f13.net

Saw this on a steam pop up tonight.Looks like an updated version of the original with multi player as well as the ability to make yourself king instead of just a vassal or renegade claiment.Anyone tried it out yet?

I don't have money the spare until next Friday.

But I'll get it that morning.

Some mention in the "what are you playing" thread.  I almost got it but came to my senses.  I simply don't have time for it.  Buuuuuuut.... :oh_i_see:

I totally bought it, the first one was like the best gaming money I spent.  I think the big point is the multiplayer which I haven't gotten around to.  The single player feels pretty much the same there are a couple of new elements added in that I'm looking forward to trying out though.

It pretty much feels the same as the old game with some new items, a love interest and a morality system added in. I started a game in the new desert empire and stumbled over some bugs and freezes I mentioned in the other thread, but after restarting Steam I got a new version (1.1 instead of 0.8 beta) and now it seems stable. There still is a {blank} quest in my questlog (the starter quest, even after finishing that), but that might just be a leftover bug. Haven't found another Hero yet, which might be bad luck or the heroes don't spawn in desert empire cities.

The game is just as wickedly fun as the original one, and I'm looking forward to becoming Sultan (you can become leader of each of the factions now).

humm... I was thinking it wasn't going to be worth picking up if you don't have any interest in the multiplayer stuff, but I'm kind of reconsidering right now.

Can you start wars when you're king? I always played as if I had a personal vendetta against one of the nations, gave me some structure and an excuse to attack caravans :)

Started yesterday, not that far yet!  :grin:

Been playing M&B for years now (I paid 7$ for it), fantastic game.

Most of the features they're adding have been in various mods for years. The community modding is very strong, and usually the "vanilla" game is behind the modders in terms of content, which is fine since it lets the Devs concentrate on the engine, core features and mechanics which the community can then pick apart.

I'll probably wait a few months to get this, I'm enjoying Darkfall a lot at the moment, the melee/archery combat mechanics in DFO aren't quite as sophisticated as M&B, but the multiplayer/MMO elements add more depth. From what I've seen with Warband the multiplayer is very fun, but very arcadish/counterstrikeish. I think the real meat will still be in the single player game, with multiplayer being a fun diversion to load up when you are looking for some pure combat at a very challenging level.

If I wait a few months I'll be get this, and I'll be rewarded cuz by then some major mods will have warband releases out which will be juice up the single player bigtime.

The combat is slightly changed and I'm still getting used to it. In particular swinging a weapon from on horseback has a lot more angles and positions you can do it from. Also skewering people with a lance is actually kind of hard now, you don't just auto-couch the lance, you have to hit x to couch it and time it right, and it is harder to aim as well (maybe I need more riding skill.)

Cool, well it's all sounding good so far thanks for the info.I've played the original for years and enjoyed it,I'm always leery of these rebuilds since at times they tend to stray too far from the original game play.

Now I just have to sit through a weekend of Pirates of the Caribbean and Narnia on the 360 that the girlfriend thought "looked like fun" before I can play it.

I kinda avoid this title because it always seemed like a work in progress.  Is it a complete game now?

I never played the original.  Is it worth it?

Try the demo if you're not sure.  It's effectively the full game.  It's an extremely sandboxy game, which isn't for everyone, but like a half hour with the demo convinced me that I was a moron for not having tried it previously.  I can't get their page to load to link it, but you can also get the demo off of Steam.

There's a demo?

Of the original, yes.  It's not that functionally different from Warband, so you'll at least know if the franchise is something you're interested in.

It's a solid mechanical game. The gameplay is amazingly fun, but also repetitive at the really high levels. You can find yourself in the older game facing wave after wave after wave of the units because your 40 solid warriors can own a field of 300 shitty ones.

YThat;s what I mean by the the multiplayer byeing a ncie diversion, when you are tired of creaming 400 peasants with your elite heavy cvalry squadron you can load up warband multiplayer and get pwned by some euretrash who only plays that. Adds a latryer of difficulty to M&B that never previously existed.....

This is fascinating.

Somebody got bested in an online game by somebody from Europe once too often it seems. Through his rage and tears he couldn't even find the right keys on his keyboard :grin:

Don't hate on us for it, I try not to play games in multiplayer. Promise!


On topic, restarted a new game and everything worked fine. Heroes in taverns (even in the desert cities) and no funny stuff with quest descriptions anymore.

I played a beta version of this long ago, and liked it but didn't have the time back then. How does the multiplayer work in this?

Certain modes of the multiplayer are very fun. Stick with modes that allow you to respawn, as large battles with no respawn (until the next round) take freaking forever.

Are any of the single player features very improved for those of us that like the sandboxy experience? I heard about the Throne and vassals and marrying politically stuff, but I didn't hear how it translated beyond featurespeak to actual play.

Can one play the campaign with other people, or is the multi reserved solely for pvp stuff?

So, do any of these updates from Warband go into the original? Or do you have to buy Warband to get them?

I only played the beta, I have not bought the full game yet, but I doubt you can co-op through the main game (that would have been great though).

Warband is stand-alone and virtually the same game as the original, just a little deeper and "complete" (although riddled with non-critical bugs like text formatting errors and such.)

And no, no campaign co-op.

Still worth it, in my opinion. It IS better.

Anyone actively playing? I've done a bit of multiplayer and have had a good time every time. In fact, I think it would be pretty sweet if we could get some sort of group together and play on a ladder or something.

Anyone interested?

I plan on buying it when they go to $19.99, and/or I hear about a solid mod for warband like the last one I had for regular that made unique unit types and a Dark Knight invasion.

I forget the name of it though.

I'm currently downloading the "try before you buy" thing from their site. I never got around to playing it before. If I enjoy it, ill pick it up.

That was "Native Expansion" mod, which I also really enjoyed.

The dark knight invasion part of that mod was completely retarded, IMO. Thankfully you could turn it off as the other stuff in it was largely pretty nice, particularly the fixes to village improvements and the like.

Tried out the "play before you buy" with a couple characters. First off; kudos to the company for that alone. Did my second run through with some heavy cheating (to try and beef up my character to get a feel for some higher level stuff). Seemed.. interesting. Lack of some in-game information/feedback was bothersome, however. Like when upgrading units.. I get no idea which option really gives me what. I can pick between two upgrade options, but there didn't seem to be any indication of how each differed. Likewise, when picking up heroes.. no real indication what they all do before you hand over the coin.

Also wasn't.. uncommon for me to get "lost" in battles with little indication as to where the enemy was without watching my own charging troops for a general direction; especially in very hilly/small mountainous maps where line of sight was largely useless. I miss minimaps, even though I understand why there isn't one.

Archery eludes me, as well. At 30-40 yards I can't seem to hit shit, but then again, I always forget to zoom. Still, game looks interesting enough, even with the "what should I be doing...?" feeling at the beginning. I'll probably pick it up from Steam later today (especially with C$ at parity atm  :heart:) just based on what I saw in the 'try before you buy' and such.

Its awesome when I get glowing neon lights in taverns though for body textures :drillf:

Time to start heavily reading up on the game, though, so I don't feel so... lost.

Hit backspace in combat to bring up the minimap/troop order window.

Also, quick version of troop upgrading tips:

- Khergit troops only have one fork. Lancers or Horse Archers. Pretty self-explanatory
- Nord troops also only have one fork. Footman sends them down the infantry line (eventually ending in huscarls which are pretty much the most badass infantry unit), huntsman sends them down the archer line
- Rhodok troops, again, only one fork, spearman is the infantry line, crossbowman is their archery line
- Swadians have two forks - first you get a fork after militia between footman and skirmisher. Skirmisher is the archer line, the footman line then forks into man-at-arms (cavalry line) and infantry (infantry line)
- Vaegirs are the same as swadians - one fork after footman between skirmisher (archery line) and veteran, veterans then fork into infantry (infantry line) and horseman (cavalry line).

Not sure about the Sarranid troop tree, they're new and I haven't messed with them much, but from fighting against them I can tell you their heavy cavalry (mamelukes) are pretty badass.

I didn't include the neutral troop options as they're almost all really expensive and/or lame. One exception is if you get peasant women (I think only recruitable by freeing them from bandits who've captured them) they go through several really lame steps but then eventually turn into sword sisters which are a pretty good cavalry unit and are notably cheap in terms of upkeep.

Don't be so naive. Your credit card company will charge you at least months rate if they can.

Nope, got charged at the current rate.

Ingmar; yeah, found a chart that showed the unit progression, and a host of other things I'd missed. Such as heroes not liking certain other heroes, heh. Thanks for the tip on the minimap. Didn't see that anywhere.

Going from memory...

Recruit	-> Footman	-> Skirmisher	-> Archer	-> Master Archer
		-> Veteran Footman	-> Infantry	-> Guard
			-> Horseman	-> Mameluke

Never tried the infantry tree (why bother), but the rest looks about right.

Mamelukes are powerhouses, I'd have to directly compare them to the Mounted Knights, but on their own they look quite like heavy hitters.

Game needs some tweaking of the economy - income from holdings is too low to support enough troops to actually hang on to them, never mind NPC lords have no trouble - and probably also the "controversy" stat needs some work. As marshal for the Vaegirs I took over a bunch of crap from the Khergits, but because I was "too controversial" none of it got awarded to me - the problem? One village on the other freaking side of the country got razed while I was leading the big campaign (and in the process killing like 12 or 13 Khergit stacks.)

The economy is always the issue. The real tweak needs to happen on the discount for garrisoned troops vs. those in the field. This was a problem in the first game as well. I personally believe that if they put they made garrisoned troops cost 25% of the fighting men, you'd be fine.

I tried the demo of the vanilla version and wanted more, so now i own Warbands. I was having an awesome time, but someone needs to write a tl:dr guide on how to not be a dud in this game. I seem incapable of taking on anything other then generic looters, even though i'm like level six.

Is that normal? What troops are good to hire for a newbie player (as in, most durable/good mix of foot/archers/horse at later levels?), what weapons are easier to handle then others, is it perfectly fine to gather a band of ruffians and hold up random villages for their produce, then re-selling it back at the town hubs (i feel like i'm playing eve again)?

The early game is kind of hard, a good idea is to take as many quests as you can from the lords - some of them are to collect taxes which you do and then put off completing the quest for as long as possible, thereby "loaning" money from the lord. It's a pretty reliable way to get a fairly significant sum of money early on. I think you have 30 or 60 days to "repay" it.

Some incoherent suggestions:

Invest skill points in Trainer and Leadership. Trainer grants a smallish amount of XP to your soldiers every day, which will give your lowest tiered troops a much needed boost. Just getting them to tier 2 is a big improvement in survivability (most get shields or the like at tier 2, while tier 1 is usually just a single-handed weapon.)

Kill everything you see, especially bands with prisoners. You need that XP, both for yourself and the troops. Looting the remains isn't that efficient, but if you have spare room, go for it. Also, peasant women (only obtainable from prisoners) can be upgraded to Sword Sisters which are pretty good, cheap cavalry and somewhat of a favorite of mine.

Speaking of which, cavalry reigns supreme. One cavalrist is equal to three normal foot soldiers, pretty much. If you have a choice when upgrading, always go for the mounted option.

Do not loot villages of the faction you intend to join, if any.

Weapons. I've found reach to be very important, so get a sword with as good reach as possible and a reasonable shield. Two-handers are useful if you meet a lot of cavalry (better reach and a good blow can kill an unarmoured horse instantly) but you'll be shot to bits if you don't have a shield to hide behind, especially by Rhodoks. Early on I often carry two shields, since those you find are of such poor quality and are often broken before the fight is over. There's a lot of fun to be had with weapons since they do behave very differently, but swords are definitely the best all-round option.

I haven't done the trading minigame, so I don't know how efficient that is. I would wager "not very."

I have things on the "easy" setting, so take what I have to say with that in mind.

Early game is hard for newbies. Or it was for me, at least. I find it hard to do just about anything all that well. Archery/throwing weapons especially. Now that I'm like.. level 22 (vastly out-leveling my 8 companions, and I mean.. vastly.. I think the highest level one is 13, and he starts at 10) I largely plow through things. I've managed to concentrate points in One-handers and Archery, some skill points in Riding/Horse Archery and Power Strike as well as Leader ones and.. I do pretty well. Expensive armour has helped, though I'm still using a sword I got around... level 2 because it has decent reach which helps in field battles when I charge into the enemy to soften them up before my men arrive by slashing along their flank.

Learning to chase tournaments was key for me. First month or two of in-game time all I did was recruit Swabian recruits at villages, a few in from the Nords, and went city to city for tournaments and looking to get my group of 8 heroes who balance their likes/dislikes so no one leaves. Bet on myself every round of the tournaments netted me about 4.2k every tournament until recently (seems I'm the favourite in these things now). This accomplished a couple things; upped my rep a bit with various towns for slightly cheaper goods, got me money to equip myself with good stuff (my heroes only get hand-me-downs and loot from battles) and most importantly it forced me to up my skills in weapons via use. I think I've gained close to 80 skill points in two handers and pole-arms from tournaments alone, not to mention gains in one-handers, archery and throwing, which makes me far more lethal in actual combat.

For my troops.. I went largely Swabian at the start. They can do a bit of everything, but I sent all them up the infantry route. Only got around.. ~20 or so troops for a first bit. I've also found it better to fight the looters and bandits around Swabia rather than other places. Steppe raiders and the desert ones tend to be horse-back and a pain to catch (though I did find a few good grind spots occasionally) and if they start running from you.. its a waste to try and chase. One in the the North with the Nords and Vaegirs? Tough bastards. Sea Raiders and the like caused my poor Swabians and heroes a fair bit. Bandits and forest bandits, however, were easy kills.

I've grown my army very slowly (I'm around ~45 atm, partly to train 7 Mamelukes for a Lord) and now I'm involved in a war and finding it a touch too small, but my only fief gives me a mere ~260 in revenue a week, and my army cost is close to 900 a week. Tournaments have me sitting around 15k, though, and with a reputation. Every seems happy to meet me. I wish I didn't suck at sieges, though. Trying to help in one atm and I generally lose ~75% of my troops, even if I clear the wall a bit before the mass of ally troops and mine catch up. I need more Huscarls, I think.

I've never bothered with companions, it was too much of a hassle to keep them trained and armed.

Vaegirs are definitely the siege army of choice. They are fucking ferocious melee fighters (and they have axes most of them, which is useful in sieges because there's a wall of shields everywhere you look.) Go vikings! In sieges it can also help to command everyone to initially "follow" rather than "charge." If you then also try to penetrate far into the castle, they often spread out a little more which gives you a larger frontline and better efficiency. The AI works so that the best enemy troops (along with lords...) are always stacked right at the ladder, so it can be a violent struggle to just get past the initial 20 guys.

Sieges are rather cludgey, though. The enemies often stack up at one end and refuse to move, so you have to send wave after wave into a big pile of enemy troops where only a few can fight at a time. Attacking capitals is just murder in that regard.

If i'm using Trainer to boost my mens up in xp gains, is it generally better (early game at least) to have a larger number of low-tier troops (levels 2/3), or to have a smaller number of more elite ones? I'm asking since i presume Trainer xp is split evenly between all of your minions.

Also, is there any real point to Companions? I've hired a couple, and even with upgraded gear all they seem to do is just run off in battle and get killed off.

If i'm using one-handed maces, do they only deal non-lethal damage, or can i actually beat someone to death with it?

How do you guy handle battle? I just recently realised that i was 'doing it wrong' by simply having all of my guys set to Charge, instead of leading my band of mixed spearmen/crossbowmen to the top of a hill, setting the ranged behind the shield-wall and waiting for the enemy to come to me.

Also, with the tax collection bit, is there any downside to just not returning the money? If i do it too many times, will a faction (or the lords that i've angered) send people out to get me?

I liked using companions for group skills like surgery first aid tracking etc so I can use my own points for leader abilities like training prisoner management etc. Once I've leveled them up a bit I've found they do a decent job of mowing through infantry and staying alive.

There's one one handed axe I tend to use that has a nice reach and decent damage that I prefer over the sword, if I get to a full gallop it will chop through lower level shields and insta kill most peon infantry as well as the odd time take a horse and its rider in one hit.

I mainly only use cavalry so pretty well only let everyone charge in with my smallish infantry/archers corps coming in half way through the battle to mop up what ever the heavy cavalry didn't mow down.

Yeah, some companions are badasses but for the most part you'll want to use them for skills.  Also, you can send them off to tell people how awesome a ruler you'd be although I don't know what that actually does.

Companions are quite a bit more capable fighters in Warband than they were in the original game it seems like to me. Even Jeremus was kicking some ass when I picked him up.

I've found Companions fairly useful. Granted, I'm running with eight of them, which is about a fifth of my army. It was a bit annoying figuring out how to balance the ones I really liked with the like/dislike system, but once I got 'em all, only.. two tend to have trouble in big melees (Artimenner and Lezalit). Rolf, Alayne largely chew through opposing infantry while the two archers I have, the female doctor and scout do a good job whittling down the enemies. The female archer has taken about about nine lords in my Sassinid/Rhodok war by sniping them off. They all tend to suck until you've leveled them a bit and gotten them decent stuff, where they'll really start to stand out.

For sieges (I haven't led one yet, just joined in when they've whittled the enemy down a bit) I've come to just be the third or so person atop the ladder (first two to take arrows) and then using swings and, sometimes kicks, clear a few so that the guys coming up behind me can push in. I almost always end with about a quarter of my health left, or less, after sieges, though. I'm not looking forward to the eventual restart on more 'normal'-ish difficulty settings.

Necro to inform people of a mod called CRPG.

It's persistent Warband, as in you earn money and exp for kills. You can level up and use the gold to buy weapons and armour which stick around from server to server, fight to fight.

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/board,178.0.html

It's a long, uphill, poopsocky fight to advance your character, but I can't help but like it. Anyone here play it?

Yeah, the bad thing is they dump you into a group of high level people wearing plate-mail and swinging 2h swords or polearms that will kill you in one hit. So until about level 20, you pretty much just have to hide behind your sides "tin-cans" and hope they don't tk you on accident.

The nice thing is, you don't have to kill anyone to get xp or gold (in fact, you don't get any extra reward for killing someone, except to improve your K:D), you just have to be nearby when someone on the opposite side dies, and try to die in a good spot, because you continue to get xp+gold as a corpse.

Not so nice thing: if you are on the losing side, you only get about 25% xp+gold at the end of the round, and if you die on the winning side, something around 85%.

Going to post this here because the official forum is being as helpful as, well, an official forum. I'm getting an inexplicable save error, I'll post what I posted there:

So I downloaded the trail from the games main website, and as soon as I try to save I get this "Error: Unable to save game!!!!!". Everything else runs perfectly, except the ability to save/load saves.

I've tried the options from previous threads, such as:

Stopping all start up programs
Turning off all firewalls
Reinstalling multiple times
Making sure I have lots of space left available (around 20GB)
Am running the game as an Admin, and have full access to the game files
Clearing out the registry and reinstalling again again
Moving around the Mount and Blade save folder to multiple different spots/downloading a save file, still doesn't recognize it.
Reinstalling in different locations (C:\, D:\)
Making sure folders/files are not set to "read only"
Trying different versions numbers
Virus sweeping the computer

I'm also having the exact same issues with the original Mount and Blade, the same error, so it mustn't be just the file I downloaded and something wrong on my end, however I have never had this issue with any other game.

I'm running Windows Vista on a laptop.
Mobility Radeon HD 2300
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5500 (1.66GHz).
3GB RAM
Direct X 9

Quite lost as to what to try next, any suggestions?

The log, if it helps:

That is a really weird problem... Been playing M&B for a long time and never seen that.

Since I play this and the last post was a year ago, CRPG mod is a lot better now BTW, way way less poopsockish.

The exp/gold system was changed so it ticks every minute or so and you get 50 gold & 1000xp whether you are alive or dead, not based on kills or position at all. If your team wins a round get a multiplier up to 5x.

It's also been heavily curved so that you can get to lvl 15 in a few hours of playing, and not much longer to get to 20+.The main grind is from lvl 30 to lvl 31 (takes the same xp to go from 30 to 31 as it does to go from 1 to 30), which is purely option and only really if you want to retire your character 31 so you can "heirloom" an item. Even when you max retirements on an item it is only about 15% better so basically a very marginal improvement. Further you can just skip to lvl 30 and forgoe all leveling.

They also have a working beta version of their strategic map shell called "strategus" which is basically a clan warfare matchmaking and conquest browser based shell system for CRPG. You use the same character as normal CRPG battles and move him around the M&B map like a party, you can park in a city and earn gold/soldiers while offline, and sign up for scheduled clan battles where they fight over cities, castles and villages. If you are unclanned you can apply for a side in a scheduled battle as a mercernary. It's fairly a rudimentry beta-ish version, but playable and pretty popular.

Looks like disk permissions, or full disk issue. AFAIK, M&B saves to the my documents on C:. Make sure you have room, and or do not have some funky permissions you are missing for the program to create the file.

All the permissions are fine and have plenty of disk space, which is why I'm confused.

I want to say I had some weird bug like this at some point, and I have a vague memory of having to go in and create a dummy save file for it to save over? That may have been some other game entirely, I am a big help I bet.

Warband basic game on sale 75%-off on steam until April 23rd.

Game is highly recommended if you have never tried it, best medieval combat game out there, neat single player campaign with RPG/strategy aspects (plus tons of modder content), and a solid multiplayer scene.

New Napolean Era multiplayer DLC now released for 10$ also.

It's not really a traditional DLC tho, it's actually "Mount & Musket" mod, one of the most popular & successful multiplayer mods along with c-RPG. The devs were hired by Paradox/Taleworlds to do a professional update to it, and then release it as DLC. This is good, because it's a fully fleshed out total conversion with a lot of neat features that these modders have been working on for years, it's not just normal Warband with medieval armor models replaced with 19th century and breaches.

Not bad prices at all.

Having played it with various mods for over 150 hours, I can assure anybody who hasn't played it that it's worth it.

Is Warband a sequel or is it stand alone?  In other words, do we need the original first?  Would one recommend the original first to learn gameplay?

Stand alone. No need to get the first. Warband is better in most every way.

Warband is basically M&B++. It has superior single player and added multiplayer. I don't even know why they sell pre-Warband M&B (besides to trick people into buying it?), cuz the only reason to play it would be to play some antiquated mod that never was updated to Warband compatability.

Fire & Sword is a very optional purchase. It's basically just a professional mod. But some fan mods are better anyways if you want more content for single player, and for multiplay you are better off just playing Native, cRPG or the new Napoleon mod (didn't buy it yet, but from what I see on the forums it's REALLY good).

Also there are a ton of kickass mods out there. I prefer Brytenwalda which cranks up the realism and sets things in 7th century England. If you thought the basic game was tough to start this is way tougher. However if you know what you're doing it isn't that bad.

It has a lot of changes I like such as a huge array of realism options and 20+ small kingdoms fighting it out.

I like Sword of Damocles as a mod for Warband.

Prophesy of Pendor is really good single player also.

I stick to Native. Too many of the other ones stick a bunch of fantasy gunk in there.

Native expansion is a must-have mod, imo.

Sorry, yeah, that what I mean.

I forgot how awesome this game is. Its got the right mix of ..............everything.

I agree, so much of this game needs to be expanded upon. It's an amazing idea that's begging for an Elder Scrolls world treatment.

With a little refinement and some better visual feedback, Mount & Blade would have arguably the best melee combat of any RPG I could think of.

It does already.

Well they are working on M&B2, I wouldn't expect it until sometime next year tho. Hopefully it will expand on the game in all areas, take up the stuff modders have worked on (persistent multiplayer campaign, better RPG questing/dynamics in single player) but modders are limited by existing hard code, and lack of professional resources.

Given its limitations, it's about 10 years old now, and the way it started as a non-published indie game (Paradox only picked it up years later for Warband) made by a turkish couple in their garage, it is IMO one of the biggest gaming success stories of the past decade. Would love to see what kind of nice polish game they can do if they re-do it from scratch with a new engine, and a full dev/art team from the beginning along with full publisher support  (I would assume Paradox again).

Not sure why they should move development to Poland.

If I was adding things to the game, I would add.

- More fleshed out economic trading system, including trading quests
- More interaction with guilds, different types of guilds, and guild missions.
- Better faction balance with available access to all unit types: horse, archer, infantry
- More interesting loot, with legendary and epic weapons
- Boss armies with awesome loot.
- Game objectives for victory.
- More control over cities, and city building options. Kingdom management options as well.

One of its strong points is. There is no Fantasy or Sword +1 in the game, for the love of god it does not need "legendary and epic weapons". And AFAIK, you can get any unit in the game, regardless of being a Vassal or not. We have enough Generic RPG games with loot treadmills. Why taint such an awesome title with this crap? Here is your win condition: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women. ".


Here is what I would add: Multi-player Campaign.

The units don't really balance. Certain factions have outstanding archery and no real horses. Certain ones have outstanding infantry and crap archery. While that's fine, it usually boils down to taking the faction with the best Knights because they win everything. That's what I mean by better balance.

The strong point is the combat Bloodworth, but there are still weapons and better armors. There are still skill grinds to make your weapons stronger. I don't care if they do that with multiplayer, I want it for the single player experience. This is a single player game to me, not a multiplayer one.

One of the most common things that people ask for in this game when they overhaul mods is updated units, better equipment, better economics, and victory conditions. People like goals more than they like sandboxes. You have to deal with that.

Well like Paelos said, we're talking about single player here, andl phat loots plus unit progression is an important part of RPG play to a lot of people, and what they expect. You can still do it without tacky fantasy elements.

If you defeat the king of Swadia (which in-game represents western latin style) you should get a chance to retrieve maybe some unique & high quality gear he would sport, or you could raid some bandit headquarters and retrieve treasure too, or commission a master blacksmith to make you some unique & ornate pieces suited to your style, etc.

I'd like to see some Civ elements baked into the next one. Resource management (and battles for control of resources), town building based on research trees, etc.

Or do I need to stop being a noob and get further into the game. The clunky interface kinda bums me out, along with kind of wandering aimlessly. I love those open kind of games....once you know what you're about.  :why_so_serious:

No they need to do that Sky. You are able to trade resources, but they don't do anything other than feed armies. I would like to see a better economy and research, yes.

Yeah, think of one county or duchy or whatever controlling the only iron mine on the map...

You are not locked to one kingdoms units. You can have a mix of all the best units of each faction ( At a cost, Moral hits ), that's kind of the point, build your army to your play style or what you are going against ( Bust out your pike men if fighting mounted units..ETC.. ). As far as gear, nothing is truly better than another, with exception of quality ( Rusty, forged, ETC.. ) its is completely dependent on the build you are going for ( Skills ). Not sure why you are arbitrating what I am saying to multi-player, I'm talking about single player. My want is for the campaign to be multi-player ( Technical issues aside ).

Phat loot is the wrong direction for this type of game. Its not currently in it. So why add it? None of the kings or lords have anything you can't already get. Yes you progress in skills, but you put points into areas that have nothing to do with combat as well, its always a tradeoff.

The outcome of a battle is determined by your in field tactics, what units you field, and your skill as a hero ( on paper, and in playing ). Adding the sword of omens will just go against the basic principles of this title.

This is my point, it sounds like you guys want Everquest loot grinds and imposable armies where you just face roll the opposition because you grinded more. Not that you are a better tactician. That's not the attraction, or intent of the game. Its a strategic, historical(ish), medieval simulation with gamey trappings.

Let me quote the website, because apparently some of you didn't read it.



I'm all for expanding some of the systems you mention, like more ways/Variety of shops and better kingdom management. But come on, loot grinds, +1, Uber skills, 1 to 1 units in each faction ( Ignoring that the factions ARE balanced already ).

You need to stop playing MMO's.

Your sperg is showing.  :why_so_serious:

Glad you found the website. That's good work. Allow me to refute a few points.

1 - The tactical side of this game sucks as it stands. Army orders are clunky, the interface is bad, and certain units dominate the map if you get them. There is very much an IWIN button if you stack knights.
2 - Kingdom management isn't deep enough. It's wandering around building things in small towns while you wait for more Taiga bandits to decapitate.
3 - The point of this game is decapitating people. There isn't some sort of magical thing a weapon will do except add more to do while you ride around the map. Maybe the weapon increases your leadership stats or something, which are already IN THE GAME. This isn't like an MMO where you walk up to someone with a better sword and die because you're holding a cleaver. There's still timing and skill involved, not autoattack.
4 - Who cares what the developers think their game is about? Alot of the time they are dead wrong, or have no idea what their customers really want. See: Minecraft Modding API, Mass Effect ending, DAOC ToA, etc.

I don't really want any loot progression type stuff beyond what is already in there. I like that there aren't any fantasy elements and that even a level 20 armored dude can get overwhelmed by superior numbers, at least on foot.

I want them to polish up the actual world elements - give the various lords and stuff more distinct personalities, tactical tendencies, unit preferences, etc., than they do now. Make it more obvious which ones are related to each other and make it matter more. Let the player get better connected into those elements. Fill in the history more so that places matter more to people, give houses grudges against each other, flesh out the joinable NPCs. Hire some real writers and get some Game of Thrones type shit going.

More city-building type elements would be great too.

Don't really care about multiplayer at all.

What the hell are you talking about? I want an EQ grind? You are the one describing the game as some kind of cheesy min/maxer experience where you go around grabbing the best troops from different NPC kingdoms.

I've played the shit out of this game, since 2004, single and more recently multiplayer, and when I play single player I pick RP restrictions just to add challenge and fun (cuz any chump can grab a mix of the best cav/archer troops and beat the NPCs, big deal, with some heavy in for sieges).

There is a multiplayer campaign for c-RPG mod btw, it really needs to be in vanilla M&B2.

Oh add a rework to sieges for my list. I think there needs to be a reason for ladders v. tower, the pathing needs work, and there are various sticking points where your troops can hang on the walls. There's nothing more frustrating than watching your guys turn into pincushions because one jackass at the top of the one ladder won't actually move forward into the melee.

I'd like to order archers to hold and have none of them ignore me and go up the ramp, yeah. Or hell tie it to leadership, that might be fun. Crappy leadership, some % of troops ignore your orders and go up the ramp one at a time like Albs.

Goddamn it, now I have to go home and fire up a session of this.

This.

Damn you all.

Bought the DLC on steam. Wicked fun. Sadly it's MP only, but that one is great.

Or you could play the Brytenwalda mod which has all of this already. Mind you the custom stuff doesn't have the best stats.

I've been meaning to try that one, but I'm addicted to c-rpg multiplayer at the moment. When I get an urge to hack out some single player I will check it out.

I want to replay this, if there was only an alternative to the takeover-world-siege grind.

Did CRPG ever improve from being a soul-crushingly grindy newbie experience where you are so useless as to be a liability until you started getting better equipment where you then became a nearly unstoppable god of destruction?

I dunno when you last played it..

Now xp is gained by team performance, and it just takes few hours to get from lvl 1 to 15 where you are decent and can start getting kills. You dont have to retire either, just keep going after 30 if you really hate retiring.

I prefer c-rpg over native cuz it has better balance. Things are slowed down a bit so less spammy, range less powerful too. Also with the "strategus" clan campaign map, clans overall arelarger and more organized than native, so you get decent group tactics going on even on public  servers when clans are on and playing together.

I last played CRPG maybe a year, year and a half ago. I lost interest in bothering with the grind when it became obvious that development focus was shifting to be primarily about Strategus, which I did and still don't give even the tiniest ghost of a shit about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DYHlFtGN0JE

 :grin:

If we're going to talk about Napoleonic War, yeah, I do line battle with goons.

I've been recording our battles.

Here's two of me on Artillery mowing people down
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RqBLyufeFA&hd=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zp98dw_FKA&hd=1

And here's last night's battle where we're line infantry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGL8KI4mXjY&hd=1

There's a line battle almost every night, and generally about 15-30 random people who make it to any given one, with about a hundred players on each side overall.

So I did start a new game of this on normal level. Ummm, why is it every time I get started I'm captured and fucked within like an hour or two of playing? Am I just missing something? Not paying enough attention? Should I be paying off bandits until I get a few levels?

Early in the game you really need to focus on winning matches in arena, hiring a small team of peasants (10ish), and only fighitng small bands of brigands that are 8 or less.

Also, run jobs for the guildmasters in the cities. They give huge xp and will get your level up fast. Do that until you're level 10, invest in some training, and hire the max amount of troops you can get. Ride out to win!

You also, Personally, want to avoid direct combat. To a point. Reason I say this, if you go down, you take a major moral hit and your health suffers if you are allowed back in.

PRO-TIP: Doing things for villages, and towns increases your standing with them. Get this high enough and when you recruit there, they will be higher tier troops than recruits. Makes losses easier to recover from.

Start by beating the shit out of looters and selling their stuff, upgrade your gear a little bit and hire some peasants to take fire for you. You can work your way up to harder bandits as you go. The recruitable companions are really good since you can equip them yourself, pick their skills as they level up, they're cheap (salary wise), and they never die permanently. Avoid mercs, they're expensive.

Never ever get off your horse unless you're really sure you know what you're doing, and you probably shouldn't even then.

Don't start in Khergit lands until you're good at the game. Steppe bandits are significantly tougher than the ones in other areas. Watch out for sea raiders as well.

I don't think I've ever seen what Bloodworth is talking about with higher tier recruits from a friendly village. That may be a mod thing. I am pretty sure in the normal game they just give you more dudes, not better dudes.

Also invest in industry in various major cities as soon as you can; usually whatever the steward says is the best return on investment at the current time will stay that way. If you can do that with all or most of the major cities for a few in-game months you'll have a pretty good warchest ready for when you inevitably piss off one or all of the factions, which freezes your assets.

http://mountandblade.wikia.com/wiki/Villages


http://mountandblade.wikia.com/wiki/Recruitment

If I recall right, it does take over 20 with the village.

In all but a couple towns you should just do the dyeworks (unless they've patched it.) Even though it doesn't always have the best efficiency it pretty much always gives you the most actual gold per week which is really the only thing that matters. Possibly if you really want to go deep into the weeds of going around to towns and buying raw materials and delivering them yourself you can make better money with other things.

EDIT: MrB have you ever actually gotten better than recruits from a village? I've had one up in the 80s for their opinion of me and it is still always just recruits. A shitload of recruits, but they're still just recruits.

That reminds me though, Haemish, if you're planning to build up a big army of guys the trainer skill will save you a lot of time in training them up to different troop types.

I think Int is the most important stat.

Yes. Its Prosperity + Standing.

Obviously if you are going the bandit route of life, this may be useless to you.

Ah, well, as the game goes on prosperity is pretty much a lost cause.

Damn you all. Now I must start a new game. So much for my evening.

I highly recommend you create your character with 3 leadership and then go max int until 40, then dex. Level pathfinding, first aid, surgery, plus whatever else you want. Renown is so much more important than leadership, you get renown by winning battles and so a default 9 cha is plenty. So is your 3 in weapon master / ironflesh / power strike, if you're attacking from horseback you'll one-hit-kill everything with a good 2h anyway. I went warrior/urchin/squire/lust for money if I recall. Pathfinding allows you to avoid enemies and is super important later as travel speed is king, especially with larger armies. You can hold space to speed up your overland travel.

Make sure you turn damage down to 1/4th in the options until you get a decent force of maybe 15-20 people. It's practically mandatory unless you hate yourself or are VERY good at the game. To be honest, to speed up the boring parts I often run with 1/2 damage because attrition is an absolute bitch until you have high surgery/first aid.

Wander around from city to city checking every single tavern for ONE OF THESE (http://mountandblade.wikia.com/wiki/Heroes#The_Raiding_Party) heroes. Also check to see when/where the next tournament is. If they have int as a primary/high stat, make sure to level training as much as possible for each character, that's probably the most important thing for mid/late game, way more than their individual fighting skills. Training stacks, so with a bunch of heroes and high training, it only takes a few days to train brand-new peasants into super-strong end-tier units (that you'll need for sieges)

Once you find a tourney, save the game. Then enter, betting max money on yourself every single round. Then win. You get about 1k dinars! You should be able to do this with 1/4th damage without too much trouble. Use this to work up a nest egg as well as some basic fighting skills (and fighting skills for the game engine, which takes real practice as well). You can then follow the tourney from town to town. I'd do it at least two or three times.

Once you have a bit of cash, several hero followers and some levels, you can start making trouble. Hunt bandits, maybe do a mission or two, eventually you'll get asked on as a mercenary for one particular faction. Kill enemies, hunt caravans. I don't recommend looting, as it's virtually impossible to repair your reputation, even when your faction or you yourself gain control over a village, and they become useless to recruit from. Yes, it's incredibly profitable, maybe decide to loot one or two villages on a war line that is constantly being taken and re-taken, but that's IT.

Seriously, you will hate yourself a few hours later when you're trying to scare up new recruits. Then you will download TweakMB in an effort to zero out the rep only to find you can't do it.

If you have some training skill, start wandering around recruiting peasants until you have a decent force, you'll be asked to participate in a siege, so learn how to do that. Eventually, you'll want to pick a side and swear allegiance. Swadia is a good choice, for their knights and crossbowmen are awesome and make sieging much easier.

Eventually, you'll start leading parties and sieging yourself (or at least whittling down the number of defenders) and you'll end up taking castles/towns. You can ask for control. Once you have control, you start earning passive income from them. Around this time, you will also have enough of a reputation to build a guild building in other towns for additional passive income (check the wiki for details). I highly recommend getting the money to do this as well.

Once you're rocking out owning everything in sight, you'll end up controlling a town or castle or two and a bunch of villages. Then the next part of your plan begins.

Start preparing by massing as many guys as you possibly can and garrison them in your towns (garrisoned units only cost 1/2 upkeep). During the next war, you can ask to be granted something you took, but you'll be refused because you own too many things. Tell the king to fuck off.

REVOLUTION! Now you're on your own and against the world. Proceed to take over the entire continent and siege every town and castle and then win the game. (This is easier said than done and half way through it's a tremendous grind and unfun though some mods make it a bit easier)


I'd recommend trying the diplomacy mod once you get the hang of things, it adds some quality of life options for mid-game like auto-recruitment and auto-replenishment of food from villages you stop in, as well as a whole slew of options once you get to the 'put the boot in on the continent' part of the end-game.

Oh, and different kinds of food = morale = faster speed on the overland map. And you'll also go faster if you have only cavalry, and faster the smaller group you have.

Carrying around a bunch of extra horses also makes you go faster (or at least offsets carrying around a bunch of extra weight in food/goods/loot, I forget exactly how it works.)

Yeah, it's all kind of hidden. Make sure all your followers are on horseback and you have a few extra if you're carrying loot.

This game is FRUSTRATINGLY badly documented. Is there a way to equip my party or should I just sell all the shit I loot?

Select them in your party list,, talk to them, ask them about equipment, it'll pop up the inv screen. If you install diplomacy mod, you can tell them to just pick up upgrades off the loot pile as needed.

For your first character, aim to build a horseman, lance as main weapon. Mounted is basically easy mode compared to fighting on foot, and lancing is the easiest. After a bit of practice you'll be mowing down parties of bandits by yourself or with a bit of help.

For the first 1-2 hours, what you should do is scrape some gold together like the ways people suggested, arena, peasant prisoners, guildmaster quests, trading, etc, then upgrade your horse and buy a really long lance (jousting lance is good, with blunt damage for capturing prisoners). Also with some gold you've scraped together, hire a few horseman/horsearcher mercernaries from an inn. Just need a handful, 1-5 or so against bandits, they will wheel around and distract the NPCs while you race around lanceing them down. Just avoid sea raider parties they have nasty throwing axes and longbows which will shred your horses, and probably headshot you too at high speed from 100 yards away. Maybe avoid horse archer parties too on the steppes they are a pain in the ass.

Couched lancing is basically easy mode in this game. Later you can build towards horse archery too it's super easy mode against harder enemies like knights and pikemen. Lancer/horse archer you are basically invincible.

When you get good enough that you start to find your lancer/horse archer character boring, move onto a more challenging one like a 1h sword cavalry, or foot character.

You can only equip yourself and NPC companions. Talk to a companion and ask them about their stuff to switch their gear. Your troops just upgrade. So most of what you pickup is junk to sell.

If you install the diplomacy mod (http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,116424.0.html), you can set your team to just pick up stuff off the ground after a battle that they consider an 'upgrade'. Diplomacy really has a shit-ton of quality-of-life improvements.

I really need to get back into Native or Native-like mods. I haven't really played Native much since the original M&B hit. It's mostly been about Eagle and the Radiant Cross and Prophesy of Pendor for years now.

Maybe I'll try Diplomacy since I'm getting the M&B itch, and it's hard to go back to something like Diplomacy after the comparatively deeper Pendor. It's like going back to vanilla Civ IV after playing a lot of FFH2. It's reeeeeally hard.

Yeah after fucking around with Native Expansion a bit last night I realized I actually meant to recommend Diplomacy. Derp. I had some of their features crossed up in my head.

Eurg. I just can't do it. After so many hundreds of hours sunk into them, larger mods like Pendor have ruined me for something like Diplomacy or Native. I simply cannot go back it seems; everything just feels so off.

Yeah I just play multiplayer now cRPG, I doubt I'll play single player until Pendor 4.0 comes out.

So before I throw my computer out a goddamn window, why is it I can't bring out my fucking sword? I have a crossbow equipped, a shield and a one handed sword. Yet in combat, when I roll the mousewheel to change weapons, I pull out my shield, but no fucking sword. And this isn't just the sword, it seems to be any 1-hander I put in the slot. What's the key to make that fucking sword appear so I don't get gangraped in fights?

Mosuewheel one way is 'equip shield(s)' Mousewheel the other is cycle between weapons.

Can anyone link me to a mod or hack that enables widescreen functionality, or at least allow me to play windowed instead of stretching the textures? I tried to play and was getting nauseous from narrow FOV and stretching.

I don't think you need a mod. I just set it to my desktop resolution and turn on window mode. I'm not clear on what you are trying to do though.

I reset the settings before starting the game and that at least gives me a 1600x1200 window. It is snapped to the very top of my monitor though...makes it tough to see the stuff at the top of the screen. Definitely not perfect, but I can live with it.

I bought Warbands but haven't had time to play too much, just messed around with the tutorial since it's been ages since I played the original. I hope to play a bit more this weekend.

I made the mistake of letting my 3.5 year old son see me play this. Now every time I am doing ANYTHING else he is on me to play Mount and Blade  :grin:

Can I install more than 1 mod at a time?

Yeah, the launcher has a selector thing on it to pick which one to use for each session ('Native' is the default standard one).

If you mean combine mods you can do it manually by making a custom mod folder and putting the mods you want in it. Which can be a bit of a trial and error process finding different mods that work together.

combine mods? You mean graphic/sound enhancements?

I think he is asking about new campaign mods, and yes just install them to their own subfolder in warband "module" folder, and you can select which mod to launch via dropbox on launcher.

Obligatory necro!

Viking Conquest, DLC for M&B Warband, comes out today!

Here's a gameplay video of the first 15 minutes. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3zJcNVZv60)

Its on steam yes?

Yes. 20% less until release later today.

Viking Conquest: lots of bugs from small ones that just irritate to large ones that crash the game but I like it so far (despite it's problems).
It feels like a more fleshed out Brytenwalda mod where they have been able to do some stuff that normal modders don't have access to. Still you have to keep in mind that it's a M&B dlc/mod and you can't expect them to do miracles (maybe Banner Lords will allow alot more once/if its time comes)  :why_so_serious:

I just don't have time for it right now, but I will at the Winter sale.

I would not recommend buying this yet due to the amount of bugs. I'm not personally regretting buying this so soon but that probably has something to do with being accustomed to buggy M&B play after trying out several mods for the game over the years.

Buggy like it's crashing, buggy like quests go nowhere, or buggy like my troops keep getting stuck on sieges and falling through the world?

Yes to all (according to the forums) though my main problem has been the fact it crashes alot,

Yes, to me as an experienced M&B mod-player as well, the only thing I won't accept is crashes. Pathing, quests, weird faces, odd texts, etc. That's all workable for the most part. But crashing? I won't bother until that gets fixed.

Usually in other mods that could take months. The fact they released this under the steam header as a sort of expansion makes me believe it will get fixed much faster.

The developers are saying that alot of the problems were not in the beta version and the latest m&b patch or something else unforeseen is causing them (though I'd take any such claims with a grain of salt but that's because I'm a cynic).

Someone posted on the Taleworlds forums that they've seen the source code and according to them it's riddled with mistakes and zero optimization. Linkage:

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,319843.0.html

I have no coding experience so someone smarter than myself will have to weigh in on what all that means.

Right, and I'm the King of Mars.

I have no coding experience either, but I have an extremely hard time believing that huge amounts of problems show up based on a gameday patch. And if so, why wasn't the patch tested? This thing just got released. Was it working before?

I can understand if a month down the road you patch and fuck it up, not at this point.