I figure I can't come back from this, but feth it. I'm going to build a Lair somewhere and start just looting every fort or settlement I can take.
I happpened across a mod called Brytenwalda Repolished on the Steam Workshop. It seems like just a general bug fix and clean up, but apparently adds in some bits and bobs too. Not that I've played much of it so far and haven't really noticed any differences, bar that there's more Pictish war paint sets and the world map had some locations fixed (ie port towns clipping so much). Even not having looked into it much, just the general fixes would have me recommend it. I've started a new character for it, though I may well find myself just ditching the mod and waiting for the next expansion in December. =P
Wyrmalla wrote: I happpened across a mod called Brytenwalda Repolished on the Steam Workshop. It seems like just a general bug fix and clean up, but apparently adds in some bits and bobs too. Not that I've played much of it so far and haven't really noticed any differences, bar that there's more Pictish war paint sets and the world map had some locations fixed (ie port towns clipping so much). Even not having looked into it much, just the general fixes would have me recommend it. I've started a new character for it, though I may well find myself just ditching the mod and waiting for the next expansion in December. =P
Does the Steam Workshop for Warband actually work now?
I just downloaded that file and stuck it in the warband modules folder rather than the workshop one. So the game's reading it from where it thinks mods should go, rather than where Steam wants them to be. All my other mods are in the original folder, so I just threw it in there to avoid any conflicts between having the files stored in two places.
I just downloaded that file and stuck it in the warband modules folder rather than the workshop one. So the game's reading it from where it thinks mods should go, rather than where Steam wants them to be. All my other mods are in the original folder, so I just threw it in there to avoid any conflicts between having the files stored in two places.
Try it yourself. I just didn't bother as it seemed messy and I didn't want to be looking in two places instead of one. It probably works, but as there's other mod sites out there than the workshop I'd rather use the default location than one specific to just one of those sites.
Wyrmalla wrote: Try it yourself. I just didn't bother as it seemed messy and I didn't want to be looking in two places instead of one. It probably works, but as there's other mod sites out there than the workshop I'd rather use the default location than one specific to just one of those sites.
Well. It doesn't download them to the right location. Pretty sure that qualifies as not working correctly.
Well I didn't try running that mod in the location it installed to, so I wouldn't know. I'd also assume that even if they didn't work there that the person with the issue would just move the files to the original modules folder. With every other game that I've used the workshop for the mods have worked fine (well those which worked in the first place that is), so I wouldn't expect that ones for this game just due to install method wouldn't. Like I said though, I wouldn't get hung up on moving the files from the Steam mod folder to the original one, whether its necessary or not. =P
I...just followed the instructions and had absolutely no problems. I was surprised how simple it was. IIRC, I found the Brytenwalda mod on Steam Workshop, and it linked me to a download page on ModDb.
Another game based on the Mount and Blade engine, though this time with only a multiplayer mode like Napoleonic Wars. Again somehow involving Pirates. I mean I think its based on that engine, it certainly looks like it, but neither the Steam Greenlight page or Kickstarter states that so I may be talking out my arse. =P
I'm still playing Brytenwalda. Getting the hang of things now- I had been completely ignoring Right to Rule, and didn't realise that releasing prisoners got me rep. So now I'm pretty well respected. I've conquered Leinster, pretty much, and I seem to be holding my own. But I am at war with like seven factions. How do I make peace without going all the way into their territory?
I've found it's really effective to just have about 50 cavalry as your main force, and to just slam into enemies and destroy them. The only weakness is if you get attacked at camp, which is a bit of a nightmare!
Is Viking Conquest a stand alone game like Fire and Sword or will it count as a DLC Module in the Warband Launcher like Native, Napoleonic Wars and mods?
DLC is a laggy mess for multiplayer atm. I honestly think it is worse then some of the stuff you saw in BF4 at launch.
Singleplayer seems decent though if you guys are playing Bryntwelda already I really dont think you are going to be missing anything.
Optio wrote: [...]
Singleplayer seems decent though if you guys are playing Bryntwelda already I really dont think you are going to be missing anything.
Other than a different time period?
Brytenwalda is set in the 7th Century. Viking Conquest covers the 9th century (800-900), when the Vikings invaded.
Optio wrote: [...]
Singleplayer seems decent though if you guys are playing Bryntwelda already I really dont think you are going to be missing anything.
Other than a different time period?
Brytenwalda is set in the 7th Century. Viking Conquest covers the 9th century (800-900), when the Vikings invaded.
The DLC's story seems decent enough actually. *Spoiler* that pretty soon on it gives you the quest to assasinate the King of a Faction is cool, even more so that you can tell the guy to shove it as he was clearly going to kill you afterwards (or was he, its all speculation on your part). Tell the King this and he'll say that the lord who tried to have you kill him has already told him about your will to discredit him and tells you to get out of his lands or be hunted down.
It is a buggy mess right now however. The new feature where you can see the whole town and its inhabitants when you enter its menu is cool, but it seems resource hungry (transitions between say it and the pub are slow for me). There's new things abounds though, like when you go into the tactical menu during a battle it zooms out to give you a birds eye view of things. However the bugs are just too common at the moment- enemies endlessly charging up throwing attacks is something which seems common, as does battle music not work at all.
That and FFS, there are two, count that, two female outfits in the whole game (barring the Wedding dress). Women have the option of wearing either a long dress or a tunic. The joke being that there are actually more female outfits in there, just that only the male variant is available (ie there's more dresses, but its they're made for male bodies, with muscly arms and thick necks). You can't really get away with wearing anything else then bar the various colours of that same tunic (there's about a dozen at least) as the other outfits are very clearly proportioned for men (again massive arms and necks). Yeah most players chose male characters, but I guess companions are screwed. I would have liked to have seen more, but perhaps that'll be fixed (the base game never sorted it out for ages).
There's plenty of new content in there, but expect to see some reused weapons and music, not something which occurred much in the mod. Its a pity to see some of that stuff being reused and would have been great if maybe the mod's resources were in, but I get that its another time period. Overall though it seems to be a step up from the mod, or at least it will be once its actually stable and has the content finished off and tidied up (odd to see an official expansion with the option to turn on cheats still in the camp menu, and it was something I wondered if they'd keep in, but its a handy feature for scoping out what's changed).
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Quote from: Armagan on Today at 12:52:20 AM This was our first release as an independent developer and apparently we still have a long way to go and much to learn. I want to apologize to our players and especially the Brytenwalda team for this problematic release. It was our duty as Taleworlds and of course my duty as the manager to make this release as smooth and satisfactory as possible. Unfortunately we failed in this. However, I want everyone to rest assured that we will work very hard in the coming days together with the Byrtenwalda team to fix all the problems and make sure that players will get a great gaming experience and fully enjoy Viking Conquest's innovative features and excellent storyline.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Edit of mien edit. Something which I only just found out about. For female meshes in Mount and Blade download the OpenBRF application. Open up the BRF file in your resources folder which contains the game's outfits (with Viking War's there's like a dozen), press Ctrl+A then go to select and click feminize. Save the file and job's a good un. Yes you can do this to the existing female meshes and delete the original frames too. =P
In Viking Conquest, does any know where to find a Physician? I've got a wound (-1 STR) that will become permanent in 4 days. The game tells me to find a physician in "a large town", but I've wandered all round Lundenwic and not found anybody.
Wow. If I was going to give advice to someone starting out in this game again, I would definitely mention Right to Rule! It's so important to your early foothold establishing. The second thing is to grab as many towns as you can manage for the money they bring in.
Currently got all of Leinster, most of Meath, most of Ulster and all of Munster under my control. Connacht remains a bastion of resistance, but I have their king and many of his vassals prisoner in my prisoner tower in Leinster, so they're pretty quiet for the most part. Once I've crushed the last resistance elsewhere I will be rolling over them with my 400 strong army of elites.
Put about 70 hours into this game so far, and as far as my self determined objectives are, I'm only about half way through! Amazing mod for an amazing game. I gotta thank Lynata for putting me onto this game!
Brytenwalda, I think it's 6th century british isles? The dialogue is pretty janky in places, but I really wanted to play something in the time period, and they put a lot of love into the setting. I really enjoy it for that reason, but I actually disabled all of their "realism" options because as far as I could see it just made the game less fun!
Major changes are that archery and cavalry are generally a bit less effective, throwing weapons are more common, and most "castles" are hill forts, crannógs or log fortresses. The units and lords all have old english, welsh or old irish names too, which is probably a little confusing if you're not used to the language.
Some of the others are talking about Viking Conquest, which I assume is something similar (it's from the same team, I think?) but it's a paid expansion that deals with the 8th century viking invasions.
Void__Dragon wrote: I hear Viking Conquest is super duper buggy and borderline broken.
Is this true?
Well, I played it for an hour or two yesterday and once I was trap in a menu with no normal escape. But I save often so that wasn't a big deal. What was a big deal was that I tried to take a boat because I couldn't go anywhere by land and the boat just sat in the river doing nothing, loading didn't help, so I stopped playing.
Da Boss wrote: Brytenwalda, I think it's 6th century british isles? The dialogue is pretty janky in places, but I really wanted to play something in the time period, and they put a lot of love into the setting. I really enjoy it for that reason, but I actually disabled all of their "realism" options because as far as I could see it just made the game less fun!
They almost invariably do. What ARE their "realism" options?
Da Boss wrote: Brytenwalda, I think it's 6th century british isles? The dialogue is pretty janky in places, but I really wanted to play something in the time period, and they put a lot of love into the setting. I really enjoy it for that reason, but I actually disabled all of their "realism" options because as far as I could see it just made the game less fun!
They almost invariably do. What ARE their "realism" options?
Permanent injuries, Stat modifiers for equipment, and I don't remember what else, but I'm sure there is something.
I like the rest thing, its something basic thats overlooked in most games. Forced marches have won and lost many wars in history. The ability to know when to rest and when to risk forced marching is a cool aspect of warfare throughout history. Cool addition.
Light infantry are very useful with the option to have armour effect stats. Now light infantry move faster and strike faster, but obviously have less armour. Makes for interesting builds in class and character along with choices of soldier. Especially online.
Permanent injury adds penalty for being slain in battle. Nothing wrong with that, you are meant to lead your soldiers and a dead leader is a useless leader. So stay alive!
No tripping over is not a realism option. It may be part of the game (have not experienced it if it does exist) but its not an option.
I wouldnt say stupid, just something to make the game more engaging or challenging. Which is nice because alot of games dont do that outside of basic difficulty levels.
And permanent injury without possibility for recovery basically just means that eventually your character will be useless for anything physical the longer you go, because sometimes gak happens, which is bad game design.
Melissia wrote: And permanent injury without possibility for recovery basically just means that eventually your character will be useless for anything physical the longer you go, because sometimes gak happens, which is bad game design.
No you have usually 4-6 days to get a physician to take a look at it before it becomes permanent. So in short, take your life with care and you will have a lack of scars to prove it. Be silly and the scars will add up over time.
Well hopefully there will be a mod which allows you to pick and choose which things you enable. I think injuries should be a thing, but not permanent(or at least very unlikely to be so)
Something like there is a 1/1000 chance of an injury being permanent after the normal amount of time, but otherwise you can heal it whenever.
The tripping when you fall backwards can be disabled. All the other things mentioned are part of the mod, but I am happier playing a more streamlined game where I don't have to worry too much about fine detail.
Another option I disabled is the "realistic sieges" where you bleed morale and money every day of the siege and are expected to make sanitation and all that stuff for your siege camp. I prefered the simpler sieges in the base game because the gameplay was smoother.
) and a priest, who kindly donated his donkey to me. I finally have a Mount, and I'm now able to take on Bandits.
