Casualties

[eastpaw]

I do sometimes reload, though that often spoils that character for me entirely. Well, if I reload because I've done something boneheaded (like sleep-navigating into a massive army I'm not ready to face), it's usually ok.

Things go pear-shaped for me all the time! I don't reload but I retreat a lot lol.

Considering that you seem to like living on the edge, I'd be most surprised if they didn't!

[Frei]

I always enable "No quitting without saving" as I think it leads to a better/more immersive experience.  Everything feels like it matters even more because you can't just reload when you mess up (and mess up you shall!)

Casualties are a given in warfare.  It is very demoralizing to see a bunch of kills pop up, when Marnid's surgery skill fails me, but it does motivate me even more to be a better commander and try to take better care of my troops.

[Zaakjes]

I'm not too worried about the casualties. I love to take the risks; attacking huge armies with my small but high end army... And it sometimes costs me greatly. That's why I usually don't have such a great collection of towns and castles. Not really a problem to me. What I do get is great skill in fighting when you're in a tight situation. And I always store some troops that I don't want to lose, and extend it while I train my other troops during battles. It's easy to get new troops too. Bandits always have prisoners with them which you can rescue. Losing some troops, or a little more troops, or even being taken as a prisoner, is not as bad as it might seem if you're just careful about who's with you.

[LordHumungus]

How many Tier 7s do you guys have in your armies?  I have an army of ~150 and have maybe 40-45 T7.  I demolish armies much bigger than mine with few casualties.

[Hanakoganei]

How many tier 7? Zero.

I have tier 4 and 5 troops, and maybe a few tier 6 mainly in the form of Black Widows, but I don't use them a lot and stuff them into garrisons instead, because I love infantry tactics.

[Falconian]

I play with 10 cavalry heroes + 90 lancers + 100 xbowmen or simply 200 slave crushers.
Foot army is for sieges mainly: by the time archers have unloaded all their arrows on the enemy, infantry can take over easily.
Cavalry army is for money making or sitting into garrisons to scare enemies.
Usually fill my lords' armies with rescued prisoners, mainly mercs, and cannon fodders.
In my games for some reasons Swadia is always succumbing to Rhodocks, Vaegir getting steamrolled by nords and Kherghit / Sarranids just doing minor stuff and getting trades up.

Never get much casualties, if any I replace them with garrisoned units.
Then again I usually run around with 220 men, 20 being replacements so I never run out of soldiers 

[Zaakjes]

How many Tier 7s do you guys have in your armies?  I have an army of ~150 and have maybe 40-45 T7.  I demolish armies much bigger than mine with few casualties.

I can't check it right now, but I think it's about 30 units overall. I never have them in my warband, though. They do very well in my castles and towns. Is much cheaper too.

[Leifdin]

How many Tier 7s do you guys have in your armies?  I have an army of ~150 and have maybe 40-45 T7.  I demolish armies much bigger than mine with few casualties.

Hardly any, lol I don't even think that I ever had more than 5.

[Hanakoganei]

Haha yeah they're so hard to get lol. And even when I manage to free some from bandits and stuff, it tends to be from a faction I'm at war with or some other troop that doesn't really fit into my army.

I would've loved to have the Sarranid tier 7's though. I was playing a full-cheaty game to test a mod I did, got myself 100 of each and I was taking like under 10 wounded even in sieges. After that, I decided that it wouldn't be very fun to have them as my permanent army, but it sure is interesting at least during the test game.

[Ghgl]

Usually 0, as soon as a substantial amount of units reach tier 6/7 (usually 10), I'll walk back to town, stuff them in garrison and take out weaker/fresh troops to train.

[-AoG- X3N0PH083]

Personally, I've been collecting them at every opportunity since the beginning of the game. Kind of a side-game really slaving, rescuing... it's all the same.

I think I have 51 Vaegir Bogatyr, 23 Baron Mineures, 10 Swadian Retinue, 23 Nord Axemen (I forget the name) and maybe 6-7 Condottiero. All sat in my city state of Dhirim with Nord infantry and Rhodok crossbowmen. Not to mention the peace-time bandit harvesters, the slavers.

Edit: Oh, and the few Sarranid Hasham, Khergit Cherbi and various others I have in small numbers.

[Gorfel]

I usually dont restart unless something very terrible happened, like all my high end units happens to die. And even then I dont always restart, its a part of the game after all. Its not fun to *always* win every single battle

I've often attacked overwhelming forces, mainly to see how good I can manage it. Its fun when a battle goes great even if your odds of wining is pretty low.

Haha yeah I agree. That's why I like to use the tier 4-5 Sarranids really. They're not the toughest guys out there but they have a certain style that reminds me of desert warriors you often see in movies and whatnot. I'm actually remembering The Mummy and Prince of Persia as I fight with them. I lose a lot of men in some battles but winning feels more glorious when you win with 180 tier 4-5 Sarranids against King Harlaus' 480 men and his friggen heavy cavalry and longbowmen.

For that reason, I also don't restart after battles at all. Restarting for me is when I get captured. I hate that because you might lose your companions and some rare/expensive equipment. Might take weeks of in-game time to recover whatever you lose.

Yeah, I only restart if I get captured. I hate losing companions, and rare/expensive equipment. With all the dead weight removed, I can go to some cities where I have land, and use my rent-money to build a new army. My game is going really weird. Vaegirs are steamrolling the Nords(My faction ATM, I haven't rebelled yet), we've already lost and recaptured Sargoth twice. Khergits are just doing their little part of.... getting conquered by the vaegir in seiges, but keeping their army low enough in field battles that they only lost 2-3 castles. Sarranids and Rhodoks are CRUSHING the swadians, mostly the Sarranids. Sarranids captured Uxkhal from them, then attacked the Rhodoks and captured Veluca as well as some various castles in each. If nords die too much, I'l go to the Sarranids. Nords have avoided war with them, and I used to be a mercenary for them before I resigned. I probably still have some contacts there, and if I can become their Marshal, I might get some nice fiefs. My main problem is that the Nords won't elect me(They for some reason love Hersir Olaf even though he's failing to actually capture and hold anything, and has lost Sargoth to the Vaegirs temporarily), because if they did, I'd actually recapture Alburq, and destroy Curaw. Instead, I'm stuck with only having Fenada and Isimarala Castle.

[Ghgl]

Nice to see my thread is still going.

Restarting a new M&B play through with Floris mod. Boy did I get rusty. Died 3 times straight to marauding bandits, loosing so many (t1) troops even to looters. Lets see if I can claim all of calradia before I enter the army myself.

*Also, where can I thank all the mods and testers for the fantastic work they did in the awesome new version?