Introduction And Settings
Welcome to my Mount and Blade Warband guide! In the next pages you will find a good number of tips and strats to get you in a desirable starting position to start forging your legend amongst the nobles of Calradia.
But, first things first: Settings. While it might be more difficult at first, i suggest setting the defense to "Mouse direction". First, this leads to a more challenging and fun gameplay. Plus, you will thank me whenever you jump to a MP game. I also recommend increasing the difficulty of battle to at least medium, otherwise soldiers are going to barely attack more than once every 5 seconds.
Other than that, feel free to set up the difficulty to your liking. Should you need practice, you can go to the tutorial and fight a bit until you get used to block.
When you are ready, click the New Game button and get ready to take Calradia
Character Creation
Once you started the game you will be received by the character creation screens. This allows you to pick many pre-defined background stories for your character. This, however, is not only cosmetic. The choices you make in these screens will affect the attributes, skills and gear you get when you start the game.
If you're roleplaying, choose whatever fits your character the most. But if you're mix/maxing you character, or you want to get the best possible amount of points in a given attribute / skill, then you should use the tables below to get your desired result:
Gender:
Opposed to what the game states, playing a female character might be easier than playing a male, since marriage is going to be easier to get and you can benefit a lot more from marrying a lord than marrying his daughter / sister (more detailed later on)
Your father was
Early life
Adulthood
Reason for adventuring
Attributes And Skills
After you finished selecting your background, you'll be able to customize your character. After that, you'll get to the Character Stats screen.
Note that are 3 different stats showed here: Attributes, Skills and Proficiencies
Attributes: Attributes give a minor boost to your character You gain 1 point per level:
+1 STR = +1 HP
+1 AGI = +5 Proficiencies points and minor speed increase
+1 INT = +1 Skill Point
+1 CHAR = +1 Soldier limit
Skills: Skills give a major boost to your character in pretty much any field you want. To develop a skill, it's current level must be lower than 1/3 of it's primary attribute, rounded down (i.e i can't get Ironflesh 4 if i don't have a STR of at least 12)
Also, note that are 3 types of skills: Personal, Party and Leadership
-Personal skills: They are only applied to the character
-Party: These skills apply to your entire army. If more than one has the same skill, the highest skill is chosen
-Leadership: These skills only apply to the leader of an army (such as yourself)
Good skills to look up for yourself:
-Ironflesh: While 2 HP might look a bad deak foir a skillpoint, it increases your hp per 3 points of STR by 66% (3 from STR + 2 from skill). This is even more important at full damage, where those HP points might be the difference between life and death
-Power Strike: A no brainer. Sooner or later you're going to rely on fighting at melee. This will help you to do the maximum amount of damage per swing
-Power Draw: Bows, while they might look bad, are by far the deadliest weapon in the game. Once you get the hang of it, you can get an insane amount of kills (especially during sieges). This is also requiered to use the best bows available. Note that you can only benefit from a max of 3 skills higher than the Power Draw requierement in terms of damage (If you have a Hunting Bow, your damage output is increased by a max of Power Draw 3, even you have more).
- Weapon Master: This not only allows you to spend more proficiency points in the weapons you choose, but help you to improve your skills with weapons faster by using them in combat
- Shield (Optional): I do recommend the use of shields during the levelling and gearing, but in th end it comes down to you if you want to keep a 1-handed + shield or a 2-handed. Shield skill + a steel shield means that you pretty much can't be hit from the front
- Riding: Unless you plan to play as infantry, having a high riding skill allows you to ride armored horses and improve your riding speed. At least 4 would be needed to ride a charger
- Horse Archery (Optional): With a high level of Horse Archery you can retain a perfect aim while riding at top speed. Useful to take down a good bunch of soldiers while keeping the high mobility a horse provides
-Trainer: This skill is useless until you have higher levels. Every day, every troop / companion that is lower level than you will gain experience, based on level difference and training skill
- Inventory Management: The +6 inventory slots are going to be useful to loot enemies and keep supplies for your army
- Prisoner Management: While using a blunt (B) weapon, you can knock out enemies, which can be sold for money at a ransom broker. Also useful to keep lords as prisoners (it lowers the chance of them escaping)
- Leadership: Increases the max size of your army +5 and it reduces the upkeep of your armies. A must for later on, when you start getting into 2k gold per week (even more) just to keep your armies. The increased morale also help to stick them together
Proficiencies: These points determine how good you are at using certain types of weapons. The higher the value, the more damage you do and, in case of ranged weapons, how accurate you are. They can be improved by:
- Spending proficiency points
- Use said weapon in battles
Where To Start?
After finishing you character customization, you will be asked where you want to start. There are 6 possible choices:
- Praven (Swadia)
- Reyvadin (Vaegirs)
- Tulga (Khergits)
- Sargoth (Nords)
- Jelkala (Rhodoks)
- Shariz (Sarranids)
From these options, the best one would be Praven. This is due to the large amount of looters (lowest tier bandits) surrounding the city. Jelkala is also a decent option, but due to the terrain (mountains) and proximity to Mountain Bandits (Rhodok exclusive mid tier bandits) it's better to stick with Praven for new players
Avoid starting at Tulga or Shariz, since both regional bandits spawn with horses, making them faster than you can run
As for Reyvadin and Sargoth, they both are near Sea Raiders, which are top tier bandits, so it would be better to avoid them for now
Early Game: First Steps
As soon as the game starts, you will be attacked by a bandit. Once the fight is over (either win or loose the battle), you will be taken to the Merchant of [Insert starting town here] house, where he will give you your first quest (save his brother). While completing the quest isn't requiered, i strongly recommend doing it, since it yields arround 700 gold in total, plus it will get you used to the recruitment system and some more battles.
1- Recruit five man. To recruit new soldiers, you have to visit a town (like Veidar) and click on the recruit volunteers action
While you can get more than 5 man, i woudn't suggest getting more than 20, due to the upkeep of your army and the movement speed penalty. Once you have enough troops, go back to the merchant (you can find him in the tavern inside Praven)
2- Learn where they hold his brother. The merchant will inform you that there's a small group of robbers near the town. The spawn near Praven and will have their troop number in blue. They're just 4 looters, so this is an easy fight. and you should have no problem at all to take them down. Don't forget to grab all the loot. It might be cheap af, but since you don't have any money, every gold coin counts. Plus, you might get a nice upgrade here and there
3- Attack the bandits lair. Again, a fight against looters in a preset map. Kill all the looters and grab the loot again. Once back at Praven, unload your loot in any merchant and talk again to the Merchant. He'll pay you for freeing his brother and another fight will start. This time inside Praven. Once again, kill all the bandits. Getting none or 1 will yield 100 gold, killing 2 will yield 200 and killing 3 or more will give you 300 plus reputation with Praven (the more you kill, the more rep you gain)
Building An Army
Once you've finished the Merchant questline, you won't receive any other quests, so you'll have to decide what to do next. Since you still have a bunch of peasants as your army, you're quite restricted in terms of things to do and places to visit. That's why you need to start improving your army, allowing you to take on stronger opponents and to succesfully become a lord.
Considering that you don't currently have good units (nor many, remember to keep your army with max 20 soldiers), the first step would be grinding looters in the area surrounding Praven (all the way up to Elberl, near the frontier with the Kingdom of Rhodoks). To more effectively train your troops, you should pick the majority of the looters for yourself and let the peasants to take care of the fer looters who might gotten away.
You should keep doing this until your troops reach tier 2/3 (You have a bunch of footman/skrimishers, which are the tier 3 troops for Swadia and militias (tier 2), nothing else).
Once you've done this, you can start gradually increasing the size of your army, but always keeping a strong core of units. I wouldn't suggest going beyond tier 3 until later on, where you want your troops to be as good as they can, since they become quite expensive and you don't need them to be at tier 4 to fend off looters).
After this, you can start going against Forest Bandits (Swadia, east of Suno or Mountain Bandits (Rhodoks, between Veluca and Yalen). These bandits are stronger than looters, but they also give more XP and better loot. While it might be optional to do this (you just really need a core army to start fighting sea raiders) the improved loot might be useful, considering that Fur Coverered Shields are the best shields you can get from bandits due to it's huge HP)
Also, you might want to fight some desert or steppes bandits, since the usually have manhunters and caravan guards as prisoners, letting you get your hands on some cavalry (better if manhunters because the upkeep of Caravan Guards is too high compared to it's usefulnes)
Once you have around 30 to 40 tier 3+ troops, you can start going against Sea Raiders (not in large groups, otherwise they will tear your army apart). These are the top tier bandits. They drop the best gear you can get without buying or fighting another army. I usually keep killing them for a good amount of time (usually until i've geared all my companions with mail gear). They also yield a good amount in any ransom broker (except Ramun).
Note that, unlike any other bandtis, you can't buy your way out of a fight against the Sea Raiders using gold, so once they're at you, there's only one way out of there: Fight
IMPORTANT: While doing this, you might receive an offer of vassalage into a kingdom. DO NOT ACCEPT ANY OFFERS YET!
Without a strong army, no income and no companions, you won't last long in a kingdom and might find yourself stuck trying to fend off attackers and suffering heavy casualties after every battle
Companions
As you're grinding your way to the top, you might find named characters inside the taverns around the cities of Calradia. These named characters are known as companions. Just like your character, a companion can't die, and they have their own skill set and attributes, which you can improve as you like as they level up.
The reason because i didn't recommend grabbing any party skills is because you can have companions to handle those tasks.
There are 16 total companions. Every companion likes another and hates two more. You can balance two companions that hate each other by having someone they like in your party. The next table shows who hates who and the person they like
Each companion hates the adyacent companions in this diagram, and like the one who's pointed with an arrow
When choosing companions, you should consider which roles will they fullfill in the party:
- Heavy Cavalry: Ironflesh - Power Strike - Riding - Weapon Master
- Horse Archer: Heavy Cavalry + Power Draw - Horse Archery
- Medic: Surgery - Wound Treatment - First Aid
- Scout: Pathfinding . Spotting - Tracking
- Tactician: Engineering - Tactics - Trainer
- Looter (Optional): Looting - Weapon Mastery - Athletics
The best possible configuration in terms of companions woud be:
-Alayen: Heavy Cavalry
-Firentis: Heavy Cavalry
-Bunduk: Heavy Cavalry
-Baheshtur: Horse Archer (Optional, since AI doesn't handle well horse archers)
-Jeremus: Medic
-Ymira: Tactician
-Deshavi: Scout / Horse Archer
-Klethi: Looter / Scout
Note that the role fullfilled by Deshavi will depend on what you do with Klethi. If you don't mind Looting, use her as a horse archer and use Klethi as a Scout. I recommend the use of Looting since not only gives you a bit more of loot, but it also affects it's quality, enabling you to find Masterwork pieces of gear (top tier quality)
Levelling And Gearing Your Companions
To level up your companions (and you for that matter) there are 2 main ways:
1- Battle: Every enemy they kill will yield a companion the normal amount of xp. A companion who sees a lots of fights will kill more troops and, therefore, level up faster than a copmpanion that doesn't. Note that wounded companions can't join the fight and you won't be able to use their skills as long as they're out of combat
2- Quests: Both Lords and Guild Masters can give you many types of quests. The XP given by this quests is only shared between you and your companions, making questing (especially the Bandit Lair quests) the quickest way to level up a companion.
To make them the most effective, you should give crossbows to all your companions and put them in the archers group. The only exception is, of course, those who are going to be using a bow as horse archers, which should receive a bow ASAP
This also applies to yourself, but, since you're probably get more kills than any companion in battles, even in melee, the difference between questing and battling will be severly diminished.
After a battle don't forget to upgrade your companions equipment. From pieces of armor to improved weapons, it will help your companions to survive longer, kill faster and, therefore, level up faster
Gaining Gold (and Spending It)
As you train your companions and build an army, you will start to need an evergrowing amount of gold per week. This is because every soldier in your army (companions included) have a weekly upkeep, plus the food you need to keep to supply your army.
All of this costs gold and, if not properly handled, can lead to bankrupcy and an beautiful headache
The reason for the low amount of soldiers at the start is becasue early on your recruits have a low upkeep (1 gold per week). But, when you reach tier 3 it's already 10g/week (if not cavalry, otherwise it could be near 25 gold weekly each). This can snowball really quick if not handled.
Yep, it can go as high as this. Manage your finances properly!
That's the reason why you need to know how you can make gold. Luckily there are a few methods to raise the money you need (and even more):
1- Battle: Every time you win a battle, you earn a bit of gold, based on the power and amount of troops you just defeated. You also get any prisoners your army might have captured as well as the loot. A couple of points in Prisoner Management, Inventory Management and a blunt weapon can improve your earnings per battle
Advantages: Some quick instant money and loot, as well as levelling your army and companions. Captured bandits / soldiers usually sells for a good price
Disadvantages: Every dead soldier means you just lost money (recuiting + training). If you don't run into a Ransom Broker, you're missing a good bunch of gold in the form of prisoners you can't take. Not so reliable when you have a large strong army, since many bandits might run faster that you
2- Quests: Most quest you can get from lords and cities (not villages) will give you money as a reward, ranging from some coins to a couple thousands. It also helps you to keep good relations with lords and cities
Advantages: Improved relations with towns and lords, usually not that hard to do.
Disadvantages: You never know wich quest they might give you. Some of them can take ingame weeks to complete
3- Trade: Just like in real world, not every zone has access to the same resources. The classic buy low / sell high applies to pretty much any trade good, from food to manufactured goods. Below you can find a table with base prices and recommended buy/sell prices
Advantages: You can start trading with as little as 15 gold if near Dhirim (grain runs). No need to fight, can be done at any given moment (as long as you're not in war with the kingdom you want to trade with)
Disadvantages: In terms of time, doing a full trade run take two weeks ingame, maybe more depending on the size of your army. During this time your profits MUST be higher than your expenses, otherwise it's pointless. If you don't have a strong army yet, some zones might not be accesible to you due to the strenght of the bandits surrounding the area
4- Tournaments: Ocasionally, a tournament will be held in the cities of Calradia. Once you enter, you can bet on yourself up to 100 gold per round. During feasts, there will alway be around 4 tournaments daily as long as the feast continues. Note that every consecutive victory will reduce the income of your bets for some time in that city. Even without betting, you earn 200 gold by winning the tournament
Advantages: You can earn a lot of gold by betting on yourself, up to 4k by betting 600 on you. You also get renown and relations with that town. Should a feast be held in the city, you are allowed to enter (even without enough renown) and you're able to dedicate your victory to one of the ladies in the feast
Disadvantages: Some tournaments can be hard to win if you don't have enough skills with the weapons. Losing in any round means that every coin you betted on yourself is now gone.
As a side note, the best tournament to grind money is the one in Praven. It's an only cavalry tournament, and it's fought only with lance and shield, with a max of 8 fighters at any given time
5- Arena Practice: When you're in a town, you can go to the arena and start a practice fight. You earn money depending on how enemies you take down, and 250 for winning the fight
Advantages: The time doesn't pass while doing this. Making it a perfect way to raise money without letting the time pass (if you need to pay your weekly bills and you don't have money for example)
Disadvantages: You won't win most fights, making the process slow with way too low reward and worse than any other option mentioned above. Use it only in dire need
But... What's the point of getting money if i'm only paying bills, you might ask? Well, it's not just for that. There are three other things were you can spend the money.
1- Gear: With gear, i refer to weapons, armor and horses. Usually a bad idea (except for horses). Do it only if the gear you're getting is WAY better than you currently have, and if you know that you're going to use said item for a very long time. (i.e. don't waste 2k in a chest armor that gives +32 body def +8 leg def, since sea raiders drop two kinds of armor which give you better stats). Consider also what benefits you might loose (that sword might hit hard, but if you're losing the blunt weapon that is helping you to pay the bills is not worth it)
2- Fief Improvements: I'll talk about this later on
3- Enterprises: In every city you can start a business (only one per city) by speaking with the Guild Master. Investing in a business is expensive (1.5k the cheapest), but they will give you a weekly income that you don't even have to collect, it's instantly added to your weekly balance, giving you money or mitigating how much you spend per week. This is the ideal option early on, since that money can help you to mitigate the weekly costs (or even start getting an income) while training your army
A list of all the possible enterprises you can start
Mid Game: Joining A Kingdom
So, you grinded a lot. Built an army of 50 / 60+ battle-hardened troops. Got yourself your companions and trained them, geared them. Levelled up and geared yourself. Maybe even started a couple of businesses around. Finally, it's time to join a Kingdom.
Since you should have declined a couple of petitions by now, every king has a negative opinion of you and won't be sending any invites by now, but that doesn't matter, since you can ask them to join the faction.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
1- If you have only a bunch of businesses, join the faction who owns most of them (i.e. if you have 5 bussinesses and 3 of them are in the Kingdom of Nords, join the Nords). This is because whenever you go into war against a kingdom that has a business you control, you won't get any income from that business.
2- Relative Power: Look for how many vassals a kingdom has, and how much land do they occupy. A kindom with too much land to cover and with little vassals will fall down very quick. Keep in mind that factions tend to fight their neightbors. Swadia is a great example of an unstable kingdom. Too much land, vassals tend to have problems defending the realm and it is surrounded by every other kingdom
3- Vassals. Joining a kingdom where everyones hates you might lead to you having a bad time to get lands. While you can work your way to good relations again, it's gonna take some time to do it
Managing Your Fiefs
Once you joined a kingdom you were awarded a fief (Unless you're a female, in which case you might have to wait a bit longer). Go to your new fief. Before we start talking about improvements, you must learn about the two most important stats of a village: Their relation with you and its prosperity:
-Relation: The main ways to bring your relation up with them are doing quests (bring grain, bring cattle or train peasants against bandits). The better relation you have with them, the more troops you can raise there in a single recruitment (You can even start getting already trained troops, and even an army)
- Prosperity: Prosperity is a measure of how much rich the town is. The bigger the prosperity value, the bigger the income from taxes you receive from the village. Prosperity increases every time a group of villagers reach the nearest city and when they come back to the village. Some buildings improve the prosperity of the village. At the saime time, if a village is looted, or if the villagers are attacked and captured, the village will lose prosperity.
As the lord of the village, you are allowed to build improvements to your villages. These improvements are rather expensive without engineering, and take a long time to complete, so consider having a skilled engineer with you to start your develpment projects
Here you have a table with all the improvements you can do to a village
Note: Manors won't actually make you character dissapear from the map like cities and castles, meaning that if you are being chased by a stronger enemy, they still can catch you
When it comes down to castles and cities, the only improvements you can do are the Messeenger Post (same effect than villages) and Prisoner towers (Reduces chances of prisones escaping the settlement)
However, you should be mindful about which places to grab for yourself, as there is a limit on how many fiefs you can have without incurring into tax inefficiency. This is based on two factors: How many fiefs you have and the campaign difficulty. The limits are 6/4/2, going from the easiest to the harder difficulties. Wheneveryou have more fiefs than this limits, you get a tax inefficiency penalty, that stacks up to 35% and can't go higher than that. While it is possible to keep increasingyour income even at capped tax inefficiency, this would requiere you to hold around 27 fiefs yourself, so try to focus on actually useful fiefs, like cities
Expanding Your Influence
Once you joined a faction, the next step is to expand your influence. How do you do that? Earning the favor of other vassals. This can help for two things:
1- It will allow you to gain more votes when land is being given, especially if it's land you want to have
2- It will help you to point which vassals are likely to desert the kingdom, which can be useful for when you decide to become a king yourself
You do this in two main ways:
1- Questing: Performing quests for a lord will ueild some reputation with him, ranging from one, maybe two points up to 10 points
2- Aiding in battle. Whenever you join a battle where a lord is fighting, you will get some reputation with him / them at the end, based on the likelyhood of winning that battle (if you help them to kill 3 looters don't expect a big rep change. If you help the to survive the attack of another king they will be most grateful)
You can also attend to feasts. If you're invited, you get 2 points with the vassal who holds the feast. If you're holding it, you get 2 points with every vassal it attends. Keep in mind that if you are the one hosting the feast you need to speak with every vassal in order to get the reputation points. You can speak with them on a daily basis to improve relations
Marriage
We've talked early about marriage in the game. Marriage is important for some reasons:
1- It allows you to start feasts, which can help you to boost your relations with every lord in the kingdom
2- Your spouse can give you quests to maintain the stability of the realm (or destabilize it)
3- Once you're king/queen, your spouse can be your Minister, which will help you with the realm
Marriage as a male:
1- Find a woman who is single: Wandering troubadours can help you with some of the ladies they know are single.
2- Ask permission to visit her to her father (you can try to avoid this, but if she doesn't accept to marry you without his consent then you're pretty much done)
3- Pay visit to her every now and then. Troubadours also teach you poems you can use to improve your relations with ladies.
4- Once you hit 20 rep with the lady, ask her father about marriage. Be prepared though, since marriage is quite expensive (around 10k or more, based on your renown and her father's renown)
After marriage, you get the benfit of beter relationships with her family and right to tule (explained later on.
Marriage as a female:
Marriage as a female is not only easier, but, like i said earlier, you can get WAY MORE from a marriage as a female character. You only need to find a lord who is willing to marry you (since as a woman who leads troops you're way too far from the conventional road of a female in the medieval times).
You know which ones are valid ones based on his response. Whenever someone is telling you that will consider your proposal, it means that with some extra relation points he will accept.
The reason for females having an advantage is because they can marry their way into a kingdom this way, while males can only marry ladies from their kingdom. Not only that, but if your husband owns a castle or city, you gain access to the garrison, allowing you to take high tier troops (or dump as many as you wish) and you don't have to pay anything. All of that goes into your husband accounts, meaning that you have an infinite garrison at your disposal
Lord Personalities
All lord in-game have a set personality. Personalities affect how you actions influence in other lords. For example, releasing a captured lord is saw as something honourable, will increase your relations with honourable lords, but might dislike dishonourable ones
Below there's a table with all different personalities and how how to tell which personality does every lord has
Try to get as many upstanding and good-nature lords as possible as friends, and make sure they're not pleased with their king, as they will be invaluable later on
Marshal
The Marshal of the kingdom is the commander of the army. Whenever a war is declared, the marshall will summon the lords to start a campaign against the enemy kingdom. This is the main way to conquer enemy lands, since castles and towns might still be too strong for your own forces to take down.
You can become the marshall of your kingdom mostly by having excellent relationships with your liege, and getting support from other vassals. This will enable you to start your own campaigns against enemies.
Note that every succesful attack against your kingdom will raise the actual value of Controversy of the marshall. When that value gets high enough, the king will relieve the marshall of his position and open a vote to select a new marshal.
If you're the marshal you can start a new campaign by talking to one of your companions and telling him that you wish to start a new campaign. Same process if you wish to end it.
Another advantage of being the marshall is the fact that you control all the troops of your faction in an open terrain battle instead of letting every commander to perform as they wish, which leads to less casualties after every battle (The AI in Warband isn't known for its ability to implement strategies after all)
Conquest
In order to conquest new territories, your kingdom have to take either a castle or a city. All villages associated with that settlement will also join your kingdom.
Whenever a new land is captured, the faction will start a vote on who should have that land. You can vote by talking to any lord of your kingdom and ask them who will they support. You can select him, his choice or yourself
While it might sound tempting to grab every fingle fief for yourself, there is a limit on the fiefs you can hold at any given time without incurring into tax inefficiency, depending on campaign difficulty. So be sure to grab only land that are worth grabbing (mainly cities and castles.
Whenever you lead an attack that ends in capturing a new settlement (castle or city) you will be asked about what to do with the reward. You can ask that town for yourself or ask nothing in return.
Keep in mind that if you ask it for yourself and you are denied that place, you can rebel and claim it as your own, which will make you an actual king. Still, should this happen to you, don't mindlessly start your own kingdom. There's still work to be done
Getting Right To Rule
The reason why you can't be a king just yet is because you don't have Right to Rule. The right to rule is a measure of how strong is your claim for a throne in Calradia. To become a king you should have a right to rule of at least 50.
This stat (which you can find looking more info on your character, along with renown and honor) affects two main things:
1- How many attacks you receive: Having no right to rule at all would mean that you're an usuper. For the kings out there that would be a threat, since pretty much anyone can sit there and say "Hey, i'm king now". Probably you will have attacks from multiple kingdoms to stomp your rebellion.
Side Note, i didn't found anything confirming this, but pretty much every warband player acknowledge this, even the more experienced ones
2- The likelyhood of lords deserting your kingdom. While some lords, due to their personalities, tend to jump from one kingdom to another, having no right to rule will make that pretty much any lord might end up defecting to another kingdom
There are three ways to earn right to rule:
1- You can send companions to fabricate claims. They will be out for a week or so, and everytime you do this you get 3 Right to Rule
2- You win 3 Right to rule everytime peace is ddeclared between your kingdom and andther kingdom.
3- Marrying a lady (or a lord if playing as female) yield 5 right to rule
Thins means that without relying on companions, you should participate in 17 wars total to get enough right to rule.
It's worth mentioning that you can actually get RIght to Rule by being a mercenary of a kingdom, So, if you're still levelling up a character and you join as mercenary, you are making progress already to be a king in the future
End Game: Becoming A King
Well... You've been a vassal for some time now. Maybe got yourself some nice amounts of fiefs, other lords love you, you learned how to attack other kingdoms, and got some sweet victories. It is time to reach the ultimate goal: Conquering Calradia under your rule.
How do you become a king? There are two ways:
1- Leave your faction (this also means that you lose every fief you were awarded with) and conquer a settlement on your own:
2-Conquer a castle / city and request it for yourself. Should the king oppose, you can decide to revolt and keep no only that place, but also every other castle or city you currently control.
Whenever it's possible, use the 2nd option to get your own kingdom, since this way you start with tons of land to give away to vassals (maybe even more than the original kingdom). Make sure that you start your rebellion when the king is already at war with at least someone else (if it's fighting 2 kingdoms at the same time even better). This i because the king will want to make peace since it has so many open fronts in battle
Either way, once you started your kingdom you will be at war with someone (the last owner of said place). Since you have no powerful vassals to help you defend the kingdom, making peace should be your first priority. As soon as you created your kingdom, you are asked to select a minister. The best option is always your wife (or a random companion, just don't use anyone from your main core, since the minister won't join your party)
Talk to your minister and send a peace offer to the king. You might want to train some of your companions in persuation to serve you as an emissary, althought this ins't a requirement.
Giving Fiefs
If you started your own rebellion, you should have a good bunch of castles, cities and towns to give away. This will attract many lords who aren't happy with their lieges, hoping that you will accept them as your vassals.
However, you don't want to give away land to the first guy it appears knocking on your door. Nor you want to give land to any lord like it doesn't matter at all. Given the personalities table i put earlier, the best lords to give lands are both the good natured and upstanding lords. Martials can also be good, as long as you have good relations with him.
As long as a vassal don't have any fiefs, it will start lowering his relation with you, and everytime you give a fief to another lord, you also take a hit with them (unless that lord is a member of his family or a close friend). While at this point things can get kinda complicated, i'm going to use a small table to guide you in giving your lands to lords:
-Cities: Unless you're above the tax inefficiency cap, you should keep these. Otherwise, give them to upstanding or good natured lords, since they are unlikely to desert you at all
- Castles: Same as above, but you can also include martial characters here, since they are a bit more prone to leave your kingdom and take your lands with them (But not that much like all the other personalities)
- Towns: Give towns to any kind of lord, it doesn't matter its personality, since if it defects it wont be taking the village with him
Feasting
As a king, feasts become way more relevant than before as a vassal. This is due to the amount of relation hits you take by giving away fiefs and having unlanded lords. Whenever you start a feast remember to talk to everyone to get a +2 in relations. This can be done on a daily basis with every lord in your kingdom.
The End
Well, that pretty much does it for the guide! Should you have any doubts, questions or suggestions to add / modify stuff in the guide, please let me know in the comments and i'll get it done.
Have a nice day and good luck on conquering Calradia!
Appendix: Unit Breakdown (WiP)
In the following section i will try to give a look at every unit from every kingdom, based on my own experience
Tier 1
First things first, all T1 troops are garbage. They're the equivalent of convincing a peasant of grabbing a pitchfork and charging at something. Therefore, this guys should be left in the back while you and your trained soldiers take care of things.
- Swadian: These guys are literally described with what i just said above. Keep them behind, since they are mostly useless, as they don't have any good hitting weapons nor means of defense apart from the ocasional shield they might get
- Rhodoks: If someone saw the swadian recruits and thought "Wow, these guys suck. There can't be anyuthing worse than them", i would say they're wrong. Meet the rhodok recruits. They'rearmedwih a shield (which is good) and a polearm (which is terrible). This means that any attacks they try to perform takes forever, leaving them exposed to be butchered by generic bandit #3, and if they manage to land a hit, it would be usually just as harmful as a punch. The only really good thing about them is that they can somewhat survive against projectiles
- Nords: Tied with the best of the recruits, they usually carry 2h axes, and, while they won't survive a prolonged fight, they can actually do damage to enemies, which is more that can be said for the rest of the recruits
- Khergits: The other contender for the best T1 unit, as they can come equipped with some bows, allowing them to score some range kills, or at least do some damage without the risk of them dying.
-Vaegir: Same as swadia
- Sarranid: Same as swadia
Tier 2
Kingdom of Swadia
Swadian Militia: The only T2 unit Swadia can get, but luckily isn't half bad. They still are not good at melee, but can fend off most types regional bandits, excluding mounted ones and sea raiders. They often come equipped with a crossbow, allowing themto dish out ranged damage, which helps them to get their upgrades faster
Kingdom of Rhodoks
Crossbowmen: The range path to follow for this kingdom, they pack quite a punch and with a decent accuracy. While not great at melee, they can hold by themselves for a bit, but they should be supported by other units
Spearman: The plot twist of this kingdom is that they lack swordsmen or axemen like other factions, but their infantry carry spears. While they're under average performance against other infantry, they can fend off light cavalry should you choose to group them in a dense formation.
Changelog
v1.0: Original release of the guide
v1.1: Added information about fief limits
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1967269896
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