I'm having a rough start, any tips?

[BogdanM]

First of all a big thank you to Docm30 and all the other contributors for creating such a masterpiece! I had a huge smile the entire time I played the mod, so they are certainly on the right track!

While I'm aware I probably should have gave it another try before posting, I'm kind of lacking ideas how to do it differently. So my problem was that after playing for about 2 hours, I've made very little progress into the game. I started a game in France, did the first couple of missions, then I met a recruiter and enlisted in the army. Then I recruited about 20 riflemen (from villages) and started looking for deserters and highwaymen to fight, but after searching the map for 30 min, I only encountered 3 enemy groups. Eventually I ran out of money and food, I had to pick up a mission from a village (training the peasants and fighting off the bandits) and lost a lot of morale in the meantime.

I'm eager to start again but I don't know what to do differently. Since you don't have any money at the beginning, trading items between town is not really a solution. How can I get a decent stream of money so I launch my military career? I'm a bit rusty at M&B, haven't played the game in over a year so I might have forgotten how to play the game.

 

[shaelor]

There is always lots of bandits in Denmark as well as quite a lot around in Russia.

 

[B.Achraf]

Start in France, do the first mission and enlist, with the money you get recruit as much as you can and save up for like 6 bread/smoked fish.
Then go right into enemy territory (most likely Austria) and loot remote villages, sell the goods at the nearby neutral towns and maybe get some recruits from Prussia/Italy. Rinse and repeat.
Once you get some money you can become less aggressive and start a trade route (I'll let you discover what to sell where)

Have fun

 

[BogdanM]

Start in France, do the first mission and enlist, with the money you get recruit as much as you can and save up for like 6 bread/smoked fish.
Then go right into enemy territory (most likely Austria) and loot remote villages, sell the goods at the nearby neutral towns and maybe get some recruits from Prussia/Italy. Rinse and repeat.
Once you get some money you can become less aggressive and start a trade route (I'll let you discover what to sell where)

Have fun

Thanks! I was kind of reluctant to cross into enemy territory, since my extremely untrained troops couldn't even fight off a patrol. But I guess I could raid some villages and hope there's no royal around to teach me a lesson for messing with his peeps. Too bad Freelancer is not included in the mod, it would offer an alternative to to trading and raiding early in the game.

 

[iCod43]

The best way in mount and blade to make money, no matter what module you're playing, is to loot & burn cities, and sell the loot in towns/villages. Whenever you loot a village, you get many valuables, such as raw silk, salt, wool, wine, pottery, etc, which is worth a lot of gold. You also got tons of food. I'm talking about 9-14 slots of delicious cheese, bread, meat, whatever you name! You can sell all of it at towns, and make a pretty huge profit from only a few villages. On the bad side, however, you will be at war with the faction, and while looting, you cannot move, so an enemy lord or patrol may attack you, and ruin your day. But hey, who said quick cash was easy cash?

Before the L'aigle patch of 1.1, this gave you a **** ton of money, but Docm30 has patched this in that patch. Still though, you make quite a lot of coin (about 1,500-3000 gold a village,)

Since you joined France (And may as well do it again) You should start off being at war with Britain and Russia, two good nations to loot villages in. Start off by recruiting half line infantry and half heavy cav/line cav. Recruit all you can, use all the money, since you don't lose money at the end of the week. You should have around 20 troops.
Now you have the choose. If you want to loot some British villages (I don't recommended this with only 20 men, i'll explain later) head up into Ireland, since their cities are very spread out. Loot one or two (depending on Inventory Management skill) and rush back home. I don't recommend this at first because if you get caught, you're pretty much screwed. It's very difficult to get out of the British Isles once you're in...

If you go into Russia, which is also nice, their cities are also very spread out. Loot one of the border ones next to Prussia (a quick getaway and towns are right there.) and sell the loot. Russia is also a much better option since you can safely move in and out of Russian territory very quickly, so it's a good idea to loot one village at a town, going in and out through Prussia and Russia, selling loot and looting villages.

Be careful though. With only around 20 guys, the villagers will come out and fight you. Now, if you only have infantry, you might as well just not even bother, since they will be destroyed by those peasants (strange huh?) This is due to the bugged melee system, which makes infantry pretty much useless when it comes to close-quarters combat. However, if you have cav, you will be saved. When the villagers start charging, move with your cav, and go around to their flank (behind them or to the side of them) Once the villagers engage, set the cav to charge, and just watch as the cav completely wreck those plebs, just as they should.

Anyway, after your first loot, you should have enough coin to recruit a lot more troops, which will in-turn make it much easier to loot villagers, which will make it easier to make more money, which will make your life a whole lot easier and your experience a whole lot more fun! After looting maybe a dozen villages, if even that, you will be set, with around 50 or so ranked up troops. You're now ready to take on the world! Fight a few enemy lords along with the other officers of your chosen faction, or hey, loot some more villages. Why not? The world is your oyster!

 

[BogdanM]

Thanks for all the tips guys, raiding seems like the best way to deal with my problem. I'll give it another go tomorrow morning.

EDIT: So the musket melee is bugged? That explains why my 30 infantrymen were bested by some bandits, I was saved by the peasants which I was supposed to protect. )

 

[Hysterion]

What i usually do is start in Britain, do all starter quests, then do a couple of quests for Arthur Wellesley and Gorge III, Arthur usually gives me a quest to collect taxes, in the end the payout is around 1600-1700.

When you are done with that, buy 6 stacks of grain, and around 40-50 soldiers of your choice(i usually go with light infantry then i either go full 95th, or light fusiliers).

Then finally go and attack any patrol you see, it doesn't matter which faction they are, you won't lose any relation with the factions. Repeat until you lvl them all up, by then you should have a **** ton of money and 50 elite soldiers. Don't forget to buy food, they eat like crazy.

 

[Vicboss]

Best way to make money is the arena fights. You start only making 100 francs a fight, but after about 20-30 fights every fight you do gives you 2000 francs. Make a little money then go companion hunting. You need a group of companions that don't hate each other, 3 is necessary any more is a plus but you absolutely need 3 companions and you want them to be low level. This is so you can mold them into a doctor, tactician, and scout respectively. Every time a companion levels increase their intelligence, even if they are not one of your main 3, this is so you can put more points into trainer, which makes it so you can level units just by waiting a day. Once you have your companions, equip them at the french military depot with cuirasses, cuirassier helmets, cavalry gloves, and a light officer sabre, buy horses from the market in town because right now those horses are better than the depot ones, go to England and in the military depot buy British infantry rifles(for some reason my companions equipped with carbines and swords on horswes could only use carbines, with rifles not an issue), also 95th rifleman pants (some reason French max pants armour is like +16, the 95th pants are  +20 or +25). Once everyone's decked out, start going from place to place doing arena fights. Use the fast travel. Kill any bandits and level yourself and your companions. Once you've done enough grinding, I like to get myself to around 22 and my 3 main companions to have 6's or 7's  in their important skills.

Just for clarity the increase in arena money is as follows, minus the info as to how many guys you have to beat to get to each level, as that I am unaware of.
1st level=100 francs
2nd= 350 francs
3rd= 750 francs
4th= 1000 francs
Final= 2000 francs

 

[Nopkar]

I run the trading game. Wine to Warsaw/salzburg/venezia is huge. don't sign with an army and run with 20-30 men and some food. after a dozen or so trips you've got like 10k on you and can go from there. all the above tips work well with this as you can sprinkle them in for extra money

 

[Mickeh]

I run the trading game. Wine to Warsaw/salzburg/venezia is huge. don't sign with an army and run with 20-30 men and some food. after a dozen or so trips you've got like 10k on you and can go from there. all the above tips work well with this as you can sprinkle them in for extra money

I trade every time when I start a new game. I often get around 40 men to protect myself from bandits. You can buy salt in Munchen, Frankfurt or perhaps Prag, from around 20 Francs to as low as 4 Francs, then sell them around Holland and Prussia(the Norther part) at as high as 70 or so Francs. For wine, Konigsberg sometimes offer wine at ~100 Francs and you can sell them around for 300-400 Francs. Buying wool at around 40 Francs and selling at Stuttgart for ~100Francs is also a good idea. It is one of the easiest and safest way to earn money as you can run from lords with that little men while protecting yourself from those petty bandits.

 

[Germanic Celt]

I'm also having a rough start, mainly because I get too distracted listening to the music, viewing the scenes and the near perfect map.

 

[Aposynth]

I started with a huge Trading Skill (+5 Trading!), as far as I remember, I chose child of a store owner or how its called, craftsman apprentice, engineering student, university student and money and power.
I wen't to a city, assessed prices and when they had much of the wares in store that I could sell elsewhere, I made like 2.000 francs atleast per trip. Of cause you need to get a little protection troop but you have the starting quests for that .
Once you have a little wealth, invest it into enterprises in as many Towns as you can, they let you build them even if you have 0 relation with them (dunno if it's a bug or working as intended).
You earn more money, you can invest more => after a while you get a ****load of money every week, even in native where you got to pay for your troops for yourself you would make a huge profit with that tactic and when you're at where with a country, it doesn't hurt that much because you got enterprises in every country

At the moment I make something about 20.000 francs per week (about 95% enterprises, remaing is rent).

To get a starting capital I recommend doing the arena fights, you can do them every 2nd day and once you reach World Championlevel, which happens very fast when you do the fights regulary, you earn 2.000 francs per won fight, so you can make 6.000 francs per week through the fighting.

And in your imagination now add looted stuff from raiding and so on => You're going to be Dagobert Duck, swimming in an ocean of coins in your huge safe building

 

[Lackay]

I dont even know how to join a faction of my choosing

 

[Seven of Spades]

Just go to the army recruiter on some cities or to the army liaison in the military depot of your country.

My advice is to not start in the country that you want to serve but in the country next to it, pick a "collect taxes" quest on a city and then run with the money on your pockets.

 

[Lackay]

iv gone to the army liaison, but nothing happens

 

[Niftyeye]

iv gone to the army liaison, but nothing happens

Walk around the streets of their capital city, there should be an army recruiter, walk up to him and sign up that way.

 

[Lackay]

iv gone to the army liaison, but nothing happens

Walk around the streets of their capital city, there should be an army recruiter, walk up to him and sign up that way.

all good now, for some reason, my past walks through the town of Wien there was no recruiter

 

[Niftyeye]

iv gone to the army liaison, but nothing happens

Walk around the streets of their capital city, there should be an army recruiter, walk up to him and sign up that way.

all good now, for some reason, my past walks through the town of Wien there was no recruiter

I have struggled a bit in certain cities too, I think its just the fact that its an early alpha release