I just finished the mod (love it), on easy difficulty, I'm fairly new to Mount and Blade. So I'll throw in what I experienced for laughs, criticism or just to show possibilities. I went heavily into trading at first, after being captured a couple times,since this forum forewarned armies would be expensive. Oil,furs,iron, wool,tools,spice and especially SALT built up my finances. Then off to train up more Valkyries. Usually in mid to late game ran with 8-10 Valkyries,4-7 Lady Valkyries, 15 Noldor Rangers and 2-5 Noldor Knights. Usually on one round of the map at least one of the Valkyries would upgrade,they were getting in so many kills quickly.A very fun party to play,capable against most enemies except the big outsider armies, lots of wild action and now I can actually hit consistently from horseback at full speed with a saber.I really lucked out on the first 3 places my tight-fisted (Empire) king awarded me, Kennet Castle, AVENDOR and SARLEON. Mutually supporting so I got away with small garrisons that could increase quickly by stripping the other 2 if needed, and right in the center of the map. Ideal bases of operation.I didn't find the Lady Valkyries as hard to train as some have reported, I had 21 in garrison at end and had lost probably as many in the course of many, many hours play.The smaller the party I ran, the faster I could train up Valkyries, they were getting lots of kills. Also by prisoner rescue had maybe 20 Grey archers (never used),57 Noldor Rangers,37 Noldor Scouts, 23 Noldor Knights, all in garrison at end in Kennet Castle.Only had 3 cities,Izmir was the other, 4 castles and 7 villages. Had to raise big armies to assault cities, but the expense forced me to disband a lot,money was a constant problem as warned. The only trader I found that had a lot of cash didn't have any inventory room to buy, and I was too stupid to buy up some of his cheap stuff to make room to sell my expensive loot.
All of this probably shows how inexperienced I am, but I sure had fun, and learned a lot. Greatly looking forward to replaying and putting into practice "lessons learned". Next time, I'll concentrate even more on the financial, and to assault or defend cities and castles I sure don't want to waste any of those hard won or rescued elite troops that I use for traveling and fighting in the field. I about cried when I lost 2 Noldor Knight defending in a siege.Ditto with the Lady Valkyries.I only used the Ravenstern Rangers a couple times, they're good, but too many horses was getting in my way, "Hey,I want to kill something, too, you guys are all leaving me with nothing to fight".