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 Avatar 720 wrote:


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.

Just saw some youtube videos on the warhammer fantasy mod. Looks really cool. Anybody know anything about it?

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.

Well worth it for a bit of fun.

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

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 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.



http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/board,235.0.html

http://www.moddb.com/mods/1860s-old-america/downloads/099z

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.

I used a carbine too till I could afford a custom pistol. Short range ride by attacks are very effective. Got pretty good at getting head shots too.

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.

They wont effect each other at all.

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!"

 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.

You are in the most fun part o this game haha.

Yeah, just made a guy a vassal and first thing he does is get himself captured.

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

Couching, not crouching.

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.

You can always wait till they launch an assault and join the defense. You can just slaughter them as they come up the ladder.

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.