Basics to competitive warband

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This guide is aimed at clans completely new to competitive warband, so the content might not be that interesting to more experienced clans. However, I'd appreciate if some other experienced leaders read through and say what they think about the guide.

Should we join a tournament?

One pretty common thing that causes many new teams to crumble is when they join a tournament that's completely out of their league, get stomped hard, and ragequit. European tournaments are where the most experienced teams play in. If you start there right away and get stomped, don't feel too bad about it, since the other teams are usually either at least a couple of years old, or at least majority of their players are veterans.
A few less hardcore leagues and tournaments include: DNL (german league), Puchar Polski (polish cup), SNL (slavic native league), WWC (warband weekend cup).

How to deal with losing?

When losing, remember to keep calm, it's just a game. It's not the end of the world. The more you rage or the more depressed you are, the more your team is likely to crumble. The positive side of losing is that you get the chance of seeing what you can improve to play better next time. Think about how and why you lost, every round you lose, you should think why did we lose? What can i change? What can we change?



Common "noob-fails" to avoid:

Shieldwall - only works irl, don't even try it. Doesn't even look cool when every player is moving out of sync.
"Shields are for noobs lol" - Try blocking two directions at once or blocking an arrow without one...
Saddlehorse - It's simply not made for combat, you should pretty much always use hunter or better.
Firing line - NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO...
"Omg they must be cheating cuz we lost, we must get cheats too" - No. Only cheat that's pretty common in high-level competitive warband is "bush hack", which is removing tree/bush leaves or editing them so that you can see through them better. Cheats like wallhack are usually used only by bad clans which most likely started cheating only because of this. Aimbots and autoblocks are extremely rare. Get good without cheats, it will be a lot more fun in the long run anyways.


i'll rewrite this sections below in more detail later. (maybe)
Weapon drops
You can gain access to a huge amount of different starting equipment through weapon drops. It can vary from dropping a shield for an archer or just a slightly better sword for crossbows, but in the end it can even decide who's the winner of the match.
Here's a few pretty useful weapon drops and which classes are used:
[*] Crossbowman drops free crossbow for cavalry, cavalry drops free sword for crossbowman
[*] Archer drops axe (nords) or scimitar (sarranids) for infantry, infantry drops shield for archer
[*] Infantry drops war spear for crossbow, crossbow drops board shield for infantry.
[*] Cavalry (vaegirs) drops scimitars for two infantries, one infantry drops shield for cavalry
The most useful one is probably dropping shields for archers, but every slight improvement in starting equipment can be the little something that causes your victory. Also don't be afraid of experimenting and coming up with your own weapon drops, you could even give horses or bardiches for archers for a surprise strategy, for example.



What are the jobs for each class?

Usually you need at least one of every class for every map, a balanced setup is most likely to not be stomped by another imbalanced setup. I'll go through what are my opinions on each classes job in each map type; open and closed. (don't mix them up with the open, closed and mixed categories in NA, they're different!) Also keep in mind that nothing restricts you from coming up with your own roles for the classes.

Infantry:
Closed: Infantry forms the backbone of your team in closed maps. Being the best class in melee combat, the team should usually be at least half infantry. Maps like Village or Vendetta are usually the only maps where you see less than 4 infantry being played. Some infantry can go simply go for sword, shield and armor only to maximize their effectiveness in the actual melee, but at least one or two at minimum should also buy war spears, awlpikes or pikes to support the team by stunning and stopping/scaring cavalry away. One possibility would be for one infantry to take a 2h weapon for extra damage, but polearms like war spear are usually cheaper and do the support job better. Throwing weapons are useful for shutting down enemy archers and weakening infantry or cavalry, which, especially when used by nords, (who get them for free from cavalry and have the best throwing skill) can be utterly devastating for a team not prepared for them.

Open: On open, infantry's role is considerably smaller than on closed. Infantry has the best shield skill and overall they can take the most damage before dying. Therefore their role is to be more like a tank, protecting archers, pinning down enemy archers and holding flag while other classes are the main damage dealers. In open, taking a polearm to keep cavalry away is very important.

Ranged:

Closed: In closed, ranged can be either very important or barely important at all, depending on the map. Maps like San'di'boush are not that archer-friendly, though one or two can be very useful. In exchange maps like Village and Vendetta are almost impossible to play without any archers. Basically the more complicated the map, the more useful archers are. The main goal for archers should be either to create a crossfire around flag or around the enemy, or support the infantry by shooting down enemy cavalry and ranged. Sometimes just preventing a crossbow from reloading can mean your team wins.

Open: In open, archers are usually very important, since they can deal damage even from the other side of the map. The main goal should be to try and create crossfires around flags and taking down enemy cavalry.

Cavalry:

Closed: Cavalry is the most mobile class, so it's the best class for scouting. A horse couching down an enemy and bumping another enemy to the ground might completely change the tide of the battle. It's great for support and every team should usually have at least one cavalry in any map. Also required for nords to get access to javelins.

Open: Cavalry is often the main damage dealer in open maps once the fighting starts. They can instantly kill anything with couched lance or a stab to the head from high speed, and also they can bump down enemies to make them vulnerable to further damage, usually leading to a kill if the enemy was fighting already. The cavalry make use of their mobility to move in to the aid of infantry or archers fast.



What you should do before flags spawn?

Fight for map control. Gain control over positions as advantageous as possible for when the flags spawn. For an example, if there's a ruin next to a flag spawn, you will want to be able to place an archer into the ruin if the flag spawns next to it. When you can't place an archer in the ruin, try to find a place for an archer that will prevent the archer in the ruin from shooting properly. Obviously, don't overdo the fight for map control, once you have control over two flags, there's usually no need to try to gain control of the last one, since odds are already on your side.



Know the maps you're going to play

Scout out the maps before you play a match in them.
Important things to search for:
[*] Where both teams spawn in
[*] Where the flags spawn in
[*] Positions that you can shoot at the flag spawn(s) from cover
[*] Positions that you can shoot into the positions mentioned earlier, from which you can shoot to the flags.
 
If you want to find out where flags spawn without having to do some waiting:

Enable Edit Mode
"Host a Game" and pick the map you want to look at
Ctrl+E to get into Edit Mode, Alt+Enter to window the game and let you see the UI
look through the props list for Entry points 67, 68 ,69

And if you haven't pieced this together, those entry points are where the motf flags spawn.
 
Das Knecht said:
Also you can just use an admin mod which has a "Force MOTF" feature built in.
We are using it, anyway. Sota was explaining the tactical side of "capturing" the flag, not giving a how-to-force-a-flag-spawn guide.
 
Captain Lust said:
Nice guide except for the apparant condoning of bush hacking. I don't think it's widespread or acceptable and I'd certainly hope tournament organisers don't share your trivial take on the matter.

He is not condoning it, he is saying that it's pretty common and that is just stating facts.


Imo, someone should sticky this.
 
Captain Lust said:
Nice guide except for the apparant condoning of bush hacking. I don't think it's widespread or acceptable and I'd certainly hope tournament organisers don't share your trivial take on the matter.

bush hack is very common in polish and russian community (at least), and as far as i know it does exist in european communities. But the point of that part was, to not whine about cheats because they barely exist in warband community.

just go visit any dm server and u'll get votebanned for autoblock or aimbot almost instantly...  :lol:
 
Do you guys actually get new clans over there? We've been stuck with the same 10ish for like 2 years :/
 
Random Polish, Russian and Turkish clans, consisting of roughly the same group of people, forming and dissolving in a never-ending cycle.
 
ryozu said:
Random Polish, Russian and Turkish clans, consisting of roughly the same group of people, forming and dissolving in a never-ending cycle.

there's also noob german, polish, turkish and russian clans that ragequit just like that NW regiment in UNAC. (or stay in their own leagues)
 
DarkShogun417 said:
nice guide. But what shield wall clan will we beat now?  :sad:
Be thankful that they will become worthy opponents with time and knowledge.
It's always better for the community when there are more teams; it raises everyone's level of play.

I think this should be stickied in the MP section.
 
Every time I see a new clan in the Guild Hall, I think "Great, new people to fight!", however 99% are just casual gaming groups that never intend to scrim or even see another clan.
 
DoctorPainkiller said:
Every time I see a new clan in the Guild Hall, I think "Great, new people to fight!", however 99% are just casual gaming groups that never intend to scrim or even see another clan.
It would be great to help the new clans develop, but I doubt very many people would be willing to expend the time and energy to do so. (Sota is a eurofag so that doesn't count) Welcome to the ever shrinking NA community.
 
That's way too long.

All you have to write:

Is the map somewhat open?

Drop shields for range (if needed).
Spread out to campable positions.
Shoot.
Have two people buy heavy horses, hold right click and W.

Is the map somewhat closed?

Drop shields for range (if needed).
Spread out to campable positions.
Shoot.
Have one person buy a heavy horse, hold right click and W.

All the same, hopefully the "newness" of Bannerlord will attract new people, at which point you'll actually have an ability to help new players because there will actually be new players.

 
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