On top of that, they have only two war fronts: one with the Sarranids and one with Swadia, two factions whose strongest asset is their heavy cavalry, which loses most of its threatening power when they try to fight Rhodoks on their own land. The very concept of Rhodoks is turtling, their whole army is designed around that defensive stance, and so is their natural environment, since their Kingdom is made of steep hills, surrounded by mountains, and what few entrances it has are chokepoints defended by some of the best castles in the game. Well, it's also my favorite playstyle, so I think I can answer that, and that would be Rhodoks. The AI is terrible at mounted archery so Horse Archers won't shine w/o a ton of micro, they are very fast on the world map tho.
Vaegir has the best bow troops but Sarranid & Nord are decent. Rhodok are best, Swadian xbows are ok but noticeably worse. Vaegir Knights (and the heavy inf) are decent but lack of shields can hurt them in sieges especially.įor missile troops, xbows are better for sustain bows for dps. Khergit Lancers are certainly weaker but they rank up very fast. Heavy cav, Swad Knights and Mamlukes, will crush most battles straight out. Level up the trainer skill on all your companions you're able to, it stacks! Rhod & Swadian Sgts are both strong in their own right and because they rank up much faster you'll be able to field almost (more than?) twice as many as you would Huscarls.
The best heavy infantry in the game are Nord Huscarls but they take loads of exp and effort to train. The game will cycle through 3 maps each battle. The next time you deploy you'll be on a new battle map that might have better terrain for you.
#MOUNT AND BLADE WARBAND GUIDE TO YOUR OWN KINGDOM PLUS#
If you're into the vanilla warband experience be sure to run the Diplomacy mod, a couple little quality of life improvements (like talking to the guild master straight from the city menu) it makes plus battle continuation make a big difference between a ~40hr campaign and getting frustrated and quitting before things get interesting.įirst a tip, at the start of a battle you can have a look at the terrain and then retreat w/ no penalty. It is very satisfying to improve both my own skill as well as my character's stat based skill so that the fights just keep feeling better. It's enough to keep me busy for a good long while and I happen to really enjoy the combat. Keep a small party size early and have some ranks in pathfinding + spotting (pref on a companion like Borcha or Deshavi) and cruise around the map for a while, picking easy fights, trading, taking in the sights, questing, tourneys, etc in order to gain some exp & equip before just grabbing a bunch of peasants and throwing them at bandits. I'll fire up a new campaign and my checklist usually follows as: gather companions, win tourneys, grind sea raiders, get rich, buy enterprises, court ladies, become vassal, grind fights, friend some lords, get married, start my own kingdom, capture a cluster of towns, throw some feasts, get bored. M&B is so open ended everyone has their own way to enjoy it but I think a common thread is to have some goals, something to work toward and something again after that and so on.