casualty figures

[crpcarrot]

hi all

i'm quite new to the game and playing my first campaign. my party is about 40 strong with about 15-20 knights and the rest vagir infantry and archers.

so far i have been avoiding any parties that outnumber me or have high end troops. but since last night swered fealty to the Vagir king and am his vassal now. still havent got a castle. anyway i finally attackes a lord of a equal force and manged to beat him comfortably but also took some losses. 4 of my men were killed and they were IIRC 1 knight and 3 vetran infantry. my question is what do the experienced players consider to be acceptable losses?? and how do u asses if fight or run?

i just hate losing men and and ahve reloaded a few timed before by getting into battles i shouldnt have but dont want to continue playing like that. also while we are at it what are good odds when attacking a castle. the only time i did i think my whole party got wiped out only a few even made it onto the walls. this was with no seige equipment. oh on the same note is there a way to check what equipemnt is available when joinign another lords seige?

well that turned out longer than i was expecting but thanks for any replies.

 

[Berpol]

If you want to reduce your losses invest in the Surgery skill (either yourself or one of the heroes).

Otherwise you don't have many ways to prevent losses, use formations, kill more enemies yourself and so on, 10% losses would be bad against unskilled enemies, against average foes it's not unlikely.
You have bot infantry and cavalry, you get best effects if you engage the enemies cavalry with all your troops while his infantry is still far away - divide and conquer.

What kind of siege equipment is used when attacking a castle (or city) is depending on the castle, you always get the same map and equipment each time. I don't have list though of what you get when.
Actually I often attack fortifications that have 5 times the numbers - in that case the first fight is outside the wall and superior infantry (nord huscarls) have no problem slaughtering low or medium level opponents even at these odds with minimal losses.

 

[AztraGoth]

Acceptable losses depends on how anal you are. The fight you mentioned, was it one you started or did he chase you down and started it? Did you capture the lord, got great loot and the xp from it did it level your troops and how many got levelled? Even then one knight out of fifteen to twenty is nothing really, their purpose is to serve you and your needs or die trying.

And then since you're fighting for a faction, beating the previously mentioned Lord weakened the enemy so losing four high levelled troops is nothing, as long as they (the enemy) got wiped out. Not entirely true, if it resulted in you loosing majority of your troops I'd see it as a meaningless battle but I wouldn't reload...live and learn.

Did you fought the Lord because he was besieging a friendly castle or did you fought him to take a castle and resulting in you gaining this for Veagir (sp?). If so losing four soldiers is perfectly acceptable.

Concerning sieges no AI can beat the ferocity of the player, if you don't use ranged weapons (like me) make sure you get on those walls and start slaughtering to make room for your troops...they seem to think its a good idea to stand in a line and get butchered by the defending forces instead of actually pushing through. When you and your footsoldiers is up there get your archers on there to assist (with arrows/bolts) when they (footsoldiers) go down those "thin" stairs trying to get to the courtyard (depends on the Castles layout). Archers out side of the walls waste their arrows/bolts on the wall and only kill the occasional troop...at least in my experience so I might just be cursed.

No one (I think) likes to loose soldiers but its just something one has to accept, fighting in the open can "spawn" unfavourable battlefields, attacking a castle without knowing how it looks for whatever reason can have bottlenecks that will kill a bunch of your (suicidal) troops.

Then again last time I played native was the beta back in 2005, recently re-installed Mount & Blade when I found my serial by accident and I started using mods right away. So take my advices with caution.

 

[crpcarrot]

thanks for the replies

@astragoth

after reading the first paragraph i feel better about letting them die thanks

wel that aprticular battle the rhodok lord was attacking a vegir caravan. he lost about 50 troops but the lord escaped. cant remeber how much xp and upgrades happeend.

i think i just need to get used to getting soldiereds killed.

at the moemet i just hand around big battles and wait till an emey lord retreats and take out his depleted party.

anyway this is a great game have to attacka castle soon will be looking for new nord recruits

 

[Johnny Morphine]

Playing Native, your best bet is to keep a hefty stock of Nord infantry handy. Good strategy there. I use Vaegirs for archers and Swadians and sometimes Khergits for cavalry. Rhodoks work well enough against cavalry, but I find myself not using them because in Native there's no guarantee of a dedicated spearman. Their sharpshooters are quite nice as long as it's not raining. Hired Blades are always, always a nice guaranteed solid troop with standardized equipment, if you don't mind paying for them.

Base your formations and order of battle on the terrain and what troops you're fighting. I've taken on armies that outnumbered me 20 something to 1 and ended up with what I'd call acceptable losses. But even without an army of huscarls and only limited skill in tactics you can rock 5 to 1 odds as long as you know what you're doing. For example last time I played through til the end I crushed King Ragnar's 250+ man army with just 50 or so soldiers (none of them top tier) a few dozen days into the game. Think I lost about four men.

You're obviously on the right track, so just keep experimenting and you'll eventually be able to avoid losses of even one man in an even battle.

 

[crpcarrot]

ive heard order of battle mentioned a lot but have no idea what it means . i'm starting to think its the order in which your troops enter the battle but please correct me if i'm wrong. on reading the forums today i have figured out that the troops enter the battle and stand in line according to the order in the party window so will try playing with that tonight.

i downloded the battle sizer alst night and set it to 250 so usually i get my whole band into the battle.

is there anyway to give specif formation orders. like for example form spear wall etc or anywya to split infantry into groups? and give them seperate orders.

also another thing i noticed sometimes 5 of my ngihts will runn off chasing that lone light cavalry while the thick of the figting is going on someplcae else. is the only way to get them back "f1"?

 

[Johnny Morphine]

Well, this what I call order of battle, anyway. I'm not sure what it's officially called, but it makes sense the way I phrase it. On your party screen, the soldier list on your right can be adjusted by moving troops up and down. This is more than an organizational feature (And this took me awhile to figure out) but the troops at the top of your list are more likely to show up in battle. This is essential in important battles - to put cavalry up front against archers (Assuming terrain permits) or to get your siege team in front when you're taking a castle. You can also change this between skirmishes in a battle with your party hotkey, but in different phases of sieges you're stuck with what you've got unless it's modded otherwise (this was one of the 1st things I fixed in my mod, (shameless fyi))

Some mods let you give orders for more intricate battle formations, though the ones I've seen have seemed unnecessary, overly complicated, and overly advantageous for the player, seeing as lords would never use them. Really you can hold your own with just telling your troops to stand closer or spread out (check your controls for the shortcut - very handy). A tight line of infantry, as long as you've got some decent anti-cavalry troops, is good enough to stop most charges. Just take the high ground whenever possible. That's rule #1.

If your knights run off chasing one poor loser, just tell them to follow you. Their target will usually follow them, and at that point you can take the sucker out yourself.

 

[Scyrius]

to me any loss of men is unaccetable but i guess it depends on what level you and your men are. if your very low level with only recruits then your bound to loss men every fight. a suggestion if you dont want to loss men tell all of them to hold and charge in yourself and kill as many as you can yourself before telling your men to charge. i do this and usally kill 30 or 40 men before my health gets really low

 

[crpcarrot]

@johnny

will try out these tips on party list whne i play next.

and if the Ai doesnt use the formations i guess it will be too much of an advantage.

@scyrius

i'm afraid my play style does not really allow me to take this strategy. i am not much of a first person hack slash player and hence get my men to do most of the work. tiell recently my knights had better stast and were better equiped me. ive started to get involved in the abttles more but still my knights do way better than i do. it will proabbly come with more practice but i would always use my men rather than rush off inot the fight on my own.

 

[dubaiboy]

just do some tatics some time i dont get any casualties like this  tell you infantry to hold a line by pressing standcloser command and do the same to the archer but tell them to go 20 fet bhind the infantry better if on a hill and tell them to hold fire let your calavry to folow you and circle around the enemy and dont atack until the infantry charge wait until the archer be beind because when reloding and firing they slow and they tend to kill your troops first so attack the archer first with your calavry and keep your foot infantry and archer in their place then the final charge is when you charhe the infantry it would be easier with a higher battle size to lower amount of spawns thats the basic which i use alot

 

[Johnny Morphine]

That's quite possibly the longest sentence I've ever bothered to read.

Look, I don't mean to tell you how to fight every battle, crpcarrot, but here's something that works for me in almost every battle, particularly in the general rolling hills landscape you see commonly.

Put your cavalry just behind the very top of the hill. Tell them to spread out twice. Position your archers just so they can shoot almost down to the base of the hill without hitting your infantry, which you're going to put just far enough in front of your archers to give them the room they need to shoot over them. Preferably they'll still be some way up the hill to retain the high ground advantage. You generally won't have to tell your infantry to stand closer unless they're bracing for a particularly heavy cavalry charge. Exceptions to this are rare. Having infantry stand too close, outside of charges, doesn't protect them as much as it makes them targets for archers. You can keep your troops spread until the last moment if your enemy has any significant amount of archers.

What you've done is built a fortress on top of a hill. Your cavalry is spread out to act as a shield to catch anything that gets by your infantry line. You can relocate them quickly to outflank the enemy if need be - that's what fast cavalry's for. And if you happen to use horse archers, you can almost get away with leaving them there. In defensive formation you'll almost never need them. Your archers are spread out for their own protection. Your infantry, at the point of contact, should be ready to function together like bricks in a wall.

I took over all of Calradia without ever joining a faction using this tactic or variations of it in more than 90% of the battles fought.
Good luck!

 

[Almalexia]

Acceptable losses depends on how anal you are.

 

[Ptolemny]

Well, I've been playing for a couple of days now, and the way I generally butcher infantry and\or archers is to get a battles-worth of Veteran archers, and maybe 10, 20 Swadian knights, sit in front pf the infantry and shoot arrows into them until they run, and charge. I can generally get away with no losses against a Rhodok shield-wall, this seems to work very well on open fields, especially since I focus in horse-archery, and can generally take their feet out from underneath them, when I'm attacking a castle, I take out all the archers and crossbow men my self, and sit just out of range of the infantry on the wall, where they'll actually expose themselves to my arrows. I can generally take down over 100 men in a castle with 10ish losses this way. (and only because I run out of arrows) This doesn't seem to work against the Vaegris as they have too many archers to take out single-handedly, and as such my losses are generally higher. This wont work very well If you're a bad archer though.