Combat guide - how to beat most things with little effort

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sepulchar

Regular
Greetings and Salutations forumites  :mrgreen:


After reading a thread where people where complaining about having a hard time i have decided to reveal the secret... unlikely my secret alone. With the exception of lord parties you can beat almost any group with a horse, shield, long pointy stick, and some archers. This should be called the robin hood mod  :cool:

step 1 Begin game, if you start as a noble you will get a decent horse, shield, and long pointy stick if not you will need to obtain these things. following the merchant will net you 100 schillingas as well. with what you already have thats more then enough money to hire 10 peasants, and thats all you need in most circumstance.

Ideally you should get briton peasants - they have a 2nd archer upgrade in the tree. they are deadly.

step 2 Go beat up a few weak theow groups until your merry men have moved up to archer status. once you have 10 archers you are golden.

Step 3  The game uses alot of shields and shield walls, but the AI has a weakness to archers, here's how its done - Start the battle by rideing out to meet them, typically the enemy will be moving toward your forces haphazardly - without any formation. Attack the leading enemy's and proceed to circle the enemy party untill they form a shield wall. Once you have their attention fixed on you it tends to stay there. The AI isnt smart enough to pick a new target for the whole shield wall - Lead them to the archers and make them follow you in circles in front of your firing squad. Your archers cant penetrate thier shields but once they turn their backs on them, as the enemy shield wall will be following you optimistically yelling and screaming, menacingly- they start to die.

After a while even the fiercest dena pirates will lose morale and break, running for the map edge.

step 4 Ride them down. The second flaw in the AI is they run headlong for the map edge, in a straight line. They wont try to avoid you when you get near and never try to defend themselves - just a bee line to map edge.

Now there are a few wrinkles in the cream here, they are as follows -

        A) dont get the enemy to close to your archers or some may peel off to attack them.

        B) If the enemy have ranged weapons, be it javilins or bows a few may peel off to return fire. Your job is to keep them in a herd as much as possible.

        C) None of this will work on enemy cavalry, they come to fast and their AI is different, so always look at what kind of deserters you are about to engage. Avoid cavalry.

        D) With very large well armored groups more archers may be needed. you dont want your squad of longbow assassins to run out of arrows in the middle of the fight  :roll: Its hard to face a group of dena pirates with nothing but a horse, shield, and a long pointy stick!

        E) Larger groups of enemy archers can be a pain as well, the easy way to deal with them is to distact them with an attack from behind while your troops rush from the other direction, then wade into them.

        F) This wont work on lord parties because they generally have cavalry.

    Archers are cheap to maintain, between the loot and the prisoners you dont need to do any trading if you dont want to. Practice makes perfect, beware the enemy's long pointy sticks! Buy the longest pointiest stick you can find.

    If the modders are reading this maybe you can adjust the AI a bit?
 
step 1 Begin game, if you start as a noble you will get a decent horse, shield, and long pointy stick

So that's how you start with a shield.  I've tried various combinations of anglo, saxon,  even foreigner, and always end up with javalins, spear, axe and knife.  Never a shield. 

And here always avoided noble because i didn't want to feel like i started with a silver spoon.

/facepalm
 
The easiest start seems to be :

Noble.
a page as childhood
and pick retainer as job

All you need to start out is good prisoner management skills as alot of your early income comes from prisoners and some combat skills. Pointy stick for the win !  :razz: swords can be fun to mix it up a bit, and throwing skills for javalin shots now and then.

Noble is definatly the silver spoon  :wink: and it should be that way.
 
i forgot to mention that you should never sell your starter shield. You start with a shield that has your chosen heraldry on it. Try to find another like it !

Just buff up your shield skill and it will break much less.

Its improper roleplaying to use a shield with incorrect heraldry.
 
I have found the best start to be outlaw (its either this or poacher, whichever is in the job section) for job, you get a heavy north horse which is the 2nd best horse in the game and 2 meat and 2 furs to sell which gives you a fair bit of starting capital. I have had great luck with the balanced long boar spear, 83 speed, 190 long and 28 damage  :twisted: with a bit of practice you can solo groups of dena and franks which gives you a huge amount of renown at the start, sometimes even 50. If you find some reasonable clothes that dont have the heavy equipment penalty all the better, there is one mail shirt which gives about 35 body protection and weighs 10kg and some of the leather style hats dont affect your ranged skills like the metal ones do.

However I have found myself a very successful mounted warrior in a game thats meant to be about infantry shield wall combat so i'm not sure i'd recommend this approach!

Edit: the starting stats do vary a lot, almost an unfair amount, sometimes you get 17 skill points at the beginning (including those spent for you) other times 21 and thats with an intelligence of 4 both times. Personally if im fed up with having skills i dont want at the start I export the character and change them to 0 giving myself an equivalent number of skill points to spend, then import again although I guess this is kinda cheating.
 
You can recomend being a mounted warrior in an infantry centric mod - It requires skill. And to be a king you will have to get off the horse eventually for sieges.

soloing a decent sized frankish or dena group is challenging. I wouldnt recomend someone who hasnt played the mod start out with that  :mrgreen:

The long boar spear is the longest ive seen, briton long spear takes second place.
 
sepulchar said:
soloing a decent sized frankish or dena group is challenging. I wouldnt recomend someone who hasnt played the mod start out with that  :mrgreen:

Honestly.... i found them easy. Only because i didn't let them get near me.  At least i think it was those guys. They throw axes right?  I found it easy (though time consuming) mainly because they weren't hurling arrows at me non stop.  Needless to say, I have the "pseudo couched lance Saxon spear charge"  down pat.  Exploding heads a plenty.  Ironically, i find bandits and other missle units much tougher because no matter how elegant i can be with a spear and a horse, i end up looking like a moving porcupine. Otherwise, i have no problem taking on 45 men plus their leader, solo. It just takes me awhile.  edit: Providing of course, the terrain is horse friendly.
 
Semper_Ducimus said:
sepulchar said:
soloing a decent sized frankish or dena group is challenging. I wouldnt recomend someone who hasnt played the mod start out with that  :mrgreen:

Honestly.... i found them easy. Only because i didn't let them get near me.  At least i think it was those guys. They throw axes right?  I found it easy (though time consuming) mainly because they weren't hurling arrows at me non stop.  Needless to say, I have the "pseudo couched lance Saxon spear charge"  down pat.  Exploding heads a plenty.  Ironically, i find bandits and other missle units much tougher because no matter how elegant i can be with a spear and a horse, i end up looking like a moving porcupine. Otherwise, i have no problem taking on 45 men plus their leader, solo. It just takes me awhile.  edit: Providing of course, the terrain is horse friendly.
Just do circles in front of the archers at long range until they run out of arrows. your shield will look like a pin-cushion of course, but once out of arrows they are easy to mow down.
 
sepulchar said:
You can recomend being a mounted warrior in an infantry centric mod - It requires skill. And to be a king you will have to get off the horse eventually for sieges.

soloing a decent sized frankish or dena group is challenging. I wouldnt recomend someone who hasnt played the mod start out with that  :mrgreen:

The long boar spear is the longest ive seen, briton long spear takes second place.

Kontos is the longest spear but it's very rare. I've never tried it. I use hasta. its 182 reach and 31 damage is cool.
 
Azoku said:
sepulchar said:
You can recomend being a mounted warrior in an infantry centric mod - It requires skill. And to be a king you will have to get off the horse eventually for sieges.

soloing a decent sized frankish or dena group is challenging. I wouldnt recomend someone who hasnt played the mod start out with that  :mrgreen:

The long boar spear is the longest ive seen, briton long spear takes second place.

Kontos is the longest spear but it's very rare. I've never tried it. I use hasta. its 182 reach and 31 damage is cool.

I havent seen hastas that good yet. But tell me what you know of this mythical Kontos  :shock:
 
im not sure about it but the range is 240. but its damage is a bit less than the saxon/briton spears.
 
Just do circles in front of the archers at long range until they run out of arrows. your shield will look like a pin-cushion of course, but once out of arrows they are easy to mow down.

I thought of that, and attempted it.  Though i suspect their supply of arrows exceeds my supply of patience.  I took a peak with tweakMB and apparently as in native, arrows come in stacks of 60, but, they sure could have fooled me into thinking they had twice that amount.  Maybe they do, i don't know.
 
sepulchar said:
I havent seen hastas that good yet. But tell me what you know of this mythical Kontos  :shock:
It is very long (by Brytenwalda standarts at least) spear. About 240 as Azoku said.
It was rare in early versions, and looks like it is exremely rare in 1.32 (I have not found it yet, probably I am unlucky or may be it is removed).
I take this spear as 'sarmatian easter egg' as I don't think actual sarmatian kontos could have survived for 200 years.
Oh, and in earlier versions of Brytenwalda it was possible to couch kontos. Obviously, with this spear you was God of battlefield when mounted.
 
Also renown seems to be very important if you want a big army in this mod, im pretty sure in native for every extra 25 renown you got 1 soldier extra space in your army, in brytenwalda its 1 every 3 renown! And leadership gives you only 1 extra man not 5. Another reason why soloing big groups is good at the start.
 
This is the same I am doing usually. The only exception is that I never buy proper equipment, I always use things from loot.

Sometimes surprisingly good droops are seen, and day 2 I soloed a deserter group of heavy infantry for 2 crude lorica's and a padded leather armor, also some good shields  :grin:


Even though I generally love axes (swords are not piercing), for this merry-go-round a sword with a longer reach (you can win principe sword on tournaments) or Agasicles' saxon spear is better (poor guy gets hired and gets his good spear replaced by a short war spear instantly).


sepulchar said:
i forgot to mention that you should never sell your starter shield. You start with a shield that has your chosen heraldry on it. Try to find another like it !

Uh, I forgot about this, I wanted to write to suggestions topic for ages for custom-heraldry shields!
 
I've found the best combination for me, as I always play a mounted heavy fighter, is as follows;

Noble.
Retainers Apprentice.
Retainer.

Shield,
Sword,
Short Spear,
Shield.

I'm give all of my companions the same load out, switching out the secondary shield for thrown weapons if they have the skill. I always prefer short spears over their longer counter parts for the speed factor, also if I get bogged up in horse combat, I don't have to switch out to my sword straight away, the short spear is still small enough to puncture the enemy full of holes before I get into a good old melee scrap.

The secondary shield has been a life saver most often than not, it provides a back up if the first is rendered useless and it also gives you back full protection from ranged weapons and those pesky spear wielders.

The character set up gives you the best start in melee fighting and provides you with the most amount of points you can start off with commanding men.
 
Here's my setup:

Father: Noble
Childhood: Retainer's Apprentice
Profession: Lesser Noble

I do it this way so I can get a horse first off. With a horse, you can solo most bandit, Scoti, Dena, etc.

Right now I have ~500 renown and still have no liege and no army, with ~65,000 scillingas, and I'm equipped like a curraidh (with the exception of the special weapons and armor (Speaking of which, how much renown do you need for them?).
 
The Mysterious Stranger said:
Here's my setup:

Father: Noble
Childhood: Retainer's Apprentice
Profession: Lesser Noble

I do it this way so I can get a horse first off. With a horse, you can solo most bandit, Scoti, Dena, etc.

Right now I have ~500 renown and still have no liege and no army, with ~65,000 scillingas, and I'm equipped like a curraidh (with the exception of the special weapons and armor (Speaking of which, how much renown do you need for them?).

700+ Renown to get most of the special items.
 
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