-- Mount and Blade: Warband -- -- Version 1.00 -- -- Copyright Vinz55 2014 -- -- Introduction -- Warband is the standalone expansion to the successful Mount and Blade. It has been considered by many to be the best game in the franchise. The game has a bit of an indie feel to it (low production value etc.) but is among the more unique gaming experience you can find. Among the best thing you Warband allows you to do is to run your own kingdom. Now I know a lot of game let you do this. But few really make ruling your kingdom as intriguing and dynamic as Warband. Most games made being the king of the world too easy. You can finish a Total War or a Civ map in less than 10 hours. When you can be crowned twice a week, it gives no value to your throne. Warband by contrast really makes you earn your kingship. As I struggle mightily in the past when I first created my kingdom, I created this guide to offer some insights that might save you some headache as you try to conquer Calradia. This guide is by no means exhuastive or definitive and was written as inspiration rather than rules. -- Source -- I read infos here and there on the web when I played. Much of the guide will however come from my own experience. I kept many save files and have used a few mods that let me see a lot more statistical information than the vanilla version can see. -- Copyright -- The guide of course belongs to me. If you want to use part or all of it, shoot me a message on gamefaqs and you can start using it. Be sure to credit me for it of course. -- Difficulty assumptions -- This guide is written for a player playing on normal combat mode (for both you and allies) and with good AI (both combat and campaign). Difficulty level overall is around 80%. -- Table of contents -- 1. Time commitment 2. Creating your own faction 3. Things to do before creating your own faction 4. Early stage of your faction 4a) Pick your capital 4b) Promoting companions 4c) Nurturing former-companion lords 4d) Combat in early stage 4e) Map strategy 5. Middle stage of your faction 5a) Recruiting lords 5b) Domestic policy 5c) Foreign policy 5d) Economic policy 5e) Combat in the middle stage 5f) Map strategy 6. Late stage of your faction 6a) Managing lords 6b) Combat in the late stage 6c) Map srategy Note: To search for a section, just copy and paste the entire title of that section. For example, "4d) Combat in early stage" ****************************************************************************** 1. Time commitment ********************************************************** ****************************************************************************** Before we start, let be frank with each other. Calradia is one tough continent to subdue. Even on easy mode, you will need some serious commitment and time to be king of Calradia. I have conquered Calradia with my own faction 3 times in 2 years. The fastest one was done in 1255 game days, 125(ish) hours and about 75% difficulty. I've yet to talk to someone who have done the deed in fewer than 1000 game days. So don't expect to sit down and become king in a weekend. It's more likely that you'll need weeks or even months to achieve the feat. Understanding the time commitment can help you down the line. Patience is the most important quality to win it all. Unlike other games when you can usually make a beeline to kingship, the case with Warband is usually 2 steps forward 1 step back. You win some land then your stupid noble lose some land. Things like that can and will happen a lot so be prepared. ****************************************************************************** 2. Creating your own faction ************************************************ ****************************************************************************** If you want to be king, you need to create your own faction. Conquering Calradia as a vassal means someone else will be king. There are 3 ways to create your own factions: Method 1: As a neutral (i.e. not a vassal of anyone), conquer a castle or a town. You'll automatically create a new faction at war with whoever you just attacked. Method 2: Ask for a lief, be denied, and chose to dispute the decision by force. You'll create your own faction, keep all your current liefs, and be at war with your original faction Method 3: Take up the cause for a claimant to the throne then dismiss them later after you gain a foothold. That rebel faction will become your faction. Advantage & Disadvantage of each method: Method 1 gives you the most flexibility. You can choose where to start your kingdom (extremely important) and when. Downside is that you'll have to give up all the liefs you gained as a vassal to go neutral. Method 2 allows you to keep your liefs so you'll start out in much better financial shape. However, you cannot choose your starting city. You can somewhat control when to start but kings will not always deny you liefs you ask for. Method 3 really has no advantages. Helping a claimant is almost as hard as running your own faction. Another downside is that you cannot name your faction if you use method 3. It will always be [Nation's name] Rebel Recommendation: Method 1 is still by far the best. Being able to pick your starting city is too influential to pass up. ******************************************************************************* 3. Things to do before creating your own faction ***************************** ******************************************************************************* Creating your own faction too soon is suicidal even on super easy mode. As with every upstart, you'll need a good foundation and all the support you can get to survive the first 100 days of your new kingdom. Below are things you should have before starting your own faction: a) Right to rule (RTR): Never EVER create your faction with fewer than 25 RTR. Every faction will declare war on you if that's the case. Around 40 is the minimum I would suggest to have. Low RTR could throw your newborn kingdom into multiple wars, which will suffocate your expansion. Low RTR will also makes it harder for you to recruit lords, a major concern at the early stage of your kingdom. The easiest way to increase RTR is to send your companion out on mission. Ask them if they know you want to be king for that option. Note that it might not show up if they don't like you enough. b) Solid finance: Money is important at any stage of Warband but it is most precious at the beginning of your faction. You will fight battles after battles, liefs will most likely be dirt poor when you first acquired them and armies and garrisons keep getting bigger and bigger. Make sure to have some savings heading into the new kingdom. I'd say at least 20,000 should be in your pocket. More important is having multiple sources of income. You won't be able to trade as much (if at all). The most sustainable sources are the enterprises in each city that you can buy. These sometimes get sequestered by country you go into war with but enough of them spread out will give you a healthy and stable income. c) Good troops: Your party will pretty much be the entire army of your new faction starting out. As a result, one loss or even a costly win and you can say bye-bye to your throne. Make sure to have a big and experienced army. I'd say you need at least 120 troops. Half of which should be top-tier troops. d) Relations: Recruiting lords is a pain when you first started out. To make matter worse, as king of your own faction, you will have limited time and opportunity to improve relations with other noble. So make sure to get chummy with them before you strike out on your own. I'd say have at least 7 friends. e) Renown: Renown is important to recruit lords and to expand your troop size. Renown increases slowlier as it gets bigger. Best way to increase it is to win big battles that are stacked against you. Siege battles are the best for this. f) Honor: Honor is also important to recruit lords. Technically, you can recruit lord with either low or high honor. But honorable lords are more desirable so you should aim to increase honor. The best way to improve honor is to let lords go when you captured them in battles. This has the added effect to improve relationship with that lord also. f) Example of a good set up to start a faction 50 RTR, 30000g, 10 enterprises, 140 troops (80 top tier), 10 friends, 1000 renown and 50 honor. ****************************************************************************** 4. Early stage of your faction ********************************************** ****************************************************************************** After you decide you're sick of being someone else's henchman and eke out a land of your own, the real fun starts. The early stage of your faction is considered the toughest. Not literally because I know for sure more skills are required in later stages. It is the toughest mainly because many don't expect it to be so difficult. The odd against you is almost like cheating at times. So make sure to take solace in the fact that you know it's gonna suck and hang in there. Note that early stage is defined as **from the start of your kingdom to the time you conquer the first nation** 4a) Pick your capital -------------------------------------------------------- No matter what method you choose, your new faction will always be at war with at least 1 faction. If that faction does not originally own that lief, you will likely be at war with the original owner also. That is why it is advisable to conquer a town that is currently owned by the original owner. Next you need to pick a weak side to fight. Ideally that faction has been at war for sometimes and is still at war. Contrary to what you think, do not pick a city deep inside a faction's territory. Sure, that will help you limit your war to one faction even if you're at war with multiple sides. But you could be facing non-stop battles in that location and you won't have access to towns to sell and buy stuffs. Below are accessments of who to fight at the beginning: Nord: Nord has good location. Sargoth is a popular starting city. They have tough infrantry however which means very tough siege. Vaegir: Vaegir archers will make sieges somewhat tough. Their castles and towns are also positioned in a way that you'll likely be attacked from multiple sides no matter where you start. Swadia: Swadia knights are strong but the AI Swadia rarely ever amasses enough of them to pose a threat. Swadia is usually involved in multiple wars and get worn out fast so they make a good opponent to pick on. None of their cities are ideal starting places though. Rhodok: Rhodok's specialties are spearmen and crossbowmen. You can guess how hard it is to win a siege against them. Khergit: Khergit's horsemen are bad at siege defense. Halmar is a nice starting position. Their armies move very fast however and you're very vulnerable to sneak attack at the start. Sarranid: These guys put up a decent fight in a siege. Their land is very isolated, which can be either a good or a bad thing. Recommendation: Fight Khergit. Siege is a dangerous affair without other lords to help out (which will be the case at the start) and Khergit is the worst at siege defense. 4b) Promoting companions -------------------------------------------------- What you will find out is that it is almost impossible to recruits lords of other nations at the start. Even if they overwhelmingly love you, hate their liege and has no lief, they will most likely turn down your invitation due to reputation concern. Don't stress out too much over it as lords start coming over steadily after the early stage. You still need help in the early stage though. One nation is still big enough that you won't be able to defense and attack alone. That is why you need to promote some of your companions to lordship. You should promote companions that are noble, otherwise other lords will lose relationship, which is hard to maintain as it is. Don't promote too many however. Companions are a lot more useful inside your party. I'd say having about 3 should be sufficient to pass the early stage. Candidates to promote are: Matheld: Comes with some leadership already so she'll start out with decent party size. Her default army type is Nord, making her invaluable in siege battles. The downside is that Matheld is an awesome fighter, so losing her is a tough loss for your party. Bashetur: A decent Khergit lord. His party moves very fast and he is fairly uncontroversial. A low-maintenance lord is just what you need in the early stage. The Khergit's habit to roam means his party won't always be welcomed in a crunch battle however. Also, he makes a good horse archer if kept in your army. Alayen: He is a blank slate so you can mold him into whatever you want, including a good lord. He is from Vaegir however, whose troops' strength is diversity. I tend to prefer lords with faction who has specialized troops so they can better assist me. He is a fairly honorable lord. Lezalit: Lezalit is a very useful lord because of his ability to use whatever troops his lief is on (for example, he'll use Rhodok if you give him Veluca). This quality won't shine until later stages however. At the start, you most likely only own liefs in a single nation (whoever you're fighting) Firentis: A Swadian noble. A well-nurtured Firentis can pack serious heat with his Swadian Knights. He is however one of the better companions in combat, and perhaps the best companion on a horse. Rolf: Probably the worst noble companion to make lord. He comes with rather high level so it's harder to mold him. He will use whatever troops on his lief like Lezalit. One good thing about Rolf is that he likes Bashetur. Putting their liefs together means they could go everywhere as a pair. 4c) Nurturing former-companion lords--------------------------------------- Once made lords, your former-companions will be quite weak. At this time they are simply no good so you need to help them. Prevent them from fighting battles on their own at first. Give them any spare troops you can afford. And generally try to give them liefs that are away from danger. I would not have them freely roam until they have at least 60-70 troops. 4d) Combat in early stage-------------------------------------------------- You need to be good at combat at any stage of your faction but especially so in the early stage because one loss could be the end. You will also mostly fight using your own party. Below are some tips regarding battles: -- Troop composition -- You will need a diverse mix of troops at start since you won't have the luxury of other lords helping yet. Thus, you will need some cavalry, infantry and archers. Good calvary are Swadian Knight and Sarranid Mamluke. Good infantry are Nord Huscarl and Swadian Sergeant. Good archer are Rhodok Crossbowman and Vaegirs archers. The absolute best in term of stats are Swadian Knight, Nord Huscarl and Rhodok Crossbowman. So how many of each? You want most of your army to be cavalry since in the early stage, you need to move fast on the map. Also, cavalry is the quickest way to win a field battle. I usually go with a 50% cavalry - 25% infantry - 25% archer mix. -- Field battles -- Enemy AI is very passive in a field battle. So if you come up with a good strategy that win most battles, you can keep using them over and over. You will rarely if ever have to make split second decision in battles. My strategy is to have infantry and archer hold position on some high ground with infantry slightly ahead of archer. Infantry will absorb the enemy's archer hits and archers will wear them down. I then take my calvary and flank the enemy. I time my calvary charge just as the enemy charge hit my infantry formation, resulting in pincer movement. Using this strategy, I regularly win battles in which I'm outnumbered by more than 2 to 1 with relatively little casualties. Do not ever auto resolve a battle (order troop to attack on their own) as even if you greatly outnumber the enemy, the outcome is never favorable. I had a battle of 178 against 15 once and auto resolve it. I lost 14 elite troops in the fight... That's how many I normally lose if I fight 300+ army on my own. -- Siege battles -- Siege battles in Warband is crazy hard. Mostly because of the lack of siege option. You either has a ladder or a siege tower. Your troops will get stuck at the entrance while their archers have free shots at your men. A careless siege battle can end very very badly. Now the single most important element in siege is YOU. In higher difficulty, sieges almost always end badly without actions from your character. There is no way to compensate for it, not 150 huscarls or 150 crossbowmen. But first let's talk about what your army should do. Spread your infantry and archers out. Have your infantry make a shield wall for your archers. Most likely your archers will be better than the defender but they lack cover and amunition. Do not bring troops who does not have a shield or only have a small shield. Nord Huscarls have the best shield. Swadian Knights can decently shield also. Once it is okay to advance, have huscarls go first since they have short range weaponry to use if they are not at the front. Anyways, now let's talk about you. You want to have decent Power Draw level and decent aim. Hide behind the shield wall as well or if you trust in your aiming then go directly below the wall. Shoot the archers in the tower first, they have the best position and are the hardest to reach. You don't want to hit the non-archer. Killing too many could spawn reinforments before you get to break inside the wall. After most of their archers have die, have your troops charge. You want to be 4 or 5 layers behind the front line. Take out your bow and start shooting the enemies on the wall from where you are. Most of these are gonna be point blank shots so you'll kill many this way. After your troops break in is when things get complicated. Depending on who you are fighting and what you are good at, there are different things to do. Most of the times, the main danger is that when your troops are bogged down on the wall, their reinforcement archers will shoot them from the yard. If you're a good archer, then shoot at them when standing on the wall. If you're a good melee and really need a big win, then jump down and engage these archers. Most of them should die in 1-2 hits. After you're done with the archers then go around and hit the enemies' infantry from behind. Rinse and repeat after each wave of enemy reinforcement. Generally, once your troops get to the yard, you have the win in the bag. 4e) Map strategy ------------------------------------------------------------- The biggest problem in your initial war is that you are outnumbered, in troops and more importantly, in lords. If you have an army as I described earlier, no single lord can win against you, not even king and their 300+ army. Your danger is facing up against multiple lords or get sneak attack while you are occupied. As a result, it is advisable to actually bait enemy into attacking you. Try to hit 2 to 3 lords at a time and decimate the other faction's elite troop numbers. I would say you need to kill around 1000 troops from the other factions before you can really start sieging their liefs. There is really nothing you can do if you have to face a campaign (7-8 lords at a time). It is possible to win 100 v. 1000 but you need to some insane luck, a lot of terran advantage and a very bad hostile army. This why is important to pick a nation who has been at war. After you think you have defeated most of their experienced army, it's time to go on the offensive. Preferably, you should have 3-4 lords at this time to help hold the fort when you're out and about. Get the town first if you can as they affect the owner's troop count. I know that you recruit at village not town but that's how troop number works for AI (including your allied AI). Some towns are actually easier to siege than castles. Once you got a town, start sending out recruitor to get as many troop there as you can. Sure, they might be mostly recruits but the enemies, assuming you hit them hard, should use mostly recruits as well. For castles, pick and choose which one you want on your side. Usually you should pick off castles that might be your blind spot. For example, if you start at Halmar, get Narra then Tulga. Ouhoun and Malayuk will be your blind spots. Just be smart about it at this point, see where your lords are, how fast and how far can you move. Once you get all the towns, start consolidating. As your land has expanded quite a bit, this is when you'll start getting attacked in multiple places. This is the most frustrating part of the early stage. It is when you feel like you're doing this thing alone. Just be patient and resilent. Fought off sieges as they come. Most enemies won't be able to succeed before you can come to the lief's aid. If they get one of your liefs, attack them right away. Newly acquired liefs have very poor defense. Remember that the more it stays at the status quo, the better it is going for you. Without towns, their troops will start falling. Your lords will only become stronger. When you feel like the the hostile nation is on its last leg, go for the kill. Get the lords to go with you or to defend important towns. Remember to go slowly but surely. Don't be greedy and go for multiple liefs at once. Once you get a nation's last property, they will be eliminated after a few days. And you will complete the first stage of your Calradia conquest. ****************************************************************************** 5. Middle stage of your faction ********************************************* ****************************************************************************** Hard as the early stage is, you rarely have to worry about politics during it. With so few lords, all of them will love you. In the middle stage, you will begin to deal with governing more often. Most of the actions of the early stage took place in battles but the middle stage is as much about map strategy as battle strategy. Note that the middle stage is defined as from the end of the early stage to when you conquered 4 out of 6 nations (or 2/3 of Calradia) 5a) Recruiting lords -------------------------------------------------------- Shortly before you eliminated the first nation, lords will start flocking to your court. Most of them will be nobles from the nation that is about to be vanquished but you will see some noble of other nations as well. Keep a few liefs unoccupied so noble will be enticed to join. There is a few things to remember when you start acquiring vassals: -- How many -- It might be tempting to have as many noble as you can get, especially after you essentially fight alone in the early stage. That is not wise however as the more vassals you have, the harder it is to keep everyone happy. A general rule that I use is that the number of vassals should equal 70% to 80% of the number of liefs. The extra 20% is to account for vassal who I might want to hold more liefs so as to gain more troops as well as liefs that I own myself. In the middle stage, you should not have more than 40 vassals at any point. -- Who to recruit -- The first factor to consider is the lord's renown. Higher renown lords are better because they will have bigger army. They will also attract fellow lords to your cause. Next is their personality. You generally want upright and honourable lords. These aren't as likely to cause trouble. Lords with too much controversy will eventually clash with other lords, making you taking time to defuse the conflict. Third is their relation to your existing lords. You generally want lords that know and support each other. This will help minimize the relation loss when assigning liefs down the line. Lords with tie to each other also comes to one another rescue quicker. Note that a trick to check their relation is to change the name of your lord's title to something unique. For example, use "Duke". Then when checking out a potential lord, check his relatives and friends list to see if there are any Dukes in it. Fourth is their current relation with you. You want lords who already like you. Relation tend to go down rather than up when a lord becomes your vassal so it's useful to have a buffer zone. Fifth is their original faction. This will affect their troop types. A lot of lords you see in your court is from the nation that is just eliminated. You don't want 20 Khergit armies or 20 Vaegirs armies. Try to find a good diversity. 5b) Domestic policy ----------------------------------------------------- This section describes the things you should take notice of within your faciton. -- Assigning liefs -- Assigning liefs is one of the aspects of Warband that is extremely difficult. When assigning lief to a lord, you'll boost your relation with that lord for a lot, a little bit for his friends but lose a little relations with all other lords. This doesn't sound too bad but imagine if you have 20+ lords. In most cases, your net relations with all lords will go down. This is why assigning liefs is my least favorite part of Warband. I would understand if a lord with no lief complains when a lief get assigned to someone else. But why does a lord with 2 castles hate you when he does not get a tiny village from accross the map? The system makes the game much harder, but not in a good way. Anyways, there are methods to remedy this badly designed system. First, as mentioned in the previous section, try your best to recruits lord that support each other. You can potentially creates "camps" within your court. I tried to mantain around 3-4 camps at most so when I give a lief to a camp, only 2-3 other camps will lose relations. The Diplomacy mod helps with maintaining camp. One of the ministers can tell you who has the most support to be assigned a lief. You can intervene as well by convincing lords to support your choice. Most of the times you still can't prevent a net loss in relations, but at least the loss won't be devastating with proper management. There are two pitfalls to avoid when assigning liefs. First is to keep too many liefs to yourself. Assigning lief to yourself does not increase or lower relations with anyone so it can be a good way to avoid an incident. However, most liefs are more useful in the hands of your lords than yours. While you can recruit troops anywhere, lords only recruit on their own liefs. Having 1 or 2 more liefs won't affect your troop count at all but it could make huge difference for lords. Giving liefs away also means there is a default defender for that lief. Finally, tax inefficiency means that too many liefs won't make you any richer. The second pitfall is trying too hard to play socialist. You just have to accept that you can't make everyone like you. Desperate attempt to appease lords who hate you won't save those lords and might even damage your relations with other lords. It's better to have a few super lords with multiple liefs than a bunch of whimsy lords with 1 village each who has 50 troops and can't defend anything. -- Managing relations -- As mentioned above, assigning liefs usually end up giving you a net loss in relations. Below are some other ways to lose *net* relations: *The lord loses a battle (doesn't matter if you have anything to do with it) *Promoting a commoner companion to vassal *Declare war without provocation *Indict a lord for treason *The lords has no liefs Below are are some ways to increase *net* relations: *Help a lord in a battle, preferably one he's losing *Plunder a lief and share the spoil (does not always work) *Resolve a dispute *Hold a feast Please note that the above are only actions that affect empire-wide relations. Of course you can influence individual lord just as when you're not a king (have their wife help, etc.). -- Dealing with unhappy lords -- Inevitably, there will be lords who hate you to the core. That can't be help so you just have to try your best to limit the damage they'll do. Another useful option in the Diplomacy mode is to spy on a particular lord. If they're betraying you soon, you'll know to act first. Most of the time, the best way to deal with bad seeds are to give them villages. So even if they betray you, you won't lose anything since villages are tied to castles. Give your castles and especially towns to lords who has a lot of relations with you or who you plan to keep mostly happy. There will be times when a lord who has been assigned an important lief in the past become unhappy. It might be worth it to expel these lords and absorb the relations loss rather than risk losing the liefs to other nations. Most other times, it's better to simply wait for the lords to rebel and take them out. A particularly good way to limit the damage is to tell the unhappy lord to travel to an area populated by people who hate him. When he rebeled, he'll get taken out without any fuss. 5c) Foreign policy ---------------------------------------------------------- Compared to domestic policy, foreign policy is fairly unexciting. There is a variety of emissaries you can send to other nations to improve relations with them and to gain RTR. None of them are too significant though. Your foreign policy aim in Warband is mostly to manage who you are at war with. The best things you can do internationally is establishing trade agreement. Trade agreement boost your overall prosperity level by quite a bit over time. Trade partners are also less likely to attack you. Take special notice of nations who are not with war with anyone and who has not been at war with you for a while. They're the most likely to declare war on you. Send emissary to these nations and get chummy with them as much as you can. 5d) Economic policy -------------------------------------------------------- As with foreign policy, there is not a lot of things you can do for your faction economically. As soon as you give off liefs to lords, it's up to them to manage those. With Diplomacy mod, you have certain options to improve finance at the cost of military expansion. I found myself avoding these options as much as I can since it's hard to quantify their effects. A good strategy that I usually do is to build a mill in every village before I hand them off. The mill costs like 3500g, which should be pennies for you after you become kings. You can give the liefs away before the construction finishes. It will be completed regardless. Other than that, there is not much else to do economically. The factor which influences the prosperity of your faction the most is actually security. As long as people can travel around freely and villages are not raided, prosperity level will improve. And this has more to do with war strategy than any economic strategy. Remember that Warband isn't Civilization. The only purse string you can control is your own. And that's the only purse that matters. 5e) Combat in the middle stage -------------------------------------------- After you get all of that politics out of the way, we will get back to the good ol' brawl. Most of the strategy shown in 4d (combat in early stage) will still apply to combat in the middles stage. However, there are some additional elements to consider. -- Troop composition -- The troop composition that you use in the early stage can still work. But it is advisable that you tweak and/or expand your troop selection. There are two reasons for this. First, you will no longer fight alone like you used to. So your troop composition should make use of what your allies can offer. Second, you have more freedom on the map now that you're no longer the only standing army of the realm. A strategy I use is to find a lief close to the nation I'm fighting. I then put different troop types in that lief. I would go back and exchange troops depending on what kinds I need most. I recommend that you have at least 3 army compositions: the harassing army, the campaign army, and the siege army. * The harassing army: Even in the middle stage, you're still almost unrivaled in field battle. If you can catch enemy lord 1 on 1 or even 1 on 2, you can obliterate them quite easilly. The harassing army is good to whittle down the hostile nation's experience force. The most important factor with this army is speed because you want to be able to pick your battle. So you will want mostly calvary or infantry that counts as cavalry for the sake of map speed computation (most final tier infantry are). This army can essentially be the same as the one in the early stage since you will also fight alone. You can potentially try to replace Rhodok crossbowmen or Vaegir archers with Khergit horse archers for faster movement. * The campaign army: This army is for when you're with a bunch of other lords. Note that even though I name it "campaign," I advise against using the campaign option most of the time. This will be explained in map strategy section. Anyways, when fighting with other armies, you can't really know for sure what troops you'll get in a battle. Essentially, with this army you can just bring the best troop you can find. A better way to go about it is to check to see what your allies are bringing and bring what they are missing. You don't need a lot of speed with this army. If you're too fast, you might actually get away from your allies. * The siege army: This army can be further divided into 2 more categories as well: siege alone or siege with allies. In both types, do not bring any cavalry. They are of little help in siege. Unlike in the early stage, you no longer have to be everywhere everytime (if you manage your lords well) so the map speed that cavalry provides isn't needed. If you siege alone, bring your best infantry and best archers. If you siege with others, bring mostly archers. The reason is that there are essentially 2 roles in siege: the shield wall and the archers. There are many troops with shields but the AI rarely possess top-tier archers so they will need to come from you. -- Field battle -- Field battles remain mostly the same in the middle stage as in the early stage. 2 changes that are most significant. First, you will now have to fight against more varieties of troops. Second, you will have to fight more often with allies. Let's talk about the varieties of your enemies. Even though you mostly will still fight only 1 or 2 opponents at a time (you should), enemies will start to vary a lot more in the middle stage. This is when lords start changing sides often. Of course, there are also the nobles from the nation you just eliminated who need a new liege. When lord joined another side, they still use troops from their original faction. Different factions fight field battles somewhat differently, and playing to one's weakness is necessary to pull off big win. Below are some tips on how to fight certain armies: * Nord Nords' strength is their infantry. Your worst fear when fighting Nords is actually not your infantry fighting theirs but when your calvary got bogged down in a bunch of Nords Huscarl. That will end very badly for your cavalry due to the Nord short range weaponry. The biggest weakness of Nord is lack of mobility. Their big shields negate a full on charge but if you can charge them from behind or from the side, their line will still collapse. And it's usually quite easy to maneuver into a good position against the Nord .Split your cavalry into 2 groups if it's a tough fight. Have one group charge then retreat as the other group charges. Kiting works well against the Nord also. Pretend to charge then pull back right before impact. Their line will always charge back at your retreating cavalry who is a lot faster .Meanwhile, your archers have free shot at their unshielded infantry. Rinse and repeat * Vaegir Vaegir has perhaps the most well-rounded troop tree in Warband. They have a decent infantry, an average knight and a good archer. The good thing is that there is not a big threat to look out for. The bad thing is that there is not a single way to counter all Vaegir armies. Most of the times, what ever is your most effective strategy works well against the Vaegir. Their archers shoot very fast so make sure never to let them have the high ground. * Swadia Swadia is all about heavy cavalry. A charge from their Man at Arms and Knight is gonna be very painful. So your success against Swadia comes down to preventing them from charging, which is actually fairly easy. Swadia has a habit of taking time to line up before engaging. They will always "re-lineup" if they want to charge in a different direction. You can use this to your advantage in many ways. For example, you can charge them first before they get to line up. You can confuse them by making them line up over and over and eat arrows while doing it. Another habit of the Swadians is they will charge at you regardless of where you are. So it's easy to bait them into charging a forest or a hill where their horse is a burden. Overall, Swadian cavalry is a lot more potent in your hands than in the AI hands. * Rhodok Many new players have problems with Rhodok because most new players rely solely on stacking Swadian Knights to overwhelm everything. Rhodok spearmen counter cavalry very well. Their crossbowmen are the best ranged units in the game. They shot hard and accurately. To counter Rhodok, you need to exploit their reluctance to charge. Rhodok usually fights defensively. Have Huscarls advance close to their line then stop and start throwing axes. Spearman has no or weak shields so the axes will be devastating. If they don't charge, you get more free hits. If they do, one-on-one Rhodok spearmen are food to Huscarl. Once they broke their line, either by you or by themselves, have your cavalry charges their archers. That should do them in. * Khergit Except for their recruits, all Khergit troops are on a horse. It's very easy to win against the Khergit. It is however very hard to prevent troop deaths against them. Their lancer can randomly pop one or two of your troops and so can their horse archers. One thing you want to avoid doing against Khergit is let your troops roams. Once you charge them, Khergit lancer and horse archers will always start to peel off the pile and run around. Without instructions, your troops will start chasing them around, prolonging the battles and risk more deaths on your side. Always charge them first. Khergit does not organize their charge as well as Swadia so if you use Swadian Knights or Sarranid Mamlukes, you will always win in a head-on charge. Then once their troops start roaming, pull your cavalry back. Have your archer shoot at their horsemen as they try to regroup. Charge them again once they regroup. Think of Khergit as flies. You can kill more when they are all in 1 place than when they scatter. * Sarranid Sarranid is similar to Vaegirs. They are very well-rounded with good troops in all categories. Their difference compared to Vaegirs is that they have better cavalry and worse archers. Mamlukes could be a pain to deal with on the flat desserts. You need to be somewhat flexible against the Sarranid. See what they have in their army and then counter accordingly. Mamluke is fairly easy to recognize from afar. If you see a lot of them, then fight them like the Swadian. Bait them with hills or forests. If you see more archers and infantry, then do a pincer movement with your cavalry and your infantry on either sides. If you see a good mix of everything, then just use your most effective strategy. One good thing about fighting the Sarranid is that they are fairly peaceful so they don't go to war a lot. As a result, their armies have numbers but not a lot of top tier troops. -- Siege battle -- Siege tactics remain exactly the same as in the early stages. The only thing that really changes is that you now fight more often with allies. That doesn't really change anything though since you can still command your allied troops. Again, your character is by far the most imporant element in siege battles. Refer to section 4d for more details. 5f) Map strategy ---------------------------------------------------------- If you manage relations with your vassals well and keep winning battles, you will do fine in the middle stage no matter what map strategy you use. Again, you have to remember to be patient. Consolidate gain is more important than quick expansion. This section will discuss one element of map strategy that is not relevant in the early stage but is significant in the middle stage: allied armies management First, let me leave no doubt that I do not advise at all the "start a campaign" option. This option allows you to gather lords around you. After some time, you can potentially gather a massive army around yourself. Ideally, you can then snowball through a region with your unstoppable army. Reality does not work that way however. It is more likely that your massive army will move poorly. Taking lords away from your liefs means that your border will be left wide open. Having so many troops will mess up your composition in the actual battles as well. Campaigning has its place in late stage, but not in the middle stage. The only time you might want to start a campaign in the middle stage is to counter another campaign. A flaw of campaigning is that you cannot choose who to invite and who not to. You might want certain lords for their troop type and might want to avoid others whose liefs are in danger. Diplomacy mod provides a much better alternative by allowing you to send vassals messages. You can pick whoever you want to go with you and tell them to meet you somewhere. Once you meet them, talk to them and tell them to follow you. If you don't have the Diplomacy mod, then organize your "fighting lords" into 1 region. Visit said area to pick them up. The rest is really up to you since every game is going to be different. The general strategy in the early stage should still work well. Harass first to decimate their forces then start siezing liefs by liefs, focusing on towns when you can. The enemies can feel like undead at times with how they keep spawning huge armies with no resources to speak of. But keep at it, the attrition is real and will kick in at some points. After you eliminated one nation, spend some time in peace to consolidate. You will likely has some more lords joining (mostly from whoever just got eliminated) so go through that process again. Once you have at least 2/3 of Calradia under your thumb, it's time for the end game. ****************************************************************************** 6. Late stage of your faction ********************************************** ****************************************************************************** This section will not be as long as the previous two. If you have gotten to this stage, it is likely that you already know what to do. The biggest difference betweeen this stage and the middle stage is just the sheer size of things. Battles become many times bigger. You have several times as many lords. Your land now needs more than a day to travel from one end to another. Generally though, you should already be dealing with these things gradually towards the end of the middle stage. Unlike between the early stage and the middle stage, there is not a genuine need to change approach between the middle stage and the late stage. So my advice is to keep doing what you're doing. Below are certain tips to help you better deal with the scale of things in the late stage. 6a) Managing lords ---------------------------------------------------------- As of the beginning of the late stage, you probably have between 40 and 60 lords. It is likely that there will be a vassal getting pissed off every few weeks. Hopefully, you're doing a good job of maintaining camps so as to isolate groups of lords who hate you. In the late stage, you can sometimes just afford to let them rebel, even if they're holding castles or towns. If they are deep within your territory, they will be surrounded by your other vassals. You might not even need to retake the lief yourself. The only ones you need to pay attention to are strategic liefs on the border. When managing relations with lords in the late stage, remember the concept of relativity. There are too many of them. You cannot (and should not) try to micromanage everyone. Say you know that lord is going rogue soon. He is capable of laying waste to a few villages. Do you need the income from those villages though? 2 rich villages are like 4000g combined. That's not gonna make or break your kingdom. So just let him go rouge and let the other lords take care of him. The mistake that many aspiring kings or queens make in the late stage is that they want to take care of everything. Search online and you'll see stories of how many warband campaign lasted for more than a year because stuffs just don't stop happening. Keep an eye on the lords to sniff potential troubles (they are easy to spot). But once you found one, make sure to weigh it and see if it is worth your time to personally handle it. 6b) Combat in the late stage --------------------------------------------- In the late stage, you will pretty much fight every battle with your vassals. You might find a stray lord here and there but most of the times they will have too many troops for you to fight alone. If you haven't already done so, now is the time to create a group of "combat vassals." These vassals are those you trust whose troops fall into well-defined cetegories. For example, 2 Nord lords for infantry, 2 Rhodok Lords for archers, 2 Swadian Lords for cavalry etc. etc. These are the lords that you will go with on small incursion. Think of using them in situations that you would go alone in earlier stages. For bigger battles, it is likely that you still need to call a campaign. Enemy troops count as this stage reach above 1000 easilly. You will need at least 500 to win comfortably. Fighting with mostly allied units is essentially the same as playing pick up basketball games. You have no idea what team you get. Without the right troops, you might not be able to pull those counter-strategies that we discuss earlier. However, the upside is that you also have fewer concerns about losing troops. Before, losing 20 troops in 1 battle can be considered disastrous. In the late stage, you could be losing 100 and still register a big win. So just stick with your try-and-true strategies. Field battles should still be easy. The AI is still inept at this stage. The only difference is that instead of fighting 1 battles, an engagement now last several battles. You fight longer but not any harder. Siege battles, however, are an absolute pain in the late stage. Two things make it much harder. First, there will be so many troops in castles and towns that you need support to take it. That means using random troops your vassals bring. Most siege strategies depend on having top tier troops to break through. Weak or even average troops are just gonna be bogged down in bottlenecks and killed. Second, siege battles now last much longer but you are still just 1 man with 1 hp bar. As you recall, the most important element in a siege is you. In a siege against 100 troops, you can afford to be bold. But in a siege against 1000 troops, your margin of errors are slim. Your troops can replenish but your hp won't. No matter how godly you are in combat, a few stray arrows and you're down to critical health. I research long and hard trying to come up with a viable sure-fire way to siege in late stage. My conclusion is that there is just not any. The method that I usually resort to is to bring my combat lords with me. I would load them up with top tier troops and just overwhelm the defender with better quality. There is a limit of how many times you can do this though. You lose a lot of troops in a siege and replacing 100+ elite troops take some time. As I will explain the next section, dominating in the late stage comes down more to map strategy than combat strategy. At times, you will just have to bite the bullet and take a costly win. It might feel uncool to lose more troops than the defender but this is just the way the game has to be won. 6c) Map srategy ------------------------------------------------------- It might sound crazy but I have found that fighting the last 2 nations at the same time is easier than fighting one at a time. In 2 playthroughs, I eliminated the 5th nation first then go for the last one alone. At this point, there is a crazy amount of lords that need a liege. Since there are only 2, me or the last nation. I have a lot more to lose if I admit more lords so naturally most of them go to the last nation. As a result, fighting the last nation becomes a nightmare. Every battle last for more than an hour because there are thousands of troop on either side. Enemy lords with nothing to protect would spill over the border and wander deep inside my land. In both playthroughs, I was thrown into a mini crisis for those reasons. However, in one playthrough, I fought both last nations at the same time. Lords have one more option to go so they would not overspill as much. What's better is that because the enemies have way more lords than liefs (because 2/3 of Calradis belongs to me), pretty much every lords hate their liege. They betrayed their kings almost weekly, and since I won't admit them, they would go to the other nation. The two enemy factions trade lords so much they can't sustain any type of combat. Lords literally change color on the map as I'm about to fight them. Since there is only 2 options to go to war with, the 2 enemy nations are more likely to fight each other
also, further making things easier for me.

The trick here is to keep both factions equal in strength. If you take one
lief from one faction, take one from the other as well. Be smart about it,
do not let one faction dominate the other. Of course for this strategy to
really work, the two last nations should be next to each other. I found
that for this purpose, Vaegir and Nord are the best. They share a long
border and will essentially start to mingle their land together. Your border
with them is also manageble. Have strong lords hold down the 2 valleys on
the east side and you yourself patrol the west side.

You will be forced to use the campaign option in the late stage. It is
still not desirable that you can't choose who comes but many times,
starting a campaign is the only way to muster enough troops to attack
anything. Think long and hard before calling a campaign however. One
untimely campaign can set you back by hundreds of days.

One last thing to remember is that attrition does not work very well
in the late stage. This is when the game's unrealistic element becomes
most noticeable. 40+ lords sharing 4 liefs can continously churn out
thousands and thousands of troops despite little to no resource. You
have to accept that you simply can't wear them down to submission.
The only way to win is to take their liefs. So unlike in earlier
stages, do not bother to actively hunt enemy armies on the field.
Set targets on liefs that you want to go after. Prepared for the
eventual siege and set off for your destination. If you happen to
stumble upon enemy armies, then defeat them and move on.

Beyond that, there is not much else to be said about the home stretch.
Just keep doing what you're doing. Be patient and one day, you'll be
happily crowned king/queen of Calradia! And it would feel really great.

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Special thanks

Me - for writing this
You - for reading this
Paradox and TalesWorld - for making a wonderful game
GameFAQs, for hosting this guide

Message me on gamefaqs if you have any questions, suggestions or just
want to talk about Warband.

December 24, 2014