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Hah, finally stickied. Great work.

Xima, read the guide: Eligible Bachelors: The gold digger's guide to Calradia

Since you are a mercenary working for the Vaegir king, the castle naturally belongs to him to distribute as he wants to. Since you are not a noble of the realm, you would be nothing but a common bandit leader if you insisted on keeping it, so you don't get that option.

However, by your actions in aid of the kingdom that employs you you build relations with its king and once you have reasonable relations and renown the king should happily extend you the offer to become his vassal.

ONCE you are his vassal and an acknowledged noble of the realm and have your own banner, THEN you can defy your monarch if he chooses to award a fief you have conquered to somebody else, though you should think carefully before raising rebellion against your lawful liege.

Fundamentally, make yourself useful to the king. If you have yet to learn the basics of the game, which it appears you do, and if you aren't the patient and systematic type, which it appears you are not (though I may be mistaken in that), you should probably play a man until you have learned how the game works.

You have chosen to play female and that is harder and not a good way to learn the game if you are the type that needs handholding through game mechanics - I don't mean this disparagingly, it is just how the game is constructed.


As regards the castle, it is empty without a garrison until it is assigned to somebody. It is not yours and won't become so while you are a mere mercenary.

manekemaan 说:

the sarranids just should leave calradia. In my eyes they messed up the ballance of the game. Great archers + great cavarly...

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I don't know what you are smoking.

The Sarranids have bad infantry and worse archers. In a game where versatility has a fairly low value, the Sarranid hat is "versatile troops" as contrasted with the Swadian's "heavy armour" hat and the Rhodok's "tough and non-cavalry" hat. Their strength as a faction lies solidly with their terrifying mamlukes, the heavy cavalry that is second to none and also fights well on foot.

The Dominator 说:

damn!! My 40 Swadian Knights just got owned by those imrpoved Mameluks and there were only 40 of them 2.

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What's new about that?

In 1.113 Swadian Knights and Mamlukes are approximately equally strong. Swadian Knights are a tiny bit tougher and have slightly better armour while Mamlukes deal slightly more damage. 40 SK vs 40 Mamlukes in 1.113 should be a nearly even fight that could go either way.

If Mamlukes utterly crush an equal number of of Swadian Knights in 1.124 on a regular basis, there may be a problem, but if they just defeat them with nearly even honours there isn't. After all, the deadly Mamluke cavalry is supposed to be second to none according to the faction descriptions.

Kellick 说:

@Peter Ouch, that must be rough going in....ahhh...then again brigandine has no str requirement and is decent...although ugly as sin. I guess that is what you wear?

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No. My trader/leadership character started with str 7, as I didn't want a sob-story of broken love to be her reason for adventuring; rather, she was forced out from her home (and otherwise had the background outlined above) and thus started slightly suboptimally from a trading perspective but with a backstory more to my liking.

On the other hand, I must admit that I would have gone for strength 7 eventually even if she hadn't started with it, since this character is vain and would not accept wearing anything other than armour with her own tabard.

Her weapons are a masterwork elite scimitar and a masterwork crossbow (54p, no str requirement, not usable from horseback.. so what? That's not her job) and between a nordic warlord helmet, gauntlets, heraldic mail with tabard, and sarranid mail boots (normal versions as soon as available, upgrade to lordly as funds allowed), she has very decent protection... but nobody should ever mistake her for a line fighter and, yes, the early game was rather rough until I decided to focus solely on the character's strengths.

Khalim 说:

Especially Crossbow comes in handy as it does not need many skillpoints. Strengh 10/12 or 14/15(Masterwork SiegeXBow) are recommendable.(12,15 are "good numbers" whereas 10/14 are requirements. 10 STR are okay, I think. Agi is maybe more important) Also I would increase Weaponmastery to 4(12 agi, gives also 4 into riding, what is important). With the book you can increase Weaponmastery to 5.
Also you have to keep in mind that you won't need charisma 30. 27 is sufficient because of the books

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If you are making a trading character, you can choose your starting background such as to start out with riding 4. Moreover this goes, at least for females, very well with the choices that give charisma/int bonuses at start.

The strongest example would probably be a daughter of a steppe nomad who worked as a shop assistant and became a lady in waiting who became an adventurer due to the loss of a loved one. STR 6, AGI 7, INT 8, CHA 9, Ironflesh 1, Riding 4, Path-finding 1, Inventory Management 1, Wound Treatment 2, Persuasion 2, Leadership 1, and Trade 1.

Such a character really has no need for putting any points into either agility or strength, though a few points in strength certainly makes the combat aspect of the game easier - but if planning to make a trader character, it is much more interesting not to boost the usual combat skills, and not spending many early levels on boosting combat means reaching the goal of profitability and massive cheap armies earlier.

Gunzo 说:

Have u tryed a trader char and is if fun just to have some great men and greatly geared companions and youself just "stay" out of combat and lead them all!?

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I have very nearly done what you are asking about - a character that even at level 30+ has strength 7 and agility 9 with everything else dumped into charisma and intelligence.

When I say "very nearly" it is because my character, apart from issuing rudimentary tactical orders, does participate in battles by cutting down fleeing infantry in the open field with an elite scimitar when it is safe and by sniping with a masterwork crossbow (the best missile weapon available to her with a strength of 7) during assaults/defenses. As an example of the weirdness of the character, I didn't put a single point in shields until past level 30

My companions are my bodyguards, lavishly equipped and all given a military hammer, a shield, and a bow and all are trained in power strike, power draw, horse archery, weapon master, and riding - the three assigned to cover party skills obviously being less skilled and without bonus points in ironflesh.

It is quite interesting to play that way and with sky-high leadership, trade, persuasion, and prisoner management as well as decent inventory management (you can make do with a mere 4 but more is better if you want to maximize your income by not turning over your entire inventory at each stop), it is very profitable as well. It also sobers you to personal risk. Your main character is very fragile and even early bandit ambushes in towns/villages can prove dangeorus. Training village peasants in melee is something to be considered very carefully, and quests such as insulting a lord to the face or tracking down a murderer in a village are fraught with danger.

Being a complete skillmonkey means that most party skills that she doesn't have as her own primary skills get a +1 or +2 bonus.


One obvious question arises: how the hell do you gain XP this way? 

The answer is "very slowly". Apart from aiding my lord in battles by defeating his enemies (trivial to do since I could easily afford to maintain a fairly large full mamluke field army after the early game), which gained quite a bit of XP after each battle even if I never killed anybody, I did quests. Most quests give only a minimal amount of XP, but there is one in particular, and one town in particular, that offers an incredible easy quest.

The quest in question is the one to kill bandits that rewards 1,000 denars and 2,000 xp and the town I found best for this purpose was Ichamur. With steppe bandits frequently spawning all over the Khergite steppes but generally not moving that far away from the steppes, the guild master in Ichamur offers this quest very frequently - and with Tulga an almost obligatory stop on any high-profit route and Ichamur also usually buying wool and salt at reasonable prices, making Ichamur a step on your route and checking for quest-bandits in the vicinity makes a nice diversion while trading.

Even so, the answer is that you will level very slowly, but from a practical point of view it does not matter much - so long as you don't get sidetracked into trying to become a better warrior but just put points into charisma with a few into intelligence you will level the skills you actually need quickly enough.

It is a somewhat different approach to the game and probably not fun for everybody but I find it fun and you might as well. There is lots of money to be made in Calradia once you stop focusing on tournaments and looting and focus on trading in goods and in men.

Charles du Lac 说:

Yes the ransom money is broken, you only get 24 for anybody, not even the 50 it used to be, nor by level.

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How the hell do they manage to break something like that by accident?!

Assuming this isn't a case of mod conflict, it sounds like either a complete failure of version control or of not properly designing the subsystems in logically distinct chunks in the first place.

bianconeri 说:

so i dont see the reason for negative morale for troop size

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It is a game balancing mechanic that makes very little sense as implemented but achieves its goal of encouraging players to use smaller warbands, to invest in leadership, and rewards the use of more, and more expensive, supplies when fielding larger armies. As always, gameplay >> realism, so while I'll be the first to admit that it is implemented in a somewhat hamfisted and counter-intuitive way, I generally like the gameplay impact of this design decision.

darkweaver 说:

For the love of god, please don't write about the mission where you rescue the merchant's brother.  We all may have heard that story once or twice before.

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Ah, but have you read a version like mine in My Inevitable Greatness before?   (Which is admittedly an exercise in just how puerile I can write without slitting my wrists and does on no account qualify as good literature, but if it wins even a single chuckle or two from my readers, especially those who know the mission by heart, then it is worth the trouble)

Even if you have read my AAR and think it would be better off without that chapter 5 or think that it should be skipped on general principles, AAR-writing is done at least as much for the fun of the writer as it is for the readers. So long as somebody wishing to write an AAR thinks that writing about the merchant, his brother, and their trials and tribulations when subjected to the actions of the protagonist is valuable to what he wants to convey, he will do so. (In my case, I used it to some success to deepen the character of the protagonist and also to poke fun at some of the more bizarre game mechanics, knowing that the readership on the Paradox forums include many people, who haven't played M&B Warband - other writers will have other reasons. It might even teach the experienced player something he might not have known before and which is arguable of little value to most characters - that it is possible to get the normal town guards to attack the guard captain's men).

It can certainly be skipped and, indeed, I would expect most people writing more than one AAR and especially experienced AAR writers to occasionally choose different starting points for the narrative or to leave it out entirely depending on which AAR format they have chosen - as you say, we have all heard (or experienced) that story before - but skipping it on general principles? No. That is going much too far.

As a really good example of starting the narrative later in the gameplay, Wyvern's Realm of the Wolf comes to mind. He is, like me, an accomplished AAR writer in many games and likes to experiment. In this case he wanted to tell a story of rebellion, love, and kingship in a war-torn land and, as a result, chose a starting point relevant to his narrative.

A good example of starting the narrative earlier is my abovementioned AAR - since I present it as somebody's moderately crappy book published in an environment that has some level of censoring on the subject of my main character and based on select quotations from the autobiography of the main character, it actually starts at the birth of the main character and runs through the character creation stages in four chapters before even reaching Calradia. I probably wouldn't do that a second time, but for my chosen narrative and goals, it fit, and that is what is important when choosing the narrative AAR style; - it wouldn't fit well in, say, the newspaper, dialogue-driven, or diary-format, to take three other common AAR styles.

Wurzelmann 说:

The problem is: There are maybe 2 Sergeants in an average Swadian army but the lower-tier Swadians suck badly. My experience was that I could hold a Rhodok castle against nearly infinite numbers of Swadians but when Sarranids attacked, my men were brutally slaughtered by low-tier Sarranid Footmen.

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Now you are moving the goal-posts. If your real complaint has nothing whatsoever to do with the strength of the respective factions infantry in general but rather with the force composition of the nobles and a specific tier of infantry, you should have addressed that issue rather than painting a false image of the Sarranids having strong infantry and the Swadians having weak infantry.

Wurzelmann 说:

Let's face the truth: The Sarranid Sultanate is the only faction without any weaknesses.
Sarranid "skirmisher-infantry" is heavily armoured and uses throwing weapons like Nords. Just compare their combat abilities to those of Swadian "well equipped" infantry!

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Yes, let us do that, shall we?

Taken from warband 1.113, their stats are.

Swadian Sergeant: level 25, hp 55, combat skills: Powerstrike 6; Shield 3; Athletics 4. 1H 155, 2H 135, Polearms 145
Sarranid Guard: level 25, hp 55, combat skills: Powerstrike 3; Shield 3; Athletics 5. Can use throwing weapons. 1H 155, 2H 135, Polearms 145, Throwing 100

Swadian Sergeants not only have a considerably advantage in melee killing power, they are also slightly better armoured than Sarranid guards on average.

I am sorry, but looking at their combat abilities, there is absolutely nothing to support your notion that Swadian infantry is weak and Sarranid infantry is strong.

To compare further,
Rhodok Sergeant: level 24, hp 60, combat skills: Powerstrike 5; Shield 5; Athletics 5. 1H 130 in all weapon skills
Vaegir Guard: Level 24, hp 55, combat skills: Powerstrike 4; Shield 3; Athletics 4. 1H 150, 2H 130, Polearm 140


My own anecdotal evidence, and as such utterly worthless as goes for most anecdotal evidence, is that Sarranid infantry is not only the weakest on paper according to stats of national infantry of all that factions that have infantry, but that is is also the weakest in practice and that the ability to carry throwing weapons, though definitely nice, does not make up for the fundamental weakness of the Sarranid infantry.

Which I consider quite okay, since they have arguably the best cavalry for the price - cavalry that is right up there with the Swadian knights (though slightly less tough) when horsed and cavalry that in addition works great as infantry when dismounted (and their elite cavalry shields are better during siege assaults/defenses than the Swadian's knightly heater shields). Whether on horse or on foot, the true strength of the Sarranid armies are the feared mamlukes - and that is as it should be in any game that features mamlukes in imitation of the historical mamluke class.

Lords of defeated factions will slowly join other factions (or leave Calradia) via the standard defection procedure.

Mmm, I've been asked by friends to post my somewhat puerile Warband AAR that is currently running in the Paradox Warband AAR subforum, My Inevitable Greatness, in this forum, but as unlike Monnikje I don't have either time or inclination to maintain the same AAR in two forums at the same time and I don't know this forum well enough to know its limits, I have chosen not to do so.  This thread, however, seems like an excellent place to test the waters, so without further ado, and my apologies if this is a bit longer than most other entries, I present to you chapter 5, dealing with the introductory bandit quest:



So, there I was in Shariz with a very good horse, a very shrunken purse, and my late lover's hunting crossbow while wearing the good wool “wanton townswoman” costume that always turned on the late baron, rather the worse for the wear and with still a few faint bloodstains.

Fortunately, as I was to discover quickly, bloodstained clothing was not a rare sight in Calradia. With six kings struggling for the same ultimate prize, that being the control of all Calradia, and with every nobleman who fancied himself a leader brandishing ancient claims to more than his fair share, wars were fought over the least excuse and ended on the merest whim. These were small and petty wars and seldom achieved more than the change of hand of some dismal castle or war-torn village that had probably already been razed during the conquest. Some castles changed hands half a dozen times a year! It was sheer madness.

Glorious madness, of course, and the noblemen considered it good sport and a diversion from feasting, which, if anything, was the pastime of the nobility. You haven't fought a war until you've seen all the nobles defending a critical town send a messenger to the enemy asking for a time out because they have to return to Shariz for feasting, yet in my time I saw in actually done and honoured by the enemy. Twice!

To say that this made a mockery of war is an understatement; At least home on the steppes, when our war leaders had to abandon a theatre of war for a year or two and return home to a gathering it was because of the death of the overall war leader and the election of a new one, a matter of life and death as well as overall direction of a war, not for feasting.

When I first visited Shariz, this all lay in the future and my knowledge of the internecine warfare in Calradia scant, but the widespread bloodstains on the clothes of mercenaries and even a few of the town guards, those were very noticeable.

As was the brute who shot me as I was approaching my tavern in the evening fresh from the docks. Talk about a rough neighbourhood. Fortunately, it was but a flesh wound, but the knock on the head I received courtesy of his club laid me out straight.

I came to myself in the house of a merchant of Shariz. Apparently I hadn't been the victim of some degenerate bow-wielding robber-rapist as might have been feared (and would have been just my luck) but the victim of a common cutpurse, who had nicked the merchant's purse and was making a run for it, mistook me for a civic-minded citizen, and took a lucky pot-shot – or so the merchant conjectured, for he was himself a civic-minded citizens and rather lacking of imagination. He thought I'd been trying to stop the cutpurse, the more fool him.

I learned something that day of the highest importance: In Calradia cutpurses and other criminals were as heavily armed as trained warriors elsewhere. That was a good lesson to learn early on. They weren't as heavily armoured as trained warriors, in fact.. but I'll get to that soon enough.

Having examined me closer for wounds as he took me to his house, the blood stains in my clothes and the fading bruises on my neck and face as well as my general physique summed me up as a foreign mercenary, but a civic-minded one.

He told me a sob-story about how his poor brother had been captured by bandits and how he was looking for somebody to aid him, an honest, trustworthy, and, above all, cheap mercenary with military experience to free his brother and, incidentally, would I happen to know such a one?  Now, you get what you pay for, and if he was in the market for discount mercenaries, I certainly qualified. I volunteered and he paid me a sum in advance to recruit some farmer lads to back me up, the more fool he.

I had half a mind to just do a runner with the money, but as my slate was clean in Calradia, I decided to at least look into the problem. Building positive relations with the well to do would likely pay off in the long run, if it wasn't too dangerous.

I rode to the nearest farming village, Mit Nun, and discovered that generations of warfare had so formalized the nature of mercenary employment that there was a standard non-negotiable hiring fee of 10 denars per man regardless of skill, of which they had little in any case, and health, which was worse. This fee was to be paid directly to the village elder who also kept a handy list of just which villagers were available so rather than perform individual negotiations, any passing stranger with a purse full of coin could just visit the village elder, be told how many recruits were available, and hire the lot on the spot.

Given the general level of destruction visited on villages on a regular basis in Calradia, this was probably the economic foundation of village life and, indeed, the habit of some casualties, both disappeared, gravely wounded, and in some cases dead or appearing so, to turn up back at their home villages for later recruitment strongly suggested that some of the smarter village elders were running a quite profitable business, as I were to discover in my travels.

I quite approve.

Be that as it may, I had barely left the village with four members of the salt of the earth running their hearts out trying to keep up with my spirited courser, when we were ambushed by a band of looters! There were only nine of them or so and all of them save one were, to my shock and appreciation, barechested!

I ordered my brave fellows to engage the looters while I stayed out of reach taking shots with my crossbow and was reminded with every bolt of just how much I hated firing a crossbow from horseback. Now, the crossbow is a fine weapon for a woman who isn't overmuscled like a man, but a bow is more elegant and easier to use from horseback, so I decided to acquire a hunting bow as soon as possible. While I was trying to fight back, my discount mercenaries were killed every last one of them, but they took four looters with them in death, leaving four barechested lunatics and one with a shirt, more raving than any of the others, eyeing me lustily. Or perhaps it was blood lust? With a certain type of man, it can be hard to tell the difference while they are wearing trousers.

I considered running away since none of them could keep up with my horse and since I had no intention of suffering either type of lust for little gain, but I was already down 40 denari so rode away from them to a decent distance and shot a looter and I did so again and again until I had put them all out of their misery, even the one wearing a shirt.


Which raised the obvious question: Just what sort of bloody idiot runs around half-naked in the desert heat ambushing travelers? It cannot be poverty, for they all wore trousers (and more's the pity), and their trove of goods included a very nice wool tunic and some leathers as well as several shirts, so it cannot be from a lack of opportunity. I concluded that they must have been driven mad by the heat and left the philosophical ramifications to the philosophers, to whom belong all things weird and irrelevant.

Stripping the dead of their valuables and exchanging some of my clothes for the better cast-offs, I left the bodies of the dead, both looter and farm recruit, to the desert animals. Deeming it unwise to return to Mit Nun for another bunch of recruits so soon and facing the awkward questions of just what I did with the first bunch, I rode to the nearby villages of Dibbain, Rushdigh, and Ayn Assuadi recruiting a new and stronger guard force. The merchant had suggested that I'd need at least 5 man to beat the bandits that took his brother but it wasn't his life on the line, now was it? I had 12 lads in my train as I began hunting for bandits.

Now, as it turned out the desert was just swarming with bandits in those days, so how was I to find the particular group of bandits that had taken the merchant's brother? I took advantage of a stratagem so deep and unlikely that no man would ever attempt it until all others had failed and then only in the blackest desperation: I asked people for directions. This novel approach led me directly to the bandits at a very low cost and we fell upon the bandits, putting them to the sword!

To be more precise, my gathering of armed farm lads did so, while I remained safely behind yelling inspirational phrases like “hit them in the trousers” and occasionally winging a bandit with a crossbow bolt. I am no fighter and never was and I saw no reason, then or ever, to risk my life in the front-line without a very good reason.

One of my stout lads was under the severe misapprehension that I had promised during the heat of the battle that whomever performed the bravest would receive some private sword practice, so to speak, and honesty compels me to admit to my autobiography, if nowhere else, that certain of my yells such as “Fight like a demon out of the icy plains and I'll sheathe your sword in something warm!” or “A soft reward for the hardest amongst you!” could have been so misinterpreted by the terminally dim and lecherous, when I was obviously referring to the desert sand and a good night's sleep, to take just two examples. Whatever the case, he came upon me after the battle demanding his reward with his comrades snickering in the background and even dripping with blood and sweat as he was, I gave him the reward he deserved.

I melted into his manly arms, gave him a minute-long deep and promising kiss to a roar of appreciation from his friends even as his face contorted with the lack of air and the blood rushed to his nether regions, then kneed him in the privates and stabbed him in the heart as he came up for air, and, shaking my head and with my golden locks streaming in the wind,  asked whether anybody else wanted a reward?

That was rather risky as they could have rushed me and killed me in anger for the death of their friend, but sometimes you just have to take a risk and establishing my uncontested dominance, not only as paymaster but as somebody not to be crossed lightly, was worth it. My actions were so unprecedented and unexpected that rather than reacting in anger, they took refuge in the peasant's safety: bowing their heads and accepting fate. It is the one that stands tall, who is chopped down first, and well do the peasants know it in these cowed lands.

So nobody took me up on my generous offer, least of all the merchant's brother whom we had freed and who had watched these proceedings with disbelieving eye  and we began our return trip to Shariz.

During the night the brother and my remaining farm lads huddled around their fire, drinking deep and telling tales, while I sat at my own fire with my crossbow at the ready and my horse saddled, just in case, but the men ended up asleep so all was well. Exactly what they had been telling each other that night I shall never know, but it is a safe bet that invention and exaggeration soon took over.

I include this evening's happenings, innocent and terminally boring though they may be (though I was certainly not calm as I sat there hoping that my fragile dominance would hold!) because it turned out in the end to have far-reaching ramifications in a way I could never have anticipated.

We returned to Shariz, reuniting the merchant with his brother, and after they had been talking for a while in private, the merchant asked me to, and I swear this isn't a joke, go help seize the captain of the guard, a corrupt man who was the source of all evil and banditry in the region, a thoroughly vicious bastard of a man who liked beating up women just for fun, who went around kicking dogs in his spare time and, incidentally, somebody the merchant was willing to pay rather a lot to capture  with a view to presenting him to the Sultan for punishment.

I believe I have mentioned already how I from an early age discovered that most men are stupid and governed by their feelings rather than taking the obviously superior rational approach? I believe I have, and this merchant gave me no reason to doubt that conclusion. To make a long story short, I was young and I needed the money, so I said yes and together with a bunch of friends of his we bravely beat up the guard captain's guards and took him into custody!

Well, that was the merchant's version when he presented himself to the Sultan, and who am I to disagree? I certainly wasn't present at that meeting, having taken a convenient ride in the countryside with my few possessions and my bunch of farm lads, busily hunting bandits and ready to speed for the horizon in case of pursuit.

My version, which I bequeath to my autobiography and you, dear reader, is that we weren't all that heroic, brave, and good at fighting. The merchant's friends bravely engaged the superior guards and got themselves harmed for it; I, rather than wearing my leathers and weapons, made sure to wear only a hidden dagger under a nice blue dress bought for the occasion out of the money the merchant had paid me and, giving it an artistic rip or two, ran from the scene with one of the guard captain's men in hot pursuit.

It isn't actually easy to rip clothing in just the right degree that it looks natural and just the right degree of sultry. Revealing and suggesting, innocence defiled, rather than tawdry and soliciting, that's the key! Though there is a use for both, depending on situation. Practice makes perfect, however, and while I had already performed some experimentation on a strict amateur basis during my years as a shop assistant, I gained a lot of both practical and theoretical experience in this regard as a lady in waiting and I put it to good use in this situation.

Racing to the front gates with the guard captain's man in hot pursuit, I cried out that most wonderful charge in the female vocabulary: “RAPE!”. A grizzled veteran, his wars done and retired to a sinecure as town guard, upon seeing this lovely well dressed foreign lady with her bodice ripped and tears streaming from her face, reacted in exactly the way I had planned for. He cut down my pursuer and, upon being told that I had been set upon by an entire gang of ruffians, offered upon his honour to track down every miserable soul and make them pay. He was a good man and true and made good on his word, and that is how most of the guard captain's men were defeated! Having made a friend and gained a champion of sorts, I later found other uses for him.

Editor's note: A couple of brief paragraphs extolling the virtues of older men and the stamina of veterans who keep themselves fit as well as covering some of the interesting situations they might find themselves in, should they be fortunate enough, while of interest to men of a certain age are not relevant to a greater public. Should the reader be interested, this is covered in the Collector's Edition. With illustrations.

Be that as it may, the Sultan was simultaneously happy to take the head of his corrupt guard captain and unhappy with the usurpation of his power, for he wanted no vigilantes acting in his capital city, thank you very much. He banished the merchant from the city, and a just reward that is for circumventing the law say I, and I, I was never mentioned with a word.

Or so I thought.

For me, bandit hunting had turned out to be unexpectedly lucrative, so I took my lads and went ahunting, putting the matter of the merchant and the Sultan out of my mind.

The Darklord 说:

Your wrong it is pigeon and not pigeons given that it referring to the pigeon that cooing in the window sill.

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Good point.

I do wonder how Hammy noticed that the sound that had awoken him came from a pigeon in the windowsill, but had to go downstairs to notice it was dawn and, upon having done down and noticed that it was dawn cursed the blasted pigeon - but you are right, that's what the text implies and I just didn't read it right the first time. Presumably he was still very sleepy at the time.

To anybody whining about how Swadian infantry deals more damage than Rhodok infantry despite Swadia being the knight faction, the lords of Rhodok have this to say:

BOOM! HEADSHOT!


Somehow or another, I suspect that most people view the Rhodoks as the ranged faction rather than the "anti-cavalry infantry faction", just like the Swadians are the heavy cavalry faction* and the Nords the infantry faction. Rhodoks don't have a problem with their infantry being too weak compared to their opposition - they have a problem with the combat engine not simulating the problems of charging a wall of pikes very well and the tactical AI being very poor at any sort of combined arms operation.


* In fierce competition with the Sarranids

You can still hire recruits in any village belonging to a nation you are not at war with.

Your odds of getting a new fief are excellent. It may take some time depending on how many other nobles in your faction are without a fief but sooner or later it will be your turn.

Mulek 说:

Erm, no. The ones which were in debt where the petty nobility with one village and a manor. The other borrowing ones where broke not because of the lack of income, but because they invested their money in a failed war or something. The big land owners where usually the most rich and powerful people in the country. In Poland, which is a pretty extreme example, each Magnat fielded a bigger army than the King could.

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Poland is an extreme example, as you note, particularly as you seem (unless I am misunderstanding you) to be thinking in terms of Poland under the Jagiellon dynasty in the later middle ages or well into the renaissance - a far cry from the situation in the war-torn lands of Calradia, which appear to be modelled on the end of the dark ages and the early middle ages and in which most nobles do in fact correspond to what we would call the petty nobility - in control of a village or two, perhaps a village and a castle, perhaps even a town or several, but almost all struggling to merely survive, and enforcing order on the world with his personal warband.

Poland under the magnates just doesn't make a good comparison with Calradia, I am afraid. Think rather in terms of Western Europe in the 7th and 8th centuries - some time after the fall of the Western Roman Empire but before the crowning of Charlemagne.

Katana_Geldar 说:

There's also the saving the village from the bandits, but that pops up randomly and usually from taverns.

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Specifically, it pops up in a village and remains active until the bandits there are fought, whether one does it by visiting the place by accident or as a result of being informed about the fact by a villager in the tavern in the nearest town. Refusing the offered reward is important to gain a bigger boost to village reputation.

Quite useful when one is mass recruiting - just visit every damn village in an area and attack bandits if they are there. Over time, it adds up to a lot of bandit-infested villages helped and a lot of support.