Could really use some general advice on building armies.

[hermanJnr.]

Hi all, first post

I've read the stickies and all, but I think I need some more personalised advice for my greatest problem at the moment.

Quick background on my game - I'm Level 20, have a Party Size of 52, and am working as a Vassal for the Khergit (60% difficulty). My problem's pretty simple - enemy armies (the Vaegirs next door to my town) are just far, far too big. It's massively frustrating.

I try to ambush lone enemy Lords whenever I can, and I can happily beat up to 90 or so men if I fight well. They never seem to be in parties less than 90-ish though, sometimes much larger.

Anyway, I did a whole bunch of tasks for my town to get them producing decent soldiers and liking me, and suddenly 5 groups of 100 Vaegir soldiers march on it. Bam. Nothing I can do, I pretty much lose horribly, my whole army gets wasted and the town is razed. It just seems crazy.

By comparison, if I try attacking their castles nearby all have a garrison of about 200+, and of course the Lords mob you as well.

So, am I missing some great secret on how to raise a larger army? It's immensely frustrating, I'm basically just getting out spammed all the time and there's nothing I can do against it :\

Any help or tips on raising party size/attacking high garrisons would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Swadius 2.0]

There are multiple factors that increase your party limit.

One is renown, for each additional soldier you need 25 more renown.

Two is of course leadership.

Three... well there isn't a three. But seeing as levelling and spending your hard earned points into leadership isn't always favorable,try to earn lots of renown. Fighting pitched battles against a superior enemy usually does the trick. If you have no qualms with exploiting the AI and game turn the battlesize to the smallest when you face a large enemy party with your own small party, you'll get 50 renown per-battle if the numbers are stacked up against you enough; you won't have to face all of them at once.

Then there's always quests and tournaments to increase your renown.

 

[Fuscus]

Besides raising your renown and putting points into Charisma and Leadership, one (hit-and-miss) way of getting extra troops is to become your faction's Marshall -- to do this (I think) you need decent renown, a good relationship with the King (or indeed Khan) so that he'll consider you when the next marshall selection comes up, and good relationships with other lords so that they'll vote for you during the marshall selection. Once you are the Marshall you can multiply the size of your army by proxy, ordering five or six lords to follow you. (I think they have to like you a bit before they'll actually join battles on your side, though, so it's good to get lords who are friendly to follow you. And of course they do tend to chase after insignificant targets half of the time.)

I've found it's possible to catch enemy lords with smaller forces -- even just twenty men, or so -- if you travel deep into their territory (which, with good Pathfinding and Spotting, and especially with a mounted army of Khergits, shouldn't be too challenging) or look for lords returning from battle.

Another issue might be the troops you're using, if you're restricting yourself to Khergit troops (are you?), especially if you want to attack an enemy fortification while outnumbered. Even Khergit Lancers can't really pretend to be the kind of well-armoured, hard-hitting heavy infantry that are ideal for leading siege assaults.

(Note, though, that I'm not a M&B veteran myself, so there may be something here I'm missing or have wrong.)

 

[Temeraire]

so you should know that you need the stronger of the 4 unit types

Infantry beats Pikeman
Pikeman beats Cavalry
Cavalry beats Archers
Archers beats Infantry

Unfortunately for you, you choices are a tad limited with the Khante

with the proper type differences, the army size advantages don't matter as much

 

[stygN]

Well my good Swadius, there is a Third, each Charisma also gives you 1+ partysize : )

Having a high Leadership is not only important to get the partysize up, you will also soon learn that a bigger party get a pretty massive moralepenalty, and the Leadership helps this since you get a moralebonus from high Leadership. You also reduce the wages a lot, 5% each point, so if you get your Leadership to 9 (takes a while) you can just read that book, Life of Alexander the Great or something, and get 1 more Leadership. (All skills max at 10 even if you have skill level 10 and read a book, or if you have skill level 10 and add a book to your inventory that gives 1+ in that skill).

I think rather few ever get their character to level 10 Leadership, simply because Charisma is so little usefull, it only support Prisonermanagement, Leadership and Trade. Trade and Leadership are both good skills, but the Prisonermanagement is pretty useless.

So, a high Leadership is vital if you field a large army.

---

When you eventually get a decent army, try to get some troops from other factions to help out in sieges. Nord Huskarls are insane at taking castles, and are also pretty damn good at defending them. Its good to use Huskarls in sieges, cause the only thing that really threaten a Huskarl is cavalry, and you don't face that in a siege.

So, when you get your first Castle you should garrison mainly Nord, Vaegir or Rhodok troops, Nords have sick infantry, Vaegirs have sick archers and Rhodoks have slightly sick Infantry and Crossbowmen. The Khergit Veteran Horse Archer is also good at sieges (at least for defence) because its actually the best archer on foot in the game (at least according to stats). Khergit Lancers are not weak units, but you should rather have them in your fieldarmy then in your garrison, they are far better on the field then in sieges.

So, what you do now is to recruit (or rescue prisoners if you are lucky enough to find them) men from the Nords, the Vaegir and perhaps the Rhodoks (I don't like the Rhodoks and use only Nord and Vaegir in my castle). Now you train the men you recruited and put them in to your castle when they get better (you do not need to get them to the very top tier just yet, just focus on getting many semi-elite troops in to your castle ASAP).

Then when you have a stable army and a stable garrison you might take out some of your weaker units in your castle to train them, I would suggest you try to train many Huskarls.

---

Right, now you have 1 elite army of Khergits for the field, and 1 army of elite Infantry and Archers for siege, so when you want to siege an enemy castle, just swap! Put your Khergits in to your castle, and take the elite Infantry and Archers. Then do the siege : )

---

It is NOT profitable to have many castles, 1 castle is more then enough (at least if its around the center of the map), you should rather accept villages as fiefs, you don't have to protect them much (after a while you will see that your villages don't get raided much) and you get more money from them. If you have many castles you get little money and have to but a garrison in each castle and pay for them as well! If you are offered a City you might want to say yes, a City give you rather much money when it is Very Rich, and almost pay for the garrison, at least if its a crack force of elite infantry and archers instead of 600 mid tier units.

---

When a Village is raided (like yours got) it is not destroyed, it takes a while (a week I think) and its back up and running. Your relationship with the village do not get reduced if it get raided, so you can still harvest good troops from it once it gets back in to shape.

---

I hope this was at least slightly helpfull : )

 

[hermanJnr.]

I hope this was at least slightly helpfull : )

Very, very helpful! Thanks!

Concentrating on training more Nords now, it's kinda handy that they're right next to my borders 

Handy replies, thank you everyone, I'll go try it  all out and tell you how I get on...

 

[Khazik]

My first venture into this game was with the Khergit, I got to 6 leadership ASAP and it helped rank up my troops as I had superior numbers I overwhelmed starting battles. I went for around 30% archers in my army and I fleshed the rest out working towards Khergit Lancers. I roleplayed the army so I didn't recruit any other factions and I did quite well.

As the Khergit are on horses they run around a lot so getting them to level up quickly does help. My advise would be to get leadership up to at least 5 as soon as you can to help train their exp up, so if you lose any your replacements wont take forever to rank up.

Also recruit companions, they help an awful lot with fighting, they're better than standard troops. You could use their skills to train up too, eg trainer skill.

In short invest in trainer and leadership skills, imo.

 

[Sataraha]

Harass the lawless bands: Sea Raiders for the Money&Mail, Steppe Bandits for Archery, Mountain Bandits for daily food everywhere while getting your own stats higher.

Level 20 is good for your personal stats for starters, but forget your own fighter&strider skills and pump up your Warlord skills. Leadership pays off on the Pay Day, every week. Don't mess with the Lord wars until you are bigger and can have all the prisoners and much of the loot gear. Get high renown and take a city. Castles don't pay, good villages do, but a wealthy City pays a lot more.

Man your strongholds with fast and cheap Recruits to great numbers as soon as you can so the Enemy won't attack them so eagerly. Keep your elites with you on your active host and make them earn their pay... Every day. Mixed troops you really must have: Vaegir Archers and Marksmen for fire support, Heavy Infantry Nords in mail to make it up the ladders in sieges. If you must have a costly heavy cavalry force, use it only for open field encounters. And make it worth the monetary effort.

Help the villagers every time you can and you can recruit from them even when hostile with the faction.

Cheers, Sataraha

 

[hermanJnr.]

Harass the lawless bands: Sea Raiders for the Money&Mail, Steppe Bandits for Archery, Mountain Bandits for daily food everywhere while getting your own stats higher.

Just out of interest, are there any places Mountain Bandits specifically spawn? (Well, mountains I guess...but meh  ).

I know that Steppes are common in Khergit territory and Sea Raiders are always in the home Nord territory, but don't see Mountain variety very often.

Man your strongholds with fast and cheap Recruits to great numbers as soon as you can so the Enemy won't attack them so eagerly. Keep your elites with you on your active host and make them earn their pay... Every day. Mixed troops you really must have: Vaegir Archers and Marksmen for fire support, Heavy Infantry Nords in mail to make it up the ladders in sieges. If you must have a costly heavy cavalry force, use it only for open field encounters. And make it worth the monetary effort.

This in particular has really helped my castle out. Even with much better troops they definitely seem more reluctant to slaughter me.  I also didn't realise how absolutely epic Nord Huscarls are. You know when you happily defeat a 100 man siege attack with 16 losses that they're pretty good troops

Thanks for all the advice guys, things finally seem to be getting easier now that I have a foothold to attack from...until the next 9000 man army shows up, anyway 

 

[Fuscus]

I think I often encounter mountain bandits around the mountain to the east of Dhirim.

 

[Zaranthan]

That's where they spawn.  If you start a new game and hit Ctrl+T, you'll see gaggles of bandits around their spawns.