Off to a slow start?

[Lancefighter]

Hey guys!
Well, Ive recently purchased warband, and I seem to note something unusual. Well, you see.. everything seems very slow. Around 150 days in, my character is level 20 working with an army of 60 under king yargoleck. Well, this isnt incredibly much of a problem, except that with this 60 man army I cant seem to do anything! We recently sieged and captured Narra, but that required the marshal to call the combined forces of a good deal of the nation to storm the gates. My current fiefs include a small town in the middle of back-country, because, well, my 60 men cant seem to be useful! Our principal enemy for the moment is the Khergits, my least favorite..

Right, I digress a little bit: It just seems that my band cant actually compare to any other lord's group. My current makeup is around 30 archers (mostly vaegir marksmen) and the rest a mix of guards/infantry and horsemen/knights, which seems to take care of anything except khergit charges..... I seem to note a lack of tactics on the battlefield for some reason. Every single lord seems to know one command: CHARRRRGGGGEEE. Which is, well, unfortunate, because these maps seem so small that i dont have time to get my archers into position before 70+ mounted units hit my lines.

Now, my time during the last m&b were a tad skewed - I mainly played Native Enhanced, which probably skews my perception a good deal..
Generally, around 150 days into the game, I usually had a town to my name and a good deal more troops.. Then again, It was also more possible to take a castle with only 60 elite soldiers, because the top tier in NE generally wiped the floor of anything not close to their level.

Anyway, What I am saying is, my current game seems to be going incredibly slowly, based on my arbitrary standard of how much fun I am having. I installed diplomacy, but that doesnt seem to have much effect at all besides the changing of relations between kingdoms.. this is more interesting than random declarations of war and peace, and it includes other useful features..

Anyway! Again, digression. Am i just doing it wrong? Should I have focused more on party leadership than personal stuff earlier? (s15, a12, i15, c9, leadership 3..)
Should i look towards mods to fix this issue? I note that NE hasnt been ported yet, fairly unfortunate, but I also note that no current mod seems to do anything near what any large m&b mod does yet..

Right, that concludes this. For our TLR folks out there, here you go:
LIKE OMG GAIS IM STUCKED. HALP I CANT HAVE CASTLE.

 

[Fattyfat]

Native Expansion will definitely skew your vision when it comes to M&B warband.  As opposed to NE, warband has a degree of difficulty and a little learning curve.  There are a few ways to speed things up as far as being a powerhouse and feeling useful.

Cavalry, and lots of it - ditch anyone on foot and you will soon see that your party is nigh invincible.

Huscarls, and lots of them - If you want to siege, these are your guys.  Hell, if you don't care about being slow on the map, you can ignore the above cavalry statement and load up on these.

Leadership is hit or miss in usefulness.  If you want a great big party that can effectively solo-siege and decimate several lords, it certainly helps.  You can always limit your physical stats early on and be successful - 10-12 strength and 12 agility seems to be just fine at any point in the game.

Surgery is very helpful to keep your guys going and out of the grave.

If you want to edit your experience more, try Tweakmb located on these forums.  You can change a lot of how things work - such as how many soldiers you can have per point of leadership, or how many per renown.

Hope at least some of that helps.

 

[JRDY]

yeah you need more leadership and renown, if money is the problem trading till you can afford land in each city is what you should do.

also there's a book you can buy that raises your leadership by 1, so maybe read that.

 

[Lancefighter]

Perhaps I might do that- modify the party size...  I thought it kinda silly that you have a fixed amount of units, i will see if that fixes this enough.

Ive got a few companions with enough skills in keeping people not dead to make me happy enough, its just that when i get into a battle, it has two outcomes - total death on my side, or total death on the other side. There never seemed to be much middle ground, where surgery becomes useful

 

[Fattyfat]

Perhaps I might do that- modify the party size...  I thought it kinda silly that you have a fixed amount of units, i will see if that fixes this enough.

Ive got a few companions with enough skills in keeping people not dead to make me happy enough, its just that when i get into a battle, it has two outcomes - total death on my side, or total death on the other side. There never seemed to be much middle ground, where surgery becomes useful

The primary role I find for surgery is during excessively outnumbered sieges.  Companions do the trick fine as long as they don't get KO'd.

 

[Elisianthus]

You say that you can't do much, yet you have an army of 60 men, and since you mention Marksman I'm assuming they are high tier troops. A decent army of troops and a small bit of forethought can do a lot. I recently took a mixed force of Rhodok high ends and took out a castle of 140 using around 46 troops. Don't underestimate the difference between high end and low end troops, especially archers. If you;re doing a siege, they have no cavalry. It's remarkably easy to slaughter them if you control your troops well, and much faster if you have the equipment/skills to get heavily involved yourself.

Sometimes you just have to take a chance, but the feeling when you pull it off is worth it.

 

[Lancefighter]

Not being agressive-that's something I am very very good at. Working to fix that, but I am usually fairly worried as to how well I can hold it..
Will also attemp to be lore aggressive with less troops....

Also, final notes- nobody mentioned how crappy the other lords ai is.. Are they always that horrible? (are there mods to fix that?)

 

[Lancefighter]

mixed reactions here.... I sieged that unpronounceable castle that starts with an S and stands between khergit and vaegir territory, and after building a siege tower, the defenders came out to attack me. Awfully kind of them to give up their horses and walls so my archers can mow them down with ease.. Which they did. Except..... Somewhere near the end I took a pair of arrows to the face, so I ended up watching my archers attempt to shoot down the final few guys that were stuck behind a rock someplace :\ didnt happen.... had to retreat, and take the 'loss'. I gained 50 morale.....

Total loss on my side? 1. Me. Wounded. Their side? almost 100% dead. Somehow, out of the entire line of 30 strong archers, and the entire line of 30 strong linemen, I am the only one who gets an arrow to the face. Yeah......


Ohwell. I pull back, only to be ran away by some other khaanite, so i pulled back.. to notice that kudan was under attack. Well, I go defend there, finally get my 'none shall pass' achievement, defending 300 men vs the red horde.. er.. khergits, 800 strong. yay me.

I grab some extra food, and head back to the aforementioned castle, and was halfway building a siege tower when lord yargoleck decided 'oh hey, we just trounced the entire khergit army. Lets go to peace.' ARGH!
<.< back to another grueling year of peace.. *sigh* at least ill have time to run around making an unstoppable force of vaegir knights! muhaha.