A thread for discussing Mount & Blade series.
Which game do you play? Do you have favorite mods? Are you active in multiplayer? Do you roleplay? Tell us about your characters and their adventures!
Recently I started (and already stopped) playing Warband again, Aut Caesar aut nihil mod. Really good, set during reign of emperor Nero. There is a system of gradually making your way up through Roman society, rather than simple adventurer => noble => king as in vanilla warband. Also has most of Viking Conquest features.
Although instead of staying in Rome, I roleplayed an escaped slave, started by repeatedly attacking Roman patrol to get my relationship with them to -30, and run away to Germania, where I made my living as trader and hunter.
I wanted to have as much realistic roleplay as possible so I gave myself whole bunch of restrictions:
>has to sleep at night<by default can carry only food + 1 item (as long as it isnt too heavy) in inventory, more by either getting more people in the party (1 for each) or by getting pack animals (1 item regardless of weight for donkey, 2 for mule and horse)>as female character in patriarchal society, I cant hire anybody or get any quests until my renown is sufficiently high, with exception of hiring women, and even then it has to be actual female warriors, because camp followers arent signing up to be frontline infantry<when defeated, lose everything, all money, equipment, stuff in inventory (exception if you get away from your captors by them getting defeated by another party, in which case you get to keep what you were wearing)>hunting doesnt take in-game time, so if I hunt I fast-forward whole day, and also if I get injured during hunt go to arena during next visit to town and get myself smacked around, because the game restores your health after huntAnd couple other minor rules, mostly pertaining to character roleplay, like never hunting deers because they cant fight back, not taking slaves, not buying armor I think looks ugly, etc.
>>31442I really loved that mod during my first playthrough, but then I tried making different character and realized the mod isnt made for anything other than honorable mounted archer/knight. That takes away the freedom which made Warband fun.
New start of Aut Caesar aut nihil, same rules as before, plus new one - not being able to visit healer to fix a wound sustained in battle I lost (so -1 to a stat permanently). Over 500 days in, just now managed to scrape together 50 renown, because a single loss means loosing everything and back to square one. Recently got attacked (well I attacked and didnt count on enemy having reinforcements) and surrendered, so no equipment, but I do have my renown, meaning I can take quests from Guild Masters. Only in Britain though, thats where I made most of it fighting their deserters, who have high level and good stats, but are poorly armored so you get good renown/risk ration fighting them. Good way of making money is being a cattle thief, lot better than robbing peasants. Also trading spice and silk from east, but getting there is dangerous. Rome conquered most of Mesopotamia, Parthian empire has only one town and is their ally. Only parts of the world free from Roman yoke are Germanic tribes east of Rhine, eastern steppes and Britain. Recently they expanded into Dacia and around Black Sea.
>>316921300 days in. Because for some reason year in this mod is roughly 1/3 of what it should be, my character, who started as 18, is now in her 30s. Despite leveling I keep loosing stats to injuries and random events, so I am far below my starting attributes, with exception of strength, which I managed to keep 16. Got completely wiped repeatedly, I have nothing now, no renown, no money or equipment. Romans are expanding into Germania and Britain, and the constant fighting results in those areas being infested by looters, deserters, and Roman armies, who keep robbing me of everything, prevent me from getting back on my feet. I need over 10K denarius to get decent equipment + shitty horse to solo looter bands, and even then fighting bigger ones gets too risky. This might be the first Warband game I just straight-up lost, if Romans manage to take over Germania I no realistic path out of being just a wandering tramp.
Starting another character, this time in Viking Conquest. Actually my first time playing it unmodded, previously I always used Balance Patch mod.
My character is a young Norse woman names Dagný with a dream to become a famous warrior. The mostly same rules as
>>31445 playthrough, with some changes to accommodate VC, such as being allowed to use healer even if you sustain injury in loosing battle, because unlike Aut Caesar aut nihil, there are no ways to rise your attributes in VC. Another problem is a donkey/mule to carry stuff, they dont exist in VC, the cheapest alternative is a pony for 6k. So I am gonna just accept it, although I am going to treat lame/swaybacked version as normal for roleplay purposes, because this is way too expensive. But I can carry unlimited amount of items sailing from port to port, I just cant walk with it.
So anyway, I started by deleting my starting money and honey, so my initially I had nothing but a clothes, bow, dagger, and a single coin to my name. I started in Norway, made some money by working in homestead, lumber camp, and hunting boars. Hunting is fun in VC, you have to organically track the herd on overworld. After putting together small capital, transitioned to trading goods,mainly iron and soapstone, between villages and Norways only city.
Just moving around is quite dangerous, the country is absolutely infested with bandits. Although good thing is they are contend to collect "toll" when they catch you instead immediately clubbing you to death.
>>31828I dont think it is. Germanic tribes actually managed to briefly unite and sack couple of their border fortresses, but then Romans peaced out with them one by one until only a single tribe remained in war, which they conquered.
>>31831My first kill. A lone bandit I attacked. And I remembered that in VC, outlaws are a faction, meaning fighting them lowers the relationship, and when it gets low they no longer offer you chance to pay for free passage, they just attack you outright.
So I put together some coin to buy tar in Norway and ship passage to Bebbanburh in Norsemen occupied Britain, to make hefty profit. Traded some wool with nearby villages, put together enough money to buy myself mid-tier equipment. Right now I am farming renown and exp hunting down small 2 men bandit parties.
I cant emphasize how much I love the aesthetics and atmosphere of this game. Particularly the music score, and the ruined Roman cities meshed with Dark Age cottages. What actually made me replay it was this thread on /siberia/
https://leftypol.org/siberia/res/467582.html good news everybody, the game has a sex mod
i downloaded native: gold edition which is a bit broken, faces can become white when you go too far, other than that it contains a mod called dickplomacy reloaded, which is the diplomacy and sex mod I'm talking about, you can make a brothel in this game
i started my campaign, named myself Alunya and surrounded myself with hired thieves, farmers, cutthroats and mercenaries from towns and liberated peasant women from other brigands I attacked, after amassing a huge army i chose to attack harlaus head on until i capture him, failed at that because his army is at 800 and cheated by using the Ctrl+Alt+F4 combination until i got him, then went to camp and take a walk around your camp, now he sits in my cage, my next stop is finding a companion that looks like Grace and making her a part of my degenerate army
tldr; i became alunya and fucked harlaus
>>33691Hm, gaming in Syria doesn't look that bad.
Meanwhile, SEGA fucks game modders over by adding DRM.
>>37209butter trade runs still work
horses not so much
And I am kind of done with Bannerlord now. Didnt even make it to nobility.
The fundamental issue with this game isnt that its better or worse that Warband, but too similar. There are improvements and changes here and there, but the core gameplay is identical to something I already played dozen times. What the sequel to Warband needed is shake up the formula. For example switch scope, either focus on kingdom management, and deep battle system, basically a third person TW/CK title, or on the other side of the spectrum (which is what I would enjoy the most), completely cut all that out and make it a medieval life-sim, where you no longer can be a king who lead armies towards conquest, but a mercenary with at most handful of comrades, doing jobs for lords and merchants. I would really like the kind of game where big battles still happen, but you dont direct them, you and your men are just hired swords in lords armies, trying survive to collect the paycheck more than win.
>>37279but did it add tools for modders to implement these alternative experiences you want?
the problem with warband was that the module system was extremely limited. I don't want to rant too much, but for example the scripting language for warband was an ad-hoc assembly language that compiled to an ad-hoc bytecode that was completely useless for the most part
imo the ideal should be a warband clone but with garry's mod scripting capabilities, did they accomplish that at least?
>>37279I was hoping for some city building elements, maybe even with town founding and tile development like civ and family managment like ck2. At least something like a watered down version of the guild 2 would've been amazing. Welp, I guess its just warband with better graphics (and less mods).
I completely agree, doing the same thing over and over again for a decade now… the late middle ages, shouldn't that be the perfect bourgie simulator?
Like many people have said before, warband and bannerlord, those two are nice tech demos waiting for a game to be added.
Also another thing I would like to bitch about concerning Bannerlord, they completely ruined female troop tree. Making a woman-only army was an interesting roleplay challenge, they were hard to come by, the early tiers were looter-level quality, but once you managed to upgrade them enough you get a unique versatile troop, with plate armor, crossbow and fast mounts. Hell, even Viking Conquest, with its emphasis on historical realism, makes women into decent archers in the final tier. In Bannerlord, female mercenaries are abundant in taverns, fight with crossbows, and are the absolutely worst troop in the game in terms of performance:cost ratio.
>>37638Yeah, I take my comment about maces back, thay are very good since amor is more effective in Bannerlord, contrasted with Warband where high power-strike character kills even heaviest armored opponent in 2-3 hits, regardless of weapon type. Another factor is, since AI is so much better at blocking, short reach of maces is no longer an issue, as you can no longer rely on killing the enemy before they even get close enough to fight back.
I discovered can-crush-through-block does in fact exist, for two handed axes, maces and polearms, even though the game in no way indicates this property in weapon description.
And since we talk about balance, I am puzzled by TaleWorlds refusal to acknowledge that just because arrows have pointy ends, doesnt mean they should be treated as armor piercing weapons. It leads to dominance of ranged armies, and makes any troop without shield useless. Viking Conquest figured it out, why are we taking a step back?
Also, crossbows being underpowered compared to bows. In Warband crossbow advantage was not requiring any skill points, so they were a ranged choice for characters not wanting to invest into ranged, but are a pure gimmick now. Slower, less damage, less armor, higher cost, literally why would anyone bother?
>>37642Yeah I was disappointed by how bad crossbows suck too, which could have been fixed by just upping their damage so that it compensates for low DPS. Cross bows and longbows should be dedicated anti-armour weapons, which would be balanced by slower rates of fire and having to be dismounted to use them.
>It leads to dominance of ranged armies, and makes any troop without shield useless.Sure, but on the other hand I've defeated armies 3x my size with like 30 Fian Champions and some mid tier infantry.
>>37932And another thing I want to bitch about, all factions troops trees are nearly identical. In Warband factions had a clearly defined identity, Nords were the infantry faction, Rhodok the pike-and-shot, Swadia all rounder, etc. In Bannerlord, every is all-rounder, everybody has everything. I understand wanting to expend troops selection beyond two choices most Warbands faction trees offered, but they still should have preserved the strenghts and weaknesses. For example everybody gets archers, but some factions can only get then up to only lower tiers, but they can level something else to the max. Instead, every gets T5 of everything, ranged, infantry, shock infantry, heavy cavalry. And there tend to be redundancies even within the individual trees. Like look at Vladia: its infantry splits into spearman and swordsman line, and spearman line then splits into spear and sword vs polearm, and you are never going to be using any of it anyway, because they have no shields and meadium armor. Their swordsman infantry branches into heavy cavalry, and their noble troops are a better heavy cavalry. The whole tree should have been streamlined, crossbowmen, heavy cavalry, and infantry carrying both polearm and 1hand+shield, instead of splitting them into usable infantry and two kinds of dedicated arrow fodder.
>>37949>In Warband factions had a clearly defined identity, Nords were the infantry faction, Rhodok the pike-and-shot, Swadia all rounder, etc. In Bannerlord, every is all-rounder, everybody has everything. I understand wanting to expend troops selection beyond two choices most Warbands faction trees offered, but they still should have preserved the strenghts and weaknesses. For example everybody gets archers, but some factions can only get then up to only lower tiers, but they can level something else to the max. Instead, every gets T5 of everything, ranged, infantry, shock infantry, heavy cavalry.my guess is talesworld wanted to expand their userbase to include people who aren't familiar with the first game and medieval tactic lore. the type not to read the strength and weaknesses of each faction and will choose their faction based on their favorite lard (deus voolt, byzantineboos, mongols or just the arab oriental faction", and so to make the game relitvly simpler they gave every faction an all-round troop trees.
>>37951You had it right the first time TBH
Unfortunately casuals ruin everything
>>37950I mean, warband factions were kind of whatever, like the eastern european guys with the good foot archers (???)
in other news, bannerlord recently got a persistent world multiplayer mod that claims to be similar to warband's PW, has anyone here tried it?
>>37953>I mean, warband factions were kind of whatever, like the eastern european guys with the good foot archers (???)Whats so bad about that? They were also unique in their focus on two handed weapons instead of 1h+shield, which synergized (or at the very least had its disadvantages mitigated) with their archers outclassing others.
Arguably Sarranid Sultanate was the meh faction, because their troop tree was basically weaker Swadia, but still felt distinct thanks to arab aesthetics and isolated easily defensible map position.
Restarted Bannerlord. In fact multiple times, and every time quit couple hours in, getting frustrated by how unbalanced this game is. When I played crossbows character, I was completely dominating, able to solo basically arbitrary amount of early game enemies, in fact hiring troops was a pure burden, there was no need for them. I realized the ability of AI to defend itself against ranged attacks is worse than in Warband, because of removal of shield skill and addition of directional blocking, enemies will often keep their shield way too high, exposing not just their legs but stomach to arrow fire. On the other hand, when I tried melee approach, I can easily get beaten by 2 looters, since melee AI has really fast reaction time now. It becomes rather bizarre when it come to cavalry charges, because those can be blocked just as easily swinging sword. For example if in a tournament the last two combatants are one mounted, one on foot, it will literally go one forever, because mounted troop will constantly attempt to circlecharge and always gets its charge attack blocked.
>>37954>>37953I'll tell you what's the hardest faction. The rhodocks based on Italian city states. Sieges against them are a cunt
Khergit are horsemen but when defending their castles they lack. I can take on a 200 garrisoned town with 70 guys from first siege
But with rhodocks.. God i can still hear the crossbows on the 11354th siege of grunwald catsle…waves after waves. Do you have any idea what it's like to lose a 29 of your elite huscarls in less than a minute? If you faced a rhodock catsle you do.
>>37932>Two elite Sturian and Khuzai troops, completely different cultures living in completely different environments, and they are basically pallet swaps.Sturgians are slavs and Kuzhaits are Mongols, so their similarities are pretty logical actually given the extensive interaction between those two cultures.
>>37949>In Bannerlord, every is all-rounder, everybody has everything. Not really. Batanians have shit cavalry, Vlandians and Sturgians have shit ranged, Kuzhaits have shit infantry, etc. The only real all-round faction is the Empire. Not only that but the structure of the troop trees tend to force different factions to focus on different types, e.g. if you want Batanian cavalry you have to raise them to tier 5, whereas other factions can get them as low as tier 2 or 3. This also makes a difference in terms of AI army composition, since factions with more easily accessible troop types in their trees will have more of that type. I find myself riding around and gathering recruits from specific cultures based on their strengths, like when doing an independent kingdom run I would always take some time to ride over to Batania to scoop up as many Fians as possible since they’re so much better than all other archers.
>>39019I know that feel.
Never trusted steam clouds, if it isn’t on your hard drive then you can already consider it lost.
>>39151The Last Days of The Third Age. Lord of The Rings mod, I would say the most impressive mod of Warband, in terms of how much it manages with the engine and how polished it is. Gameplay loop is completely changed, you create a character for either good or evil side, then pick specific faction you wish to belong to (e.g. orc of Moria, man of Gondor, elf of Woodland Realm,…), and try to help your side win the war. All the internal politicking is removed. There is no money, instead you earn requision (basically money, but tied to a faction), rank (unlocks special item rewards) and influence points (buy item rewards and order NPC parties around), with specific factions by fighting their enemies, and fulfilling quests. You have to reduce the enemy faction strength by defeating parties so your side can lay siege to settlements.
I like playing evil side, much more challenging than good guys, especially as an orc, worse equipment, weaker troops, although you do get trolls.
It is a mod I would recommend trying to everyone, even people who dont like Mount&Blade, because of how different it is standard Mount&Blade experience.
Im thinking of starting new TLD character. The last one was an orc of Gundabad, fighting mostly on warg, this time I want a lightly armored berseker type character, 1h+shield + 2h + throwing if I got skill points to spare. Not sure which faction, but I want it to be on Sarumans side, so either Gundabad again (althought I cant imagine running non-warg army there, all the parties weaker than me will run away and all stronger will catch me), Moria (doesnt have access to decent light armors, so Ill have to get them somewhere else), or an uruk-hai of Isengard. Leaning towards the latter, the only issue being that fighting Rohan is not particularly challenging, and I like the pain.
How are the sieges in Bannerlord? It's definitely the low point of Warband
>>41132Haven't played the game yet but naval warfare could be cool. I've been rocking Viking Conquest since my return to the series and despite some jank it's pretty fun.
Adding stealth mechanics makes sense. Even in previous games there were plenty of instances where they could be utilized
>>41135I am not against stealth in principle, but the issue is there arent really
plenty opportunities to make use of it, there is exactly 2, bandit hideouts and prisonbreaks. The game needs more contend, not systems.
>>41314fuck me, you are using the same weaponlist and armors as i am
elf helmet and blue elfshield, exact long sword, bear armor, quality boots and gloves, a long spear for killing on horseback, only diffrence i don't use javelins, i keep a bow for sieges where the spear isn't worth it.
i don't think that's how you redeem the trophies in towns though
>>41330Lol, I just stick the higher number stuff on me. I take it this is the best in slot for everything? I found a few swords that I assume will put out more damage once improved by a smithy but I love the 120 range on this one.
>i don't use javelinsYa they're pretty useless, I may try bows soon. I love the projectiles in this game tho, not using them per se but seeing them in action. They have so much weight to them. Seeing all of the rocks, arrows and javs flying around, knocking soldiers back and sticking into/ricocheting off of their shields. The way the misses sprinkle the battlefield like a pollock painting. The carnage that gets unleashed when I tell my spearmen (who make up the majority of my army) to hold fire till their in point blank range. Even the firing/throwing animations looks great. It's just too bad that the slings look so goofy when not in use
>i don't think that's how you redeem the trophies in towns thoughThis is the looting screen. Never seen anywhere near this many trophies from one battle. That on top of all of the other lootables and prisoners I got and I made like 30k peningas off this one battle.
Anyways, I'm in a rut in my current game where I can't expand much because I can't afford a larger army because all of my fiefs are perma raided and hence have terrible economies so I spend all of my time playing whack a mole with the raiders and siegers which is a constant drain on my army. Current gameplay loop is: recruit/upgrade>defend>loot>sell ad infinitum. I guess being at war with like 6 factions isn't paying off
>>41339>I got and I made like 30k peningas off this one battle.lucky viking, did you improve your looting skill to get those trophies? i on the other hand went the trade route, i maximise trade skill, then i buy wine jewels and salt from dorestad (wine there goes as low as 100 and 70), sell it to the closest ports dunwic and ribe (where it rises up to 700 a piece, 600 returns in profit) by travelling from port to port via the screen while keeping a small crew to pay less for the voyage back and fourth, appearantly they don't make you pay extra for all the luggage, so you end up cleaning out all shops in england, like 5K peningas in a voyage from dorestad to dunwic, and i buy mead and wool to sell it back in frisia at a 500 win per wool and about 300 per mead horn, there's also fur and tar but they exist far north in tunsberg, not worth it.
the voyage system is broken, instead of buying a boat early on you could pay some sailor to sail you there instead, thank god tarrifs don't exist in the viking world otherwise i'd be tried for sucking up all shops dry with all the wine i dump.
>>41375Ya both looting and especially trade are decently high and I've focused on upgrading the former on a lot of my companions. The latter got me through the early game, allowing me to build a few oak busses, but now that I'm waging PPW on the map my opportunities are slim. Doesn't help that the story mode railroads you into getting kicked out of the money printer that is Frisia. Of course, you can always just buy the dirt cheap raw resources from villages and sell them to towns and there are still trading opportunities between the few neutral powers left but that gets a bit repetitive after a while. Thankfully the trade skill still comes in handy for selling my loot
Getting shipped around by sailors is great and got me through the early game but it becomes too expensive once you have an army and again, there are only a few friendly ports left.
>>41377You're right. I won't let my ancestors (descendants?) down. In fact, immediately after making that post I went on to double the size of my kingdom. All of that defending I did, though monotonous, had the side effect of weakening my enemies. Every time they returned they were smaller and lower tier, allowing me to go on the offensive in between bouts of defending against sieges. More importantly though, I discovered two things; First of all, taking fiefs immediately after they have been taken by some other power is free real estate because their garrisons are tiny. More importantly, and idk if this is just broken or if it's being augmented by my high persuasion skill, but I realized you can just ask nicely and the enemy will abandon their fief as long as your besieging force is larger than their garrison. Picrel is my expansion since making that post, where blue is the initial kingdom and green is the new additions. Believe it or not I only had to fight a single siege to take all of that, everyone else vacated their post peacefully, even in the face of extinction as was the case for Alt Clut. Denisesburna and it's village were mine as well but the cunt I gave it to seceded from my kingdom immediately afterwards which made his "Thank you for so and so, you can trust me to protect it" the first time I ran into him since pretty amusing. You're protecting it from
me, pal.
>>41361Kewl. That alone sells the game for me since, again, the sieges in Warband suck. It's just a normal field battle with a couple of chokepoints. Added to the wishlist but I suspect I'll need to upgrade my PC before I can play it
>>41375Norway and Denmark are out of the way but I found just going back and forth from England to Frisia didn't give enough time for the shops to restock so I would do a trade route circling the north sea clockwise. It'd take me the whole round trip to dump Dorestad's salt, wine, and jewelry, picking up and selling mead, tar, fur and wool along the way. I miss that money printer now that every port involved, minus the one I recently conquered, hates my guts
>>31423i'm glad there's a thread for M&B on here, i've been doing a vanilla campaign on bannerlord since i haven't played it vanilla since it first released and it's actually pretty
fun it's certainly no warband though. yet. the nord expansion looks breddy gud
Starting a new campaign in Caldaria, with diplomacy4.litdum mod, because I just found out the creator finally decided to remove the awful scuffed sound effects and add option to use vanilla font. I am really glad, it seems like the ideal vanilla+ mod, focusing on quality improvements rather than stuffing as much shit into the game as possible.
Warband modding is going though pretty good period now, update they worked on for years for Perismo finally entered beta, final major update for ASOIAF should come out this month, Warsword Conquest got a new update recently, TLD is still actively being worked on, Honour & Glory, a new 16th century Easter Europe mod got released couple months ago, good stuff all around.
>>41409It is kind of silly, but what killed my interest in Bannerlord is balancing issues with bows. The game treats them like guns, which makes every build other than bowman feel like I am purposefully crippling myself.
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