OMG! - Grunwalder Castle...

[Dawaraven]

Looting a village that has rich prosperity is one of the easiest ways to make money. Sometimes you can make up to 10000 from a single village if you sell the goods in the right places. As a secondary source of money you can set up a business in your factions capital, and enter every tourney you can and bet 100% on yourself.

If you are tryibg to finish the game in record time try and become the marshall ASAP and just lead the vassals. Nothing can stand against an entire factions army. Not even Grunwalder.

 

[bakters]

Looting a village that has rich prosperity is one of the easiest ways to make money. Sometimes you can make up to 10000 from a single village if you sell the goods in the right places. As a secondary source of money you can set up a business in your factions capital, and enter every tourney you can and bet 100% on yourself.

  It's not about the easiest way, it's about the quickest way. Looting villages will yield several hundred a day at best at the start of the game.  I can get more than 10K by soloing sea raiders if the ransom broker isn't far away... 

And efficient raiding requires an army and high looting.  My party has 2 looting only because it was needed for Diplomacy autoloot feature, otherwise I would save those two points and spend it elsewhere.  Once again, you can prove me wrong, but I seriously doubt that looting villages is a time efficient option at all.

If you are tryibg to finish the game in record time try and become the marshall ASAP and just lead the vassals. Nothing can stand against an entire factions army. Not even Grunwalder.

  I have my own kingdom and I will never have enough vassals to matter.  There is simply not enough time for that.  (sub 200 is the goal this time around, just to remind you where we stand)

As it stands right now I don't know if relying on lords is even possible within the constraints of my game.  Yes, you can reinforce lords with your own troops and bring larger army to bear on the enemy, but how much time you save by doing that?  You need to train the troops for the lord, then you need to wait for him to appear and constantly remind him that he is supposed to follow you and all that.  At the end of it all you have what?  350 troops instead of 150ish?  For difficult places like Grunwalder it doesn't even matter. 

Or I can say eff this and just attack on my own.  At worst I will have to spend more time on a fortress than with a strong lord supporting me, but there is no fortress in this game which requires more than two days of grinding.  At least it never happened to me yet.

 

[bakters]

We went off on a tangent, but coming back on topic I took Grunwalder Castle again.  Several thoughts on the matter.

Technically speaking the Caste was strongly defended, about 350 total including a lord party, but it wasn't as difficult as before.  Average level was a notch lower, and they had almost too many crossbows.  Sure, it took me several rounds to kill them all, but I didn't die once and nobody in my party died too, so you could say it was easy...

But it wasn't a walk in a park despite that.  I was just very cautious and a bit lucky. 

Overall strategy consisted of two stages.

1.  Position my troops behind the left side of the caste and win a ranged battle with crossbowmen there (plus several on the right wall, but they were few).
2.  Position my troops close to the ladder, and start a "ladder dance" myself.

What I call a "ladder dance" is climbing the ladder and shooting the infantry from close distance.  You must go forward and backward often to make them lower their shields, and you must run away instantly when there is a crossbowman out there, but overall it's surprisingly safe way of killing a lot of defenders.  When crossbowmen come close they often try to engage you in melee instead of shooting, and even if not they often target your troops down below.

In conclusion it's doable with decent strategy, lots of patience and a tiny bit of skill.  I hope it helps someone.

 

[Telemachos]

What I call a "ladder dance" is climbing the ladder and shooting the infantry from close distance.  You must go forward and backward often to make them lower their shields, and you must run away instantly when there is a crossbowman out there, but overall it's surprisingly safe way of killing a lot of defenders.  When crossbowmen come close they often try to engage you in melee instead of shooting, and even if not they often target your troops down below.

Sorry to ruin your glory but this is just exploiting the stupid of the AI. Might as well just enable cheats and kill off all the enemy. Some of the other ways listed above of taking the fief are a lot better.

 

[bakters]

Sorry to ruin your glory but this is just exploiting the stupid of the AI. Might as well just enable cheats and kill off all the enemy. Some of the other ways listed above of taking the fief are a lot better.

  Better for what?

 

[Knight of calradia]

I actually have used this "ladder dancing" tactic too and it's very defective way to slaughter the enemy. It's way different from cheats because it requires time.
Also if you use this tactic, it's good to have some archers that you can pick their arrows from walls and keep killing the enemies.

Greetings.

 

[bakters]

I don't even know how to comment on Telemachos post.  I don't know what his goals are and he seems to assume that mine are similar to his. 

But I want to say one thing.  Whatever rules of conduct I impose upon myself, I never break them.  I will either finish the game or abandon it, but I don't break the rules (well, for a moment to test stuff, then reload a former save - that doesn't count for me).

 

[Knight of calradia]

I don't even know how to comment on Telemachos post.  I don't know what his goals are and he seems to assume that mine are similar to his. 

But I want to say one thing.  Whatever rules of conduct I impose upon myself, I never break them.  I will either finish the game or abandon it, but I don't break the rules (well, for a moment to test stuff, then reload a former save - that doesn't count for me).

Yeah, I suppose you're right about that. And actually, I might as well start to not reload my savegames once I screw , because that is not very fair playing at all.

 

[bakters]

I do reload.  I just test stuff and whatever I do during testing does not count, because I reload to the point before the test anyway.

Actually right now I don't have any special rules, just to be as quick as I can.  It's quite difficult way of playing this game.  If you never tried it and want a challenge, I recommend it.

 

[Knight of calradia]

I actually noticed very good tactic to use and I'm curious have you used it:
when enemy is over powered (20 fierdsvain huscarls, 15 empire knights and couple adventurers) you charge alone at them, put your crossbow men to front line (20 empire crossbow men and 12 less level ones) and start to take them out one by one, until there is only 20-25 weakend soldiers in the battlefield and then, you start to make them follow you and you lead them closer to your crossbow men and after that, you turn off from your troops and your crossbow men starts to shoot their backs, and you do that couple times until the enemies are only handfull of left, and you let your troops finish them off.
Result for me was: 2 cobra warriors and 1 rogue squire (+3 level ups ) : Wounded.

Greetings.

 

[bakters]

Yes, I did that.  Low level companions on a hill while I dance with the enemy below.  Other than that I used it in With Fire and Sword, where it works even better, because every marksman is capable of killing any unit on the battlefield.

Which makes me think, how people even manage to avoid AI abuse?  Whatever you do, you abuse AI to some extent.  When you ride across their line of fire at full speed you abuse their inability to lead their shots.  When you approach an archer in a tournament you abuse their inability to predict your movement.  When you take their horses out, or they get stuck on the walls it's even worse.

I don't even see how you can play "fair" with the AI, so I never bothered with trying.

 

[Knight of calradia]

Yeah, the AI system is still pretty primitive on their attacks and they don't really use their moves very succesfully, but I hope the Taleworlds will improve this (weakness) in bannerlord.