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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.

Man, how much are their weekly salaries? Are we talking all high level or just regular grunts?

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.

Characters must have higher wages in that mod. In the regular game they get paid chicken feed.

Its also my experience that mercenaries are too expensive for long term use. They're always much more expensive than an equivalent regular soldier.

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!

They're much lower in warband and vanilla.

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.

Man enjoying this game too much.

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 ¬¬).

I go for a lance and shield and use horse back.

I only carry a sword for when im dehorsed or im ambushed in a town/bar fights.

Lance defeats all.

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.

I take the fastest horse I can. Thats all that matters when you have a lance. the speed adds heaps to your couch damage if you time it right.

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.

How do you switch modes?

I can't figure it out.

The default key is 'x'. Some mods might change it, but you should be able to edit it in the keyboard options.

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.

Me too. I usually flank the enemy and hit them just before my own infantry do.

I didn't know that horses in inventory make you faster. That's interesting.

My army is all infantry bar the odd surviving cavalry, and I move 4.9 speed with 104 men currently.

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.