How to move on from first castle?

[Nameless One]

Started as Adenian. Got lucky on day 13 and ran into Senuzgda Castle in the middle of Swadian territory which had just been captured by Nords and left with 30-men garrison. Took the castle and now I have a kingdom. Swadia declared war during the next day. Defeated 5 Swadian lords who tried to loot my village. Swadia collapsing.

My castle is close to Forest Bandit spawning point so it is not bad for farming them. I leave the top tier foot troops in the castle and take cavalry and foot troops that need training with me. Now I have like 180 top tier foot troops in the castle (around 60 of them being Forest/Mountain/Sea bandits) and 96 troops in my party consisting of companions and top tier cavalry. How do I move on from here? It's day 78 and all I've been doing those two months is earning for wages and trying to build some improvements in my castle and the associated village. My troops cost 9000 per week. I can't afford to gather enough money to build a stable (4500), much less to hire a decent mercenary company (7500).

As an experiment, I tried to hire an average, maximum-size Black Army melee infantry company and attack a castle or a city. I put the cavalry in my castle, filled my party with best foot troops available and created another regiment with around 50 foot troops from the castle. My troops, numbering around 200, were crushed by 300 defenders of Praven with 100 of them still remaining. I killed 10-15 defenders on each assault but it didn't help much..

Next, I tried to hire the mercs again and attack Ryibelet Castle. Decided to go for auto-resolve since it is a siege tower attack. It succeeded with around 50% losses on my side but I was out of money and the next day was the pay day

What should I do? I can't seem to gather 16500 denars so that I can both hire mercs and pay wages for my troops
I can go killing bandits like this forever but I don't think it will help me defeat the invasion.

 

[damnimbored25]

Well get a town and dictate laws favoring your economy.
BTW you pay like 250 denars to support your castle so you don't survive whit just one village.

 

[Azn_soul]

My strategy is to storm a defensible castle like chalbeak castle then reinforce it for a month, after that i invade and take town then i abandon castle or keep it if i got enough men. Towns produce more income as damnimbored25 has said before, that and you can gamble with your money. i usually load my town with artillery troops to keep the besiegers busy.

 

[Nameless One]

Well, I decided to continue the game where I got the castle. I didn't have the money to pay all the wages but by the next pay day I got enoug to start building stables. Now I've got 2 villages, 2 well-defended castles and a vassal. How many troops do you suggest for storming a town with 300 defenders? The only targets close to my castles are Praven and Suno, no more castles, and I don't feel like starting a war against Rhodoks.

 

[Nameless One]

By the way, how do I get the taxes from my villages? I don't remember getting any when I visited them. Are the subtracted from the wages?

What about the garrisons of the castles I grant to my vassals? Do I still have to pay upkeep for them? Will the vassals garrison their castles on their own? I see I can still manipulate the garrison and construction by entering the vassal's castle.

 

[damnimbored25]

Hmmm enact laws in the camp menu, you don't have to visit your villages for the taxes, now a summary Pops up at the end of the week and I believe they pass to be soldiers of that lord.

 

[Grönstenätare]

Yes, taxes are subtracted from wages.

Yes, lords pay for their own garrison, you can still give them a larger force either as a garrison or to them personally. They tend to use them as they see fit. You can also build things for him, while he does not need the barracks and whatnot, the blacksmith will reduce his cost of maintianing the castle and various village improvements can increase his income.

What I usually do is to take a castle close to a neutral town and to sea raiders, but forest/mountain bandits work too. Close to a town is only going to reduce the time spent running back and forth with prisoners and selling goods.

You can make a castle break even with the village, or even generate a couple of 100 dn. But the greatest income is from fighting. A companion with high looting/trade skill is useful, keeping your party small is another way to reduce costs and increase loot gained.  Prisoners are too few to make a key difference as Adenian, but they're still a small income.

There are different ways to proceed from your first castle. Assuming you dont' want to sacrifice it and run around the world trading your way to wealth before taking another one you can either go about capturing a few more castles in order to get more lords which you can use for your initial assault.This was not an option in your case unless you want to overextend yourself so you've got to save up money for a town.

Mercenaries are expensive, but you can get a bunch of them quickly. Hire them for a month once you've decided to attack.

Adenians have shielded Infantry and archers, thus can make use of their cheaper troops rather than the mercenaries.
Garrison a force of your best foot troops, as many as you can keep in your party at any given time and then some spares. about 4:1 archers:infantry is my prefered mix.

Gather money by fighting bandits or enemy lords, caravans, whatever, with a smaller force of your elite cav.

Gather pesants and pile up the leveled but not yet upgraded Pesant*s in your castle, this allows you to instantly upgrade them to regulars to defend the castle and to fill out the ranks as cannon fodder instead of mercenaries in conjunction with the elites once you decide to besiege. I don't recall the total cost of wages+feefor the mercs, but you can pile up quite a few Pesant*s for a long time before it's more economical for just hiring the mercenaries for a month.

The basic idea is to have your infantry hold ground and take some of the arrows from the defenders while your archers kill off the defenders. If you don't feel it's a gamey mechanism, you can retreat and resiege once your archers run out of arrows.

How much you need of each depends on the town you intend to take. I've not fought alot around Praven and Suno myself, so I can't tell.

If you can, learn how to use a bow, or at least a crossbow and spend your time sniping enemies with your archers.
You can kill well over half their force if you've got the skill and can scavange projectiles from your dead archers.

 

[Nameless One]

Sniping the defenders is a good tactics I've used before, but in case of Praven it didn't quite work. The walls are so tall and there is no high ground so my archers don't have the line of sight to the enemies. Basically, they just stand in front of the ladders doing nothing while my infantry gets killed. I don't know if it's the same with other towns. I'll have to try Suno some time soon.

 

[Azn_soul]

Yep i agree with all their advice, as long as you don't edit the siege scene like i do then you should be fine with praven(my praven siege scene is a full city map now with double defense line, full crossbow defense 2 high towers that you have to manually storm that and you have to attempt to pass the first gate first but i put a large spawn point there so troops are playing push back and forth) it make the siege scene nearly impossible since the crossbow men have the best area to kill you but then again challenges are funnier that way wouldn't you agree?

Factors that must be considered during taking castles(this applied to real life warfare and it also applies to M&B since it has about 70% realism)

1. What location will i take next? this question is probably the best thing to ask you after you first acquire your first fief either by conquest or by proclaiming loyalty to either king or pretenders,

2. Is the location ive taken defensible against a mid size army? (consider a lord with atleast 100 men) This is possibly the most important question you should be asking yourself, the defensibility of the surrounding lands and castle/town. Will it let you utilize certain strategy such as raiding, hit and run, conquest, diplomatic defense, and patrolling(assuming you got mercs)

3. Can this land of mine prosper in my kingdom? Prosperity in the game although doesn't always increase taxes but it shows you the answer to, do i get a stable tax from my land? If your village is smack dab in the center of enemy territory then it probably get raided every second day, destroying taxes.

4. Is the terrain suitable for my army? As the saying goes "the one with the upper hand is usually the one who chooses the battlefield" Terran is important half the time, if you got a full cavalry army or major in cavalry you wouldn't want a mountain terrain, completely destroying your advantage.

5.Is the town im taking a ladder defense or siege tower defense, is it behind mountains/rivers or on open field? this is important as mountains and water produces a natural barrier from invading forces. Siege tower battles are slow and defensible but only archers gain advantage here, ladder sieges gain advantage majorly in infantry assault and defense.

 

[Lord MIelos]

what i useally do is bringing an ally lord with me let the lord of the castle/town fight him and siege the castle/town
then when your done u help your lord since no time passes

 

[Uhtred of Bebbanburg]

First thing is to ditch the mercenaries.  They are too expensive to be sustainable by a fledgling economy.

Second is to garrison most of your horse troops.  If you have your companions on horse and have 10 of them with you that is enough to take on much larger forest bandit groups. 

Third is to arm your companions with blunt weapons like the Flanged Mace and capture some Zerrikanian Reapers and Harvesters.  Then use those guys to capture some refugee troops (deserters) like the Villianese, Marinian, and Adenian, and keep them in a regiment until it's time to use them in battle.  Then start to recruit them and train them up when you want to take a city.

Taking a city is not that hard. You need at least two-thirds of your army to be archers and they should be at the top of your cue.  I just took Yalen with 500 men in it with 214 troops.  The current character I'm playing doesn't even use a bow so I wasn't a major force in this battle.  Let your archers loose all their arrows then send them up the ladder to be killed. Most will be knocked out and when new troops spawn recall the archers so the new archers can fire all their arrows. Keep your infantry up close to the walls where they won't take any arrow hits. This is especially important if you are using Marinians with no shield.

Calradrian units cost more than your home troops and Mercenary units cost twice as much. If you put any troops in regiments the price doubles so it's only a good idea for short periods.

You don't need 200 men in a castle as a garrison. You need only 10 and then take the rest and capture a city and continue to do that.

Remember the old Holy Roman Empire saying, "He who defends everything defends nothing".  No matter how many troops you put in a castle the enemy will always bring enough to take that castle. So if you have 500 they will bring more.  Better to let them think they only need 100 and then show up with 200 to take them out.+

Finally, try going to war against the Black Army.  They drop mad loot. Take out one army and you will get about 40k denars in loot depending on loot level, inventory level, trade level, and town attitude towards you.  It's a great way to make that money you need to take a city.  And as I said on another thread, if you are using blunt weapon troops like Reapers you can put all your prisoners into a regiment of one soldier and let some bandits take it over. Then attack it again and get all the same loot again. Repeat it 100 times if you want.  So long as the prisoners are high enough in number to slow the army down the only problem you will have is selling all the loot.