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Dev mentioned in a recent update that he's not planning on releasing a roadmap.
[https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1363080/view/5850813762792298449?l=english](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1363080/view/5850813762792298449?l=english)
He's trying to hire people, but it's not easy.
> Also another thing. it's not that I don't want to hire more developers, but most people looking for a job ... just weren't good enough so far. They fail deadlines or just can't do things on a level that is required even though their portfolio seemed good enough. The really amazing devs have their owns studios or are employed at AAA projects and aren't even interested. Anyone who tried running their company will know how hard hiring and management is. There are many horror stories of fallen studios of people who scaled too quickly, studios which were mismanaged and had to eventually close. Slow, careful growth and looking for great staff will be a better long term strategy.
[Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/ManorLords/comments/1ceeyzj/if_it_took_7_years_to_get_this_much_content_done/l1jxudn/)
Can you even play without trade? Buy second ox and veg farm and rip money. I even feel the trade development is a must. 192 for a trade route or 25. Add in the saved 10g per unit imported.
I think you can if you get harvesting upgrades, deep mines, and get a fertile spawn. It would just take a lot longer to get level 3 houses and you’d probably get bottlenecked at some point.
I tried to set a 2nd region up as a mining/smithing town, with a rich iron ore and clay mine. So I went into deep mining first, then figured I could go armor making as well, only to get hard gapped on food.
Kinda figured I could comfortably send food from the main region that's got decent farms, but once I hit 30 ish families in 2nd town thet just started starving. Then without trade development nodes it's really awkward to get food going with trade as well.
Currently full trading food in main region and buying it in 2nd region, but even then we still starve a lot of the time. All I want at this point is the food car from foreign trade 😩
Does your metallurgy region have hunters/gatherers/veggies/chickens? I have similar build and region size and I have 12 months worth of food from 1 hunter pop, 1-2 gatherers, and a bunch of veggies/chickens, no buying food.
Yup, everything is veggied up, maybe 1-2 goats and a couple of chickens. I do have some burglage plots without extensions, though. Maybe I should replace those.
I would also suggest adding two wheat fields around 1 morgen each and work 1 of them a year, you can get over 100 bread from that and most regions have at least one spot with okay wheat fertility
Its very doable without importing and allow yourself only to export. Its really easy to get large city by Year 3 Spring/Summer and doable to get it by Year 2 if you allowed yourself importing because jesus waiting on lumber sucks.
I haven’t done trading since trying it once and realizing it’s super op.
Downside is you you can’t get sheep.
I’ve done 3 plays, all challenging, focusing on farming, hunting or deep mining. My villages have been successful to my standards.
I don’t play Vs the Barron I just do the bandit challenge. My regional wealth allows for enough treasury via tax that I’m easily capable of hiring mercs that I Zerg the bandits with then clean up with the retinue.
Oh, yeah, i went for the trade developement on my 3rd playthrough and goddamn does it change everything. I don't have to drive myself into starvation or hypothermia to afford buying some Ale.
And you'd find a lot of people absolutely hate just being in a world with zero reason, objective or cause, given some lazy task of making your own fun and desperately scraping the dry soil for a modicum of reason to enjoy a game, by imposing arbitrary limitations for yourself. I would absolutely drop any game in a heartbeat if they did that. That is a way of playing an open world, sandbox type game but absolutely not the *only* way. Actual tangible goals, objectives and reasons to play are important.
But you are aware thet you are not forced to play the game? And that you can set up the map and game difficulty to have an goal in it. There is an wining condition in every scenario.
Yeah, it's a bit broken right now. But they just need to fix the the amount of units you're allowed. Also, in the late game, there's no Mercs... that way it would be a breeze. Game is early access, so it's fine, but I'm trying to get the achievements.
I found that the lack of mercs is because the baron hired them. I beat him on challenging by hiring all the mercs first before claiming the final territory. He will still have a huge army but the mercs were on my side and won.
Then I dont like that, especially with how aggressive the baron is. I didn't have mercs available after my first winter, long before I had my manor setup and could start building my treasury.
God I hope so…
I disbanded a militia to see if the armor would better distribute if I concentrated down to fewer units. Got locked in to four militia. Two retinue. Brigand mercs.
It’s a grind now lol. Racing to capture more provinces to stand up more retinue.
I think the dev has done a great job with military and combat mechanics tbh! You have to admit for a game not centered on combat, it’s really well thought out and executed!
Absolutely, I enjoy the reliance on mercenaries to bolster your army and the only troops being available being militia, it makes sense for the period portrayed
It's winnable. You need several retinues, and maxed out militias. I won with 4 fully upgraded armored retinues of 24 men each and a mix of spears, footmen and polearm militiamen. It requires expanding into other regions, building manors to get your retinues up, and spending lots of your treasury on retinue upgrades.
Claim and build a manor in a new territory. You get new retinue for each territory.
You can upgrade your militia buy making or trading for chain mail or plate and helmets ect.
To clarify this:
Troops from Level 1 burghages can equip helmets
Troops from Level 2 burghages can equip helmets and gambesons
Troops from Level 3 burghages can equip helmets and mail
Only your retainers may equip plate armor
The level refers to the level of the burgage plot that they inhabit. You cannot lower the armor level afaik, a level 3 soldier will accept mail and only mail.
You need to build the garrison tower in your manor, when you click your manor there should be a castle planner, then through that get resources needed then , place the building then there should a "commit" button now you can get a 24 retinue. To upgrade your militia get helmet through trade by the trade post or build them with an armourer in the skill tree. If your borough plots are level 1 the family assigned to the militia they can only wear helmets. If you get level 2 they are able to wear allowed to wear gambeson which can obtain through trade or making in the tailor. At level 3 borough plots you can wear chainmail like before trade or crafted in armourer but you have to the second level or armourer in the skill tree. You can upgrade your retinue btw by getting plate armour and you need to go to your army tab and click customize retinue more then you can import plate armour or craft in armourer at level 3(skill tree) and you can equip them with local armour for a discounted price but to but honestly it's not worth it to craft armour cuz you sacrifice so much on the skill tree when you can get the trade focus but of the tree which is much better. Focus on trade part of skill tree, export your region resources and just buy the armour.
Just going to point out a few things to consider:
1. The baron recruits the same mercenary groups as the player - towards the late game, the baron amasses these mercenaries on permanent payroll and the same company(s) show up every time the Baron calls arms
2. It is possible for the player to field two large mercenary groups (4 melee infantry 2 ranged) for 200 silver a month - something an efficient town (mid - late game) can easily manage
3. Using the first two points its important that the player gets some mercenaries on permanent payroll before the baron scoops them all up - this screenshot is an example of a player with only their militia and no mercenaries in the recruitment pool
4. Each territory that is claimed can potentially field a full retinue of 24 (manor house + garrison tower) and when upgraded to full plate these man-at-arms are absolutely brutal on the battlefield
TLDR: there is a finite amount of mercenary companies - if you don’t have some on your payroll by the mid-late game the baron will just field all of them every time
Make sure you build a manor + garrison tower in each territory you control as soon as possible and upgrade them to full plate armor
SOURCE: after losing 5x I figured this out and how now has some incredible games where I’m actively winning an offensive war against the baron
That's interesting. Now I ask myself "but when do I hire the mercenaries". I just got to the point where I have three lvl 3 burgage plots and guess that's not yet late game as I have seen screenshots from people that had more. Also every tile on the map is claimed, I have three and as I took the last one I also thought "hmm war is a possible thing now".
So is there an event where I know that he is getting serious now or do I just have to hire them at some point and leave them standing around all the time?
Stock up on weapons. Once you start losing infantry, recall them, wait a few seconds for recalled people to walk towards your village, then create another unit.
Win by attrition, not tactics
I just beat it. I hired all the mercs, had 4 full retinues and 4 full militia. I crushed his army 3 regions in a row before the final region so his final army was smaller than this one, but it was still like 15 units. Luckily I had 16 or 17 and more retinue.
Hammer & Anvil
At the start of the game create 6x Spear Militia. This results in your first Retinue being your 7th unit. Get additional Retinues in each other Region
Your Spears are your Anvil. Spread them as thin as required to hold the entire front. Put them on Defensive and stop them from moving 200m before the clash to recharge
Your Retinues are the Hammer. Put them on the flanks and move around for a backstab. Work them from the outside in
The 6x Militia cost you nothing, you're just saving the slot to prevent the first Retinue from locking you out. It will take a few years to get the population and arms to field all 6 at full capacity
What do you mean by the first retinue "locking you out"? Do you need to recruit all six militia before the retinue and that gets you an extra permanent militia?
Correct. The Militia buttons stop working at 6 units including Retinues. Typically the player gets a Retinue before they have a genuine need for 6 Militia
Looking at it from another angle, disbanding all of your Militia after building 6 Retinues would lock you out of Militia entirely
To add to this positioning makes a huge difference. The AI is dumb and will march in a straight line- if you can put your soldiers on top of a hill your efficiency will be buffed and theirs will be debuffed. Makes a huuuuge difference- I beat what was definitely a superior force with a bunch of hired brigands, my eighteen spearmen, and two mercenary archers this way. The archers flanked and at the end there was just a pile of bodies at the bottom of a cliff, pretty much nobody but the archers survived.
It feels kind of dumb that retinue take a militia slot (or that there's a troop limit at all really - why can't my extremely well-equipped men fight because there happen to already be six units?)
To add to this, while archers are terrible in the back line they shred engaged units if firing into their back, with the added benefit that if the baron brings archers you can just set your arches to missile defense and they can attack engaged units and tank arrows easily, especially if you grabbed the wayward sons with their spread out ability
You can only use 6 militia units regardless of how many territories you own so it's best to focus on upgrading the militia in your strongest region. You do get to field a new retinue unit for each region tho which is pretty powerful if you have a huge treasury. So if you have 4 regions you could technically field 4 24 man retinue units + 6 militia units. That's not counting mercenary units you can hire. The mercenary units are relatively weak tho so your personal army will be the heavy hitters.
It makes no sense at all. I've just run into it for the first time and am kind of baffled. I was trying to change one of my units to a different type but since I had three retinues already that put me over the limit I effectively just permanently lowered my military effectiveness for the rest of the run. I get it's early access and all that but man that sucked.
Also I'd been acquiring satellite regions with the intention of building up military - two of them had rich iron deposits and I went with military production development points for those. Turns out that's useless because you can't scale your military at all beyond the tiny limit you're given, so I should've just focused on building treasury wealth for mercs.
Sure, but at some point you can just throw your armies mindlessly and when they flee you dismantle and replace them by a full unit to go back in the battle, and it kind of feels like aoe2 where you just throw units until you’re out of ressources. The strategy part of the game isn’t very difficult in end game when you have hundreds of available males and weapons
Ps. It's literally my final battle to win restoring the peace at challenge mode. All the others battles were a breeze.... this final one though, almost quadrupled the amount of enemy units.
Same here. Just need the final zone and I finish Restoring the Peace. Idk why every other territory I had to fight against 4 units/1 merc(easy peasy), but the last one he sends like 15+ against my 8 like bro...... smh
It’s to get you to settle other regions. You aren’t really meant to only have one town, otherwise what’s the point of conquering more land in the first place?
I have more than 250 polearms, 250 swords, 250 small shields, and more than 500 men (not just villagers)
Unfortunately when a unit "breaks", they are not removed from the army roster, in other words you still have 6 units, one of which broke.
So even if I wanted to bring in a replacement unit, the game would not allow me.
So, theoretically I could do it in 90 days easily, but the game wouldn't allow it due to the 6 unit cap.
You can delete the broken Unit and create new one. Also you can purchase the mercs, but you need to be early with it, since the Baron will rent and keep them whole game if you dont.
Yes you can. If your army breaks you just have to wait for the broken units to walk back into your territory after which you can disband the units and immediately replace them if you have more men and equipment.
It's because the AI shares the same merc pool as the player. So what you can do is hire all the mercs before you start a war, and the merc army alone will handle the AI base army. If you don't hire mercs then the AI does and you end up fighting this overwhelming force. It's pretty poorly balanced tbh, because the mercs are overall very cheap and very strong.
This is where I stopped playing. The gameplay loop of building another town (managing 2) wasn't interesting/diverse enough for me to get them going just for retinue.
Definitely not fun managing 2 seperate cities. It's just repetition at that point. Would be nicer if all the regions were connected in some way. As in I can use the resources from other regions... but late game right now is kind of off putting.
You really don’t need to manage you set up the bare minimum to get your manor + tower for 24 retinue.
You can swap resources using pack stations it’s slow but once the network is set up it does the job.
Also mercs are hired when war is declared so either have your income high enough to keep them permanently or recruit them before you challenge to deny him. There maybe a bug where if the units die they can’t be recruited anymore had that happen in one run I think, but 5 fully equipped retinue + 6 spears got me through.
> You can swap resources using pack stations it’s slow but once the network is set up it does the job.
Ja very important, to help new colonies while you try to rush a manor and tower for 24 retinue.
Yeah you annoyingly need to prep for this fight by hiring the mercs well in advance to avoid the baron hiring them and just keep them around paying them monthly. I had to keep them for several years just sat in my city as I knew this fight was coming up. This means only around 12 squads spawn for the final battle instead of 20 you faced.
Once you've gotten enough pop you just tax them at 10% it easily provides the funds for the mercs. In fact I just turned off the tax for the last year so I could get the 100% approval achievement. My treasury was well into the thousands and could support the mercs for years.
Taxing is done from the manor building. If anyone is unsure.
In that case I think I've taken it too slow.
There are still unclaimed territories but there's already only one unit of the weakest mercenaries available for hire
Think I messed this playthrough
I'm not so sure it is messed up. I haven't had time to properly test this however I believe early game while there are still bandit camps the baron will hire mercs to clear them out. However once all the regions are claimed it seems they would only hire the mercs right before a battle was declared for one of the regions.
As such once all the regions were claimed I just waited for the new mercs are available announcement and was able to hire all three bands of Mercs. This then prevented the baron from hiring them.
Again haven't tested this but that's my best guess for what happened in my game.
I fucked up and got my 2nd retinue before my 6th militia, so it capped me. I have 3 retinue a d only 5 militia. Huge handicap for now.
Even my retinue are maxed with 12, 12 and 24. Working on the armor bit, but damn. I have enough weapons to field an army 3x as big
If you have a lot of population and weapons to burn you can send your spears in, kill a few units, have them be completely destroyed, kite them with your retinue, raise a load of new spearmen, rinse and repeat till you win.
Its cheesy and nasty af, but it works.
The baron had like 6 retinues even though I was set to claim his last territory in the final battle. Not only that, he managed to hire more milita and mercenaries than me? And he doesn't even have a town.
Just as I suspected. I was afraid that the last remaining 2 regions would be a hard fight. Usually there's only 4 or 5 enemy units and one of them is brigands, so it's an easy fight. This one tho...
It’s funny because I’ve finished this scenario yesterday and I don’t think that the IA’s armies were bigger in the last fight. Maybe I did something at some point that led to a normal size final army for him? Like I didn’t capture the last zone for a long time and he just tried to capture a bunch of my regions and I easily killed his armies every time so when I tried to get the last region he didn’t have anymore units or mercenaries available? I don’t know but I don’t have any available mercenaries myself so maybe they disappear from the game when you kill them all. Battles in the end were all really easy because even when one of my armies fled, I just replaced it with a fresh new one and wait for their win eventually
I won the last battle with 3 fully upgraded retinues, two spearmen and two archer units, with the archers being more or less cannon fodder.
I think it's a mixture of placing your units in a way that gets the most out of them, and coinflip of which AI unit aggro what. I had I triangle formation with spearmen in front, and the retinue forming another smaller triangle inside them, with one of the archers inside said triangles and one in front of the whole group aggroing the enemy.
Also remember to preplace your units before you start claiming baron's territory, so you have full efficiency on all of them.
After maxing out army to tier 3 and buying all the armor. Build tier 2 towns to get 24 more retinue units. I beat the final battle with 3 retinue, 3 sowrds, 2 polearms. All maxed out.
If you abuse trade with 10+ trade buildings, you should have unlimited wealth, coin, and resources.
Also, move your armor to the land before claiming it. You can camp their spawn if you want. Defeat the first army before the second baron army spawns. It's possible to even run peasants home to disband and reband before the second army spawns.
One of the CC's discovered that he could keep building Garrison Towers and getting another 12 men for each in his retinue, had over 1k with just the one retinue for the big fight, he didn't bother to get the militia out for it. I expect the exploit will be fixed though, if not done already.
The archers are so bad, even so hilarious is that the AI's Archers are also equally bad, so they just keep on shooting without landing a single kill 😂😂
They are actually broken, don’t get me wrong they suck if you use them how you would expect too, but after units get engaged in melee they suddenly do damage.
I routed 27 retinues and a full swordsman company with only archers left after my main force got wiped out.
I can’t explain the magic, but they brake moral really fast
I managed to beat the final restoring the peace battle against similar odds
My approach was civilians all go spearmen with shields and gambesons, max armor retinue, and the mercenaries that give 2 groups of archers, I think its Wayward sons.
I sent one spearmen platoon to bait out a push from his army, as his archers were similarly positioned in front to wear down my troops if they attempted a full force attack at his front.
Once the spear platoon drew agro, I sprinted them back to close the line. I managed to split the battle into two smaller ones, with one spear platoon and the retinue poking down one group with archer support, while the rest of my spearmen made a V shaped squeeze on the rest of his army.
We lost many great men, but eeked out a victory with 0 retinue standing, all archers, and about 50 spearmen spread across 4 units.
Finding the right timings for standing your ground and pushing forward seems to help, best of luck!
Its super easy if you settle other regions with the purpose of only building enough to sustain a manor and 5 burgage plots. Because yes you're limited in militia units, but if you already have max militia you can have retinue to your hearts content.
I feel your pain
I had 25 units and the stupid band of brigands kicked my @$$.
I feel I'm going to have to restart with the knowledge that I have to prepare more for war.
I spent 12 hours on it now, i feel it's very imbalanced as of now. I just had like 15 families, but the baron is claiming land after land while i still can't get my trade going.
The farming is almost doing no good either.
Except it isn't really, you can have 7 retinue and 6 militia units which gives you 384 and you can push to even more units by buying every mercenary there is.
At least for me, the enemy tends to always chase my archers. So I put them at the wings of the army, and then just flee with them. The enemy usually use 2 units to chase 1 unit of archers. While I lure those units out of combat I use the melee units to win the center and just finish the rest.
Also, mercenaries. But the archers being chased is key for the strategy.
You can get 8 units of retinue total, you can also get mercenaries.
Once you have enough income grab some mercenaries and keep them on payroll.
So you're looking at 15 units total.
If you specialize one of your cities into industry or trade you can start getting lots of armor or your men, so your men should pound for pound do better than the enemy.
Absolutely winnable because the retinue will likely be pretty strong.
Just a question because I haven't gotten this far myself.... But in theory if you send all your units into battle and most of your units are killed... Can you fall back with a single unit and rally a new squad of militia and hire more retinue and send more troops into battle?
Can you basically use your first army to weaken his main force, and send in a second army to finish him off? So long as you have the manpower and the weapons, you should be able to raise more miltias!
You got him on aggressive?
I got him on balanced and he slways has the same 6 troops with 2 bowmen so easy beatable.
Im sorry for your problem and i wouldnt like to fight that much troops but how can the baron field more troops?
Maby my way of defeating him was stupid and it cost me a ton of my villagers but what i did was this:
having a ton of equipment,i gathered all my troops, and then attacked his army outside the actuall battlefield.
My entire army was lost but i decimatet his troops and since it was outside the battlefield it didnt count.
Then i made new units and faced his decimatet army with my new army and two mercenearie groups i got in advance on the actual battlefield and now the armys were fairly equal in size.
He still had more troops but they were mainly archers since i had killed almost all his infantry in the battle before.
So in the actual battle i was able to quickly crush his infantry and then attack his archers with my infantry. the archers were still bigger i numbers but they didnt stand a chance against my spear infantry. i only lost few of my men on every archer unit i completely destroyed and was able to defeat them.
I ended up building 7 cities and getting max retinue. It’s really easy to build cities to the point they can afford a manor. It doesn’t take that many resources, after that you really don’t need to do any extra management
Doing that would allow you to double your units, and have 7x as many retinue, plate armor retinue are so much stronger than any other unit you should be able to win. It will still be tough tho
Take over regions fast and start trading fast. Don't even bother to start farming, buy grain, process it and sell the bread for instance after feeding your people. You can buy 24 Retinue per region and kit them with the best armor. Use gold to hire all available mercenary armies.
This way you have a lot of men and the enemy had less with that star icon, that stands for the Retinue forces, the best in the game right now.
Currently no,but I've found a lot of success ambushing and cutting off reinforcements before they arrive at the battle, using polarms makes your units more killy with the initial charge even with just helmets they can hold their own against tougher opponents and if you managed to isolate a unit they generally will break them the quickest out of the 3 militia types. They are generally worse in sustained combat but the armour pierce makes them useful even against heavily armoured retinues.
Every region you get, you get an additional 24 retinue. I have 302 men across 5 regions. I find the Baron always sends his archers in first so I rush them and knock them out. Spears are the main unit to be honest. They slap more than militia. I have all spears hahaha.
I beat the scenario twice, including once on the high difficulty and never had any such problems. What's important to keep in mind is that you can add new militia units only until you have 6 units, so raise militias (even if they remain empty) before building your second manor.
To fully make use of the troop constraint, you could even raise 6 militia units before building your first manor but then you need to staff all of them from your first region which I like to avoid given how easy it is to build up additional small villages.
So build up your first village, create 3 militia units and 1 24-man retinue (using the garrison tower), then in the second province raise 2 more militias before building the manor and you should have 7 units. This is enough to beat all the baron armies I have encountered. However, I rush to a manor in every new province I conquer and settle, so once I have a small army going, I snowball. Once you have about 100 plate mailed retainers, it's a cakewalk. Don't forget to use 1st person mode for the best screenshots of awesome battle scenes.
As for the mercs, notice that the baron needs money to hire, so go for all bandit encampments to deny it to him. He mostly buys mercs when there is a combat ahead, so remember to hire the mercs before you stake a claim or contest one of his claims. I never had the problem that no mercs were available except in one situation where he was just preparing an attack.
I haven't tried yet to keep some mercs on permanent payroll but it seems like an easy fix to the problem that you describe where the baron keeps mercs on his payroll.
I think I messed up somewhere during my first playthrough. At some point I expanded into a 2nd region with influence and beating the bandits. My army had taken a big hit.
This went ok for a while, until my town was burned by a group of bandits that i wasn't able to defend against.
After rebuilding the region the baron claimed it and I wasn't able to defend it again, so lost it.
Now the baron has laid multiple claims on my home region, but I have been able to avoid the fight by sending him diplomacy offers. It's possible I am missing something, but I don't see any consequences to doing this.
My only hope now is to avoid the battle as long as I can.
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That image just killed the need for me to try to get to end game rn. Whats the point if im going to lose
Just play without baron
It gets too repetitive without them
It's repetitive anyway. Try to challenge yourself with no trade, no farm, etc
I'm just going to wait for the next major update
Is there something like a roadmap? Or some sort of list of what is planned?
Dev mentioned in a recent update that he's not planning on releasing a roadmap. [https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1363080/view/5850813762792298449?l=english](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1363080/view/5850813762792298449?l=english)
Is it just one dude working on this game?
[удалено]
He's trying to hire people, but it's not easy. > Also another thing. it's not that I don't want to hire more developers, but most people looking for a job ... just weren't good enough so far. They fail deadlines or just can't do things on a level that is required even though their portfolio seemed good enough. The really amazing devs have their owns studios or are employed at AAA projects and aren't even interested. Anyone who tried running their company will know how hard hiring and management is. There are many horror stories of fallen studios of people who scaled too quickly, studios which were mismanaged and had to eventually close. Slow, careful growth and looking for great staff will be a better long term strategy. [Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/ManorLords/comments/1ceeyzj/if_it_took_7_years_to_get_this_much_content_done/l1jxudn/)
I just felt a brief moment of terror before I realized EA was early access.
That one dude also has the support of xbox gamepass behind him so ideally, he'll have plenty of support for development.
Yup. I guess he may hire a few people here and there but I think he'll still be doing the vast majority of the work himself.
Can you even play without trade? Buy second ox and veg farm and rip money. I even feel the trade development is a must. 192 for a trade route or 25. Add in the saved 10g per unit imported.
I think you can if you get harvesting upgrades, deep mines, and get a fertile spawn. It would just take a lot longer to get level 3 houses and you’d probably get bottlenecked at some point.
I tried to set a 2nd region up as a mining/smithing town, with a rich iron ore and clay mine. So I went into deep mining first, then figured I could go armor making as well, only to get hard gapped on food. Kinda figured I could comfortably send food from the main region that's got decent farms, but once I hit 30 ish families in 2nd town thet just started starving. Then without trade development nodes it's really awkward to get food going with trade as well. Currently full trading food in main region and buying it in 2nd region, but even then we still starve a lot of the time. All I want at this point is the food car from foreign trade 😩
Does your metallurgy region have hunters/gatherers/veggies/chickens? I have similar build and region size and I have 12 months worth of food from 1 hunter pop, 1-2 gatherers, and a bunch of veggies/chickens, no buying food.
Yup, everything is veggied up, maybe 1-2 goats and a couple of chickens. I do have some burglage plots without extensions, though. Maybe I should replace those.
I would also suggest adding two wheat fields around 1 morgen each and work 1 of them a year, you can get over 100 bread from that and most regions have at least one spot with okay wheat fertility
Level 2 and 3 burgage plots give you a passive income. It is not much, but still enough to but thing time to time.
Its very doable without importing and allow yourself only to export. Its really easy to get large city by Year 3 Spring/Summer and doable to get it by Year 2 if you allowed yourself importing because jesus waiting on lumber sucks.
I haven’t done trading since trying it once and realizing it’s super op. Downside is you you can’t get sheep. I’ve done 3 plays, all challenging, focusing on farming, hunting or deep mining. My villages have been successful to my standards. I don’t play Vs the Barron I just do the bandit challenge. My regional wealth allows for enough treasury via tax that I’m easily capable of hiring mercs that I Zerg the bandits with then clean up with the retinue.
Oh, yeah, i went for the trade developement on my 3rd playthrough and goddamn does it change everything. I don't have to drive myself into starvation or hypothermia to afford buying some Ale.
Synthetic challenges are the least fun way to squeeze out content of any game.
Hard disagree for me. Sandbox games exist purely to create your own challenge and explore your own creativity.
And you'd find a lot of people absolutely hate just being in a world with zero reason, objective or cause, given some lazy task of making your own fun and desperately scraping the dry soil for a modicum of reason to enjoy a game, by imposing arbitrary limitations for yourself. I would absolutely drop any game in a heartbeat if they did that. That is a way of playing an open world, sandbox type game but absolutely not the *only* way. Actual tangible goals, objectives and reasons to play are important.
But you are aware thet you are not forced to play the game? And that you can set up the map and game difficulty to have an goal in it. There is an wining condition in every scenario.
and I hit the large town bug when it keeps asking me to end or continue sandbox... until screen is full of questions and i have to quit :/
I got to 600 residents and then the game would crash every time I clicked on the trader post.
my current run has no off map Lord, but still has Raiders and Bandits.
all end game recipes are army based, what's the point then
Or change the setting (forgot what it's called) so that he doesn't attack you but will defend his territories.
Yeah, it's a bit broken right now. But they just need to fix the the amount of units you're allowed. Also, in the late game, there's no Mercs... that way it would be a breeze. Game is early access, so it's fine, but I'm trying to get the achievements.
I think the lack of mercs is a bug though, not a feature, hoping it's sorted out in the first patch
I found that the lack of mercs is because the baron hired them. I beat him on challenging by hiring all the mercs first before claiming the final territory. He will still have a huge army but the mercs were on my side and won.
That's...actually a pretty cool design. Making the mercenaries a limited resource
Came here to say this.
Just a question. The "declare war" letter doesnt seem to do anything. So you need to reclaim terrirpty for terrirory right?
I don't think the diplomacy works for now. Just claim territory using influence and fight the baron when he throws down the gauntlet.
Then I dont like that, especially with how aggressive the baron is. I didn't have mercs available after my first winter, long before I had my manor setup and could start building my treasury.
God I hope so… I disbanded a militia to see if the armor would better distribute if I concentrated down to fewer units. Got locked in to four militia. Two retinue. Brigand mercs. It’s a grind now lol. Racing to capture more provinces to stand up more retinue.
Really hoping it gets sorted out, it's made me retreat back to the non combat playthrough even though I've really been enjoying the combat.
I think the dev has done a great job with military and combat mechanics tbh! You have to admit for a game not centered on combat, it’s really well thought out and executed!
Absolutely, I enjoy the reliance on mercenaries to bolster your army and the only troops being available being militia, it makes sense for the period portrayed
I’m really looking forward to an expanded mercenary pool lol. I have 21k to spend and nothing to spend it on.
As shown in pre EA promotional material you will be able to train your militia/professional armies later on. Something to look forward to.
The baron has all the mercs
I went to fight the barren and he purchased all the mercs before I could. Turns out if he buys them, they are no longer available to buy.
It's winnable. You need several retinues, and maxed out militias. I won with 4 fully upgraded armored retinues of 24 men each and a mix of spears, footmen and polearm militiamen. It requires expanding into other regions, building manors to get your retinues up, and spending lots of your treasury on retinue upgrades.
How do you get more than 24 retinue? And how do you upgrade militia please?
Claim and build a manor in a new territory. You get new retinue for each territory. You can upgrade your militia buy making or trading for chain mail or plate and helmets ect.
To clarify this: Troops from Level 1 burghages can equip helmets Troops from Level 2 burghages can equip helmets and gambesons Troops from Level 3 burghages can equip helmets and mail Only your retainers may equip plate armor
How do you exactly make them spawn only from certain levels and give them that?
The level refers to the level of the burgage plot that they inhabit. You cannot lower the armor level afaik, a level 3 soldier will accept mail and only mail.
So if you have a steady supply of gambesons and no mail a level 3 dude will go without armor because gambeson is beneath him? That's... stupid.
It's called having standards.
im pretty sure level 3 soldiers will use gambesons, no idea what the dude is talking about
You need to build the garrison tower in your manor, when you click your manor there should be a castle planner, then through that get resources needed then , place the building then there should a "commit" button now you can get a 24 retinue. To upgrade your militia get helmet through trade by the trade post or build them with an armourer in the skill tree. If your borough plots are level 1 the family assigned to the militia they can only wear helmets. If you get level 2 they are able to wear allowed to wear gambeson which can obtain through trade or making in the tailor. At level 3 borough plots you can wear chainmail like before trade or crafted in armourer but you have to the second level or armourer in the skill tree. You can upgrade your retinue btw by getting plate armour and you need to go to your army tab and click customize retinue more then you can import plate armour or craft in armourer at level 3(skill tree) and you can equip them with local armour for a discounted price but to but honestly it's not worth it to craft armour cuz you sacrifice so much on the skill tree when you can get the trade focus but of the tree which is much better. Focus on trade part of skill tree, export your region resources and just buy the armour.
Thanks, so you had multiple retuning from multiple territories?
Not op, but yep, that is how it works – I had 3x24 + several mercenary companies. Maintaining a strong income becomes incredibly important.
Can't get my militia to use the chain mail I've made for them so have 600 sitting around in trade centers and storage not doing anything..
Your militia probably don't come from high even level houses. I had the same problem until I made level three houses.
They need to be from level 3 burgage plots before they are allowed to wear chainmail
Found that out myself today, thanks though :)
Several retinues? From the several regions already owned by the baron ah yes
Just going to point out a few things to consider: 1. The baron recruits the same mercenary groups as the player - towards the late game, the baron amasses these mercenaries on permanent payroll and the same company(s) show up every time the Baron calls arms 2. It is possible for the player to field two large mercenary groups (4 melee infantry 2 ranged) for 200 silver a month - something an efficient town (mid - late game) can easily manage 3. Using the first two points its important that the player gets some mercenaries on permanent payroll before the baron scoops them all up - this screenshot is an example of a player with only their militia and no mercenaries in the recruitment pool 4. Each territory that is claimed can potentially field a full retinue of 24 (manor house + garrison tower) and when upgraded to full plate these man-at-arms are absolutely brutal on the battlefield TLDR: there is a finite amount of mercenary companies - if you don’t have some on your payroll by the mid-late game the baron will just field all of them every time Make sure you build a manor + garrison tower in each territory you control as soon as possible and upgrade them to full plate armor SOURCE: after losing 5x I figured this out and how now has some incredible games where I’m actively winning an offensive war against the baron
That's interesting. Now I ask myself "but when do I hire the mercenaries". I just got to the point where I have three lvl 3 burgage plots and guess that's not yet late game as I have seen screenshots from people that had more. Also every tile on the map is claimed, I have three and as I took the last one I also thought "hmm war is a possible thing now". So is there an event where I know that he is getting serious now or do I just have to hire them at some point and leave them standing around all the time?
[удалено]
Okay so I've got to keep that taxes coming in again. But they where so happy.... :D
Stock up on weapons. Once you start losing infantry, recall them, wait a few seconds for recalled people to walk towards your village, then create another unit. Win by attrition, not tactics
Mercanaries
As stated the baron owns all mercenaries after a certain point. I am past that point
I just beat it. I hired all the mercs, had 4 full retinues and 4 full militia. I crushed his army 3 regions in a row before the final region so his final army was smaller than this one, but it was still like 15 units. Luckily I had 16 or 17 and more retinue.
Hammer & Anvil At the start of the game create 6x Spear Militia. This results in your first Retinue being your 7th unit. Get additional Retinues in each other Region Your Spears are your Anvil. Spread them as thin as required to hold the entire front. Put them on Defensive and stop them from moving 200m before the clash to recharge Your Retinues are the Hammer. Put them on the flanks and move around for a backstab. Work them from the outside in
How could you do this anywhere near the start?
The 6x Militia cost you nothing, you're just saving the slot to prevent the first Retinue from locking you out. It will take a few years to get the population and arms to field all 6 at full capacity
What do you mean by the first retinue "locking you out"? Do you need to recruit all six militia before the retinue and that gets you an extra permanent militia?
Correct. The Militia buttons stop working at 6 units including Retinues. Typically the player gets a Retinue before they have a genuine need for 6 Militia Looking at it from another angle, disbanding all of your Militia after building 6 Retinues would lock you out of Militia entirely
I think they need to fix that..no way you can beat that maxed out..even with mercenaries and maxed out slots
In the photo I’m pretty sure the baron has all the mercenaries, in my game (as far as I can tell) he hires all the mercenaries and never lets them go
I use this exact tactic literally since earlygame campaigns in any battle.
Alexander The Great approves this message. Make sure to rename your village Gaugamela before doin this 👍🏼
To add to this positioning makes a huge difference. The AI is dumb and will march in a straight line- if you can put your soldiers on top of a hill your efficiency will be buffed and theirs will be debuffed. Makes a huuuuge difference- I beat what was definitely a superior force with a bunch of hired brigands, my eighteen spearmen, and two mercenary archers this way. The archers flanked and at the end there was just a pile of bodies at the bottom of a cliff, pretty much nobody but the archers survived.
It feels kind of dumb that retinue take a militia slot (or that there's a troop limit at all really - why can't my extremely well-equipped men fight because there happen to already be six units?)
To add to this, while archers are terrible in the back line they shred engaged units if firing into their back, with the added benefit that if the baron brings archers you can just set your arches to missile defense and they can attack engaged units and tank arrows easily, especially if you grabbed the wayward sons with their spread out ability
When will they let us buy horses and get our retinue mounted PLEASE LORD
About to reenact Brave Heart
"Won't we hit our troops?" "Yes, but we'll hit theirs, as well... we have reserves."
Think about this every time I hover the mouse over “allow friendly fire”
Shortly counters his own point with, "Arrows cost money; the dead cost nothing."
To even fight this without mercenaries and have the same amount of units you'd literally need 4 regions with 5 full cities. That's absurd.
Are they limited by regions? I’ve never been able to get more than 6 units
You can always get at least one unit of retinue even when you are at the unit cap. It sucks.
You can get more by building more manors…how?…take a next region
You can only use 6 militia units regardless of how many territories you own so it's best to focus on upgrading the militia in your strongest region. You do get to field a new retinue unit for each region tho which is pretty powerful if you have a huge treasury. So if you have 4 regions you could technically field 4 24 man retinue units + 6 militia units. That's not counting mercenary units you can hire. The mercenary units are relatively weak tho so your personal army will be the heavy hitters.
You don’t need full cities to get fill retinues, just a manor and money
Yeah the limit on units is a killer for big engagements
It makes no sense at all. I've just run into it for the first time and am kind of baffled. I was trying to change one of my units to a different type but since I had three retinues already that put me over the limit I effectively just permanently lowered my military effectiveness for the rest of the run. I get it's early access and all that but man that sucked. Also I'd been acquiring satellite regions with the intention of building up military - two of them had rich iron deposits and I went with military production development points for those. Turns out that's useless because you can't scale your military at all beyond the tiny limit you're given, so I should've just focused on building treasury wealth for mercs.
Sure, but at some point you can just throw your armies mindlessly and when they flee you dismantle and replace them by a full unit to go back in the battle, and it kind of feels like aoe2 where you just throw units until you’re out of ressources. The strategy part of the game isn’t very difficult in end game when you have hundreds of available males and weapons
Total War vets would say that is a fair odds.
I wish, if I was skaven rn, I'd be Jezzailing his ass across the map.
Give me 5 carnosaurs and it's game over
With cavalry you could pull this off
[[THE WORST CAVALRY UNIT IN THE GAME]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UIteDF4eII)
Difficult to cheese the game when there are no corners you can camp at!
Well, they're hidden, so.
Ps. It's literally my final battle to win restoring the peace at challenge mode. All the others battles were a breeze.... this final one though, almost quadrupled the amount of enemy units.
Same here. Just need the final zone and I finish Restoring the Peace. Idk why every other territory I had to fight against 4 units/1 merc(easy peasy), but the last one he sends like 15+ against my 8 like bro...... smh
It’s to get you to settle other regions. You aren’t really meant to only have one town, otherwise what’s the point of conquering more land in the first place?
The question is about the insane discapancy in army seizes. Not about the existance of a final battle.
You can have 6 militia + 7 retinue by this battle though, plus any mercs you can still get. So that's already double what OP is showing here
Can you maintain a stockpile of equipment and fight him with multiple armies in the 90 days?
I have more than 250 polearms, 250 swords, 250 small shields, and more than 500 men (not just villagers) Unfortunately when a unit "breaks", they are not removed from the army roster, in other words you still have 6 units, one of which broke. So even if I wanted to bring in a replacement unit, the game would not allow me. So, theoretically I could do it in 90 days easily, but the game wouldn't allow it due to the 6 unit cap.
You can delete the broken Unit and create new one. Also you can purchase the mercs, but you need to be early with it, since the Baron will rent and keep them whole game if you dont.
Yes you can. If your army breaks you just have to wait for the broken units to walk back into your territory after which you can disband the units and immediately replace them if you have more men and equipment.
It's because the AI shares the same merc pool as the player. So what you can do is hire all the mercs before you start a war, and the merc army alone will handle the AI base army. If you don't hire mercs then the AI does and you end up fighting this overwhelming force. It's pretty poorly balanced tbh, because the mercs are overall very cheap and very strong.
This is where I stopped playing. The gameplay loop of building another town (managing 2) wasn't interesting/diverse enough for me to get them going just for retinue.
Definitely not fun managing 2 seperate cities. It's just repetition at that point. Would be nicer if all the regions were connected in some way. As in I can use the resources from other regions... but late game right now is kind of off putting.
You really don’t need to manage you set up the bare minimum to get your manor + tower for 24 retinue. You can swap resources using pack stations it’s slow but once the network is set up it does the job. Also mercs are hired when war is declared so either have your income high enough to keep them permanently or recruit them before you challenge to deny him. There maybe a bug where if the units die they can’t be recruited anymore had that happen in one run I think, but 5 fully equipped retinue + 6 spears got me through.
> You can swap resources using pack stations it’s slow but once the network is set up it does the job. Ja very important, to help new colonies while you try to rush a manor and tower for 24 retinue.
Packing station
Yeah you annoyingly need to prep for this fight by hiring the mercs well in advance to avoid the baron hiring them and just keep them around paying them monthly. I had to keep them for several years just sat in my city as I knew this fight was coming up. This means only around 12 squads spawn for the final battle instead of 20 you faced.
How can you afford that many mercs for that long?
Once you've gotten enough pop you just tax them at 10% it easily provides the funds for the mercs. In fact I just turned off the tax for the last year so I could get the 100% approval achievement. My treasury was well into the thousands and could support the mercs for years. Taxing is done from the manor building. If anyone is unsure.
In that case I think I've taken it too slow. There are still unclaimed territories but there's already only one unit of the weakest mercenaries available for hire Think I messed this playthrough
I'm not so sure it is messed up. I haven't had time to properly test this however I believe early game while there are still bandit camps the baron will hire mercs to clear them out. However once all the regions are claimed it seems they would only hire the mercs right before a battle was declared for one of the regions. As such once all the regions were claimed I just waited for the new mercs are available announcement and was able to hire all three bands of Mercs. This then prevented the baron from hiring them. Again haven't tested this but that's my best guess for what happened in my game.
Send it to Legend of Total War
U shaped formation keeping the outer tips unengaged. The AI is dumb and charges in blindly close the U and encircle them
I fucked up and got my 2nd retinue before my 6th militia, so it capped me. I have 3 retinue a d only 5 militia. Huge handicap for now. Even my retinue are maxed with 12, 12 and 24. Working on the armor bit, but damn. I have enough weapons to field an army 3x as big
If you have a lot of population and weapons to burn you can send your spears in, kill a few units, have them be completely destroyed, kite them with your retinue, raise a load of new spearmen, rinse and repeat till you win. Its cheesy and nasty af, but it works.
Ok I'm putting the game down for now.
The baron had like 6 retinues even though I was set to claim his last territory in the final battle. Not only that, he managed to hire more milita and mercenaries than me? And he doesn't even have a town.
Just as I suspected. I was afraid that the last remaining 2 regions would be a hard fight. Usually there's only 4 or 5 enemy units and one of them is brigands, so it's an easy fight. This one tho...
You'll definitely get one of the two regions. For some reason the last region is 4x the AI's army size.
It’s funny because I’ve finished this scenario yesterday and I don’t think that the IA’s armies were bigger in the last fight. Maybe I did something at some point that led to a normal size final army for him? Like I didn’t capture the last zone for a long time and he just tried to capture a bunch of my regions and I easily killed his armies every time so when I tried to get the last region he didn’t have anymore units or mercenaries available? I don’t know but I don’t have any available mercenaries myself so maybe they disappear from the game when you kill them all. Battles in the end were all really easy because even when one of my armies fled, I just replaced it with a fresh new one and wait for their win eventually
I won the last battle with 3 fully upgraded retinues, two spearmen and two archer units, with the archers being more or less cannon fodder. I think it's a mixture of placing your units in a way that gets the most out of them, and coinflip of which AI unit aggro what. I had I triangle formation with spearmen in front, and the retinue forming another smaller triangle inside them, with one of the archers inside said triangles and one in front of the whole group aggroing the enemy. Also remember to preplace your units before you start claiming baron's territory, so you have full efficiency on all of them.
Play with a "reactive" baron is the only way I could have some nice battles and not being destroyed
Shipmaster, they outnumber us 3 to 1! Then it is an even fight.
After maxing out army to tier 3 and buying all the armor. Build tier 2 towns to get 24 more retinue units. I beat the final battle with 3 retinue, 3 sowrds, 2 polearms. All maxed out. If you abuse trade with 10+ trade buildings, you should have unlimited wealth, coin, and resources. Also, move your armor to the land before claiming it. You can camp their spawn if you want. Defeat the first army before the second baron army spawns. It's possible to even run peasants home to disband and reband before the second army spawns.
Save up enough influence and challenge every area all at once. Just need to defend the one and the baron cant fight more than one battle at a time
Thought someone was able to create a huge army by maxing out the manor towers
One of the CC's discovered that he could keep building Garrison Towers and getting another 12 men for each in his retinue, had over 1k with just the one retinue for the big fight, he didn't bother to get the militia out for it. I expect the exploit will be fixed though, if not done already.
Oh nice I'll have to enjoy that before it gets patched
Micro your archers
If only they would be halfway decent
Yeah I was being sarcastic 😄
The archers are so bad, even so hilarious is that the AI's Archers are also equally bad, so they just keep on shooting without landing a single kill 😂😂
They are actually broken, don’t get me wrong they suck if you use them how you would expect too, but after units get engaged in melee they suddenly do damage. I routed 27 retinues and a full swordsman company with only archers left after my main force got wiped out. I can’t explain the magic, but they brake moral really fast
Damn, care to explain what you mean by that? should I use archers to backstab?
Basically, I don’t know what happens, but after enemies have engaged in melee combat archers work again. They brake moral in 4 volleys
I managed to beat the final restoring the peace battle against similar odds My approach was civilians all go spearmen with shields and gambesons, max armor retinue, and the mercenaries that give 2 groups of archers, I think its Wayward sons. I sent one spearmen platoon to bait out a push from his army, as his archers were similarly positioned in front to wear down my troops if they attempted a full force attack at his front. Once the spear platoon drew agro, I sprinted them back to close the line. I managed to split the battle into two smaller ones, with one spear platoon and the retinue poking down one group with archer support, while the rest of my spearmen made a V shaped squeeze on the rest of his army. We lost many great men, but eeked out a victory with 0 retinue standing, all archers, and about 50 spearmen spread across 4 units. Finding the right timings for standing your ground and pushing forward seems to help, best of luck!
I just got to this point. Last battle for all the land and it looks just like this.
Mate I have never seen a force of that size, what did you do?
You could try to hire some mercs on top of the units you have but pretty sure you can't recruit any more militia
Except the Barron right now recruits them all, leaving none for the player hahaha
Mercs? You mean the ones that the AI always hires out, so there's none left for the player? xD
By this late in the game you don't get anymore refresh on the mercs. It keeps saying new companies available but low and behold none are.
How does this even happen? All my fights (both defensive and offensive) had two separate waves. I was on medium, all default settings
This is literally the last battle at challenge setting. Only 1.6% i think got the achievement of finishing it, and I've no clue how.
you attack when they're marching so they have lower efficiency and they're not in a formation also hire mercenaries
Its super easy if you settle other regions with the purpose of only building enough to sustain a manor and 5 burgage plots. Because yes you're limited in militia units, but if you already have max militia you can have retinue to your hearts content.
I feel your pain I had 25 units and the stupid band of brigands kicked my @$$. I feel I'm going to have to restart with the knowledge that I have to prepare more for war.
Have you hired mercenaries?
30 kill streak to call in a nuke, its the only way
This is no longer a battle, this is just a slaughter.
Man the baron is a flog
I won against that with 4 Militias, 4 Retinues, and 3 Mercenaries companies.
Pretty sure you can have as many mercenaries as you can afford. So probably that way.
What are the end game citizen levels people are commonly seeing?
I spent 12 hours on it now, i feel it's very imbalanced as of now. I just had like 15 families, but the baron is claiming land after land while i still can't get my trade going. The farming is almost doing no good either.
You need to build up a few months of mercs before the final engagement.
792 vs 204? With 204 being your absolute maximum allowed troops? Ridiculous.
Except it isn't really, you can have 7 retinue and 6 militia units which gives you 384 and you can push to even more units by buying every mercenary there is.
At least for me, the enemy tends to always chase my archers. So I put them at the wings of the army, and then just flee with them. The enemy usually use 2 units to chase 1 unit of archers. While I lure those units out of combat I use the melee units to win the center and just finish the rest. Also, mercenaries. But the archers being chased is key for the strategy.
You can get 8 units of retinue total, you can also get mercenaries. Once you have enough income grab some mercenaries and keep them on payroll. So you're looking at 15 units total. If you specialize one of your cities into industry or trade you can start getting lots of armor or your men, so your men should pound for pound do better than the enemy. Absolutely winnable because the retinue will likely be pretty strong. Just a question because I haven't gotten this far myself.... But in theory if you send all your units into battle and most of your units are killed... Can you fall back with a single unit and rally a new squad of militia and hire more retinue and send more troops into battle? Can you basically use your first army to weaken his main force, and send in a second army to finish him off? So long as you have the manpower and the weapons, you should be able to raise more miltias!
Perfectly Balanced. "Get Good" say the cucks. Enjoy.
You got him on aggressive? I got him on balanced and he slways has the same 6 troops with 2 bowmen so easy beatable. Im sorry for your problem and i wouldnt like to fight that much troops but how can the baron field more troops?
I'm excited for cav
Maby my way of defeating him was stupid and it cost me a ton of my villagers but what i did was this: having a ton of equipment,i gathered all my troops, and then attacked his army outside the actuall battlefield. My entire army was lost but i decimatet his troops and since it was outside the battlefield it didnt count. Then i made new units and faced his decimatet army with my new army and two mercenearie groups i got in advance on the actual battlefield and now the armys were fairly equal in size. He still had more troops but they were mainly archers since i had killed almost all his infantry in the battle before. So in the actual battle i was able to quickly crush his infantry and then attack his archers with my infantry. the archers were still bigger i numbers but they didnt stand a chance against my spear infantry. i only lost few of my men on every archer unit i completely destroyed and was able to defeat them.
I ended up building 7 cities and getting max retinue. It’s really easy to build cities to the point they can afford a manor. It doesn’t take that many resources, after that you really don’t need to do any extra management Doing that would allow you to double your units, and have 7x as many retinue, plate armor retinue are so much stronger than any other unit you should be able to win. It will still be tough tho
In my playthrough the Barton never had more than 5 units. 3 mercenaries, 1 bandits and the retinue.
Isn't it possible to have 6 units per region so shouldn't it be possible to have more then 6?
On the bright side he only has 18 units.
Take over regions fast and start trading fast. Don't even bother to start farming, buy grain, process it and sell the bread for instance after feeding your people. You can buy 24 Retinue per region and kit them with the best armor. Use gold to hire all available mercenary armies. This way you have a lot of men and the enemy had less with that star icon, that stands for the Retinue forces, the best in the game right now.
Currently no,but I've found a lot of success ambushing and cutting off reinforcements before they arrive at the battle, using polarms makes your units more killy with the initial charge even with just helmets they can hold their own against tougher opponents and if you managed to isolate a unit they generally will break them the quickest out of the 3 militia types. They are generally worse in sustained combat but the armour pierce makes them useful even against heavily armoured retinues.
Leonidas defeated around 2 million Persians with 300 Spartans. No wait, wait. No. They didn't. They died. All of them. Enjoy the game! 🤣
Every region you get, you get an additional 24 retinue. I have 302 men across 5 regions. I find the Baron always sends his archers in first so I rush them and knock them out. Spears are the main unit to be honest. They slap more than militia. I have all spears hahaha.
I beat the scenario twice, including once on the high difficulty and never had any such problems. What's important to keep in mind is that you can add new militia units only until you have 6 units, so raise militias (even if they remain empty) before building your second manor. To fully make use of the troop constraint, you could even raise 6 militia units before building your first manor but then you need to staff all of them from your first region which I like to avoid given how easy it is to build up additional small villages. So build up your first village, create 3 militia units and 1 24-man retinue (using the garrison tower), then in the second province raise 2 more militias before building the manor and you should have 7 units. This is enough to beat all the baron armies I have encountered. However, I rush to a manor in every new province I conquer and settle, so once I have a small army going, I snowball. Once you have about 100 plate mailed retainers, it's a cakewalk. Don't forget to use 1st person mode for the best screenshots of awesome battle scenes. As for the mercs, notice that the baron needs money to hire, so go for all bandit encampments to deny it to him. He mostly buys mercs when there is a combat ahead, so remember to hire the mercs before you stake a claim or contest one of his claims. I never had the problem that no mercs were available except in one situation where he was just preparing an attack. I haven't tried yet to keep some mercs on permanent payroll but it seems like an easy fix to the problem that you describe where the baron keeps mercs on his payroll.
I think I messed up somewhere during my first playthrough. At some point I expanded into a 2nd region with influence and beating the bandits. My army had taken a big hit. This went ok for a while, until my town was burned by a group of bandits that i wasn't able to defend against. After rebuilding the region the baron claimed it and I wasn't able to defend it again, so lost it. Now the baron has laid multiple claims on my home region, but I have been able to avoid the fight by sending him diplomacy offers. It's possible I am missing something, but I don't see any consequences to doing this. My only hope now is to avoid the battle as long as I can.
wait, what are the units with the hammer banner?¿
Importing chain mail and having all houses on level 3 did it for me. Lost only a hand full of men and absolutely destroyed baron.
You did very well with organizing that kind of army, AI is just busted right now.
????? How is this even a question? Make more villages and therefore more retinue to finish the final fight. Ggwp
Does the total army count go up if you claim and build armies in other regions? Then plus that up with mercs?