For those that don't know, Mount & Blade is a free-form sandbox RPG in that there is no plotline or linear story to follow; you make up your own story and play it out as you want to. You can be a warlord, mercenary captain, goods trader, whatever. I first played the game demo about 3 years ago with mixed results. The gameplay was fun and I enjoyed myself, but the lack of a story had me question whether there could really be any long-term fun involved - how would the game keep me involved if there were no prescribed goals that I had to carry out? Well, fast-forward a few years and I find out that the game's been finished and released when I see it on Steam (I still don't have Steam installed, am on the fence about it... side note: if they put the old LucasArts games you can't buy anymore (aka Jedi Academy, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, etc.) on there I would definitely take the plunge). It's also the time of the Steam year-end sale, and they have it for $15 (half off) and I really consider it... but I've also seen it in stores too, so I hold off on selling my sou... installing Steam, figuring that sooner or later it'll price drop at a B&M store and I'll get it that way. A few weeks later, I'm reading CAG and Steam has it on their weekend sale for $7.50. You really can't beat that price and now I'm really considering getting Steam. Well, I look a little further down the topic and discover that EB/Gamestop has basically put it on clearance for $5. That price is too good for me to not go after it. So the next chance I get I head over to the Gamestop that reportedly has it in stock and there it is. It's still got a $30 price tag on it, so I take it to the clerk and ask about it. He scans it and says it's $5, just like I read and I scoop it up.
I tell that story because, even at $5, I'm still a little nervous about whether the lack of plotline will make the game worth the purchase. Silly? Yes. That's just the way I am, though. I'm also slightly concerned that, with Gamestop having the oddball habit of opening their PC games and putting just the boxes on the shelves, I may have just bought a worthless game (one of the key reasons I don't buy PC games from them except in special circumstances aka preorders shipped directly to my house) since it uses an online activation serial key that GS can't guarantee if they're opening boxes. Anyways, my fears on both are soon put aside as I get the game home and install it, and the key is fine and works without a hitch. Now it's time to delve into the game and see if the create-your-own story works.
First things first, character creation is complex enough so that you can create a face for your character that's unique enough to not have to worry about any of the other characters looking like you do. In fact, there are enough options that none of the NPCs, which all use the same face mechanics, look exactly the same, which is a nice touch. They also let you choose the background of your character, which I'm not really sure makes much of a difference on gameplay, but each option has some interesting stories to go with it. I don't really see anything making that info last longer than that quick opening, though. The basics of my character are that I'm male and I've specced myself to have enough charisma and intelligence to have a pretty large army if I so choose (something I remember from playing the demo - large armies are fun).
I start out in the Khergit Khanate and go through the training ground tutorials to re-acquaint myself with how the game is played. I do reasonably well in the melee training and fail pretty miserably in mounted training. Oh well. I head out and make my way to a village, where I pick up a few recruits and then busy myself with a quest or two to earn some denars (this game's currency). I'm also getting into fights with groups of bandits, which are targetting me with quite a bit of frequency as I have a small party and am, well, easy prey for them. Or so they think. One of the things I remember from playing the game earlier is that this game specializes in mounted cavalry combat, specifically in lance charges. There's even a technique in the game where you can get your horse up to charging speed and the game will automatically couch it so you're holding it in a way that has it pointed down and forward, and if you have the tip of the lance go through someone, be it a horse or unit, they'll take couched lance damage, which is massive, usually enough to kill/KO someone with one hit. This adds slightly to the realism of the game since it lets a full cavalry charge simply run down un-mounted units and obliterate them. In any case, couching the lance lets me stay alive and get goods and cash from the bandits, which in turn lets me hire more recruits and mercenaries to suppliment my army.
There's also a feature in the major Towns of the game called the arena, which is where you can engage in melee fights to earn up to 250 denars if you wind up as the last man standing. As I'm really struggling for money right now, those are really my best option for making cash. It takes a while, though, as the battles are a 40 man free-for-all, with each starting with about 8 fighters and the rest phased in over time. My first attempts at this are pretty unsuccessful and I quickly learn that charging in head first and swinging away is an easy way to get myself knocked out and thrown out of the bout with only a small amount of cash. Nonetheless, I persevere and eventually make it all the way to the end (after about 10 tries or so, thankfully these fights don't cost anything to enter) and win the grand prize of 250 denars. After a few more melee fights I begin to realize that it's easier (and safer) to sit in a corner and let all the AI opponents fight it out, only taking on the ones that come close to you, until it's down to just you and 1 other opponent for the victory. This does have some pitfalls though, as occassionally the AI will decide to gang up on you and when you're fighting 5 on 1, there's not really much chance for survival.
Several fights later, I've finally acquired a hefty sum of 1000 denars and I feel like indulging myself so I head to a tavern and hire my first hero. They want me to pay their bar/inn bill before joining me, a total of about 300 denars. Well, whatever, heroes are good to have around since you can customize their stats and equipment and, more importantly, they don't die, they're only wounded, unlike your soldiers for hire who can quickly become corpses in battles. By this time I've got about 12 people in my army and now some of the bandits are starting to run away from me. It feels pretty good, but as bandits are my main source of equipment, it's a little disconcerting, especially because armor is pretty expensive at shops. I start moving from town to town, competing in melee fights and hiring heroes where I can. My Khergits are upgrading themselves to better and better versions as time passes, and I'm starting to get more confident in my army's ability to lay the smack down on bad guys. However... larger bandit groups of 20-40+ seem to like picking on me one after the other, so I find myself spending a lot of time at castles and towns, resting and hoping they'll lose interest and go away so I can continue on to the next town.
Fast forward a bit, a bunch of levels and battles later, and I've got an army of almost 30 Khergit Horsemen, Horse Archers, and Lancers, all mounted units, combined with 5 heroes. I've done a few odd jobs for the local lords, consisting of delivering letters, collecting taxes and the occasional bounty hunt. I decide to become a mercenary captain for the Khergits since I'm basically one anyways and they're offering to pay me for it, so why not? Shortly after I sign up I'm called to my first duty: one of the lords wants me to do some scouting for him, basically I have to move around the world map and get close to 3 random villages and/or castles and then report back to him. This is slightly harder than it sounds since the lords don't sit still on the world map and you only get 3 game days to finish the quest; just scouting the 3 places takes a full day and a half, so you really don't have time to go looking for the lord to give him the reports. Matters get worse when I discover a game oddity where the lord can get into a fight, lose and be captured before you deliver your report, which makes it impossible to complete the quest, resulting in a failure for which you get in trouble. Kinda stupid since it's not my fault the quest failed, but luckily I chose to have a "quit without saving" option which makes this easier to avoid. Side note: I don't really consider quitting without saving cheating, even though some people might (and it's even kinda spun that way when you're asked if you want the feature or not when you make a new character), mostly because I use it (for the most part) to deal with randomness that can screw me over without me being able to do anything about it and also because I like trying different things out that will have major effects on gameplay, without having to completely start a new game just to see what happens (will exaplain that one a bit more later on).
I wind up spending a couple weeks as a mercenary for the Khergits, and have a pretty good relationship with them and figure hey, I might as well see about becoming one of Sanjar Khan's vassals (he's the ruler of the Khanate). I'm all set to do this, but I wind up making a trip to Tulga, where I meet someone named Prince Valdym the Bastard, a claimant to the throne of the Kingdom of Vaegirs. I start thinking to myself, hmm... I wonder what this might be like. And so, I agree to help him take over the throne, which means we need to start getting lords to switch sides and capture towns and castles from the ones who don't switch. It sounds fairly simple, but we start only with my small army (which is up to about 40, plus or minus a few when I get new recruits and when they get killed). Our campaign starts out easily enough we head across the mountains and run into one of the Vaegir lords and I talk to him and, based on what he's saying to me, choose the option that sounds like what he wants to hear, and, sure enough, he joins us and when he asks what he should do, I tell him to follow me. Yay. This happens for another 4 lords and we've got a pretty big combined army going.
We run into another lord and go through the motions as per usual, but something odd happens with this guy. I choose the option I think he wants to hear and suddenly there's a new step in the process. There's something called a consistency check, which I obviously fail because the lord gets upset and spouts out something along the lines of "do you just tell every lord what they want to hear?" Well, yes, isn't that what you're supposed to do? Unfortunately, that's not a dialogue option, so I lose the support of this lord, as well as a bunch of others that don't agree with the position I wind up sticking with (you've got the options of Expediency, Justice, Legality and Self-interest (aka rewards for the lords), as well as "you decide for yourself" and "my resoning is my own" (aka your personal relationship with that lord) - I chose Justice, not because that's how I actually felt but because there were a few lords I recruited early on that were into the whole justice thing).
The rebellion continues to earn steam, despite my diplomatic snaffu, and we conquer a few castles. Each time one is conquered, a little while later Prince Valdym asks me who I think should take control of said property (you assign castles, villages and towns individually) and I figure it's probably easiest to spread things around evenly, even though depending on who you assign property to you can lose favor with other lords while gaining favor with the lord you give it to (favor basically determines who your friends and enemies are, which is somewhat sorta important later on in the game but not so much at the beginning). After a while, I figure it's time to put myself in charge of one of the castles. Rindyar Castle, to be exact. With command of my own castle boosting my morale (out of game, the morale in game is still the same) I continue the rebellion and conquer a bit more when a catastrophe occurs: my castle is under siege. Oh cripes. I quickly run back only to find a freaking war party there and there's just no way I'll be able to defend against it, even with the mini-war party I have. And so, I lose Rindyar Castle to the Swadians. Easy come, easy go.
Not to be deterred, one the war party has moved back into Swadian territory I go back there with my own little war parties and we lay siege to the castle and take it back. This time, however, I'm not really interested worrying about a castle, so I figure I'll just let someone else take care of it and do just that. We've acquired a new lord and he doesn't have any estates of his own so he gets Rindyar. We go back to our offensive and about half a game-day later Rindyar is under siege again. You've got to be freaking kidding me. Oh well, I never liked that place anyway, so I just let the Swadians keep control of it. Big whoop, right? Wrong. As it turns out, the Swadians are a royal pain in my rear. We're not technically at war with them, but they keep looting our villages and laying siege to our castles and, in another humorous game moment, whenever I go and chase a single lord off (his army of 80 or so against my close to 600 at this point war party) he runs away for a bit only to turn back and continue his attack 30 seconds later. Well, fed up with the cat and mouse routine I say screw it and just chase him down and attack his army with mine. The humorous twist part of this is I'm the one that loses reputation with him and his kingdom because I've got a larger army attacking his smaller one.
Despite the Swadians getting on my nerves every now and then I continue the rebellion and discover an interesting thing about getting lords to switch sides. There are a number of factors that influence your "Rebellion Chance," including persuasion skill, relationship with the lord, the argument you use, the consistency check (grr...), and the rivalry check (that is, if your lord is rivals with another lord on your side they're going to be less likely to join you). The relationship and argument factors stay the same, but consistency and persuasion have a random component to them, meaning that you can save before talking to a lord and the chance can be 40 one time and 20 another. Additionally, those are just the rebellion success chances, once that's determined and there are no more modifiers to put in, there's a rebellion check, which is basically a roll of the die, a 100 sided die, to be precise. If the roll is lower than your success chance, then the lord joins. If it's higher, the lord stays your enemy. Now, why explain that? You've probably guessed already. Considering how random it is, I decide that it'll just be easier to save before talking to each lord and then reloading until I get them to join my cause. That may be borderline cheating to some, but it's a built in game mechanic that I'm just taking advantage of. Whether that's cheating or not isn't the point (probably in the same category of borderline cheating that the FFT level down/up trick is). The point is that it works and it just made the rebellion speed up, in that I don't have to conquer everything one castle and town at a time. In reality, there are only... 3 (I think) lords that I turn to my side in this manner. Several still join on the first try and some I don't even try to convince since they had a -30 rebellion chance (I wasn't persuasive and had already recruited their rival).
I've moved about half-way across the kingdom at this point and am deciding my next move when the game gives me a piece of great news: the Khergit Khanate and Kingdom of Swadia are at war! Now, why is this good news? Well, I'm still on good terms with the Khergits, so they aren't attacking me, but since they border Swadia as well, they are attacking them. My Swadian problems are disappearing and it's great.
As I had said earlier, I was about half-way across the map. Now, one other thing worth knowing about the Vaegirs is that they have 4 major towns: Curaw, Khudan, Reyvadin and Rivacheg. I managed to persuade the lord of Curaw to join the rebellion so that one was given without war. The lords of the other 3, on the other hand, weren't quite as willing to join our side, meaning I'd have to take control of them the hard way. At this point I had 2 options: I could stay in the snowy areas and take Khudan first, or I could go into the grasslands and take Reyvadin first. Both options had their merits, Khudan was closer but one of the lords I turned had a castle and village near Reyvadin, and it was disconnected from the rest of our forces, meaning it would be really easy for it to be taken over without me being able to stop it. So I decided to take Reyvadin first, then move across to Khudan.
At this point, I was thinking that I'd want one of the towns for myself, as they were considerably more appealing than castles were. Since I couldn't have Curaw, that left Khudan, Reyvadin and Rivacheg. I had already decided that Prince Valdym should have Rivacheg since that's what the current Vaegir king was using as his home and it just seemed poetic that he should have it. I decided on Khudan for myself as it was more insulated from the outside than Reyvadin was and seemed like it would be easier to keep.
With those two conquered and Khudan under my control, it was time to finish the war. At this point, they only had Rivacheg and 3 castles left for me to conquer. I take the castles around Rivacheg first (at least, I think I do... unfortunately my memory is a little fuzzy here) and then move to Rivacheg. Interestingly, all of the lords I've been beating until now are at Rivacheg, waiting. The battle is mostly routine, however, and we take Rivacheg. Shortly after we do, Prince Valdym asks who it should go to and I tell him to take it for himself, and he does. With all of the Vaegir towns and castles defeated I start wondering whether I missed something in the process because the quest from Prince Valdym hasn't updated and when I ask him about it he just says "we're about to win the war." Well, ok, whatever. I start walking around for a while and then suddenly a screen appears saying that the Kingdom of Vaegirs has fallen and Prince Valdym the Bastard is the new king. I get the quest rewards and he leaves my party and boom, all of our towns go from the red Kingdom of Vaegirs Rebels back to the green Kingdom of Vaegirs. Mission complete.
I start wondering what to do next and decide to spend some time in Khudan, hanging out in my new town when something pretty hilarious happens. During the various sieges and war battles I had taken a few Vaegir lords captive since there's a pretty nice chunk of change awarded for their ransom. As it turned out, I still had one or two held captive when I completed the quest. When I finished the quest and the kingdom of Vaegirs had its new king, all of the lords I hadn't converted before were now automatically converted, meaning I was holding one of the lords of my own realm prisoner. The hilarity ensued when I got a message saying that the kingdom of Vaegirs would pay his ransom. Go figure. Not being one to quib over details, I took the money and never looked back.
One of the other things I find out is that some of these lords still bear grudges against me because of the way I kicked their tails during the war. In an attempt to make them not hate me anymore, I start taking quests from them to get us back to at least an indifferent status. One of these I wind up half-regretting as the lord asks to borrow Nizar (one of my heroes) for a week. That irks me a bit, but I know that if I refuse there's a good chance I'll lose favor with the lord (another game quirk: refusing a quest from a noble will often deteriorate your relationship with them) and I'm trying to improve my relationship with him, so I agree and find ways to kill time, mostly consisting of going on recruitment campaigns and participating in tournaments in various towns (tournaments, unlike the melee battles are held randomly by a few towns at a time and offer much bigger rewards). The Swadians are still being a pain in the neck from time to time and are still exchanging Rindyar Castle with the Khergits. Good grief.
There's another game message popup that, this time, says Prince Valdym the Bastard (why he didn't just change his name to King Valdym is another game quirk) is looking for a new marshal for the kingdom and he's considering me and the game is asking if I'd like to accept the nomination. I say sure, and then we go through a voting process where the other lords make their picks. Thanks to the various favor quests I've done I'm able to get enough votes to become the new Marshal. Go me. I decide that maybe it's time for me to go on the offensive with the Swadians. Starting a new campaign from Reyvadin, I move across the map along the Swadian/Vaegir border. Among the first for me to take over is Vyincourd Castle, which is right on the border with where the snow and grasslands meet. I fight a lord there and discover that I really like fighting in that area and so, when I take Vyincourd from the Swadians I ask for it to be awarded to me. Sure enough, a little while later the message pops up that it's mine, along with the nearby village of Rduna. Awesome. Figuring Khudan will be safe from attacks, I go back there and pull some of the garrison out, moving it over to Vyincourd, having learned from my mistake with Rindyar. Speaking of Rindyar, it's back in Swadian hands now and I say, hey, what the heck, let's take it... again. I manage to catch it right after the Swadians had taken it from the Khergits, which means there's almost no one there to defend it and I've got an army of over 500 waiting at its gates, so I offer them the chance to surrender and they take it. The castle is mine again. Well, almost. I decide it's not really worth the trouble it takes to apparently keep it, so I don't ask for it to be awarded to me.
Around this time I've picked up about 10 heroes, but they aren't all getting along. Some of them, in fact, are growing quite agitated. One of my early heroes, Katrin, decides it's time for her to leave, citing my bad choice of companions as the reason. And so, just like that, she's gone. I start paying attention to all those messages about their grievances after that, since now I know I can lose people. I know I'm going to lose more, too, because there are a few that just don't get along. What really worries me is when I see that Ymira, my healer, is discontent. I try and do everything I can to make her stay longer and it sorta works. She's not happy, but she's not leaving. Now, healing in M&B works a bit differently than it does in other games. There are no items to heal with, you simply have to wait for the damage to wear off by not getting into fights for a while. There are three skills associated with this effect: Wound Treatment, Surgery and First Aid. Wound Treatment increases the rate at which your party heals, Surgery increases the chance that when your units are taken out in combat that they'll be knocked unconscious instead of killed (which is good as it takes a while to train cavalry) and First Aid gives heroes an instant % boost to their health (you can see the % of their health they have in the party window). Losing those skills (well, other people have them but Ymira is the one that specializes in them) would be pretty hard on my team as those are probably the most important party skills you have when using a large army; hence why I'm trying to keep her around.
In any case, the war with Swadia is going relatively well and I'm finally powerful enough so that I feel I can turn the difficulty up a little by changing the battle size all the way up to 100. Battle size in M&B determined the number of combatants that can be on the field at any given time. With battles now being hundreds of troops vs. hundreds of troops, this can make them go by quite a bit faster, but it also increases the chance that you'll take casualties or that you'll be swarmed on the battlefield. It's worth it, though. At least, for field battles. Sieges are another story, as I find out rather painfully. You see, when you're the attacking team in a siege, you have to first make your way to the castle/town and then you can assault it. Depending on the location, that means either going up ladders or using a siege tower. Ladders are quicker but offer very little room to get people up, you can only have 1 go at a time, basically, and there's usually only 1 ladder to go up (actually, I only remember ever seeing multiple ladders once in the entire game) meaning you can get bottlenecked very easily. Siege towers just plain take forever. First, you have to wait a few days for them to be built (although you can lower that time with one of the skills, Engineering) and then when you do assault the location, it takes a good minute or 2 for the tower to be rolled over to the wall, during which time castle archers will be firing at you with only shields to defend. You can personally hide behind the tower and use it for cover, but the AI feels the need to just stand there in the open taking hits. This means that in a large battle you're more than likely going to lose a few troops by the time you're ready to attack the walls. As a result, what I eventually wound up doing was seeting the battle size to 25 (smallest) for sieges and then turning it all the way back up to 100 for everything else.
Again, back to the war with Swadia. Things are going my way when something a little unexpected happens. The Nords declare war against Swadia as well and start attacking. Oh boy. I'm moving my way through Swadian territory and can start to see the finish line when I notice a rather large gathering of Nords around one of their castles, as well as a Khergit war party taking another one. Poor Swadians, but oh well. I keep my attacks going and soon all that's left are a few castles, including the one the Nords are attacking. I'm not really sure why, but that's taking forever. Seriously, I've conquered a Town and 3 other castles and they're still waiting for their siege to start. Not really sure what's going on with that, especially since the Khergits have finished their siege already. I decide to end the campaign as there's very little of Swadia left and we're being attacked more frequently by the Rhodoks, so I figure it'll be easier for me to do the siege warfare myself and let the other lords defend the land. I wait around for a while and the Nords are finally ready to assualt so I join them in that. While the Nords get control of the castle I do get a nice boost to our friendship, which means we don't have to worry about Nords attacking us anytime soon, and since they're at war with our enemies, it makes us that much harder to attack.
Fast forward a bit again and I've taken over all the Swadian territory (well, minus the 2 places the Khergits and Nords got). I've also lost Ymira, which is painful, so I use a few of my own levels to increase my own healing skills, which is ok, as I have the points to do so with a high int score (every time you put a point in int, you get an additional skill point for that level). I've also learned that just requesting a territory be rewarded to you doesn't guarantee that it will be as my next reques gets turned down, though I do get a 900 denar offering instead. Whoopdie doo. In any case, one of the options is to reject the cash and denounce your loyalty to the king. I wonder what that would be like and so when I conquer the next location I request it and then save. When, sure enough, word comes along that I won't be getting it I choose the option to reject the money and denounce my oath. There's another message that says if you give back all your holdings that the king might overlook the betrayal and forget about you. Or... you can hold onto them and become an independant state. I choose the latter, just to see what happens, and my holdings go from the Vaegir green to independant gray. I'm also once again known as the Kingdom of Vaegir Rebels. Well, ok, whatever. I quit without saving and go back to my war. Side note: back when I was helping Valdym with the rebellion, I was curious, so I made a save and told him I didn't want to help him anymore. He then vanished and all of the Vaegir Rebels territory went back to regular Vaegirs except for my castle, which turned gray and was still known as the Vaegir Rebels; so basically the exact same thing happened.
With the Swadians defeated I decide to move on to the Rhodoks, the other faction that's been a thorn in my surprise. First, however, I make my way back to Valdym and do a few quests for him, thinking that by increasing our friendship it might make it more likely for me to get more territory from him. I also get a message saying that the Kingdom of Swadia has been eliminated, followed by messages of Swadian lords switching to other factions. Once I feel ready I start moving my way up the map, going straight through the middle of Rhodok territory. Among one of my first acquisitions is Jelkala, one of the Rhodoks' major towns. With my friendship with Valdym increased I request the town for myself and, luckily, get it. Woo hoo. I put my war on a temporary pause and go around collecting recruits and mercenaries to station there, as well as taking some of my garrisons from Vyincourd and Khudan as, by this point, those are pretty far from the front lines. With Jelkala feeling sufficiently safe for now, I finish working my way up the middle of Rhodok territory, dividing it in two. Of these two sides, one borders the Nords and one borders the Khergits. I decide to start working on the Khergit side first, figuring that it'll be easier since I've got a better relationship with them than I do with the Nords. In any case, I start working my way over when I get a message that one of the castles I just conquered is under attack by the Rhodoks. Ugh. To make matters worse, it's only just been assigned a lord, meaning it's got virtually no defense. Double ugh. Needless to say, it's recaptured by the Rhodoks and I need to backtrack more than I thought I would (it's on a small island with only 1 connecting bridge, far away from where I wound up). and deal with the war party that took it, then retake it myself. Annoying, but I move on and soon conquer the lands near the Khergits.
The Khergits decided to go on a war party of their own. Now, this normally isn't all that strange, it happens all the time. What's odd about this one is that they attack a castle that's basically on the other side of the map that their territory is. Well, whatever, I guess. It's one less territory I have to worry about conquering.
I decide to move on the other half of the Rhodok territory, thinking it's time to finish them off, which brings up another tidbit about the game. The various heroes you pick up along the way will have stories to tell you about where they're from or what they were doing before they met up with you, and these stories are often about the locations you adventure to on your travels. One of my companions, Artimenner (my engineer) tells a story about one of the Castles I'm approaching called Culmarr Castle and how it has one of the only trade routes available to lands outside Calradia, thus making it very rich and very important. I think to myself that that might be a pretty good place to hold on to, so when we conquer it I ask for it. Luckily, Valdym still likes me enough to give it to me along with it's town, Istiniar. Nice. Unfortunately, as time goes on I realize that the story is just that, a story, and the amount of money I get from these two places is about the same as what I get from Vyincour and Rduna. Oh well. Jelkala, on the other hand, is proving to be a lot more lavish than Khudan was. As it turns out, having Khudan so isolated means it doesn't earn as much money as Jelkala, which is right in the thick of things. Oh well, live and learn.
Before I finish the Rhodoks part of this story I just want to make a few comments about the Rhodoks. Rhodok Seargants are a nightmare to cavalry, especially if you're using horses with a low armor rating, like Coursers. They carry Glaives with them, which have a very long reach, which they use to really mess with mounted units. In addition to that, Rhodoks are equipped with the largest shields in the game, meaning they can deflect couched lance blows, which really gets annoying after a while, and even moreso during sieges where they hide behind those things quite a lot. Because of that, the Rhodoks wound up being the hardest faction to fight. They don't have much in the way of cavalry, but their infantry is a royal pain to fight. Now, back to the rest of the story.
I finish taking over all of the Rhodok territory but I'm not getting the Rhodoks are defeated message and I have no idea why. That's what's supposed to happen, right? You defeat the faction by taking over all of its territory, right? Well, apparently not. It doesn't really matter anyway, I've got all of their land. Now, at this point I'm considering going into retirement. I've taken out the Swadians and the Rhodoks and am friends with the Khergits and Nords. This would be a pretty good place to call it quits and end my campaign. I decide to take a small break from the game (I had quite a few late nights in my campaign, and even a few days where I was really surprised at the number of hours I put in during the day) and let the idea sit for a while. By the next day I'm starting to wonder just what would happen if I went and conquered the entire country. One of my heroes said something once about uniting all the factions and building the "ultimate" army with the best units from each and being nigh-unstoppable. Well, I kinda like that idea, and that, along with the pure curiosity of wanting to see what would happen, fuels my decision to conquer the rest of the country. The real fun is just about to start.
Another thing worth mentioning about the Rhodok campaign is that just before it ended I once again get the message that the king is going to choose a new marshal and wants to know if I'm interested. This time, I say no, I'm too busy. And so we get a new marshal that's not me. Big mistake, probably the biggest mistake I've made so far and you're about to find out why.
The Rhodoks are still hanging around for some reason I can't figure out so I decide to start my Nord campaign anyway. Before I do, however, I go around to several different towns and their taverns, recruiting as many mercenaries as I can. Mercs are really expensive to keep around, but they're also really good and you can find (and hire) them already full upgraded as Cavalry, Crossbowmen and Hired Blades. I grab about 40 or so mercs to use as my front line, expecting them to get killed first, figuring that by the time I lose them I'll have rescued enough prisoners and trained enough recruits for my army to not need mercs anymore. I've also taken all the mercs out of my garrisons as they're just too expensive to keep around on a long-term basis (I have to spend about 6000 denars per week on wages for my personal army and the garrisons, though luckily garrisoned troops only cost half of what their wages are if they're in your army).
Feeling sufficiently armed, I head to the Nord castle that's in the middle of our territory (the one they captured from the Swadians), figuring that would be a good place to start. I go into the castle and... there's no siege option. O...k... Wondering what to do next, I remember something I tried back when I was with the Khergits, which was to talk to a lord and say "I'm here to deliver my demands." The lord then asks you if you're serious. Back with the Khergits, I said I was only joking around as I didn't want to wage war with anyone. Well, this time I do the same thing, but instead tell the lord to surrender or die. That works. My relationship with the nords quickly drops from about 60 all the way down to 0, and I lose a bit of reputation with one of the Nord lords. Well, ok. Now, another game quirk. I told the lord to surrender or die and we wind up in the pre-fight screen where it tells you the numbers (your army has x and his has y) but there is no attack option. In fact, the only option is to leave. So, I do just that and head over to the castle. There's the siege option. I pick it and suddenly my relationship with the Nords plummets to -40. Just what I wanted, or so I thought.
I take that castle (Reindi Castle, for those interested) and move on to another castle they've taken that's sorta in my territory (aka used to be Swadian) called Ryibelet Castle. Here's where things get really interesting. Right as I start to build my siege engine at Ryibelet, I get a notice that my lands are under attack. Specifically, that my villages are being looted. Well, I suppose it's to be expected that the Nords would attack. The odd thing is that they're only attacking my settlements and nothing else. They're not even trying to retake Reindi which I just conquered. That's a little unsettling, but ok. I decide to finish attacking Reindi before I head off to deal with the looters, as it takes me a lot less time to siege a castle than it does for them to loot a village for whatever reason. With the castle in hand, I find out that both of my villages (Istiniar and Rduna) are being looted now. If there's one thing the Nords like to do, it's looting villages, apparently. Istiniar was being looted before I finished my assault, so I figure that one's a lost cause at this point and head towards Rduna. I arrive in time to stop that assault and then get the message that Culmarr Castle is under attack. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Another interesting game quirk that I notice at this point is that if your army is sufficiently larger than your opponents, they will run away from you, but if they were looting or sieging, they'll just head right back as soon as you turn away. Also, because you have the larger army, you're seen as the aggressor and so attacking them means your relationship deteriorates with both them and their country. Wonderful. I move in to defend my village and I'm the bad guy. That makes perfect sense. Sigh... In retrospect I suppose it sorta makes sense that they're going to attack me; I was the one that picked the fight after all. It's still annoying that the only dialogue options when you encounter a lord that's running from you are: "surrendor or die" and "this audience is over." There's no "you're attacking my village, I can't allow that" option. Oh well. Side note: one of the more annoying game quirks is that several times when I'd chase lords around, they'd move to Vaegir towns/castles to escape and be safe. It became incredibly annoying when a lord actually travelled to my castle (Vyincourd) to escape me and stayed there. I wanted one of my guards to arrest him but it wasn't even an option (you can only have guards arrest people from countries you're at war with, I guess).
I take out the lords that are around Rduna and Vyincourd (just waiting to attack and loot) and then head up to deal with the ones at Culmarr and Istiniar. This is another headache as Culmarr and Istiniar are sufficiently far enough apart that I can't defend both at the same time like I could with Vyincourd and Rduna. What I basically wind up doing for a day or two is chasing one away then running back to the other side to chase the others away, then going back to the other side, and so on and so forth until I finally just say screw it. There's only 1 army attacking Culmarr and it's got a good enough garrison that I can leave it alone for a while, whereas there are 3 lords waiting to sack Istiniar. So, I leave Culmarr to its own defenses and chase after the other lords, defeating them and deteriorating my relationship with them all because I won't let them loot my villages (still seems a bit backwards). Then I head off to deal with the siege at Culmarr and take that lord out. My lands defended for the moment, I head back to my own sieges.
I'm now starting to siege the castles that are Nord in origin, not just what they took from the Swadians at some point in time, when I notice something unusual on the map: an army with blue numbers over it. Now, blue is the color of the Rhodoks, so that means they're a Rhodok army. Ok, I thought I had them all wiped but apparently not. I forget the Nords for a second and head after that army and finish it off (it really wasn't a challenge; they only had about 30 people in their army and I've got well over 100). Sure enough, the next day I get the message that the kingdom of Rhodoks has been defeated and their lords are starting to choose new sides. Ok, whatever, back to the Nords.
I take another Nord castle when something happens that really puts a ratchet in my gears. Apparently, the marshal for the Vaegirs decides that he wants to start a new campaign and I have to report to him for duty. Seriously? This is really not a good time for this, but there's nothing I can do about it as you get in trouble for not reporting. To make matters worse, he's over on the border with the Khergits, nowhere near where I'm fighting my war. Ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh. Well, whatever, I don't have any choice but to go, so I do. While there I see a few Nord armies so it's not a total waste... yet. I take them out then report to the lord and he says he wants me to follow him for a while. Ok, whatever. The only problem with this is... we're not going anywhere. Really? He called me half-way across the map to just sit here and let my rations run out? Seriously? Good grief. As if that weren't enough, my cash reserves are starting to bottom out, as I've just paid the weekly wages to my troops of ~6000 denars and I'm down to ~9000 now, meaning I can only afford 1 more week of wages, which happens faster than you'd think. I'm starting to get a little worried, but, like I said, there's nothing I can really do about it. To make matters worse, Istiniar is being looted again and there's nothing I can do about it because I can't leave and get back in time. So I have to sit around and just wait for several days while the marshal does nothing.
To give you a bit of an idea as to what that was like, I'm going to take a break from the story of my war with the Nords to explain something else about the game that's rather annoying: the way additional lords join you in sieges. Now, taking an army of 10 lords and over 1000 troops and attacking a castle sounds pretty neat, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it never quite works out that way. You see, the lords have their own minds about things and if something else approaches that they'd like to attack, they go ahead and do that, chasing it for a few days if they feel like it. This gets incredibly annoying when you're sieging something that needs a siege tower that takes at least 2 days to finish. You may start with 6 or so lords but only have 2 there when your tower is finally done. There's nothing you can do about it, either. There's no way to chastise the lord or even to show your own disapproval of them running off.. You just have to take it. This becomes incredibly irritating when you're attacking towns that have caravans coming in and out all the time. I had to abandon several sieges because by the time I was ready to attack the town I only had 200 troops to attack their 1000+. Now, I don't mind going in with a disadvantage, in fact sometimes I prefer it since you can wind up taking out more of their army per turn; but it's something else entirely to try and take a town when you're outnumbered by that much.
Ok, back to the action. It's been a few days now and I've had to go over to the nearby towns to resupply my food stockpile a few times (large armies consume a lot of food) when I'm finally told the marshal's campaign is done and over with. Finally. Istiniar is long since looted at this point so now I've got to go take care of Rduna again. I do that then get back to my sieges. Now, to take the Nord territory, I'm systematically working my way across their territory, starting from where they border the original Vaegir territory and working to the corner of the map. Castle by castle and town by town the yellow of the Nords is replaced by the green of the Vaegirs. I've also been taking on the armies I see scattered across the map, especially going after the ones headed in the direction of my towns, which brings up another point: Nords on the regular field of battle are incredibly easy to defeat if you've got cavalry. They're pretty much all lightly armored footmen that you can just ride down with relative ease. Nords are great for attacking castles with (I used them quite extensively in my campaign against the Rhodoks) but they just fall apart easily when you have cavalry. Something disappointing that happens is that I request one of the Nord towns I've conquered (Tihr), but don't get it. Apparently, my relationship with Valdym isn't good enough for me to get 3 towns. It's disappointing, but I'm not really broken up about it.
Eventually, the Nords are down to 1 castle, Chalbek Castle. That's all that's left for me to conquer the Nords. I head over to it and... Oh my goodness this is going to be impossible. Every single Nord lord is there with his army. Now, granted, some are only armies of 30-40 as I recently gave them a good stomping, but there are a ton of them there and my army is down to under 100 after taking all that other territory. There are about 15 lords and over 1000 troops in that castle, there's just no way I'm going to take it at once. To make matters worse, I'm not the marshal right now so I can't get support from any other lords (little did I know then... you'll find out what I mean later), meaning this is all on me to take them all out. Oh boy. Well, I decide I might as well start a few small sieges to whittle away at their numbers a bit but unfortunately things don't go exactly as planned. You see, when you're that heavily outnumbered, before you can attack the walls you first have to fight the defenders that will sally out to meet you. Now, if you win you can continue and attack the walls. If you lose, you have to build a completely new siege tower (or ladders, whichever the case is) before you can attack, and repeat the same process, again. Also, being that heavily outnumbered, I'm only allowed to have 1 or 2 other people with me when I attack, as opposed to them having 20+. You can imagine how long we last. Fortunately, between some of the skirmishes, some of the lords leave the castle, but it's just not enough to make enough of a dent in their numbers. Well, a few skirmishes later I realize that I'm just not even making a dent on their defenses and decide to just give up sieging it for now. I pull back a little and just camp there, letting myself and my troops recouperate from the fights.
As luck would have it, some of the lords decide to venture out of the castle and go off on their own or, if they've got large parties of 100+, they attack me. This is fine with me because it's an indirect way of cutting down the number of troops they have at the castle. Unfortunately, some of the lords that made it out have decided to attack my villages again. Argh. I head over to Istiniar (the one that's being attacked) and it's Lord Aedin, one of my old friends from back when I was friends with the Nords (not anymore though, after all these raids on my villages I'm out for blood). When I speak with him he says he's glad to see me although it's a shame our countries are at war (or something like that). Unfortunately, our countries aren't exactly at war since that would have made this oh so much easier, but oh well, technicalities. I've chased him off sufficiently that he's no longer a threat to my village so I decide to just let him go. Interestingly enough, when I say goodbye, he stops me and says he'd like my help. Uh, ok. All I need to do is have my surgeon (Ymira) talk to one of his wounded soldiers to convince them to get medical help (or to stabilize them for the journey, don't remember which exactly). I don't need to give her up, so I agree and, wait for it, my relationship with him improves. Go figure. Well, whatever, I chase him a little while longer to make sure he's not going to attack my village again and then head back to Culmarr.
When I get back I notice that enough lords are out of the castle that I'd only be outnumbered 8:1 or something like that, so I decide to just plow through and finish them off, no matter what it takes. I start the siege again and it takes about 4 tries, but I finally get past that first wave. What I finally do is, since it's 2 vs. 20, stay as close to the other warrior that's in there with me and try to defend them as much as I can, since they're a lot more fragile than I am. Another thing worth mentioning at this time is that the weapons you use for a siege are pretty different from what you'd use on horseback. Using a lance is a really bad idea during a siege, even though it's one of the best weapons available for mounted combat. Also, when on foot at a siege, using two handed weapons for that extra punch is really worth it. Anyways, I've got my Voulge out and start swinging away. The really nice thing about this Voulge is that the damage is high enough that if I get a bit of a speed bonus (i.e. you hit something while moving so the momentum of the movement is added to damage) I can get 1 hit kills on most normal troops and can take out lords with 2-4 swings, which really helps out a lot. I'm swinging away and taking out whatever I can, trying to stay close to my buddy and it's working. We're making a dent in their forces and eventually, all the lords are down. Awesome. All that's left is the small fry. We're working out way through them, but with about 5 left, my buddy goes down. Well, it's not great news but I just stay focused on what I'm doing. I have to hurry though, my own health bar is getting pretty low (down to about 1/3) so I start backing up and swinging at the guys coming at me. One of them happens to be an archer and switches to firing pot shots at me. Fortunately, I've got pretty thick armor on so the damage is minimal. A few good voulge swings later and it's just me and the archer. I've got about a sliver of health left, which means 1 lucky head shot from him and I'm down (and have to start the whole thing all over again). I bum rush him and he raises his bow to shoot, and then lowers it. I've gotten close enough so that the AI has switched him from ranged combat to melee combat. I'm not completely out of the woods yet, though, as one hit from a melee weapon is probably enough to knock me out as well, but I ready my weapon anyways and keep charging him. He draws his weapon back to attack and I let loose, hoping to get my attack in before he gets his. I do. He winces and falls back, dead. I've won. At least, I've won the outer assault.
Now it's time to attack their walls. I'm not quite as outnumbered this time, I've got 3 buddies to their 14. 4v14, I can do that. Thanks to the first aid skill my health is back up to about half or so, and as these are all fresh troops with me, they're at full health. I let them get to the wall first and attack the few lords that are around this time, with me swinging away behind cover (yes, you can hit people in melee from behind walls in this game if you've got a long enough weapon) using my Glaive (the same thing the Rhodok Seargants used). We get them down and this is where we split up. My AI buddies go after the nearby archers while I take out the archers in the other direction. With them down we join back up and start taking out the caslte reinforcements. One more thing to quickly mention is that when you're assaulting castles, you don't have to defeat the entire garrison, one you win a battle and move further into the castle/town, you don't have to fight the outer layers again unless you lose further in and have to restart the siege. We're down in the courtyard of the castle fighting and I lose my buddies, but get reinforcements. While getting a fresh supply of troops is nice, they start outside the castle, which means I'm still alone with 5 defenders attacking me. I back up to the wall and make my way up the staircase, swinging away the whole time, taking hits the whole time, and my health is back into that "danger zone" where another few hits and I'm done. Fortunately, my buddies arrive in time and we proceed to wipe the rest of their defenders and finish them off.
It's time for the keep, the final part of the castle (note that if you're attacking a town and they still have a lot of defenders there's another round where you fight in the streets, but since this is a castle and not a town that doesn't apply here). This part isn't nearly as hard as the earlier stages as the keep only has about 5 defenders and they don't get any reinforcements at all. The keep falls easily and it's done. The last Nord castle is mine. There are about 12 lords that I've defeated and while most get away, there are a few (4 or 5) that I'm given the option to take prisoner. Since the Nords aren't going to exist for much longer I decide to let them all go, hoping to earn enough favor with them (you get +5 for letting them go) that they'll decide to join us instead of the Khergits as I'm planning on attacking them next.
With that over with all I have left to do (as I learned from the Rhodoks) is go around and defeat all the individual lords that are remaining, which should be the easy part. Some are easy to find as they've decided to attack my villages again (by now I have no problem being the bad guy and hunting them down) and some are still patrolling where their territory used to be. I take out every Nord I run across rather easily (remember, they're not that great at battlefield combat against cavalry), but the message that the Nords have been eliminated is not happening. Argh. That means there's still one left out there. Well, start moving across the map systematically, also taking the time to do tournaments to restock my cash supply, which got pretty low there for a while. Unfortunately, the remaining Nords are proving very difficult to find. I've made my way across the entire map and haven't found them, and I can't ask anyone where they are or even how many of them there are. So, getting a little desperate, I go through the game logs and look up all the characters, trying to piece together where they might be, but I'm coming up with nothing. I don't want to start attacking the Khergits until after I've wiped out the nords, so I'm in a bit of a pickle at the moment. I take a small break from Nord hounding and do a few more tournaments and a couple quests to improve my Jelkala and Istiniar relationships (brings up another point: cattle are very annoying; you move them around the map by chasing them, they don't follow you... I really dislike cattle quests). In any case, I'm relaxing a bit and basically feel like I'm on vacation for now.
In a stroke of good luck, something unexpected happens. The Nords declare war... on the Khergits. Not exactly what I had in mind but hey, you take what you can get. I find a Khergit lord and ask them how the war with the Nords is going, and find out the Nords only have 1 army (aka lord with troops) left. Well, that explains why I can't find them anywhere, so I go to my towns and castles and start moving troops around, preparing to go to war with the Khergits. While I'm doing this I get a message that the last Nord lord was defeated in combat and, sure enough, the next day I get a message that the Nords have been eliminated. Finally. In a second stroke of luck, it's time for a new marshal again and my name is once again being considered. This time I jump at the opportunity and, because I've got quite a few friends at this point, get the job in a landslide victory.
Learning from my past experiences with the Nords, I know that going to war with the Khergits is going to be a me only thing and that they're going to start attacking my estates. This time I'm going to be ready for it, so I leave about 200 troops in Khudan as that's the farthest from their territory, put ~160 each in Vyincourd and Culmarr, and leave about 300 in Jelkala, figuring that will be one of their main targets. As for the villages, I just accept the fact that they're probably going to be raided multiple times while I'm off taking over territory. My own army is down to ~100 so I hire a bunch of mercs to beef it up to ~130 and then head for the castle that's the deepest inside Vaegir territory: Estroq Castle. There's a lord inside, but you're not allowed to pick fights with lords in towns or castles, you have to wait for them to be on the field before you can do that. So, I save my game and set up camp outside the castle. And I wait. I wait about 3 days and the lord still isn't moving and I get fed up waiting so I quit without saving and reload the game to before I wasted 3 days. Do I need to do this? Not really, it was pretty pointless, actually. I just felt like it. Besides, he made me waste some of my food supply so I was gonna fix him.
I head across the mountains into the thieves forest (as it's apprently called by one of my heroes) and to the other castle they've taken over in the middle of Vaegir territory, Senuzgda. I find a lord walking around over there and pick a fight with him. Again, the only battle option is to leave, so I do that and head back to Estroq. Sure enough, the lord is still sitting in the castle. So I take it over. I go back to Senuzgda and take that one over, too. Side note: the Khergits are pretty annoying castle defenders since their main units are Lancers and Horse Archers/Veteran Horse Archers. All of these classes have bows, as do most of the lords, meaning they like shooting at you. A lot. Losing someone waiting for a siege tower to get into place is pretty much a guarantee against them. However, once you get inside the walls, they quickly fold and are defeated.
It's time for me to start attacking the heart of Khergit territory, and, honestly, it feels a little weird since I was almost a part of the faction. Although, looking back at it, it seems fitting that the final campaign would end where it all began. I decide to take down their two mountain pass castles first, but I also realize that, being marshal again, I can call for a campaign to begin and use the full might of the Vaegir army to take them down. Or so I thought. Another game quirk is that if your countries aren't at war, then the lords won't attack each other, which includes joining you in castle sieges. Oh well. Figuring it's a waste of time to keep the other lords with me, I end the campaign and move on to another castle by myself. Having taken 2 castles and a town from the Khergits with relative ease, it looks like this campaign is going to be over with pretty quickly. Not wanting to hunt them down forever, I find a few lords moving around on the map and attack them. That's when it hits me like a ton of bricks: the Khergits are a primarily mounted group, and they use the faster and more maneuverable horses. Oh boy, these field battles could wind up taking a bit longer than I thought they would. To make matters worse, most Khergit territory is hilly, meaning it's not the most idea land for couching the lance, especially not with my Heavy Charger that has troubles maintaining couching speed on hills. I actually wind up switching to my siege equipment to have better options for "slow" moving hill combat.
After a few battles I decide to switch my horse to a Courser, the fastest horse type in the game (and also the one with the least armor), so I'll be able to chase them all down. All I have in inventory, however, is a regular Courser and I was hoping for a Spirited version (extra speed and maneuverability). I head to the nearest horse merchant and, as luck would have it, they had a Spirited Courser available for purchase so I grab it and switch over for the next battle. Holy cow it's like switching from an 18 wheeler that just plows through everything to a formula 1 racer that leaves everything in the dust. There are a few situations where I'm actually moving too fast and wind up galloping past my target. Also, at that speed, you don't exactly corner on a dime. Needless to say it takes a little bit of getting used to. In a strange twist of fate, I also start running into lords that switched to the Khergits from the other factions, mostly Rhodoks, which means they have a lot of infantry as well, for which Chargers are perfect. Sigh. Oh well. I spend a few battles switching back and forth from the Courser to the Charger and finally figure it's better to just stick with the Courser for the hills and chasing down Khergit Horse Archers. The only big adjustment is that since Coursers can't just plow through infantry the way Chargers can, I have to whittle my way through their flanks instead of just charging into the center. Side note: when a Charger is up to speed, no infantry can stop it's momentum so you can literally run down a line of 30+ infantry and trample them all. The left side of the screen will fill so completely with "Horse charged for xx damage" that you'll basically lose the left side of your screen until after the charge. It's a beautiful sight.
As I'm getting ready to attack the next town, I get an interesting message. The Khergits have declared war with the Vaegirs. Excellent. This is going to be easier than I thought. A little easier, anyway. They're unable to attack my estates anymore since there are a lot of lords guarding Vaegir territory. I decide to take advantage of the new war declaration and start a new campaign. It's a good idea, right? Well... nobody seems to want to repot to me. I get 1 lord to follow me around. In another game quirk that's slightly humorous now, I can't even ask other lords to follow me. When I do ask a lord to follow me, he says he can't at the moment. He blew me off. That's just hilarious since it's not an option for me when someone else is the marshal. Oh well. We attack the town and I realize that I really don't need help taking these castles and towns. Khergits are pretty easy to defeat in battle, even when you're outnumberd by quite a bit; they don't have heavy armor and most of their troops don't have shields. Since I don't have any support anyway, I end the campaign and send the lord who did show up home.
Compared to the other factions, the Khergits really don't have much in the way of castles to take control of. In fact, taking control of the rest of their territory is pretty easy. The only somewhat annoying part of all this is that most of their castles require siege towers instead of ladders. Fortunately, at this point Artimenner, my engineer, has a high enough engineering skill that it only takes 42 hours (game time) to complete them as opposed to the 60 it used to take. Even so, once I finish sieging all their lands there are still quite a few armies running around, as well as a few individual lords moving around (their party gets dropped down to 1 when they're defeated and they retreat to one of the castles, which means that if they're hiding in a castle with just their party of 1 and they run away, they still only have themselves in their party). This should be the easy part, right? Wrong. Oh so wrong.
Every remaining lord with an army has banded together and they're marching around as this humongous war party of about 2300. There's just no way I'm going to beat that. Needless to say, that when they siege one of our castles (Sungetche), we lose it. Instead of trying to defend the castle from their siege, I instead head over to all of my estates and take all of my knights out, putting everything that's not a mounted unit into the garrisons. When all is said and done I've got an army of 160 cavalry ready. They then start to patrol around Sungetche and are chasing one of the Vaegir lords around and finally catch up to him. Keep in mind that once a battle has started, in order to join it, each army has to join individually, the lords don't just all join en masse. I've still got my war party of 160, which is sufficient to scare off a lot of the lords that only have 50-80 in their units, meaning there are only about 1000 troops now attacking the lord (who has a party of ~170). At this point I join in the fun a
I tell that story because, even at $5, I'm still a little nervous about whether the lack of plotline will make the game worth the purchase. Silly? Yes. That's just the way I am, though. I'm also slightly concerned that, with Gamestop having the oddball habit of opening their PC games and putting just the boxes on the shelves, I may have just bought a worthless game (one of the key reasons I don't buy PC games from them except in special circumstances aka preorders shipped directly to my house) since it uses an online activation serial key that GS can't guarantee if they're opening boxes. Anyways, my fears on both are soon put aside as I get the game home and install it, and the key is fine and works without a hitch. Now it's time to delve into the game and see if the create-your-own story works.
First things first, character creation is complex enough so that you can create a face for your character that's unique enough to not have to worry about any of the other characters looking like you do. In fact, there are enough options that none of the NPCs, which all use the same face mechanics, look exactly the same, which is a nice touch. They also let you choose the background of your character, which I'm not really sure makes much of a difference on gameplay, but each option has some interesting stories to go with it. I don't really see anything making that info last longer than that quick opening, though. The basics of my character are that I'm male and I've specced myself to have enough charisma and intelligence to have a pretty large army if I so choose (something I remember from playing the demo - large armies are fun).
I start out in the Khergit Khanate and go through the training ground tutorials to re-acquaint myself with how the game is played. I do reasonably well in the melee training and fail pretty miserably in mounted training. Oh well. I head out and make my way to a village, where I pick up a few recruits and then busy myself with a quest or two to earn some denars (this game's currency). I'm also getting into fights with groups of bandits, which are targetting me with quite a bit of frequency as I have a small party and am, well, easy prey for them. Or so they think. One of the things I remember from playing the game earlier is that this game specializes in mounted cavalry combat, specifically in lance charges. There's even a technique in the game where you can get your horse up to charging speed and the game will automatically couch it so you're holding it in a way that has it pointed down and forward, and if you have the tip of the lance go through someone, be it a horse or unit, they'll take couched lance damage, which is massive, usually enough to kill/KO someone with one hit. This adds slightly to the realism of the game since it lets a full cavalry charge simply run down un-mounted units and obliterate them. In any case, couching the lance lets me stay alive and get goods and cash from the bandits, which in turn lets me hire more recruits and mercenaries to suppliment my army.
There's also a feature in the major Towns of the game called the arena, which is where you can engage in melee fights to earn up to 250 denars if you wind up as the last man standing. As I'm really struggling for money right now, those are really my best option for making cash. It takes a while, though, as the battles are a 40 man free-for-all, with each starting with about 8 fighters and the rest phased in over time. My first attempts at this are pretty unsuccessful and I quickly learn that charging in head first and swinging away is an easy way to get myself knocked out and thrown out of the bout with only a small amount of cash. Nonetheless, I persevere and eventually make it all the way to the end (after about 10 tries or so, thankfully these fights don't cost anything to enter) and win the grand prize of 250 denars. After a few more melee fights I begin to realize that it's easier (and safer) to sit in a corner and let all the AI opponents fight it out, only taking on the ones that come close to you, until it's down to just you and 1 other opponent for the victory. This does have some pitfalls though, as occassionally the AI will decide to gang up on you and when you're fighting 5 on 1, there's not really much chance for survival.
Several fights later, I've finally acquired a hefty sum of 1000 denars and I feel like indulging myself so I head to a tavern and hire my first hero. They want me to pay their bar/inn bill before joining me, a total of about 300 denars. Well, whatever, heroes are good to have around since you can customize their stats and equipment and, more importantly, they don't die, they're only wounded, unlike your soldiers for hire who can quickly become corpses in battles. By this time I've got about 12 people in my army and now some of the bandits are starting to run away from me. It feels pretty good, but as bandits are my main source of equipment, it's a little disconcerting, especially because armor is pretty expensive at shops. I start moving from town to town, competing in melee fights and hiring heroes where I can. My Khergits are upgrading themselves to better and better versions as time passes, and I'm starting to get more confident in my army's ability to lay the smack down on bad guys. However... larger bandit groups of 20-40+ seem to like picking on me one after the other, so I find myself spending a lot of time at castles and towns, resting and hoping they'll lose interest and go away so I can continue on to the next town.
Fast forward a bit, a bunch of levels and battles later, and I've got an army of almost 30 Khergit Horsemen, Horse Archers, and Lancers, all mounted units, combined with 5 heroes. I've done a few odd jobs for the local lords, consisting of delivering letters, collecting taxes and the occasional bounty hunt. I decide to become a mercenary captain for the Khergits since I'm basically one anyways and they're offering to pay me for it, so why not? Shortly after I sign up I'm called to my first duty: one of the lords wants me to do some scouting for him, basically I have to move around the world map and get close to 3 random villages and/or castles and then report back to him. This is slightly harder than it sounds since the lords don't sit still on the world map and you only get 3 game days to finish the quest; just scouting the 3 places takes a full day and a half, so you really don't have time to go looking for the lord to give him the reports. Matters get worse when I discover a game oddity where the lord can get into a fight, lose and be captured before you deliver your report, which makes it impossible to complete the quest, resulting in a failure for which you get in trouble. Kinda stupid since it's not my fault the quest failed, but luckily I chose to have a "quit without saving" option which makes this easier to avoid. Side note: I don't really consider quitting without saving cheating, even though some people might (and it's even kinda spun that way when you're asked if you want the feature or not when you make a new character), mostly because I use it (for the most part) to deal with randomness that can screw me over without me being able to do anything about it and also because I like trying different things out that will have major effects on gameplay, without having to completely start a new game just to see what happens (will exaplain that one a bit more later on).
I wind up spending a couple weeks as a mercenary for the Khergits, and have a pretty good relationship with them and figure hey, I might as well see about becoming one of Sanjar Khan's vassals (he's the ruler of the Khanate). I'm all set to do this, but I wind up making a trip to Tulga, where I meet someone named Prince Valdym the Bastard, a claimant to the throne of the Kingdom of Vaegirs. I start thinking to myself, hmm... I wonder what this might be like. And so, I agree to help him take over the throne, which means we need to start getting lords to switch sides and capture towns and castles from the ones who don't switch. It sounds fairly simple, but we start only with my small army (which is up to about 40, plus or minus a few when I get new recruits and when they get killed). Our campaign starts out easily enough we head across the mountains and run into one of the Vaegir lords and I talk to him and, based on what he's saying to me, choose the option that sounds like what he wants to hear, and, sure enough, he joins us and when he asks what he should do, I tell him to follow me. Yay. This happens for another 4 lords and we've got a pretty big combined army going.
We run into another lord and go through the motions as per usual, but something odd happens with this guy. I choose the option I think he wants to hear and suddenly there's a new step in the process. There's something called a consistency check, which I obviously fail because the lord gets upset and spouts out something along the lines of "do you just tell every lord what they want to hear?" Well, yes, isn't that what you're supposed to do? Unfortunately, that's not a dialogue option, so I lose the support of this lord, as well as a bunch of others that don't agree with the position I wind up sticking with (you've got the options of Expediency, Justice, Legality and Self-interest (aka rewards for the lords), as well as "you decide for yourself" and "my resoning is my own" (aka your personal relationship with that lord) - I chose Justice, not because that's how I actually felt but because there were a few lords I recruited early on that were into the whole justice thing).
The rebellion continues to earn steam, despite my diplomatic snaffu, and we conquer a few castles. Each time one is conquered, a little while later Prince Valdym asks me who I think should take control of said property (you assign castles, villages and towns individually) and I figure it's probably easiest to spread things around evenly, even though depending on who you assign property to you can lose favor with other lords while gaining favor with the lord you give it to (favor basically determines who your friends and enemies are, which is somewhat sorta important later on in the game but not so much at the beginning). After a while, I figure it's time to put myself in charge of one of the castles. Rindyar Castle, to be exact. With command of my own castle boosting my morale (out of game, the morale in game is still the same) I continue the rebellion and conquer a bit more when a catastrophe occurs: my castle is under siege. Oh cripes. I quickly run back only to find a freaking war party there and there's just no way I'll be able to defend against it, even with the mini-war party I have. And so, I lose Rindyar Castle to the Swadians. Easy come, easy go.
Not to be deterred, one the war party has moved back into Swadian territory I go back there with my own little war parties and we lay siege to the castle and take it back. This time, however, I'm not really interested worrying about a castle, so I figure I'll just let someone else take care of it and do just that. We've acquired a new lord and he doesn't have any estates of his own so he gets Rindyar. We go back to our offensive and about half a game-day later Rindyar is under siege again. You've got to be freaking kidding me. Oh well, I never liked that place anyway, so I just let the Swadians keep control of it. Big whoop, right? Wrong. As it turns out, the Swadians are a royal pain in my rear. We're not technically at war with them, but they keep looting our villages and laying siege to our castles and, in another humorous game moment, whenever I go and chase a single lord off (his army of 80 or so against my close to 600 at this point war party) he runs away for a bit only to turn back and continue his attack 30 seconds later. Well, fed up with the cat and mouse routine I say screw it and just chase him down and attack his army with mine. The humorous twist part of this is I'm the one that loses reputation with him and his kingdom because I've got a larger army attacking his smaller one.
Despite the Swadians getting on my nerves every now and then I continue the rebellion and discover an interesting thing about getting lords to switch sides. There are a number of factors that influence your "Rebellion Chance," including persuasion skill, relationship with the lord, the argument you use, the consistency check (grr...), and the rivalry check (that is, if your lord is rivals with another lord on your side they're going to be less likely to join you). The relationship and argument factors stay the same, but consistency and persuasion have a random component to them, meaning that you can save before talking to a lord and the chance can be 40 one time and 20 another. Additionally, those are just the rebellion success chances, once that's determined and there are no more modifiers to put in, there's a rebellion check, which is basically a roll of the die, a 100 sided die, to be precise. If the roll is lower than your success chance, then the lord joins. If it's higher, the lord stays your enemy. Now, why explain that? You've probably guessed already. Considering how random it is, I decide that it'll just be easier to save before talking to each lord and then reloading until I get them to join my cause. That may be borderline cheating to some, but it's a built in game mechanic that I'm just taking advantage of. Whether that's cheating or not isn't the point (probably in the same category of borderline cheating that the FFT level down/up trick is). The point is that it works and it just made the rebellion speed up, in that I don't have to conquer everything one castle and town at a time. In reality, there are only... 3 (I think) lords that I turn to my side in this manner. Several still join on the first try and some I don't even try to convince since they had a -30 rebellion chance (I wasn't persuasive and had already recruited their rival).
I've moved about half-way across the kingdom at this point and am deciding my next move when the game gives me a piece of great news: the Khergit Khanate and Kingdom of Swadia are at war! Now, why is this good news? Well, I'm still on good terms with the Khergits, so they aren't attacking me, but since they border Swadia as well, they are attacking them. My Swadian problems are disappearing and it's great.
As I had said earlier, I was about half-way across the map. Now, one other thing worth knowing about the Vaegirs is that they have 4 major towns: Curaw, Khudan, Reyvadin and Rivacheg. I managed to persuade the lord of Curaw to join the rebellion so that one was given without war. The lords of the other 3, on the other hand, weren't quite as willing to join our side, meaning I'd have to take control of them the hard way. At this point I had 2 options: I could stay in the snowy areas and take Khudan first, or I could go into the grasslands and take Reyvadin first. Both options had their merits, Khudan was closer but one of the lords I turned had a castle and village near Reyvadin, and it was disconnected from the rest of our forces, meaning it would be really easy for it to be taken over without me being able to stop it. So I decided to take Reyvadin first, then move across to Khudan.
At this point, I was thinking that I'd want one of the towns for myself, as they were considerably more appealing than castles were. Since I couldn't have Curaw, that left Khudan, Reyvadin and Rivacheg. I had already decided that Prince Valdym should have Rivacheg since that's what the current Vaegir king was using as his home and it just seemed poetic that he should have it. I decided on Khudan for myself as it was more insulated from the outside than Reyvadin was and seemed like it would be easier to keep.
With those two conquered and Khudan under my control, it was time to finish the war. At this point, they only had Rivacheg and 3 castles left for me to conquer. I take the castles around Rivacheg first (at least, I think I do... unfortunately my memory is a little fuzzy here) and then move to Rivacheg. Interestingly, all of the lords I've been beating until now are at Rivacheg, waiting. The battle is mostly routine, however, and we take Rivacheg. Shortly after we do, Prince Valdym asks who it should go to and I tell him to take it for himself, and he does. With all of the Vaegir towns and castles defeated I start wondering whether I missed something in the process because the quest from Prince Valdym hasn't updated and when I ask him about it he just says "we're about to win the war." Well, ok, whatever. I start walking around for a while and then suddenly a screen appears saying that the Kingdom of Vaegirs has fallen and Prince Valdym the Bastard is the new king. I get the quest rewards and he leaves my party and boom, all of our towns go from the red Kingdom of Vaegirs Rebels back to the green Kingdom of Vaegirs. Mission complete.
I start wondering what to do next and decide to spend some time in Khudan, hanging out in my new town when something pretty hilarious happens. During the various sieges and war battles I had taken a few Vaegir lords captive since there's a pretty nice chunk of change awarded for their ransom. As it turned out, I still had one or two held captive when I completed the quest. When I finished the quest and the kingdom of Vaegirs had its new king, all of the lords I hadn't converted before were now automatically converted, meaning I was holding one of the lords of my own realm prisoner. The hilarity ensued when I got a message saying that the kingdom of Vaegirs would pay his ransom. Go figure. Not being one to quib over details, I took the money and never looked back.
One of the other things I find out is that some of these lords still bear grudges against me because of the way I kicked their tails during the war. In an attempt to make them not hate me anymore, I start taking quests from them to get us back to at least an indifferent status. One of these I wind up half-regretting as the lord asks to borrow Nizar (one of my heroes) for a week. That irks me a bit, but I know that if I refuse there's a good chance I'll lose favor with the lord (another game quirk: refusing a quest from a noble will often deteriorate your relationship with them) and I'm trying to improve my relationship with him, so I agree and find ways to kill time, mostly consisting of going on recruitment campaigns and participating in tournaments in various towns (tournaments, unlike the melee battles are held randomly by a few towns at a time and offer much bigger rewards). The Swadians are still being a pain in the neck from time to time and are still exchanging Rindyar Castle with the Khergits. Good grief.
There's another game message popup that, this time, says Prince Valdym the Bastard (why he didn't just change his name to King Valdym is another game quirk) is looking for a new marshal for the kingdom and he's considering me and the game is asking if I'd like to accept the nomination. I say sure, and then we go through a voting process where the other lords make their picks. Thanks to the various favor quests I've done I'm able to get enough votes to become the new Marshal. Go me. I decide that maybe it's time for me to go on the offensive with the Swadians. Starting a new campaign from Reyvadin, I move across the map along the Swadian/Vaegir border. Among the first for me to take over is Vyincourd Castle, which is right on the border with where the snow and grasslands meet. I fight a lord there and discover that I really like fighting in that area and so, when I take Vyincourd from the Swadians I ask for it to be awarded to me. Sure enough, a little while later the message pops up that it's mine, along with the nearby village of Rduna. Awesome. Figuring Khudan will be safe from attacks, I go back there and pull some of the garrison out, moving it over to Vyincourd, having learned from my mistake with Rindyar. Speaking of Rindyar, it's back in Swadian hands now and I say, hey, what the heck, let's take it... again. I manage to catch it right after the Swadians had taken it from the Khergits, which means there's almost no one there to defend it and I've got an army of over 500 waiting at its gates, so I offer them the chance to surrender and they take it. The castle is mine again. Well, almost. I decide it's not really worth the trouble it takes to apparently keep it, so I don't ask for it to be awarded to me.
Around this time I've picked up about 10 heroes, but they aren't all getting along. Some of them, in fact, are growing quite agitated. One of my early heroes, Katrin, decides it's time for her to leave, citing my bad choice of companions as the reason. And so, just like that, she's gone. I start paying attention to all those messages about their grievances after that, since now I know I can lose people. I know I'm going to lose more, too, because there are a few that just don't get along. What really worries me is when I see that Ymira, my healer, is discontent. I try and do everything I can to make her stay longer and it sorta works. She's not happy, but she's not leaving. Now, healing in M&B works a bit differently than it does in other games. There are no items to heal with, you simply have to wait for the damage to wear off by not getting into fights for a while. There are three skills associated with this effect: Wound Treatment, Surgery and First Aid. Wound Treatment increases the rate at which your party heals, Surgery increases the chance that when your units are taken out in combat that they'll be knocked unconscious instead of killed (which is good as it takes a while to train cavalry) and First Aid gives heroes an instant % boost to their health (you can see the % of their health they have in the party window). Losing those skills (well, other people have them but Ymira is the one that specializes in them) would be pretty hard on my team as those are probably the most important party skills you have when using a large army; hence why I'm trying to keep her around.
In any case, the war with Swadia is going relatively well and I'm finally powerful enough so that I feel I can turn the difficulty up a little by changing the battle size all the way up to 100. Battle size in M&B determined the number of combatants that can be on the field at any given time. With battles now being hundreds of troops vs. hundreds of troops, this can make them go by quite a bit faster, but it also increases the chance that you'll take casualties or that you'll be swarmed on the battlefield. It's worth it, though. At least, for field battles. Sieges are another story, as I find out rather painfully. You see, when you're the attacking team in a siege, you have to first make your way to the castle/town and then you can assault it. Depending on the location, that means either going up ladders or using a siege tower. Ladders are quicker but offer very little room to get people up, you can only have 1 go at a time, basically, and there's usually only 1 ladder to go up (actually, I only remember ever seeing multiple ladders once in the entire game) meaning you can get bottlenecked very easily. Siege towers just plain take forever. First, you have to wait a few days for them to be built (although you can lower that time with one of the skills, Engineering) and then when you do assault the location, it takes a good minute or 2 for the tower to be rolled over to the wall, during which time castle archers will be firing at you with only shields to defend. You can personally hide behind the tower and use it for cover, but the AI feels the need to just stand there in the open taking hits. This means that in a large battle you're more than likely going to lose a few troops by the time you're ready to attack the walls. As a result, what I eventually wound up doing was seeting the battle size to 25 (smallest) for sieges and then turning it all the way back up to 100 for everything else.
Again, back to the war with Swadia. Things are going my way when something a little unexpected happens. The Nords declare war against Swadia as well and start attacking. Oh boy. I'm moving my way through Swadian territory and can start to see the finish line when I notice a rather large gathering of Nords around one of their castles, as well as a Khergit war party taking another one. Poor Swadians, but oh well. I keep my attacks going and soon all that's left are a few castles, including the one the Nords are attacking. I'm not really sure why, but that's taking forever. Seriously, I've conquered a Town and 3 other castles and they're still waiting for their siege to start. Not really sure what's going on with that, especially since the Khergits have finished their siege already. I decide to end the campaign as there's very little of Swadia left and we're being attacked more frequently by the Rhodoks, so I figure it'll be easier for me to do the siege warfare myself and let the other lords defend the land. I wait around for a while and the Nords are finally ready to assualt so I join them in that. While the Nords get control of the castle I do get a nice boost to our friendship, which means we don't have to worry about Nords attacking us anytime soon, and since they're at war with our enemies, it makes us that much harder to attack.
Fast forward a bit again and I've taken over all the Swadian territory (well, minus the 2 places the Khergits and Nords got). I've also lost Ymira, which is painful, so I use a few of my own levels to increase my own healing skills, which is ok, as I have the points to do so with a high int score (every time you put a point in int, you get an additional skill point for that level). I've also learned that just requesting a territory be rewarded to you doesn't guarantee that it will be as my next reques gets turned down, though I do get a 900 denar offering instead. Whoopdie doo. In any case, one of the options is to reject the cash and denounce your loyalty to the king. I wonder what that would be like and so when I conquer the next location I request it and then save. When, sure enough, word comes along that I won't be getting it I choose the option to reject the money and denounce my oath. There's another message that says if you give back all your holdings that the king might overlook the betrayal and forget about you. Or... you can hold onto them and become an independant state. I choose the latter, just to see what happens, and my holdings go from the Vaegir green to independant gray. I'm also once again known as the Kingdom of Vaegir Rebels. Well, ok, whatever. I quit without saving and go back to my war. Side note: back when I was helping Valdym with the rebellion, I was curious, so I made a save and told him I didn't want to help him anymore. He then vanished and all of the Vaegir Rebels territory went back to regular Vaegirs except for my castle, which turned gray and was still known as the Vaegir Rebels; so basically the exact same thing happened.
With the Swadians defeated I decide to move on to the Rhodoks, the other faction that's been a thorn in my surprise. First, however, I make my way back to Valdym and do a few quests for him, thinking that by increasing our friendship it might make it more likely for me to get more territory from him. I also get a message saying that the Kingdom of Swadia has been eliminated, followed by messages of Swadian lords switching to other factions. Once I feel ready I start moving my way up the map, going straight through the middle of Rhodok territory. Among one of my first acquisitions is Jelkala, one of the Rhodoks' major towns. With my friendship with Valdym increased I request the town for myself and, luckily, get it. Woo hoo. I put my war on a temporary pause and go around collecting recruits and mercenaries to station there, as well as taking some of my garrisons from Vyincourd and Khudan as, by this point, those are pretty far from the front lines. With Jelkala feeling sufficiently safe for now, I finish working my way up the middle of Rhodok territory, dividing it in two. Of these two sides, one borders the Nords and one borders the Khergits. I decide to start working on the Khergit side first, figuring that it'll be easier since I've got a better relationship with them than I do with the Nords. In any case, I start working my way over when I get a message that one of the castles I just conquered is under attack by the Rhodoks. Ugh. To make matters worse, it's only just been assigned a lord, meaning it's got virtually no defense. Double ugh. Needless to say, it's recaptured by the Rhodoks and I need to backtrack more than I thought I would (it's on a small island with only 1 connecting bridge, far away from where I wound up). and deal with the war party that took it, then retake it myself. Annoying, but I move on and soon conquer the lands near the Khergits.
The Khergits decided to go on a war party of their own. Now, this normally isn't all that strange, it happens all the time. What's odd about this one is that they attack a castle that's basically on the other side of the map that their territory is. Well, whatever, I guess. It's one less territory I have to worry about conquering.
I decide to move on the other half of the Rhodok territory, thinking it's time to finish them off, which brings up another tidbit about the game. The various heroes you pick up along the way will have stories to tell you about where they're from or what they were doing before they met up with you, and these stories are often about the locations you adventure to on your travels. One of my companions, Artimenner (my engineer) tells a story about one of the Castles I'm approaching called Culmarr Castle and how it has one of the only trade routes available to lands outside Calradia, thus making it very rich and very important. I think to myself that that might be a pretty good place to hold on to, so when we conquer it I ask for it. Luckily, Valdym still likes me enough to give it to me along with it's town, Istiniar. Nice. Unfortunately, as time goes on I realize that the story is just that, a story, and the amount of money I get from these two places is about the same as what I get from Vyincour and Rduna. Oh well. Jelkala, on the other hand, is proving to be a lot more lavish than Khudan was. As it turns out, having Khudan so isolated means it doesn't earn as much money as Jelkala, which is right in the thick of things. Oh well, live and learn.
Before I finish the Rhodoks part of this story I just want to make a few comments about the Rhodoks. Rhodok Seargants are a nightmare to cavalry, especially if you're using horses with a low armor rating, like Coursers. They carry Glaives with them, which have a very long reach, which they use to really mess with mounted units. In addition to that, Rhodoks are equipped with the largest shields in the game, meaning they can deflect couched lance blows, which really gets annoying after a while, and even moreso during sieges where they hide behind those things quite a lot. Because of that, the Rhodoks wound up being the hardest faction to fight. They don't have much in the way of cavalry, but their infantry is a royal pain to fight. Now, back to the rest of the story.
I finish taking over all of the Rhodok territory but I'm not getting the Rhodoks are defeated message and I have no idea why. That's what's supposed to happen, right? You defeat the faction by taking over all of its territory, right? Well, apparently not. It doesn't really matter anyway, I've got all of their land. Now, at this point I'm considering going into retirement. I've taken out the Swadians and the Rhodoks and am friends with the Khergits and Nords. This would be a pretty good place to call it quits and end my campaign. I decide to take a small break from the game (I had quite a few late nights in my campaign, and even a few days where I was really surprised at the number of hours I put in during the day) and let the idea sit for a while. By the next day I'm starting to wonder just what would happen if I went and conquered the entire country. One of my heroes said something once about uniting all the factions and building the "ultimate" army with the best units from each and being nigh-unstoppable. Well, I kinda like that idea, and that, along with the pure curiosity of wanting to see what would happen, fuels my decision to conquer the rest of the country. The real fun is just about to start.
Another thing worth mentioning about the Rhodok campaign is that just before it ended I once again get the message that the king is going to choose a new marshal and wants to know if I'm interested. This time, I say no, I'm too busy. And so we get a new marshal that's not me. Big mistake, probably the biggest mistake I've made so far and you're about to find out why.
The Rhodoks are still hanging around for some reason I can't figure out so I decide to start my Nord campaign anyway. Before I do, however, I go around to several different towns and their taverns, recruiting as many mercenaries as I can. Mercs are really expensive to keep around, but they're also really good and you can find (and hire) them already full upgraded as Cavalry, Crossbowmen and Hired Blades. I grab about 40 or so mercs to use as my front line, expecting them to get killed first, figuring that by the time I lose them I'll have rescued enough prisoners and trained enough recruits for my army to not need mercs anymore. I've also taken all the mercs out of my garrisons as they're just too expensive to keep around on a long-term basis (I have to spend about 6000 denars per week on wages for my personal army and the garrisons, though luckily garrisoned troops only cost half of what their wages are if they're in your army).
Feeling sufficiently armed, I head to the Nord castle that's in the middle of our territory (the one they captured from the Swadians), figuring that would be a good place to start. I go into the castle and... there's no siege option. O...k... Wondering what to do next, I remember something I tried back when I was with the Khergits, which was to talk to a lord and say "I'm here to deliver my demands." The lord then asks you if you're serious. Back with the Khergits, I said I was only joking around as I didn't want to wage war with anyone. Well, this time I do the same thing, but instead tell the lord to surrender or die. That works. My relationship with the nords quickly drops from about 60 all the way down to 0, and I lose a bit of reputation with one of the Nord lords. Well, ok. Now, another game quirk. I told the lord to surrender or die and we wind up in the pre-fight screen where it tells you the numbers (your army has x and his has y) but there is no attack option. In fact, the only option is to leave. So, I do just that and head over to the castle. There's the siege option. I pick it and suddenly my relationship with the Nords plummets to -40. Just what I wanted, or so I thought.
I take that castle (Reindi Castle, for those interested) and move on to another castle they've taken that's sorta in my territory (aka used to be Swadian) called Ryibelet Castle. Here's where things get really interesting. Right as I start to build my siege engine at Ryibelet, I get a notice that my lands are under attack. Specifically, that my villages are being looted. Well, I suppose it's to be expected that the Nords would attack. The odd thing is that they're only attacking my settlements and nothing else. They're not even trying to retake Reindi which I just conquered. That's a little unsettling, but ok. I decide to finish attacking Reindi before I head off to deal with the looters, as it takes me a lot less time to siege a castle than it does for them to loot a village for whatever reason. With the castle in hand, I find out that both of my villages (Istiniar and Rduna) are being looted now. If there's one thing the Nords like to do, it's looting villages, apparently. Istiniar was being looted before I finished my assault, so I figure that one's a lost cause at this point and head towards Rduna. I arrive in time to stop that assault and then get the message that Culmarr Castle is under attack. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Another interesting game quirk that I notice at this point is that if your army is sufficiently larger than your opponents, they will run away from you, but if they were looting or sieging, they'll just head right back as soon as you turn away. Also, because you have the larger army, you're seen as the aggressor and so attacking them means your relationship deteriorates with both them and their country. Wonderful. I move in to defend my village and I'm the bad guy. That makes perfect sense. Sigh... In retrospect I suppose it sorta makes sense that they're going to attack me; I was the one that picked the fight after all. It's still annoying that the only dialogue options when you encounter a lord that's running from you are: "surrendor or die" and "this audience is over." There's no "you're attacking my village, I can't allow that" option. Oh well. Side note: one of the more annoying game quirks is that several times when I'd chase lords around, they'd move to Vaegir towns/castles to escape and be safe. It became incredibly annoying when a lord actually travelled to my castle (Vyincourd) to escape me and stayed there. I wanted one of my guards to arrest him but it wasn't even an option (you can only have guards arrest people from countries you're at war with, I guess).
I take out the lords that are around Rduna and Vyincourd (just waiting to attack and loot) and then head up to deal with the ones at Culmarr and Istiniar. This is another headache as Culmarr and Istiniar are sufficiently far enough apart that I can't defend both at the same time like I could with Vyincourd and Rduna. What I basically wind up doing for a day or two is chasing one away then running back to the other side to chase the others away, then going back to the other side, and so on and so forth until I finally just say screw it. There's only 1 army attacking Culmarr and it's got a good enough garrison that I can leave it alone for a while, whereas there are 3 lords waiting to sack Istiniar. So, I leave Culmarr to its own defenses and chase after the other lords, defeating them and deteriorating my relationship with them all because I won't let them loot my villages (still seems a bit backwards). Then I head off to deal with the siege at Culmarr and take that lord out. My lands defended for the moment, I head back to my own sieges.
I'm now starting to siege the castles that are Nord in origin, not just what they took from the Swadians at some point in time, when I notice something unusual on the map: an army with blue numbers over it. Now, blue is the color of the Rhodoks, so that means they're a Rhodok army. Ok, I thought I had them all wiped but apparently not. I forget the Nords for a second and head after that army and finish it off (it really wasn't a challenge; they only had about 30 people in their army and I've got well over 100). Sure enough, the next day I get the message that the kingdom of Rhodoks has been defeated and their lords are starting to choose new sides. Ok, whatever, back to the Nords.
I take another Nord castle when something happens that really puts a ratchet in my gears. Apparently, the marshal for the Vaegirs decides that he wants to start a new campaign and I have to report to him for duty. Seriously? This is really not a good time for this, but there's nothing I can do about it as you get in trouble for not reporting. To make matters worse, he's over on the border with the Khergits, nowhere near where I'm fighting my war. Ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh. Well, whatever, I don't have any choice but to go, so I do. While there I see a few Nord armies so it's not a total waste... yet. I take them out then report to the lord and he says he wants me to follow him for a while. Ok, whatever. The only problem with this is... we're not going anywhere. Really? He called me half-way across the map to just sit here and let my rations run out? Seriously? Good grief. As if that weren't enough, my cash reserves are starting to bottom out, as I've just paid the weekly wages to my troops of ~6000 denars and I'm down to ~9000 now, meaning I can only afford 1 more week of wages, which happens faster than you'd think. I'm starting to get a little worried, but, like I said, there's nothing I can really do about it. To make matters worse, Istiniar is being looted again and there's nothing I can do about it because I can't leave and get back in time. So I have to sit around and just wait for several days while the marshal does nothing.
To give you a bit of an idea as to what that was like, I'm going to take a break from the story of my war with the Nords to explain something else about the game that's rather annoying: the way additional lords join you in sieges. Now, taking an army of 10 lords and over 1000 troops and attacking a castle sounds pretty neat, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it never quite works out that way. You see, the lords have their own minds about things and if something else approaches that they'd like to attack, they go ahead and do that, chasing it for a few days if they feel like it. This gets incredibly annoying when you're sieging something that needs a siege tower that takes at least 2 days to finish. You may start with 6 or so lords but only have 2 there when your tower is finally done. There's nothing you can do about it, either. There's no way to chastise the lord or even to show your own disapproval of them running off.. You just have to take it. This becomes incredibly irritating when you're attacking towns that have caravans coming in and out all the time. I had to abandon several sieges because by the time I was ready to attack the town I only had 200 troops to attack their 1000+. Now, I don't mind going in with a disadvantage, in fact sometimes I prefer it since you can wind up taking out more of their army per turn; but it's something else entirely to try and take a town when you're outnumbered by that much.
Ok, back to the action. It's been a few days now and I've had to go over to the nearby towns to resupply my food stockpile a few times (large armies consume a lot of food) when I'm finally told the marshal's campaign is done and over with. Finally. Istiniar is long since looted at this point so now I've got to go take care of Rduna again. I do that then get back to my sieges. Now, to take the Nord territory, I'm systematically working my way across their territory, starting from where they border the original Vaegir territory and working to the corner of the map. Castle by castle and town by town the yellow of the Nords is replaced by the green of the Vaegirs. I've also been taking on the armies I see scattered across the map, especially going after the ones headed in the direction of my towns, which brings up another point: Nords on the regular field of battle are incredibly easy to defeat if you've got cavalry. They're pretty much all lightly armored footmen that you can just ride down with relative ease. Nords are great for attacking castles with (I used them quite extensively in my campaign against the Rhodoks) but they just fall apart easily when you have cavalry. Something disappointing that happens is that I request one of the Nord towns I've conquered (Tihr), but don't get it. Apparently, my relationship with Valdym isn't good enough for me to get 3 towns. It's disappointing, but I'm not really broken up about it.
Eventually, the Nords are down to 1 castle, Chalbek Castle. That's all that's left for me to conquer the Nords. I head over to it and... Oh my goodness this is going to be impossible. Every single Nord lord is there with his army. Now, granted, some are only armies of 30-40 as I recently gave them a good stomping, but there are a ton of them there and my army is down to under 100 after taking all that other territory. There are about 15 lords and over 1000 troops in that castle, there's just no way I'm going to take it at once. To make matters worse, I'm not the marshal right now so I can't get support from any other lords (little did I know then... you'll find out what I mean later), meaning this is all on me to take them all out. Oh boy. Well, I decide I might as well start a few small sieges to whittle away at their numbers a bit but unfortunately things don't go exactly as planned. You see, when you're that heavily outnumbered, before you can attack the walls you first have to fight the defenders that will sally out to meet you. Now, if you win you can continue and attack the walls. If you lose, you have to build a completely new siege tower (or ladders, whichever the case is) before you can attack, and repeat the same process, again. Also, being that heavily outnumbered, I'm only allowed to have 1 or 2 other people with me when I attack, as opposed to them having 20+. You can imagine how long we last. Fortunately, between some of the skirmishes, some of the lords leave the castle, but it's just not enough to make enough of a dent in their numbers. Well, a few skirmishes later I realize that I'm just not even making a dent on their defenses and decide to just give up sieging it for now. I pull back a little and just camp there, letting myself and my troops recouperate from the fights.
As luck would have it, some of the lords decide to venture out of the castle and go off on their own or, if they've got large parties of 100+, they attack me. This is fine with me because it's an indirect way of cutting down the number of troops they have at the castle. Unfortunately, some of the lords that made it out have decided to attack my villages again. Argh. I head over to Istiniar (the one that's being attacked) and it's Lord Aedin, one of my old friends from back when I was friends with the Nords (not anymore though, after all these raids on my villages I'm out for blood). When I speak with him he says he's glad to see me although it's a shame our countries are at war (or something like that). Unfortunately, our countries aren't exactly at war since that would have made this oh so much easier, but oh well, technicalities. I've chased him off sufficiently that he's no longer a threat to my village so I decide to just let him go. Interestingly enough, when I say goodbye, he stops me and says he'd like my help. Uh, ok. All I need to do is have my surgeon (Ymira) talk to one of his wounded soldiers to convince them to get medical help (or to stabilize them for the journey, don't remember which exactly). I don't need to give her up, so I agree and, wait for it, my relationship with him improves. Go figure. Well, whatever, I chase him a little while longer to make sure he's not going to attack my village again and then head back to Culmarr.
When I get back I notice that enough lords are out of the castle that I'd only be outnumbered 8:1 or something like that, so I decide to just plow through and finish them off, no matter what it takes. I start the siege again and it takes about 4 tries, but I finally get past that first wave. What I finally do is, since it's 2 vs. 20, stay as close to the other warrior that's in there with me and try to defend them as much as I can, since they're a lot more fragile than I am. Another thing worth mentioning at this time is that the weapons you use for a siege are pretty different from what you'd use on horseback. Using a lance is a really bad idea during a siege, even though it's one of the best weapons available for mounted combat. Also, when on foot at a siege, using two handed weapons for that extra punch is really worth it. Anyways, I've got my Voulge out and start swinging away. The really nice thing about this Voulge is that the damage is high enough that if I get a bit of a speed bonus (i.e. you hit something while moving so the momentum of the movement is added to damage) I can get 1 hit kills on most normal troops and can take out lords with 2-4 swings, which really helps out a lot. I'm swinging away and taking out whatever I can, trying to stay close to my buddy and it's working. We're making a dent in their forces and eventually, all the lords are down. Awesome. All that's left is the small fry. We're working out way through them, but with about 5 left, my buddy goes down. Well, it's not great news but I just stay focused on what I'm doing. I have to hurry though, my own health bar is getting pretty low (down to about 1/3) so I start backing up and swinging at the guys coming at me. One of them happens to be an archer and switches to firing pot shots at me. Fortunately, I've got pretty thick armor on so the damage is minimal. A few good voulge swings later and it's just me and the archer. I've got about a sliver of health left, which means 1 lucky head shot from him and I'm down (and have to start the whole thing all over again). I bum rush him and he raises his bow to shoot, and then lowers it. I've gotten close enough so that the AI has switched him from ranged combat to melee combat. I'm not completely out of the woods yet, though, as one hit from a melee weapon is probably enough to knock me out as well, but I ready my weapon anyways and keep charging him. He draws his weapon back to attack and I let loose, hoping to get my attack in before he gets his. I do. He winces and falls back, dead. I've won. At least, I've won the outer assault.
Now it's time to attack their walls. I'm not quite as outnumbered this time, I've got 3 buddies to their 14. 4v14, I can do that. Thanks to the first aid skill my health is back up to about half or so, and as these are all fresh troops with me, they're at full health. I let them get to the wall first and attack the few lords that are around this time, with me swinging away behind cover (yes, you can hit people in melee from behind walls in this game if you've got a long enough weapon) using my Glaive (the same thing the Rhodok Seargants used). We get them down and this is where we split up. My AI buddies go after the nearby archers while I take out the archers in the other direction. With them down we join back up and start taking out the caslte reinforcements. One more thing to quickly mention is that when you're assaulting castles, you don't have to defeat the entire garrison, one you win a battle and move further into the castle/town, you don't have to fight the outer layers again unless you lose further in and have to restart the siege. We're down in the courtyard of the castle fighting and I lose my buddies, but get reinforcements. While getting a fresh supply of troops is nice, they start outside the castle, which means I'm still alone with 5 defenders attacking me. I back up to the wall and make my way up the staircase, swinging away the whole time, taking hits the whole time, and my health is back into that "danger zone" where another few hits and I'm done. Fortunately, my buddies arrive in time and we proceed to wipe the rest of their defenders and finish them off.
It's time for the keep, the final part of the castle (note that if you're attacking a town and they still have a lot of defenders there's another round where you fight in the streets, but since this is a castle and not a town that doesn't apply here). This part isn't nearly as hard as the earlier stages as the keep only has about 5 defenders and they don't get any reinforcements at all. The keep falls easily and it's done. The last Nord castle is mine. There are about 12 lords that I've defeated and while most get away, there are a few (4 or 5) that I'm given the option to take prisoner. Since the Nords aren't going to exist for much longer I decide to let them all go, hoping to earn enough favor with them (you get +5 for letting them go) that they'll decide to join us instead of the Khergits as I'm planning on attacking them next.
With that over with all I have left to do (as I learned from the Rhodoks) is go around and defeat all the individual lords that are remaining, which should be the easy part. Some are easy to find as they've decided to attack my villages again (by now I have no problem being the bad guy and hunting them down) and some are still patrolling where their territory used to be. I take out every Nord I run across rather easily (remember, they're not that great at battlefield combat against cavalry), but the message that the Nords have been eliminated is not happening. Argh. That means there's still one left out there. Well, start moving across the map systematically, also taking the time to do tournaments to restock my cash supply, which got pretty low there for a while. Unfortunately, the remaining Nords are proving very difficult to find. I've made my way across the entire map and haven't found them, and I can't ask anyone where they are or even how many of them there are. So, getting a little desperate, I go through the game logs and look up all the characters, trying to piece together where they might be, but I'm coming up with nothing. I don't want to start attacking the Khergits until after I've wiped out the nords, so I'm in a bit of a pickle at the moment. I take a small break from Nord hounding and do a few more tournaments and a couple quests to improve my Jelkala and Istiniar relationships (brings up another point: cattle are very annoying; you move them around the map by chasing them, they don't follow you... I really dislike cattle quests). In any case, I'm relaxing a bit and basically feel like I'm on vacation for now.
In a stroke of good luck, something unexpected happens. The Nords declare war... on the Khergits. Not exactly what I had in mind but hey, you take what you can get. I find a Khergit lord and ask them how the war with the Nords is going, and find out the Nords only have 1 army (aka lord with troops) left. Well, that explains why I can't find them anywhere, so I go to my towns and castles and start moving troops around, preparing to go to war with the Khergits. While I'm doing this I get a message that the last Nord lord was defeated in combat and, sure enough, the next day I get a message that the Nords have been eliminated. Finally. In a second stroke of luck, it's time for a new marshal again and my name is once again being considered. This time I jump at the opportunity and, because I've got quite a few friends at this point, get the job in a landslide victory.
Learning from my past experiences with the Nords, I know that going to war with the Khergits is going to be a me only thing and that they're going to start attacking my estates. This time I'm going to be ready for it, so I leave about 200 troops in Khudan as that's the farthest from their territory, put ~160 each in Vyincourd and Culmarr, and leave about 300 in Jelkala, figuring that will be one of their main targets. As for the villages, I just accept the fact that they're probably going to be raided multiple times while I'm off taking over territory. My own army is down to ~100 so I hire a bunch of mercs to beef it up to ~130 and then head for the castle that's the deepest inside Vaegir territory: Estroq Castle. There's a lord inside, but you're not allowed to pick fights with lords in towns or castles, you have to wait for them to be on the field before you can do that. So, I save my game and set up camp outside the castle. And I wait. I wait about 3 days and the lord still isn't moving and I get fed up waiting so I quit without saving and reload the game to before I wasted 3 days. Do I need to do this? Not really, it was pretty pointless, actually. I just felt like it. Besides, he made me waste some of my food supply so I was gonna fix him.
I head across the mountains into the thieves forest (as it's apprently called by one of my heroes) and to the other castle they've taken over in the middle of Vaegir territory, Senuzgda. I find a lord walking around over there and pick a fight with him. Again, the only battle option is to leave, so I do that and head back to Estroq. Sure enough, the lord is still sitting in the castle. So I take it over. I go back to Senuzgda and take that one over, too. Side note: the Khergits are pretty annoying castle defenders since their main units are Lancers and Horse Archers/Veteran Horse Archers. All of these classes have bows, as do most of the lords, meaning they like shooting at you. A lot. Losing someone waiting for a siege tower to get into place is pretty much a guarantee against them. However, once you get inside the walls, they quickly fold and are defeated.
It's time for me to start attacking the heart of Khergit territory, and, honestly, it feels a little weird since I was almost a part of the faction. Although, looking back at it, it seems fitting that the final campaign would end where it all began. I decide to take down their two mountain pass castles first, but I also realize that, being marshal again, I can call for a campaign to begin and use the full might of the Vaegir army to take them down. Or so I thought. Another game quirk is that if your countries aren't at war, then the lords won't attack each other, which includes joining you in castle sieges. Oh well. Figuring it's a waste of time to keep the other lords with me, I end the campaign and move on to another castle by myself. Having taken 2 castles and a town from the Khergits with relative ease, it looks like this campaign is going to be over with pretty quickly. Not wanting to hunt them down forever, I find a few lords moving around on the map and attack them. That's when it hits me like a ton of bricks: the Khergits are a primarily mounted group, and they use the faster and more maneuverable horses. Oh boy, these field battles could wind up taking a bit longer than I thought they would. To make matters worse, most Khergit territory is hilly, meaning it's not the most idea land for couching the lance, especially not with my Heavy Charger that has troubles maintaining couching speed on hills. I actually wind up switching to my siege equipment to have better options for "slow" moving hill combat.
After a few battles I decide to switch my horse to a Courser, the fastest horse type in the game (and also the one with the least armor), so I'll be able to chase them all down. All I have in inventory, however, is a regular Courser and I was hoping for a Spirited version (extra speed and maneuverability). I head to the nearest horse merchant and, as luck would have it, they had a Spirited Courser available for purchase so I grab it and switch over for the next battle. Holy cow it's like switching from an 18 wheeler that just plows through everything to a formula 1 racer that leaves everything in the dust. There are a few situations where I'm actually moving too fast and wind up galloping past my target. Also, at that speed, you don't exactly corner on a dime. Needless to say it takes a little bit of getting used to. In a strange twist of fate, I also start running into lords that switched to the Khergits from the other factions, mostly Rhodoks, which means they have a lot of infantry as well, for which Chargers are perfect. Sigh. Oh well. I spend a few battles switching back and forth from the Courser to the Charger and finally figure it's better to just stick with the Courser for the hills and chasing down Khergit Horse Archers. The only big adjustment is that since Coursers can't just plow through infantry the way Chargers can, I have to whittle my way through their flanks instead of just charging into the center. Side note: when a Charger is up to speed, no infantry can stop it's momentum so you can literally run down a line of 30+ infantry and trample them all. The left side of the screen will fill so completely with "Horse charged for xx damage" that you'll basically lose the left side of your screen until after the charge. It's a beautiful sight.
As I'm getting ready to attack the next town, I get an interesting message. The Khergits have declared war with the Vaegirs. Excellent. This is going to be easier than I thought. A little easier, anyway. They're unable to attack my estates anymore since there are a lot of lords guarding Vaegir territory. I decide to take advantage of the new war declaration and start a new campaign. It's a good idea, right? Well... nobody seems to want to repot to me. I get 1 lord to follow me around. In another game quirk that's slightly humorous now, I can't even ask other lords to follow me. When I do ask a lord to follow me, he says he can't at the moment. He blew me off. That's just hilarious since it's not an option for me when someone else is the marshal. Oh well. We attack the town and I realize that I really don't need help taking these castles and towns. Khergits are pretty easy to defeat in battle, even when you're outnumberd by quite a bit; they don't have heavy armor and most of their troops don't have shields. Since I don't have any support anyway, I end the campaign and send the lord who did show up home.
Compared to the other factions, the Khergits really don't have much in the way of castles to take control of. In fact, taking control of the rest of their territory is pretty easy. The only somewhat annoying part of all this is that most of their castles require siege towers instead of ladders. Fortunately, at this point Artimenner, my engineer, has a high enough engineering skill that it only takes 42 hours (game time) to complete them as opposed to the 60 it used to take. Even so, once I finish sieging all their lands there are still quite a few armies running around, as well as a few individual lords moving around (their party gets dropped down to 1 when they're defeated and they retreat to one of the castles, which means that if they're hiding in a castle with just their party of 1 and they run away, they still only have themselves in their party). This should be the easy part, right? Wrong. Oh so wrong.
Every remaining lord with an army has banded together and they're marching around as this humongous war party of about 2300. There's just no way I'm going to beat that. Needless to say, that when they siege one of our castles (Sungetche), we lose it. Instead of trying to defend the castle from their siege, I instead head over to all of my estates and take all of my knights out, putting everything that's not a mounted unit into the garrisons. When all is said and done I've got an army of 160 cavalry ready. They then start to patrol around Sungetche and are chasing one of the Vaegir lords around and finally catch up to him. Keep in mind that once a battle has started, in order to join it, each army has to join individually, the lords don't just all join en masse. I've still got my war party of 160, which is sufficient to scare off a lot of the lords that only have 50-80 in their units, meaning there are only about 1000 troops now attacking the lord (who has a party of ~170). At this point I join in the fun a
Alea Jacta Est - Caesar
I live my life by Murphy's Law.
I live my life by Murphy's Law.