How do you win against the superiority of NPC Lords?

Question

I am playing a female character and have fought a long time with the Kingdom of the Nords against Swadia, which resulted in them having only a few castles left.

Now I am trying to help the female Claimant on the Throne. I have captured 1 Castle of Swadia, which has a good position since a lot of Nord Castles are between it and the remains of the Kingdom of Swadia.

Capturing the remaining Castles seems to be very difficult, since my army's max size can be around 90, but all swadian Lords have around 200-400 Men in their Armies. And Swadia has still many lords, I think it is around 7 or 8. And they often group up on me, which makes me fight more than 600 men with my 70-90 men, depending on the current state.

Restricting the Number of men in battle at once is not an option since you still have to fight the rest in a second battle and if you loose some in the first battle, the second one can still go ill.

What is the best late game strategy to win against these lords and/or capturing their castles?

Answer 1

You may have decided to support the claimant a bit early. There's really not much you can do when all you have are 90 units with 1 lord vs 600 and 9 lords unless your party's stats (like surgery/first aid) are super high already.

Here are some tips that may help you out:

1. A max army size of 90 means that you don't have enough Renown and Leadership. A good army size to have when declaring for a claimant is at minimum of 150. Next time you should try to boost your renown (by taking fewer units into battle against a higher number of enemies). Having a renown of 1500 to 2000 is probably a minimum before striking out on your own. Also, put more points into leadership/charisma.

2. Try to build up relationships with the lords of the faction your claimant is from (capturing and releasing them repeatedly will gain you relationships fairly quickly as well as improving your honor). If you do that, you can visit their lords while they are in their castles and persuade them to join your cause. This will increase your holdings and lords without having to fight them. Since you'll always be the marshall of your faction, you can then ask your lords to join you in battle.

3. Use only high tier units and play to their strengths. For the Nords, their best units is huscarls, but they aren't mounted so suffer when fighting in the open. Your best bet is to fight in moutnaineous terrain and tell all your units to hold out on top of a hill. This will drastically slow any mounted units heading at you, giving your huscarls plenty of time to throw their axes for tons of damage.

4. Try to wait until there's a war between Swadia and someone else, when their leaders are distracted, go in and take their territory. Also, wait until you see Swadia conquer a city, this is the best time to go and take that city from them as it won't be heavily defended.

5. There are also some really cheap tricks you can do to take a castle without any losses, but that requires you to get some rhodok sharpshooters first. Just tell them to use their melee weapons and defend at the start of a castle battle. They'll be nearly invincible when hiding behind their board shields. Then wait until the enemy runs out of missiles, then tell them to open fire. After your guys run out of missiles, retreat, and repeat.

Answer 2

My strategy so far has been to get as many of the companions as i can and max one of each stat on different ones (the party skills only of course, and research the noble companions. best tog ear them for being a Lord rather than party member). 10 in wound treatment, surgery, first aid, trainer and path finding makes your downtime very...short.

for troops i follow the 'specialist' builds

• Infantry: Nord Huscarls (best melee, even over hired blades. Also has thrown weapons to whittle away the enemy ranks before the even clash.)

• Archers: Rhodok Sharpshooters and Nord Vet archers. I mix and match because I feel rhodoks while powerful in ranged combat, they cannot move and fire and their melee skills kind of stink. The nord vets are better at melee defense if cavalry happen to get through.

• Cavalry: mix of merc cav, Saranid horsemen/mamlukes and swadian Knights/MAA. (While very expensive to upkeep, a completely cavalry army of this mix offers very good NON-SIEGE victory. Never bring cavalry to a siege, they will die or be incapacitated quickly compared to hired blades and huscarls.

From what i have read/seen this is what i consider the troops usefulness for (best to worst)

Infantry

• Nord huscarls
• Rhodok/Hired Blades
• Swadian
• Vaegir/sarranid
• Khergit (no true infantry past 2nd upgrade so... yeah)

Archers (not horse-archers)

• Rhodok Sharps/Vaegir Marks
• Swadian sharps/merc crossbowmen
• Nord/sarrandid
• Khergit (non ponies, again no ground troops past upgrade 2)

Cavalry (melee)

• Swadian Knights/ Sarranid Mameluke (Knights have better armor/hp, Mameluke have better weapons/manuever/speed/dmg)
• Mercenary Cavalry/slaverchief (the entire line is pretty awesome, more later) Vagir kngihts/Khergit Lancers (refer to top, repalce swadia with vaegir and sarranid with Khergit)
• Nords don't like ponies apparently.

Cavalry (archers)

• Khergit
• No one else has the moving, hand-eye coordination.

I think a companion sums it up (lezalit maybe?)

• Nord flank
• rhodok line
• vaegir archers
• swadian cavalry
• khergit pony-archers hit and run.

Sieges

For sieges I have everyone hold their fire, and station my archers behind my huscarls (if I bring archers, sometimes i don't). I then go up the ramp/siege tower behind the second rank of huscarls (so I'm in the third 'set' to hit the walls). I then jump down and get to the opposite wall of the castle/town (if there is an opposite wall) and have the archers hold that position so they can pepper the enemy with arrows from behind. I then sit back and keep enemies off my archers.

My personal skills priority list

1. Riding to 5
2. Leadership 10 (dat paycheck shrinker)
3. prisoner management 5 (explained later)
4. invo manage 5 (explained later)
5. then I alternate points into Ironflesh/shield/powerstrike/powerdraw/weaponmaster

Prisoner Management

Doesn't matter if you are on your own, helping g a claimant or helping a faction having a central garrison is your first goal.

Go for a city that is fairly secluded (wercheg is my favorite) or a city that is VERY easy to get to (Dhirim or Suno for example) and build your prison tower. Start filling your barracks with Highlevel troops and use the city as a storage closet for your cavalry if you are going on a siege spree.

Get as many of the Manhunter line as you can (I usually stop at 50-100, they are pretty spendy) and add a small mix of other cav units too. Use this as your main "field engagment" force. Capture as many enemies as you can hold and barracks them in this city.

When you get a certain troop PAST what you can carry for prisoners, put ALL of your troops into the barracks and grab that troops set out. Set camp recruit them (if they accept) then IMMEDIATELY barracks them. DO NOT grab your old crew back out yet, unless they have better than "below average" morale as you risk losing some to desertion. Grab any over that and go find looter/bandits AND SLAUGHTER THEM until your morale is back to average/below average on the troops in your city.

If you get too low on cash you can also sell these prisoners as an 'emergency bank account' :)

Then go back about your business.

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Inventory Management

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Inventory management is a MUST if you are going to be holding a large number of troops for any period of time.

I set my Inventory (going to call it bags from now on, just faster) up with my food/alternate weapons at the bottom so i don't accidentally sell it.

When looting the enemy after a battle i ONLY pick up items worth at least 200 gold (until i get my bags full). when my bags are full and I'm on my way to a friendly (or neutral) city to sell I still battle (morale is important, so are prisoners if I can get my hand on em) I will start replacing low value, nonfood/alternate weapon items with higher value gear, starting at the lowest value and replacing my way up.

SO in essence inventory priority:

• food/secondary weaps for me and party

High value items

1. Horses/tradegoods, they both sell very well usually.
2. Armor usually sells at an acceptable rate over weapons.
3. Weapons (thrown too, but not arrows/bolts)
4. ammo because it's usually the lower value battle-loot

Honor vs Dishonor

I usually don't worry about honor before I get to around 750-1250 renown. Keeping your army outfitted/paid/upgraded is more important then moral feelings and as such should be your first concern. When you finally start warring with other factions (be it by yourself, helping a claimant or a faction) you can keep attacking caravans that ARE on the enemy side but almost always let enemy lords go (inc faction with them usually). I only keep kings for ransom, or if I'm doing a 'capture an enemy lord' quest I will not release my next captured lord. It will make it so you have more enemies to train your troops off of (enemy lords keep recruiting when you release them) but also makes defending your realm a more challenging objective.

A word of advice, do not try to persuade lords to defect until you have a VERY high relationship with them, I have a game I enabled cheats on (and import/exported my character for max stats). She has 109 relation with Jarl Olaf but he just refused her attmpt to defect to Swadia (he is mad at ragnar, mad at most of the jarls and loved my reason he should defect. he also fealt safer among my faction than his own).

Types of Engagements

General Engagements Army(ies) vs Army(ies) on a random battlefield. You will be in A LOT of these. . Reasons to battle in general engagements:

• Morale. Morale is raised every time you win a battle that required even half an effort. No reward for going 200 vs 3 enemies.

• Relation. Saving villagers/caravans from enemies or bandits increases your faction with that realm.

• Money. Battlefield loot is pretty valuable and often yields upgrades for your companions. Never buy your companions gear unless you have the cash. give them hand-me-downs or downgrades from you.
• Experience for you, your companions and your troops. Avoid getting into long drawn-out battles if you do not have a companion with surgery at 10 (increased chance that fatally struck troops will be incapacitated instead)

Reasons to AVOID battles:

• Losing results in morale lost, cash lost, companions are lost, items lost. Losing battles becomes VERY costly.
• troops WILL die unless its an absolutely unfair battle. or you have maxed surgery.
• Companions lose morale and start to whine if you lose or lose to many troops in a victory.

Sieges Offenders vs Defenders in a castle or town setting. Defenders will come out only if they have TRIPLE the offenders troop number. very useful if you have max level troops and they have mainly low level troops. otherwise, HAVE FUN STORMING THE CASTLE!

Average Castle garrison WITHOUT an occupying lord(s) is roughly 80-200. Average City garrison WITHOUT occupying lord(s) is roughly 200-450.

expect a large range of troop levels, from recruits to Specialists.

Reasons to besiege:

• New territory for your faction
• Release prisoners (lords or troops). released troops can be recruited.
• Make trade routes safer if you at war with a faction but not one on the other side. Caravans that reach their destination inc prosperity.
• Fiefs Fiefs Fiefs!

Reasons NOT to besiege:

• Storming a castle is very costly, in terms of time AND money/troops. You lose food while waiting to build ladders/towers and are vulnerable to being counter-attacked/surrounded.
• Storming a City is the same as above, but even-more so.
• The lord you are taking it from will, for some unknown reason, NOT LIKE YOU!
• a freshly taken city/castle by an NPC lord is rarely left with a sizable defending force, leaving you to do it or left it to be counter-sieged.
• messes with prosperity A LOT if you/your faction raided the villages nearby, leaving you an economic mess.

Hope some of that helps you. That's all from my personal experience playing for over 300 hour or my own personal summary of what I have read from other sources/the wiki.

Also, try making friends with enemy lords. at the cost of some relationship points some of them will agree to avoid the battle, making it so the other lords have to catch up to you if they still want to fight.

Answer 3

Cavalry is the way to go. I have taken armies of 60-80 Swadian knights against forces numbering 1200+. Take down all the enemy lords in the first round, then you can just sit back and watch your knights clear the field will often no casualties whatsoever. Knights are still pretty decent when taking castles - but I find that I can support them with a good bow and a large pack of arrows. Shooting the archers off the walls as they try to plink your troops makes a huge difference.

Answer 4

Get Hired blades. and kill Bandits and others to get Manhunters. Belive me Manhunters at thier best (Slave Chief) and Women peasant at their Best (Sword sister) are great just like Hired blade (best of Peasent).

Both these three don't belong to any Faction, so fight any without fear of them running away.

Don't go for Stats, I have fought hundreds Sword sister and Hired blade in Tournament and believe me they are toughest to kill. (They got improved Ai ...i think. ofcourse i dont know)

(78 hired blades + 59 Swadian Knight + 34 Slave Chief + 31 Sword Sister + me + 6 companions with good armour) vs. (King Harlaus 846 Troops + 2 other Lords troop).

Result : I won, with just 5 injured and 2 deaths.

(78 hired blades + 55 Swadian Knight + 33 Slave Chief + 31 Sword Sister + me + 6 companions with good armour) vs. (Count Delingard had about 9 other Counts with him, total of 1145 -damn he was marshal and guess what, my father in law)

Result : I won, with 9 deaths and 38 injured. (more injury becuz Jeremus had +10 surgery)

Both battles on Fields.

Ofcourse, it was easiest setting.

Answer 5

Get Swadian/Vaegir Knights. I am with the Kingdom of Vaegirs and I still use Swadian Knights because I have never been at war with the Swadians.

I have only 95 troops, but I am unstoppable because I have 36 Merc/Cavalry and around 21 Hired blade, and 10 Vaegir Knights and other Troops. I have about 3/4 of my Army (However small it may be) Cavalry because there is less chance of them getting injured/killed because they are on horseback. Hired blades are also very good, Under those awesome Great helmets (I have one) They are actually very strong and look very intimidating with their armour!

Just the other Day, I fought against a Count from the Kingdom of Rhodoks and he had 125 troops verses my 95 and I demolished his troops in less than 3 minutes just because of all my cavalry! (The only bad thing is I was battling him in the Mountains. Because I have Jamiche Castle and that is in Southern Mountains, and it was really hard to maneuver)

Answer 6

Swadian Knights are the best units, even against Swadians. On the hardest difficulty, I usually can kill enemies that have armies ten times the size of mine. Adding some Nord Housecarls when attacking fortresses is a good idea as well. I only use Archers to defend my towns and castles. While attacking fortresses, I destroy enemy ranged units by myself using Masterwork War Bow with two bags of arrows. After you breach the ladders, most of the garrison should be destroyed.

Answer 7

You were not ready for this war

Just as the accepted answer tells, you decided to support claimant way too early. What do you need for it? Well, lots of things. I played my last campaign long ago, so I am not sure if I remember everything.

Character builds

1. Max out Leadership. Get 27 in Charisma, 9 in Leadership, and read a book on Leadership to make it 10. That will save you 3 Attribute points (very valuable) and 1 Skill point (not that valuable). That given, your army size will be already kinda big: minimum 87 in Mount&Blade, minimum 107 in Mount&Blade: Warband, barring the bonus from high Renown, which you should also get high. This is arguably a must-have skill for just any build, no exceptions. Start with maxing it.
2. As you will have to persuade a lot of lords to join you, you need high Persuasion, hence high Intelligence is needed. You will also get some nice bonus skill points this way.
3. Your companions must raise party skills instead of you. Unless you know what are you doing and want to get a bonus, don't waste your points on them. For that to be possible, you need a lot of companions, and, oddly, it is better to get those who start at lower levels because you may specialize them faster. However, if you have high Intelligence, you will find some extra points to spend on that.
4. Neither do spend too many points on combat stats that improve your own performance on the battlefield. You need to be barely able to win tournaments on your own to get Renown -- that's all. Most likely, no combat skill should go above 4: for example, Riding 4 allows you to get the heaviest horse, while Riding 5 just makes you a bit faster. The reason is that in the end-game your character's performance stops being important unless your battlesize is extremely low. Don't make Strength too big either, because STR of 9 already allows you to use the strongest possible body armour, and STR 10 gives access to the strongest possible helmet. Weapons are, again, not that important, at the latest stages of your game your most valuable "weapon" will be a Masterwork Steel Shield so you do not die. At worst can you need STR 11 for the Great Lance. Don't look too much at two-handed weapons, as they leave you without a shield, hence open to a sudden death from couched lance strikes and ranged headshots.
5. Conversely, make every single companion specialize at one single party skill or a group of skills (they may possibly overlap a bit in case one of them gets hurt) and leave all other points for combat stats. This will give you a small squad of very strong elite cavalrymen who will be very hard to take down. One of them, specialized at looting, should basically be a pure fighter with some points at looting (oddly, it depends on Agility). Making all of your companions capable fighters will make them advance in levels at a faster rate compared to companions who spend all the skill points of party skills. Combat stats are an investment granting even more points to distribute. Still do remember that they have their roles, and if, say, your planned doctor still doesn't have at least ~9 at all medicine skills at level 35, it will take a long time to get them... You may experiment a bit by cheating to get the desired level, allocating points, then loading the save again to play fairly/experiment again.
6. Trainer skill. Will allow you to train soldiers at extremely fast pace to regain from losses. Trust me, this skill is invaluable, especially if the whole party has it. This means that they everyone will need some Intelligence -- but make sure that at least your Intellligence companions buy it, as their Intelligence is going to be very high. Yours too, if you bump Persuasion. Again, you need 2 doctors, in case one of them gets wounded.
7. Prisoner Management can give you some fast money, especially when grinding through enemy lines with an army of Mamluks using their 2h-maces.
8. Path Finding, even if your companion has it already high, is actually invaluable, so you might choose to allocate some points to that skill to have a bonus, even though it is a party skill. You should aim for a value of either 2, 5, 8 or 10, any middle points wield no bonus and are hence wasted. Again, you should understand what you are doing. Path Finding is possibly the only party skill worth your investment.

Social

1. Get as much Renown as you can. Win tournaments, host feasts -- and do it frequently, or Renown will decrease. Renown gives you insanely high party size, comparable to that of faction leaders (though not as big).
2. Have high relationship with at least one village of the country whose units you use most. Or with several villages. Saves you a lot of time while recruiting. Attention: if you do that, recruits may come upgraded, so you may not be able to train them the way you desired -- such as Nord recruits that you wanted to train as Huscarls may already come as Hunters... So leave some villages with not-that-high reputation to be able to restock Huscarls if you need them quickly.
3. Build good relationship with all the lords you encounter at feasts. Basically, host feasts frequently, and talk to each lord that visits you. Make quests given by your spouse -- you must have one -- to settle conflicts between lords by asking them to settle it in the sake of your friendship. Feasts also help to get Renown, because each day you also host a tournament. Yes, this needs you to get married. Go get married as fast as possible after you get your first town.
4. Probably try yourself as a marshal, so you know how wars are resolved.
5. Would you not support a claimant, but rather wish to be a king yourself, you need to gather right to rule. If you don't, you will have a trouble recruiting new lords.
6. Never ever loot villages. This ruins your relationships with them, and doesn't really yield you a lot of loot. Good relationships with villages can be invaluable, though.

Feafs

Don't get too many. If you have a good engineer, build everything you can build in your starting village, otherwise don't bother as it will take too long. If you lose it after you establish good relationship with it -- good! You will be able to reconquest it soon, but it will not take space in your fiefs count. What space, would you ask? Isn't it always better to gather more? No, it isn't The more fiefs you have, the more taxes get lost due to poor management. 1 city is good, 2 cities are around 1.5 times better, then you will quickly lose more money than you will get. I once owned around 6 cities because I got them before I understood the problem and there is no way to give them to someone else.

So only accept those two cities as fiefs, nothing more. That's the point where high renown helps, because it decides who will get the fief -- so does help having good relationships with the king. You may convince lords to support you in your claim for a fief, then their renown is added to your count -- this way, by supporting each other, lords score fiefs.

I suggest to have those two cities pretty far away from each other so you have two "bases" in two different regions on the map.

Gear&Gold

1. You need the best (the heaviest) available armour, helmet, boots and horse you can find. Weapons too, but they are not as important at late-game, survivability is. So you most likely need a steel shield and some skill at shields. :) 4 is ideal, not too low, but also doesn't require your Agility to be boosted higher than you need for the heavy horses.
2. Money. Having a war is costly -- so make some reserves. This should not be hard if you own 2 cities (and exactly 2, not fewer, not more) and Dyeworks in every single city. Do not bother with trading, it takes too much time and is hard to scale quickly, those merchants don't have very much gold to buy all your goods.

Choosing units

In general

You should not just use one concept of the army and should not limit yourself to one faction, contrary to what many people may suggest. You need a lot of diverse elite units from different factions stored at garrisons so you may quickly change them. For example, you have 300 Mamluks. Take 150 with you, and you can steamroll most of the foot armies if you order them to use blunt weapons. You are weak on sieges, though -- return Mamluks to the town, and take Rhodock crossbowmen.

I will not tell you which style is the best, there are many, but I will tell you which units are good in their respective category.

1. Infantry -- only Nord Huscarls.
2. Ranged -- Rhodock/Vaegir Sharpshooters.
3. Cavalry -- Swadian or Sarranid (difference is very small). They also fight more or less well if dismounted, especially Mamluks with their 2h-clubs.

However, don't forget to check their stats in-game -- due to some strange mechanism units get some amount of points randomly distributed, so, for example, Swadian Knights may suddenly become strongly superior to Mamluks. The amount depends on the unit level, and the bigger the levels, the less the chance of a big difference is due to normal distribution taking place, but the bigger can the difference be.

Factions in more detail

1. Never get Sarranid archers (they are just very weak) or infantry (weaker than dismounted Sarranid Mamluks; this doesn't make Mamluks the best infantry in the game, just better than Sarranid infantry.)
2. Rhodok infantry doesn't use its full potential due to AI limitations and lack of "spear wall" stance in vanilla Native.
3. Vaegir troops are more or less good all around, but you only need archers if you have access to other factions' troops to cover them.
4. Khergits are only good in open field. Only get those troops if you enjoy their very specific fighting style.
5. No reason to get Swadian crossbowmen or infantry, since you have relatively quick access to both Nord (north from you) and Rhodock villages (south from you).
6. Nord archers are OK, but not as good as Vaegir. You just don't need them.

You need a lot of elite units stored in those two towns you have, because it may happen that they will get besieged by whole kingdom armies. Never leave them unattended!

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Once you get all of that, you may probably decide that you are ready to face the whole world -- it may happen that everyone starts a war against you. What's the problem, however, if you have 500 Rhodok Sharpshooters stationed at Veluca?..

Of course, you still need to manage that all properly. Of course, mods may change how things work -- sometimes in a more realistic way. But that's another story.

Answer 8

Two words. Nord Huscarls. Best at attacking castles because of their shields and their strength. Best at defense of castles because they can throw axes at the enemy as they come. Real fun to watch enemy recruits get cut down while I defend.

Answer 9

Get your party skills up (First Aid, Surgery, Wound Treatment).

Get alot of cavalry and Sergeants, (Swadian Knights, Any Sergeant*)

With this set up, every confrontation you have with 600+ army you'll pick off 50+ men after each battle and they'll let you leave, after that rest for a while and attack again. Repeat until domination.

You could call it raiding them.

Answer 10

Go to the config men when starting up the game. Turn cheats on. Go into a fight and press CTRL F4. (Must button spam if large amount of enemies).

Answer 11

Well Mount and blade is a fabulous game. You are talking about less number of men in our party.

to play fair. The game developers gave a little advantage to the lords and kings over the player. 1. The Kings and lords seem to have the ability to take as many prisoners as they can. 2. They mostly escape after battle quite easily. 3. They can automatically acquire and train troops while sitting at one place.

Here is my solution. You can use some cheats but with all the honesty. I mean to say that you can get even.

Requirements: Cheat engine. (easily available on the web)

export the character and modify the attributes. Keep it honest.

1. elevate your intelligence and charisma and their corresponding abilities. Import the character and youre done. you can have a huge army now.
2. To create army instantly. calculate how much training a class of troop costs. Example Nord Vet Archers cost around 110 Denars.
3. according to your affordability. raise the number of troops.

Ill tell you how. train five troops of your choice. then use cheat engine and change the number of troops to your desired number. calculate the cost and deduct the same amount of money from your inventory.

TA....... DAAAAAA! Now you have a filthy strong army and you can whack anyone.

A suggestion dont use mercenaries, they are pretty damn expensive and are not very versatile.

I have 8 years experience on the game.

best horsemen are the swadian Knights best archers are vaiger marksmen. best footmen are huscarls (pretty hard to kill)

In a castle keep 150 men half nord veteran archers and half swadian infantry. in the same ratio keep 300 in towns. this keeps the weekly budget healthy. Also its a quite a deterrent. your settlement gets seldom attacked.

maintain a Task force at your capital fortress. For offensive or defensive seige.

a contingent of 120 Vaegie Marksmen and 120 Sergents will do. they can be quickly deployed at any moment for defense or offense.

Dont use cavalrymen for offensive seige. they get massacred.

keep a contingent of 150 Swadian Knights for feild defense, they are pretty damn good against bulk forces of 500-600 you mentioned.

these contingents get very low causality rates at even at the normal damage mode. for cheat engine usage watch video on you tube.

Happy gaming