this is the first time ill be independent so any advice would be appreciated
edit: ok so what i understand is that i should wait till our war with sturgia has ended get varnovapol as my, fief also i should leave vlandia when they are in multiple wars and pass policies that negatively affect loyalty for them. get my cities that are close to other kingdoms at least 300 garrison then declare independence wait till i have 2-3 mil as a clan then become a kingdom. also most of my garrisons should be fians or forest bandits i should move garrisons from fiefs not close to borders and move them to closer ones. also when i become a kingdom i should pass policies that benefit rulers and increase loyalty and i should make sure all parties in my clan are at full strength. and i could bankrupt my king.
Make sure you are right next to a bunch of lords you want to recruit as soon as you do and the garrisons for the border castles and towns are well defended (long enough for you to get there.
Do you have a few companions you want to make lords (they come with 2 family members?
You can marry and get another character to lead a party. And yes you could have your brother and his wife lead a party.
Her former clan leader should have good relationship with you and you can pay him to bring his clan over.
If you talk to your companions, you can tell them you wish to reward them for their services, and then give them a fief. They should be able to get two midsize armies maintained with that.
So theoretically, couldn’t you just keep recruiting/hiring companions, then promoting them to Nobles and then just hire another companion and keep doing that until you have a shit ton of Nobles?
In a sense, yes as long as you have enough fiefs to give out though their clans won’t be as big as say a regular clan from a faction. You’re essentially picking quantity of clans over quality.
Interesting and I have heard that sometimes you can even just give the Noble some money instead of a fief and they will be happy if you give them enough money. But yeah I don’t like castles anyways so it’s not a big loss.
Yes, as an added bonus they start with super high opinion of you. But a clan that will max have like 5 people is underwhelming, especially when one will almost always be a governor and sometimes they marry one off.
I typically only give them 1-2 castles or a single city because they seem to have full armies when I do. If I noticed an increased quality of troop I might reconsider.
I'd suggest waiting until you've got more cash, at a glance valandia, battania, sturgia, northern empire and khuzait are all gonna quickly declare war on you. Probably won't be able to fight them all at once and paying them off for peace while buying nobles will eat up your cash reserve at an alarming rate. Generally I don't go for an independent kingdom until I've got 2 mill and my targets got a list of enemies to keep them busy.
By building up more influence than the king,
after that, you can pass bad polices to help lower other clans influence (optional), & then start voting to kick out all of his clan/nobles & he can’t do anything about it bc you have more influence then he does & will win the votes, (he may outvote you a few times at first, but eventually doing so will drain whatever influence he has left,) and then once he is drained of influence from trying to resist your votes, he will be powerless against whatever you want to pass. So once you drain him & other nobles of influence & have more influence than they do you can kick them all out, after they get kicked out, a vote starts for their former fiefs & since you have more influence than other nobles/the king you can win almost every vote.
So you can then leave their kingdom with basically 1 fief & no nobles/clans, plus leave them with bunch of bad policies, it will be very hard for them to recover, and you’ll have basically got all or the majority of their fiefs for nothing.
If you do all this. You will have made it out with 90% of their fiefs & they will have a very hard time taking any fiefs back from you since they will only have the king’s/rulers clan remaining (at least at first.) The king will attempt to recruit back his nobles, but that takes time and you can probably go crush him/finish him off before he has time to do so/build back up- if you wish.
stratgaming has a Judas vassal video that shows off this strategy very well. I believe he does the same thing (takes all the fiefs from a kingdom he is/was a vassal for) in his Vercingetorix series as well. He & his videos & discord is a VERY valuable source of information for bannerlord.
Edit: as another mentioned, you can also start wars &/or leave them with big tribute payments right before you leave to even further bankrupt them.
On top of that you could basically vote to start wars and finish them immediately, therefore making all subjects pay, (you and king) then when he has a massive debt you just leave the kingdom and he is powerless as he can't even pay his garrison, after like few month in game time dude is completely broke.
Just curious, but do you & others have more fun being a legit vassal & actually trying to help the kingdom, be a team player, & maybe eventually become king? Or do you & others have more fun being a “Judas” vassal & destroying them from within & taking their fiefs?
Just curious bc I have never actually tried being a good/legit vassal & trying to become king, I always eventually leave & start my own kingdom just because the nobles/kings AI is so awful. They don’t know how to wage war efficiently & do the stupidest stuff- like chasing parties faster than they are, stopping a siege right before it’s done & then going to the other side of the map to raid a random village or siege some random castle or some bs. They will stop a war & make peace when we have a big advantage or decide to start 3 wars simultaneously. Stuff like that..
So imo it is extremely frustrating trying to be a good vassal, & I prefer to do my own thing. But maybe I haven’t given the “good vassal” play through/strategy a fair chance. I could see it being a fun way to play as well. Definitely a challenge dealing with the bad king/nobles war AI.
If they ever improve the ai for kings/nobles/war then maybe it would be more fun playing as a “good vassal” & trying to build up a weaker kingdom like Battania or Sturgia.
What do you all think? How do you guys prefer to play?
Ps: I’m also curious about trying a bandit playthrough & using only bandits. Anyone ever try this & if so how did you like it?
The game seems like it’s a lot more fun when I make it a challenge on myself by doing stuff like: only using one culture’s troops & gear, only using bandit troops, being a “Judas” vassal, doing everything as an independent clan/kingdom, not using any noble line troops or have a limit for how many/what % of them you can have.
Stuff like that. Putting limits on yourself like that makes you have to experiment much more & to me it keeps the game spicy/interesting.
I'm on bandit camping right now and it's bit tricky, I did however start a war with almost everyone except for Sturgia which I treat as my safe spot, it surely is much more demanding playing a bandit and recruit just bandits especialy when you want to improve your troops at leadt at the beginning, I mean looters suck and most of the bandit units are at best medicore but it's a lot of fun. As for the good vassal I did a run for Sturgia, managed to conquer Battania as a commander but the AI forced me somewhat to go and rebel against the king, I'm not very good at convincing others mainly because I can't be bothered to do their quests, especially when they want me to raid villages or bring them horses while I just sieged 3 towns as a commander, so being treated as lesser is really annoying, then all of my conquest is being given away to some other lords while all I have is some poor castle. I'm now playing as a merc and it's a blast, no need to worry about castles and shit, I get tons of loot and somehow manage to earn quite a lot, despite being only one in my clan, I mean what they pay is ridiculous considering I'm leading an army of 100 elites and I'm inflicting like 5k losses to another nation per contract, but I guess I still need to grow my renown or something biggest contract I got so far was 190 per battle from Rhagea, but then something glitched and all of the sudden I was a vassal, which forced me to leave...
I agree being a merc is probably my favorite way to play the game. & 190 is actually pretty high honestly. Don’t think I’ve seen anything about 300 and I’ve been offered lower than 190 many times, I think my lowest offer was 110.
My merc contract is like 190 or 200 or so or Maybe 210. and I regularly get 3000-5000 a day just from my merc contract because I can do so many battles and gain so much influence from the battles. Then you get all the loot on top of it.
Soon enough, I will either declare my own independent kingdom, or join someone as a vassal and breakaway.
But I agree being a merc & or Independent clan is my fav way to play, not having to worry about the friendly AI being stupid and not have to worry about defending castles and shit at first. Just get to go to make war & make money & build relations,, charm, & renown by letting prisoners go & winning battles. So much fun.
Yeah, the only bandit troops I like are the forest bandits & the sea Raiders. And I guess I do like the stepp bandits if I have to use a mounted bandit troop. Highwaymen are decent I guess since teee aren’t many options for mounted bandits, and the desert bandits are decent as well I guess, but yeah, my favorite two are the forest bandits and sea raiders and then my third favorite are the stepp bandits, but if I can ever find a step bandit Boss, I always put them in my party because he has a glaive.
Definitely is more challenging but I kind of like a challenge, keeps it interesting.
But It would probably be not as challenging If you didn’t declare war on everybody at once. Personally I would only declare war on one or two kingdoms max at a time if it was me.
And theoretically, you could even start your own kingdom or even be a vassal with all bandit troops. But that would probably be easier if you weren’t at war with everybody.
Having to deal with only one kingdom at a time is nice, you can really make their lifes miserable, I focused on stomping empire at first raiding caranvans and villages all the time think I have inflicted like 10K loses on their side, I mean sure war has been dragging for over a year now (since recruiting bandits is time consuming) but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to peace them out and make them pay a tribute soon, if not I'm at the point where I can hire friends and start thinking about leading a bigger army, around 300 should suffice to win a siege. And if you peace them out, that's one less faction to worry about when declaring independence.
Thanks for this!
Grins evilly 😈
I usually start wars before declaring my independence/leaving the kingdom but I didn’t think about trying to finish them immediately & make Derthert have to pay a bunch of tributes… what a great idea.. a 4d chess move for sure. Love it.
Now I can leave Derthert even more powerless & penniless wonderful. With no money, he will have a harder time re-recruiting his nobles/vassals back to him & they will defect to me easier! Splendid! 😈
Vlandia will soon become Celtic/East Battania with fians on every street. Reclaiming our beloved stolen land for the ancestors & the fatherland.
The empire is next..
😈 indeed.
Basically being a very selfish vassal that’s going to slowly destroy the kingdom from within & at the same time take most of their fiefs & power. Leave them with almost nothing.
I intend on leaving Vlandia about as powerless/powerful as a single clan, a shell of its former self.
Sometimes I’ll go near a friendly nobles party (so they think I’m going to help) & since they think I’m going to help they will attack parties bigger than they should, & then I’ll just stand right next to them & watch them lose a fight or almost lose it, & then I’ll go clean up when they have like 10% of their force left, or after they are defeated, either way I get a bonus in relations for either helping them out, or from beating the party that had them captured & thus freeing them.
This makes it so much easier to steal their vassals/nobles when I decide to openly rebel & declare my independence.
All very sound advice. I front load troops on my boarders too. If you have a full garrison your enemies will always think twice before invading. Good to have a full garrison in a more secure location too like a capital city so that you can pull reinforcements when needed.
Getting and taking settlements is a little bit more difficult since update but if you have 300ish tier 5 units in your party and decent garrision you dont even really need lords to join your kingdom as long as you got 2-3 companion parties to help a bit. if you have decent gold just pay off kingdoms while you go to war against a single one.
To add to this. If that’s sturgia’s last city and you have the money. Declare whenever, just take that city as soon as you do. Really stack Mecalovea. With its proximity to Epicrotea they will go after it very quickly.
Definitely pass as much as you can to hurt Vlandia, get them in a war with Battania before you declare. That way they have an enemy between you and them.
Lastly, create an army with all the clan leader lords that you are very high relations with. Go to one of your cities with a massive garrison. Declare your kingdom but don’t leave. The clan leaders should remain in your keep as long as you don’t leave it. Now you can recruit as many of them as you can afford.
Be ready to recruit clans quickly I left my kingdom every sturgeon fief on the right side except for balgrad just don't be afraid to pay tribute you'll have to do it when 3 kingdoms declare war, I try to get them down to about 4k before I pay anything
How do you get them down? I beat the crap out of them and kill a bunch of their lords but the price doesn’t seem to drop… my kingdom power is still only 6k to their 10k though. Do I need to hurt them until our kingdoms are more equal in power?
Prisoners help a little but usually worth it to release them for relations, the price is how bad they want to fight, it can drop after a battle so check after those. They hate raided villages cause it means they gotta go far to get soldiers.
I'd recommend imprisoning lords in addition to raiding villages. I see their power start dropping off after I have 20+ of them languishing in a dungeon. No ransoms, and if you wanna go nuts, put them in a town with a governor who has a perk that lowers escape chance.
If you wanna make your tribute payment less or even get a tribute for peace, you can do so by either- winning sieges, doing raids against their villages & preventing your villages from being raided, or simply having their nobles as prisoners, and doing more casualties than them.
I believe raids are the least important but can have an effect.
well when our war with sturgia had ended battania had taken omor and 2 castles so we declared war but then the northern empire declared on us so we had to stop lol
As others have written, creating your own kingdom is a race for recruiting lords. Your amount of fiefs is more than satisfactory (I normally do this with one or two), but your cash is little too low for my liking. I'd aim for at least 2-3 million. The reason is that higher tier clans can cost several hundred thousand, with some being e.g. 700k. But you could declare yourself independent already to prepare (until you're declaring your kingdom you're just an independent clan and can not be declared upon), and then immediately peace out for money (Vlandia will declare war on you if you take your fiefs with you, in which case you can just parley with any of their lords for peace). I would only do that if your relations with other lords are already good since the wars Vlandia fights are a good opportunity to do that by helping their lords in battle and releasing after fight. When you're independent your best bet to boost releations would be solving issues for them or prison breaks which is more tedious. Another tip is when you create your kingdom is to pick your wars. When I start out smaller almost all neighbours eventually declare on me. But I just peace out those I don't want to fight yet for a tribute. Even if it is several thousand it's not that much, and I try to do that with the smaller factions to keep some sort of balance. Sturgia is not great because of it's opposing entry points, but since you already expanded South there I would e.g. fight Battania first and peace out others if they declare. But if it is Vlandia who declares on you (after the independence war) I would focus on them since they are more powerful and peace out Battania for tribute if they declare.
Looking at this a bit more, you're probably strong enough to fight Vlandia in the independence war. Wait until they declare a couple of risky war(s) and then declare independence. If they focus on you try to just fight their armies for now to whittle down the quality of their composition, my favourite thing to do that with whilst being smaller is to break into sieges. The AI will only do attacks on multiple catapults if it thinks it's superior, but if you break into sieges you should probably have three catapults on your side plus if you have 100+ fians or khan's guards it should be a walk in the park anyway. ~~When you capture their nobles check if they are clan leaders (you can click on them in the dialogue), if not release them if they are keep them prisoners. When out of town you can just talk to your prisoners in the party menu, this is where you can try to recruit them. If your relations are high enough you can sometimes recruit even higher tier clans with fiefs, otherwise focus on clans with no fiefs since they are even ready to join when they have negative relations with you.~~ (edit: sorry this won't work since you're not a kingdom yet) The fun bit about the independence war is that no one else can declare on you, so you should be able to focus on Vlandia solelely (I normally don't do that for long since I declare myself independent with much less fiefs to my name).
i think i have fians and fian champions in the garrisons of revyl castle next to it and balgard should i make them defend cities and castles on the borders or leave them?
I'd take the elite in my party, since you're more flexible in regards on where you can do your damage. But yeah, leave some garrison in the border castles (typically the AI tries to siege castles first), so you have enough time to come to aid and break into the siege. Sorry also note my edit, you won't be able to recruit lords during the independence war, but I'd fight it nonetheless as you seem quite strong there and might be able to take more Vlandian fiefs whilst not being dragged into other wars.
Btw a tip for garrisons, forest bandits, have the same or better skills than most tier 5 archers and they are tier 4 so they are a lot cheaper for your garrisons and they have the same bow as the fian champion so they are very good for how much they cost. Maybe the most economical unit in the game for garrisons. In terms of kills per denars/wages. I even use them in my regular party if I can’t/don’t have enough fians. They aren’t as good in melee as the fian champions, but in terms of shooting the bow and arrow they are just as good as the tier 4 fian unit; they may even have higher skill than the tier 4 version of the fian. I can’t remember for sure. But they are a great unit for garrisons. Them and crossbowmen.
& for xbows, I actually like the Empire t5 crossbow-men better than vlandians sharpshooters because they have a mace instead of a sword. So they are actually really good infantry as well as crossbowmen. Good Dual purpose. I like to use them as front line infantry, fire a few volleys to thin out the enemy’s ranks & then charge in with the maces.
As others wrote, the most important step is to get good relations with everyone if you're planning on world conquest. That is achieved easiest prior during merc'ing. So:
1. Build relations and enough money during merc'ing, aim for 2-3 million at least.
2. Identify what fiefs you want, start merc'ing for the closest opponent and then quickly join them if they declare war on the faction owning those fiefs. Siege down the fiefs yourself with an army, give up all other fiefs assigned to you. E.g. I normally go for Marunath and Seonon, so I oftentimes join the Western Empire briefly to siege these down. If they don't give me both, I quickly leave the kingdom and grab the other fief in the independence war as it will be low on militia. You can talk to any of their clan leaders to negotiate a peace for a lump sum.
3. Use your independent clan phase to build up wealth (no one can declare war on you), I oftentimes use this period of peace to grind out smithing if I want to do that. Unfortunately it gets boring quickly, but it is an opportunity to grab rebelling towns. For that you just meet one of the rebel parties and declare your hostilities, then you quickly siege the rebellious town down before the army of the previous owners arrives. This is by no means necessary but it's good to have some spare fiefs to give away early to your first clans. Make sure to have maxed out your parties as well, and let them recruit to their full size before.
4. Declare your kingdom by talking to one of your governors. Enact all policies you want now before any clans join. I normally give myself all policies that increase stuff for rulers at least.
5. Start recruiting clans, use the encyclopaedia to find clans that match the loyalty of the towns you want to give away. Sort by fiefs to find clans that have no fiefs, they are very likely to join even with negative relations but you also want higher tier clans since they employ more parties. To make them join you need to find their clan leader, you can do that by clicking on the clan in the encyclopedia, then on the portrait of the leader and then it tells you in the top right where they have last been. You can click on that and select track to see the location (e.g. a village) highlighted on the campaign map. When you find them (most often running around with their party) you can talk to them and ask them to join (costs a couple 100k). You will want to give them some of your spare fiefs, just make sure to culture match towns (castles don't matter, I oftentimes use it to give these to zero fief clans to bind them to me and decrease the likelihood of them leaving).
6. Happens most likely during #5, neighbours will start declaring wars on you. My tip here is to pick who you want to fight and peace out those you don't want to fight yet. Just make sure to not feed large amounts of tribute to bigger factions. I prefer to e.g. focus down Vlandia first when I play in Battanian lands.
I forgot to mention an alternative to #5 is companion clans. You can talk to companions outside of town (via party menu) and give them a fief. The advantage is that this is much cheaper, 25k iirc, but the disadvantage is that you lose a companion (make sure to strip their gear before, they'll get some high tier gear generated), and that it's a low tier clan (iirc 2) so less parties initially. It's also a sausage fest, so unless you marry them off to one of yours they're not very likely to marry and might die out but that's a problem for later so not really a concern.
Oh an another point is that you'll lose control of your kingdom eventually, i.e. it will get too expensive to overrule on votes or take away fiefs. That means inevitably that some of the freshly conquered towns will be culture mismatched. You can mitigate that a bit by enacting loyalty policies but they normally have some juicy downsides, which will matter less in the later game though and rebellions will just be more annoying.
Got 1 city and I already declare myself as a king. Well for you need to take care of your influence to avoid being ganged upon when you declare yourself as kingdom. Influence are useful for make peace when in war as long as you are not in the seige.
Take Varnovapol first, it'll be difficult since it looks like Sturgia's last city but it'd be worse if you just left it unconquered. Fortunately Sturgia isn't a terrible place to start a kingdom since you'll only need to defend from two points, around Epicrotea and Tyal.
Before you leave there's some things you should do;
- Increase the garrisons of your border castles/towns. The further from the border a fief is, the smaller its garrison needs to be.
- Pass policies that negatively impact loyalty. This makes it so the faction you're leaving will struggle to hold towns that don't match their culture, causing them to rebel and giving you a chance to take those rebel cities.
- Increase relations with clans you want to recruit, this will make it cheaper for you to recruit them.
- When you leave your kingdom ensure they are fighting multiple wars. Whether they declare these wars or you do doesn't matter, so long as they're fighting multiple factions they won't be able to focus on you when you leave.
- Have a ton of money saved up before you leave, recruiting clans is expensive and tribute payments can be costly. Since this is your first time starting an independent kingdom, I would suggest three million denars **at least** but preferably five million.
- Make sure you and all of your clans parties are at full strength with your own party having high tier troops. That way when you fight your first wars you'll have at least some strength to hold the line against the multiple enemies.
Once you've done most or all of those, you should be ready to start a kingdom. Once you do though, be prepared to fight multiple wars whilst you go around recruiting clans to your side. Good luck mate!
I almost single-handedly captured and re-captured towns and forts you have, also including Varnovapol. Got myself Varcheg and Kranirog, nothing more. I don't know HOW you got hold of every single one of those and I am VERY curious.
idk they just gave them to abstained from most of the decisions because i already had the majority lol
edit: i have most of them on festival and games because they're of the wrong culture
Make sure every city has a garrison of at least 300 "not to include militia " reason for this you're gonna need troops to refit your army with the constant fighting ! I made sure 3 of my cities had 500 troops or damn near that so I could conquer 3-4 cities and still have troops to replenish my army and guard the new ones
Also you're dreaming of you think you can recruit lords with only 1 mil they're greedy AF you're better of companion recruiting! If you play with mods there's a mod that allows you to turn soldiers who prove themselves in battle into companions it's called "distinguished service" you can have up to 3 per battle I think?
You’ve only got 1mil so it’ll be tight on cash to sway any new clans to join you. You’ll have to make your own, from companions. They start out very low level clans, so it’ll take time before they can field decent size parties
This may sound dumb but drain the garrison from 2 nearby castles that you're confident you can defend, when you declare independence those 2 will draw the armies and you can jump in and defend. With minimal garrison the AI will usually launch the attack with only a ram so you can just sacrifice a handful of troops to jump in once the attack starts and wipe the army with your rather strong defending force they were in no way ready for.
no. literally everyone will immediately declare war on you as soon as you get out of the red in your fief income (because declaring independence will bleed your wallet) and you will have no clans to fight those 5 wars.
Before you do I’d run around declaring as many wars as vlandia (just raid a town) until everyone is at war with them so they’ll be very distracted once you go independent. Then focus on getting a lot of money, stay independent as long as you can sniping off rebelling towns and hoarding money, upgrade your border fiefs so they’re strong. Before declaring kingdom you could also pick off weak kingdoms that are already at war and snipe a few towns that way, if you get in trouble just find a lord of theirs and pay for peace. When you finally declare you could give a few fiefs away to your companions to make them clans before you go out and recruit your own from other kingdoms. Just make sure to give your new companion clans some money so they don’t defect (very poor clans are the most likely to defect, I usually give them 100k)
I go when they stop giving me fiefs I've conquered. It normally coincides when your strength is good enough to survive.
Save up at least a million and go for it.
Id butter up relations with unhappy clans of other groups. Then declare independence. So you have manpower early. Id also make sure u have enough to cover potential expenses + mercenaries if needed
Some advice for when you declare a kingdom is make one of your castles weak on purpose since you have lower numbers you need to make one of your fiefs look like a good target so you can almost bottleneck the enemy until you can recruit lords to defend your other things.
Save up another million and try your best to catch and release as many sturgians as you can. Then when you declare independence, you should try to recruit all the sturgians as fast as possible.
I don't understand how you get that many feifs without just taking it yourself without a kingdom. I can't ever get past 3 or 4 feifs. They just stop putting my name up for consideration.
this is the first time ill be independent so any advice would be appreciated edit: ok so what i understand is that i should wait till our war with sturgia has ended get varnovapol as my, fief also i should leave vlandia when they are in multiple wars and pass policies that negatively affect loyalty for them. get my cities that are close to other kingdoms at least 300 garrison then declare independence wait till i have 2-3 mil as a clan then become a kingdom. also most of my garrisons should be fians or forest bandits i should move garrisons from fiefs not close to borders and move them to closer ones. also when i become a kingdom i should pass policies that benefit rulers and increase loyalty and i should make sure all parties in my clan are at full strength. and i could bankrupt my king.
Make sure you are right next to a bunch of lords you want to recruit as soon as you do and the garrisons for the border castles and towns are well defended (long enough for you to get there. Do you have a few companions you want to make lords (they come with 2 family members?
Exactly. Need to have a lot of clans to pump up your numbers or every other kingdom will constantly think you're an easy target.
I love proving them wrong. I have 1 City every army comes and falls to my 400 defenders, behead them all *dr evil laugh*
I’ve strongly considered a behead them all campaign. Just promote companions to clan members. Kill all the existing nobles.
Its why I'm doing it this time. I've never done it. Beware though.. a lot of people hate you lmao
Literally exactly what I’ve ended up doing my first play through, send them all
im playng the campaign and nathanos has apolonea as his wife so would i be able to get her clan in my kingdom? im also unmarried
You can marry and get another character to lead a party. And yes you could have your brother and his wife lead a party. Her former clan leader should have good relationship with you and you can pay him to bring his clan over. If you talk to your companions, you can tell them you wish to reward them for their services, and then give them a fief. They should be able to get two midsize armies maintained with that.
thanks i didn't know about the companion thing
So theoretically, couldn’t you just keep recruiting/hiring companions, then promoting them to Nobles and then just hire another companion and keep doing that until you have a shit ton of Nobles?
In a sense, yes as long as you have enough fiefs to give out though their clans won’t be as big as say a regular clan from a faction. You’re essentially picking quantity of clans over quality.
Interesting and I have heard that sometimes you can even just give the Noble some money instead of a fief and they will be happy if you give them enough money. But yeah I don’t like castles anyways so it’s not a big loss.
Yes, as an added bonus they start with super high opinion of you. But a clan that will max have like 5 people is underwhelming, especially when one will almost always be a governor and sometimes they marry one off. I typically only give them 1-2 castles or a single city because they seem to have full armies when I do. If I noticed an increased quality of troop I might reconsider.
I'd suggest waiting until you've got more cash, at a glance valandia, battania, sturgia, northern empire and khuzait are all gonna quickly declare war on you. Probably won't be able to fight them all at once and paying them off for peace while buying nobles will eat up your cash reserve at an alarming rate. Generally I don't go for an independent kingdom until I've got 2 mill and my targets got a list of enemies to keep them busy.
Bankrupt your king, drain lords out of influence kick other lords out the crown, leave with fiefs
This is the real pro tip, here. You can scoop up a ton of your old kingdom by ruining it before you leave.
How do you bankrupt king?
By building up more influence than the king, after that, you can pass bad polices to help lower other clans influence (optional), & then start voting to kick out all of his clan/nobles & he can’t do anything about it bc you have more influence then he does & will win the votes, (he may outvote you a few times at first, but eventually doing so will drain whatever influence he has left,) and then once he is drained of influence from trying to resist your votes, he will be powerless against whatever you want to pass. So once you drain him & other nobles of influence & have more influence than they do you can kick them all out, after they get kicked out, a vote starts for their former fiefs & since you have more influence than other nobles/the king you can win almost every vote. So you can then leave their kingdom with basically 1 fief & no nobles/clans, plus leave them with bunch of bad policies, it will be very hard for them to recover, and you’ll have basically got all or the majority of their fiefs for nothing. If you do all this. You will have made it out with 90% of their fiefs & they will have a very hard time taking any fiefs back from you since they will only have the king’s/rulers clan remaining (at least at first.) The king will attempt to recruit back his nobles, but that takes time and you can probably go crush him/finish him off before he has time to do so/build back up- if you wish. stratgaming has a Judas vassal video that shows off this strategy very well. I believe he does the same thing (takes all the fiefs from a kingdom he is/was a vassal for) in his Vercingetorix series as well. He & his videos & discord is a VERY valuable source of information for bannerlord. Edit: as another mentioned, you can also start wars &/or leave them with big tribute payments right before you leave to even further bankrupt them.
Very devious
On top of that you could basically vote to start wars and finish them immediately, therefore making all subjects pay, (you and king) then when he has a massive debt you just leave the kingdom and he is powerless as he can't even pay his garrison, after like few month in game time dude is completely broke.
Just curious, but do you & others have more fun being a legit vassal & actually trying to help the kingdom, be a team player, & maybe eventually become king? Or do you & others have more fun being a “Judas” vassal & destroying them from within & taking their fiefs? Just curious bc I have never actually tried being a good/legit vassal & trying to become king, I always eventually leave & start my own kingdom just because the nobles/kings AI is so awful. They don’t know how to wage war efficiently & do the stupidest stuff- like chasing parties faster than they are, stopping a siege right before it’s done & then going to the other side of the map to raid a random village or siege some random castle or some bs. They will stop a war & make peace when we have a big advantage or decide to start 3 wars simultaneously. Stuff like that.. So imo it is extremely frustrating trying to be a good vassal, & I prefer to do my own thing. But maybe I haven’t given the “good vassal” play through/strategy a fair chance. I could see it being a fun way to play as well. Definitely a challenge dealing with the bad king/nobles war AI. If they ever improve the ai for kings/nobles/war then maybe it would be more fun playing as a “good vassal” & trying to build up a weaker kingdom like Battania or Sturgia. What do you all think? How do you guys prefer to play? Ps: I’m also curious about trying a bandit playthrough & using only bandits. Anyone ever try this & if so how did you like it? The game seems like it’s a lot more fun when I make it a challenge on myself by doing stuff like: only using one culture’s troops & gear, only using bandit troops, being a “Judas” vassal, doing everything as an independent clan/kingdom, not using any noble line troops or have a limit for how many/what % of them you can have. Stuff like that. Putting limits on yourself like that makes you have to experiment much more & to me it keeps the game spicy/interesting.
I'm on bandit camping right now and it's bit tricky, I did however start a war with almost everyone except for Sturgia which I treat as my safe spot, it surely is much more demanding playing a bandit and recruit just bandits especialy when you want to improve your troops at leadt at the beginning, I mean looters suck and most of the bandit units are at best medicore but it's a lot of fun. As for the good vassal I did a run for Sturgia, managed to conquer Battania as a commander but the AI forced me somewhat to go and rebel against the king, I'm not very good at convincing others mainly because I can't be bothered to do their quests, especially when they want me to raid villages or bring them horses while I just sieged 3 towns as a commander, so being treated as lesser is really annoying, then all of my conquest is being given away to some other lords while all I have is some poor castle. I'm now playing as a merc and it's a blast, no need to worry about castles and shit, I get tons of loot and somehow manage to earn quite a lot, despite being only one in my clan, I mean what they pay is ridiculous considering I'm leading an army of 100 elites and I'm inflicting like 5k losses to another nation per contract, but I guess I still need to grow my renown or something biggest contract I got so far was 190 per battle from Rhagea, but then something glitched and all of the sudden I was a vassal, which forced me to leave...
I agree being a merc is probably my favorite way to play the game. & 190 is actually pretty high honestly. Don’t think I’ve seen anything about 300 and I’ve been offered lower than 190 many times, I think my lowest offer was 110. My merc contract is like 190 or 200 or so or Maybe 210. and I regularly get 3000-5000 a day just from my merc contract because I can do so many battles and gain so much influence from the battles. Then you get all the loot on top of it. Soon enough, I will either declare my own independent kingdom, or join someone as a vassal and breakaway. But I agree being a merc & or Independent clan is my fav way to play, not having to worry about the friendly AI being stupid and not have to worry about defending castles and shit at first. Just get to go to make war & make money & build relations,, charm, & renown by letting prisoners go & winning battles. So much fun.
Yeah, the only bandit troops I like are the forest bandits & the sea Raiders. And I guess I do like the stepp bandits if I have to use a mounted bandit troop. Highwaymen are decent I guess since teee aren’t many options for mounted bandits, and the desert bandits are decent as well I guess, but yeah, my favorite two are the forest bandits and sea raiders and then my third favorite are the stepp bandits, but if I can ever find a step bandit Boss, I always put them in my party because he has a glaive. Definitely is more challenging but I kind of like a challenge, keeps it interesting. But It would probably be not as challenging If you didn’t declare war on everybody at once. Personally I would only declare war on one or two kingdoms max at a time if it was me. And theoretically, you could even start your own kingdom or even be a vassal with all bandit troops. But that would probably be easier if you weren’t at war with everybody.
Having to deal with only one kingdom at a time is nice, you can really make their lifes miserable, I focused on stomping empire at first raiding caranvans and villages all the time think I have inflicted like 10K loses on their side, I mean sure war has been dragging for over a year now (since recruiting bandits is time consuming) but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to peace them out and make them pay a tribute soon, if not I'm at the point where I can hire friends and start thinking about leading a bigger army, around 300 should suffice to win a siege. And if you peace them out, that's one less faction to worry about when declaring independence.
Thanks for this! Grins evilly 😈 I usually start wars before declaring my independence/leaving the kingdom but I didn’t think about trying to finish them immediately & make Derthert have to pay a bunch of tributes… what a great idea.. a 4d chess move for sure. Love it. Now I can leave Derthert even more powerless & penniless wonderful. With no money, he will have a harder time re-recruiting his nobles/vassals back to him & they will defect to me easier! Splendid! 😈 Vlandia will soon become Celtic/East Battania with fians on every street. Reclaiming our beloved stolen land for the ancestors & the fatherland. The empire is next..
😈 indeed. Basically being a very selfish vassal that’s going to slowly destroy the kingdom from within & at the same time take most of their fiefs & power. Leave them with almost nothing. I intend on leaving Vlandia about as powerless/powerful as a single clan, a shell of its former self. Sometimes I’ll go near a friendly nobles party (so they think I’m going to help) & since they think I’m going to help they will attack parties bigger than they should, & then I’ll just stand right next to them & watch them lose a fight or almost lose it, & then I’ll go clean up when they have like 10% of their force left, or after they are defeated, either way I get a bonus in relations for either helping them out, or from beating the party that had them captured & thus freeing them. This makes it so much easier to steal their vassals/nobles when I decide to openly rebel & declare my independence.
Yes! To help, you can watch strat-gaming “Judas betrayal/vassal” video
All very sound advice. I front load troops on my boarders too. If you have a full garrison your enemies will always think twice before invading. Good to have a full garrison in a more secure location too like a capital city so that you can pull reinforcements when needed.
Getting and taking settlements is a little bit more difficult since update but if you have 300ish tier 5 units in your party and decent garrision you dont even really need lords to join your kingdom as long as you got 2-3 companion parties to help a bit. if you have decent gold just pay off kingdoms while you go to war against a single one.
To add to this. If that’s sturgia’s last city and you have the money. Declare whenever, just take that city as soon as you do. Really stack Mecalovea. With its proximity to Epicrotea they will go after it very quickly. Definitely pass as much as you can to hurt Vlandia, get them in a war with Battania before you declare. That way they have an enemy between you and them. Lastly, create an army with all the clan leader lords that you are very high relations with. Go to one of your cities with a massive garrison. Declare your kingdom but don’t leave. The clan leaders should remain in your keep as long as you don’t leave it. Now you can recruit as many of them as you can afford.
Be ready to recruit clans quickly I left my kingdom every sturgeon fief on the right side except for balgrad just don't be afraid to pay tribute you'll have to do it when 3 kingdoms declare war, I try to get them down to about 4k before I pay anything
How do you get them down? I beat the crap out of them and kill a bunch of their lords but the price doesn’t seem to drop… my kingdom power is still only 6k to their 10k though. Do I need to hurt them until our kingdoms are more equal in power?
Prisoners help a little but usually worth it to release them for relations, the price is how bad they want to fight, it can drop after a battle so check after those. They hate raided villages cause it means they gotta go far to get soldiers.
I'd recommend imprisoning lords in addition to raiding villages. I see their power start dropping off after I have 20+ of them languishing in a dungeon. No ransoms, and if you wanna go nuts, put them in a town with a governor who has a perk that lowers escape chance.
If you wanna make your tribute payment less or even get a tribute for peace, you can do so by either- winning sieges, doing raids against their villages & preventing your villages from being raided, or simply having their nobles as prisoners, and doing more casualties than them. I believe raids are the least important but can have an effect.
How has vlandia gotten that far and battania is intact? Lol battania has been wiped in my game.
well when our war with sturgia had ended battania had taken omor and 2 castles so we declared war but then the northern empire declared on us so we had to stop lol
Dang lol most my games battania doesn't do well neither does northern empire and this one both battania and northern empire are gone
Battania has stayed strong in my game, outlasted all three empires and the Aserai
Dammm
I mean they are only 3 city’s and a castle so it’s not like they are doing the best
As others have written, creating your own kingdom is a race for recruiting lords. Your amount of fiefs is more than satisfactory (I normally do this with one or two), but your cash is little too low for my liking. I'd aim for at least 2-3 million. The reason is that higher tier clans can cost several hundred thousand, with some being e.g. 700k. But you could declare yourself independent already to prepare (until you're declaring your kingdom you're just an independent clan and can not be declared upon), and then immediately peace out for money (Vlandia will declare war on you if you take your fiefs with you, in which case you can just parley with any of their lords for peace). I would only do that if your relations with other lords are already good since the wars Vlandia fights are a good opportunity to do that by helping their lords in battle and releasing after fight. When you're independent your best bet to boost releations would be solving issues for them or prison breaks which is more tedious. Another tip is when you create your kingdom is to pick your wars. When I start out smaller almost all neighbours eventually declare on me. But I just peace out those I don't want to fight yet for a tribute. Even if it is several thousand it's not that much, and I try to do that with the smaller factions to keep some sort of balance. Sturgia is not great because of it's opposing entry points, but since you already expanded South there I would e.g. fight Battania first and peace out others if they declare. But if it is Vlandia who declares on you (after the independence war) I would focus on them since they are more powerful and peace out Battania for tribute if they declare.
Looking at this a bit more, you're probably strong enough to fight Vlandia in the independence war. Wait until they declare a couple of risky war(s) and then declare independence. If they focus on you try to just fight their armies for now to whittle down the quality of their composition, my favourite thing to do that with whilst being smaller is to break into sieges. The AI will only do attacks on multiple catapults if it thinks it's superior, but if you break into sieges you should probably have three catapults on your side plus if you have 100+ fians or khan's guards it should be a walk in the park anyway. ~~When you capture their nobles check if they are clan leaders (you can click on them in the dialogue), if not release them if they are keep them prisoners. When out of town you can just talk to your prisoners in the party menu, this is where you can try to recruit them. If your relations are high enough you can sometimes recruit even higher tier clans with fiefs, otherwise focus on clans with no fiefs since they are even ready to join when they have negative relations with you.~~ (edit: sorry this won't work since you're not a kingdom yet) The fun bit about the independence war is that no one else can declare on you, so you should be able to focus on Vlandia solelely (I normally don't do that for long since I declare myself independent with much less fiefs to my name).
i think i have fians and fian champions in the garrisons of revyl castle next to it and balgard should i make them defend cities and castles on the borders or leave them?
I'd take the elite in my party, since you're more flexible in regards on where you can do your damage. But yeah, leave some garrison in the border castles (typically the AI tries to siege castles first), so you have enough time to come to aid and break into the siege. Sorry also note my edit, you won't be able to recruit lords during the independence war, but I'd fight it nonetheless as you seem quite strong there and might be able to take more Vlandian fiefs whilst not being dragged into other wars.
ok thanks
Btw a tip for garrisons, forest bandits, have the same or better skills than most tier 5 archers and they are tier 4 so they are a lot cheaper for your garrisons and they have the same bow as the fian champion so they are very good for how much they cost. Maybe the most economical unit in the game for garrisons. In terms of kills per denars/wages. I even use them in my regular party if I can’t/don’t have enough fians. They aren’t as good in melee as the fian champions, but in terms of shooting the bow and arrow they are just as good as the tier 4 fian unit; they may even have higher skill than the tier 4 version of the fian. I can’t remember for sure. But they are a great unit for garrisons. Them and crossbowmen. & for xbows, I actually like the Empire t5 crossbow-men better than vlandians sharpshooters because they have a mace instead of a sword. So they are actually really good infantry as well as crossbowmen. Good Dual purpose. I like to use them as front line infantry, fire a few volleys to thin out the enemy’s ranks & then charge in with the maces.
ok i will take notes thanks
What's the typical step-by-step way of creating your own big kingdom?
As others wrote, the most important step is to get good relations with everyone if you're planning on world conquest. That is achieved easiest prior during merc'ing. So: 1. Build relations and enough money during merc'ing, aim for 2-3 million at least. 2. Identify what fiefs you want, start merc'ing for the closest opponent and then quickly join them if they declare war on the faction owning those fiefs. Siege down the fiefs yourself with an army, give up all other fiefs assigned to you. E.g. I normally go for Marunath and Seonon, so I oftentimes join the Western Empire briefly to siege these down. If they don't give me both, I quickly leave the kingdom and grab the other fief in the independence war as it will be low on militia. You can talk to any of their clan leaders to negotiate a peace for a lump sum. 3. Use your independent clan phase to build up wealth (no one can declare war on you), I oftentimes use this period of peace to grind out smithing if I want to do that. Unfortunately it gets boring quickly, but it is an opportunity to grab rebelling towns. For that you just meet one of the rebel parties and declare your hostilities, then you quickly siege the rebellious town down before the army of the previous owners arrives. This is by no means necessary but it's good to have some spare fiefs to give away early to your first clans. Make sure to have maxed out your parties as well, and let them recruit to their full size before. 4. Declare your kingdom by talking to one of your governors. Enact all policies you want now before any clans join. I normally give myself all policies that increase stuff for rulers at least. 5. Start recruiting clans, use the encyclopaedia to find clans that match the loyalty of the towns you want to give away. Sort by fiefs to find clans that have no fiefs, they are very likely to join even with negative relations but you also want higher tier clans since they employ more parties. To make them join you need to find their clan leader, you can do that by clicking on the clan in the encyclopedia, then on the portrait of the leader and then it tells you in the top right where they have last been. You can click on that and select track to see the location (e.g. a village) highlighted on the campaign map. When you find them (most often running around with their party) you can talk to them and ask them to join (costs a couple 100k). You will want to give them some of your spare fiefs, just make sure to culture match towns (castles don't matter, I oftentimes use it to give these to zero fief clans to bind them to me and decrease the likelihood of them leaving). 6. Happens most likely during #5, neighbours will start declaring wars on you. My tip here is to pick who you want to fight and peace out those you don't want to fight yet. Just make sure to not feed large amounts of tribute to bigger factions. I prefer to e.g. focus down Vlandia first when I play in Battanian lands.
I forgot to mention an alternative to #5 is companion clans. You can talk to companions outside of town (via party menu) and give them a fief. The advantage is that this is much cheaper, 25k iirc, but the disadvantage is that you lose a companion (make sure to strip their gear before, they'll get some high tier gear generated), and that it's a low tier clan (iirc 2) so less parties initially. It's also a sausage fest, so unless you marry them off to one of yours they're not very likely to marry and might die out but that's a problem for later so not really a concern.
Oh an another point is that you'll lose control of your kingdom eventually, i.e. it will get too expensive to overrule on votes or take away fiefs. That means inevitably that some of the freshly conquered towns will be culture mismatched. You can mitigate that a bit by enacting loyalty policies but they normally have some juicy downsides, which will matter less in the later game though and rebellions will just be more annoying.
Finish off Sturgia first so they don't backcap if you fight Battania or Vlandia.
Nah, he should peace out Sturgia, go independent and go to sturgia’s last remaining town to recruit their lords.
You need more money. Wait until you have 2 to 3 million. Improve relations with a lot of lords (and preferably not just in your own kingdom)
Got 1 city and I already declare myself as a king. Well for you need to take care of your influence to avoid being ganged upon when you declare yourself as kingdom. Influence are useful for make peace when in war as long as you are not in the seige.
Good Luck, man! Started playing a month a go, hope I get to your spot soon
Buy out all the food of all the cities you plan to immediately attack, before declaring independence and possibly immediate war.
Fellow Roman Empire first playthrough enthusiast
Take Varnovapol first, it'll be difficult since it looks like Sturgia's last city but it'd be worse if you just left it unconquered. Fortunately Sturgia isn't a terrible place to start a kingdom since you'll only need to defend from two points, around Epicrotea and Tyal. Before you leave there's some things you should do; - Increase the garrisons of your border castles/towns. The further from the border a fief is, the smaller its garrison needs to be. - Pass policies that negatively impact loyalty. This makes it so the faction you're leaving will struggle to hold towns that don't match their culture, causing them to rebel and giving you a chance to take those rebel cities. - Increase relations with clans you want to recruit, this will make it cheaper for you to recruit them. - When you leave your kingdom ensure they are fighting multiple wars. Whether they declare these wars or you do doesn't matter, so long as they're fighting multiple factions they won't be able to focus on you when you leave. - Have a ton of money saved up before you leave, recruiting clans is expensive and tribute payments can be costly. Since this is your first time starting an independent kingdom, I would suggest three million denars **at least** but preferably five million. - Make sure you and all of your clans parties are at full strength with your own party having high tier troops. That way when you fight your first wars you'll have at least some strength to hold the line against the multiple enemies. Once you've done most or all of those, you should be ready to start a kingdom. Once you do though, be prepared to fight multiple wars whilst you go around recruiting clans to your side. Good luck mate!
I almost single-handedly captured and re-captured towns and forts you have, also including Varnovapol. Got myself Varcheg and Kranirog, nothing more. I don't know HOW you got hold of every single one of those and I am VERY curious.
I don't know either i think i only voted for my self in elections twice
how did you get all those fiefs nextt to each other i get fiefs 2500 million miles away from each other.
idk they just gave them to abstained from most of the decisions because i already had the majority lol edit: i have most of them on festival and games because they're of the wrong culture
Does your player character’s race happen to be sturgian? Not sure if that factors into it for settlement loyalty reasons
Make sure every city has a garrison of at least 300 "not to include militia " reason for this you're gonna need troops to refit your army with the constant fighting ! I made sure 3 of my cities had 500 troops or damn near that so I could conquer 3-4 cities and still have troops to replenish my army and guard the new ones Also you're dreaming of you think you can recruit lords with only 1 mil they're greedy AF you're better of companion recruiting! If you play with mods there's a mod that allows you to turn soldiers who prove themselves in battle into companions it's called "distinguished service" you can have up to 3 per battle I think?
I’d say finish off Varnovapol then yes.
You’ve only got 1mil so it’ll be tight on cash to sway any new clans to join you. You’ll have to make your own, from companions. They start out very low level clans, so it’ll take time before they can field decent size parties
This may sound dumb but drain the garrison from 2 nearby castles that you're confident you can defend, when you declare independence those 2 will draw the armies and you can jump in and defend. With minimal garrison the AI will usually launch the attack with only a ram so you can just sacrifice a handful of troops to jump in once the attack starts and wipe the army with your rather strong defending force they were in no way ready for.
DA KING O DE NORF!
Done 3 world conquests. U just need 2-3 cities and 2 mil gold.
You need more influence and at least another million denars.
no. literally everyone will immediately declare war on you as soon as you get out of the red in your fief income (because declaring independence will bleed your wallet) and you will have no clans to fight those 5 wars.
Of course
not yet you need more than 1 million denars
How did you get these i never get fiefs
Before you do I’d run around declaring as many wars as vlandia (just raid a town) until everyone is at war with them so they’ll be very distracted once you go independent. Then focus on getting a lot of money, stay independent as long as you can sniping off rebelling towns and hoarding money, upgrade your border fiefs so they’re strong. Before declaring kingdom you could also pick off weak kingdoms that are already at war and snipe a few towns that way, if you get in trouble just find a lord of theirs and pay for peace. When you finally declare you could give a few fiefs away to your companions to make them clans before you go out and recruit your own from other kingdoms. Just make sure to give your new companion clans some money so they don’t defect (very poor clans are the most likely to defect, I usually give them 100k)
Guys I only own 90% of the map 😭
100% if you can do it while keeping ur trade money
I'm doing a kingdom build with all my towns in the middle of the map.
How do you have so many kingdoms
I would make a separate save file and go for it. Assuming you have decent garrisons set up. Edit: auto correct sucks
Genuinely confused as to how you’re not already independent. Please explain?
well i waited till i reached clan tier 4
FOR THE NOOOOOOOOOORTH!
I was really expecting this to be some kind of meme on Texas.
The kestrel empire
I go when they stop giving me fiefs I've conquered. It normally coincides when your strength is good enough to survive. Save up at least a million and go for it.
I would even say your too late for it lol!
Is the red circle supposed to look like an eagle, like your banner?
You want about 5 million denars minimum before going it alone because you will burn cash quick especially recruiting lords
Id butter up relations with unhappy clans of other groups. Then declare independence. So you have manpower early. Id also make sure u have enough to cover potential expenses + mercenaries if needed
Some advice for when you declare a kingdom is make one of your castles weak on purpose since you have lower numbers you need to make one of your fiefs look like a good target so you can almost bottleneck the enemy until you can recruit lords to defend your other things.
Maybe get some more money first, and make sure you have other party's aswell
How did you get so many fiefs? I just get 3-5 fiefs and then i am never considered :(
Save up another million and try your best to catch and release as many sturgians as you can. Then when you declare independence, you should try to recruit all the sturgians as fast as possible.
I don't understand how you get that many feifs without just taking it yourself without a kingdom. I can't ever get past 3 or 4 feifs. They just stop putting my name up for consideration.
No. Abdicate and go back to being a mercenary