Mount &Blade:Warbands

[caladein]

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.

Going from memory...

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

[Tebonas]

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.

[Ingmar]

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.)

[Paelos]

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.

[Megrim]

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)?

[Tarami]

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."

[Ceryse]

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.

[Tarami]

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.

[Megrim]

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?

[Jade Falcon]

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.

[caladein]

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.

[Ingmar]

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.

[Ceryse]

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.

[FatuousTwat]

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

[ashrik]

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

[FatuousTwat]

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%.

[Pagz]

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:

[Speedy Cerviche]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

Stuff....

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.

[Pagz]

Stuff....

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.

[Ingmar]

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.

[Pagz]

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.

Moving around the Mount and Blade save folder to multiple different spots/downloading a save file, still doesn't recognize it.

[Speedy Cerviche]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

Not bad prices at all.

[Paelos]

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

[shiznitz]

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?

[Mrbloodworth]

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

[Speedy Cerviche]

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).

[Njal]

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.

[Paelos]

I like Sword of Damocles as a mod for Warband.

[Speedy Cerviche]

Prophesy of Pendor is really good single player also.

[Ingmar]

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

[Paelos]

Native expansion is a must-have mod, imo.

[Ingmar]

Sorry, yeah, that what I mean.

[Mrbloodworth]

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