My Best Game (Now with smaller images, so hopefully it will load.)

[blainedeyoung]

This is really only the second time I've carried the game all the way through to completion (officially wiping out every other faction).  The first time I had all the difficulty settings on hardest except the two damage controls that were on the medium setting.  So for years I've been planning to do it again on full 111% difficulty.  I've started (and gotten pretty far) a whole bunch of times, but then I decided I'd made some mistake (i.e. I got my skills or my companions' skills wrong or I pledged to a ruler too early) or I just got sidetracked.  But I finally did it, and I decided to make a kind of slide show to commemorate the occasion and catalog my progress.  And I thought I'd share it here. 

So what's so great about this game?  Well, lots of stuff...  Charge!

I gave up my heavy morningstar and use a balanced spiked mace (Enough Nord Veterans hit me with them to convince me it's a good weapon.), and my companions are all using 2-handed hammers and siege crossbows.  Since we're always mounted except for sieges, all our kills are prisoners.  That means money, money, money, and no skill points spent on power draw and no companions doing stupid horse archer stuff.  But I started doing that a long time ago.  All my companions (except Klethi, the looter) are frozen at 12 Str and Ag and put the rest of their points into Int, so by the end of the game I have 7 companions with 10 Trainer and all kinds of redundancies in party skills.  But I've done that before. 

I really prefer to play with a 15 Str and Ag, but I finally figured out that keeps me from starting my own kingdom until too late in the game.  So this time I stayed at 12 Str and Ag.  Then there's my skills.  I wanted to give myself Trainer too, but there are better ways of spending my skill points.  I wanted to take Inventory Management, but most of the loot you get isn't even worth carrying and certainly isn't worth your character's skill points.  You start with 30 inventory slots, and that's enough.

But mostly there's this:

隐藏

27 Lords.  And look at the relationships-

Don't bother counting.  That's 27 Lords at 100 relation.  That's because-

Which means I can do this-

Each of my Lords has 1 castle and 1 village.  I put them all in the bandit hotspots and kept the rest for myself.

I could have gotten a few more lords at the end of the game if I'd tried harder, but I had enough, I'd won, and I figured out what's the point.

So progression.  Here's how I started-

隐藏

At the beginning of day one.

And at the end. 

I spent a lot of time in the arena training which means I could afford to buy all this stuff.  Of course at the beginning of the game, you're a slave to what's available and what you can afford right now.  It's pure serendipity that I started in the city with the book merchant selling those two books.

Then, as always, I went off to become a tournament champion, gather my companions, and start the Ironworks in Curaw and then the dyeworks in Rivacheg as quickly as possible.  For that last I need to impress Meriga, so I take out the Sea Raider Landing.  When I run out of tournaments, I turn my eye toward bandit hunting.  My companions are weak as kittens, so I develop a force of khergit lancers who are fast, tough enough, and sometimes use blunt weapons.  I really want a force of slavers, so I start looking for them right away.  But they're not always easy to find, and they tend to die especially at low tiers.   

It's really a search for ransom brokers who are close enough to bandit lairs: Rivacheg, Uxhal, Veluca, Ichamur, Ahmerrad, or Durquba are the best cities.  Add Khudan to the list if the tundra bandit lair is near to it and not closer to Rivacheg which happens a lot.  Suno, Curaw, Yalen, Narra, and Tulga are also good cities, but ideally you want the ransom broker to be right next to the lair.  That way you can go back and forth, capturing bandits and selling them without wasting time traveling.  I find the bandit lairs and gauge how close they are to a city.  They can spawn right on top of the target city and that makes bandit harvesting easier.  So I find them and if they're far away, I take the destroy bandit lair quest and then move on.  Later I'll come back and check again.  I keep doing that until the lair spawns right near a city.  Then I leave them alone. 

I equip my companions with whatever I can take from bandits.  Tundra and mountain bandits use flanged maces which will do until they're strong enough to use mauls (which you can also get from mountain bandits) which give way to sledgehammers when they get to 12 Str.  Deshavi and Ymira get their Int up to 12, and 4 points in their party skills (Pathfinding and Spotting for Deshavi, First Aid and Tracking for Ymira but Tracking doesn't matter at the start of the game so put that off).  Everyone else puts every point into Str, so they can use better gear.  Jeremus's first few skill points go into Wound Treatment and First Aid, but his attribute points go into Str.  Then into Ag until it's 12.  Then every point goes into Int.

For a while, I never have more than 10,000 silvers because that's the price of dyeworks.  As soon as I get that much, I start another business.  As I build up money, I start buying armor for myself and my companions.  Sea raider chain shirts are the best you can get from bandits, and they're nice but Scale Mail is much better and it's cheap.  Especially Rusty Scale- about 2,500 silvers.  Remember a lot of really cheap stuff is almost as good or even just as good as the more expensive types.  Hardened leather gloves cost a quarter of what gauntlets do and get 5 points to the gauntlets' 6. 

When I've developed a team of professional bandit hunters and built an enterprise in every city (day 172), my guys look like this:

隐藏

The slavers are the force I've building up since day one.  I disbanded the khergits when the slaver force got strong enough.  The Swadians I've just taken on because as a vassal of Harlaus I'm going to fight real armies, and 30 slavers just won't do.  But 30 slavers and 30 swadian knights can take just about anything I'm going to have to take at this point.

Then the bandit hunters become army hunters.  Top tier troops are worth a lot more than bandits in loot and experience.  The tradeoff is that you have build a real army.  The little band I've been using up till now won't cut it anymore.

One hundred and eleven days of almost constant battling later (day 283), I'm ready to leave Harlaus's kingdom and start my own.  Now I've got all the books in the game read, and my companions are ready to whip some tail.  I've got a couple thousand troops garrisoned in the two cities I've already conquered.  And I can build a force tailored for each battle I have to fight.

隐藏

At the end of the game (day 540), I had three kings in my prison towers.  They stop ransoming the lords after their kingdoms fall. 

My companions are superhuman, the most skilled individuals in the realm.  Why they keep putting up with me- well, it must be love. 

隐藏

And in the end...

 

[bonez899]

Impressive.  Very nice to see your progress and how things went for your throughout your journey.

 

[NeverUseCavalry]

Awesome job.  I've personally never conquered Calradia because I always get bored with my game and want to try new builds for me or my companions.  I really want to get through a game though.  Do you have any advice?  My playstyle is a lot different than yours.  I could never build all my companions exactly the same.  I like doing some minor role play with my companions, like Alayen uses a Bardiche because he's Vaegir.  That sort of thing.

 

[blainedeyoung]

Impressive.  Very nice to see your progress and how things went for your throughout your journey.

Awesome job. 

Thanks, guys.

I've personally never conquered Calradia because I always get bored with my game and want to try new builds for me or my companions. 

I did that a bunch of times.

I really want to get through a game though.  Do you have any advice?  My playstyle is a lot different than yours.  I could never build all my companions exactly the same.  I like doing some minor role play with my companions, like Alayen uses a Bardiche because he's Vaegir.  That sort of thing.

Well, my companions being super-manhunters is really central to my game.  It's how I make money, and I haven't found any way to replace that in this game.  But I think probably the most important thing I've found is getting your main character a 27 Int and 10's in Tactics and Engineering (I also got 10 in Persuasion which you could probably do without, but don't go too low).  The 10 in Tactics really helps you take larger forces, and the 10 in Engineering cuts down the time between siege battles.  I mean it cuts it down a lot. 

The last game I had a companion with 10 Engineer and I had 2 (I put one point in and read the book), so my effective Engineer skill was 11.  Building a siege tower took two days, like 40 hours.  It made it a real problem to take those cities and castles because you have to have a large army there the whole time, so they're eating two whole days worth of food (and you're perishables: Beef, Chicken, and Pork are going bad) and the men's morale is going down.  You also can't get vassals to wait for two days to participate in a siege.  (You can get a few sometimes, but most of them will get distracted and run off.)

If your main character has a party skill, that means you get a +4 bonus.  So my effective Engineering skill was 14.  It took six hours to build siege towers instead of 40 (and less than an hour to build ladders).  That changes the whole scenario.  When you're waiting 2 days for the siege, you feel like you have to go through with it all at once.  So you get the biggest force you can (which means they eat a lot of food and their morale gets low), and you storm the walls.  What follows is invariably a blood bath.  You lose like 50 or 100 guys even with all top-tier men.  Then you fight a mission with only a few men in the city center and then again in the palace.  And those secondary fights are really, really hard because you're probably badly wounded, and you don't want to take your companions because they're wounded too.  That means you have to move huscarls up behind you in the march order and maybe your companions don't even spawn for the fight at the wall which robs them of experience points and robs you of your best fighters. 

There are a couple of good things about doing it that way: you don't have to kill every guy in the garrison which means it's over quicker, you're going to be victorious over a large force so you'll get renown (you get the same renown you got at the walls again in the city center and again at the palace, so sieges can actually be a really good source of renown), and you get loot and prisoners because you did this really big battle.  But with the 14 Engineering, you don't have to do it this way.

I took every town and castle in Calradia with 50 archers (usually rhodok sharpshooters, but for some of the campaign against the rhodoks their morale was too low so I used vaegir sharpshooters), 50 infantry (usually nord huscarls, but sometimes swadian sergeants; rhodok sergeants would probably be better but I always train rhodoks as sharpshooters), and 20 swadian knights (the purpose of the knights is in case I get attacked on the way to the siege and so I can immediately put them into the garrison after I take the city; I'd really rather not have them in the siege at all).  I got help from my vassals.  I have a system that works and don't need them, and they always bring low-tier troops which reduces the shock of the attack. 

The smaller force doesn't eat as much and doesn't have their morale go down as much and is faster and allows you to recruit freed prisoners into your army and is generally easier to manage.  In the marching order, I put my companions in front then the archers then the infantry then my knights; I build the ladder or siege tower; then I ordered my men to hold in front of the walls- a line of infantry first, my knights behind (often none spawned), archers behind, and then my companions; let everybody fire until my companions were exhausted (they all have two large packs of steel bolts so it took a while; I had a bow with only one ammo pack, so I had to pick up ammo off the ground (you really want a shield in situations like this, and sometimes they come down the ladders at you so it's also advisable to have a weapon); if everyone was using crossbows, I picked up a crossbow after my quiver was empty); then retreated; then did it again.  When I was sure there were only a few defenders left, I let everyone charge.  That way, I took cities with 350 defenders and lost 10 men.  Seriously. 

The fact that I had an effective 11 Surgery helped, but not charging the walls until there's nobody defending them saves lives- lots of them.  Retreating over and over means you don't get any renown, you end up with nothing for loot or prisoners, but in the end you killed every man in the garrison so you and your companions get more experience and higher bow/crossbow skills.  Some places, places that have never been attacked will be stacked with top-tier troops and they're much harder to take.  Sometimes (probably 3 or 4 times in the whole game), I exhausted my force (everybody wounded) and had to go back to get fresh men, but I never found it necessary to increase the size of my army. 

If you don't know about that, it's the best advice I can give you.

 

[NeverUseCavalry]

Impressive.  Very nice to see your progress and how things went for your throughout your journey.

Awesome job. 

Thanks, guys.

I've personally never conquered Calradia because I always get bored with my game and want to try new builds for me or my companions. 

I did that a bunch of times.

I really want to get through a game though.  Do you have any advice?  My playstyle is a lot different than yours.  I could never build all my companions exactly the same.  I like doing some minor role play with my companions, like Alayen uses a Bardiche because he's Vaegir.  That sort of thing.

Well, my companions being super-manhunters is really central to my game.  It's how I make money, and I haven't found any way to replace that in this game.  But I think probably the most important thing I've found is getting your main character a 27 Int and 10's in Tactics and Engineering (I also got 10 in Persuasion which you could probably do without, but don't go too low).  The 10 in Tactics really helps you take larger forces, and the 10 in Engineering cuts down the time between siege battles.  I mean it cuts it down a lot. 

The last game I had a companion with 10 Engineer and I had 2 (I put one point in and read the book), so my effective Engineer skill was 11.  Building a siege tower took two days, like 40 hours.  It made it a real problem to take those cities and castles because you have to have a large army there the whole time, so they're eating two whole days worth of food (and you're perishables: Beef, Chicken, and Pork are going bad) and the men's morale is going down.  You also can't get vassals to wait for two days to participate in a siege.  (You can get a few sometimes, but most of them will get distracted and run off.)

If your main character has a party skill, that means you get a +4 bonus.  So my effective Engineering skill was 14.  It took six hours to build siege towers instead of 40 (and less than an hour to build ladders).  That changes the whole scenario.  When you're waiting 2 days for the siege, you feel like you have to go through with it all at once.  So you get the biggest force you can (which means they eat a lot of food and their morale gets low), and you storm the walls.  What follows is invariably a blood bath.  You lose like 50 or 100 guys even with all top-tier men.  Then you fight a mission with only a few men in the city center and then again in the palace.  And those secondary fights are really, really hard because you're probably badly wounded, and you don't want to take your companions because they're wounded too.  That means you have to move huscarls up behind you in the march order and maybe your companions don't even spawn for the fight at the wall which robs them of experience points and robs you of your best fighters. 

There are a couple of good things about doing it that way: you don't have to kill every guy in the garrison which means it's over quicker, you're going to be victorious over a large force so you'll get renown (you get the same renown you got at the walls again in the city center and again at the palace, so sieges can actually be a really good source of renown), and you get loot and prisoners because you did this really big battle.  But with the 14 Engineering, you don't have to do it this way.

I took every town and castle in Calradia with 50 archers (usually rhodok sharpshooters, but for some of the campaign against the rhodoks their morale was too low so I used vaegir sharpshooters), 50 infantry (usually nord huscarls, but sometimes swadian sergeants; rhodok sergeants would probably be better but I always train rhodoks as sharpshooters), and 20 swadian knights (the purpose of the knights is in case I get attacked on the way to the siege and so I can immediately put them into the garrison after I take the city; I'd really rather not have them in the siege at all).  I got help from my vassals.  I have a system that works and don't need them, and they always bring low-tier troops which reduces the shock of the attack. 

The smaller force doesn't eat as much and doesn't have their morale go down as much and is faster and allows you to recruit freed prisoners into your army and is generally easier to manage.  In the marching order, I put my companions in front then the archers then the infantry then my knights; I build the ladder or siege tower; then I ordered my men to hold in front of the walls- a line of infantry first, my knights behind (often none spawned), archers behind, and then my companions; let everybody fire until my companions were exhausted (they all have two large packs of steel bolts so it took a while; I had a bow with only one ammo pack, so I had to pick up ammo off the ground (you really want a shield in situations like this, and sometimes they come down the ladders at you so it's also advisable to have a weapon); if everyone was using crossbows, I picked up a crossbow after my quiver was empty); then retreated; then did it again.  When I was sure there were only a few defenders left, I let everyone charge.  That way, I took cities with 350 defenders and lost 10 men.  Seriously. 

The fact that I had an effective 11 Surgery helped, but not charging the walls until there's nobody defending them saves lives- lots of them.  Retreating over and over means you don't get any renown, you end up with nothing for loot or prisoners, but in the end you killed every man in the garrison so you and your companions get more experience and higher bow/crossbow skills.  Some places, places that have never been attacked will be stacked with top-tier troops and they're much harder to take.  Sometimes (probably 3 or 4 times in the whole game), I exhausted my force (everybody wounded) and had to go back to get fresh men, but I never found it necessary to increase the size of my army. 

If you don't know about that, it's the best advice I can give you.

I have quite a bit of experience in the game.  I'm aware of the tactics to siege a town, etc.  I'm asking how do you mentally stay committed to a game and not want to restart once the game gets too easy?  That's what always happens to me.  Basically, there's a point at which you have, in effect, beaten the game, and it's long, long before you've taken the whole map.  It's at that point that I can't continue.  I like the idea of following through and completing the game, but in practice I can never bring myself to do it.  Once you know you can beat everyone, you're just tediously going through the motions.

 

[fragonard]

Interesting thread. I have a question about your use of archery; I notice that you have only 4 PD and, I assume, a regular warbow. My quick calculation says that delivers only about 39 base damage. Is that effective in sieges? I've never tried using a bow with less than 6PD but maybe I'll try it with an imported character to see. Just wanted your comments about it.