This is hard....

First off, I want to say that this mod has a lot of amazing features. I like it a lot.

However, I see threads like "this game is too easy" and I'm thinking "man I must be retarded". I played a while on diplomacy at 1/2, 3/4, and was doing quite well. I then loaded up floris on the same settings and started getting my butt kicked. All the time, every time.

Archery no longer hits anything. I suppose this was to make it not be completely overpowered at 200 skill, but starting off I can't hit anything. It takes half my quiver to kill an opposing archer at 20 meters, while both of us are standing still. This makes it extremely difficult to level and gain archery skill. So I tried melee.

I die. All the time. And this is with a warrior/page max strength max melee start. I don't get all these post saying they  can take on more than a few looters at a time. I must not understand basic concepts. I can almost use the sword and board style, but its very tedious and I lose the shield after a few bandits. Heck I lose the shield versus two opponents in the arena. Which brings me to tournaments.

I love love love what you did with tournaments. That said, I still can't win, even at the easiest settings. I can sometimes make headway couch lancing or two handed swords on foot, but one little mistake and I'm dead. Even with a few opponents, I royally suck. People say "oh yeah tournaments are easy money, bet everything" but I end so poor....

What am I doing wrong? I have to completely rely on my warband for combat, because I am completely useless. The only thing I can do is use my horse to distract and flail around with a bow trying to hit the broad side of a barn, or take down two enemies and die in melee.

I don't feel like a leader. I feel like a useless serf that randomly obtained enough money to hire mercenaries.

Should I go back to diplomacy and learn to play this game? Or should I drop the difficulty down to peasant levels and try not to cry? Because I am simple not having fun here.

For combat I personally learned to play this game in multiplayer against against bots. o_o It hones your reflexes so much that I don't even use a shield to block, not even against archers. Well archers are pretty dumb anyway, just moving sideways makes you stupidly hard to hit.

The reason multiplayer is ideal for combat practice is because you can respawn within the same battle, usually only after a few seconds delay (sometimes friggen instantly). Unlike trying to "practice" combat in Floris itself, where if you get knocked out you have to wait for the battle is over, and then you lose your stuff because you're taken prisoner, etc.

An alternative is practicing in the arena. It doesn't help you too much against group combat, though, since after a while you're mostly fighting enemies one-on-one, making it easy and predictable (and boring after a while of course).

As for group combat, this mod has PBOD+FormAI. They change the way combat works in certain ways. For example, charging ahead is probably a really bad idea. Stay in formation even when you know you have a numerical advantage, unless you have like 100 elite troops against 4 Looters or something. In fact, the goal in this game is to cause the enemy to break formation first, by provoking an ill-timed charge or causing their morale to drop.

Archery in this mod is supposed to be used in formations as well. It isn't about having an army of snipers, but having hundreds of arrows flying against the enemy line at any given point in time. This is to benefit the formations system. Same goes for the player, though obviously with proficiency and actual player training you can be quite effective at it.

I'm not denying that Floris is harder than Native though. It really is. There's more enemies, differences in equipment stats and stuff are pretty huge, and combat/formations AI is generally smarter, and all of that jazz. One other thing a lot of Floris players do though is import their old characters so as not to start off from level 1. You can even edit the import file to suit your tastes. As many people say, there's no such thing as cheating in a single player game.

My philosophy is: "A game is supposed to be fun. If it stops being fun, it isn't a game." So do everything you can to try to bring out the fun in it. If all else fails, then maybe it just isn't for you and you can probably find something more fun to play instead.

Floris is quite a bit more difficult than native, but it does offer some extra features to help you out along the way. I'll try to detail some tips/tricks that I use to beat Floris (max difficulty options, expanded troop tree, battle size 250).

Archery: You're absolutely correct. The bows in Floris have an inverse relationship between power and accuracy. Early on I like using the Swadian Self Bow. It does a respectable 36 cutting damage (as opposed to piercing damage of top bows), making it weak to top tier troops but more than enough for mowing down poorly armored bandits. It also has 95 accuracy, which isn't very different from native's 99 accuracy bows. It also has nice range. You don't want to bother much with any bow that a tier 4 or below archer uses. They don't have the range or power to be very useful. Use the troop viewer (under reports->troop trees, click on the troop icons to see their stats and equipment) to see what they use.

Bandits: most bandit types are more powerful in Floris, so its very hard to solo anything than looters in the early game. Mountain bandits are the overall weakest of the bandit types, and they carry some nasty crossbows that can surprise you. The good news is that assembling a party to take them on is easy.

In any town you can take out a loan from the lenders, which will allow you to hire some decently powerful mercenaries right away without grinding bandits. Once you have some decent troops, you can slaughter some bandit parties and sell off their gear. This is very profitable, your companions will pick up all the gear and sell it in town for you. In the town market options you can configure how they autosell loot (I like to set them to sell anything less than 250, so they sell the junk but keep any masterwork weapons they find). You will easily get enough money to pay your troops and pay back the loan this way.

As an added bonus, you can rescue Manhunters from bandit parties. Manhunters in your party increase your prisoner management skill (+1/+2/+3 for having 10/25/40 manhunters in your party, upgraded ones count too). The extra prisoners to sell really helps, since most bandits sell for 130 each to ransom brokers. Upgraded manhunters are very powerful too.

Tournaments take some finesse, but can be done. The key for doing them early is to really stack it in your favor. Set the amount of combatants to a small number, and choose having your favorite weapon for each round. My favorite early tournaments are in Swadia, the arenas are flat and wide open, lots of room to maneuver and lance. The tournament fighters are tough on foot and tend to be good archers, but on horseback they make a lot of mistakes. Just don't stop moving on horse and don't get cornered by them, and you can lance them down one by one.

As for not feeling like a leader, you start off woefully underpowered compared to most combatants in Calradia in Floris. You have to be shrewd to survive. It gets much better once you level up some, obtain some nice gear, and get some money invested in acres of land or dyeworks. I posted my fast track to this a while back, but here it is again:

1: get a loan
2: hire companions and mercenaries with said loan
3: kills some bandits and sell their stuff
4: pay back loan
5: rescue manhunters and add them to your party
6: knock out bandits with manhunters, sell their stuff and sell them to ransom brokers (very profitable)
7: invest money in businesses and acres of land
8: invest the profits from those into more businesses and acres of land
9: enjoy your fabulous wealth

You could also go freelancer and join an army. Talk to any lord and pledge your service. Again, its rough early on, but its an easy way to get some level ups and you get free gear (you have to give it back normally, but you can steal it by handing it to a companion while on a leave of absence).

I play on max difficulty, but I am by no means a skilled player. I don't solo huge hordes and I often lose fights against tough troops. I just pick my battles carefully and progress steadily. I hope this helps you, if you have any questions I'll try to answer them.

Archery is only somewhat useful to the player in Floris. I only equip bow during sieges.
You still have to rely on your troops to be successful.

This is what I suggest you try.

Use Battle Size changer and allow more troops on the field (if your PC can handle it)

Hire a bunch of tier-1 Rhodoks (at least 50-60 of them).  Train them with "Trainer" skill up to tier-3 (Basteliere or something like that) then continue to raise them to D'Assedio.

In battle, form them up behind your footsoldiers and let them rain fire on enemies. Watch them drop like flies.

Use Nord footsoldiers in frontline for added effect They start throwing spears which adds insult to the injury for the enemy and they are powerful in melee.

Make sure you keep the formations, using "Hold this position" for Rhodoks.

You just pick off the smaller groups of enemies yourself.

Stalwart_Defender said:

Archery: You're absolutely correct. The bows in Floris have an inverse relationship between power and accuracy. Early on I like using the Swadian Self Bow. It does a respectable 36 cutting damage (as opposed to piercing damage of top bows), making it weak to top tier troops but more than enough for mowing down poorly armored bandits. It also has 95 accuracy, which isn't very different from native's 99 accuracy bows. It also has nice range. You don't want to bother much with any bow that a tier 4 or below archer uses. They don't have the range or power to be very useful. Use the troop viewer (under reports->troop trees, click on the troop icons to see their stats and equipment) to see what they use.

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Nice to see people appreciating the archery tweaks for a change lol. I've heard just about every negative comment about it even if the Floris team decided it was a good enough addition to put into the main mod.

And you're right. Players will have to find the "right bow" for them, instead of the "best bow". Depending on what kind of combat situations you find yourself in more often, and depending on your archery style, you'll need to use specific kinds of bows.

I tend to like the light bows like the White Hunting Bow (Vaegir) and the Desert Bow (Sarranid) when on foot especially during sieges, where more shots per minute matters more than one-shot-one-kill. But I use the pattern bows of the Khergits when I'm on horseback. I don't need reload speed so much when skirmishing. I need to be able to take down even heavy target or enemy horses in 1-2 hits, and that's the right bow for the job for me.

Wonderfully detailed replies.

Loaded it back up and gave it another spin.

1. Archery got noticeably better with 3 power draw and 100 skill. I can actually hit the barn now. I understand why the changes were made to it, getting head shots at a full gallop with 250 skill was a bit ridiculous.

2. Formations. In native, using the right form usually affected the fight by about +/- 20% casualties. In floris, it is the difference between a smashing win and a crushing loss. I saved and reloaded a few battles a number of times to test this out, and to get better at battle calling. I'm starting to like this. The ai certainly is better at holding formation.  Cavalry charges are freaky now.

3. Tournaments. I took the suggestions here and dropped the difficulty down, and started hacking through rounds with a two handed sword. I'm starting to win now. This is good.

Thanks guys, I appreciate your help.

Good to hear! And yeah cavalry charges are a fantastic challenge. It's the primary reason I like playing with Khergits and Sarranids primarily, because they're very capricious and require a lot of tactics if you're going to play with a full cavalry army. I've had to learn to play with moving skirmish lines, multiple simultaneous cavalry wedges, feints, pincer maneuvers, etc.

I don't always win, but the wins I get in good battles are always fun, and the losses are often glorious too.

Stalwart_Defender said:

1: get a loan
2: hire companions and mercenaries with said loan
3: kills some bandits and sell their stuff
4: pay back loan
5: rescue manhunters and add them to your party
6: knock out bandits with manhunters, sell their stuff and sell them to ransom brokers (very profitable)
7: invest money in businesses and acres of land
8: invest the profits from those into more businesses and acres of land
9: enjoy your fabulous wealth

You could also go freelancer and join an army. Talk to any lord and pledge your service. Again, its rough early on, but its an easy way to get some level ups and you get free gear (you have to give it back normally, but you can steal it by handing it to a companion while on a leave of absence).

Click to expand...

This right here. I do this with all my characters even the noble ones. My advice? Join the king's army to build up your relationship with him, so when you become his vassal you can get him to give you fiefs. Right now my relations with the Nord king is 34 or 35. So if I were you I join the king's army and build up your wealth, then leave get some manhunters to hunt prisoners.

Is there a resource on tactical ideas and workarounds for this mod? I have a couple issues.

First off, I have the "battle after death" setting set to "formation ai". It doesn't seem to work. Any troops I had following me stand there stupidly getting picked off one by one. They don't raise their shields, they don't swing their swords, they don't swarm lone enemies, they just stand there. Anything I had set to "hold position" will hold the position, but I notice a large amount of issue with infantry not actually doing anything, spending too much time swapping from pike to sword and back, or freezing up and standing rigid like a powered down robot. Any suggestions? I really don't want to use "charge on death" as that seems inviting disaster.

Tactics against larger forces are hard. I've been pitting my force of i2,i3, miscellaneous high tier merc infantry, and slaver cav against similar sized forces of  bandits. I have troop damage set to 3/4, but as soon as I face up to numbers the same size as mine, I lose. A lot. This is kind of strange because I completely smash a force that I have even a 1/10 number advantage on.  These bandits go down to one or two arrows or a mace in the face, but my force can't seem to keep up even a 1-1 ratio. I usually have my archers hold at spawn or the nearest vantage point, the infantry 10 paces in front, and the cav following me around behind hone enemy to mess up their archers. It just isn't working. What would you guys recommend?

Yeah the FormAI settings post-death are a known bug. I don't know how to fix it, but I personally recommend not getting killed and/or retreating ASAP just to spare your men. I don't fight on the front lines unless I'm fairly certain I won't get killed.

Ah, tactics discussions. This is my favorite thing about PBOD+FormAI and any large mod that uses them really. It's a tricky thing and it's not something you can learn overnight. There's many aspects about it to learn, and even then it's still not a fixed science. As T. E. Lawrence says, "Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals."

I dare claim I am a good full-time commander in this game. I've been doing it almost exclusively for years especially in Floris, but I've taken my learnings even to other mods. That said, let me help you with some basic tactics against bandits, since that's your current problem.

Bandits are idiots. Depending on the type of bandits, you'll be facing either a force that rides right into your line or a force that runs right into your line, and in both cases you'll have a few stragglers that shoot or throw things into your line.

General tips:
- Use the F1 key. Hold it to position troops precisely using the little flag marker that pops up. This is much more accurate than telling them to advance ten paces or direct them using the map with the backspace key.
- Use a horse. Even a slow one if that's all you can afford. It gives you a better vantage point.
- Ride around the battlefield if you have time, leaving your men in formation, to see if you can set up at a better spot. Ideal spots are hills and areas overlooking rivers where the enemy has to cross, but you won't always have that luxury of course.
- Use volley firing whenever the enemy isn't too close. Volley firing has been a proven tactic both IRL and in this game. It may feel like you're getting less kills per minute with it, which may even be mathematically true in most cases, however, kills per minute by archers is less important than breaking the enemy line in large combat situations.
- Breaking the enemy formation is best achieved when they take massive amounts of casualties in a short time. It lowers morale in the game faster than kills per minute, due to how morale actually regenerates over time. Losing large amounts of morale in a short time causes the morale to dip into the dangerous threshold when the game considers the battle to be unwinnable for the other side, and forces them to flee. It'll get so bad at some points that even if their reinforcements show up, they immediately start fleeing.
- It is actually this mechanic that makes the long-known tactic of using a full cavalry charge to crash into a solid enemy line effective. It works by the same principle. If the enemy loses 15 men against one cavalry wedge attack, the morale dips too quickly, etc.

If you're fighting against mounted bandits:
- Keep your infantry in front in a dense formation. This is standard against cavalry. I recommend a depth of 3 men or more depending on the size of your army. In particularly large battles (400 or more) you may want to have two infantry blocks, formed in squares.
- Always set up the front line first.
- Have more than one infantry division. I tend to assign my infantry as either unshielded infantry (I call them light infantry) and shielded infantry.
- Put the light infantry a few paces behind where you put the shield infantry. This will give you a depth of 4 men total if you have them form 2 ranks each.
- If you have any, have skirmish infantry (throwers) right behind the front line.
- Archers and skirmish infantry can be in any formation as long as they're behind the infantry line by several paces, but not more than about 20 paces, and their flanks are not excessively exposed. Meaning if your infantry is in a dense square formation, don't have your archers spread out so thin that the enemy rides right into them, bypassing the infantry line.
- Do all of that quickly before the bandits make it to your line.
- If you have time, use volley firing. But if not, just let them shoot at will.
- Bandits have low morale. Killing several of them in a short period of time will cause many of them to flee. If you have cavalry they should be sitting at your flank but holding position until most of the enemy has dispersed significantly.

If you're fighting against dismounted bandits:
- Infantry formation will depend on terrain. Typical formations include similar to above, or having two infantry divisions covering the archer flanks, while your main force is in the center.
- Whether archers are in front of them or behind them will depend on terrain. Skirmishers are typically in front if you know what you're doing (basically pull them to retreat behind the shield wall after they unload some spears or axes into the enemy).
- Use volley firing. Hold fire until they're within decent range.

A long time ago I was planning on doing a tactics school series of videos, but I sorta lost interest due to the waning interest in Floris at the time lol. I might pick it back up at some point.

Thanks. I'm getting better. I can take on twice my number in faction troops now. I am killing something like 30 a battle, with my line of pikes and crossbows wiping out everything else. Troop size is up to 180, I've got enough training points to turn a stack of recruits into t3 troops in two days.

Next question on this topic. Strategic map control. I am nowhere near ready to declare my kingship. It is day 185. I have 1064 renown, 35 honor, and 27 rtr. However, I feel like my faction is getting out of control. I am playing as a rhodock, who currently own 53 centers, including most of what used to be swadia, and a good chunk of sarranid territory. The veagers have 48, the Khergs and sarranids 26 each, the nords 25, and the swads 2. I really don't want to take on a supper faction when I become king, and if I stay with the rhodocks they will surely take over the rest of sarranidia. Of course if I drop them I lose my two castles and my village, but that's not a really big deal.

Of course I may be looking at this wrong. Is the strength of an empire better measured by the centers comtrolled or the amount of lords? The top 5 factions have between 20 and 26 lords, so not that big of a difference there.

What is the usual strategy here? 

It's somewhat a balance of both. Having a lot of lords that are weak is actually harmful to the kingdom because they'll be losing more and proving to be ideal targets for the enemy when they make a decision on what to do next. They will be weak if you don't have a lot of centers, particularly money-producing centers like villages and towns. If the centers are all poor, usually the case if the region is infested with bandits and/or has been at war for too long, it'll bring out the same result.

If you notice in the kingdom that you have a lot of lords with 60 troops or below, that's what's going on. They don't have enough money to raise better armies. Rich kingdoms will have lords with at least 120 troops, and their average quality is significantly better.

Of course, unless you make some changes, having too few lords is also a bad thing. Maintaining a large kingdom without enough lords means there will be larger chunks of territory where nobody is guarding. The counter to this is having patrols guarding the areas, and making sure the outlying villages especially all have watchtowers. Your lords will also spend more time traveling between their fiefs to collect taxes and stuff, so you need to pre-plan which fief goes to whom.

There's lots of ideas on how to run a kingdom especially economically and each have good points. Personally I prefer building up my kingdom with only a handful of lords, maybe 5-8, that I know will be loyal to me. I give them money-producing centers and make sure they're all rich. I use my own money to hire patrols to guard the various regions, because there isn't much to spend money on in later game anyway. I also give them any soldiers I could spare whenever I can. Eventually I end up with a kingdom with each lord having at least 200 troops, with a large percentage of high tier men. If we go to war, we generally win. They can even conduct their own campaigns without me and they're usually victorious too.

When dividing fiefs to my vassals, I follow these guidelines:

My dukes (or faction equivalent) will have a town and a nearby village, my counts will have a castle and its adjacent village, and remaining villages around a town will be given to a baron. This gives me enough vassals to protect the land and they will have enough money to raise large armies. I only recruit martial, upstanding, and good natured vassals.

I throws tons of feasts, just like Harlaus. At every feast I award a fief, so my vassals stay happy with me. I also buy mercenaries whenever possible, and donate them to my vassals to gain relations. Same goes for recruiting troops from my towns, I keep the T6 and T7's, but hand out the T5's and below. I usually make so much money off of acres of land that I could bankroll the armies of every vassal in my kingdom and still turn a profit.

I can't imagine why you are having so much trouble. For one I can't understand why you die so lot. Are you using a horse? If so do it. So long as you're on a horse and its moving, you're invincible. You want to be brave? Go play multiplayer. In MB going foot is a path to nowhere,  unless you're really really confident and want a serious challenge.

Thankfully, you can steamroll MB without even really knowing your way around the combat system. I know I don't. I play 1/2:1 just because I want my character to be a beast in close combat, but if I really tried I could pull off a 1:1 I guess. I'll give you a couple of pointers on how you can do well in Grand Theft Horse hassle free.

For the beginner, awlpike is the best mounted weapon. It's a dirt cheap, commonly sold lance type weapon with a low reach and high speed. The low reach actually helps a lot because it's easier to time when your lance hits the target. When your Polearm skill goes up and you get better at lance couching, you should switch to a 240 range lance, but for the time being, get the awlpike, you'd be surprised at how easy it is to cut down archers on the ride. Alternatively a light lance is good as well, or even your lowly spear.

Early game don't hire any troops or buy anything. Find a pair of chumps, one with trade and one spotting and pathfinding. Assess prices in town to know what sells where. Then act as  Fedex Express. Fetch items from one place to another, try to suck up to lords in the meantime, reap profit. Once you get enough gold, start buying out businesses  - dyeworks is the best one because of its stable 500 income, so  aim for a dyeworks in every city. In Floris you can own land, which is a great source of income. It's expensive, but sooner or later the moolah will flow like gravy. Try to buy land in a place where you plan to conquer your first city...my pick was Shariz, but in retrospect, a remote city in the far corner of the map (Bariyye or Veluca) would be better.


Now for WS leveling. Go find some bandits. Foot ones. Preferrably without bows. Hold your troops back. Solo them. That's right you heard me. It's actually quite easy. Keep kiting them if you're using a bow until your arrows run out, and/or use your polearm to skewer scattered and separated enemies. Just don't charge into a formation, that's how you die. If your Weapon master (WM) skill is high enough you'll be getting 2 points per strike, 1 per kill and about ~30 or so per fight at first. Level your polearm and bow past 150 this way, or all the way up to 200. Keep in mind that the WM affects the speed which you skill-up, so consider putting a few points there at start (usually no more than 4 are required to get God tier weapon levels).

If you done all this, your weapon skills are 200, your monthly income from dyeworks is 6000 and that's not counting the income from land rents. You still don't have any troops.  Start hiring companions, and max trainer on each. Get one or two companions with maxed out surgery skills. Then go village raiding. And by raiding I mean going up to the village elder and politely asking him how many cows he's short of a herd, or whether some lads need training how to swing a stick. That way you will find yourself getting a much more favorable town reputation and with that comes the most important thing -  number of recruits. Personally I'd recommend you do this at Rhodoks/Nords. Why? I'll get to that next.

Now for battles. My army composition consists of mostly foot units. The ratio of inf/ar/cav I maintain is around 4:3:1. Rhodoks are easily the best infantry because of their pikemen, and you're going to be needing more than a few in your army, trust me. Infantry soak up the enemy charge, archers cause the most casualties and cavalry kept back to assist at crucial moments or mop up archers. Before the battle use the planner. Infantry should be in ranks or shield wall,  stand closer, weapon orders - polearms. I keep cavalry in wedge just so they don't spread all over the place - I find it easier to control them that way, but it's up to you. Learn hotkeys you'll need them. The chief hotkey you'll need is "hold fire/fire at will", "stand ground", "stand closer", "charge" and "assume formation". Don't forget to organize your units in control groups - I use 123 for inf/arch/cav and 4 for Heroes whom I keep back  so they survive till the end of the battle (if your "surgery" guy dies early on...then say good bye to a good chunk of your force). In case you didn't know it, pressing and holding F1 also orders the selected group to move where you point it to or attack an enemy group.

So at this point you should be easily running/upgrading a warband of ~130 troops, your money troubles are no longer an issue, and where to go from there is up to you. You can either swear allegiance to a faction, or better yet capture a weakly held castle and town to start your own.

Kushana said:

Now for battles. My army composition consists of mostly foot units. The ratio of inf/ar/cav I maintain is around 4:3:1. Rhodoks are easily the best infantry because of their pikemen, and you're going to be needing more than a few in your army, trust me. Infantry soak up the enemy charge, archers cause the most casualties and cavalry kept back to assist at crucial moments or mop up archers. Before the battle use the planner. Infantry should be in ranks or shield wall,  stand closer, weapon orders - polearms. I keep cavalry in wedge just so they don't spread all over the place - I find it easier to control them that way, but it's up to you. Learn hotkeys you'll need them. The chief hotkey you'll need is "hold fire/fire at will", "stand ground", "stand closer", "charge" and "assume formation". Don't forget to organize your units in control groups - I use 123 for inf/arch/cav and 4 for Heroes whom I keep back  so they survive till the end of the battle (if your "surgery" guy dies early on...then say good bye to a good chunk of your force). In case you didn't know it, pressing and holding F1 also orders the selected group to move where you point it to or attack an enemy group.

So at this point you should be easily running/upgrading a warband of ~130 troops, your money troubles are no longer an issue, and where to go from there is up to you. You can either swear allegiance to a faction, or better yet capture a weakly held castle and town to start your own.

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I went from having a "standard" army consisting of infantry, archers and cavalry to a army of manhunters and their upgraded versions. They can rip almost any army into pieces and even when you take losses, you can replace them by rescuing prisoners from bandit parties.

I initially had an all-cavalry party at the start, but later found that they're too costly to maintain and don't do well against clumped up infantry (since Floris ramps up the damage pikes do to horses anyway). The infantry is there to draw attention from foot archers, who actually inflict the most kills before the enemy can close in. 

Also when AI charges a tightly packed infantry block,  the kill ratio turns overwhelmingly in your favor. There's nothing wrong with running an all cavalry party, I just think it's simpler to stick with mainly foot units.