• Character Creation Novels

My biggest problem with the game is the scale of the battles. I want them to a) use all the men involved at once, and b) involve larger armies or something. The inability to command subsections of your company on the battlefield and choose which ones show up at the start of the battle can also be frustrating, but the expansion looks to be dealing with at least some of this.I'm surprised that no one came out with a Battle Size changing mod for the latest versions yet. They had them for older versions, as I recall. Battle charger (mod) lets you have just about as many guys on the field as you want. I think I set it to like 300 or something. Anything more and it starts to get a tad laggy.If you've got a good rig, you can get more.

Character Creation Novels

I'm running an i7 with 8 gigs of DDR3 RAM and a 1GB video card. I've got Battle Changer on 500 guys, and I'm getting 40+ fps. Fun times.I'm about 150 days into my latest character, a captain of the Swadians (I normally go Nord because I so very HATE having to take Nord-held castles). So far, we've wiped out the Khergits (they've got a couple of armies still kicking around, but no castle or cities) and I'm in the middle of a nasty fight with the Rhodoks, and my genius of a King just declared war on the Nords.

The same Nords who evidently have 600-man armies stomping around.facepalm.I think I'm gonna try the 1257 historical mod next. Gta 5 san fierro dlc. Anybody tried it? I found this game to be ultimately frustrating and tedious.

No matter what mods I run, it boils down to three distinct phases:1. Oh hey look everything kills me very quickly except for the most tiny and insignificant weakling armies that don't drop any good loot. I guess I'll challenge this mangy cur to a duel for the trash can.

I have to watch out that he doesn't knock me over, because my 15 pikemen will be defeated by two peasants if they can knock ME down.2. Hey sweet I'm actually growing in power and can challenge the lesser nobles. Perhaps one day I will be able to attack a castle!3. OK, my forces have arrived at Castle Ultradoom, where the entire Khergit army is staying.

I'll just drop my character behind this large rock and go make and then eat a sandwich and when I come back I'll tell my army to move on to the next small town and capture that.Phases 1 and 3 are both fairly unsatisfying. Mount And Blade, like World Of Warcraft, was one of those games where I eventually realized I spent more time reading a book to pass the time between interesting bits than the actual interesting bits lasted.

Some advice:1) Don't play in the Khergit area. The bandits and deserters there are VERY fast and you can't outrun them and choose your fights, making it difficult to play in.2) Keep the settings on 'easy' until you get the hang of the combat system (1/4 damage to you, 1/2 damage to your friends). Ramp them to more realistic when you can handle it, as it makes the game more satisfying, but for now keep it managable.3) The 'best' character background is (forget order) Veteren Warrior, Page at a Nobleman's court, Squire and Personal Revenge and a male character. This gives you the most useful skills and stats, good weapon proficiencies and starting equip. From there, you want to focus on a melee character that uses a combination of a two-handed weapon (I prefer a sword of war, but the case can be made for axes or a swinging polearm like a glaive), a lance and shield and ethier a throwing weapon or a 1-hander and a shield. I personally go for a heavy bastard sword, a 103 speed shield (lighter but much faster to block with), a sword of war and a practice lance (longest lance, and great for 'prisoner mining').4) Fight looters right off the bat, you don't need to recruit troops but if you want to you can. Read some guides for NPCs on the forums for the game, some are better than others and you need to find a combination that can work for you.

For troops, you want. Melee: Nord Huscarls, even Nord Warriors are great though.Ranged: Vaegir Marksmen or Rhodock Sharpshooters. Swadian Sharpshooters aren't too bad ethier. The Vaegir's do by far the most DPS, but the Rodock's fare better in melee and are tougher (they make great wall troops).Horse: Swadian Knights.

Vaegir Knights are respectable, but the swadians are flat-out better. In general, you want a good% of your army to be Swadian knights, cause they are the best troops all-told in the game.Skirmishers: Its a decent idea to have a few Khergit Veteren Horse Archers and Lancers to help round-out your forces and provide some light flanking support for your forces.That all being said, the Khergits are very annoying to fight as although their top-tier troops aren't as effective, ALL of their guys are mounted. This makes it impossible to out-maneauver them and fights against them very dirty slug-fests; I go out of my way to avoid joining a faction at war with them for this reason.Do the tutorial if you haven't already, and then just practice 'drive-by-whacking' on some looters. Woohoo, real help!

Ok, i've seen this practice lance mentioned a few times, but where do you actually get it? And what skills are actually worth putting points into? They seem kinda vague in the descriptions.Like all other equipment in the game, it can be purchased from the weaponsmith in towns. However, what equipment they have available is random and you may have to shop around for a bit. They don't cost much though, I don't remember exactly but its.

Strangely, I often heard that horse archery is the best. Huh.Here's the list why it doesn't work:NOTE: This assumes you can't consistantly pull off headshots against moving targets on horses that have shields, including the random aspect of ranged attacks and the horse penalty that you need Horse Archery 10 to completely negate. Even still, much of the following applies.Also, I play on nearly-realistic settings: half damage to you and reasonable (but still larger then default) battle sizes, everything else on/max (Good AI, Fast Combat, etc).1) It takes 2 seperate skills, making you less effective at actually useful things. If it was actually a good combat style though, this would be a mute point. Read on.2) Bows do much less damage then melee weapons (don't forget Power Blow), and are far harder to land a square blow with. Specifically, you can't do the 'horse nudge and cleave' technique with bows, which is the only consistant way to overcome defending opponents.3) You can't deal blugeoning damage with a bow, so you can't 'prisoner farm' with a practice lance (denying you an excellent source of income as well as possible recruits).4) Ok, you are fighting Forest, Mountain, or Sea bandits, you have to contend with the following:a) The Forest bandits all have bows, they hurt, and the longer you try to circle around the bigger pincushin you become.

Your horse is also going down fast. However, if you play melee you are weaving in and out getting them to pull out melee weapons, are better able to see when they are going to fire so you can shield (which you have out) and generally are doing far more damage (dropping them in 1 hit).b) Mountain bandits have big shields and horses, they also throw for considerable damage and can decently keep up with you. But, if you are really skilled maybe you can outmanuever them and eventually win if you have like spare quivers instead of alternate weapons/shield. This also assumes you don't have any troops, who will otherwise take alot of casualities as you.

around trying to pick off people slowly instead of chopping them to bits.c) Sea raiders are all on foot, but 4/5 of them have shields, and they throw (and sometimes have a bow) for a LOT of damage. I've been 1-shooted at full hp before by an axe to the head. Sure, MAYBE you can circle far outside and peck their legs off, but not only is this REALLY slow (see: your troops are owned) and ineffectual, but its way harder to accomplish then good melee weaving (at least to me).5) Ok, now you are fighting an actual army. Their first wave has 20 heavy calvary (swadian knights, lets say). What are you going to do, exactly? Its hard to manueaver with so many horses around you, and the terrain may not be a perfectly flat plane.

They all have shields and are moving fast(ish) on horses, its very hard to get a decent hit, if you get tied up in melee and you dont know how to handle yourself you get wasted very quickly. Maybe, best case, your troops break them up and you can dance around and pick off a couple as they do most of the work. This results in you not dieing but its still contributing far less then meeting them in melee.This isn't even wrost-case, that's Khergits, which amounts to 'you get trapped in a sea of horses and get mauled to death, you can't even fire your bow due to melee attack interrupts.' 6) Now you are in a siege, almost certinally attacking (I've never even played a defensive siege), I suppose you can try to exchange shots with the dudes on the wall.

Its hard, since they hide behind the wall for cover, but I suppose its managable. You likely take quite a few shots yourself for doing this, but I suppose you contribute. Not as much as storming the ladder and dropping dozens and dozens of guys (I often get like 30 kills in sieges with my sword of war and full plate tankiness), but something. You also lost way more troops due to the extended wall exchange and not directly supporting the wall effort, which goes way more poorly without you cleaving dudes.7) Now you are fighting a 150 man army. Each battle, you will run out of arrows if you intend to kill more then 6 guys.

That's assuming you can head-shot reliably, don't miss, and your horse doesn't get killed (happens easily regardless of combat style) forcing you to be a sitting duck as an archer vs heavy cav or groups of heavy infantry.In summary, the point amounts to: Its way too hard to hit people who can block with shields. Even a head shot takes 2-4 shots to down a helmeted opponent. You are vulnerable when you inevitably HAVE to be in melee. You don't contribute nearly as much or as quickly to the fight as a melee warrior, thus leaving your troops to pick up the slack resulting in higher casualities. You are constrained by ammo, causing you problems in longer fights. You also can't deal blugeoning damage, preventing you from effectiently 'farming' prisoners for ransom and recruits.The two things you are good at is dealing with lines of poorly-defended infantry (this does come up), but a melee warrior could do that easily enough, although he might take a bit of damage you could avoid; and dealing with skirmishing calvary doing 'wheels', especially the fast Khergits. This is very annoying for the melee warrior with the heavy, slower horse, but he makes up for it by taking out 20-30 guys before the battle even gets to that 'straggler' point.

My luck must stink, it started me in the Nord area, and i got mobbed by 27 sea raiders before i could get to the training ground.That's. Very odd, since you have like move 6 at the start and sea raiders are maybe move 5. I guess they started right on top of you? Be sure to pay attention to where you are going as you travel, especially early when you really need to pick your fights.In general, the Nord/Vaergir areas are the best to hang around in, with going to the Swadian area at times.

They have good tournaments, good enemies (the Rhodock and Khergit bandit types are much harder to deal with and don't drop as good stuff) and later on make good targets to fight with.As for what happened to you in that specific game, I suggest you simply exist, delete that character, restart another one with the same stats, and then hope not for such rotten luck.Castaras: Good luck! I wish I had time to participate in it, I just hope it really picks up the slack that some areas of the game have when it comes out!