Mount&Blade Warband Catch-all

Tamren wrote:

Anyone tried the Floris mod for Warband? It's been described to me as Native++, that is the native module with a crapton of upgrades.

Floris is all I play. I love it. I haven't explored shipping, but feel I have a good handle on the other parts. It penalizes some skills when wearing heavy armor. I did once conquer the whole Floris map without hiring on another lord. Then I took an arrow to the knee. I had Swadian mounted troops and mounted companions in my seige party, two handed weapons and bows for all.

I did tweak the game to allow for higher wagers in the tournaments. That was before the current rework of the tournaments, now there are placings and points involved, not just "last man standing".

Tamren wrote:

Anyone tried the Floris mod for Warband? It's been described to me as Native++, that is the native module with a crapton of upgrades.

Floris is all I play. I love it. I haven't explored shipping, but feel I have a good handle on the other parts. It penalizes some skills when wearing heavy armor. I did once conquer the whole Floris map without hiring on another lord. Then I took an arrow to the knee. I had Swadian mounted troops and mounted companions in my seige party, two handed weapons and bows for all.

I did tweak the game to allow for higher wagers in the tournaments. That was before the current rework of the tournaments, now there are placings and points involved, not just "last man standing".

Maq wrote:

For character build, what should I be focussing on? I suspect I've not been developing my companion's skills efficiently and need to reassess. I also think I've been spreading myself too thin (mostly stacking INT) and picking up skills that I'm better off leaving to my companions.

I tend to build my character for troop management and combat. So leadership skills, lots of INT to get all those combat skills. Mounted archery is a nice cheap way to mess with AI, but I've been preferring going sword and board with throwing axes as my ranged.

As for your companions, the wiki has a guide for having the most companions who get along at a time if you're not using a mod to make them all friendly. I usually guide them towards what they're already doing statwise. One medic, one with tactics/pathfinding/scouting/etc, and the rest spec'd for sword and board combat. They become really effective at high levels, sometimes taking out dozens each. There is the tradeoff of not being able to make them very effective lords though.

At this point I play Native while modding things like tournament bets, and eventually, just boosting my stats because somehow it's still fun with cheating. I should really try some mods...

I'll have to try Floris when my SRIV addicition is over. I recently started enjoying M&B again.

I haven't tried any mods yet. The only thing I've done is a small game file tweak to make cattle follow, not run. Cos herding's well boring.

Maq wrote:

I haven't tried any mods yet. The only thing I've done is a small game file tweak to make cattle follow, not run. Cos herding's well boring.

That is the best. I also like the battle not ending when you die.

So Brytenwalda is intense.

Anyone tried the Game of Thrones mod?

More specifically has anyone successfully downloaded the smegging thing? I don't know if my internet is suddenly up the spout or what.

Ooooh I may check this out tonight.

Personally I'm still waiting on L'aigle which seems to be suffering from a Duke Nukemesque development cycle.

They just added Steam Workshop support! Hell yes!

Tamren wrote:

They just added Steam Workshop support! Hell yes!

!!!

And apparently the workshop is totally broken, mod files aren't going where they are supposed to at all. Hopefully they fix that soon.

I'm not sure how the workshop is going to hold up with the bigger mods. Some of them are pushing a gig of data. Sure beats the hell out of digging through forums and nexusmods to try and find what you want, assuming they get it working.

Any recommended multiplayer mods for Warband? I don't have Napolean DLC.

Well that's a sh*tty selection.

I'm still hanging out for L'Aigle but it appears to suffer from Lone Perfectionist Waterfall Developer syndrome.

Arise!

So the Bannerlord demo video has me deep back into M&B. I had a little dabble with Prophesy of Pendor but ultimately dove back into a Silverstag save game I had at about 220 days: Trade focused, horse archer, enterprises in every city in Calradia.

So I'm pottering along, got a good infantry army under me made up of a mix of pike, voulge, footmen, and of course crossbows. I'm taking down cities and castles, asking King Graveth for holdings I capture in the south east with an eye on setting up my own kingdom at some point. My high income means I can generally garrison my new holdings quickly and eat the cost even if the town or castle is given to another retainer.

Anyway, the Swadians declare war and retake Uxkhal. I rally the army, retake it and march on Suno. In the field we meet the massed armies of the Swadians. It's a 1000+ battle on each side but I figure better to fight them in the open than behind walls. Silverstag gives you more formation control and, crucially, the ability to brace pikes to receive charge. This tends to do horrible things to Swadians so they tend to avoid frontal charges and end up circling about - I figure I form a makeshift schiltrom and let the crossbows pick them off while the infantry holds everyone at bay. I still play on easymode - for all the hours I've put into this game I guess I still kinda suck at it - so I reckon I'll be able to decimate their main force while taking fairly acceptable losses.

They have a Nord lord in their party.

He brings Huscarls. Lots of them.

They absolutely rip through everything I have. Nothing can stop them. Not crossbows, not pikes, not voulges. Nothing.

Goddamnit why didn't I stick with Nords?

Sidebar: I'm pretty sure I'm doing things in this game that are just plain wrong. I'm torn between wanting to set the difficulty to higher than "pretty easy" in order to get better at it and just leaving it as it is to keep it a nice relaxing game. My battlefield tactical game is pretty solid, I have a decent grasp of the economic game. I'm pretty ropey at hand to hand combat (sparring training I can beat 1 opponent every time, 2 most of the time, 3 is a coinflip and I'm dead against 4). I think it's strategy I'm falling down on. I suspect I expand too quickly on offence and don't run from the fights I should run from. I've also not yet founded my own kingdom. The only full playthrough I've ever completed was in Vanilla where I played Nord and took over the world for Ragnar.

Anyway, back to it.

Great read Maq, post more if you can be bothered.

Huscarls HUSCARLS HUSCARLS!!!

Archeers!

I never get tired of that - such a great, great game. Whenever I start, I just know that 20-30 hours will disappear. Its getting harder to wait for M&B Bannerlord though, so maybe just a liiitle look at MB Warband this weekend?

Also really hyped for Bannerlord. Huscarls are definitely OP and I love them for it. Throwing weapons are so powerful, and most units won't get to fire enough to warrant a full quiver of arrows/bolts anyway.

So I reloaded from save (I have no idea how people play this game on normal difficulty Ironman. Maybe I should try it some day.) And ran from the aforementioned big battle. Kited the opposing force back far enough to cut a couple of lords out of the herd and take them down. Ducked to the side to let the main force ride to Uxkhal, sending King Graveth and his retinue of 454 soldiers back to Uxkhal to hold against the siege until we could return to lift it.

Sidebar - I wish there was a way to get a lord to ride to a castle or town and bloody well hold it against enemies until told otherwise. I'm not sure if a lord is more likely to stay and hold a town if it's his own town or not. Sometimes I don't know why I even bother accepting the Marshalship.

The siege of Suno was brutal. Normally with sufficient numbers and a good crop of crossbowmen you can whittle them down pretty easily but something glitchy happened this time. The defenders sallied and the combat started with their infantry right on top of us and their archers safely positioned uphill to the rear. There was no time for us to form ranks, get our shields up, or anything. Absolute slaughterhouse. Gotta love M&B glitches.

Anyway we had enough soldiers to push through, I wasn't going to waste the opportunity while their main army was throwing themselves at the walls of Uxkhal, so we kept trying. Finally got to the wall assault after choking them on our bodies for a few rounds and took the city just in time for Swadia to sue for peace. Nice.

Morale took an absolute shellacking. Even wandering around with Babette's Feast in the caravan it was still "Very Low". Had to take a crash course in how to raise morale again before all my Elites went AWOL.

Anyway here's the question portion: starting your own Kingdom - I've never done it. I figure that actually being a good marshall for my faction is a really bad idea as I'm just setting myself up with a powerful enemy. Plus it's a die roll as to whether or not the king is going to give me holdings that will actually form the core of a good kingdom. There's no way to trade fiefs in Silverstag that I know of. What's the plan here? Get right to rule as high as possible through emissaries, make sure I have good relations with a decent number of lords then "accidentally" dismiss the garrison of all my holdings during a war while asking to be released from my oath to the faction? That should give me easy pickings while making sure my erstwhile faction isn't too strong.

Suggestions?

It's not REALLY Ironman since you can't completely wipe. You can be set back to having poor relationships, no inventory, no money, and no army, but really things keep going.

Starting your own Kingdom is risky. From what I remember, everyone at least considers each other to have some right to rule, but to them, you will have none. You get ganged up on really badly until you can make some friends. It's been a while, but that's how I remember it.

Delerat wrote:

It's not REALLY Ironman since you can't completely wipe. You can be set back to having poor relationships, no inventory, no money, and no army, but really things keep going.

Starting your own Kingdom is risky. From what I remember, everyone at least considers each other to have some right to rule, but to them, you will have none. You get ganged up on really badly until you can make some friends. It's been a while, but that's how I remember it.

I'm sending out all my companions as emissaries to get my baseline right to rule up, when that's done I'm going to resign from the Rhodoks without keeping my holdings so I don't tank my relationship immediately. I'll then nick a town somewhere in a defensible corner (Wercheg would be nice) Garrison it with 500-600 troops and wait out the initial storm. Making peace raises right to rule.

And, in a bid to completely destroy any spare time I have left, Mount & Blade will be released on the newest consoles on the 16th of september. It doesnt state it anywhere, so I doubt it will include mods, but that would be awesome!

That's so weird. Tempting, but I think I'll hold out for when Bannerlord is released

Aaaand I'm back into this. Giving Prophesy of Pendor another try and actually making some headway this time. I've got enterprises in every city and have signed on with Ravenstern. Picked up a somewhat vulnerable castle in a border dispute with Fierdsvain so I've got somewhere to churn out Knights of the Dragon, which is nice. Pootling about winning tournaments right now while I wait for someone to declare war so I can gain more territory. I've also got to the point where I can fairly reliably win the arena now, which is a massive step up from where I was.

I'm liking the fact that there's clearly some story to go investigate a little further into the game. The elite troops add a nice bit of depth to the game. I'm not sure how I feel about the massive armies kerbstomping everything but I suspect I'll get to the point where taking them out is an acceptable challenge (I've already taken out one)

It's nice it's got some of the Diplomacy/Floris features but I really do miss having a group quartermaster to handle selling loot and buying food.

Oh, and the best thing is I have Voice Attack set up now. So damn useful.

Just got Mount and Blade: Warband. Any mods to make it better/prettier/more playable in 2019?

Play it vanilla.

There are supposed to be some good full theme mods, but I haven't tried them. Only thing I've used is tweakmb where you can change most values in the game. So sometimes I'll tweak things to increase the speed at which you can progress in the game, or to give the enemy advantages in battle. I think tweakmb also has an option that lets battles continue when you're dead, so that it doesn't rely on auto-calc. Really useful so you don't have to storm castle multiple times in one siege when you were winning, just because you go down. There was also an option to give you more control commanding your troops in battle, but I can't recall if that was tweakmb or something else.

Prophecy of Pendor : This is my favorite mod, as some of you may already know Its basically a complete overhaul of all the factions and its troops, the world and a TON of new stuff. Its does contain fantasy elements that may put off some, like Noldor (Elves) that roam a giant forest and amazing archers. Demons roam the land in packs, as does witches (no magic, though) and gods occasionally give you a gift or voice their concerns.

That said, it has Knighthoods for each faction, that you can upgrade and train, and even become a part of.
It will allow you to create your own knighthood as well, that you can setup exactly as you want! Knights are very expensive units but very lethal.

What I really like is the tight focus the mod have, letting all the different addons play together to create the mods, and not just add options because they can, but because it gives the player real choices - Choices are important! My ultimate goal is always to reunite the world under the Pendor faction, the old kingdom that all the above were part of once.

Brytenwalda : Brytenwalda is…really unique - its the single biggest and most comphrehensive mod I’ve ever seen for a game. Again, its a total conversion to the dark ages Brittania, right after the fall of the Roman Empirewith a LOT of small factions vying for control over the lands, different religions competing. One of the most unique things about the game, is that horses are very rare, and bows are quite poor, making it a VERY different experience than other M&B mods. You rely on infantry, throwing weapons, and skill to make the day. You can also become a Bard in this mod, as well as a pirate if you so choose, although there isn’t much to do as it.
It does have a TON of random going on’s, special locations (Ancient Roman ruins) and a real sense of history that permades everything in the mod. Its easy to see this is a real labor of love for the team, and also one that a LOT of research has gone into.

Sword of Damocles : Unfortuantely this mod isnt anywhere near done, but its still quite fun. The basic idea is that in 400 days a major invasion will take place, and you need to unite the world before that, or perish in the onslaught. It also has some unique ideas in it that I really like.

There are many, many more, like Clash of Kings which is a Game of Thrones mod that is actually quite good, but I’ll leave the rest for now - The above should be enough for 2-300 hours of fun

Another +1 for prophesy of pendor. It's far more difficult and intricate and less of a mod and more m&b 1.5. I'm jumping back into it as they just recently did their final rework. It's really quite amazing how many things they added. Really looking forward to playing it with my new computer.

I would suggest one vanilla game first to get the hang of it