Winning with a faction quickly.

[bakters]

One more comment about how you are supposed to abuse high battle size.  Usually at the start I tell all my troops to follow me and run around the castle to hide them all behind the walls.  Enemy archers will try to get the shot on them and they will slowly trickle down towards them.  Then you or your ranged troops can slowly take them down.

No matter how many archers they have, at this spot you have more bolts flying their way than they have flying your way.  You can do all the shooting yourself if you choose so.

When there is nobody to shoot at, I usually start playing peek-a-boo from behind some forcastle and start shooting guys around the ladder.  The AI will always try to face your troops in a neat line, so if you do your job right they will often walk onto the ladder itself.  Now all you have to do is go around and start shooting their backs.  Even if they can't go down the ladder there usually is a place from which you can have a clean shot on them behind their shields, as long as you play with your own troops positioning.

For extra bolts you can bring some mules (low level crossbowmen).  Just order them to cease fire, so they don't waste their packs.  Then you can kill one every time you run out of missiles and reload with his pack (Fire at will, headshot, grab bolts, Cease Fire again).

After a while the AI will lose patience and charge you.  They will come toward your troops in a slow trickle, and you can kill them easily.  Or if they can't get to the ladder, they will bunch up in front of it.  You can then get close and shoot them in the face.

What to do next is up to you.  Charge or end round, depending on circumstances.  It's a slow process, but this way you can take many difficult places with a small army and very low losses. 

 

[Filou]

Yeah, you're pushing to levels of abuse that I avoid. 
The most I do in sieges is to put the troops on one side of the ladder and I go on the other so I can bypass the defender's shields. You can rarely clear the top of the ladder like that, so at some point I send in the melee troops so the defenders turn to face the ladder, exposing them even more to fire from the sides from me and my shooters.

Well, ok, I did do the 'go up the ladder and shoot the defenders in the face as they drop their shield' thing a few times, but at that point I was wondering what's the point of the exercise. There's not much challenge there when the remaining troops don't have any ranged weapons and they can't climb on the ladder to pursue you.

 

[bakters]

Yeah, you're pushing to levels of abuse that I avoid. 

Trying my best! 
What's the point?  Taking the worst well defended castles with a rag-tag army of 50-ish.

Speaking of which, Curring Castle is causing me some grief recently.  I will stoop to new levels of cheese, I can feel it coming.

 

[Abek]

Oh my bagels, Bakters. I don't know if it's original to you, but the idea of using low level crossbowmen as mules  to carry extra ammunition is both terrible and brilliant. I only learned the following tactic once I became marshal and had to lead other people's total **** men into battle instead of my own. This should work for any ragtag band in most cases.

1) I begin by telling my troops to hold their positions and spread out. I do that at the beginning of a siege while the siege engine is slowly rolling to the wall (why the hell am I the only one who can push the damn thing?) or the ladder is looking extremely uninviting. Then I, and the other archers, pick off all the defenders off the walls who'd be shooting at us while we'd be funneling into the chokepoint.

2) After things seem calmer (less arrows aimed at my head), I'll send the melee units in to charge and follow behind with the archers. Hopefully, we've thinned out the front ranks enough that we can break through the funnel. I then sprint to one of the towers/corners that the archers used to occupy and tell everybody to follow me.

3) Hopefully, at least 3/4 to 1/2 of your guys are still conscious. Then we park our asses on that tower/corner of the wall and wait for reinforcements. Meanwhile, the enemy AI will have clustered their next wave of men at the top of the ladder. We will then stare at each other furiously with out shields up. I personally kill as many archers on the ground below as I can. Eventually, enough of your men will die so that reinforcements pop up.

4) Once the reinforcements arrive I send the order for everyone to charge and immediately countermand it for the squad that made it to the corner alive with me. They have to hold until the reinforcements make it to the top of the ladder. Time your attack so that the defenders at the top are getting smashed from two sides at once.  This is where it can get a little dicey. I play on full difficulty and I HATE being cluster****ed. Also, I RP as a Sword Sister, so no helmet. Regardless, aim to kill the men who are body blocking your own guys.

5) I consider this to be the most critical moment of the siege. It's kinda a game mechanic exploit IMO. Any number of soldiers can take any size castle if the army size isn't set extremely high. If you wipe out the entire defending force at once (before enemy reinforcements arrive) you move on to the next stage of the battle/win immediately. At the time when you have the largest number of men on the top of the walls you will be faced with a new wave of enemy reinforcements. You want to wipe them so hard and so fast that everywhere you look is blood and bodies.

6) Split your force in half. There's generally multiple ways down to the enemy spawn point. Get half your men down to the enemy spawn point. Just straight up start overhead chopping. I go straight for the undefended backs of the guys blocking the other half of my guys on the stairs. Free them so that everybody can do battle royale in the spawn point. I will often **** up at this point and have enemy reinforcements show up. Then you might be totally FUBARed if everywhere you look your guys are falling like flies. Most of the time though, I hear the victorious cries of my men.

Notes & tips:
If you're trying to conquer all of Calradia in the fastest amount of time, try to take minimal damage in every battle. You are the limiting factor in sieges. If you get knocked out, siege is over. Make a group of "Bodyguards" who stick with you. Everyone likes to hero it up, but that's unreasonable in anything but easy mode. I stick with a crossbow and overhand chopping people when they're not looking or have a shorter weapon than me.

If you have a surgeon, a hero with special medical skills, make a group called, "Surgeon" and make sure he either retreats from battle or sticks next to you the whole time.

In a speed run, bandit prisoners are going to be a major source of troops.

Hammers. It's hammer time. A huge pain in the ass is seeing "Some unit was killed by Swadian Knight/Huscarl/Lancer/Sergeant." Those units are decently armored and extremely deadly fighters at good enemy AI. But a hammer to the face is a pretty good solution.

All these notes are for normal difficulty, ie, full damage to you and your friends and "good" AI. Otherwise, just use a greatsword and plate armor. You are carnage incarnate when taking 1/4 damage.

I hope this helps in any way. Comments are appreciated.

 

[laverniusregalis]

Get Vexed native (unless diplomacy does this), you can bet up to 500 denars at tornys
Do Lots of tornys. Get atleast 20k. Buy some enterprise in every town. Rack up dat moneys.
Buy Calvary. a party of 100 merc calvary/horsemen can put fear into parties of double your size.
Rek Calradia.

I think you mean Swadian knights. Only use mercs/mamlukes against the Swadians, to avoid deserting knights.

 

[bakters]

Just a quick update - I finished Rhodoks (second faction) by day 123.  Not a quick run, but it was to be expected.  Now it's time for Nords.  The war is already on.