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Mount and Blade: Warband |OT|

Ok, now I'm rocking a rag-tag 50 men warband. I've been chasing looters and deserters for a bit now, and the ghosts of poverty and famine slowly become a memory. Won a tournament and got access to a feast where I annoyed several jarls with my lack of social skills. The King has given me a couple assignments to do. Should I keep doing his dirty work in order to earn the right to be a vassal? Is that the usual approach?
 

GDJustin

stuck my tongue deep inside Atlus' cookies
What I did was just tear a bunch of shit up - earning a bit of renown doing quests for vassals, fighting bandits, etc. The king actually accepted me as a vassal and gave me a town the very first time I met him.

I'm still new(ish) to M&B but it seems to me like renown is like a secondary currency in the game. Without it, you can't find a wife, you can't raise a huge warband, you can't get people to respect you, etc.
 

Moobabe

Member
Quick question about the Polished Landscape + Buildings mods - it says it's best to install M&B to another location because it overwrites some unmodable files. If I'm using the steam version do I just literally copy the install folder elsewhere rather than doing a separate install?

Also is the HDR mod worth it? It's recommended in the readme in PL
 
Moobabe said:
Quick question about the Polished Landscape + Buildings mods - it says it's best to install M&B to another location because it overwrites some unmodable files. If I'm using the steam version do I just literally copy the install folder elsewhere rather than doing a separate install?

Also is the HDR mod worth it? It's recommended in the readme in PL
I copied the entire directory and it worked fine for me. The Polished Landscape mod didn't impress me at all. I encountered a bug with floating towns and castles making it impossible to fight in them. You'll also run into some weird AI issues since it isn't programmed to handle dense vegetation.
 
All my hard work struggling at the start has paid off, I've built up a massive income and it feels good to be able to lead a giant army with no finacial worries. Long live King Yaroglek!
 

thefil

Member
At what point do you start getting involved in the politics? I'm at 60 person warband (mostly cavalry) and 10000+ money. Just been wandering around trading and failing in the last round of tournaments :(. Kings don't seem to want to accept me as a vassal, either...

I feel lost often in this game.
 
thefil said:
At what point do you start getting involved in the politics? I'm at 60 person warband (mostly cavalry) and 10000+ money. Just been wandering around trading and failing in the last round of tournaments :(. Kings don't seem to want to accept me as a vassal, either...

I feel lost often in this game.

Raise your renown with some quests if you want to become a vassal. Tourneys will get you renown if you win them too, but quests and bandit hunting are good sources as well. Eventually you'll get offered a quest to sign on as a mercenary for a military campaign. That quest will often lead to an offer of vassalage, but either way it lets you get involved in an actual war rather than just bandit hunting.

Or you can just go attack an army, but it's a bit safer to be at least peripherally attached to a kingdom.
 

thefil

Member
I was looking at a M&B:W FAW and noticed that it's recommended you get knights, which are upgraded from general troops. Most of my army right now is mercenaries cavalry; is it worth it to train up soldiers from squat as well?

*edit* Also, is it possible to equip your troops with new armor?
 
thefil said:
I was looking at a M&B:W FAW and noticed that it's recommended you get knights, which are upgraded from general troops. Most of my army right now is mercenaries cavalry; is it worth it to train up soldiers from squat as well?

*edit* Also, is it possible to equip your troops with new armor?

It really depends on how you want to play. If you are just going to be a mercenary captain, you can just hire whomever you come across. However, once you start getting castles/towns, you *have* to be able to train up an army from the bottom up.

Your troops will get better armor each time they upgrade.

Your companions on the other hand have to manually upgrade their armor.

To become a vassal, find out who your chosen country is at war with, and then go fight that country's lower-level lords. Be sure to win, because if you lose/retreat, it will actually cost you in relations with your 'home' faction.

Has anyone else had issues with the OTS camera? I find that after a little bit, it seems to zoom by itself to the point where I can no longer see my character's arms.
 

GDJustin

stuck my tongue deep inside Atlus' cookies
So I single-handedly sieged and conquered another castle last night. Only problem is it's on literally the other side of the world from my first one. At one point both castles were being sieged by enemies. I had to cheat and revert to a previous save to not lose them -_-

I spent most of last night criss-crossing the globe training up infantry and Archers to defend my castles (my main force is all cavalry so I didn't have anyone on-hand to garrison the castles). After quite a while of this I still only have 30-40 troops defending each castle, whereas most NPCs keep ~100-150 in theirs.

I also got a woman to elope with me last night. I saw later that that's one of the least common Steam achievements earned. Weird.
 
GDJustin said:
I spent most of last night criss-crossing the globe training up infantry and Archers to defend my castles (my main force is all cavalry so I didn't have anyone on-hand to garrison the castles). After quite a while of this I still only have 30-40 troops defending each castle, whereas most NPCs keep ~100-150 in theirs.

Grab the diplomacy mod, then make a diplomacy folder in the saves, move your game into there (they are compatible). One of the improvements it offers is the ability to have a constable send recruiters to grab guys for your garrison for you, and even train them up for you. You have to pay them, of course, but it really streamlines the process.
 

GDJustin

stuck my tongue deep inside Atlus' cookies
platypotamus said:
Grab the diplomacy mod, then make a diplomacy folder in the saves, move your game into there (they are compatible). One of the improvements it offers is the ability to have a constable send recruiters to grab guys for your garrison for you, and even train them up for you. You have to pay them, of course, but it really streamlines the process.

Yeah, I've heard Diplo is the most essential of the essential mods. But I'm a little funny about mods. I want to make sure I understand the base game first, so I understand what a mod is actually modifying.

I've put ~24 hours into M&B already, amazingly. So I'm probably at about the point where I can poke around with some of the vanilla mods that improve the core game, like Diplomacy.

What are the best mod resources on the web?
 
Things have taken a turn for the worse on the game for me. After swearing an oath of vassalage to the King of the Nords, I found that my enterprises on quarreling countries were held captive, giving me no income. I got pissed off and raided an enemy village with my savage 50 men-strong warband, only to have a 200+ army knocking on my ass within minutes. We got steamrolled, most of my men were killed or captured and I was made prisoner. Afer a while I escaped, and got back to the King to tell him to go fuck himself with his vassalage shit. The motherfucker gave me a fief in the asshole of his reign, right in the middle of two enemy nations, and thus my fief got raided and looted day after day. Fucking asshole king.

Released from my oath, at least I gained control of my businesses again and have sources of income, now I'm on the arduous process of building a warband again. I have no news of my companions.
 

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
SteelAttack said:
Things have taken a turn for the worse on the game for me. After swearing an oath of vassalage to the King of the Nords, I found that my enterprises on quarreling countries were held captive, giving me no income. I got pissed off and raided an enemy village with my savage 50 men-strong warband, only to have a 200+ army knocking on my ass within minutes. We got steamrolled, most of my men were killed or captured and I was made prisoner. Afer a while I escaped, and got back to the King to tell him to go fuck himself with his vassalage shit. The motherfucker gave me a fief in the asshole of his reign, right in the middle of two enemy nations, and thus my fief got raided and looted day after day. Fucking asshole king.

Released from my oath, at least I gained control of my businesses again and have sources of income, now I'm on the arduous process of building a warband again. I have no news of my companions.

i think thats what save files are for.
 
davepoobond said:
i think thats what save files are for.
I'm living in danger. I chose realistic saving, without properly realizing what it entailed. :lol
At least now I have a stable 1000+ denars weekly income, so it's not like I'm starting all over again.
...
...
;_;

Edit: I seem to have missed this post.
GDJustin said:
What I did was just tear a bunch of shit up - earning a bit of renown doing quests for vassals, fighting bandits, etc. The king actually accepted me as a vassal and gave me a town the very first time I met him.

I'm still new(ish) to M&B but it seems to me like renown is like a secondary currency in the game. Without it, you can't find a wife, you can't raise a huge warband, you can't get people to respect you, etc.
Thanks. I'll keep this in mind now that I'm getting my shit together again.
 
SteelAttack said:
Released from my oath, at least I gained control of my businesses again and have sources of income, now I'm on the arduous process of building a warband again. I have no news of my companions.

I've had a very similar situation come up in the PoP mod. I aligned with Ravenstern (PoP's Nord/Celtic faction), but I lucked out and was given a fief in the middle of the kingdom.

But then the bastard king just refused to let me keep any of the castles/towns I seiged and won, so I rebelled. I managed to steal the king's own city before another faction I had pissed off seiged the hell out of me.

Now I have 20 guys (half of them are my companions), and one castle that's under seige by about 800 of my former buddies.
 

GDJustin

stuck my tongue deep inside Atlus' cookies
bonesmccoy said:
I've had a very similar situation come up in the PoP mod. I aligned with Ravenstern (PoP's Nord/Celtic faction), but I lucked out and was given a fief in the middle of the kingdom.

But then the bastard king just refused to let me keep any of the castles/towns I seiged and won, so I rebelled. I managed to steal the king's own city before another faction I had pissed off seiged the hell out of me.

Now I have 20 guys (half of them are my companions), and one castle that's under seige by about 800 of my former buddies.

Renown renown renown. If you aren't being granted lands, it's because the king thinks you've already earned lands equal to your "accomplishments." And he's probably right. If you take a look at your renown compared to other vassals, they're probably at 500-700, and you're probably at 200.

You could do what I have done a few times, and single-handedly siege a castle. I've found that I can count on a trained Warband to take out enemies at a rate of about 2.5:1. So if I have 70 guys, I can conquer a castle that has 160+ enemies.
 
Damn that renown. Plus, it would have been much better had I not reduced my faction relations to the point of war before going rebel. I think there's just one faction out there that doesn't want to burn me to the ground.
 

Ferrio

Banned
So how common are servers with 120 people on it or such? I saw a video of a 60v60 battle... but curious if that happens often or was just staged for the video.
 
If you find a town/castle to siege that your siege weapon is ladders, you can take on even bigger groups. Take just your missile weapon of choice (ok, not throwing weapons), tell all of your men to stand ground, and then snipe their archers. If you get a place of cover/snipe from the base of the walls, you'll lose only a couple of guys (hopefully to woundings if you have a good medic), and maybe yourself if you are careless. If not, you run out of ammo. Flee, then immediately resiege (if necessary, if not, send your men charging up the ladder). Assaults go a lot more smoothly when they aren't taking potshots at your men on the ladders.

The reason I say only to try this with ladders is that the siege towers take so long to build that the other side will almost always get reinforced before you can finish this maneuver.
 
Good tips, platypotamus. I didn't release you had the option in Warband of selecting ladders, or building a seige tower.

What are some other good single player mods? I have PoP, and I just downloaded 1755. Any others?

1755 has some excellent and not so excellent features. Its developers have crafted some excellent maps with cliffs, heavily forested areas, and small ponds. But then there are some very strange things like having a feather-headdress with a higher armor rating than a steel-capped Tri-corner hat, and being able to equip a 'Red Indian Head'.
 
bonesmccoy said:
Good tips, platypotamus. I didn't release you had the option in Warband of selecting ladders, or building a seige tower.

You can't choose, sadly, it all depends on the target of your siege. Some have ladders, others the tower.
 
I've kept playing this. Things have improved again after I told the nord king to fuck off. Steady sources of income again, more stores bought, a healthy warband again, and I ransomed all of my companions. I've been playing on the desert lately, won two tournaments that were more difficult than most actual battles. Fuck the sarranid sultanate tourneys and their penchant to do every fucking thing on horseback: javelin throws, archery, everything.

To make things worse, I suck at jousting, so on the last tiers of both tourneys I get...yup. Lances. On both of them I got knocked out of my horse unceremoniously, and I won both of them by running towards my opponent like a madman, killing his horse with my bare fucking fists, and then beating them senseless. I felt like fucking Conan. Lol.
 

Stahsky

A passionate embrace, a beautiful memory lingers.
I've yet to get an option to ransom a companion. How's that work?
 
Stahsky said:
I've yet to get an option to ransom a companion. How's that work?
If one of your companions gets captured when losing a battle, you can approach ransom brokers in taverns. They'll tell you how much will the ransom amount to, and if you pay him, in a couple days (game time) the companion will catch up to you and ask you to join your party again.
 

Avocado

Member
This game is seriously one of the best RPGs I've ever played. Its a real rush charging into battle with 50 other horsemen and trampling over the enemies soldiers.

Just a question, does that graphical enhancement mod that was made for the original game also work for warband?
 

Herla

Member
platypotamus said:
Prophesy of Pendor is awesome, though much harder than the vanilla game. Very recommended overall.

This, and if you prefer something more historical there's Brytenwalda (the new version should come out this month). It's insane the amount of content they have.
 

Qwomo

Junior Member
Yeah, Brytenwalda and 1200 AD (I think it's called) are both stellar, and obviously Pendor is quite good though I haven't tried it. I can't imagine anyone wanting to play this game in vanilla, it's so much more enjoyable when there's a concrete historical context (or really, just anything non-Calradian) behind it.
 
Qwomo said:
Yeah, Brytenwalda and 1200 AD (I think it's called) are both stellar, and obviously Pendor is quite good though I haven't tried it. I can't imagine anyone wanting to play this game in vanilla, it's so much more enjoyable when there's a concrete historical context (or really, just anything non-Calradian) behind it.

I really liked Vanilla... but then I played with some mods and I was like... OH
 

Sullen

Member
So this game is awesome, but I have some questions:

Mods, I know there is a link to a ton of them on this page, but I'm really only interested (for now) in ones that enhance the base singleplayer component because I wanna play through it at least once. Are there any essential graphical or gameplay mods that don't drastically alter the singeplayer campaign? I don't want any like alternate setting mods or anything like that.

Singleplayer, what the fuck am I doing? I have no idea what I'm doing so I began doing a couple quests, pledged my allegiance to my country (vaegirs I think) began doing more missions, and now I've just started focusing on doing tournaments cause the seem to make really good money. What are other ways to generate income?
 

mkenyon

Banned
Sullen said:
So this game is awesome, but I have some questions:

Mods, I know there is a link to a ton of them on this page, but I'm really only interested (for now) in ones that enhance the base singleplayer component because I wanna play through it at least once. Are there any essential graphical or gameplay mods that don't drastically alter the singeplayer campaign? I don't want any like alternate setting mods or anything like that.

Singleplayer, what the fuck am I doing? I have no idea what I'm doing so I began doing a couple quests, pledged my allegiance to my country (vaegirs I think) began doing more missions, and now I've just started focusing on doing tournaments cause the seem to make really good money. What are other ways to generate income?
You want the Diplomacy mod. It makes the game what it should be.

It really opens up the game on how to make money, such as owning industry-esque buildings in Towns.
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
Qwomo said:
Yeah, Brytenwalda and 1200 AD (I think it's called) are both stellar, and obviously Pendor is quite good though I haven't tried it. I can't imagine anyone wanting to play this game in vanilla, it's so much more enjoyable when there's a concrete historical context (or really, just anything non-Calradian) behind it.
I saw the 1200 AD one a few days ago, was really enjoying the vanilla game but this made it sound even better. Nice to see some positive word of mouth about it, might have to try that out when I start playing again.
 

Jagxyz

Member
Sullen said:
So this game is awesome, but I have some questions:

Mods, I know there is a link to a ton of them on this page, but I'm really only interested (for now) in ones that enhance the base singleplayer component because I wanna play through it at least once. Are there any essential graphical or gameplay mods that don't drastically alter the singeplayer campaign? I don't want any like alternate setting mods or anything like that.

Singleplayer, what the fuck am I doing? I have no idea what I'm doing so I began doing a couple quests, pledged my allegiance to my country (vaegirs I think) began doing more missions, and now I've just started focusing on doing tournaments cause the seem to make really good money. What are other ways to generate income?

Try the Floris mod pack, here's the download link and list of what mods are included. It adds a ton of cool stuff while keeping the vanilla story line.

edit. There's an expanded and simplified version which I didn't know when I d/led it, just a heads up. Personally, I went with the expanded version.
 

Sullen

Member
Is there some trick to catching targets you are following in this game on the world map? Been trying to catch enemy caravans and they always match or exceed my speed on the world map so I can never get ahold of them.
 

thelatestmodel

Junior, please.
Sullen said:
Is there some trick to catching targets you are following in this game on the world map? Been trying to catch enemy caravans and they always match or exceed my speed on the world map so I can never get ahold of them.

Increase your pathfinding skill, and have less men in your party. Both of those will speed up your world map movement.
 

Jakeh111

Member
I love Warband, do they have any gfx mod out that can just make the game look better, thats my only issue with the game is the gfx
 

Luthos

Member
Ffffuuuuuu-

Been playing the demo. Was getting so into it, but hit the level cap and it made me auto-quit.

I was loving what I was playing, but not sure if I want to drop the 30 bones on it. I'm temped, it will hold me over hopefully until later this year when my anticipated blockbusters come.
 
Dear NeoGaf,

This is the most fun I've had with a game in 6 years.

Love,

Me

P.S. I got this for $5 (or somewhere around there) from a Steam sale. Best $5 ever spent. Ever. Well, besides King's Bounty: The Legend.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Has there been any balance (+ whatever else, I don't care) mod that makes parties of larger sizes harder to maintain for both the player and the AI? I don't find late game fun when I have to fight through multiple armies of 1000+ troops, that's super tedious and takes no additional skill over fights in the lower hundreds. I'd prefer it if I could have much smaller armies myself and only encountered forces of similar or slightly higher numbers (when at max capacity) with money, food, leadership, and other such maintainance issues made harder to match. Gigantic battles/wars were only really fun to check out a few times for me. Maybe if there were better RTS-esque options I'd enjoy larger battles more but the system is pretty barebones as it has always been. We need an actual M&B2 already, not dodgy spin offs with barely any changes...
 
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