SP - General Can't Even Hold On To My Own Kingdom When Cheating

[DD44]

So I wanted for my first playthrough to found my own kingdom as opposed to being someone else's vassal. Cool. Conquered a castle and one town on the far off coast tucked into the corner without too too much trouble and made peace. Nice. Now time to build up my base so I can start to spread out and bring about the downfall of the Empire.

Since then my life has been hell.

Every month or so Vlandia or Battania declares war on me and utterly crushes my **** with multiple 800-1200-man armies.

I'm running around trying to raise and train armies to garrison the town/build up some semblance of a wallet to fund my eventual push into the Empire but have to keep running home to get my ass kicked by/pay off Caladog and I can't get anywhere. Soon, I can't even afford to PAY them off, they want all my money and horses and the offer still isn't close to good enough. They utterly erase me and I can't even come close to stopping them.

Cool. Fine. I really wanted my first early access game to see what it's like to hold territory though, so to my chagrin I turned the difficulty down off realistic.

They brought even more men and still utterly erased me.

So I did something I'm not proud of: I enabled cheats. Ctrl+Alt+F4 whole armies, release all the prisoners, pass up all the loot and items to minimize my loss of personal honor, and vie for peace as soon as I can.

Except now they bring armies that are SO big I CAN'T CHEAT-KILL THEM ALL. I try once, the rest of the units load it, I try to do it a second time, and the game crashes.

TL : DR trying to be independent brings so many enemies to my doorstep I can't even CHEAT to win.

What gives? Why even give me the choice to found my own kingdom if I'm just going to get swallowed and colonized instantly? Why am I constantly at war with the factions I share the goal of toppling the Empire with? Why can't I ally with them but maintain independence? Why is there zero diplomacy system? Why even present founding your own kingdom as an option if the deck is this badly stacked against me? Am I just missing something and playing the game very badly? Is a tiny independent nation getting stomped and subjugated perhaps a little TOO realistic in this realism strategy game?

 

[EternalHeathen]

Well, there's the answer you might already know but dont want to hear, early access. Not everything is done yet. They just now seem to be putting diplomacy stuff in at a slow rate.

The way you describe it though, it's possible you didnt prep enough. Back in warband, I wouldn't start my own kingdom for years and in game years, same for my bannerlord playthroughs.

Necessary prep:
1. lots of friendly lords that you can quickly get into your kingdom
2.lots and lots of money
3.lots and lots of troops, usually at least two garrisons full

1 is way more difficult in bannerlord right now than warband, mostly because you dont gain relations fighting alongside other lords. You have to do lots of quests, or just catch and release constantly. There are mods that help.
2 is just a matter of patience, but can go a lot faster with catch and release
3 is gonna be easiest to do as a vassal. It sounds like you straight up conquered some stuff as an independent. Generally I'll build up fiefs and their garrisons while in a faction, then roleplay revolt when I'm ready. Easy to do with how greedy the rulers are.

The campaign ai is always gonna see you as weak, and a target, and until all the diplomacy features are in, you're best bet for a fun kingdom building experience is mods. There's several that get us close to the level of warband already.

The big choice is, you want to have lots of fun by using mods, or some fun/frustration without mods so you can help test and refine the game. That's where we're at with this EA.
I've had 1 awesome playthrough, was well on my way to ruling calradia with no choppy chop, by using mods to inject diplomacy and balancing and such.

I'm currently having fun/frustration with a 141 playthrough. A single mod to make training troops faster because of perma-war, and even that I held off as long as I could because I want to help test the beta.

Damn I just typed lot.

 

[TheShermanator]

Agree with all of the above. The way that I dealt with those tough early kingdom days:

*Made lots of friends / hired lots of mercenaries
*Prereq: Built up lots of charm so that I could make friends
---> One key mod for this: The Diplomacy Fixes mod, which I use mainly just for the 'messengers' feature. You have to spent influence and wait 3 days for the messenger to arrive, but it's an efficient way to talk to everyone without having to go in person.
*Prereq: Had lots of $ for mercs + garrisons before I declared independence
*Focused on Stewardship points to ensure max party size.

Also:

My PC requires me to use max battle size 500. This meant that, as long as I had 300+ men in my army, I could cheese the defender's advantage to defeat superior foes - within reason, depending on the relative size of the enemy. I often got lucky, by the way. My first war, in which I expanded significantly, had me fighting constant 600-700 stacks, never the single 1500 stack (which, ironically, I saw later in the play-through when I was bigger).

 

[DD44]

I do get that it's early access, but that's in part why I'm posting this. Hopefully the more feedback the devs get the better, right?