I need tips and help for MB VC

[Ninjaman1277]

I have been playing MB VC longer than any other expansion,because it has way more content and i will continue playing it until MB 2 comes out.But i still have so many questions in order to make my gameplay even more better,so i am making this topic,because of that reason.
Here are the questions:

-What do i gain from relegions and how does my relation to the religion help me?I have read that building shrines or churches brings you more money,that as a pagan you can hire vikings and berserkers,you can do sacrifices that either brings you or lowers your morale,you can hire people easier that that are pagans in towns,and as a Christian you can get better relations with lords and can hire from monasterys and can also hire people better in christian towns.

-How do i make a forceful conversion and can i do it with pagan priests?

-What are special traits and what do they do?

-Is it better to have strong or inspiring trait?

-How much fiefs can you hold?

-How do i levy military?It says there is an order to do it when you go to kingdom options,but i can only do it when i go to my fief and i say i need to levy man.

-Can i put slaves to work in mines or quarrys?I always get the answer no when i ask.

-Where is the best place to sell slaves?I know there is a special place in north of Welsh,but i don't know if that place gives the highest offer.

-How much tributes do villages and forts and towns bring for kigndom and does it efect how much developed they are?

-Is it better to be feard or more loved?(Reputation wise.)

-What happens when your wife gives birth to your child and do they grow up?

-What does scriptorium do,excluding the fact that brings you more money?

-What does your tortureor do in your prison?

-What are the best formations and battle tactics?

-What happens when you become the king of Norse land,the chronicleor quest?

-What happens with each option when you besiege the town and build checkpoints?(Options like posion the water or burn the stockpile).

I know there are a lot of questions here,but thats probably because the game is so huge and with lot of content and  these are the questions that are very essential to me and i would really appriciate if you can answer them.Thank you for reading.

 

[Ryantheskinny]

They disabled the ability to put your own slaves to work.
And best battle formation imho is shieldwall. As for tactics I use this:
Put your skirmishers in the center and Infantry on one flank, spear on the other and smash the enemy between them like an hammer and anvil, with the skirmishers retreating to not take heavy losses

 

[Roccoflipside]

I'll try to answer as many as I can. If I don't know, I'll say

1: I never really bothered much w/ religion, it didn't seem to affect very much. I believe choosing one religion over the other gives you a boost w/ characters of the same religion, but it mostly comes into play w/ morale. A Christian lord w/ an army of pagans will have low morale, and same vice versa.

2: I don't think priests can be forcefully converted, but I will discuss this later when it comes to torturing.

3: There are 3 (iirc) special traits, and you can activate them during battle for several bonuses. You can gain a berserk ability, a couple of warcrys, and a shield taunt. The berserk is pretty lame as it doesn't last very long, is followed by a long period of decreased movement/str, and only affects the player, while others give bonuses to friendly troops or take away from the enemy (I believe the shield taunt can also cancel any warcrys etc. the enemy uses).

4: This kind of ties into what I was talking about above, I believe strong gives you berserk, which is the lamest. My fav, irrc, was when I made sure all my companions had good weapons and armor, gave me the shield taunt which seemed the best one to me.

5: I don't think there's a hard limit on this, rather it's dependent on how many fiefs you can control. If you're the king, you could give all the fiefs to yourself, but you'd probably lose all your lords, and then won't be able to defend your kingdom. If you're not the king, obviously you're dependent on the king to grant you the fief. You can increase the odds of being granted the fief by starting the siege.

6: Iirc, this was moved from Kingdom management to fief management to allow non-king style players to use this feature. I never really made much use of this feature, as the troops gained didn't really have much of a benefit considering that dropped the amt. of money received from the fief. Seems better to me to let the farmers stay in the field so you can pay a professional army to stay in the other kind of field.

7: Ryan is correct about that. I believe that made it too easy to get money, as you could just gather a large group of slaves and have them work the mines/etc. a bunch of times, and you don't have to do anything.

8: I believe there's a place to the west of Scuin in Albany, called the Stone Row or something, which iirc pays the most for captured slaves. However, I don't think it was really enough of a difference to make it worth travelling all the way there if you aren't already near it. Also, selling to quarry masters/etc. is not worth it, they give almost nothing for even top-tier troops.

9: The order, from least profitable to most profitable, is village, fort, town, although that's probably known to just about everyone by now. The amt. of money received is definitely affected by the buildings in said fief, such as cowpens for the village, and market/slave trader for the town. Also, certain buildings affect the fief's prosperity, which is a general over-all of how the people living in the fief are doing. Higher prosperity = more cash, and vice versa.

10: Dependent on how you want to play. Being a bandit, obviously feared is probably better, while a lord could potentially be either. For a king, probably better to be loved than feared, but I could also see a scary king as a benefit in certain cases.

11: Nothing. You get an extra dialogue option, which is all of three sentences, when speaking to your wife.

12: The scriptorium is a building which raises the prosperity of a town through education, as well as the town's loyalty to you. It is one of the best buildings to build, and I would recommend building them as often as possible.

13: The torturer allows you to torture prisoners of noble birth, enemy lords, in order to force them into certain dialogue chains, i.e. join faction, give fief, etc. I'm not entirely sure, but you may also be able to force them to convert through this mechanism. However, every time you use the torturer, I believe there is a significant hit to renown etc.

14: I always like to have spearmen out front in a shieldwall, inf. behind in either shield wall or wedge, followed by skirmishers, archers, and in the very back whatever cav I have. Spearmen and inf hold fire, drawing the enemy in, or marching almost all the way up depending on what the opponent does, before I allow the spearmen to throw their javs just before charging or receiving a charge. After the spearmen have halted, send in the inf while leading the cav around behind to hammer them from behind/sides (usually targeting the giant line of skirmishers/archers that's just standing there). Once the enemy has broken, I allow the inf to throw their javs to wipe out the runners. This tactic has been very useful for me, although occasionally it needs modifying if I'm fighting a multi-round battle.

15: Not sure, after a bunch of playthroughs I still have yet to unify Ireland, where I always start  . I tend to get into a war w/ Northumbria, and then can't get out... lol.

16: I usually choose the burn supplies, as a success there can cut the enemy's food supplies by up to 80%, meaning a 7-day siege just became a 2-day siege. If you've never taken a castle by siege, it is the best way imo, as long as you have plenty of food and morale. Eventually, after the defenders have run out of food, they will sally out to try to break the siege, leaving their nice fortifications behind and running at you with no tactics or anything. I think they may also have subtractions to their stats as well, but I'm not sure. Basically I just form my men up and let the enemy run right into a spearwall.

I hope these helped.

Edit: accidentally hit post after number 4 or something 

 

[Ninjaman1277]

Thx for reply,helped a lot,but for 2),I meant to ask how do you do a forceful converison and can you convert people with pagan priests.

 

[xdj1nn]

I'll try to answer as many as I can. If I don't know, I'll say

1: I never really bothered much w/ religion, it didn't seem to affect very much. I believe choosing one religion over the other gives you a boost w/ characters of the same religion, but it mostly comes into play w/ morale. A Christian lord w/ an army of pagans will have low morale, and same vice versa.

2: I don't think priests can be forcefully converted, but I will discuss this later when it comes to torturing.

3: There are 3 (iirc) special traits, and you can activate them during battle for several bonuses. You can gain a berserk ability, a couple of warcrys, and a shield taunt. The berserk is pretty lame as it doesn't last very long, is followed by a long period of decreased movement/str, and only affects the player, while others give bonuses to friendly troops or take away from the enemy (I believe the shield taunt can also cancel any warcrys etc. the enemy uses).

4: This kind of ties into what I was talking about above, I believe strong gives you berserk, which is the lamest. My fav, irrc, was when I made sure all my companions had good weapons and armor, gave me the shield taunt which seemed the best one to me.

5: I don't think there's a hard limit on this, rather it's dependent on how many fiefs you can control. If you're the king, you could give all the fiefs to yourself, but you'd probably lose all your lords, and then won't be able to defend your kingdom. If you're not the king, obviously you're dependent on the king to grant you the fief. You can increase the odds of being granted the fief by starting the siege.

6: Iirc, this was moved from Kingdom management to fief management to allow non-king style players to use this feature. I never really made much use of this feature, as the troops gained didn't really have much of a benefit considering that dropped the amt. of money received from the fief. Seems better to me to let the farmers stay in the field so you can pay a professional army to stay in the other kind of field.

7: Ryan is correct about that. I believe that made it too easy to get money, as you could just gather a large group of slaves and have them work the mines/etc. a bunch of times, and you don't have to do anything.

8: I believe there's a place to the west of Scuin in Albany, called the Stone Row or something, which iirc pays the most for captured slaves. However, I don't think it was really enough of a difference to make it worth travelling all the way there if you aren't already near it. Also, selling to quarry masters/etc. is not worth it, they give almost nothing for even top-tier troops.

9: The order, from least profitable to most profitable, is village, fort, town, although that's probably known to just about everyone by now. The amt. of money received is definitely affected by the buildings in said fief, such as cowpens for the village, and market/slave trader for the town. Also, certain buildings affect the fief's prosperity, which is a general over-all of how the people living in the fief are doing. Higher prosperity = more cash, and vice versa.

10: Dependent on how you want to play. Being a bandit, obviously feared is probably better, while a lord could potentially be either. For a king, probably better to be loved than feared, but I could also see a scary king as a benefit in certain cases.

11: Nothing. You get an extra dialogue option, which is all of three sentences, when speaking to your wife.

12: The scriptorium is a building which raises the prosperity of a town through education, as well as the town's loyalty to you. It is one of the best buildings to build, and I would recommend building them as often as possible.

13: The torturer allows you to torture prisoners of noble birth, enemy lords, in order to force them into certain dialogue chains, i.e. join faction, give fief, etc. I'm not entirely sure, but you may also be able to force them to convert through this mechanism. However, every time you use the torturer, I believe there is a significant hit to renown etc.

14: I always like to have spearmen out front in a shieldwall, inf. behind in either shield wall or wedge, followed by skirmishers, archers, and in the very back whatever cav I have. Spearmen and inf hold fire, drawing the enemy in, or marching almost all the way up depending on what the opponent does, before I allow the spearmen to throw their javs just before charging or receiving a charge. After the spearmen have halted, send in the inf while leading the cav around behind to hammer them from behind/sides (usually targeting the giant line of skirmishers/archers that's just standing there). Once the enemy has broken, I allow the inf to throw their javs to wipe out the runners. This tactic has been very useful for me, although occasionally it needs modifying if I'm fighting a multi-round battle.

15: Not sure, after a bunch of playthroughs I still have yet to unify Ireland, where I always start  . I tend to get into a war w/ Northumbria, and then can't get out... lol.

16: I usually choose the burn supplies, as a success there can cut the enemy's food supplies by up to 80%, meaning a 7-day siege just became a 2-day siege. If you've never taken a castle by siege, it is the best way imo, as long as you have plenty of food and morale. Eventually, after the defenders have run out of food, they will sally out to try to break the siege, leaving their nice fortifications behind and running at you with no tactics or anything. I think they may also have subtractions to their stats as well, but I'm not sure. Basically I just form my men up and let the enemy run right into a spearwall.

I hope these helped.

Edit: accidentally hit post after number 4 or something 

Mostly accurate answers, I'll correct you on a few though.

You can have a son, and there's even a troop named "Son" and "Daughter", but I think you need to wait many in-game years for them to spawn, so i've never really cared to do it, at that point you may as well have unified the whole map and be just sitting on wait for the useless npc to spawn...

The torturer does unlock interesting dialogue lines but imho it's glitched and doesn't work properly, most of the time all you get from it is negative hits to both relations and reputation for no reason or useful effect at all...

Unifying lands is sort of a waste of time, it gives you a special trophy (like battle ones) that gives you a one time amount of gold and large amount of EXP, but by the time you are able to unify said places in a linear border, you don't need it, and it doesn't help you in any way. It's just a completionist thing, or a mechanic to exploit early game. (you only really need the towns to "unify the land" so, border gore can be done to quickly cash in the rewards from said trophies)

Sieges aren't all that good imo, you can conquer without fighting, but it tends to be so much more difficult with all the random events, and so much more costly... If I have 12+ surgery on the party, I actually get more losses from the mini-events in sieges than actually fighting, even when massively outnumbered or even out-classed... Imo they are only really worth it if you have mostly trash units in your army, with sheer amounts, 300+ minimum so you can take all sieging actions (burn crops, make checkpoints, send infiltrators, find traitors, etc.)
And as I do tend to favor quality over quantity, I usually roll with an army of 150 less elite units, and when doing so I never EVER besiege towns, I only invade by sea with ships to avoid said non-sensical losses from the mini-events... Main reason why I've never cared to unify the whole map, I mean, I prefer to be able to raid coast towns instead of losing my beloved units for no reason. So usually I just RP something and leave to that, once I've reached the planned goal I quit.

 

[kalarhan]

You can have a son, and there's even a troop named "Son" and "Daughter", but I think you need to wait many in-game years for them to spawn, so i've never really cared to do it, at that point you may as well have unified the whole map and be just sitting on wait for the useless npc to spawn...

nope, it is just a RP thingy and you wont get troops. RP is quite a important aspect of the game, just like the history based aspects of it.

The torturer does unlock interesting dialogue lines but imho it's glitched and doesn't work properly, most of the time all you get from it is negative hits to both relations and reputation for no reason or useful effect at all...

you can get several interesting options like forcing a lord to pay you ransom to be released (in small payments), forcing a lord to give permission to marry his kid, forcing a noble to divorce (so you can go and marry his wife), and so on. But it is a hard game and the better options are harder to get the good results, so you need to try and learn how to balance it.

Unifying lands is sort of a waste of time

it is a quest, so it works as any quests. You do a mission and get a small reward. The value of it is depending on the RP aspect of each player. Do you want to be the next Brytenwalda? Unify XXX nation? there are a few quests for that. It also works for replayability on different campaigns.

Sieges aren't all that good im

Sieges are hard. You have more troops on a VC battle than Native, multiple entry points in some forts, strong short range weapons like javelins, weak in general long range weapons like bows, lots of shields, ... it plays a lot different than Native sieges

You also have a interesting simulation of world events for a siege, so it is not stay there for a few days sleeping and then charge in. It involves real risk and you are required to make a lot of hard decisions.

There is even the option of starving the enemy (takes some time) and forcing them out of the fort on sally attacks or just a total surrender.

In all siege mechanics in VC are quite more complex than Native and one needs to try them to learn how to best make use of them.

 

[xdj1nn]

makes sense, although there IS the "Son" "Daughter" NPCs in the troop files

Siege mini-events are not something to learn, it's mostly rng based upon numbers. That's why I've said that having a massive trash unit army makes for the best strategy to "starve" enemies and win by surrender. Yet, assaults also succumb to RNG and you lose many units, preferably (by my experience) your best units will die at random... Imo it's a waste of time, so you game the game...

 

[kalarhan]

makes sense, although there IS the "Son" "Daughter" NPCs in the troop files

where?

on gameplay: people play games on all sorts of ways. Some like to min-max and find how to exploit game mechanics, others just to relax and let things happen, while others play with hardcore RP and house rules. There is no right or wrong way here.

Siege mechanics try to simulate a more historical approach to sieges. How players react to those mechanics is up to them.

 

[Roccoflipside]

I find the Vc sieges are incredibly improved to native. I enjoy all the random events, and while sometimes it does seem to be rng, there are ways to figure out which hooves will be more likely to succeed.

 

[xdj1nn]

makes sense, although there IS the "Son" "Daughter" NPCs in the troop files

where?

on gameplay: people play games on all sorts of ways. Some like to min-max and find how to exploit game mechanics, others just to relax and let things happen, while others play with hardcore RP and house rules. There is no right or wrong way here.

Siege mechanics try to simulate a more historical approach to sieges. How players react to those mechanics is up to them.

Just open Morghs and look at the troops list, easier to find. Or simply open the Troops.txt and CTRL+F son and you'll find it. Idk if it's used, never tested, but it is there...

 

[kalarhan]

Just open Morghs and look at the troops list, easier to find. Or simply open the Troops.txt and CTRL+F son and you'll find it. Idk if it's used, never tested, but it is there...

nope, you must be thinking about some mod then. There are "nino" and "nina" troops on VC DLC files, but they are not player's kids, they are the random children that spawn in villages/towns.

 

[xdj1nn]

Just open Morghs and look at the troops list, easier to find. Or simply open the Troops.txt and CTRL+F son and you'll find it. Idk if it's used, never tested, but it is there...

nope, you must be thinking about some mod then. There are "nino" and "nina" troops on VC DLC files, but they are not player's kids, they are the random children that spawn in villages/towns.

sad story bro, we are sterile in-game 

 

[kalarhan]

we are sterile in-game

there is a mechanic to have kids, which include minor bonus like morale buff when a son is born. But the game is played in days/months, not years/decades, so it is to be expected your kids wont grow up to be adults and be used in stuff like combat.