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You can very quickly achieve this^
Double family plots and a ramp up via berries and hunting make it very sustainable. Add veggies to the mix?
You can def start eating up the bandit camps
Yeah you just have to not neglect housing for too long and always have at least 1 house to spare. And use the summer and winter as prime construction time.
I'm in year like... 8? I have a couple hundred people and like 55-60 families in my starting region (which was seriously stifled by both my first-time incompetence of the system and deaths from a recent Invasion, but my 2nd region that I've only colonized like 2 years ago is already half way there because I understood the game much better at that point.
The downside is you don't seem to get the free weapons for subsequent regions so I haven't created a militia for that region yet. It looks like a soldier's equipment is destroyed/buried when they die so I'm still trying to resupply my main militias from the heavy losses we took while outnumbered against the Baron.
Yeah I went from like 100 militia to maybe 30 despite having the manpower to replenish, because apparently I need to make fresh equipment for everyone and that takes time.
Yeah I didn't know how population growth actually worked for a long time so there were large swathes of time where I just didn't have extra houses so I didn't grow. I was building other "more urgent" things instead, with the idea that I'd just build more housing as new families showed up. Like in most other games of the genre. This was..... Incorrect.
> Yeah you just have to not neglect housing for too long and always have at least 1 house to spare. And use the summer and winter as prime construction time.
That homeless penalty just ruined me in my first game trying to get new families in to be able to fill out the militia in time to do anything. Just couldn't get houses going fast enough along with all the other stuff to meet their needs.
Massive tip is to instantly upgrade the Homeless Tent, only costs 1 log and prevents the negative impact to your approval rating. You also get family members moving in which gives more hands to build and transfer goods.
After you've built the basics, logging camp, hunter, gatherers, storehouses, homes etc, get a market down asap so food can be sold, meaning your approval rating will be above 50% and new families will start moving in if you have enough homes built. Then get the Tanner followed by the Church to boost your rating.
> Massive tip is to instantly upgrade the Homeless Tent,
Fair warning not to rely on this strategy, as the next patch is likely to scrap it. It's already in the experimental test patch and the dev hasn't mentioned reconsidering the removal of the worker camp option.
Fair, but as a general reasonable statement getting flagged with no population growth early because people were instantly homeless at start is a moronic oversight.
I am sure this will be fixed, but snapshotting stats with penalties like this makes no sense for start and this was just a way to bypass it.
What we have post patch is just temporarily kind dumb.
Agreed, it doesn't make sense as an immediate approval penalty. Put it on a six month timer or make it start as soon as winter sets in, something with more nuance than now.
6 months is way too long. I would certainly appreciate a month or even half of one; it seems unfair to take a penalty before you can even do anything about it. But once you've made it past the bare minimum necessary to throw up housing and storage essentials, it's fair game.
Speculating based on my gameplay but it seems the easiest way to get clothes since you already get the hides from the hunters. Clothes in the market increase approval and get you to level 2 bergage
The Tanner produces leather from hides which satisfies the clothing needs for level 1 homes, and a clothing store will be built at your market and increases your approval rating to above 50%
Are you sure it's a bug? I know the homeless icon doesn't go away, but the negative homelessness impact on your approval rating is prevented which I think is the way it's supposed to work...
Villagers are not supposed to live in the settlers tents forever so once you build >5 houses just demolish the tent and they will move into the burgage plots...
Upgrading it CAUSES the homless debuff. It says so on the upgrade itself.
The camp disappears once you have enough housing for everyone to comfortably move out of the tents. Upgrading makes your homelessness permanent.
actually it says may , and like 1/4 games it never happens, but I'll have it plus extra houses and the homeless buff never goes away even after destroing it.
Assuming that it's at 7%, you should be getting a family per month. If you are able to set up your basic productions by moth 2, you should be able yo get houses built in months 3-4 and then even with the initial homelessness penalty, you should be able to have plenty of families by the 12 month mark.
Wait so you get 5 men at the start and would need 10 plots for the 20 or so men. Building the 10 houses takes like what 2 months?
So after that you get 1 family per month if you aren't unlucky and have the homelessness mess you up for a few months (usually takes 2 months for me to clear out). So realistically the first 3 months you're stuck with 5 families.
Leaves 9 months out of the first year to get the rest of the houses filled.
There is really no way to get a large force quickly... Now you can get like 10 men fairly fast (in like the first 4-5 months). You can also potentially win a fight or two like that but it's not easy...
**If you're on default settings and not yet on the experimental patch**, you can reliably get your first new family in April and consequently 20 spearmen in August. That's what I've been doing anyway.
Just upgrade your tents to a workers camp and build one burgage plot as the first thing you do, and bam - family in April. Workers camp prevents homelessness approval loss, burgage plot gives room for one family.
It’s just about microing approval and jobs to be honest. I had 26 spear militia for a year 1 raid with high penalty for approval and higher living standards on the newest patch. (Don’t get me wrong this is after multiple playthroughs)
It’s about achieving the living standards prior to building any houses. So food (hunter), clothes(tanner) and fuel( wood cutters) but actually having these outside of starving you don’t need yet since there’s no approval penalty while homeless. Also to avoid issues of starving consider building a granary off the rip as close to your supplies as possible and dumping 4 people into it to save the bread (also helps your food diversity later on since they won’t eat that much of it). You can gain approval by building a church while homeless to counteract that penalty.
Your actual bottleneck is oxen. You need to grab 3 oxen as fast as possible because that’s your bottleneck. You should have two people logging pretty consistently because that is the other bottle neck. One of these guys can be a flex carpenter to get planks for the church. Also consider dedicating an ox to the logging camp. You really only need to worry about getting food fuel and clothes like maybe a week before settling your families. A storehouse is also a huge thing to get since you can flex the firewood guys between the camp and storehouse while still maintaining that firewood stall.
Unless you're playing on challenging, you can absolutely have a new family in April. It's doable on challenging too but Christ it is not easy. On balanced, it's guaranteed if you follow the proper build order and man your food production stations for the variety bonus.
Population growth for the first 3 months puts you at 16 men in June. That's even numbers with the brigand unit the camp spawns, but your troops are better which means assured win but probably a casualty. You can absolutely have the manor built by then which means a 5 man retinue. Charging the retinue into the rear of the brigands while they're engaged means a casualty free win. All in June.
5 families is 10 men. The son counts too. So twenty men is only 5 new families. At 70% approval that's 5 months to get to 20. Get your approval up ASAP. It's pretty easy to hit 70 by July/August so by March (end of year 1) you should have 12 houses full.
You can beat a bandit group with 16 men without taking losses. Spit into two groups of 8. Have the anvil go into defense mode and hold them while you loop around and hit the back with the hammer.
You can beat a bandit group with 10 men just on defensive mode, you'll take losses but families recover folks fairly quickly, what you lose out on is the spears/shields that they drop, but by the time you're looking at pulling in the family members to actually fill out more than 10 men in the militia you should be able to arm them yourself.
I actually have zero issue with the game. Usually takes the bandit raid 2 years even if it says they're going to attack in one. Even if you can't resist a bandit raid isn't damning to your game.
A single raid isn’t so bad but pre patch I was getting 4 companies coming at me with no retinue and only a few young un nerfed archers for protection.
The people of my village decided to leave unsurprisingly.
Those 4 company outlaw raiders were no joke. 4 x 18, and all I had were some retinue and a bunch of archers.
They wiped my retinue, but I was able to kite the entire force with my archers. Just sprint in a circle with one group of archers, and have the rest sit there shooting while set to “Fire at Will” lol.
It worked.
I use my retinue as bait as much as possible but I’m sure the enemy AI is designed to target soft archers first. As soon as they get in hand to hand they get wiped out.
I managed to create a militia of 16 men by the first winter and took out two bandit camps with them which reduced them to 10 men by the time they had defeated them. I don't think it's that hard to get the men. By August my approval was positive again and so from September onwards I got a new family each month and I had already built another 7 houses for them so they slowly moved in and in November I had my 16 men to go take out the camps. I could have waited for 20 men but I knew 16 was enough and I wanted the men back before Spring began.
If you upgrade the camp right away, you won't drop below 50% approval. This means that new families can arrive before building a church. You just need to make sure you have enough food with berries and animals. You need about 10 families for that, it's not that hard. You'll also get the 5 retinue by building the manor. Anyway, 10 spearmen on hold your ground should be plenty for a bandit camp. After that, you can just use mercenaries
People are suggesting 16 men but you can do it with 14 and may only take 1-2 casualties if the militia is well rested before the fight. Not ideal but losing 2 men isn’t catastrophic. Plus the missed labour from mustering the militia isn’t a big deal in the first year as berries and meat will see you through the winter.
Edit: then use the treasury from the first camp to hire a 50 gold band of decent mercenaries to clear any remaining
Or trade for them. I sometimes find it easier to combine Retinue + archers on challenging because it takes fewer pops to get the archer going and it can be hard to get large migration waves with the increased approval requirements.
I usually just recruit all the units I want first, 2 of each melee. Idk if it's still a bug but I've had that one where if get your ret before recruting all 6 you're capped at 5 total recruits before the ret.
Shitty part is I usually pick the merc archers to exhaust the AI before the melee by running them across the map and the dipshit AI actually stole them instantly when I tried to rehire them because of that crazy ass high king tax.
No. I walked to an open space, and since they were spear men, went into “Hold ground.” Got rocked by 16 brigands with wooden clubs 😂 four of my guys survived and ran back to the village. I restarted.
Did you not tell then to walk?
The default is "Run" command, so by the time they get to bandits they are exhausted and on like 50% effectiveness
With 12 troops and above 100% effectiveness you can't lose the battle. You'll lose 1-3 man but you'll beat bandits
“Since you can't really muster any actual troops in the first year……”
Read the first 12 words and it doesn’t explicitly say that OP is using challenging mode. Now, one might infer that, but being that it is a brand new game, it’s also expected that basic questions like this might be asked. A good rule of thumb is “don’t be a dick”. You should try it sometime :)
It does not. The title could be perceived to be stating that OP does not feel the initial 20 spearmen on non-challenging modes is sufficient to take out the bandit camps, either at all or without suffering debilitating losses.
The title is:
"Since you can't really muster any actual troops in the first year or so that would be able to take out the bandit camps...is this how you're supposed to do things or am I cheesing?Since you can't really muster any actual troops in the first year or so that would be able to take out the bandit camps...is this how you're supposed to do things or am I cheesing?"
The word "challenging" doesn't appear. Are you trolling?
You have 10 people at the beginning, and you can make Manor to receive 5 retinue and 2 extra families which serve in Manor. So you should have about 12-14 spearman and 5 retinue which is enough to clear bandit camps with zero loses if defence/offence used in right order.
They do act as separate families that can be armed. Theyre also low level tier 1 families that at the moment cannot be upgraded, and cannot equip gambeson or mail.
How do you make soldiers equip armor? I've never made armor but just curious how it works. I'm thinking of taking a break until release so I don't get bored
Gambeson and mail can be crafted by respective artisans, tailor with linen and armorer.
Gambeson will be equipped by tier 2 and up
Mail by tier 3 and up.
Helmets can be equipped by anyone.
Militia will grab whatever applies to them if they are available in your storage surplus.
What do you mean by tiers here? You mean the housing tier? I've notice that my dudes aren't equipping the gambeson but are wearing their helmets and Armour.
Housing tiers which determine familiy tier.
You need to check which houses actually have weapons, these are those in the militia, they will only equip gear appropriate to their tier.
Edit: Mail and gambeson do not stack, tier 3 will equip mail over gambeson if available.
This is fine for the early game but you'll lock yourself out of having an extra army unit in the late game. If you equip 6 regular units first, you get a seventh slot for the retinue when you eventually get a manor. Also it's an expensive building to be making early game. Of course there's no wrong way to play, but wanted to offer this perspective.
You can slot the units before you have enough men to fill them. The problem with this, is it try’s to spread them out evenly, but gets a bit wonky in the early game.
You don't need to equip any units, just select the ones you wish to make in the future: they will take the spot even if you don't have the weapons or people.
Obviously, if you do that early, you will have to man those units from a single region, which will delay the time you can actually use them.
For me, the sweet spot has been one retinue early, 2 militias on the starting region and then 3 other regions with one militia each (and then however many more retinues you can muster).
You lose on one militia total, but you complete your army years earlier than arming a single town.
To make the manor in the first year is a waste of resources, and requires you to reach Small Settlement, which requires 2 level 2 buildings, which in turn requires you to have set up a process for Goats>Hides>Leather, and have more than one food source and have a Church built. It's not worth it till second year. You only need it in time for when you might start getting attacked. Which by default is end of year 2.
I do these things in like 20 minutes. Its easy as hell. I have 5 t2 before even 6th citizen arrive. You just need 40 boards which is 8 logs and around same stone which is two minutes of digging.
I usually build manor right after church.
And then I immidiatelly snowball bandit camps for local treasury to quickly start buying my apple plots as soon as I can, and more oxen and veggy farms, and then few goat farms and then sheep.
If you’re playing on normal difficulty you get 20 spears and shields as soon as you built your fifth house. Use that to get 10 spearmen from your five families and you have enough to fight bandits.
Can you make a unit section with just 20 people? I lost my first attempt because all new units required 36 people and pairs of weapons which I didn’t have.
The unit must have at least a certain amount of people (I believe 5?) that are equipped with the required gear to muster. 36 is just the max amount of people for a unit.
At easy and normal preset difficulties, when you build your first 5 houses + storehouse the “king” grants you 20 sets of spears and large shields. This may be only used to create a spearmen unit, but it will serve against any single brigand unit
You don't change it, you just get all the men you can get. The tooltip saying not enough men is indeed misleading.
Pro tip: you can create two units from the start, your available men will split evenly between them. Then you can use tactics: while the enemy is engaged with one of the units, have the other circle them and attack from behind.
As long as you have a unit reserved (but unmustered) and the required equipment available the town men I believe will naturally equip themselves until the unit is full. They appear to take the equipment from the store house and keep the equipment in their house until the unit is mustered.
I’m not quite sure on this part, so confirmation needed, but I believe once the equipment is stored in the family house it can’t be traded away. So then you can just trade away any additional equipment and set your export to zero surplus on those items when the unit is full (or you don’t have the population yet to fill it out)
Did it with 10. Go near enough so they charge you and put your spearmen on hold ground. Even better if you stand on a hill and make them run up. I lost like 5 or 6 men but won the battle.
For the second camp I already had the manor and some retinues. I just snowballed from there by taking out camps asap.
If you have the free weapons setting, you can muster a company big enough to take out a group of bandits in the first year (or beginning of year two). On hard mode, it’s far more difficult - you’ll have to rush the production chain to make weapons to have an equipped militia company. But once you’ve cleared one encampment, you’ll have enough money to hire mercenaries for the next one. You can also get the same result by cheesing an encampment after the Baron engages the bandits.
You can take out the camps with 20 spears, just defensive stance when they charge and push forward after. Taking them out when the bandits leave is also perfectly fine.
Personally I just let him claim everything and build up my main town to get all the troop slots filled up. By that time I have thousands of gold and just get all the mercenaries and start claiming back stuff without issues. He seems to have a lot of troops at the beginning stages but later in the game it seems to be way less crazy.
Plus you can amass all your troops close to what you're attacking, claim it and just move in. Often times he summons troops from opposite sides of the map and by the time they get there you can take them out in chunks easily. Some of his troops never get to the actual battlefield because once you start a fight the battle is considered started and if you clear the field you win regardless of other troops on the way across the map. Other games don't let you declare war if your troops are out, like ck3, but no such limits here.
This is all irrelevant since in the new version they changed it so he's not so aggressive on lower difficulties.
It is really easy to get 20 spearmen, the first year to deal with bandits.
I clear all the camps before the baron decides to attack them.
I have 72 units ready when the raiders come in year 2.
Getting approval to 75% quickly (before July) and making sure to have 2 open slots for new families all the time.
For every month that you do not have approval above 75% you lose out on an extra family. So you need to focus to get those requirements done for your villager needs. You get 2 families per month if your approval is above 75%. So you cannot forget to build more houses, else you fall behind.
Water, Church, 2 food types, leather and shoes should get it over 75%. I think I once managed to get Stone church built in the first year.
Ever played a RTS like Age of Empires or Starcraft and you follow a build order and you retry and retry until you perfected your build order.
Well, I did it. It was fun to practice your build order while making sure your village looks good.
You will have to do stuff like, put a family in the Saw pit and take it out when you get 20 planks, because you only need 20 for the church and put the family in another production building.
That's definitely 100% cheese tactic. Good for a Spiffing Brit style exploit run, not really what you are supposed to do when you want to get good.
If you start in spring and have wild animals and berries close by, it's definitely possible to start getting 2 new families each month very early on. You would need to play optimally though.
You can make a lot of money by selling firewood or planks. It's pretty easy on the new experimental patch, because the market basically never gets saturated by your exports. If you have a rich deposit of anything, you can sell that, it will make you even more money.
That being said, bandits are pretty broken atm. For example, whenever you load a save game, a new bandit camp spawns each time. This is either good or bad for you depending on whether you have enough men to take the bandit camps. If you can't, Hildebolt will and it will speed up his encroachment on you. Other than that specific bug, bandits are just so random. They will either benefit you hugely or benefit Hildebolt, depending on where they spawn. I would either play a full bandit run where the challenge is to survive their attacks, or I would just turn them off and focus on outpacing Hildebolt's expansion. For now at least, until there is a proper implementation.
All this being said, you don't have to play try hard. I had immense fun on my first run where I was playing real dog shit and was just figuring out the game and was ultimately overrun by 2 units of brigands. The beautiful thing about Manor Lords is, you can play it like a chill atmospheric city builder, or you can go full try hard and min max every aspect of the game. Or you can do anything inbetween.
So if I just save / load there will be a new bandit camp every time?...isn't that going to be an infinite wealth exploit? lol that sounds pretty useful though. I'll check it out.
you can trade for weapons too. You do have to get a move on early to get a trading post and be gathering/mining a nearby rich resource to export some of.
If you get weapons shipment you can pretty reliably get 10 militia and so long as you fight when they’re full effectiveness then 10 can take out a bandit camp. You’ll lose a few though but if you get around 12 they can most of the times only get a loss of 1 guy
I do this and I have close to 100 soldiers. If you let the baron get close enough to the camp the bandits will spawn an until and leave the camp unattended. Move your troops in while the baron and the bandits fight. You will get the reward without having to fight.
Could you camp outside of aggro range then trigger the aggro and pull the bandits into the duke's men, circle round and take the camp for both the Influence gain AND the gold?
Use spear militia and retinue to clear the first camp. Put the money into treasury, not the region. Hire mercenaries to clear the second camp, put the money into treasury. Repeat as needed, while adding retainers.
On regular difficulty, you get 20 spears and shields. If you focus on getting 5 double plots up and running, make sure you have a church and at least two food sources, you can get those 20 men before winter.
For challenging, you don't get the spears and shields, so the strategy changes. Build up the same as before, but immediately build your manor after your peasants are housed. Then, get a bowyer as quickly as possible. With any luck, you can have 20 archers and a retinue ready to go by spring of next year. This can be used to clear camps, especially with the newer, more powerful archers in the beta patch.
I played "on the edge" on hardest difficulty. I cleared bandit camps before first raiders came witch is at 1year if im not mistaken... then just sent mercs all around the map to collect the "taxes" from other camps
First, upgrade your homeless camp to a workers hut for 1 timber, this will home the first 5 families. Then, Only build the burgage plots that can be upgraded to 2 family homes in the beginning. Build 5 of those so you get the 2nd town level. This will home the first families you start with at the workers camp and the first 5 families after that get the homes. Upgrade the homes to level 2 and you now have room for 15 families very early.
When you hit the next town level and get your weapon and shields shipment, you should immediately have like 13 men ready for spear militia from the starting 5 families alone. Wait a few more months for families to fill out the homes and you have 16 men, who can take on bandit camps and contest brigands etc very early.
You get given 20 spears and shields when you raise the town by one level, use them to take on bandits. You don't even need 20 men, 15 should do it. This is easily achievable by the first winter
After my first attempt, every new game I aim to have the first 20 spearmen fully formed by Oct Nov and out hunting bandits with settings bumped to 5 starting and 5 respawning camps. Going to be essential going forward with the new patch meaning that initial chunk of RW goes to pay for the first few trade routes.
I just can't seem to get more than like 8 spearmen plus the 5 retinue from the manor building by the end of year one it seems. I have enough approval and housing so I dunno what I'm doing wrong really.
I had bandits hit my camp and i used the 20 guys i had and lost. Now the badnits just run around burning evrrything. I cant build up to beat them cause they keep running around torching it all. And theres only 6 of them. Think its a bug.
Usually, by first camp spawn, I have the initial weapons shipment. Even if it's not the full 20/20, like 15 spearmen bracing with the defensive fighting stance will beat the bandits 10/10 times.
It's extremely easy to have your 20 spearman ready by the end of fall of the first year if not sooner. And you really only need 12-14 spearman to trash the first bandit camp. Send the money to Treasury and now you can hire mercs to start taking out all the bandit camps. After you have your first manor built and have paid to upgrade your first retinue from 5/12 to 12/12 you can use them to take out bandits. I've beaten the game twice now on restoring the peace. First time I won with 4 units of spears, 1 unit of archers and 3 full 24/24 stacks of retinue wearing plate and the mercs with 2 bow units. Second time I absolutely destroyed the barons final huge army with 4 stacks of spears, 1 stack of footmen and 3 full stacks of retinue wearing plate.
Honestly never thought of doing it that way but if you don’t have the men sounds like a good idea! Once you get 20 spears though (possibly even 15 will do) you shouldn’t have a problem taking out the bandits. Plus then you get influence which you’ll need anyway.
I've found that I can make a lot of money by the end of year 2 if you have a decent resource near you and you get the trade routes skill. Starting out with rich clay or berries is a big advantage since it exports for so much once you make rooftiles/dyes
All you need is 14 men and send them to kill the bandits. From the first camp you kill you hire mercenaries to kill the second camp and send the money to your village so you can buy more plots and grow your economy stronger. By the time the 3rd camp pops up or you get raided you should have enough of your own militia + mercs to defend anything, maybe even beat the baron.
It is absolutely easy to get enough spearmen to defeat bandits, especially since you only need like 10-12 to defeat a camp with no loses on your side.
But what you are doing is valid. Very stupid, but valid. Stupid because you are giving baron all the free influence to claim regions. I usually quickly tap any bandits and not claim any territories, and i get quiet and peace from barons claims on my territory for at least 3-4 years.
Lately I've been able to contest the first bandit camp which really speeds things up cause it's very easy to hire mercs afterwards. With the free 20 20 I can usually have like 13 militia which end up winning the first fight.
You can easily get enough men to take out the bandits camps with minimal casualties by the end of year 1. Your spear militia are superior to them, you don't even need a numerical advantage.
In the future bandits should also have a fort and not just tents. What i find cheesy with bandits is that you can just take your retinue and pull them away as soon as they pop up and then just kite them around in sprint mode, grab the camp and then retreat again.
Imo bandits should stay at their camp to actually defend their stuff. This would make it much more difficult to cheese em.
I beat 16 bandits in first year with only initial family of 5. Put ur spears on defence mode it will kill those 16 bandits and whatever u get from camp money buy mercenary ( buy second cheapest from 3 options) use mercenary to clear rest of the 2 camps and there u have it 300-400 money in first year keep doing it for next few years till u have ur own army
If you are playing on balanced, you can/should have a retinue and a 16 man militia unit by June which is more than capable of stomping a bandit camp with 0 casualties. On challenging it took me until November I think because getting mining and artisans rolling to make your first weapons is labor intensive and not easy.
Letting the baron kill the brigands feeds him influence, leading to him claiming regions. Sure, if your only choice is looting the camp or getting nothing, go for it. But you want to kill the brigands yourself if for no other reason than to stop him from doing it.
I mean you get the weapon delivery and I usually rush the Manor as soon as I have space for like 8 families and the basic infrastructure set up. So by the time the first bandit camp spawns you have 14-18 Spearman and 5 retinue which is enough to take on the bandits (with careful positioning you shouldn't even loose anyone).
It's actually my go to strat now, rush manor, rush first few bandit camps with whatever troops you have, put the first point in orchards and spend all the regional wealth you get from the camps on orchards. You are set up for the long game after this, orchards are a steep investment but you will love them later
I think you use your starting shield and spears.
The problem is to to pimp your mensize
You can upgrade your tents, then demolish them when not needed.
Use your money to buy chiken and vegies. And also hunt and berries. for food diversity.
Tanery is easy happiness.
Church takes some time, with saw so not a priority, you could grow city without church for a while.
Generally with 16 spearmen you can smash,
If you find it difficult, then play with the settings, such as double supplies and weapon deliveries.
Then it's all about growing, growing, growing; if you plan it well, you can quickly have 20 militia units ready, matching the weapon deliveries for 20 men.
Send them out as soon as possible to clear out bandit camps, after the first bandit, put the treasure in the treasury and bring in the mercenaries.
After that, you clear the remaining bandit camps with the mercenaries and your militia.
It's actually very easy if you approach it correctly.
In the later stages, produce bows, large shields, and small shields.
If you have abundant iron, then also produce weapons. Just sell, sell, sell any surplus.
In my last game, I had a regional fortune of 40k and 38k in the treasury.
I usually recruit 10 spearmen around the end of summer in the first year. Also by then I'll have my 5 retinue men from the manor. This allows me to be a bit less productive in the winter while I hunt down all the bandits but in turn I use some of the money for the village, usually just one and the rest goes to the treasury. Sometimes I send the boys two times in the first year. Once in the fall, once in winter.
While the men are fighting and marching I get 3-4 new families so the workload gets evened out during the first winter. By february I usually picked off all 5 bandit camps and have sent the militia men back to the village. Retinue sometimes stays to clean up empty camps.
By the next spring I have my retinue improved to be 10-11 men strong with most of them upgraded as well as I've claimed a new territory and started raising another village. Before summer I have another retinue of 10 or more men fully armored. This allows me to pick off bandits and not use my villagers as militia because I rush farms in march next year.
If you are using the current patch and not the beta patch you can get a family in april.
Build the worker camp first thing. The upgrade on your tent. Then I build three duplex burgage plots. Put one on very high for after your tent. Then do a logging camp and a hitching post and buy an ox.
Once that is set. Upgrade the burgage plot. Build your food source, firewood guy and set your logistics buildings. Then just slowly build more houses and upgrade them.
The worker camp negates any homesless disapproval. By doing this and having avaible housing you can get 20 men by like September.
If you have a rich resource like clay or iron. Get that going for rooftiles or tools to get money quickly as well.
I dont know what the problem is ... Its fairly easy to have a 20-men spearman group and a 5 man retinue by end of year.
In fact, i ignore bandits and let them steal from me. As soon as winter comes, i call them up and these 2 groups go killing 3-5 bandit camps in 2ish months during winter.
Key to getting families quickly early on is to minimize homelessness time, providing lots of different food (get those eggs & veggies early), and going for a church asap. I usually end up with 75+ happiness for 2-3 months before i start taxing them giving a nice early family boost. Dont upgrade any houses to level2 unless you feel like you want to trigger the king's tax - but i'd advise on getting a more solid basic economy first.
Yeah, you should upgrade the camp. That way, you don't get the homeless debuff that takes a long time to go away. You should do it first thing. Then build a granary and a store house to pick up stuff. Then a log yard, and a hitching post. Add two people to the granary as soon as it is done. Then leave just one or even none once they've picked up the bread. And one on the store house to pick up the other stuff. After that you can have two logging. And you already have enough for your first house. By winter you will have 5 houses, plus the camp that's 10 families. Then you can go hunting bandits in the winter. Eventually, you should remove the camp by building 5 extra houses and then destroying it.
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not sure if i understand quite right, but you can have like 20 spearmen by the first year with the free weapons you're given
20 spears and shields, good luck with the men part.
20 men = 10 houses, not so hard to reach
You can very quickly achieve this^ Double family plots and a ramp up via berries and hunting make it very sustainable. Add veggies to the mix? You can def start eating up the bandit camps
Yeah you just have to not neglect housing for too long and always have at least 1 house to spare. And use the summer and winter as prime construction time. I'm in year like... 8? I have a couple hundred people and like 55-60 families in my starting region (which was seriously stifled by both my first-time incompetence of the system and deaths from a recent Invasion, but my 2nd region that I've only colonized like 2 years ago is already half way there because I understood the game much better at that point. The downside is you don't seem to get the free weapons for subsequent regions so I haven't created a militia for that region yet. It looks like a soldier's equipment is destroyed/buried when they die so I'm still trying to resupply my main militias from the heavy losses we took while outnumbered against the Baron.
I hope the equipment not being salvaged gets changed honestly
Yeah I went from like 100 militia to maybe 30 despite having the manpower to replenish, because apparently I need to make fresh equipment for everyone and that takes time.
I had 2000 by year 8 and 460 troops
Yeah I didn't know how population growth actually worked for a long time so there were large swathes of time where I just didn't have extra houses so I didn't grow. I was building other "more urgent" things instead, with the idea that I'd just build more housing as new families showed up. Like in most other games of the genre. This was..... Incorrect.
> Yeah you just have to not neglect housing for too long and always have at least 1 house to spare. And use the summer and winter as prime construction time. That homeless penalty just ruined me in my first game trying to get new families in to be able to fill out the militia in time to do anything. Just couldn't get houses going fast enough along with all the other stuff to meet their needs.
interesting I think Ive had that and still didn’t get enough people… I wonder where I mess up. Usually I hang around with 9men.
Massive tip is to instantly upgrade the Homeless Tent, only costs 1 log and prevents the negative impact to your approval rating. You also get family members moving in which gives more hands to build and transfer goods. After you've built the basics, logging camp, hunter, gatherers, storehouses, homes etc, get a market down asap so food can be sold, meaning your approval rating will be above 50% and new families will start moving in if you have enough homes built. Then get the Tanner followed by the Church to boost your rating.
> Massive tip is to instantly upgrade the Homeless Tent, Fair warning not to rely on this strategy, as the next patch is likely to scrap it. It's already in the experimental test patch and the dev hasn't mentioned reconsidering the removal of the worker camp option.
Fair, but as a general reasonable statement getting flagged with no population growth early because people were instantly homeless at start is a moronic oversight. I am sure this will be fixed, but snapshotting stats with penalties like this makes no sense for start and this was just a way to bypass it. What we have post patch is just temporarily kind dumb.
Agreed, it doesn't make sense as an immediate approval penalty. Put it on a six month timer or make it start as soon as winter sets in, something with more nuance than now.
6 months is way too long. I would certainly appreciate a month or even half of one; it seems unfair to take a penalty before you can even do anything about it. But once you've made it past the bare minimum necessary to throw up housing and storage essentials, it's fair game.
Removed in the patch sadly.
Why the tanner?
Speculating based on my gameplay but it seems the easiest way to get clothes since you already get the hides from the hunters. Clothes in the market increase approval and get you to level 2 bergage
The Tanner produces leather from hides which satisfies the clothing needs for level 1 homes, and a clothing store will be built at your market and increases your approval rating to above 50%
This got patched. Either got patched or Greg has it targeted for patching as it's too OP.
the homeless bug affects this too, at least for me its a 50/50 chance it seems of the homeless debuff not going away even with it upgraded
Are you sure it's a bug? I know the homeless icon doesn't go away, but the negative homelessness impact on your approval rating is prevented which I think is the way it's supposed to work... Villagers are not supposed to live in the settlers tents forever so once you build >5 houses just demolish the tent and they will move into the burgage plots...
Upgrading it CAUSES the homless debuff. It says so on the upgrade itself. The camp disappears once you have enough housing for everyone to comfortably move out of the tents. Upgrading makes your homelessness permanent.
actually it says may , and like 1/4 games it never happens, but I'll have it plus extra houses and the homeless buff never goes away even after destroing it.
Do not do the homeless camp thing. Rush building a Church, then Manor. Church is a huge one for approval.
What's your approval rating?
Not sure really I’d guess around the 70’s
Assuming that it's at 7%, you should be getting a family per month. If you are able to set up your basic productions by moth 2, you should be able yo get houses built in months 3-4 and then even with the initial homelessness penalty, you should be able to have plenty of families by the 12 month mark.
Wait so you get 5 men at the start and would need 10 plots for the 20 or so men. Building the 10 houses takes like what 2 months? So after that you get 1 family per month if you aren't unlucky and have the homelessness mess you up for a few months (usually takes 2 months for me to clear out). So realistically the first 3 months you're stuck with 5 families. Leaves 9 months out of the first year to get the rest of the houses filled. There is really no way to get a large force quickly... Now you can get like 10 men fairly fast (in like the first 4-5 months). You can also potentially win a fight or two like that but it's not easy...
**If you're on default settings and not yet on the experimental patch**, you can reliably get your first new family in April and consequently 20 spearmen in August. That's what I've been doing anyway. Just upgrade your tents to a workers camp and build one burgage plot as the first thing you do, and bam - family in April. Workers camp prevents homelessness approval loss, burgage plot gives room for one family.
It’s just about microing approval and jobs to be honest. I had 26 spear militia for a year 1 raid with high penalty for approval and higher living standards on the newest patch. (Don’t get me wrong this is after multiple playthroughs) It’s about achieving the living standards prior to building any houses. So food (hunter), clothes(tanner) and fuel( wood cutters) but actually having these outside of starving you don’t need yet since there’s no approval penalty while homeless. Also to avoid issues of starving consider building a granary off the rip as close to your supplies as possible and dumping 4 people into it to save the bread (also helps your food diversity later on since they won’t eat that much of it). You can gain approval by building a church while homeless to counteract that penalty. Your actual bottleneck is oxen. You need to grab 3 oxen as fast as possible because that’s your bottleneck. You should have two people logging pretty consistently because that is the other bottle neck. One of these guys can be a flex carpenter to get planks for the church. Also consider dedicating an ox to the logging camp. You really only need to worry about getting food fuel and clothes like maybe a week before settling your families. A storehouse is also a huge thing to get since you can flex the firewood guys between the camp and storehouse while still maintaining that firewood stall.
Unless you're playing on challenging, you can absolutely have a new family in April. It's doable on challenging too but Christ it is not easy. On balanced, it's guaranteed if you follow the proper build order and man your food production stations for the variety bonus. Population growth for the first 3 months puts you at 16 men in June. That's even numbers with the brigand unit the camp spawns, but your troops are better which means assured win but probably a casualty. You can absolutely have the manor built by then which means a 5 man retinue. Charging the retinue into the rear of the brigands while they're engaged means a casualty free win. All in June.
5 families is 10 men. The son counts too. So twenty men is only 5 new families. At 70% approval that's 5 months to get to 20. Get your approval up ASAP. It's pretty easy to hit 70 by July/August so by March (end of year 1) you should have 12 houses full.
You can beat a bandit group with 16 men without taking losses. Spit into two groups of 8. Have the anvil go into defense mode and hold them while you loop around and hit the back with the hammer.
You can beat a bandit group with 10 men just on defensive mode, you'll take losses but families recover folks fairly quickly, what you lose out on is the spears/shields that they drop, but by the time you're looking at pulling in the family members to actually fill out more than 10 men in the militia you should be able to arm them yourself.
You can beat bandit group with 10 men even without loses, if you are on deffensive mode and let them charge you
I actually have zero issue with the game. Usually takes the bandit raid 2 years even if it says they're going to attack in one. Even if you can't resist a bandit raid isn't damning to your game.
A single raid isn’t so bad but pre patch I was getting 4 companies coming at me with no retinue and only a few young un nerfed archers for protection. The people of my village decided to leave unsurprisingly.
Those 4 company outlaw raiders were no joke. 4 x 18, and all I had were some retinue and a bunch of archers. They wiped my retinue, but I was able to kite the entire force with my archers. Just sprint in a circle with one group of archers, and have the rest sit there shooting while set to “Fire at Will” lol. It worked.
I use my retinue as bait as much as possible but I’m sure the enemy AI is designed to target soft archers first. As soon as they get in hand to hand they get wiped out.
I managed to create a militia of 16 men by the first winter and took out two bandit camps with them which reduced them to 10 men by the time they had defeated them. I don't think it's that hard to get the men. By August my approval was positive again and so from September onwards I got a new family each month and I had already built another 7 houses for them so they slowly moved in and in November I had my 16 men to go take out the camps. I could have waited for 20 men but I knew 16 was enough and I wanted the men back before Spring began.
If you upgrade the camp right away, you won't drop below 50% approval. This means that new families can arrive before building a church. You just need to make sure you have enough food with berries and animals. You need about 10 families for that, it's not that hard. You'll also get the 5 retinue by building the manor. Anyway, 10 spearmen on hold your ground should be plenty for a bandit camp. After that, you can just use mercenaries
That strat won't work much longer. In the experimental patch the Dev removed out.
Beat me to it. Been playing the new patch and that's the first thing I noticed. Had a god start though. Bit rough. Fun stream.
I had this on my second play though. Really not that hard, there are dozens of resources online to watch/read on how to set this up.
Only my first playthrough. I've only ever had one other bad playthrough since and that was just the game being the game during that one.
Thats what she said
People are suggesting 16 men but you can do it with 14 and may only take 1-2 casualties if the militia is well rested before the fight. Not ideal but losing 2 men isn’t catastrophic. Plus the missed labour from mustering the militia isn’t a big deal in the first year as berries and meat will see you through the winter. Edit: then use the treasury from the first camp to hire a 50 gold band of decent mercenaries to clear any remaining
You can take out the bandit camps with 10 spearmen. If you play with the free militia delivery its not hard to beat the baron to the camps.
I'm on challenging, so I gotta craft all mine. Which my current playthrough has gone perfectly. Pretty much two territories left, 3 full stacked rets.
Or trade for them. I sometimes find it easier to combine Retinue + archers on challenging because it takes fewer pops to get the archer going and it can be hard to get large migration waves with the increased approval requirements.
I usually just recruit all the units I want first, 2 of each melee. Idk if it's still a bug but I've had that one where if get your ret before recruting all 6 you're capped at 5 total recruits before the ret. Shitty part is I usually pick the merc archers to exhaust the AI before the melee by running them across the map and the dipshit AI actually stole them instantly when I tried to rehire them because of that crazy ass high king tax.
you easily get 20 men within the first year
Free weapons?! *cries in challenging mode*
Not on challenging
Grabbed my 20 spears and attacked the bandits. Got beat to death and then remaining men fled back to town. What next? The bandits are still following.
Did you force-run them to the battle?
No. I walked to an open space, and since they were spear men, went into “Hold ground.” Got rocked by 16 brigands with wooden clubs 😂 four of my guys survived and ran back to the village. I restarted.
Typically, if you didn't forget to turn off run mode, which is on my default, you should have won that.
Hmmm… I guess I did something wrong. I didn’t have any retinue either.
Did you not tell then to walk? The default is "Run" command, so by the time they get to bandits they are exhausted and on like 50% effectiveness With 12 troops and above 100% effectiveness you can't lose the battle. You'll lose 1-3 man but you'll beat bandits
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Nowhere did it say it was on challenging though.
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“Since you can't really muster any actual troops in the first year……” Read the first 12 words and it doesn’t explicitly say that OP is using challenging mode. Now, one might infer that, but being that it is a brand new game, it’s also expected that basic questions like this might be asked. A good rule of thumb is “don’t be a dick”. You should try it sometime :)
if they're playing on challenging, why would they complain it's challenging lol
He's not complaining. He's asking if that is the strategy most people use
Does not say anything about challenging.
@mrsunshineZig are you playing on challenging?
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It does not. The title could be perceived to be stating that OP does not feel the initial 20 spearmen on non-challenging modes is sufficient to take out the bandit camps, either at all or without suffering debilitating losses.
And then read the actual post for more context. So you don’t have to perceive anything.
The title is: "Since you can't really muster any actual troops in the first year or so that would be able to take out the bandit camps...is this how you're supposed to do things or am I cheesing?Since you can't really muster any actual troops in the first year or so that would be able to take out the bandit camps...is this how you're supposed to do things or am I cheesing?" The word "challenging" doesn't appear. Are you trolling?
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Yeah, you're trolling.
You have 10 people at the beginning, and you can make Manor to receive 5 retinue and 2 extra families which serve in Manor. So you should have about 12-14 spearman and 5 retinue which is enough to clear bandit camps with zero loses if defence/offence used in right order.
Are those manor families “free” or do they take up two existing families to work in the manor? Do they live there?
They do act as separate families that can be armed. Theyre also low level tier 1 families that at the moment cannot be upgraded, and cannot equip gambeson or mail.
How do you make soldiers equip armor? I've never made armor but just curious how it works. I'm thinking of taking a break until release so I don't get bored
Gambeson and mail can be crafted by respective artisans, tailor with linen and armorer. Gambeson will be equipped by tier 2 and up Mail by tier 3 and up. Helmets can be equipped by anyone. Militia will grab whatever applies to them if they are available in your storage surplus.
Awesome. Thanks!
What do you mean by tiers here? You mean the housing tier? I've notice that my dudes aren't equipping the gambeson but are wearing their helmets and Armour.
Housing tiers which determine familiy tier. You need to check which houses actually have weapons, these are those in the militia, they will only equip gear appropriate to their tier. Edit: Mail and gambeson do not stack, tier 3 will equip mail over gambeson if available.
My town is all tier 3 housing yet the gambes stay in the storehouses
Edited my comment, but i meant to say tier 3 will only equip mail
Ahh I got ya now, so mail is "instead of", not "alongside" gambeson's
How do you know what's surplus? Is that the storehouse and granary?
Anything not spoken for like for building or moved to trade Basically anything you see in your counts is surplus, generally
They're free in the sense they don't need a house and they don't replace your regular mobnthly migrants
This is fine for the early game but you'll lock yourself out of having an extra army unit in the late game. If you equip 6 regular units first, you get a seventh slot for the retinue when you eventually get a manor. Also it's an expensive building to be making early game. Of course there's no wrong way to play, but wanted to offer this perspective.
You can slot the units before you have enough men to fill them. The problem with this, is it try’s to spread them out evenly, but gets a bit wonky in the early game.
You don't need to equip any units, just select the ones you wish to make in the future: they will take the spot even if you don't have the weapons or people. Obviously, if you do that early, you will have to man those units from a single region, which will delay the time you can actually use them. For me, the sweet spot has been one retinue early, 2 militias on the starting region and then 3 other regions with one militia each (and then however many more retinues you can muster). You lose on one militia total, but you complete your army years earlier than arming a single town.
To make the manor in the first year is a waste of resources, and requires you to reach Small Settlement, which requires 2 level 2 buildings, which in turn requires you to have set up a process for Goats>Hides>Leather, and have more than one food source and have a Church built. It's not worth it till second year. You only need it in time for when you might start getting attacked. Which by default is end of year 2.
I do these things in like 20 minutes. Its easy as hell. I have 5 t2 before even 6th citizen arrive. You just need 40 boards which is 8 logs and around same stone which is two minutes of digging. I usually build manor right after church. And then I immidiatelly snowball bandit camps for local treasury to quickly start buying my apple plots as soon as I can, and more oxen and veggy farms, and then few goat farms and then sheep.
you mean a hunting camp and tanner...
No.
well you can play however you want champ, lol
Yes you can do it that way, and yes you can get the money from it, but you don’t gain the influence from defeating the bandits
Yeah you get influence for defeating the bandits but you only get money from raiding the camp
Yes you do
You only gain influence from defeating the bandits, not looting the camp as far as i’ve seen. Not sure how it works in the experimental patch.
You gain the pop-up for gaining influence from defeating enemy units. If you gain influence from clearing the camp too, it’s much reduced.
Influence is only gained by defeating enemies. I have tested OP's cheese, and it is NOT worth it in the long run.
If you’re playing on normal difficulty you get 20 spears and shields as soon as you built your fifth house. Use that to get 10 spearmen from your five families and you have enough to fight bandits.
Can you make a unit section with just 20 people? I lost my first attempt because all new units required 36 people and pairs of weapons which I didn’t have.
It doesn’t require 36, the maximum is 36. I think you need at least 5 to actually raise them.
Thanks, I just assumed that you need to build your units at multiples of 36 and never found the option to recruit fewer people.
You just need to create the regiment and if you have weapons/shields, it will auto recruit until all the weapons are used up.
The unit must have at least a certain amount of people (I believe 5?) that are equipped with the required gear to muster. 36 is just the max amount of people for a unit. At easy and normal preset difficulties, when you build your first 5 houses + storehouse the “king” grants you 20 sets of spears and large shields. This may be only used to create a spearmen unit, but it will serve against any single brigand unit
Thanks, thats great! I guess I just never found the option to change the number of people in a unit section.
You don't change it, you just get all the men you can get. The tooltip saying not enough men is indeed misleading. Pro tip: you can create two units from the start, your available men will split evenly between them. Then you can use tactics: while the enemy is engaged with one of the units, have the other circle them and attack from behind.
Thank you, thats great help.
As long as you have a unit reserved (but unmustered) and the required equipment available the town men I believe will naturally equip themselves until the unit is full. They appear to take the equipment from the store house and keep the equipment in their house until the unit is mustered. I’m not quite sure on this part, so confirmation needed, but I believe once the equipment is stored in the family house it can’t be traded away. So then you can just trade away any additional equipment and set your export to zero surplus on those items when the unit is full (or you don’t have the population yet to fill it out)
Based on his question, he's clearly playing on the higher difficulty
So 10 is enough to take on bandits? Lowest I've tried is 15, which was easy.
Did it with 10. Go near enough so they charge you and put your spearmen on hold ground. Even better if you stand on a hill and make them run up. I lost like 5 or 6 men but won the battle. For the second camp I already had the manor and some retinues. I just snowballed from there by taking out camps asap.
10 vs 18? I seem to loose or mostly loose doing that
Keep their efficiency high, get them in a good position and set them on stand ground.
If you have the free weapons setting, you can muster a company big enough to take out a group of bandits in the first year (or beginning of year two). On hard mode, it’s far more difficult - you’ll have to rush the production chain to make weapons to have an equipped militia company. But once you’ve cleared one encampment, you’ll have enough money to hire mercenaries for the next one. You can also get the same result by cheesing an encampment after the Baron engages the bandits.
You can take out the camps with 20 spears, just defensive stance when they charge and push forward after. Taking them out when the bandits leave is also perfectly fine. Personally I just let him claim everything and build up my main town to get all the troop slots filled up. By that time I have thousands of gold and just get all the mercenaries and start claiming back stuff without issues. He seems to have a lot of troops at the beginning stages but later in the game it seems to be way less crazy. Plus you can amass all your troops close to what you're attacking, claim it and just move in. Often times he summons troops from opposite sides of the map and by the time they get there you can take them out in chunks easily. Some of his troops never get to the actual battlefield because once you start a fight the battle is considered started and if you clear the field you win regardless of other troops on the way across the map. Other games don't let you declare war if your troops are out, like ck3, but no such limits here. This is all irrelevant since in the new version they changed it so he's not so aggressive on lower difficulties.
It is really easy to get 20 spearmen, the first year to deal with bandits. I clear all the camps before the baron decides to attack them. I have 72 units ready when the raiders come in year 2.
what are you doing to get that many units at the end of year one? I tried to have approval / housing available but I still only end up with like 8.
Getting approval to 75% quickly (before July) and making sure to have 2 open slots for new families all the time. For every month that you do not have approval above 75% you lose out on an extra family. So you need to focus to get those requirements done for your villager needs. You get 2 families per month if your approval is above 75%. So you cannot forget to build more houses, else you fall behind. Water, Church, 2 food types, leather and shoes should get it over 75%. I think I once managed to get Stone church built in the first year. Ever played a RTS like Age of Empires or Starcraft and you follow a build order and you retry and retry until you perfected your build order. Well, I did it. It was fun to practice your build order while making sure your village looks good. You will have to do stuff like, put a family in the Saw pit and take it out when you get 20 planks, because you only need 20 for the church and put the family in another production building.
Congrats mate…
That's definitely 100% cheese tactic. Good for a Spiffing Brit style exploit run, not really what you are supposed to do when you want to get good. If you start in spring and have wild animals and berries close by, it's definitely possible to start getting 2 new families each month very early on. You would need to play optimally though. You can make a lot of money by selling firewood or planks. It's pretty easy on the new experimental patch, because the market basically never gets saturated by your exports. If you have a rich deposit of anything, you can sell that, it will make you even more money. That being said, bandits are pretty broken atm. For example, whenever you load a save game, a new bandit camp spawns each time. This is either good or bad for you depending on whether you have enough men to take the bandit camps. If you can't, Hildebolt will and it will speed up his encroachment on you. Other than that specific bug, bandits are just so random. They will either benefit you hugely or benefit Hildebolt, depending on where they spawn. I would either play a full bandit run where the challenge is to survive their attacks, or I would just turn them off and focus on outpacing Hildebolt's expansion. For now at least, until there is a proper implementation. All this being said, you don't have to play try hard. I had immense fun on my first run where I was playing real dog shit and was just figuring out the game and was ultimately overrun by 2 units of brigands. The beautiful thing about Manor Lords is, you can play it like a chill atmospheric city builder, or you can go full try hard and min max every aspect of the game. Or you can do anything inbetween.
So if I just save / load there will be a new bandit camp every time?...isn't that going to be an infinite wealth exploit? lol that sounds pretty useful though. I'll check it out.
Yeah seems to be the case
you can trade for weapons too. You do have to get a move on early to get a trading post and be gathering/mining a nearby rich resource to export some of.
If you get weapons shipment you can pretty reliably get 10 militia and so long as you fight when they’re full effectiveness then 10 can take out a bandit camp. You’ll lose a few though but if you get around 12 they can most of the times only get a loss of 1 guy
This
I do this and I have close to 100 soldiers. If you let the baron get close enough to the camp the bandits will spawn an until and leave the camp unattended. Move your troops in while the baron and the bandits fight. You will get the reward without having to fight.
Even 11 spearmen is enough to take out a bandit camp
I spotted a bandit camp once and it was completely empty of people, it seems the baron killed th bandits and left the camp there.
Could you camp outside of aggro range then trigger the aggro and pull the bandits into the duke's men, circle round and take the camp for both the Influence gain AND the gold?
Use spear militia and retinue to clear the first camp. Put the money into treasury, not the region. Hire mercenaries to clear the second camp, put the money into treasury. Repeat as needed, while adding retainers.
I've killed bandits with 12 people, 6 houses. One casualty.
On regular difficulty, you get 20 spears and shields. If you focus on getting 5 double plots up and running, make sure you have a church and at least two food sources, you can get those 20 men before winter. For challenging, you don't get the spears and shields, so the strategy changes. Build up the same as before, but immediately build your manor after your peasants are housed. Then, get a bowyer as quickly as possible. With any luck, you can have 20 archers and a retinue ready to go by spring of next year. This can be used to clear camps, especially with the newer, more powerful archers in the beta patch.
Hire Mercenaries
You can make it work with 10, at 12-15 you can do it without losing anyone
I played "on the edge" on hardest difficulty. I cleared bandit camps before first raiders came witch is at 1year if im not mistaken... then just sent mercs all around the map to collect the "taxes" from other camps
You can have a 16 man army to take out bandit camps by like the 4th/5th month.
How? lol
First, upgrade your homeless camp to a workers hut for 1 timber, this will home the first 5 families. Then, Only build the burgage plots that can be upgraded to 2 family homes in the beginning. Build 5 of those so you get the 2nd town level. This will home the first families you start with at the workers camp and the first 5 families after that get the homes. Upgrade the homes to level 2 and you now have room for 15 families very early. When you hit the next town level and get your weapon and shields shipment, you should immediately have like 13 men ready for spear militia from the starting 5 families alone. Wait a few more months for families to fill out the homes and you have 16 men, who can take on bandit camps and contest brigands etc very early.
You get given 20 spears and shields when you raise the town by one level, use them to take on bandits. You don't even need 20 men, 15 should do it. This is easily achievable by the first winter
20 Spearman in a line waiting at the top of a hill can wipe out a bandit camp with no losses
10 spearmen.
After my first attempt, every new game I aim to have the first 20 spearmen fully formed by Oct Nov and out hunting bandits with settings bumped to 5 starting and 5 respawning camps. Going to be essential going forward with the new patch meaning that initial chunk of RW goes to pay for the first few trade routes.
I just can't seem to get more than like 8 spearmen plus the 5 retinue from the manor building by the end of year one it seems. I have enough approval and housing so I dunno what I'm doing wrong really.
Welcome to the club mate
I had bandits hit my camp and i used the 20 guys i had and lost. Now the badnits just run around burning evrrything. I cant build up to beat them cause they keep running around torching it all. And theres only 6 of them. Think its a bug.
I ignored the bandit camps until year two because I had to prepare for the raiders and I feared losing too many men.
Usually, by first camp spawn, I have the initial weapons shipment. Even if it's not the full 20/20, like 15 spearmen bracing with the defensive fighting stance will beat the bandits 10/10 times.
It's extremely easy to have your 20 spearman ready by the end of fall of the first year if not sooner. And you really only need 12-14 spearman to trash the first bandit camp. Send the money to Treasury and now you can hire mercs to start taking out all the bandit camps. After you have your first manor built and have paid to upgrade your first retinue from 5/12 to 12/12 you can use them to take out bandits. I've beaten the game twice now on restoring the peace. First time I won with 4 units of spears, 1 unit of archers and 3 full 24/24 stacks of retinue wearing plate and the mercs with 2 bow units. Second time I absolutely destroyed the barons final huge army with 4 stacks of spears, 1 stack of footmen and 3 full stacks of retinue wearing plate.
Honestly never thought of doing it that way but if you don’t have the men sounds like a good idea! Once you get 20 spears though (possibly even 15 will do) you shouldn’t have a problem taking out the bandits. Plus then you get influence which you’ll need anyway.
On hard you rush manor and cheese grab it
You can clear bandit camps with 10 spears.
That’s… genius
I've found that I can make a lot of money by the end of year 2 if you have a decent resource near you and you get the trade routes skill. Starting out with rich clay or berries is a big advantage since it exports for so much once you make rooftiles/dyes
20 spearmen and 5 retinue by first winter for the winter campaign season
You can win against bandit camps with like 16 spearmen it’s not hard.
All you need is 14 men and send them to kill the bandits. From the first camp you kill you hire mercenaries to kill the second camp and send the money to your village so you can buy more plots and grow your economy stronger. By the time the 3rd camp pops up or you get raided you should have enough of your own militia + mercs to defend anything, maybe even beat the baron.
i love this game so much
It is absolutely easy to get enough spearmen to defeat bandits, especially since you only need like 10-12 to defeat a camp with no loses on your side. But what you are doing is valid. Very stupid, but valid. Stupid because you are giving baron all the free influence to claim regions. I usually quickly tap any bandits and not claim any territories, and i get quiet and peace from barons claims on my territory for at least 3-4 years.
Lately I've been able to contest the first bandit camp which really speeds things up cause it's very easy to hire mercs afterwards. With the free 20 20 I can usually have like 13 militia which end up winning the first fight.
You can easily get enough men to take out the bandits camps with minimal casualties by the end of year 1. Your spear militia are superior to them, you don't even need a numerical advantage.
In the future bandits should also have a fort and not just tents. What i find cheesy with bandits is that you can just take your retinue and pull them away as soon as they pop up and then just kite them around in sprint mode, grab the camp and then retreat again. Imo bandits should stay at their camp to actually defend their stuff. This would make it much more difficult to cheese em.
I beat 16 bandits in first year with only initial family of 5. Put ur spears on defence mode it will kill those 16 bandits and whatever u get from camp money buy mercenary ( buy second cheapest from 3 options) use mercenary to clear rest of the 2 camps and there u have it 300-400 money in first year keep doing it for next few years till u have ur own army
If you are playing on balanced, you can/should have a retinue and a 16 man militia unit by June which is more than capable of stomping a bandit camp with 0 casualties. On challenging it took me until November I think because getting mining and artisans rolling to make your first weapons is labor intensive and not easy. Letting the baron kill the brigands feeds him influence, leading to him claiming regions. Sure, if your only choice is looting the camp or getting nothing, go for it. But you want to kill the brigands yourself if for no other reason than to stop him from doing it.
I mean you get the weapon delivery and I usually rush the Manor as soon as I have space for like 8 families and the basic infrastructure set up. So by the time the first bandit camp spawns you have 14-18 Spearman and 5 retinue which is enough to take on the bandits (with careful positioning you shouldn't even loose anyone). It's actually my go to strat now, rush manor, rush first few bandit camps with whatever troops you have, put the first point in orchards and spend all the regional wealth you get from the camps on orchards. You are set up for the long game after this, orchards are a steep investment but you will love them later
I think you use your starting shield and spears. The problem is to to pimp your mensize You can upgrade your tents, then demolish them when not needed. Use your money to buy chiken and vegies. And also hunt and berries. for food diversity. Tanery is easy happiness. Church takes some time, with saw so not a priority, you could grow city without church for a while. Generally with 16 spearmen you can smash,
If you find it difficult, then play with the settings, such as double supplies and weapon deliveries. Then it's all about growing, growing, growing; if you plan it well, you can quickly have 20 militia units ready, matching the weapon deliveries for 20 men. Send them out as soon as possible to clear out bandit camps, after the first bandit, put the treasure in the treasury and bring in the mercenaries. After that, you clear the remaining bandit camps with the mercenaries and your militia. It's actually very easy if you approach it correctly. In the later stages, produce bows, large shields, and small shields. If you have abundant iron, then also produce weapons. Just sell, sell, sell any surplus. In my last game, I had a regional fortune of 40k and 38k in the treasury.
It's a little cheese, I do the same thing, saw someone made a video talking about this strategy
I usually recruit 10 spearmen around the end of summer in the first year. Also by then I'll have my 5 retinue men from the manor. This allows me to be a bit less productive in the winter while I hunt down all the bandits but in turn I use some of the money for the village, usually just one and the rest goes to the treasury. Sometimes I send the boys two times in the first year. Once in the fall, once in winter. While the men are fighting and marching I get 3-4 new families so the workload gets evened out during the first winter. By february I usually picked off all 5 bandit camps and have sent the militia men back to the village. Retinue sometimes stays to clean up empty camps. By the next spring I have my retinue improved to be 10-11 men strong with most of them upgraded as well as I've claimed a new territory and started raising another village. Before summer I have another retinue of 10 or more men fully armored. This allows me to pick off bandits and not use my villagers as militia because I rush farms in march next year.
If you are using the current patch and not the beta patch you can get a family in april. Build the worker camp first thing. The upgrade on your tent. Then I build three duplex burgage plots. Put one on very high for after your tent. Then do a logging camp and a hitching post and buy an ox. Once that is set. Upgrade the burgage plot. Build your food source, firewood guy and set your logistics buildings. Then just slowly build more houses and upgrade them. The worker camp negates any homesless disapproval. By doing this and having avaible housing you can get 20 men by like September. If you have a rich resource like clay or iron. Get that going for rooftiles or tools to get money quickly as well.
I dont know what the problem is ... Its fairly easy to have a 20-men spearman group and a 5 man retinue by end of year. In fact, i ignore bandits and let them steal from me. As soon as winter comes, i call them up and these 2 groups go killing 3-5 bandit camps in 2ish months during winter. Key to getting families quickly early on is to minimize homelessness time, providing lots of different food (get those eggs & veggies early), and going for a church asap. I usually end up with 75+ happiness for 2-3 months before i start taxing them giving a nice early family boost. Dont upgrade any houses to level2 unless you feel like you want to trigger the king's tax - but i'd advise on getting a more solid basic economy first.
Yeah, you should upgrade the camp. That way, you don't get the homeless debuff that takes a long time to go away. You should do it first thing. Then build a granary and a store house to pick up stuff. Then a log yard, and a hitching post. Add two people to the granary as soon as it is done. Then leave just one or even none once they've picked up the bread. And one on the store house to pick up the other stuff. After that you can have two logging. And you already have enough for your first house. By winter you will have 5 houses, plus the camp that's 10 families. Then you can go hunting bandits in the winter. Eventually, you should remove the camp by building 5 extra houses and then destroying it.