Max difficulty tips

[AlphaOmega]

Thanks , my only problem though seems to be the D'shar and Fierdsvain because they can have 3500 soldiers in their armies and it's hard to defend a castle/town without spending too much money on my garrison costs. Also the Ravenstern has been wiped out so I'm not able to recruit any of their units in my current save game anymore, as I have the silvermist rangers' order in my only castle I don't want to change my culture, because I want to have the possibility to upgrade my Pendor Gray Archers to Silvermist Rangers. (current party capacity: 242)

Well, you only need 200-300 elite troops for the actual battle, and the rest can be farmers and recruits for the numbers. At party size 242, you won't have speed issues I think, to get to any siege defense in time.

So, time to get your hands on 1 denar/week troops. If it matters to you, "town militia" are among the best 1-denar troops.

But don't laugh it off, I DID have a close siege once, where my last peasants were facing off recruits. I was thankful for every 1-denar militia I had, instead of a peasant woman.

I thought the town militia were more then 1 denar?  I might start upgrading farmers to them instead of pendor recruits like I have been then.  They at least get some armor and weapons

 

[zykox]

Yes, sorry, I was half-right/half-wrong. 

It's the "Militia Recruit", 1 tier before "Town Militiaman", who is 3 dnrs/week at LD10.

But if you want to go with factions, all factions' "___ militia" (or Empire Levy Recruits, but NOT Pendor recruits or D'Shar Tribesmen) are 1dnr/week. 

I mentioned "Militia Recruit" because they're neutral, but they're actually not easy to find and hire, I'm afraid, so scrap my suggestion. "Bandits" however are 1 dnr/week at LD10 (or a bit lower too I think) and are in abundance, though not upgradable.
.......................
But hey, don't beat yourself up over 1dnr troops...I was half-joking  . You should try to not rely on these guys in sieges, even against other 1dnr troops.

 

[Filou]

I really like Brigands as low-level troops filler. They always get a ranged weapon, and most importantly they are at the top of their troop-tree so they don't upgrade and mess up your finances/troop composition.
Not a 1d troop, but with Leadership and the half-price of garrison factored in they're still very cheap.

 

[Knight of calradia]

How about the order rank points as I have 20 of them or so ?, and as you may not know my leadership is only 7 so are there any other methods to afford my costly garrisons when our kingdom is in truce ?

 

[zykox]

How about the order rank points as I have 20 of them or so ?, and as you may not know my leadership is only 7 so are there any other methods to afford my costly garrisons when our kingdom is in truce ?

Leadership 7 is already pretty much.

There is a thread on how to make money or save money:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,326944.0.html

 

[Knight of calradia]

How about the order rank points as I have 20 of them or so ?, and as you may not know my leadership is only 7 so are there any other methods to afford my costly garrisons when our kingdom is in truce ?

Leadership 7 is already pretty much.

There is a thread on how to make money or save money:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,326944.0.html

I've read it through, but I have already very nice relationships with everyone so the only downside is that we are constantly at war.

 

[AlphaOmega]

The only sure fire way is to just not have a costly garrison.  You could also farm Heretics/Snakes for loot none stop during peace, since their relationship can't go positive you can't make them friendly to stop killing your things

 

[zykox]

If everyone is at war, and you're at war with 2-3 factions, it's best to have a large top-tier troop army and ask for protection money from caravans.

With 400-500 party size, you should be getting some 5000 denars for every caravan, so you will have your weekly costs covered with only 2 caravans.

Note, that only non-ko'ed troops and companions count (values from auto-calc are used), as well as whether the caravan will have friendly troops (other caravans or lords) nearby, cutting the total cost of protection money you can ask for.

You can even go for "neutral" caravans, as it will only be a -1 relation, and at -10 (not 100%), you won't lose relation anymore for asking protection money from caravans.

 

[Alavaria]

Protection money is a decent little bit of change.

 

[Knight of calradia]

Actually, it doesn't work very well because there are two major factions which have only one town and they cannot send out very many caravans..., also my leadership happens to be 8 so correction to that.

 

[Alavaria]

You really should be owning lords and jailing them or converting them rather than chasing caravans...but sometimes you just happen across one