Recent content by DaLagga

Vincenzo said:

Can you try and install this:

http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/296.10/296.10-desktop-winxp-32bit-english-whql.exe

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That's the driver I'm already using.  As I said in my OP, this issue has been happening for a long time, ever since Warband.  I have upgraded my drivers many times since then. 

MaHuD said:

Hm, with lowest graphics does that include using direct x 7 instead of 9?

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I don't think I've tried it with DX7.  But honestly, I shouldn't have to go that low.  I can run with pretty much everything maxed out and it's perfectly smooth framerate wise in most battles.  It's just the stuttering that's causing problems.

bump

Yeah, comparing sizes, some are way bigger than M&B, but it's not size that matters, it's what you do with it.

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Very true.  I remember when Diablo 2 came out and was astonished that it had a 2 GB install.  Yet, of course, those graphics are nowhere near as intensive as M&B.  But for the record, M&B doesn't look half as good as Oblivion.  Even with the graphical enhancement mods it doesn't even come close.  Especially when you factor in the small environments and lack of objects and detail compared to Oblivion.  But Oblivion with graphics mods looks amazing even 3+ years later.  Despite that, M&B is the better game.

Mixed armies are not nearly as effective as armies consisting of a single unit.  They're arguably more fun to use, but most of the time you don't even have time to set them up before the enemy is in your face.  Huscarls pale in comparison to Swadian Knights though.  The first disadvantage they have is map speed because they are an unmounted unit which means you can have far fewer of them in your party if you want to catch anything as opposed to knights.  Second, as infantry units they have no shock power whatsoever.  A swadian knight charge literally sends any enemy line flying and separated (yes, even lines of spearmen).  With huscarls, their line is intact when the fighting starts and several enemies can easily gang up on a lone huscarl, both because their formation wasn't broken and because they're nowhere near as fast as a mounted knight.  Third, they aren't as heavily armored, nor do they have a warhorse to soak most of the damage.  They do however tend to do a little more damage over time, but this is negated by the fact that the initial charge of the knights easily wipes 10-15 points of hp away in charge damage from most of the enemies, and the fact that as stated before you can have many more of them before you slow to a crawl on the world map.  The bottom line is, huscarls are good units and are better for sieges, but on the open field they are nothing compared to heavy knights. 

In addition to making the most of your speed bonus make sure you aim for their head.  This can be nearly impossible if you play in 3rd person because the camera gets in the way when you try to swing high, so play in 1st.  And obviously, if you plan to fight on foot often, pump up your athletics.  With that byrnie and little to no athletics you're going to be moving at a crawl, which will also reduce the speed bonus you're getting. 

What two-handed weapon does the most damage on foot?  I'm using a Heavy Battleaxe at the moment and it does 53 damage (forgot the type).  My character has powerstrike of 8 and I'm slaying foes pretty easily, but I'm still finding that enemies with heavier armor take a few swings.  Would picking up a Masterwork two-handed sword be a better option?  I love getting into the thick of battle.

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On foot the best weapon is easily the Sword of War.  The masterwork version does 45c and 36p and because piercing damage halves the armor value of an opponent it will inflict more damage than that 53c assuming he's wearing heavy armor.  Not to mention it's much faster than any axe and has a far greater range.  Be sure to move forward and aim for the head to maximize damage.  I just attacked some heavy infantry deserters (can't remember what they were exactly, but heavy Swadian infantry something or other) who were all wearing fairly heavy armor (Mail with Surcoats) and was able to solo 27 of them with my SoW on foot.  23 of them went down in a single hit. 

As for my setup:

Masterwork Sword of War
Fur Covered Shield (largest shield in the game for the weight)

I usually leave the other two spots empty because speed is very important on foot.  If I do decide to do a little mounted combat I carry a Balanced Heavy Lance in my inventory for just such an occasion. 

It really depends.  Basically, piercing and blunt damage just half the armor value of your opponent.  And, assuming it hasn't changed over the years, armor is calculated by a random value ranging from 1/2 to the actual armor value for a particular location.  If you have a helm with 40 armor, it will block 20-40 damage (avg 30).  So hitting that helm with a blunt/piercing weapon will reduce its average armor value down to 15.  The bottom line is, a blunt of 40 really isn't as good as 53 cutting damage because that blunt weapon is no doubt MUCH slower.  It will do a little more damage against heavily armored opponents, but not that much.  Stick with the 53 cut damage, unless you're going for a particular style. 

Welcome to the forums.  I suppose it is theoretically possible to conquer the entire map solo, but next to impossible.  Taking on a heavily defended castle or city without a force at least half their size can be very challenging by itself.  You'd have to master the game and play very cheaply.  I used to play only solo and did very well at it, but this was before sieges were introduced.  Playing as a horse archer would be your best bet though as they can easily destory just about any army by themselves and you could be cheap and use your archery to pick off most of a castles defenders.  In any case, goodluck!

If you read the skill description on leadership, you can see that it is from the days when you could only have so many stacks of units.  That was done away with like a year and a half ago in version .75x or somewhere around there.  I started playing in .623 and even back then there was no endurance riding skill, so that screen is very very old indeed. 

Everyone gets those freezes during battles, although every 2 to 3 sec is odd.  Naturally, the game freezes for a second when troops spawn, and then when I look at my troops for the first time (as if they're being loaded into memory or something), but after that it's fine for the most part.  And this is on a pretty good system (c2d e6850 @ 3.0ghz, 4gig ram, 2 8800GT's in SLI).  What you need to do is put all your settings on minimum and then slowly raise them testing your fps frequently.  Some options may not hurt your framerate at all and make the game look better while other settings that don't seem to change a thing graphically really hurt performance. 

Although from my experience with versions .900 and earlier my performance didn't really change at all regardless of my graphics settings on a x1950 pro.  Before that I had a x800xt and when I upgraded my performance only improved about 10-15% when using max settings.  The difference going from a 9800 pro to the x800xt was enormous though when trying to run it on max settings (my framerate literally quadrupled on max).  So from my experience, if you've got an x800 series(or it's nvidia equivalent the 6800 series) or higher you should be able to run the game max without much of a performance hit when compared to low settings. 

Well, if you're using the battle size changer and setting it high enough so that both armies field all of their units, there's no point to tactics.  Although I am almost certain it makes more of a difference than just 1 troop.  It depends on your battlesize, but having a battle advantage of even just 1 can mean you fielding 4 or 5 more troops, and them 4 or 5 less.  Bottom liine is, if you're using the default battle size, it's a great skill.  If you're using the battle size changer, it becomes useless.