Viking Conquest Reforged Edition Female Char Power Gaming Guide(minor spoilers)

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zhoumu

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Viking Conquest Reforged Edition Female Character Power Gaming Guide (minor spoilers)

So I decided to play a chick, for role playing purposes. A chick has +4 to INT and CHA, as opposed to +4 to STR and AGI as a dude. Having high INT and CHA doesn’t cripple the character. It just makes her more party oriented:
-having high INT(1:cool: makes the protagonist take advantage of all the books, so as to reach skill level 10 and take advantage of the +4 bonus in important party skills, such as surgery and wound treatment.
-having high CHA(16) brings the protagonist’s leadership and persuasion skill to 10(with skill book and the crown), which has many great benefits, such as reduced troop wages, higher troop morale, higher persuasion chance of lords (gift letters and defections), higher prisoner ransom fees

Starting Choices at character creation:
Base: 4 STR, 4 AGI, 4 INT, 5 CHA
Gender: female INT+4 CHA+4
Nationality: foreigner INT+2
Height: doesn’t affect the build; I chose normal STR+1, AGI +1
Age: adult STR+3 AGI+3 INT+2 CHA+2
Personality: choleric INT+1 CHA+3 (The idea is to have as many attribute points as possible)
Virtue: justice INT+2 CHA+1(same as above)
Father’s occupation: noble; Learned as a child: oratory. Both options give the most skill points.
Vocation: hunter (chose whatever you like, since this char won’t be using bows anyways)
Religion: pagan (saves you trouble at beginning of story line, but otherwise no effect on build)

Choice effect on end attributes: 8 STR, 8 AGI, 15 INT, 15 CHA.
After adding 5 points: 10 STR, 10 AGI, 15 INT, 16 CHA.
Target: 14 STR(as high as possible), 10 AGI, 18 INT, 16 CHA.

- 10 AGI allows important party skills such as map finding to go up to 5, to take advantage of the +2 bonus modifier, thus justifying the investment of 2 points. Important personal skills, namely weapon master, also depend on this skill (a book can take you up to 6). Athletics isn’t that important power-gaming-wise (since wearing full heavy armor reduces it to 0), but it affects your gaming experience when you run around in town or engage in competitions.
- 10 STR is (barely) sufficient early game, in fact it is so crippling that I had to run and stay away (b/c I don’t run fast enough) from bandits and make my men do the fighting, but you’ll have to deal with it. Later on, the moment you have superior heavy armor is when this build truly shines. You will fight on par with the best warriors, while commanding an army effectively. 9 is the STR requirement to wear scale armor, and 11 is the requirement for the ultimate heavy armor (acquired during the campaign).
- My favorite choice of weaponry is size 85 shield + Nad (or some other legendary sword) + horseman javelins + balanced Ray on champion horseback. You can 1 v 50 with this equipment, just like you would in a warrior build game.
- Why STR over AGI? STR governs: power strike(most important), power throw, iron flesh, and inventory management, the higher the better. While AGI governs: weapon master, path finding, spotting, etc. Since you won’t have enough points to level AGI to 16 or 20, it’s best to leave it at 10. A tweak over this build would be to trade 2 AGI for 2 STR, thus sacrificing the AGI based party skills. It is not recommended to have lower than 8 in AGI, since then you won’t be able to ride the champion horse, and “call” your horse.
- After you own castles and towns, you might trigger a random event that (when choice taken correctly) gives you STR +1 and INT +1. Therefore, there is no need to bring INT higher than 17.

Tips on making and saving money:
I know a lot of guides already covered this part already. Just to sum it up:
1. Grind villages, buy cheap goods, especially wool, and sell wool to Dorestad for 2x+ profit. Buy jewelry, wine, and salt from Dorestad to sell in any other town for 2-5x profit. Buy furs and smoked fish from Ribe to sell in any other town for 2x profit.   
2. Invest in productive enterprises, before buying yourself that fancy champion horse.
3. Choose the location of your refuge wisely (I set it up in the middle of the map near Jorvik). Upgrade your refuge and take advantage of the legendary smiths (they pay good price on loot!) to upgrade your helm armor to 57, and scale armor to 50-30, and make/upgrade Widow-makers.
4. Extra money early game is used mainly to upgrade weapons and armor, buy (heavy) horses for companions, and build Busses.
5. By end game, everything costs money: buying and upgrading troops, feeding and maintaining your troops, upgrades for settlements, raising dispositions for nefarious lords… So money is scarce, don’t squander it! One way to save money is to search and attack enemy troops with high tier prisoner units…you acquire the prisoner units for free. A trick is to wait till your target enemy to fully capture a caravan or your own AI lord’s troops (don’t rush in to save them), watch as the number of prisoners pile up…then move in for the kill.
6. Field warfare: infantry units square grouped and clustered to engage the enemy (charge if superior); archers attack from side or behind (renders the enemy shield wall ineffective - funny that they don’t raise shields to face you); cavalry and protagonist grind up enemy archers from the edge of its line formation.
7. Siege warfare: my typical strategy would be to engage with 250+ troops, infiltrate: poison the fort’s water, and assault. Saves time and money. If you’re really short on time, just assault. I’m sure a talented strategist such as yourself can still profit from the win.

This build, with high INT, high CHA, and decent STR makes troop management and maintenance a breeze. Your soldier’s death rate will be so low, and recovery rate so high, that you can find yourself fighting multiple battles consecutively in a short spam of time. Also I forgot to mention, engage the AI factions diplomatically: your huge wealth and elite troops won’t save you if you fight on multiple fronts - your AI lords who only fight over fiefs aren’t smart enough to fight and save your ass – as always, you can still profit from their undoing. Satisfying the monetary needs of those Pagan/Christian priests will help.
 
Pretty solid guide and I agree with it all.
Would recommend INT and CHA builds over STR and AGI builds every time. Having high STR and AGI is pretty pointless, since your not really going to be in the thick of it all the time, all those skills and attributes are just going to waste. Your men will be doing most of the fighting, so high INT and CHA is way more beneficial.

The only thing you forgot to mention is to not read skill books straight away, wait until you have got 9 in the skill first before you read the book. Especially if you are not taking Attributes to 20.
You kind of mentioned it at the beginning, but newer players may not realise.
 
Yep, thanks for adding!

For beginner-power-gamers, check the book list to get a gist of what and when to read:
...://mountandblade.wikia.com/wiki/Books

Of course one can also just export/import, but that kills the fun for power-gamers.
 
AfLIcTeD said:
Would recommend INT and CHA builds over STR and AGI builds every time. Having high STR and AGI is pretty pointless, since your not really going to be in the thick of it all the time, all those skills and attributes are just going to waste. Your men will be doing most of the fighting, so high INT and CHA is way more beneficial.

Completely dependent on playstyle. A skilled player with a sword and a horse can kill 50+ vikingr on his own on full difficulty, so Strength and Agility can be very useful. Even if my men are doing much of the fighting, I often ride up to the enemy lord battle lines and cut him down in personal combat to start the battle. Wrecks enemy morale to see their commander fall. I rack up 30+ kills even in those battles, a significant contribution, and that is not counting all the times I solo armies and let my army sit back.

Players who like to sit back and command troops make sense, players who like to fight personally make sense, one is not better than the other, but both are dependent on the skill and personal tastes of the player. A strength and agility personal combat player can be every bit as powerful and useful as other builds even in native.

But there are lots of VC specific changes that make a strength and agility build even more powerful than in native:

Pathfinding and Spotting are Agility based in VC. Being at sea gives +4 spotting, only to the player. Meaning player with 12 in Agility can put 6 points in spotting and get an effective 14 party skill in spotting at sea. I think the dog gives a bonus as well, but I don't like that feature so I haven't tried it.

Inventory management is strength based, looting is Agility based. The first is a personal skill, the latter is subject to the +4 for player contribution up to 14. The combination of the two means much, much more expensive loot can be hauled off for sale.

Companion leadership counts for increasing party size, so player does not need charisma or leadership himself for party size. Meanwhile, player leadership's effect on troop wages is more moderate based on level reducing formula.

Training doesn't not go beyond 5. Most useful books accessible at 10 intelligence. An event to give +1 intelligence, and a book to give +1, gets you everything except the engineering book, if you start with intelligence 9 or 10. This will also allow the 5 in party skills to get the +2 leader bonus, meaning effective maxes of 12 in surgery, wound treatment, and navigation, with 1 companion, almost perfect.

2 skill points per level in VC means intelligence is less useful for getting skill points, especially with how rare attribute increases are. Only other thing intelligence gives is an extra recruit trained per week in refuge, which is nothing. 1 extra to army max for charisma means not worth advancing except for skill needs, once a minimum to allow marriage is achieved.

Crown and books means you only need 8 leadership and persuasion base to max out, so above 16 charisma not really needed, as explained by OP as well. Only need 7 persuasion if keeping the storyline book, which you can do and still complete storyline. Or 6 if you don't mind equipping the special shirt for +1 persuasion. Only need 8 trade if you have 11 intelligence to use the book and keep an eye out for the trade bonus shirt in stores.

Personally, I prefer builds heavy on Str and Agl, with at most 16 charisma (often much less) and just enough intelligence to read books. 10 charisma is fine as well, 7 leadership and 8-9 persuasion is plenty.

I could see the argument for high intelligence, to max out navigation and surgery that final 2 points. Someone would not be wrong to play that way, if they don't like personal combat.

But VC compared to native definitely rewards Strength and Agility builds far more than native--especially Agility, which absorbs a host of useful skills usually put under intelligence--while moderately deemphasizing charisma and heavily devaluing intelligence.
 
A perfectly valid point. I totally agree that a STR and AGI char can contribute party-wise just as must as a INT and CHA based char. AGI based skills such as Spotting and Path-finding are just as important as Wound treatment and Surgery. And even as a INT and CHA char, I often rush to the front lines to kill 30+, and had wished I had more hit-points, damage, and speed.

So at the end it boils down to play-style:
STR and AGI - better tactics and personal development. superior ability to conduct missions
INT and CHA - less micromanagement needed. lower casualties on grand battles means saving more money. better relationships and diplomacy (persuasion checks seem to succeed more often: I once had a lord with negative relationship defect and brought a castle to me; maybe it's because the game checks the CHA modifier against the persuasion skill)

I picked a female char purely for role play. Its fun to hear people say: a woman like you should not be torn by the horrors of war...or wow! blah blah blah (how does it feel like being ass kicked by a woman lord anyways?)...and I shall remain your most ardent admirer...(sense of superiority)
 
Zhoumu: your guide was completely reasonable and an interesting read. I was only disagreeing with the other poster, and specifically the part I quoted of their post (where they said "having high strength and agility is pretty pointless"). You and I are in complete agreement that both builds are valid playstyles.
 
It was only my opinion, not meant to be taken as fact.

I always like to join a faction or make my own kingdom, so I'm always fighting armies of 200+, so high INT and CHA is always a superior choice for me. No way I can solo 200+ armies.

I don't play story so I had no idea most those items with bonuses existed.

Well when you put it like that, I guess they aren't as pointless as I thought. I still think INT and CHA skills are way better though overall.
 
Aflicted: No problem, I am just debating the ideas. We may disagree, but I respect both you and your contributions to discussion.

One note--the only storyline unique item mentioned is the +1 persuasion in inventory book. The others are all available in sandbox, including the +1 persuasion, +1 trade, and +1 leadership from reading books, the crown for +1 persuasion and leadership, the shirts that add to skills, etc.

Also, it really isn't solo everything or don't fight at all--if you cut down the enemy lord, their morale wavers, and he always rides in front of his battle lines to do a shield taunt or cheer. You have to be careful of his men throwing spears, but it is a good opportunity to topple him before the battle lines engage. After that, you can usually wreck havoc with the enemy battle lines by clipping the shieldwall edges or harassing the skirmishers. As both Zhoumu and I noted, player getting 30+ kill in big battle is pretty usual, so even if the enemy has 200 the player can take about 15% of his force down, all the while messing up his formation

On the other hand, this occupies the player and interferes with perfect timing of orders and formation movements, hence there are really 2 good playstyles here.

I enjoyed discussing with you!
 
I use the battle tactics you mentioned all the time LOL, clipping shield wall and harassing archers, except for the part of charging the enemy leader, as it often results in myself getting dismounted (I don't know if having a riding skill of 10 or 5 makes a difference)- a death sentence. For battle sizes 200+ on each side, its not very practical to spin around and worn off enemy spear throwers. But sometimes when they shield taunt, their units stand frozen, and don't throw anything. 
 
Hmm, I like to ride in at a sharp angle--so instead of charging directly at the leader, I ride to the side of the formation, and then race parallel to their battle lines and cut the leader down as I go.

As long as my direction of riding is at close to a 90 degree angle to direction of the incoming thrown spears, they always seem to miss.

Then again, I do have a riding skill of around 8 by the time I do this, as I pump Agility up pretty fast, so it is indeed possible it only works with such a high riding.
 
I am not a fan of super hero moves like raiding around and solo-kill 50 enemies. I am guilty of doing that back in 2005, but that gameplay lost the appeal to me years ago.

I rather play as a normal character (as you should be in the game), so no super stunts.

VC is fun to play as a regular soldier/leader. You can either join the shield wall (and ignore tactics for the most part), or ride behind it and use formations commands to lead your army (avoiding exploiting the AI weakness with overpowered flanking).

My game is heavily modified, but the OP description brings back memories from VC release when I used to play vanilla (or close to it)

Cheers
 
kalarhan said:
I rather play as a normal character (as you should be in the game), so no super stunts.

There is no "as you should be in the game"--there are only multiple fun ways to play, depending on player preference.

A 18 intelligence 14 effective surgery, 16 charisma maxed leadership persuasion trade character is going to be very powerful. He is going to have a larger army, more vassals, and have a lot of fun focusing on commanding them well.

A high strength and agility warrior character is going to be very powerful as well. He will have to work harder to recruit vassals and pay his troops, and will need to make up for his smaller army and greater casualty rate by skilled work on the battlefield. He is also going to have a lot of fun doing so.

Both will face challenges, both will have advantages.

Two equally valid ways to play, neither is correct.



 
Tingyun said:
There is no "should be in the game"--there are only multiple fun ways to play, depending on player preference.

you misread me there, so lets try to add to it:

"should be" as in: in this game your character is just a normal human. You don't have superpowers, supernatural abilities, x-gen, ironman armor, etc. In that case, you should just be a "normal dude with a sword fighting in this world". That doesn't mean you cant be a champion and be able to defeat a few foes in battle, but on a immersion/RP perspective it doesn't make sense to kill 50 (a extreme case).

you even start the game as a weak human (very low stats and skills/profiencies), and you need to work your way up to be on a equal level to normal soldiers, and after a very long time to be on equal level with a elite soldier. So a new player (low to medium level) killing 50 dudes would also be outside the expected result.

No I didn't say other players should do what I am doing. That is why this game is great, you do what you want to do, and if it is not possible... you mod that in  :razz:
 
I somewhat agree Kalarhan, and I certainly respect your opinion, but my thought is:

How can a random landless nobody suddenly raise giant armies and become a powerful king in a year? And then potentially Brytenwalda of all England within a couple of years?

The thing is, the whole game is terribly unrealistic from that perspective.

Self-handicapping combat performance is sort of like making a rule for yourself where your army can't exceed 40 men, or you can't declare yourself as a king.

Now, I'm actually all for that--as a roleplaying playthrough. Warband is great to set little rules for yourself. So I might try a "no mounted combat" or "no declaring kingdom" or "no army bigger than 40 until I am a vassal" or "no recruiting anywhere but in my kingdom" or "only units from a certain faction" playthrough as well. Those of us like you who have played warband so many years--we have to keep finding new ways to make it fun! :smile:

Also, Viking Conquest is at least as much inspired by historical imagination as actual history. The developers were clearly fans of Saxon Stories--and Uhtred of Bebbenburg has pulled off some amazing personal combat feats. In fact, my personal killing of enemy leaders is inspired by him!

But in a normal playthrough, personal combat heroics aren't any less realistic than anything else the player does. It is just an enormously fun enormously unrealistic game, where our character and companions are immortals who never die and no one minds us marching a large army through their land. :smile:



 
Tingyun said:
How can a random landless nobody suddenly raise giant armies and become a powerful king in a year? And then potentially Brytenwalda of all England within a couple of years?

Warband calendar has no connection to ours. From the game code (where a week last only 5 days), to the lack of seasons. It is a very arbritary thingy, related to how the developer wanted to create a more action heavy game on the original game (always something to fight, little time spent doing other stuff). There was a lot of discussion about this when the game was on alpha/beta ~2005 :mrgreen:

Taking things like travel time, economy, etc, you could roughly say that the VC year is about 3-4 of ours. One of the things I always change on my mods is how time is calculated, and my campaigns last usually a couple decades because of that.

But if we look at our world we can find plenty of examples of a short span of time (few months to few years) where someone goes about conquering the world/kingdom/etc. From noble origins like Alexander, to exiled small tribe leader like Khan, to normal citiziens raising up to become the Roman Emperor, to the norse army conquering half of modern England, to Napoleon becoming pretty much emperor of Europe, to the 1066 battles that in one week decided who among 3 dudes should become king of England. I think that is part of the inspiration behind MB.

But in other hand MB was never really meant to be a kings game. The original was heavily focuses on being a vassal, with little feature support to be the ruler. The game itself was badly balanced and you would end up quickly on a campaign where you already won with 1/3 of the map under your rule, so the other 2/3 was just fighting for the sake of fighting (no challenge).

Warband introduced more features to try to make the king game more fun and challenging, but it didnt go far enough. If you look at many of the big mods, you will notice how they focus on adding features to that part of the game (a good example, that is heavily copied on many mods, is Diplomacy).

VC tried to improve over Warband on this aspect as well. Having lots of factions, dual religion system, rebellions, sea travel, new features for diplomacy and new balance on troops. It makes at least conquering the first half of the map a fun experience, but it usually ends with the same original problem: the last half is not really a challenge, you already won.
 
Kalarhan: again I agree with most most of your comments, but your historical list, impressive as it is, has many examples where the background is far far more powerful than even the VC "Noble" background.

Phillip laid the groundwork for Alexander, he was essentially a royal sandbox start. And the Kings who fought over England in 1066 were kings.

Turning to the exceptions, the rise of a commoner to Roman Emperor in the later imperial period was generally through the power of institutions--the military--and in any event many of those upstarts only rules for a blink of an eye. Napoleon's rise came at a time when the rise of Nationalism and modern rebellions made the entire political landscape into something very different than a medieval world.

You could find historical examples, however, in Ancient China, generally at the head of peasant rebellions, so I'm not contesting that in all of world history you can't find commoners rising to great power.

What I'm saying is that seeing that happen in the context of Dark Ages Britain in rapid time through the mechanism of lords everywhere letting you recruit armies from their lands and march them through with nary a word of protest, and because mayors who have no reason to trust you hand you kidnapped daughter money with full confidence, and because riskfree trading of some wine brings huge profits out of all proportion to the effort and capital involved, etc etc, is completely unrealistic.

Every bit as unrealistic as a skilled player, wearing top of the line armor, slaying many enemies in personal combat. Indeed, that feels like the least unrealistic path to power for the player, as it requires only one unrealistic assumption (godlike talent for the player) vs many constant unrealistic assumptions (this mayor is crazy, these trade prices make no sense, this lord is insanely permissive, etc).

Really, the closest thing to a realistic commoner background playthrough would be working in a logging camp or farm for a couple of years. :wink:

So when we need a mechanism for the player to do the near-impossible in terms of political rise to power, overhwelming combat talent is probably the least unrealistic means Warband offers, compared to the constant silliness that is trade prices/quests/etc.

On the calendar, though--Viking Conquest borrows our real world calander, months and seasons and all, no? Have I not been paying enough attention and missed a distinction? I understand the travel speeds are a bit too fast and the North Sea is shrunk, and changes occur to quickly, but given the seasons, listed calander days, day-night cycle, I'm inclined to interpret days as exactly the same as real-world, absent some compelling reason not to. The issue boils down to making a few unrealistic assumptions (travel speed) and then playing coherently with them in place, vs having to constantly make new unrealistic judgements as you go (pretending every night/day cycle was actually 4 days, and then the calander display is wrong as well, would be a constant breaking of immersion for me).

I had thought about modding the partyspeed script in python to slow everyone down by 50% and compiling my own version, but after looking into it got overwhelmed with the complexity. I lack computer skills, and was afraid to risk breaking things even with the excelent guidance available. :wink:
 
Tingyun said:
On the calendar, though--Viking Conquest borrows our real world calander, months and seasons and all, no?

VC simple uses Warband calendar with names we would recognize, it didn`t change the under the hood mechanic. Game is still acelerated to keep the action flowing way faster than it should if you tried to copy our world.

Bannerlord is suppose to make their calendar even faster (one year = 12 in game weeks), so it doesn`t seems like they will try to replicate history and keep the more arcade aspect (as it works well for players).

Strategic games like Total War and Paradox titles also can't or don't try to replicate our calendar. They go arcade+gameplay+heavy action first.

Cheers
 
Right, but we are talking about "realistic" from the player's perspective, so under the hood mechanics take a backseat to what is displayed to the player. When Viking Conquest says "hey, it just turned March, now winter has ended, your morale improves, and all the snow in the world map and scenes melts", then the most realistic choice for the player is take the calendar at face value, even if parties are still moving too fast and the economy is changing a bit too rapidly.

The alternative, of assuming somehow every game day is 3 or 4 real days, would end up being a pretty nutty situation for a player to roleplay, requiring constant adjustments and rationalizations around the day/night cycle, calendar, and seasons.
 
Tingyun said:
The alternative, of assuming somehow every game day is 3 or 4 real days

never said that players should consider anything but what they see. It was a simple counter point to your argument that the game is too fast as you go from nothing to conquer the world in 1000 days. As showed above, that is by design (original MB design). It is what it is. We are still playing the consequence of that design from 13 years ago  :grin:
 
On that we agree Kalarhan--and the same is true of the powerful personal combat player. In the same way it is a consequence of warband design imported into VC. The player conquors the world in a few years, the player slays 50 men in a battle, both are unrealistic, and both are very fun.
 
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