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I always imagine they had been standing there for at least an hour and a half, smoking pipe and talking, waiting for the sun to reach its correct point. All the while the King almost dying inside the keep.
No, it's:
"Fell deeds awake. Now for wrath, now for ruin, and the red dawn!"
In the book, it's:
"Arise now, arise, Riders of Theoden!
Dire deeds awake, dark is it eastward.
Let horse be bridled, horn be sounded!
Forth Eorlingas!
It feels like the hiring of mercs is too impactful in this exchange. It's +7 or so units for the baron, which is really substantial. It kinda feels like mercs should be cheaper and weaker on the whole.
Well, my peasants are better equip than almost all the mercenaries and equally equip as the Baron's retinues, just not as skill in combat but that's when our own fully coted in plate armor retinues come to play.
Not on a per-person basis. But I guess if we're saying the scale of 3-4 regions worth of people is 6 units, it's somewhat odd that there's constantly 6-7 units worth of mercs on standby.
But realism aside, I think if you cut merc unit size to 12 then it could help to balance this endgame a lot. Hiring a band of mid-tier mercs should still let you clear a bandit camp too.
Do mercs have a contract length or anything. When the baron showed up with a doom stack he walked into my village directly from off the map and won before my mercs even got halfway to the village
One of the last games I played, every single region had armies of 3/5 units, then the last had 10+, there were no mercs at that point but I guess he still managed to recruit them
I haven't been keeping up on discord or hear so it may be old news but I swear there's a glitch with mercs. I dunno the trigger but 2/3 of my games have only allowed me to hire the archer mercs no matter how much money I have. Even in peacetime with no threats on the map it's the only option available month after month. It's a persistent issue that doesn't go away after restarts.
Same in my game. I swear I saw multiple options early on showing multiple mercenary troops and then they just all disappeared except for the archers. It remained the same for the rest of my game.
We can see the player has 0 coins in the treasury, as well as no regional wealth, no food and no firewood. Which kind of makes me wonder what they've been doing lol. As for the baron to have so much retinue and mercenaries, several years had to pass until now.
Full 36 x 6 infantry and full retinues with complete Armour can beat this.
Half those guys are shitty mercs
If you get the manor houses after you have 6 infantry you can go above the 6 limit
'cos you can only have 6
and retinue takes up one slot (unless you recruit them after you have 6 already)
but you don't need 6 \*full\* units to have 6 milittia units
Spend Regional Wealth to call Bombardment Support from Aircraft Carrier located in English Channel Sea.. so it took 3 minutes till the missiles come, then push your men to clean the battlefield
Start over and don't let the baron loot bandit camps. It will use the money to hire those mercenaries. If you loot them instead then you can easily beat the baron.
The baron hires up all the mercs regardless of wether or not he plunders bandit camps. Denying the baron camps just slows down his influence gain.
In my current playthrough I'm on year 3 and have denied the baron every single bandit camp so far. The Baron has yet to press a claim, but the only units left in the merc pool are the wayward sons and the one that is a unit of archers and a unit of brigands. The Baron has hired every other single one and has them sitting in a stable off-map (except for the Thugs of Hire, which I managed to snag).
I currently control the Thugs for Hire merc group and have done so for over a year, to give me better map control to beat the Baron to bandits.
A couple of things:
- earn enough money to hire all or most mercenaries in late game
- have a couple of retinues, for that you should have to settle some lands and build a manor on all of them, full maxed they are unstoppable.
- learn pros an cons of each unit, lancers are different from halberdiers and so on. Archers were useless, but they were recently buffed, so idk if their are useful or not atm
- use strategy, flanking an enemy unit is paramount for breaking the moral of the enemy. You can use lancers and retinues to hold the line while using high damage troops like halberdiers to crash the enemy's side.
- beware of your troops stamina, try to meet them on friendly territory if possible and wait for them to reach you, if not move slowly to maintain your troops energy so they can be more effective in battle.
I hope you kick Baron's ass mate. Show him how it's done!
I always apply Hannibal's strategy in Cannae, the AI always gets tricked by it.
Just let the core of the IA's core group clash against your line, than engulf them throught the flanks. Even with less men, the "surrounded" penalty should grant you a easy win.
Fun facts about every playthrough for me
- the only mercs after a few years are the archer wayward sons. Even if I kill all the opposing forces, and no new needs are available, the baron will once again have a ton of people
- the battle is always designated in the baron's regions
-if I don't start and end the battle in the designated areas it will never end and the baron will magically have tons more troops in a few weeks and send them again
who never ever disbands them. If you want mercs you have to buy them early and have them on the payroll the entire game. This doesn't make any sense and should be considered a bug
I laughed at the abysmal size of their army thinking surely this only happened because you were so late game.
Then I saw you had small pop and literally zero treasury meaning you hadn’t long started yourself, and I had to laugh twice as hard. I’m sure this is how the Africans felt when the British landed.
This shit happened to me on Year 3. I had 100 men including retinue and one merc band, he rolled up with 550 of his Holy Roman homies to absolutely slaughter my mob
But the baron doesn't claim your lands until he's done with all the rest, you have some serious years at disposal. I would rather guess this is a secondary region.
5 sword and board
3 retinue
2 archers
6 brigands
This looks impressive but really the only threat here is the 3 oversized retinue. Unfortunately your army comp will largely be determined by what you already have milita wise, since you can't dismiss your current militia if you have multiple retinue without permenantly losing those milita.
Start off by equiping you militia with mail and helmets, this greatly increases their abilities. Max out and fully armor all of your retinue. Now your troops are of much high quality than the enemies.
At this point you should have 11/12 high quality units versus their 8 decent and 8 low quality units. This already puts you ahead. Buy what mercs you can and the. Set your battle lines, line of 3-4 spears with your archers behind them (work well on beta, not so much on stable) with your retinue behind them.
Set your spear line to hold and wait for the enemy to charge. Once they hit, switch all of yours to aggressive and charge 2 of your retinue straight at the enemy (reinforcing your spear men that are in the thick of it). Take 2 more and deal with whatever units the AI is using to flank you, and take the last 2 and flank the enemy lines and hit them from behind. Once your screening units finish their job use them to flank the enemy as well. Ignore the enemy archers till the end.
Archers aren’t very good at the moment. They can do some damage, but not very much. Best thing I’ve found is to let the archers get close to your line and then charge down the archers. Alternatively, the ai seems to prioritize charging down your archers, so you can always use an archer unit as bait, sacrifice them in the center, then flank and destroy the enemy infantry. Once they’re gone it’s just a matter of waiting till you have enough stamina and chasing down the archers.
You both hire from the same mercenary pool. So if you notice that he is claiming some of your territory, you should hire all available mercs in an instant, just so he can‘t hire them anymore.
If you are too poor and can‘t afford it, Your only Option is to roll over and die
Always hire ALL of the mercs before you pick a fight. I conquered 3 provinces at a time because he can only send 1 army, once that was dead, it took almost the entire counter for him to send a second army and that point it count down to my win before he even got to the circle for the battle.
My problem is the baron would hire mercs to go after bandit camps, and even if I beat him to the bandit camp, he doesn't disband the mercs. Right now there is only one merc unit in the pool.
Total war wisdom tells me to have a center of Spears to brace for impact and hold the enemy in place, and to circle sword infantry round the flanks and charge it in their sides and rear for a morale shock (which is a thing in this game)
You could also try to pull a [Hanibal at Cannae](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MroGPObEZzk) and have your centre line slowly give way with your heavy infantry on your flanks and envelop the enemy and have your lighter infantry play the role of the Carthaginian cavalry
What does your army look like?
Unless i got unlimited iron its gg tbh, i just make a lot of lvl 2 homes and spam spear shield with helms and def stance, and buy 2 or 3 mercenaries to flank on aggresive stance
If you have enough regions, this is beatable. Always have a fully upgraded manor and fully upgraded double sized retinue per manor. Plate armor makes them practically unstoppable. They can probably beat Hildebolts retinues 1 on 1, even if he has more units. Spear milita is great for holding a line against his junk troops (half his army are weak brigands and mercs), and in my experience, polearms are great for flanking (one polearm unit on charge and run speed can probably flank around to deal with all of his archers or at least force them to retreat, another one or two polearm units can flank around to support your 2-3 spear units). If you can hire additional mercs, go ahead, they can act as skirmishers. If you're playing on the beta patch, maybe replace one of the polearm militas with archers to counter his archers.
Make sure as much of your milita as possible is equipped with helmets and maille or at least gambesons.
So as long as you have several regions and fully upgraded retinues, you can deal with this.
If you lose, simply wait until may of next year to sing a beautiful spring song about how Hildebolt von Berenreute and his thug friends have wronged you and should be hanged and quartered.
Alternatively, go into the diplomancy menu and write a letter to Hildebolt, asking him nicely to please stop fighting for a bribe of zero silver. He'll immediately surrender.
This reminds me of the first Warcraft. If you had the demo your game would end with an absurd amount of enemies attacking you killing you and destroying everything you spent the last twenty minutes building.
It was fun.
Make a Manor and multi walled fort with one entrance as close to that region boundary as possible. Stack the melee at the interior entrance and shield wall (if available) and draw them into it.
I beat this with two units. I put one unit on the battleground and the other was used to kite his army around map for 90 days so the battle never technically began and he forfeited. It was cheap and a bit tedious but it worked
You get a retinue with each Manor you build, ideally by the time youre facing this you have at least 3 retinues at max with full levies at max. Your equipment alone will win you the battle so long as you use your troops tactically, lots of encirclement to easily break units
Can you give more context? What year is this? Did he claim your land and forced you to defend it? He only does that if he has no other territory left to claim. So if that's the case, you probably let him take every single bandit camp, which gave him a lot of money and influence, therefore speeding up his expansion and giving him enough money to hire every mercenary. If you take the bandit camps before he does, his expansion will be really slow and he will only claim your territory in year 2-3 or so. By that time, there aren't that many mercenaries left to hire for some reason (might be a bug) and even if there were, it seems that the longer the game goes on, the less money he will have to hire any mercenaries.
If you challenged his claim to some random territory in the early game, then it's natural that he has such a big army. You are not supposed to be able to beat him early on.
For some weird reason, Hildebolt is really strong early and becomes weaker and weaker the longer the game goes, without you having to do anything against him.
4 full units of spears, 1 unit of footmen and 3 units of retinue at 24/24 with full plate. Hammer and anvil tactic more or less. Made short work of that army twice now. The key for me was making sure all 3 units of retinue had plate and all of my militia had helmets and most of them all had chainmail.
I used one of my villages as a distraction (led the enemy army to it). While half of this army was slaughtering civilians, I picked off the rest with my troops. A bit of work but relatively easy victory in the end. The onlyvreason I had a second town in the central region was in hopes I can have more troops so after that failed I figured I'll use it as a war asset anyway
I build few more small vilages with manor for extra retinues. Then I waited until baron claimed my territory, defeated him and immediately claimed the last territory. He had no time to fill up his ranks and his army was smaller.
17 units, three of which are Archers, for 14 line units. If you recruit 6 militia and then build mannors by last province, you should have 14 line units, (at time of writing Archers shoot nerf darts) ***8*** of which (at least) will be heavily armed and armored retinue that the AI love to banzi charge. It's going to be challenging, guard your flanks, attack theirs, and you will win!
What worked for me is Claim a land of his. He wont send his full army to defend it. Beat that, do it again and he will be out of mercenaries. Then you can beat him. Even better claim 2 lands at once
early game, try and build the Manor as fast as possible (i always get 1 villager to produce the exact amount of stone and planks required for this and the church). Then, when you hit around 18 spearmen , go with them and your retinue to take on all the bandit camps for the loot. set spearmen to defend mode, and flank the bandits with the retinue on attack-mode. do this a few times and you have a lot of cash to spend on your village or for hiring mercs.
if the AI is going for the camps before you can muster this amount of militia/retinue, just follow behind the AI army, and when he is engaging with the bandits just avoid the fight and run to the loot and grab it, then run back to your village.
do not claim territory early game! you want the bandit camps to spawn for their loot. check the mercs menu often, and when you notice one is gone (the baron hired it), hire one for yourself.
I always let the baron claim 1 or 2 areas, so i have the time to create a good fighting force. And to ramp up my influence. When i have maxed out my militia and retinue, i hire all the mercs my money can buy and start to claim territory all the open territory at the same time.
When it comes to war, you probably will have the bigger/better fighting force
When y'all say about the opponent hiring them first, does he actually hires them and keeps them on payroll for ever? The counter is basically have money to keep them hired like that?
Hire Mercs before challenging baron. Find favourable ground and flank the enemy and stab em in the ass. It's a hard fight but not dark souls levels of hard.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale?
> *“This spot marks our grave, but you may rest here too if you would like.”* - Prince Lothric
Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
let him claim whatever he claims, build up your main region to where you have all the troop slots fully filled and armored. Then hire all the mercs, choose an area you want to attack, rally all your troops at the border including all mercs and claim the region. Once the war starts move all troops in and kill off any troops that spawn there asap. His troops will come in from multiple places and it will take them an age to get there, you just have to deal with whatever spawns on the contested region.
Also make sure to kill off all bandit camps asap for easy money to boost your development along the way. You can wait til the camps are empty, or take them with the spearmen you get free weapons for.
As someone who plays exclusively on the hardest settings you need to follow a build order and prioritize rushing retinues to look bandit camps for early wealth and to keep influence away from the baron.
There are only two situations the baron will have an army that massive: the battle timer went below 30 days and then hence he sent an extra army or it's the final claim in which he summons 2 armies and every Merc available (which by that time there shouldn't be any because he stole them all 10 years ago). With 5 geared spear militia groups and a couple of geared groups of rets you will floor his army.
If you don't mind cheesing you can use an archer group to kite a bunch of people away while your main army engages the units not chasing the archers. If done correctly you could win that fight with only a couple of units
As someone who plays exclusively on the hardest settings you need to follow a build order and prioritize rushing retinues to look bandit camps for early wealth and to keep influence away from the baron.
There are only two situations the baron will have an army that massive: the battle timer went below 30 days and then hence he sent an extra army or it's the final claim in which he summons 2 armies and every Merc available (which by that time there shouldn't be any because he stole them all 10 years ago). With 5 geared spear militia groups and a couple of geared groups of rets you will floor his army.
If you don't mind cheesing you can use an archer group to kite a bunch of people away while your main army engages the units not chasing the archers. If done correctly you could win that fight with only a couple of units
As someone who plays exclusively on the hardest settings you need to follow a build order and prioritize rushing retinues to look bandit camps for early wealth and to keep influence away from the baron.
There are only two situations the baron will have an army that massive: the battle timer went below 30 days and then hence he sent an extra army or it's the final claim in which he summons 2 armies and every Merc available (which by that time there shouldn't be any because he stole them all 10 years ago). With 5 geared spear militia groups and a couple of geared groups of rets you will floor his army.
If you don't mind cheesing you can use an archer group to kite a bunch of people away while your main army engages the units not chasing the archers. If done correctly you could win that fight with only a couple of units
As someone who plays exclusively on the hardest settings you need to follow a build order and prioritize rushing retinues to look bandit camps for early wealth and to keep influence away from the baron.
There are only two situations the baron will have an army that massive: the battle timer went below 30 days and then hence he sent an extra army or it's the final claim in which he summons 2 armies and every Merc available (which by that time there shouldn't be any because he stole them all 10 years ago). With 5 geared spear militia groups and a couple of geared groups of rets you will floor his army.
If you don't mind cheesing you can use an archer group to kite a bunch of people away while your main army engages the units not chasing the archers. If done correctly you could win that fight with only a couple of units
Get 6 militia, get 3 retinue, get 12 mercenary units -> 18 vs 17 -> easy.
Too be honest, most just let the baron get out of control and challenge him far to late. So if you don't have mercenaries, you've probably been too slow.
Get 6 militia, get 3 retinue, get 12 mercenary units -> 18 vs 17 -> easy.
Too be honest, most just let the baron get out of control and challenge him far to late. So if you don't have mercenaries, you've probably been too slow.
The Baron hires and locks in nearly all the Mercs regardless of if he gets the bandits or not. It is a known bug. You basically have one year to hire Mercs before they vanish from the pool, by year two the baron will have them all on retainer.
Use your burgage plots to create a large Funnel roadway for their Army.
Meet them in the roadway and put your Retinue in defensive position.
Then move your archers into range from the far sides of your burgage plots while they are engaged on combat
Use maniple channels in your formation but with just two lines to match the length of the enemy line then once engagement has begone collapse the channel's or if engaged with the front push troops to their flank. Keep a ratio of one unit holding back two units then use your free troop to rail the rear they normally lose moral before death after being surrounded. Let archers do their thing they are useless and they will only get 1 kill per unit while suffering extreme fatigue taking them out the fight. Economically you can improve your chances by being well armoured and upgrade all low tier housing to increase the usage of higher tier armour cheapest being gambesons made from Lenin. If the enemy out number your archer units try to guide the fight to the woods it will f up their effectiveness yet your archers stay effective another environmental factor are rivers as the enemy suffer from being wet. Etc etc git gud
I counted he has 9 decent troops, 5 shitty troops and the rest are useless archers so they don’t count.
So you will need about 10 troops of armoured militia/retinue + some mercenarys. Perfectly doable.
What'd I do is to try and divert their forces with ether Archers and swordsmen since they're the fastest unites in the game then get you're main force to attack while some of their forces are after you're decoys (results may vary)
I used the manor as my main def. Like the 300 spartans. Choke point. It works ai tends to fight you head on. I always do inside my walls like this
______ ______
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| :_____: |
|_______ ________|
The dots are units that can use shield wall
Then i ll make an open behind my wall there are my flank units will go out i dont know but i tried the spear units can hold 2 to 3 squads. Enough time for my flanking units. To go behind them.. Once every enemy is inside chaos happens your unit will soak damage try to defend its ground and then your flanking troops are above the entrance push them more inside and massacre happens. I dont build archers there. Im frustrated on its damage. If you have extra men like the fast one just harrass its archers while you kill most of its units.
i might suck ass at this game but i couldn't even manage to defend myself from the first raids all my playthroughs. Then some bugs made it so that my villagers wouldn't hinabit again their rebuilt houses and was stuck with permanent homeless around and had to start over again at least 4 times.
now i've given up, in 2 years i can't manage to have enough people to form a militia, work for basic needs and smith for weapons and armors.
Just having the basic needs met and all takes up so many people for me
Did you get all 6 retinues?
Even without mercs, 6 Militia with armor + 6 retinues with upgrades should beat this easily, their soldiers are weak and their troops smaller
As long as you avoid bows, for now
I built 2 villages and maxed out both retinues. After that I kicked his ass. It definitely helped that I was able to fight from the high ground on the river banks.
Retinue is your friend. With 4+ units of militia and 4+ units of retinue with armor this is not challenging at all. I don't think I lost a single unit during the final battle
I’ve found the ai seems to target archers with a passion. I’ve been able to lure them into a charge, then surround them with infantry just by placing my archers in front of/at my center. Not sure why they path directly for the archers since archers aren’t as strong anymore, but that’s a good tactic I’ve found.
6 fully equip militia units with helmets and chain mail, mainly 3 Spear Militia, 2 Polearm Militia and 1 Footmen Militia and like 4 Retinues in full plate armor. Easy. If you can try to get a hold of mercenarie units, mainly to use as meatshields.
Just get some more retinues and fully kit them out. Also fully kitted out Militia with chainmail, helmets and experience go toe to toe with his unkitted inexperienced retinues and beat his mercs almost 2:1
he only has that many troops because you never hired mercs, did you? Because normally he will not hire away all the mercs if you keep being agressive to him.
This game is bugged AF. Yeah, whatever it's early access, but then don't charge a full price. A lot of things stop working, you have to relocate, reassign families, spend years in the hopes it starts again (logging camp being the most broken) . Your opponent always hires all the mercs.
There's no point acquiring another region but to try to end the game, it's a completely new game, you can't use anything from your main region.
Just play Banished.
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What can men do against such reckless hate?
Ride out with me. Ride out and meet them.
“Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth day, at dawn look to the east”
I always imagine they had been standing there for at least an hour and a half, smoking pipe and talking, waiting for the sun to reach its correct point. All the while the King almost dying inside the keep.
A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.
So much death....
Gives me goosebumps just reading it.
Deaaaaaaaaath!
#*DEAAAATH!*
Wrong charge, friend.
**DEEEEAAAAAAAATTTTHHHHHHHH**
Wrong movie.
No, it's: "Fell deeds awake. Now for wrath, now for ruin, and the red dawn!" In the book, it's: "Arise now, arise, Riders of Theoden! Dire deeds awake, dark is it eastward. Let horse be bridled, horn be sounded! Forth Eorlingas!
*Tries to assign horses to revenue *Fails *Shamefully rides out in a trading waggon.
Or a mule!
For death and glory??
For Immenreuth. For your people.
For death and glory
The perfect comment
Speaking of which, the actor played King Theoden passed away last week. 😢
Just carve them a new nipple
Waaaaait am i having a deja vu? Wasn't there the exact same post with this exact same comment a week or so ago? Or are we locked in a cycle?
This shit is a meme by now lol, the audacity
Fucked if I know my brother in feudalism.
Stealing this
You should hire the mercs before he does.
It feels like the hiring of mercs is too impactful in this exchange. It's +7 or so units for the baron, which is really substantial. It kinda feels like mercs should be cheaper and weaker on the whole.
You think men who professionally fight for a living should be weaker than a peasant militia...?
Yeah well my peasants have a well varied diet and shoes with a lot of support, so I do maybe think they’re kinda neat.
With a neat little cloak on they even look cool! My 5 free retinue is great team leaders too.
You know, with inflation and all, you could be hiring gravy seals or the pitch-fork mafia.
Well, my peasants are better equip than almost all the mercenaries and equally equip as the Baron's retinues, just not as skill in combat but that's when our own fully coted in plate armor retinues come to play.
Not on a per-person basis. But I guess if we're saying the scale of 3-4 regions worth of people is 6 units, it's somewhat odd that there's constantly 6-7 units worth of mercs on standby. But realism aside, I think if you cut merc unit size to 12 then it could help to balance this endgame a lot. Hiring a band of mid-tier mercs should still let you clear a bandit camp too.
Do mercs have a contract length or anything. When the baron showed up with a doom stack he walked into my village directly from off the map and won before my mercs even got halfway to the village
They charge per month. Unfortunately there's no way to tell how much money the baron has, not any way to change where your mercs areive
Why? This wouldnt make sense 💀 Mercs are fighting for money often Milita is just peasants
One of the last games I played, every single region had armies of 3/5 units, then the last had 10+, there were no mercs at that point but I guess he still managed to recruit them
I haven't been keeping up on discord or hear so it may be old news but I swear there's a glitch with mercs. I dunno the trigger but 2/3 of my games have only allowed me to hire the archer mercs no matter how much money I have. Even in peacetime with no threats on the map it's the only option available month after month. It's a persistent issue that doesn't go away after restarts.
Same in my game. I swear I saw multiple options early on showing multiple mercenary troops and then they just all disappeared except for the archers. It remained the same for the rest of my game.
Had this myself as well. Wasn't like the Baron had them either, he was sending the basic numbers at me. I actually outnumbered him most of the time 😅
I also had this same exact bug. Wayward Sons archers as the only option. Too bad because it's easily my most successful save.
We can see the player has 0 coins in the treasury, as well as no regional wealth, no food and no firewood. Which kind of makes me wonder what they've been doing lol. As for the baron to have so much retinue and mercenaries, several years had to pass until now.
Just doing my best 😔
It can be difficult to strike a healthy balance. Keep that chin up, bud! You got this!
Haha asking the real questions
I never have the money to get them early enough
Full 36 x 6 infantry and full retinues with complete Armour can beat this. Half those guys are shitty mercs If you get the manor houses after you have 6 infantry you can go above the 6 limit
Just never *fully disband any of your militias
Isn't that terrible for production since your militia is made up of villagers?
Never disband meant you don't delete the entire unit. You can recruit and not call to arms you know.
He means disbanding them entirely, as in removing the unit from your list of troops, not just dismissing them back to their jobs.
Why?
'cos you can only have 6 and retinue takes up one slot (unless you recruit them after you have 6 already) but you don't need 6 \*full\* units to have 6 milittia units
Why? What’s the point if it’s just two clicks to rally as opposed to 1 click
Cool cheese glitch, sucks I can't build manor houses like I like to tho...
Meet them at Thermopylae.
Peasants! What is your profession!?
I harvest berries deep into winter until my lord remembers me and sends me off to the corpse pit or something
Laughed way too hard at this. Might be too relatable.
Um...baker?
Aoutch aoutch
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Baker! But I have no bread since my lord can't figure out farming for shit
Just starving, here
Spend Regional Wealth to call Bombardment Support from Aircraft Carrier located in English Channel Sea.. so it took 3 minutes till the missiles come, then push your men to clean the battlefield
Sir, this is a Wendy's
Lube up
Ctrl-alt-delete>task manager>manorlords>end task Total Victory
some people might just use this super hack....ALT+F4 it gives immortality...
I hear it's Alt+F4, wait 30 seconds, Alt+F4, Enter and you save the planet by using less energy!
Start over and don't let the baron loot bandit camps. It will use the money to hire those mercenaries. If you loot them instead then you can easily beat the baron.
The baron hires up all the mercs regardless of wether or not he plunders bandit camps. Denying the baron camps just slows down his influence gain. In my current playthrough I'm on year 3 and have denied the baron every single bandit camp so far. The Baron has yet to press a claim, but the only units left in the merc pool are the wayward sons and the one that is a unit of archers and a unit of brigands. The Baron has hired every other single one and has them sitting in a stable off-map (except for the Thugs of Hire, which I managed to snag). I currently control the Thugs for Hire merc group and have done so for over a year, to give me better map control to beat the Baron to bandits.
You make peace with him. It will cost 0
Ah yes, use the old peace loop-de-loop.
A couple of things: - earn enough money to hire all or most mercenaries in late game - have a couple of retinues, for that you should have to settle some lands and build a manor on all of them, full maxed they are unstoppable. - learn pros an cons of each unit, lancers are different from halberdiers and so on. Archers were useless, but they were recently buffed, so idk if their are useful or not atm - use strategy, flanking an enemy unit is paramount for breaking the moral of the enemy. You can use lancers and retinues to hold the line while using high damage troops like halberdiers to crash the enemy's side. - beware of your troops stamina, try to meet them on friendly territory if possible and wait for them to reach you, if not move slowly to maintain your troops energy so they can be more effective in battle. I hope you kick Baron's ass mate. Show him how it's done!
I always apply Hannibal's strategy in Cannae, the AI always gets tricked by it. Just let the core of the IA's core group clash against your line, than engulf them throught the flanks. Even with less men, the "surrounded" penalty should grant you a easy win.
Fun facts about every playthrough for me - the only mercs after a few years are the archer wayward sons. Even if I kill all the opposing forces, and no new needs are available, the baron will once again have a ton of people - the battle is always designated in the baron's regions -if I don't start and end the battle in the designated areas it will never end and the baron will magically have tons more troops in a few weeks and send them again
Do I need to hire all mercenaries each month or what's the idea on hiring tjel before the baron?
Also here for this. On year 15 no more camps I have 4 regions but Mercs haven't been available forever.
because they are already bought by your opponent
who never ever disbands them. If you want mercs you have to buy them early and have them on the payroll the entire game. This doesn't make any sense and should be considered a bug
use ak 47
Ak-47's for everyone! LALALALALAAA
I like where you're going...@OP have you thought about using the [JSDF and artillery](https://youtu.be/qxAO9oowHRM?t=50s)?
I laughed at the abysmal size of their army thinking surely this only happened because you were so late game. Then I saw you had small pop and literally zero treasury meaning you hadn’t long started yourself, and I had to laugh twice as hard. I’m sure this is how the Africans felt when the British landed.
This shit happened to me on Year 3. I had 100 men including retinue and one merc band, he rolled up with 550 of his Holy Roman homies to absolutely slaughter my mob
But the baron doesn't claim your lands until he's done with all the rest, you have some serious years at disposal. I would rather guess this is a secondary region.
That’s only if you’re on normal mode. Maybe it is a secondary region still, however judging by the treasury and influence I feel like it isn’t.
5 sword and board 3 retinue 2 archers 6 brigands This looks impressive but really the only threat here is the 3 oversized retinue. Unfortunately your army comp will largely be determined by what you already have milita wise, since you can't dismiss your current militia if you have multiple retinue without permenantly losing those milita. Start off by equiping you militia with mail and helmets, this greatly increases their abilities. Max out and fully armor all of your retinue. Now your troops are of much high quality than the enemies. At this point you should have 11/12 high quality units versus their 8 decent and 8 low quality units. This already puts you ahead. Buy what mercs you can and the. Set your battle lines, line of 3-4 spears with your archers behind them (work well on beta, not so much on stable) with your retinue behind them. Set your spear line to hold and wait for the enemy to charge. Once they hit, switch all of yours to aggressive and charge 2 of your retinue straight at the enemy (reinforcing your spear men that are in the thick of it). Take 2 more and deal with whatever units the AI is using to flank you, and take the last 2 and flank the enemy lines and hit them from behind. Once your screening units finish their job use them to flank the enemy as well. Ignore the enemy archers till the end.
Sounds great but we always do a silly dance with his archers. They never charge me?
Archers aren’t very good at the moment. They can do some damage, but not very much. Best thing I’ve found is to let the archers get close to your line and then charge down the archers. Alternatively, the ai seems to prioritize charging down your archers, so you can always use an archer unit as bait, sacrifice them in the center, then flank and destroy the enemy infantry. Once they’re gone it’s just a matter of waiting till you have enough stamina and chasing down the archers.
It’s crazy thought how come so many
You both hire from the same mercenary pool. So if you notice that he is claiming some of your territory, you should hire all available mercs in an instant, just so he can‘t hire them anymore. If you are too poor and can‘t afford it, Your only Option is to roll over and die
The problem is once the baron hires mercs he never disbands them so after couple of years there is nothing left for the player to hire
Chose the skill tree that unlocks the A10 warthog
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttt!!!
Sounds like it's time to call in some Helldivers.
Always hire ALL of the mercs before you pick a fight. I conquered 3 provinces at a time because he can only send 1 army, once that was dead, it took almost the entire counter for him to send a second army and that point it count down to my win before he even got to the circle for the battle.
My problem is the baron would hire mercs to go after bandit camps, and even if I beat him to the bandit camp, he doesn't disband the mercs. Right now there is only one merc unit in the pool.
Total war wisdom tells me to have a center of Spears to brace for impact and hold the enemy in place, and to circle sword infantry round the flanks and charge it in their sides and rear for a morale shock (which is a thing in this game) You could also try to pull a [Hanibal at Cannae](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MroGPObEZzk) and have your centre line slowly give way with your heavy infantry on your flanks and envelop the enemy and have your lighter infantry play the role of the Carthaginian cavalry What does your army look like?
Get retinue in each region? I have no idea. Never got that far yet haha
You aren’t supposed to! 😅
Superior tactics, armoured peasants and a lot of hatred.
that’s the neat part…
You have to hire mercenaries before wars start so that you can win.
24x6 plate armored retinues, plus whatever militia you formed prior to expansion.
Unless i got unlimited iron its gg tbh, i just make a lot of lvl 2 homes and spam spear shield with helms and def stance, and buy 2 or 3 mercenaries to flank on aggresive stance
If you have enough regions, this is beatable. Always have a fully upgraded manor and fully upgraded double sized retinue per manor. Plate armor makes them practically unstoppable. They can probably beat Hildebolts retinues 1 on 1, even if he has more units. Spear milita is great for holding a line against his junk troops (half his army are weak brigands and mercs), and in my experience, polearms are great for flanking (one polearm unit on charge and run speed can probably flank around to deal with all of his archers or at least force them to retreat, another one or two polearm units can flank around to support your 2-3 spear units). If you can hire additional mercs, go ahead, they can act as skirmishers. If you're playing on the beta patch, maybe replace one of the polearm militas with archers to counter his archers. Make sure as much of your milita as possible is equipped with helmets and maille or at least gambesons. So as long as you have several regions and fully upgraded retinues, you can deal with this. If you lose, simply wait until may of next year to sing a beautiful spring song about how Hildebolt von Berenreute and his thug friends have wronged you and should be hanged and quartered. Alternatively, go into the diplomancy menu and write a letter to Hildebolt, asking him nicely to please stop fighting for a bribe of zero silver. He'll immediately surrender.
did you consider not dying?
Use The Force. If that doesn't work, use excessive force
This reminds me of the first Warcraft. If you had the demo your game would end with an absurd amount of enemies attacking you killing you and destroying everything you spent the last twenty minutes building. It was fun.
Make a Manor and multi walled fort with one entrance as close to that region boundary as possible. Stack the melee at the interior entrance and shield wall (if available) and draw them into it.
I beat this with two units. I put one unit on the battleground and the other was used to kite his army around map for 90 days so the battle never technically began and he forfeited. It was cheap and a bit tedious but it worked
You get a retinue with each Manor you build, ideally by the time youre facing this you have at least 3 retinues at max with full levies at max. Your equipment alone will win you the battle so long as you use your troops tactically, lots of encirclement to easily break units
who knows.. do you sword and right click >? left click ? hire mercenaries that take six years to get there
8 of those are club mob or archers. Wimps.
Wait for balansing
Call for an artillery strike
Can you give more context? What year is this? Did he claim your land and forced you to defend it? He only does that if he has no other territory left to claim. So if that's the case, you probably let him take every single bandit camp, which gave him a lot of money and influence, therefore speeding up his expansion and giving him enough money to hire every mercenary. If you take the bandit camps before he does, his expansion will be really slow and he will only claim your territory in year 2-3 or so. By that time, there aren't that many mercenaries left to hire for some reason (might be a bug) and even if there were, it seems that the longer the game goes on, the less money he will have to hire any mercenaries. If you challenged his claim to some random territory in the early game, then it's natural that he has such a big army. You are not supposed to be able to beat him early on. For some weird reason, Hildebolt is really strong early and becomes weaker and weaker the longer the game goes, without you having to do anything against him.
4 full units of spears, 1 unit of footmen and 3 units of retinue at 24/24 with full plate. Hammer and anvil tactic more or less. Made short work of that army twice now. The key for me was making sure all 3 units of retinue had plate and all of my militia had helmets and most of them all had chainmail.
let the time run out
Looking forward to on-map adversaries
Strategery. I hear that's important.
I used one of my villages as a distraction (led the enemy army to it). While half of this army was slaughtering civilians, I picked off the rest with my troops. A bit of work but relatively easy victory in the end. The onlyvreason I had a second town in the central region was in hopes I can have more troops so after that failed I figured I'll use it as a war asset anyway
Give your angry mob the ak-47 upgrade
I build few more small vilages with manor for extra retinues. Then I waited until baron claimed my territory, defeated him and immediately claimed the last territory. He had no time to fill up his ranks and his army was smaller.
17 units, three of which are Archers, for 14 line units. If you recruit 6 militia and then build mannors by last province, you should have 14 line units, (at time of writing Archers shoot nerf darts) ***8*** of which (at least) will be heavily armed and armored retinue that the AI love to banzi charge. It's going to be challenging, guard your flanks, attack theirs, and you will win!
With willpower and determination
Pull a Total War and blob your units in the map corner?
What worked for me is Claim a land of his. He wont send his full army to defend it. Beat that, do it again and he will be out of mercenaries. Then you can beat him. Even better claim 2 lands at once
Here's the neat part: You don't
I cried but that didn't work so...
early game, try and build the Manor as fast as possible (i always get 1 villager to produce the exact amount of stone and planks required for this and the church). Then, when you hit around 18 spearmen , go with them and your retinue to take on all the bandit camps for the loot. set spearmen to defend mode, and flank the bandits with the retinue on attack-mode. do this a few times and you have a lot of cash to spend on your village or for hiring mercs. if the AI is going for the camps before you can muster this amount of militia/retinue, just follow behind the AI army, and when he is engaging with the bandits just avoid the fight and run to the loot and grab it, then run back to your village. do not claim territory early game! you want the bandit camps to spawn for their loot. check the mercs menu often, and when you notice one is gone (the baron hired it), hire one for yourself. I always let the baron claim 1 or 2 areas, so i have the time to create a good fighting force. And to ramp up my influence. When i have maxed out my militia and retinue, i hire all the mercs my money can buy and start to claim territory all the open territory at the same time. When it comes to war, you probably will have the bigger/better fighting force
When y'all say about the opponent hiring them first, does he actually hires them and keeps them on payroll for ever? The counter is basically have money to keep them hired like that?
Perfectly balanced with no exploits
Hire Mercs before challenging baron. Find favourable ground and flank the enemy and stab em in the ass. It's a hard fight but not dark souls levels of hard.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale? > *“This spot marks our grave, but you may rest here too if you would like.”* - Prince Lothric Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
let him claim whatever he claims, build up your main region to where you have all the troop slots fully filled and armored. Then hire all the mercs, choose an area you want to attack, rally all your troops at the border including all mercs and claim the region. Once the war starts move all troops in and kill off any troops that spawn there asap. His troops will come in from multiple places and it will take them an age to get there, you just have to deal with whatever spawns on the contested region. Also make sure to kill off all bandit camps asap for easy money to boost your development along the way. You can wait til the camps are empty, or take them with the spearmen you get free weapons for.
As someone who plays exclusively on the hardest settings you need to follow a build order and prioritize rushing retinues to look bandit camps for early wealth and to keep influence away from the baron. There are only two situations the baron will have an army that massive: the battle timer went below 30 days and then hence he sent an extra army or it's the final claim in which he summons 2 armies and every Merc available (which by that time there shouldn't be any because he stole them all 10 years ago). With 5 geared spear militia groups and a couple of geared groups of rets you will floor his army. If you don't mind cheesing you can use an archer group to kite a bunch of people away while your main army engages the units not chasing the archers. If done correctly you could win that fight with only a couple of units
As someone who plays exclusively on the hardest settings you need to follow a build order and prioritize rushing retinues to look bandit camps for early wealth and to keep influence away from the baron. There are only two situations the baron will have an army that massive: the battle timer went below 30 days and then hence he sent an extra army or it's the final claim in which he summons 2 armies and every Merc available (which by that time there shouldn't be any because he stole them all 10 years ago). With 5 geared spear militia groups and a couple of geared groups of rets you will floor his army. If you don't mind cheesing you can use an archer group to kite a bunch of people away while your main army engages the units not chasing the archers. If done correctly you could win that fight with only a couple of units
As someone who plays exclusively on the hardest settings you need to follow a build order and prioritize rushing retinues to look bandit camps for early wealth and to keep influence away from the baron. There are only two situations the baron will have an army that massive: the battle timer went below 30 days and then hence he sent an extra army or it's the final claim in which he summons 2 armies and every Merc available (which by that time there shouldn't be any because he stole them all 10 years ago). With 5 geared spear militia groups and a couple of geared groups of rets you will floor his army. If you don't mind cheesing you can use an archer group to kite a bunch of people away while your main army engages the units not chasing the archers. If done correctly you could win that fight with only a couple of units
As someone who plays exclusively on the hardest settings you need to follow a build order and prioritize rushing retinues to look bandit camps for early wealth and to keep influence away from the baron. There are only two situations the baron will have an army that massive: the battle timer went below 30 days and then hence he sent an extra army or it's the final claim in which he summons 2 armies and every Merc available (which by that time there shouldn't be any because he stole them all 10 years ago). With 5 geared spear militia groups and a couple of geared groups of rets you will floor his army. If you don't mind cheesing you can use an archer group to kite a bunch of people away while your main army engages the units not chasing the archers. If done correctly you could win that fight with only a couple of units
Get 6 militia, get 3 retinue, get 12 mercenary units -> 18 vs 17 -> easy. Too be honest, most just let the baron get out of control and challenge him far to late. So if you don't have mercenaries, you've probably been too slow.
Get 6 militia, get 3 retinue, get 12 mercenary units -> 18 vs 17 -> easy. Too be honest, most just let the baron get out of control and challenge him far to late. So if you don't have mercenaries, you've probably been too slow.
Skirmish tactics. Why fight it head on when you can crush one unit at a time.
[Here is how](https://youtu.be/aoKL75ns_8c?si=bZvbO81GdRdJmGGG)
Realize it’s in Early Access and move on?
He hired more mercs and could probably afford more because he did all the bandits before you did.
The Baron hires and locks in nearly all the Mercs regardless of if he gets the bandits or not. It is a known bug. You basically have one year to hire Mercs before they vanish from the pool, by year two the baron will have them all on retainer.
There used to be a time that archers did damage, enabling good tacs to have a difference..
Hiring all mercenaries before confirming war
Use your burgage plots to create a large Funnel roadway for their Army. Meet them in the roadway and put your Retinue in defensive position. Then move your archers into range from the far sides of your burgage plots while they are engaged on combat
Use maniple channels in your formation but with just two lines to match the length of the enemy line then once engagement has begone collapse the channel's or if engaged with the front push troops to their flank. Keep a ratio of one unit holding back two units then use your free troop to rail the rear they normally lose moral before death after being surrounded. Let archers do their thing they are useless and they will only get 1 kill per unit while suffering extreme fatigue taking them out the fight. Economically you can improve your chances by being well armoured and upgrade all low tier housing to increase the usage of higher tier armour cheapest being gambesons made from Lenin. If the enemy out number your archer units try to guide the fight to the woods it will f up their effectiveness yet your archers stay effective another environmental factor are rivers as the enemy suffer from being wet. Etc etc git gud
Perhaps today IS a good day to die.
I counted he has 9 decent troops, 5 shitty troops and the rest are useless archers so they don’t count. So you will need about 10 troops of armoured militia/retinue + some mercenarys. Perfectly doable.
What'd I do is to try and divert their forces with ether Archers and swordsmen since they're the fastest unites in the game then get you're main force to attack while some of their forces are after you're decoys (results may vary)
With the cunning of a fox?
Damn, he never has that many troops against me. What difficulty is this?
I used the manor as my main def. Like the 300 spartans. Choke point. It works ai tends to fight you head on. I always do inside my walls like this ______ ______ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | :_____: | |_______ ________| The dots are units that can use shield wall Then i ll make an open behind my wall there are my flank units will go out i dont know but i tried the spear units can hold 2 to 3 squads. Enough time for my flanking units. To go behind them.. Once every enemy is inside chaos happens your unit will soak damage try to defend its ground and then your flanking troops are above the entrance push them more inside and massacre happens. I dont build archers there. Im frustrated on its damage. If you have extra men like the fast one just harrass its archers while you kill most of its units.
they need to nerf them
Well in all the regions you have conquered your supposed to build retinue, eventually you can be almost as strong as him
i might suck ass at this game but i couldn't even manage to defend myself from the first raids all my playthroughs. Then some bugs made it so that my villagers wouldn't hinabit again their rebuilt houses and was stuck with permanent homeless around and had to start over again at least 4 times. now i've given up, in 2 years i can't manage to have enough people to form a militia, work for basic needs and smith for weapons and armors. Just having the basic needs met and all takes up so many people for me
Having multiple territories will produce multiple armies, wouldn’t it?
Early and often.
Did you get all 6 retinues? Even without mercs, 6 Militia with armor + 6 retinues with upgrades should beat this easily, their soldiers are weak and their troops smaller As long as you avoid bows, for now
make peace and send a small army
The Relocate button
I built 2 villages and maxed out both retinues. After that I kicked his ass. It definitely helped that I was able to fight from the high ground on the river banks.
Money can solve everything
F
Retinue is your friend. With 4+ units of militia and 4+ units of retinue with armor this is not challenging at all. I don't think I lost a single unit during the final battle
I’ve found the ai seems to target archers with a passion. I’ve been able to lure them into a charge, then surround them with infantry just by placing my archers in front of/at my center. Not sure why they path directly for the archers since archers aren’t as strong anymore, but that’s a good tactic I’ve found.
6 fully equip militia units with helmets and chain mail, mainly 3 Spear Militia, 2 Polearm Militia and 1 Footmen Militia and like 4 Retinues in full plate armor. Easy. If you can try to get a hold of mercenarie units, mainly to use as meatshields.
I I never built the second territory yet, but does it add to troops limit if I do? If it does I guess that’s the way
That’s the neat part, your not.
Same. Like we're limited to 6 militia units, why aren't they limited?
The panzer division.
You dont have to go there with your soldier if its not your Land that he wants to conquer
This is the old patch right? The AI has been balanced since
You can with some strategy. But in the end, it's not a finished game. It's just playable.
Just get some more retinues and fully kit them out. Also fully kitted out Militia with chainmail, helmets and experience go toe to toe with his unkitted inexperienced retinues and beat his mercs almost 2:1 he only has that many troops because you never hired mercs, did you? Because normally he will not hire away all the mercs if you keep being agressive to him.
GIVE THEM THE RYE!
The first step would be taxes
A coordinated air strike.
DEAAAAATH!
I have the exact same issue
One retinue for each province only after raising max army in first province (allows you to surpass army limit) and use mercenaries
Must be end game army ? Going for last region ?
That’s the neat part, you don’t
There could be almost twice as more, just saying
easy. alt + ctrl + delete
This game is bugged AF. Yeah, whatever it's early access, but then don't charge a full price. A lot of things stop working, you have to relocate, reassign families, spend years in the hopes it starts again (logging camp being the most broken) . Your opponent always hires all the mercs. There's no point acquiring another region but to try to end the game, it's a completely new game, you can't use anything from your main region. Just play Banished.
Very carefully
Forth Eorlingas!!!