Casualties

[Hanakoganei]

And just to derail the topic even more, can you access custom troops only when you have your own faction? does that Sigmund guy only appears when you have your own faction?

(Never saw him before, aware of the bug, but then again I never really bothered looking for him too)

No he can show up anywhere. But, like companions, it might be a while before you find him specifically. I haven't seen him in my recent debug testing, but if you get him to show up you can tell him to stay put in a tavern or stay in your castle so that you can more easily find him.

By the way, the custom troops I've been talking about are not the Freelancers. I made my own completely new troop tree using the module system. One of the benefits of this is that I can edit these troops whenever I want especially with their equipment, if I decide I want to change their look and weapon choices. The only thing that doesn't seem to be save-game compatible is their stats and level, so I can't change that without starting a new game.

 

Haha, you just love making things hard on yourself, don't you?  Still, that does sound interesting.  I'm imaging that your units probably hit hard, 208 casualties to 802 is pretty good, especially if you besieged the enemy on your own.

Yes. Yes I do. I'm not saying the game is too easy, but it's more interesting for me when you worry about things that real commanders worry about, like minimizing casualties and using a smaller force to harass a larger one (guerrilla tactics).

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I do some annoying tricks like attack a bigger army, deal a few hundred casualties then retreat and run away. I heal up and they keep chasing me and overextend their campaign so that their force is eventually too thin to actually continue the campaign. Sooner or later they'll just give the campaign up and go home lol.

I don't think my guys hit that hard. The Assassins have Power Strike 5 and melee weapons at about 210-ish proficiency. They're mostly using scimitars though, which are fairly fast swords. So when they attack in force, which comes from their positioning, they cut down opponents very quickly. The siege video made that pretty obvious. Enemy reinforced itself within 3 seconds when my Assassins at their reinforcement spawn point. Also they comprise like 50% of my army, with the other 50% being the menacing shield wall and light archers that are supposed to form the front line that's steadily advancing on the enemy position. You need this so that there's a "flank" for the assassins to hit, otherwise you're just going the long way around to face their front line.

... The Sarranid aren't the best at defending though, all you've really got to do is park your archers in front of the wall and let them drop the majority of the enemies.  They aren't bad at launching a siege though, using the same tactic.  Their upper tier cavalry do a fair job at storming the walls as well.

It does sound really cool to have fast versatile units though.  That sort doesn't lend itself well to stationary fights, but I would think that they might dominate an open field.

Yeah the Sekban and Iq'tadar are some of my favorite troops in the game. That's why I didn't feel the need to replicate them. My new versatile troops are something that I would've liked to see in the Sarranid tree, but I didn't really want to edit the troops that come bundled with Floris, so that if I made gameplay videos like tactics tutorials or something, I'll have the same troops as most people would.

I think that the Sarranids are the worst siege defenders in the game, which big part of the reason I decided to fight the Sarranids first. If I were fighting pretty much anybody else I'd have taken more casualties I guess. The Sarranids are too generalist, and in reality their strength is in the cavalry troops. They're monstrous in the open field especially with some smart tactics, but without the horses they're not as good as other units of the same tier if you ask me. They have a lot of archers but they aren't the best archers and the bows are rather slow. They have infantry but their armor and shields are not as protective as most other factions. So any specialized army can easily mow them down if they do it right. I ended up liking the Sarranids a lot because without the proper tactics, they're a bit hard to use.

About the videos, I'm still learning to convert them lol. I found that Catalyst has a video conversion tool, so I've been trying various settings. I don't want to upload friggen the uncomprssed 6.37 GB for 13 minutes of footage. I've gotten it down to about 200+ MB with not much quality lost. I don't know if that's small enough for YouTube though. D:

[eastpaw]

I do some annoying tricks like attack a bigger army, deal a few hundred casualties then retreat and run away. I heal up and they keep chasing me and overextend their campaign so that their force is eventually too thin to actually continue the campaign. Sooner or later they'll just give the campaign up and go home lol.

/snip/

About the videos, I'm still learning to convert them lol. I found that Catalyst has a video conversion tool, so I've been trying various settings. I don't want to upload friggen the uncomprssed 6.37 GB for 13 minutes of footage. I've gotten it down to about 200+ MB with not much quality lost. I don't know if that's small enough for YouTube though. D:

Your play style sounds really, really fun lol!

As for video compression, have you tried VirtualDub or VirtualDubMod?

[Hanakoganei]

Leaving your men in a castle and attacking with a smaller force means you're generally more mobile than bigger armies. You can come in and attack, guerrilla tactics style. Then slowly thin their ranks. Couple this with good open field battle tactics and your army is virtually unstoppable despite the smaller size. It helps because maintaining tier 4+ troops is pretty expensive. This way, you don't really need a lot of troops until your kingdom is earning enough from taxes, rents and other sources.

Haven't heard of those programs but I'll give them a shot now. I really wanna do some tactics tutorials that are really fun so you guys can try them out too. It's kinda hard to describe without at least a visual on how it's done. If done right, you can totally minimize your casualties in the open field. I have one video here where I took 0 casualties against 192. Breaking the enemy formation is the key to victory for me when it comes to the open field. This is where flankers and enfilading fire from mobile archer units are a vital part of strategy.

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I learned a lot of what I know about warfare from movies and TV lol, and some reading. I learned about guerilla warfare ("war of detachment") from Lawrence of Arabia. He would take 100-200 lightly armed units to hit in the middle or back of a force, especially along their supply line or a weakened garrison, then retreat. Like in Warband, this would mess up the enemy because they keep reinforcing the wrong area.

I learned about flanking from Chinese (Warring States period, the time of Sun Tzu who wrote The Art of War, and Three Kingdoms War, where all three armies heavily used flanking, deception and espionage to their advantage) and Mongolian war tactics (their heavy use of multiple cavalry units for front line and flanking). The Chinese generals and strategists were always thinking of tactics to mess with the enemy forces, such as causing a larger army to over-commit a charge against what looks like a weaker force, only to be enveloped and have their retreat cut off. For the curious, this is the same tactic employed in the movies Braveheart (the "Battle of Stirling", which in the movie was actually a combination of the historical battles of Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn), The Patriot (the final battle; another Mel Gibson classic) and The Last Samurai (also the final battle). There are many more sources of course. Suffice it to say that when I watch a war or historical movie, documentary or read a book about war, even in fiction, I spend a lot of time taking mental notes of strategies and tactics employed.

Yup it sure is fun. M&B (Warband especially) is my most favorite game of all time because I purposely make it more fun than most people like to play it. A lot of my friends on Steam that also have the game don't even play it anymore, moving on to other games. But I'm having way too much fun as it is lol. Can't imagine getting tired of this any time soon, especially with Floris mod pack.

[eastpaw]

If you need any help with VirtualDubMod, shoot me a PM. I'm no expert but I should be able to get you right into the thick of the action, so to speak.

[JT]

I can't help but see these low casualty figures and wonder how people are doing it -- is everyone playing with personal and friendly casualties set to Normal instead of Easy or Very Easy?

I only ever play using Normal and when I fight an enemy force of roughly equal or superior numbers I suffer 50% to 80% losses, and invest heavily in Surgery and Wound Treatment as a result. Only bandits and vastly weaker forces are wheat-before-the-scythe: every other enemy lord's retinue is actually a capable fighting force, especially thanks to the formations AI.

I also never retreat -- it's not a very knightly thing to do. =)

[Ghgl]

Nope, I play on normal damage dealt to army and me and with formations AI. Have Jeremus on 8 in all three medic skills currently. Also earlier in the thread I stated that if the battle fare badly initially with me sustaining loads of casualties (dead mind you, injured are fine), then I'll just restart it.

I was also whining about how reinforcements never seem to arrive for me.(because I din't take enough casualties)

*One trick I learnt from these guys is to look carefully at the enemy's army composition. Sure they might have a large list of tier 7-5 at the top of their army, but upon closer inspection, all of he high tier units range from 1-4 per type. Add all these together and maybe you have to deal with 30-50 strong units at first. So after the first onslaught, the remaining tier 1-3 units should be no problem.
Although that is probably not your problem.

[Hanakoganei]

Normal everything for me too.

I don't always suffer low casualties. Especially during a siege offensive, I expect to take a lot of casualties, especially amongst my front line attackers. It's inevitable. The real trick for reducing friendly casualties is having good tactics. If you charge in or use the wrong tactic against the enemy force, you're really going to suffer high casualties. For example, if you have a bunch of lancers and you charge them into a shield wall with spears sticking out, you're probably going to lose all the lancers.

Every situation will need its own tactic. There are basic cookie-cutter tactics you can use, but it won't always work because of changing terrain, variable enemy army composition percentages, etc., so you often have to make a call on the fly. Some situations require a lot of patience. If you get impatient, you're going to lose, or lose a lot of men.

If you prioritize victory through minimizing your own casualties (to maximize your opponents') so that you don't have to go back to your castle or town to heal up or go around recruiting new men after every fight, you can be a more effective combat force that can push deeper into enemy territory and really achieve a lot out of your campaign.

[natzjay]

I don't reload since I played the game in realistic mode
I always think before going into every battle and I don't fast forward
it's always on a normal movement so I can pause whenever
an enemy pops up i always maximize the use of my scouts
and I always carry 20 archers and minimum of 30 cavalries
and the rest are infantries I can easily defeat 300 forest bandits
including their commander with only 100 men at 300 battle size

since I started the game I was defeated and captured 3 times
And retreated a battle many times
defeat today will be your strength tomorrow
And always maximize surgery of your healer

[nemeth]

I'm kinda surprised so many people is reloading after their battle goes pear shaped or generally are not happy with the result. Gotta say I kinda lost some respect for the community here
Ever since I've started playing warband, I always chose the realistic setting. As a result, there was a lot of times when my army was absolutely wrecked when I recklessly jumped into huge battles. Going in with 150-200 elite troops and coming out with maybe 30-40 or even losing to superior force when I didn't expect that the other enemy lord was actually in range to join the battle.
But without those events, the game would be just boring to me. The thrill when you attack a lord with 50 army just to realise that right next to him is his king with 650+ army and you know that it will either be a glorious victory or a painful loss.
Being dragged around as a prisoner and when you finally manage to escape, some random bandit group attacks you again before you can get to a town and you are dragged around again, those are the things that makes the game interesting. Not that I enjoy them, but the fact that it can happen and there is no coming back in the shape of a "load" button makes the game fun.

[spartan012]

Gotta say I kinda lost some respect for the community here

=/

People are perfectly free to play it the way to want. Some people don't have the time to spare to play games and they want to achieve something in the virtual world. Moreover, Warband is a sandbox game and a good thing that it is too, so that they can have fun, and they don't have to face senseless entitlements from elitists like you.

[Duh]

I believe he was jesting. Regardless of that - please stay civil folks

[nemeth]

Gotta say I kinda lost some respect for the community here

=/

People are perfectly free to play it the way to want. Some people don't have the time to spare to play games and they want to achieve something in the virtual world. Moreover, Warband is a sandbox game and a good thing that it is too, so that they can have fun, and they don't have to face senseless entitlements from elitists like you.

I was hoping the smiley face was an obvious enough sign of it being a joke. I was very careful to state that the realistic setting is the way I prefer to play, not the way everyone should prefer to play. Not once in my post did I make fun or degrade other people for playing differently (except the obvious joke), so I don't really understand the "elitism" part of your post.
I just stated the reasons for my decision to play how I play.
But I guess there is always someone just waiting to grab the pitchforks...

[eastpaw]

FWIW, nemeth's statement was very obviously tongue-in-cheek to me.

That said, it's pretty darned easy to misunderstand one another on the internet. I guess all is well just as long as there are no hard feelings after everything's been cleared up?

[Ruben Thomas]

Completely agree, what Nemeth said seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

He's also plays a great Skarner if I'm not mistaken hehe 

[Hanakoganei]

Things go pear-shaped for me all the time! I don't reload but I retreat a lot lol. I haven't been captured in quite a while. The last time it happened was with a named bandit group while I was still running trade routes, not affiliated with any army.

I try to weigh whether a battle is worth winning with heavy casualties, or if regrouping and saving my men will have a better strategic impact on the enemy. Because there's no point in letting all your men die in winning a battle, if you won't have enough men for whatever they throw at you next.

Meanwhile if you carry light or small numbers of troops, you could inflict even more war damage by hitting caravans or weaker lords instead of facing the brunt of their full army. Guerrilla warfare. Doing enough war damage away from their army will cause their army to rethink and possibly relent from attacking your lands.