Starting a Kingdom. Defending your lands

[Brother of blades]

Starting your own Kingdom is without a doubt the most difficult thing in Prophesy of Pendor. I'd like to open up discussion on strategies to overcome the first phase of starting your own kingdom. And yet again im at this dawnting phase. I was tired of taking Marius imterprators **** so I took things into my own hands. seiged a castle, claimed it and began expanding. however before I could say hopscotch I was jumped on by the Sarleon hordes.
I let them take the castle and then I took it back as you do. but now i'm stuck playing a game of tag.

I'm here to seek advice, strategies and tips for over coming the giants of Pendor.
What are the best ways to overcome the 1k armies?
At what level should you start a kingdom?
how do you gain vassals besides your companions?
what are your issues your facing?

 

[LevonVeldspar]

The best way to achieve success with a newfound kingdom is 90% preparation. I always prefer to accept a vassalhood, get a castle and build a stockpile of reserve troops before I break away. Even if it isn't in a good location, having those pretrained troops ready to shuttle over to your choice of starting location when the time finally comes is a godsend, and having a disposable castle to draw besieging armies toward can buy you precious time to deal with other threats if multiple factions decide to crush your upstart arse.

This is my rough rule-of-thumb checklist:

- 200,000 denars minimum
A new kingdom is expensive, and you need to be able to absorb a lot of financial loss to see you through until you can force your enemies into peace or at least gain enough breathing space to be able to start upgrading your infrastructure

- 175+ troopcap
I feel this is enough to beat almost any lord in a 1-on-1 fight with few losses, and that's something you need to be able to do in order to eliminate solo operators when/if you manage to break up the big marshal-led armies

- High training skill and village rep in your planned starting area
This allows you to recruit as many... recruits... as possible per opportunity, either passively via your steward or by going from village to village. Aside from the obvious need to replace your combat losses, it also serves you well in creating a quick and efficient training mill system to augment your vassal's own self-raised forces

- 20+ rep with all good personality lords of factions I plan to begin within/near
This should be enough to flip most lords over to your side, and being able to do that to a half dozen of your enemy's vassals in a short span of time not only increases your own kingdom's strength and size but weakens your enemy at the same time (I always play with lords bringing their holdings with them when they change allegiance.)

- 30+ Right to Rule
This is essential in establishing your kingdom's legitimacy and security. Even if you manage to survive the initial onslaught, the other kings need to you see you as a peer and not just an upstart. If they don't, they can and will stay at war with you for a looooong time and declare war without pretext. Periods of peace are important for growing your economy and dealing with minor factions, rebuilding lost troops etc.  It never hurts to have good rep with the other kings either as it makes them more willing to sue for peace and recognize your claim.


That's all I got atm, hope it helps! Oh, and I should mention that I haven't gotten to the kingdom stage in 3.6 yet, but from what I've heard around the forums hiring a strong merc company as soon as you go indie can really take the edge off of those rough early days.

 

[Piero212]

Levon wrote an amazing answer but I'd like to add something about recruiting.

Trying to convince a Lord to join you simply by talking is really hard, sometimes they won't even mention the option because of your low Charisma (actually, it's a charisma related skill whose name eludes me), when they do mention it they usually reject your offer, and with good reason, because as an starting sovereign you WILL have less military strength than the King they currently serve, the only way I could recruit Lords for my faction was raising their relations with me to AT LEAST 25 (actually, I think 22 would do the trick but it's better to be sure), you need to battle and capture them, then upon talking to the Lord while he's a prisoner he should propose to join you in exchange of freedom, Stockholm does all the work for you, and quite fast!

 

[meikaina]

I usually just spend my first 1 or 2 free gem on noldor ranger.
Wish them luck when they try to take their property back haha.
Or better yet, gamble a single gem with the guild master, hoping to get the 6 noldor twilight and 12 noldor rangers.
Best bang for your buck.

that's all there is really.
Btw i almost won a 93 vs ~1,500 siege defense  fight (enemy had FOUR people left...) with the 12 twilight and 24 rangers noldor troops in it. Most of my troops were "meh" too.
Just shows how awesome they are at siege.

 

[Brother of blades]

Really strong answers guys thanks. Currently I've taken two castles but I can't find the option to allocate my village to one of my lords. anyone know how to solve that? and yeah having a 200 strong mercanery group is really helpful even if it does eat into your wallet a bit. really useful for sieging castles as you don't take much of the hit just hire siege and rehire.

Also I have NO idea how to recruit vassals. I've started near Laria and took its surrounding keeps and so im trying to recruit empire who are at the moment left with 4 castles and no cities and are loosing against orcs who control half the map ¬¬ how im going to beat them I do not know... I'm just glad they havn't started on me yet. But anyway. I have good standings with a few of the lords and i've been going to them but with no luck :/

 

[nirkoj]

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,236657.0.html
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,270355.0.html
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,272799.0.html
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,264307.0.html
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,250072.0.html

 

[Brother of blades]

Nirkoj that has answered all my questions. Thanks for taking the time to dig those up 

 

[Nikodemus]

Levon really pointed out all the major things to take into account, good job He wrote down the mininum, if you go beyond those values it becomes much easier.

What he didnt meantion is the political situation: Factions are less of a problem if they already fight one or more other factions. Provoking war before rebelling can make life much easier.

You can also get somewhat far as a vassal too - on my current game I became a vassal of Ravenstern and managed to claim Marleons, Talon Castle (the one right next to Marleons) and Laria for myself. I rebelled after I took sarleons, so I started my kingdom with 3 towns and a castle all rather close to each other - woohoo!
I took my time, so I already had lots of honor (honorable lords like me 50+ mostly) close to 80 right to rule, roughly 500k denars and my custom knighthood order was trained and equipped. Before rebelling, I made sarleon and fierdsvain go to war against ravenstern... Ravenstern actually broke down after I rebelled and got pushed back all the way to poinsbruk by the fierdsvain, so I was already larger than my previous faction 
This nearly made founding my own kingdom too easy 

 

[Brother of blades]

Nicley done. with means of preparation I didn't do very well as I wasn't really to good with the planning, however I did have 40/50 RTR and about 80 honour so that isn't a concern. More to do with the military assets :'( and diplomacy were im falling short. but when you rebel how do you keep your castles and towns etc?

 

[noosers]

lf you give up vasselage via dialogue you lose all your holdings, but risk a less harsh reputation penalty. So you can cancel your oath anytime but leave without any posession, which isnt a big nuisance becasue you simply reduce the garrison to a bare minimum (1 recruit), leave the faction, declare war and retake your property.

The more demanding and dangerous path is to take as many hostile holdings as you can and always asking for it till you get neglected, then you can rebel with all your holdings. But it´s tricky since you can end up with a halfton of property spread over all of Pendor attracting all kinds of unfriendliness to your new and sorry arse.

 

[Brother of blades]

lf you give up vasselage via dialogue you lose all your holdings, but risk a less harsh reputation penalty. So you can cancel your oath anytime but leave without any posession, which isnt a big nuisance becasue you simply reduce the garrison to a bare minimum (1 recruit), leave the faction, declare war and retake your property.

The more demanding and dangerous path is to take as many hostile holdings as you can and always asking for it till you get neglected, then you can rebel with all your holdings. But it´s tricky since you can end up with a halfton of property spread over all of Pendor attracting all kinds of unfriendliness to your new and sorry arse.

HAHA im so stupid I forgot I could reduce my garrisons... that is ingenious

 

[noosers]

Na, it´s just a blatant abuse of a spoiled game mechanic.

 

[habeo123]

It is very clear in Pendor that you can't go big instantly unless you cheat. Normally with a new found character the process can take up to a year or even more.
Besides from the things above, here is something I find very useful.
1- Persuasion is very important to a king. Imagine having someone with 50 relationship turn to your side with his 1 town, 2 castles from previous war as marshal, and has 1.5k renown. That alone is more of an asset than a town without garrison.

2-Custom Knighthood Order, fully equipped and trained. To make going rouge easier, having the uber archer CKO is a good insurance.

3-Nice cashflow, from enterprises and fiefs. Base money is indeed good, but cashflow in the following weeks is important also. You can't always capture some unique spawns and ask for 50k. This allows you to continue your kingdom in the making. Don't hog villages, in war they are better than none. A castle at the highest level generates 6-6.5k per week while a village only generates 2.5k and suffered from raiding activities. Surely you have to pay for garrisoned troops, but still hey it's more troops than nothing.

4-Aim for the lords you will surely recruit. Aim for them, and try to talk you way out using high persuasion (7 to 10), not capturing them and use the talk dialogue.

5-Hold on to your first few sieges. You will face sieges from the ex-faction. Simply face that and reduce their troop count in sieges. Why? Because this soften their lines. While elites troops go and die in sieges, only the mid-low tier remains. This means you can then fight a battle of 200 vs 600 if all left are low tier and wipe their army. Then they won't come asking for it anymore.

 

[Brother of blades]

I've got to this point after 500 ingame days. also im having real problems. once I've claimed a village how do I grant it to a lord?

 

[Vades]

Have you assigned one of your companions as minister?

A tactic I like to use is starting out as a Merc. Build up an army and buy enterprises, by the time you have one in every town you are probably strong enough to take a castle on your own. Find a good castle to take, wait for your contract to expire, when that happens, piss off the faction that holds this castle and take it.  Immediately send a messenger to another Kingdom and swear allegiance.  This way you maintain control over the castle and the fief, so your territory is consolidated.  As you campaign with this Kingdom only try to gain towns and castle in your neighborhood, eventually they won't give you anymore and you rebel, cutting a nice consolidated kingdom out.

 

[Brother of blades]

I wish I thought of all of these ideas before :/ but ah well. I'm doing pretty well now I've finally got Laria assigned it to my Husband so he can garrison it for me and because he is my husband I can take his troops out of the garrison

 

[Darkgenius]

You people surely are giving great suggestions, I might try some of them myself, but.. nothing beats the old-fashioned "Befriend the King" thing, before starting your own faction, try becoming friends with other Monarchs, It usually helps.

 

[Sequester]

Also anyone starting a kingdom will most likely be short on manpower. To get this problem solved really quick you can hire a mercenary captain. It's quite expensive but does help a lot in the first sieges. Also you don't have to wait for other lords to come over to your kingdom. You may give some fiefs to your companions. Just hire a companion who doesn't fit in your crowd and have your minister assign a fief to him/her. Leth and Frederick bring some super fighters with their warbands. (However you might want to keep Leth for training your CKO first. If you sent him to train the order troops for a month instantly everytime he reports back he won't be able to quarrel with th others.)

 

[Ansiktslos]

The key to success in making a new kingdom is to instantly declare war on every other faction. Show those scums, who's the boss.

 

[AnthonyTjuatja]

You could first build a good relationship with the Noldor, and then start taking castles/fiefs located around Laria. The Noldor usually patrols around the perimeter, and if enemy lords approach,just draw them to the woods, and let the Noldor finish the job.