I feel like i'm doing something wrong....

[Lord Bryggan]

I think garrisons (and AI battles) go by numbers, not quality, so just fill them up with recruits.  At half wages you can store a lot of recruits in a castle.

I survived my early warring by mercing out.  The pay was not near enough to cover expenses, but I could attack small sea raider parties and bandits and such with a place to run to if I ran into a party that was too too big.  Also I could join the lord's battles and take some of the loot as well as improving relations.  Of course, once peace was made, morale dropped quickly (I didn't want to lose the men I invested time in training) and I just about went broke until I got the 'start a war' quest.

By then I was fairly strong (50 or so men), and the new marshal was pretty inactive (kept chasing sieges, only to show up too late or to have nothing happen), so I broke my contract (my relations were good enough that I didn't get in too much trouble) and went to go help a claimant.  By then I had an almost entirely mounted group, so I could do hit and run tactics until I was big enough to have real battles and sieges etc.

So that's what I would do if I hadn't doneit already.

 

[dja_hel]

How bad is it when your village hates you with a passion? The reason I say this is because I want t otake Tevarin castle from the Khergits, but I have repeatedly raided the corresponding village. So if it happens that I do come to own Tevarin castle, will all that raiding hurt me?

 

[Lord Bryggan]

Well, everyone loves me, but when you take a castle and the village is 'indifferent' you go from 0 to +5.  I think you're only problem will be recruiting, but if you build a school the teachers will indoctinate the locals and the relations slowly go up.  Plus if you really want, you can do quests for the village elder, or hope they get infested with bandits and save them.