PoP variants & challenges

[srulz]

The idea for this thread came from the fact that my adventure in the land of PoP is finally coming to a close, with me and my legion of SLC (and a hundred Doomguide) steamrolling everything in our path. So, as I'm pondering on what should I do next, I suddenly came to realization:

What if I set certain rules for my next game? And what would others do?

Now, I'm going to create a super-simple format for this. Feel free to not follow it if you want:

Spoiler

Rules: what are the requirements for this challenge
Strategy: how do you want to win with the above requirements

So, let me start with 2 variants:

1. One King to Rule Them All

Spoiler

Rules:

- you may not have any vassals
- you may not be anyone's vassal
- merc contract is okay

Strategy:

- imprison everyone!
- merc contract is good for building up your cash, just be aware that if your employer made peace with anyone, all their lords which you imprisoned will be released, for free!
- 1 relatively painless way to capture people is to catch + immediately make peace with the faction by paying a little cash. You'll keep the prisoner, even if it's one of the Kings!
- when capturing any towns/castles, choose the "consult with advisers" option. You'll immediately get some free garrison!

2. Slave to the People

Spoiler

Rules:

- you may not employ anyone other than the companions
- if you got any armies for free either through heartbeat/garrison/order knights, you must immediately disband/give them away

Strategy:

- befriend everyone!
- it may be better if you don't actually have any walled centres, as their garrison would be effectively none!

and that's all for now. Anyway, the goal here is to simply have fun, so if you want to tweak/import/cheat/whatever, it's totally up to you. At least this should hold our attentions until PoP 4.0 came along

And please share your "house rules" as well!

 

[DrSane]

One king sounds fun, but slave to the people sounds insane... to much time on your hands What about no cavalry?

 

[AxeMaster3]

If you would like a good example of what you are talking about,  There are saves available to do any testing. Believe me, it was fun.

Look at this...     http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,197647.msg4741117.html#msg4741117


If you would like a turn please post to be added to the list. 

 

[M0rdred]

Mettenheim Style Rules;

Player Character
2 Handed Weapons, Polearms and 1 Handed Weapons permitted. Throwing or Crossbow can be secondary weapon choice. A 2 handed sword should be your weapon of choice.
No riding skill allowed
No horse allowed (you may however have horses in the inventory as pack animals, they increase party movement speed)
No Archery or Power Draw permitted.
You must have a mustache.

Party
Any companions (Frederick required)
Companions must have the same restrictions as your own character. Archery / Power Draw is allowed for them though.
Any troops

Factions
Empire or Fierdsvain preferred, but you can use any.
You should try to acquire as many Mettenheim troops as you can, both released prisoners and mercenaries.
You should try to become friendly with the Mettenheim Expeditionaries as soon as possible.

Additional Rules
You MUST dismount your entire force at the start of EVERY battle. You are allowed to use Knights and the like, but only if you dismount them!

Good luck!

Tips;

Spoiler

Athletics - This skill is vital for foot soldier builds. Trust me.
Path Finding - Another vital skill, you simply wont catch many people on the world map without it. Your movement will be your biggest enemy so make every maneuver count.
Weight - Be careful what you use, a shield on the back might be useful, but movement speed will be restricted. Is it a good trade off?
Horsemen - Try to focus on proper infantry troops rather than their mounted counter parts. Mounted troops tend to have lower skills than their infantry friends.
Tactical Ability - Using tactics on the battle field is vital, you will get stomped otherwise. Try fighting defensively.
Tags - Re-tag all your cavalry troops as either Infantry / Archers to make deployment easier. It might be useful to create a 3rd tag for "2 handers" which is berserkers, halbardiers, gladiators etc, they can then hide behind a shield wall.
STAND CLOSER - Do not be afraid to use this. Properly deployed you will love fighting cavalry armies. The Jatu will become a cash cow.

 

[Fidelity]

I think I'll do a modified version of M0rdred's challenge... Made a change to it.

-You cannot have more then 1/4 of your army be cavalry/mounted in battle.

 

[Centurion1]

eh i already basically do that barring specialty things (like against mettenheim i occasionally go all ranged, etc.) at most i go for like 1/3

 

[HUtH]

- befriend everyone!

It'd be difficult... Evil lords don't like honorable heroes, so you can't have that great bonus from honor to Good lords's relation...
And by "befriending" you mean to make good relations with EVERYONE on the map? I don't think it's possible...

First variant is nice, a lot f fighting....

 

[Slanderbot]

Mettenheim Style Rules

Spoiler

Player Character
2 Handed Weapons, Polearms and 1 Handed Weapons permitted. Throwing or Crossbow can be secondary weapon choice. A 2 handed sword should be your weapon of choice.
No riding skill allowed
No horse allowed (you may however have horses in the inventory as pack animals, they increase party movement speed)
No Archery or Power Draw permitted.
You must have a mustache.

Party
Any companions (Frederick required)
Companions must have the same restrictions as your own character. Archery / Power Draw is allowed for them though.
Any troops

Factions
Empire or Fierdsvain preferred, but you can use any.
You should try to acquire as many Mettenheim troops as you can, both released prisoners and mercenaries.
You should try to become friendly with the Mettenheim Expeditionaries as soon as possible.

Additional Rules
You MUST dismount your entire force at the start of EVERY battle. You are allowed to use Knights and the like, but only if you dismount them!

Good luck!

Tips;
Athletics - This skill is vital for foot soldier builds. Trust me.
Path Finding - Another vital skill, you simply wont catch many people on the world map without it. Your movement will be your biggest enemy so make every maneuver count.
Weight - Be careful what you use, a shield on the back might be useful, but movement speed will be restricted. Is it a good trade off?
Horsemen - Try to focus on proper infantry troops rather than their mounted counter parts. Mounted troops tend to have lower skills than their infantry friends.
Tactical Ability - Using tactics on the battle field is vital, you will get stomped otherwise. Try fighting defensively.
Tags - Re-tag all your cavalry troops as either Infantry / Archers to make deployment easier. It might be useful to create a 3rd tag for "2 handers" which is berserkers, halbardiers, gladiators etc, they can then hide behind a shield wall.
STAND CLOSER - Do not be afraid to use this. Properly deployed you will love fighting cavalry armies. The Jatu will become a cash cow.

I am actually playing a halftime Mettenheim style playthrough atm and am already planning a pure Mettenheim playthrough for next time. Almost identical to your ruleset, no cav, no riding during battle (I wanna look pretty on the map, plus the speed is nice), throwing weps only for ranged. It's gonna be sweet. Empire is most def the best faction for this style but my current playthrough is with empire, so I may end up choosing Feirds, purely for something different.

 

[srulz]

slave to the people sounds insane...

I don't think it's possible...

Since there are non-believers in this thread, I'm going to go Slave to The People

trust me, it's not as hard as you guys think. Just be a marshall, get about 10 honorable lords with awesome household troops on your side, lavish them with lands so that they all get 300+ troops, go and roll over everything with 3000 top-tier men

the only hard part is when dealing with unique armies with neutral relationship towards your faction. Well, just grind them down then - attack & retreat, repeat till done.

Mettenheim Style Rules

Thanks for sharing! The rules are very specific others, come share your house rules as well!

Nekkid stuff

Hey, thanks for the invite! I'll have to pass though, too many tweaks in my game that I may break everything when my time comes

 

[XSevSpreeX]

Mettenheim Style Rules;

Player Character
2 Handed Weapons, Polearms and 1 Handed Weapons permitted. Throwing or Crossbow can be secondary weapon choice. A 2 handed sword should be your weapon of choice.
No riding skill allowed
No horse allowed (you may however have horses in the inventory as pack animals, they increase party movement speed)
No Archery or Power Draw permitted.
You must have a mustache.

I was doing this in Floris, turned out pretty good. Dominated for the most part, but I have yet to try it in PoP. I will do it eventually and my character's name shall be:

Spoiler

Sturm Brightblade

 

[Shadow-Seeker]

I wondered what SD's pic was...

 

[Golden Fish]

I think I'll do a modified version of M0rdred's challenge... Made a change to it.

-You cannot have more then 1/4 of your army be cavalry/mounted in battle.

Ha, I usually play with less than a quarter of my army cavalry. That is just how I normally play. Anything above a third of your army being cavalry sounds silly and would never sit well with me. I just can't stand not having my grand marching army supported by my small elite mounted knights (how I imagine it might have really been in the dark ages).


How about a game played with only mercenaries.

Or perhaps without any form of troop not from your chosen culture (must be chosen at beginning of game) that would mean no mercenaries and no lords from a different culture (so pretty much only one cultures lords). It would be like waging a civil war among your pairs for the title of king, then leading your reborn kingdom to continental occupation (Pendor is a continent right?).

 

[Slanderbot]

Or perhaps without any form of troop not from your chosen culture (must be chosen at beginning of game) that would mean no mercenaries and no lords from a different culture (so pretty much only one cultures lords). It would be like waging a civil war among your pairs for the title of king, then leading your reborn kingdom to continental occupation (Pendor is a continent right?).

I do this in all of my playthroughs, Pure factions only! RAWR!

 

[freitach]

We are the People

Spoiler

You are only allowed to use non-professional troops, so nothing above rank of Militia, Companions are allowed.
I tried it, but cheated a bit, so set Charisma and Leadership as high as possible, so I can field a big army that still gets slaughtered.
Very difficult, don't think you can win the game, but it's really funny and you have a great feeling if you beat a King in battle. If you can pic or it didn't happen

Borg

Spoiler

At the beginning of your game chose any 1 troop (no order troops, no Heroe/Heroine Adventures).
You are only allowed to have this troop in your army (ok the lower Tiers are allowed, as you need them to get the chosen troops, but you have to upgrade them whenever possible). You have to make your character as similar as possible to this troop (same Weapons, armor etc.), so should your companions be.
You can be pretty successful with this, but only against some enemies, others will be a real PitA.
Tactics can be crucial against good mixed armies.

 

[DennisBergkamp]

2. Slave to the People

Spoiler

Rules:

- you may not employ anyone other than the companions
- if you got any armies for free either through heartbeat/garrison/order knights, you must immediately disband/give them away

Strategy:

- befriend everyone!
- it may be better if you don't actually have any walled centres, as their garrison would be effectively none!

and that's all for now. Anyway, the goal here is to simply have fun, so if you want to tweak/import/cheat/whatever, it's totally up to you. At least this should hold our attentions until PoP 4.0 came along

And please share your "house rules" as well!

This is pretty insane, another thing to add to the "strategy" section that would help tremendously:
- get persuasion to 10 asap, so you can get ALL companions.

My current game I've been playing sort of like this... however, I "cheat" a little bit and still get a few troops (right now I'm running around with my companions and also ~10 Barclay Sappers). The cool thing about this is that your companions will get really strong over time, and you don't really have to put points into Leadership or Surgery. The biggest problem is of course the bigger spawns... the only way of beating them is to kite them into an army of a friendly faction.

 

[Othienka]

This is pretty insane, another thing to add to the "strategy" section that would help tremendously:
- get persuasion to 10 asap, so you can get ALL companions.

But you can't keep all of your companions constantly even with 10 on Persuasion . . .

 

[DennisBergkamp]

True, at some point one or two will leave... but they'll always rejoin after awhile

 

[srulz]

2. Slave to the People

Spoiler

Rules:

- you may not employ anyone other than the companions
- if you got any armies for free either through heartbeat/garrison/order knights, you must immediately disband/give them away

Strategy:

- befriend everyone!
- it may be better if you don't actually have any walled centres, as their garrison would be effectively none!

and that's all for now. Anyway, the goal here is to simply have fun, so if you want to tweak/import/cheat/whatever, it's totally up to you. At least this should hold our attentions until PoP 4.0 came along

And please share your "house rules" as well!

This is pretty insane, another thing to add to the "strategy" section that would help tremendously:
- get persuasion to 10 asap, so you can get ALL companions.

My current game I've been playing sort of like this... however, I "cheat" a little bit and still get a few troops (right now I'm running around with my companions and also ~10 Barclay Sappers). The cool thing about this is that your companions will get really strong over time, and you don't really have to put points into Leadership or Surgery. The biggest problem is of course the bigger spawns... the only way of beating them is to kite them into an army of a friendly faction.

I agree. Although you have my respect, sir, to play that way

I'll maybe expand a little bit on the strategy aspect etc later on. At the moment, I'm kinda being distracted with other stuff. But still, Companions with Ruby Axe/Two-Handed Sword/Bow is crazy good!

 

[AxeMaster3]

Looters Paradise;

You and your companions can only use what you get from the loot after battles. You may not buy any Items from any market or vender of items.

Includes all weapons, armor and horses.

Exceptions: Spawn army extras and extra tournament prizes.

PS. Yes you can buy food.

 

[XSevSpreeX]

Looters Paradise;

You and your companions can only use what you get from the loot after battles. You may not buy any Items from any market or vender of items.

Includes all weapons, armor and horses.

Exceptions: Spawn army extras and extra tournament prizes.

Don't forget food as an exception. I almost never see it as loot.