What to do?

So, what am I supposed to do in the beginning?
I've played a plethora of M&B Warband mods (ofc including PoP), so i have had some experience with rough starts. But i feel that brytenwalda perhaps overdid a bit too much?
Anyway, since i started i recruited a bunch of basic recruits from villagers. They packed a good punch against regular bandits, but get slaugthered by dena and franks. I was expecting them to ugprade soon, until i realized that this mod makes basic units lv 15, taking them forever to upgrade in tiers. This immediately makes basic recruits useless untill late game. Cause even a band of 10 Dena's can wreck 35 basic recruits, and since they won't level up anytime soon ...
In response, i gathered a bunch of money (12 000) and started hiring some medium & heavy infantry. Bandits fall like flies, but dena's & franks still managed to decimate at least 20 to 30% of my (relatively expensive) army.
So now i'm kind of aimlessly wondering the world not really knowing what to do now.
I can fight bandits for no purpose (and i've barely come across any). I can't fight dena or franks consistently and level up my army properly. Although i'm a mercenary in one of the earls armies, i can't fight other lords cause they absolutely destroy me.

I get the impression that the mod purposely limits the player a lot in order to simulate realism (especially features like the falling when walking backwards). But unless that is applied to the AI as well (as they often just outrun my chasing army backwards!), it just feels like an attempt to artifically rack up difficulty by handicapping players and leaving the AI alone.
The mod itself it probably great. From the handcrafted towns, the tons of features that mods like PoP don't have. But i'm just having such a hard time liking it because it's running into brick wall after brick wall.

Any suggestions?

Franks are relatively easier compared to Dena bandits.  I found this game hard, took me a while to figure to use Medium or heavy infantry for big combats.  Plays differently from the usual warband games.  Started to enjoy it recently.  Dena pirates need a little more in the way of tactics. 


I think 25 Dena pirates can easily take out my warband of 60 troops.  I tend to spend time in Scotland taking out those bandits up there and hunting deer until I got enough hardware to head south.

Fastest way to make money is to buy silver, minerals, and stones from villages in Wales and then sell the goods to towns in Northern England (towns north of Cirren Ceaster but Licidfeath is fine as well). You can also buy mead and bear from Oxenaforda and Aegelesburh and sell in Caer Uisc, and if you're good at hunting then Eoferwic pays alot for hides as well. If you can get Aleifr into your party (7 Trade skill), trading will become all the more lucrative. With the money you get from trading you'll be able to buy enterprises and recruit mercenaries (Veteran Warriors, Professional Mercenaries, and Equites) to fill out your army and hopefully also replace your low-tier troops. Completing quests and tournaments improves renown as well so it's probably a good idea to rely on them for building renown until you can consistently defeat enemy vassals.

Mercs are your best source of high-tier troops early on, when you get a castle you'll be able to have a constable train troops in any of your garrisons up to the 3rd Tier (Geoguths for example) but your character won't have a high enough level to train troops to Tier 4 or 5 until you reach Level 23 and 28 respectively (IIRC), so you'll have to rely on battle experience if you want high tier faction troops until your character has gained enough levels. If you want to find easier bandits to train your troops then Ireland is full of them, while Scotland, Northern England, and Wales shouldn't have more than a few Dena Pirate parties and the Franks generally stick to Southern England. Franks become easy enough to beat once you have enough mercs in your party since some of them only wear light armor though ideally you'll want to hit them with your cavalry and infantry as close to simultaneously as possible. Denas, on the other hand, are always a problem...I imagine they'd be easier to beat once you have several dozen elite infantry and a couple hundred heavy infantry on higher battlesizes, but on the default 150 battlesize I find them to be the most aggravating opponents in the game, worse than any enemy king, marshal, or vassal since I typically lose 1-2 dozen of my elites in every battle against the Denas and I just avoid them unless they're interfering with one of my trade routes. IIRC, Denas are the strongest heavy infantry in the game after Hearthwerus.

Yeah, a few heavy infantry can take out a lot of light infantry.  I'm still early in my game and I restarted to use the repolished mod.  I'm actually trying to recruit dena warriors and having morale problems, not enough money to keep everyone happy. 

Barely getting any Elite tier troops.  Guess I'm still in the early game.


One tactic vs denas is that I run close to the main army, get all 20 of them chasing after me.  When you ride near your own troops some of them will break off to engage.  30 vs 5 Danish works well.

I also think that Dena's are way to OP.
1. They all have chainmail ( now very realistic fighting a only-chainmail warband of 20 dudes. That stuff was hell expensive )
2. Chainmail is way too strong. If you have chainmail you can easily take 10 hits. It should just protect you a bit more to other armour.

Cynfar said:

I also think that Dena's are way to OP.
1. They all have chainmail ( now very realistic fighting a only-chainmail warband of 20 dudes. That stuff was hell expensive )

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Agreed. Right now the Denas and Franks are better armored than Charlemagne's army would be a century later.

2. Chainmail is way too strong. If you have chainmail you can easily take 10 hits. It should just protect you a bit more to other armour.

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Axes get through mail in 3-4 hits like they should (with high enough Power Strike anyway, and troops have higher HP here than in Native). Swords should be ineffective as mail is extremely resistant to slashes, and it wasn't until rather late in the medieval ages that swords with very fine points were designed that had a chance to thrust through mail. For this point in history, axes were the go-to weapons if you needed to deal with mail since, while they generally couldn't break the mail links they'd still hit with alot of impact since most of the weight of the axe is near the bladed end.

Irland is easier, best place to learn the game as you wont have to fight those elite bandits.

I thought Scotland was good.  The deer and goat and wolf hunting helped you make money.  I think in Ireland they have some donkeys.  For me I keep running out of money so heading north was great, cept' I hate the mountainous forested terrain.

Cynfar said:

I also think that Dena's are way to OP.
1. They all have chainmail ( now very realistic fighting a only-chainmail warband of 20 dudes. That stuff was hell expensive )
2. Chainmail is way too strong. If you have chainmail you can easily take 10 hits. It should just protect you a bit more to other armour.

Click to expand...

Agreed that Dena dudes are to OP.  I usually mod the loadout of Dena pirates to include lesser types of armor.  The Danes were hit-and-run raiders early on and they couldn't do this with heavy armor.  In fact, at the time of Brytenwalda, there probably weren't a bunch of Danes running around England, at least not to the extent to which they are in the game.  Same goes for the Franks.