Recruiting lords to your kingdom.

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WNxSpectre

Recruit
I am finding it difficult and near impossible to recruit lords to my kingdom. My character is charming enough and can easily persuade other lords to his cause, but then they want payment, and the payment is insanely high, I estimate that they want well over 200,000 gold maybe even 300,000 or 400,000. I am near broke constantly even with my shops maxed out, because I am chasing random conspiracy quests across the world map all the time, and I lose any walled towns I own or castles while doing so. Taking a castle or Town also depletes my army so that I need to recruit more troops, while doing so another conspiracy quest will inevitably pop up ad nauseum. All progress I make gets undone again.

Also the AI is constantly ant swarming me with little groups of soldiers to burn my villages reducing all income. If I break my army apart then they swarm en masse to kill. This is such a cheap tactic, because there is no way a player could operate so many groups in unison as the AI does, it feels like exploitation and cheating.

I am stuck with no means to accumulate the wealth I need to pay off a lord, no way to complete the conspiracy quest because of several bugs that frequently pop up in those missions, and the horribly slow decay rate of the conspiracy bar. What am I supposed to do? Are you not supposed to complete that quest? Should I ignore it and just focus on wealth accumulation? How to do you get that massive amount of wealth to pay lords to join you?
 
I don't know how true this is, but in my experience recruiting lords as the same culture as yours seems to be cheaper. but still, recruiting can be expensive. some can even ask for 1 million or more if they have a fief. don't recruit unless you need to. weaken them first then recruiting them will be cheaper as they will ask for less.
and for
Also the AI is constantly ant swarming me with little groups of soldiers to burn my villages reducing all income. If I break my army apart then they swarm en masse to kill. This is such a cheap tactic, because there is no way a player could operate so many groups in unison as the AI does, it feels like exploitation and cheating.
to that I say, forget about your villages. winning battle/sieges can should make enough money to make up for the loss of you villages.
 
do what everyone else do...craft javelins and talk to lord outside towns/castle and use javelins as payment hehe...work everytime :razz:
 
I'm kinda in the same boat, except I have money because I'm my own mega-caravan where-ever I go.

As far as I know, the only way to recruit is to answer questions which succeed in convincing a lord - then, and only then, does talk turn to money. My trouble is winning these little conversations. As I pissed off many lords when I was an Aserai vassal, their first question to me is "Why should I even talk to you when I don't even like you?" I'm SOL at that point, very often. Hell, I've also had plenty of conversations where I'm on the brink of getting 4 green lights, and the target says, I'm just not comfortable discussing this with you." End of discussion.

So, how do you get lords? I have plenty of fiefs I could hand out, but that never looks like an option. I've only ever had luck with lords who:
1) Hate their king.
2) Are friendly towards me.

My kingdom is manpower-constrained. I need more war parties. Every clan has at least 4 fiefs, and I have 8. Lords with no land should be knocking on my door. What's my problem?
 
do what everyone else do...craft javelins and talk to lord outside towns/castle and use javelins as payment hehe...work everytime :razz:
I don't understand why javelins cost so much, and why arrows cost thousands too
why arrows should cost so much???

this game is very inbalanced for weapon price
 
I'm kinda in the same boat, except I have money because I'm my own mega-caravan where-ever I go.

As far as I know, the only way to recruit is to answer questions which succeed in convincing a lord - then, and only then, does talk turn to money. My trouble is winning these little conversations. As I pissed off many lords when I was an Aserai vassal, their first question to me is "Why should I even talk to you when I don't even like you?" I'm SOL at that point, very often. Hell, I've also had plenty of conversations where I'm on the brink of getting 4 green lights, and the target says, I'm just not comfortable discussing this with you." End of discussion.

So, how do you get lords? I have plenty of fiefs I could hand out, but that never looks like an option. I've only ever had luck with lords who:
1) Hate their king.
2) Are friendly towards me.

My kingdom is manpower-constrained. I need more war parties. Every clan has at least 4 fiefs, and I have 8. Lords with no land should be knocking on my door. What's my problem?
I used a mod in my previous playthrough: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/2443
its called "consider my kingdom" whenever a lord leaves a faction and want to join another, he considers all factions including the players
 
Catch and Release is your friend.

Seriously, it is about the fastest way to build relationships with enemy lords. Don't siege. Don't Raid. Just catch and release as many Lords as you can. Once you get the relationship up very high, not only are they easier to recruit but they are much much cheaper.

For example, I just recruited my Wife's Father's Clan into my Kingdom the marriage related relationship gain and using catch and release, I actually managed to get 100 relation with him. I then started a war with his faction and went to recruit him. The persuasion was easy and he only asked for 15k in barter to join. He was a Tier 5 Clan and brought with him, 2 Towns and a Castle.

One thing I noticed that most people seem to jump into the whole player Kingdom things way too fast without the proper preparation and struggle because of it though honestly it is probably due to the way the story quest almost forcefully propels you into creating a Kingdom. Ideally you should wait a good long time, as much as possible before creating a Kingdom so you can do your prep work.

Keep in mind that I generally totally ignore the quest so what I have no idea if what I am suggesting will work if your doing the quests or not but it should. Also this is the "No Exploiting Smithing" way.

1. Keep your army costs minimal. Just get the minimum number troops and keep then down tiered as much as possible.

2. Focus on getting as many workshops up an running as possible and while it might cost a bit of money, make sure to experiment until you find the product with the best return. Tanneries for me always seem to have high returns, better than most anyway and it does seem like the location matters with Tanneries. Make sure to buy new workshops whenever you can as your Clan Tier levels. Also once you get those workshops up, start getting caravans out there ASAP as well.

3. Once you have your 3-4 workshops up and running, have 2-3 caravans out and about and if you have kept your army size and tier to the bare minimums you can get away with, you should have a decent passive income by this time. Save as much as you can.

4. Once you have a nice nest egg of money, start building up your army in terms of numbers and quality but ENSURE you are still making at least a fair amount of passive income for your workshops so that the wealth keeps building.

5. Join a faction as a Merc any faction, hell keep jumping between them all if you want and execute operation "Catch and Release". Basically do everything in your power to catch every enemy lord you can and release them every time. This build not only relationship with these lords but also your Charm skill. Also absolutely avoid initiating a siege because it is like a -30 relation hit with the owner of the fief however you can join an army or "Assist" with a Siege. Also don't raid because this is a negative relation hit well. You want only positive relation actions in this phase.

Note 1: Speaking of Charm and a few other skills, this, not weapons and such, is where you want to spend you skill points. You will need a high charm to make it easier to recruit lords. Also I think Leadership, Cunning and a few other skills or attributes will come into play with convincing lords to join you so you want to be an "Intellectual" not a "Brute" if you want to do a player kingdom and you can get by just fine with relatively low combat skills.

Note 2: Just becoming a merc should allow you to do the story quests without screwing something up so if your doing the story questions just stop here and keep doing the whole catch and release over and over as long as you can. Also, Save, Save, Save and Save some more. Save all you can because money makes the world go around. Ideally you want multiple Clan with over 60 relation with you. If you don't care about the quests you should become a vassal before creating your own kingdom for multiple reasons I will describe a bit later. Finally I am not sure if becoming a vassal will screw up the question. I kind of doubt it but I am not sure so do your own research if you want to become a vassal while doing the quests.

6. Join a Kingdom as a vassal and continue the "Catch and Release" plan. As a vassal you will be given a fief or most likely several fiefs all of which rapidly add to your passive income. Also continue to keep your costs as low as possible. For example use mostly Tier 1 and 2 troops for your garrisons. Also ideally if you plan on becoming a vassal on the way to becoming a king, plan ahead and put your workshops in the Kingdom you plan to join so you don't have to worry about losing them due to a declaration of war.

7. This is a big one with lots of instructions. Continue "Catch and Release" as a vassal. Try to convince your liege to give you more fiefs, preferably a town or two. Towns rake in the money which you will be needing later. Keep those town garrison costs low as well by using tons of Tier 1 and 2 troops. Also try for towns and castles that are clustered near each other as much as possible. This can be very important for creating your own Kingdom. As your renown goes up, you will be able to get more and more fiefs. My currently playthrough I had 2 cites and 4 castles before I started getting voted down for new fiefs. Always try to save several hundred influence to push fief decisions in your favor.. Also, you will want to start investing in as many companion led parties as you can reasonable afford and still maintain that passive income. You will want at least one but more are better. Once you have a companion run party, immediately create and army and take them into it. You do this because you want to work on your leadership skill. If you have listened to me you have invested heavily in the "intellectual" pursuits you should have quite a bit of attribute and focus points invested in Charm and Leadership so leadership should level up fast. If you afford most companion led parties and you take them to your army, leadership will just go up faster. Also while keeping companion led parties will lead to slowly losing cohesion it costs zero influence. All you have to do when cohesion breaks is call them back immediately and you will be back at 100 cohesion. You can basically keep these companion led parties around permanently so you can earn leadership experience permanently.

9. If you have been doing as I recommend, you will likely have a couple towns and few castles and most of the enemy lords you have been fighting will be huge fans of yours with 30-60+ relationship each. You will also have a large sum of denars saved up, maybe a couple of million or more depending on how much fighting you have did. Also you should have 3 companion parties aside from yourself to act as armies for your new Kingdom. Make sure all this is true and your good to go to the final step.

Note: You will have probably spent 800-1000 days in game by this point just to give you a sense of how much time this prep takes.

10. First, find a Lord in your current faction that you have good relations with, preferably the best relations with to be honest but you also want to consider what territories he owns because you are going to steal him and his fiefs for you new Kindgom. Once you have found that lord an he is not in a castle or in an army, go to your Clan screen and click leave Kingdom. It will ask you if you want to relinquish your fiefs and your going to say no. You will immediately go to war with your old faction. Once that is done, before anything else, create your new kingdom and then go back to the campaign map and engage with the lord you want to recruit. Tell him you need to discuss something and ask him about his liege. If you have did what I said and have decent charm, leadership and a few other skills, plus have a great relationship with this lord he should be easy to recruit. If you have 100 relation with him, he will join you with all his fiefs for like 15k denars. If the faction is lower it will cost more. Anything above 60 relation seems to be like in the 100k range tops. Boom, you have your own Kingdom, your first Clan with its 2-3 parties and all the fiefs he owned. While your you can go around doing this will all your old factions lords that you had good relationships with and take as much territory as you can if you want but I recommend just immediately finding a enemy lord and asking him for peace. Chances are the cost of peace will be zero and now you will have some time to recruit more lords to build up your faction.

Note: What I do at this point is go recruit at least 2-3 clans from other lords you have great relationships with. If you recruit them outside of war they don't come with their territories though so I usually try to grab the more distant lords I have good relations with and get them instead of lords I might want to recruit during war so I can get not only the clan and the territory. You will probably want to gift these lords with your castles once you get them so they have at least some territory but you don't have to. Make sure you keep your cities though because you will still need the passive income. Once you have 2-3 clans plus your own parties you should be able to fight a war without losing too much, especially if you immediately try to recruit a few of the "enemy" lords that regard you as "best friend". If all goes well you will add 2-3 new clans to your kingdom and all the territory they controlled without having to lift your sword once.

Anyway, that to me is the "Proper" way to create a Kingdom, at least if you don't want to struggle. Figure 600-1000 days to get here without mods, cheats or any other ez-mode strategies.
 
I must have a bad luck, as I recruit Godum (sturdian lord) to my kingdom for 600k (with relation over 50), he died in silly siege very next day, so I gave two castles to his son Lek... and gues what? He leave my kingdom with nothing in two weeks time!
Well, I do not give up, so I recruit next lord, this time imperial one (also good nature), gave him 500k and... instantly he come back to his previus king with my money - sit for 5min, as can't belive what happpend
it is a shame, that you cant give a castle or town as king to any of your vassal, i think that basic for keeping lords by rewarding them, but also to build good defence/offence - give clans a places in one area will keep them there, so they can gather much faster for any reason
 
I must have a bad luck, as I recruit Godum (sturdian lord) to my kingdom for 600k (with relation over 50), he died in silly siege very next day, so I gave two castles to his son Lek... and gues what? He leave my kingdom with nothing in two weeks time!
Well, I do not give up, so I recruit next lord, this time imperial one (also good nature), gave him 500k and... instantly he come back to his previus king with my money - sit for 5min, as can't belive what happpend
it is a shame, that you cant give a castle or town as king to any of your vassal, i think that basic for keeping lords by rewarding them, but also to build good defence/offence - give clans a places in one area will keep them there, so they can gather much faster for any reason
what's your relationship with these lords/?? I have never have anyone left my kingdom
or because your kingdom is so weak, and all your lords got beat a lot

I think if you have low relationship with lords then they are more possible to leave you.
 
what's your relationship with these lords/?? I have never have anyone left my kingdom
or because your kingdom is so weak, and all your lords got beat a lot

I think if you have low relationship with lords then they are more possible to leave you.
over 50 when recruiting, boost to 100 afrer - yes, maybe kingdom is a bit weak (town and 3 castles), but we were at war with only western empire (and winning), both lords got at least one castle... that was a supprise for me as well, as it happend first time in couple dozens of plays - I'm now on 1.5.5 (GOG version)
 
I don't understand why javelins cost so much, and why arrows cost thousands too
why arrows should cost so much???

this game is very inbalanced for weapon price
It’s historical.

King Richard the 3rd was surrounded on all sides by French Sea Raiders killing 19 of them by javelin when alas , he ran out. Knowing his fate was doomed he looked to the heavens and screamed “Javs! Javs!! My Kingdom for some Javs..!”
 
I don't understand why javelins cost so much, and why arrows cost thousands too
why arrows should cost so much???

this game is very inbalanced for weapon price
well, consider that you're not buying 30 arrows. You're buying a magical never ending quiver of infinite arrows. For it to be "balanced" you'd have to go to a town and buy arrows after every battle.
 
Catch and Release is your friend.

Seriously, it is about the fastest way to build relationships with enemy lords. Don't siege. Don't Raid. Just catch and release as many Lords as you can.
Well written post! It's sad how right you are. Out of all the things they could have carried over from Warband, it was the nonsensical "catching enemies, demolishing their armies and letting them go is the best way to build relations".
 
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I think he was joking (at least I hope so). It's not an infinite quiver of arrows, the implication is that the player picks up arrows from the battlefield after the battle.
Not joking. And, there is no implication. You're coming up with a needless and convoluted backstory to explain video game mechanics. It's a video game, it doesn't need fan fiction to explain why you never run out of arrows.
 
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Not joking. And, there is no implication. You're coming up with a needless and convoluted backstory to explain video game mechanics. It's a video game, it doesn't need fan fiction to explain why you never run out of arrows.
There is a term called "Suspension of Disbelief". Most people consider it a pretty essential part of immersion no matter what the media be it games, TV, books, you name it. What this means is that even though there are unrealistic situations or things that defy belief, the person experiencing the media can come up with answers that explain why you don't have to do things such as buy arrows after every fight. It is when you can't come up with those explanations like you get your arrows through picking them up on the battlefield or that your army is actually making them as you wander the map or whatever, that the game or whatever stops being immersive.

Obviously not everyone enjoys things the same way as others and immersiveness might not be important or even necessary to you but I would content that the vast majority of people playing a "medieval warfare and kingdom building simulator" want immersive gameplay. That is way these backstories are an essential part.
 
There is a term called "Suspension of Disbelief". Most people consider it a pretty essential part of immersion no matter what the media be it games, TV, books, you name it. What this means is that even though there are unrealistic situations or things that defy belief, the person experiencing the media can come up with answers that explain why you don't have to do things such as buy arrows after every fight. It is when you can't come up with those explanations like you get your arrows through picking them up on the battlefield or that your army is actually making them as you wander the map or whatever, that the game or whatever stops being immersive.

Obviously not everyone enjoys things the same way as others and immersiveness might not be important or even necessary to you but I would content that the vast majority of people playing a "medieval warfare and kingdom building simulator" want immersive gameplay. That is way these backstories are an essential part.
Or how about the ability to become a Master Smith while simultaneously being a King and a ravager of nations in battle?
 
10. First, find a Lord in your current faction that you have good relations with, preferably the best relations with to be honest but you also want to consider what territories he owns because you are going to steal him and his fiefs for you new Kindgom. Once you have found that lord an he is not in a castle or in an army, go to your Clan screen and click leave Kingdom. It will ask you if you want to relinquish your fiefs and your going to say no. You will immediately go to war with your old faction. Once that is done, before anything else, create your new kingdom and then go back to the campaign map and engage with the lord you want to recruit. Tell him you need to discuss something and ask him about his liege. If you have did what I said and have decent charm, leadership and a few other skills, plus have a great relationship with this lord he should be easy to recruit. If you have 100 relation with him, he will join you with all his fiefs for like 15k denars. If the faction is lower it will cost more. Anything above 60 relation seems to be like in the 100k range tops. Boom, you have your own Kingdom, your first Clan with its 2-3 parties and all the fiefs he owned. While your you can go around doing this will all your old factions lords that you had good relationships with and take as much territory as you can if you want but I recommend just immediately finding a enemy lord and asking him for peace. Chances are the cost of peace will be zero and now you will have some time to recruit more lords to build up your faction.
I was following your prescription. I have some info for anyone else doing so.

I carefully plotted my lords I wanted to pitch membership in my nascent kingdom to, and called them to me in an army. First off, While I commanded an army with parties other than my clan, I couldn't "Leave Kingdom." I had to disband first. As soon as I disbanded and Left Kingdom (with my fiefs) the lords I wanted to talk to picked fights with my companion parties (also there from the disbanding). So talking wasn't possible!

The big thing to note though is: Leaving Kingdom With Fiefs drops you 40 in relations with each other clan, so suddenly you're not friends with many, unless you succeeded in taking relations to 50 or higher earlier. If you Leave Kingdom Without Fiefs you lose 20 relations with everybody. This is easier to bear, but you'll start life as a king with no land.

So as Midnitewolf says: try to get very high relations before pulling this ploy. I went wide and shallow, with relations mostly in the 30-45 range, and those guys go neutral or somewhat unfriendly when you pull out. I could try again with the 3 lords I'm at 57-65 with... but their fiefs are not as well-integrated with mine as I'd like.
 
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