Hey, Great info here and great pointing out the temporarily messed up stats. Though I want to add that it seems like you didn't fully grasp the two main infantry lines concept for the factions. You mentioned that you noticed that there were noble lines but said they are difficult to access. However, they are far more accessible than the sub faction lines that you were calling "specialist lines." Once you join a faction and become well renown in it accessing the noble lines becomes quite easy, while the sub faction lines are very difficult to access at all times. The noble lines should be considered the most "elite" and they are kind of a reward for gaining renown and loyalty within a faction. Also you completely missed the noble line of Battania which has the Fian, probably the single unit Battania is most known for and easily the strongest archer unit in the game, and the reason Battania is know as the "hail of arrows" faction and not the glass cannon faction that you referred to it as.
I definitely glossed over that Fian line for sure. I pinned the comment of another gentleman who pointed that out. But you bring up a GREAT point about the accessibility of those noble lines. What I might do is take everyone's collective feedback and make a NEW sticky in a few hours. I'm sorry for the misinformation here. I do NOT want to spread the wrong info, so that's on me to do the due diligence a bit better. I think it's because I've had trouble accessing the noble lines, which makes me rule them out as a bit less unique. I guess the follow up argument could be made that if I wanted to make a hodge-podge force of a lot of different nations, getting access to ALL of their noble lines would be difficult. Any tips on getting to the noble line quickly?
@@italianspartacus The game is still fairly new so still lots of unknowns across the board, I may be spreading misinformation myself by saying the sub factions are inaccessible, I may have just not found a reliable way to recruit them without taking them prisoner and converting them yet, and there may be ways we don't know about. As far as the noble lines. if you gain access to the 4th or 5th recruitment "slots" the nobles are very often in those at major towns and periodically they are in those slots at the villages as well. You can certainly not find enough to make your entire army out of them but should be able access enough to have a strong complementary unit of elites. There may also be other ways of recruiting them that I haven't discovered yet such as a common way to get them in m+b Warband mods was to recruit them from castle training yards, though I haven't experimented enough with the castles to see if that is an option. Yes I do believe you are right accessing noble lines without dedicating yourself to a faction is far more difficult so the noble lines could be thought of as the specialist infantry that are your reward for fully investing in that faction and if you have a hodge-podge army then you don't get reliable access to the nobles of any faction. They aren't always the most notable infantry or what the faction is known for though. If you want access to the best archers reliably then investing in Battania is an obvious choice. Also if you want the best heavy cav then investing in Valandia is the obvious choice for the banner knights. however there are some odd ones like Sturgia where they are probably best known for their heavy infantry but their noble line is a cav unit so it seems like maybe there is not much incentive to invest in joining Sturgia since you can just go town to town and recruit their most useful units. Perhaps in that case its a matter of if you invest in Sturgia you will lack cav like you said and the nobles are intended to complement the already very strong fighting force of their heavy infantry. Sorry for the info dump but last thing to note when looking at troops that can help is you might note the level and the "tier" rank of an infantry can often best be use to gauge its strength. all of the standard recruit lines cap out at "tier" 4 and level 26 usually. While only the noble lines can progress past tier 4 and rank up all the way to tier 6 and level 31. So they are objectively the strongest units in the game. There may be some exceptions to this though I haven't seen all the lines or studied them overly closely, but that seems to be the rule of thumb.
@@italianspartacus Out of curiosity I looked into the highborn frequency more. It looks like notables with the "powerful" or above power rating when you mouse over their portrait are the ones that can spawn nobles. so your fastest way to reliably get nobles it to get in the good graces of as many of the powerful rated notables as possible.
@@italianspartacus getting nobles is not hard if you know how, you don't need to be part of the faction to do it. The only person you will get them from will be powerful landowners. Every village has a landowner and a headsman, and from the villages where the landowner has more than 200 influence he is powerful and you can recruit the noble line from him
This game for me is 1st time and I didnt knew anything about that. So I was just defeatiing everything to whom I met or chase or saw. Later I saw that the blue faction conquered them all before I even started the mission xD I had 1million gold and 100k weight of item. with 550 units. Soon I declared war with blue faction AUTOMATICALLY ( I dont know why) and their 2000 units came to my castles and defeated me xD
You missed the Battanian highborn youth line of archers which is the strongest part of their roster imo. The elite Battanian Fians do so much work in battles.
Don't get mad.. I unpinned your comment and pinned someone who laid out how to get them. I wish I could pin more than one. I'm going to make a NEW Pin of all the feedback in a few hours so that I don't miss anything. I'm so sorry for glossing over that note dude
Don't get mad.. I unpinned your comment and pinned someone who laid out how to get them. I wish I could pin more than one. I'm going to make a NEW Pin of all the feedback in a few hours so that I don't miss anything. I'm so sorry for glossing over that note dude
"Aserai is the most challenging faction in terms of troops so you will need to get your tactics down if you want to be successful with them" Me: walking with my mameluke army pressing F1 F3 \0/
That's what I do with my Elite Cataphract doom stack F1, F3, profit. They do have a devastating charge but the hand to hand is drawn out a bit, but they get the job done
Here are my 2 cents on the matter of best troop/strategy: Vlandians: Crossbows and knights. Good at siege warfare due to solid inf and crossbows that are decent at melee. I think their cav should be used as a finishing or denial tool. Finish off their morale with a charge after crossbows have done their job or deny specific threats such as horse archers, archers, enemy cav or "glass canon" troops. Battanians: Fian archers and skirmishers. Play "Cant touch this" by MC Hammer. Let the fians empty their quivers while skirm and inf run around like crazy to distract and throw javelins. Fians also have insane athletic skill in case they need to reposition. Battanian battle often demands maneuvering a lot of times to make sure that your troops are not overwhelmed in melee. Pray that you dont get charged by lancers or circled by horse archers. Empire: Sword and board is your unbreakable core. Form a shieldwall and everything else will be dedicated to make the shieldwall work wonders. Send cataphracts and horse archers to bully whatever is threatening to ruin your shieldwall. Great at siege due to sword and board inf + decent range options. If your horse archers and cav are free, break the shieldwall and charge along with all cav when the enemy has engaged the wall for a little time. The enemy will die like flies while running away. Sturgians: SHIELDWALL! Did you know that sturgian babies are able to hold a shield the day they were born? This is why you always use a shieldwall with the sturgians. Order the wall at the bottom of a mountain or hill, place archers on hill = win against armies over twice your size. In siege these guys will do great. If you want them to do really great, then mix in some berserkers in with your infantry. remember that the berserkers and ulfhednar are weak to archers, to keep them safe behind the other guys shields. In field battle, the strategy is to let the enemy approach your shieldwall while being peppered by arrows. For a quick finish, charge in with some berserkers from a flank. The only problem at the end of a battle is to catch the runners, so a few fast cav are handy. Khuzaits: Horse freaking archers. Get a ton of them, press F1 followed by F3 and you win EVERY field battle. Worst case scenario you have to manually pick routes for them to ride so that they dont get stuck or do something else stupid. The "follow me" command followed by you riding circles around you enemy until they are dead is also one of the easiest ways to do this. Sucky at siege combat, but what did you expect? At least they function as okey archers and the heavily armored ones can at least put up a fight in melee. Import some sturgian/empire troops for storming castles or have massive numbers. Aserai: Mameluke supremacy. With enough mamelukes you can just put them on charge and win. The light cav troop that turns into mamelukes should be used to engage enemy cav in a way that it lets the mamelukes finish them with arrows. Even in siege the mamelukes are effective due to heavy armor and a shield. An army consisting of only mamelukes and Palace guards could actually be an effective army.
The lack of actual info on units in the encyclopedia really triggers me... Can't be that hard to just list their equipment - That'S literally all I wish to know >.
that HAS to be added later, there's no way they're gonna leave that big of a gap in there. The entire encyclopedia, while already super useful, needs massive improvements. I'm a complete sucker for games having just an absurd about of info on every aspect of the game built in, even if none of it is relevant to actually playing the game, so it hurts to have such incomplete reference material in the game right now.
consult the Warband wiki.... the units are largely the same. they're all generic units: footman, archer, crossbowman, knight, heavy knight, spearman, pikeman, mounted archer, etc. one civilization might have an extra tier in one branch for a specific specialization, like the mongol or arab tribes having superior horse archers that no european civ has. but the other units are largely equal to one another.
18:25 thats because those arent specialist lines. Those are minor faction units. They're basically just there to add visual diversity, so you know you're fighting a minor faction, instead of just copies of your own faction troops.
For me the easiest way to get at least some capable cav units is wiping out deserst bandit hideouts (there's LOTS in the deserts near the southern end to the map, at least 6 spots I found already) or fighting desert bandits and taking the "harami" prisoners. When you can recruit them you have a solid early on mail protected cav that costs only 7 gold per day
Yeah I use this in my gameplay. I have imperial infantry and archers with khuzait horse archers and shock cav mixed with imperial shock cav. I also tried some vlandian knights but most armies have quite a lot of polearm infantry and that makes it really hard for the knights, so I prefer horse archers to harrass with some shock cav to finish of the enemy while my legioners and archers hold the line as much as possible.
You don't need other factions. Get a core of cataphracts and bucellarii. Send your bucellarii off at the start to harrass the enemy. Get your xbow's out double spaced with legionaries behind them in a shield wall. Command your cataphracts yourself and ride off to a flank. I never lose.
This is an interesting video, I like the structure of it and I think you did a good job of staying focused on the important elements so well done. Regarding the Khuzait I disagree with your assessment regarding their difficulty to play; they require less micromanagement than a few other factions because of their cavalry focus. A mistake players appear to make a lot is using the charge command in combat which drives all selected units into melee regardless of their unit type; a much better command is advance which causes selected units to engage but does not command them to melee meaning your archers (mounted or otherwise) will move into firing range and automatically attempt to kite opposing forces. Considering the above, the Khuzait become insanely powerful, even playing on realistic because your mounted archers will run circles around enemy cavalry, peppering them with arrows and of course anything not mounted stands a snowballs chance in hell. In my Khuzait campaign I give the advance order to my mounted archers then focus my micro on my infantry and even when outnumbered two to one I can decimate opponents of any faction with losses that fall well and truly into the margin of acceptable or minimal. I am not a master tactician, it's select all > F6. I also disagree with the extent to which you focus on armour; whilst I do agree that armour is very important I do not believe it plays as much of a role in Bannerlord as it did in Warband and that is due to the capabilities of tactical play in Bannerlord. Yes Warband supported tactical play but it didn't have the depth it has in Bannerlord and much more important than armour overall in Bannerlord is morale. There are some nasty perks in the game such as cavalry causing ten percent more morale loss to enemy units or each kill with a crossbow lowering enemy morale by one etc. I have done some play testing with a few such mechanics and routing enemy forces is utterly devastating to the balance of power, severely diminishing the opponents odds of victory. I reckon that the impact of good tactics vastly outweighs the armour element in combat to such an extent that in most cases I hardly think armour is much of determining factor. In smaller scale fights, armour is everything. If you're looking at up to say fifty against fifty type battles then armour is very important but in larger scale battles, one hundred per side or more I believe armour becomes a non issue for the reasons stated above. Smaller scale skirmishes you can even resolve on your own with a mount and a polearm. I think the easiest faction to play, if you're limiting yourself to just one factions units and not planning on mixing troops from other factions in, is Vlandia followed closely by the Empire. By mid tier the Vlandian forces have some very solid staying power, they require no major micromanagement, their crossbows are devastating against armour and they have four above average in general type units which are their sergeants, their pike-men, their sharpshooters and their cavalry. If you take Vlandia as your origin then an additional twenty percent experience to your forces after battles is nothing to turn your nose up at either; that's actually a substantial boon. Every five battles your troops effectively get the experience of a sixth battle... For free.
Thank you, this was very helpful. I love how Bannerlord has multiple troop trees for every faction. Just makes me wonder how amazing the modding potential is going to be now.
I'm loving the Khuzait, they work quite well with hammer and anvil style fighting. I've been experimenting with mercenary crossbowmen instead of the Khuzait bowmen and it does seem to help. The real problem I've found is maneuvering your shock cav properly so it engages the enemy infantry or archers rather than chasing enemy cav around the map.
most enemies i have encountered only have max like 20 cav units so at the beginning of a battle i rush them myself and then a little later do my cav and horse archers come in to kill the rest of the 10 enemy cav. once that is done they decimate all the poor poor infantry with polearms and arrows
Battle Commands Guide: ruclips.net/video/eS7QI9CuHJ8/видео.html Purchase link that I get 10% commission on: www.fanatical.com/en/game/mount-blade-ii-bannerlord?ref=italianspartacus
The way to fight khuzaits is to engage them wile they are raiding so you get a settlement map to fight on. The worst thing to happen to cav is to get stuck on terrain which happens a lot in settlements from all the buildings and small walls while being picked off by archers and crossbows.
From my experience with the game having more units is much more important than the quality of them. The new ai knows how to surround the enemy. Tier 2 and 3 units can give the highest tier a run for their money. I just wish it was easier to increase the limit of your army. I wish level progression went a bit faster, it's soooo slow right now
@@andredulac4456 I made it to 287 for my party size with a tier 4 clan and an independent kingdom. I only just recently discovered you can convince other clans to join your kingdom so soon I'll have a big army
Great videos! You can actually speak english well. You don't try to sound like a ring announcer (can just see the wink and finger point); f, that's annoying. The info you cover and explain is exactly what's needed and done really well. Favourite RUclipsr right now. Thank you.
The Aserai noble line is incredible. The fact that they carry javelins and lances makes them amazingly powerful offensively, but they do tend to die kind of easily.
Those Boar units you were referring to, as well as the poachers and other units like that, aren’t really anything to do with the major factions - they’re exclusively for the mercenary factions and you can only get them if you take them prisoner and recruit them that way
About the Khuzait infantry and archer lines... I believe the best use of them would be to have them hold a position while the shock cav and archer cav take care of the actual killing. With that said... I usually only go for cav until my army is quite large anyway lol... Feels pretty mighty to have that horde of cavs in battle!
you forgot to mention that to upgrade any cav unit you need to buy them a horse or a war horse which is even more expensive and further limits your ability to make large heavy cav forces.
In this current patch: Calvary is your bread butter, the more elite the better. High map speed, couch lance damage is a virtual instant morale break for most factions, and horse archers are almost invincible. It doesn’t matter how much godtier your infantry are if your enemy gets to dump arrows at them for free and reengage by running off the field. Also the Bucellarii are good foot archers too thanks to the speed of their bows and double 30 pack they carry. The palatine guard are really only there because the Bucellarii are so dang expensive because you have to feed them a War Horse on top of the upgrade cost.
I'd say one aspect that might warrant highlighting is how you actually have prerequisites for unit upgrades in Bannerlord (at least for now). You might be thinking to go after some nice heavy cavalry - only to discover that you need a warhorse for every single one you want to upgrade. Yes, you need to GIVE THEM a warhorse (and specifically a warhorse - or whatever other horse they specifically desire) to upgrade to certain units. If you do not have that particular type of horse available you can forget about upgrading that unit. This really changes things up as access to some of these things might not be as easy. Plus not only do you need to get access to the right core units (meaning roaming specific areas) - but you also need access to additional things which can really complicate certain troop lines.
Yeah, this is an interesting extra hidden cost to upgrading units. For example, the khuzait have really nice cavalry, but after tier three all their units need warhorses, making a full khuzait army very expensive to raise compared to almost any other force in the game. Tons of AI lords get stuck with a ton of tier 3 cavalry be cause of this
@@italianspartacus Nope, this troop from a Lord Clan indie, in encyclopia, you have Nord Troop and Vikken in sturgia tree, I've forget name of Vikken, but the Nord is the Brotva Skolder, sure The Skolder (Nord) Banner, is Viking Raven style Maybe the future Nord From Warband
And for the "son of Warrior" Sturgian, the village with great production of this warrior is "Zhemyan", near "Ustokol Castle" in west of "Revyl" Is not Vikken, is Vakken (sorry), this troop from Forest People, Lead by "Zhem" is a Sturgian leader from Minor Faction The Brotva Skolder is lead by "Yun" a Sturgian chief, from a Minor Faction
It depends on how you see it. The Empire, if it's modelled after the Justinian code which is the Byzantine Empire and not the good ol' Roman.. Wait. Both Roman Empire actually used horse archers. Early Roman Empire ones din't but when it got close to the 12th - 14th century, they actually did employ some horse archers into their fold like those from the eastern steppe like the Cossacks from Transylvania. When the Western Empire collapsed and it switched to the Byzantine Empire, horse archers were used even more because they need those units to combat the Mamlukes of the Sassannid Empire during Justinian's reign all the way to the Ottoman's rise in dominance.
Yeah, Khuzait culture is based on Mongol-Turk and Asia cultures which used too many horse archers. But in other cultures, horse archers weren't popular.
@@romainvicta3076 But you have to remember that the Empire we seen now is mirrored after the Byzantine so.. Yea. That's why the Empire has horse archers too. Not extremely great ones but still, available.
I know this had just come out when you made this video but I have been playing since release(early access), so couple things from my experience, not sure whether the same has happened for other people but this is what has happened to me. 1. Vlandia is by far the strongest or at least they are the easiest to use their only real weakness is lack of archers which have a faster rate of fire than cross bows makes them week to their only other missing unit type horse archers. But while the AI does attempt to skirmish you with their horse archers they don't seem to do it very and stop to fire all the time allowing you crossbows to be plenty good enough, though as a player against vlandia you can really hurt their cavalry and get them to waste ammo by using skirmish tactics. 2. while its not useless pretty much all un-shielded infantry besides maybe the empire late heavily armored stuff is at a huge risk from projectiles. Missile weapons of all kinds seem way more effective than in warband and the AI definitely uses them better though they tend to leave them unguarded as big battles drag on. 3. while no matter what the numbers say, the noble lines final unit are all very similar besides battania(which in my opinion is the best one). The are all heavy shock cavalry with a slight twist. Banner knights are probably the strongest all round, Elite Imperial Cataphracts have a longer lance and the best armor and damage resistant horse, Vanguard Faris and Druzhinik Champions both have throwing weapons with Druzhinik being better after the charge in melee and the Faris being the fastest heavy cavalry by a lot, and finally the Khan's guard has a bow and is very mobile. 4. Finally and you kind of did point this out part of this but to me the weakest faction is Sturgia, they seem to just have the most weaknesses. first the noble troops line or royal as you call it are not that hard to get, but beside battania they all either start out mounted or are at tier 2 this makes it very hard for stugia to get heavy cav. second while infantry focused they tend to have no armor until later tiers and some have no armor or shields making them extremely vulnerable to archers or any missile weapon. finally the normal troop line cavalry seem to be equipped to be a mounted skirmisher like the horse archers but it function like a melee cavalry. Now if you manually control them and use them like a jav cav from a total war game they can actually be quite effective but in big battles this hard to do and the AI will just have them throw some javelins then charge.
I run 20 Vlandian Knights, 10 Cataphracts, 15 Battanian Fians, 15 Vladian Hardened Crossbowmen, 15 Imperial Vet. Archers, 15 Vladian Swordsman, 35 Imperial Vet. Infantry and 20 Khan's Guard then 35 of an assortment of tier 3 imperial archers and infantry to fill in the tier 5 casualties. Works like a charm
Luckily the modding community already fixed a lot of it. There are already files that fix the wrong stats and enable disabled armors and even whole troop trees that are supposed to be available.
Typical shitty practice. They have definitely released it in such a sorry state and left it to the community to finish what should have been done years ago.
From what I remember of Total War games: Use any combination of expensive units you like, from heavy cavalry to heavy infantry to shield crossbows, but *only Horse Archers can deal with Horse Archers.* _Really_ good foot archers are the exception to that rule but then it becomes a game of 'reposition the archers' and if they're swifter than you, their foot archers join and it's bye-bye.
You can counter with heavy cav. Still, you will take some damage but i have always traded pretty well commanding heavy cav and using them to counter the skirmishing of horse archers. Durable shield is a MUST.
The imperial infantryman is to bannerlord as the swadian militia were to warband. Low cost troops that were very armored compared to their contemporaries. Edit: the khuzaits have lighter armor compared to everyone else.
Ive been playing Empire a lot lately, and i can safely say, i loathe to fight the Khuzaits, and the Aserai clans. And whenever i do fight them, it can essentially be summed up as "Gods help me... they have Cavalry" Because those cav are so damn maneuverable, they always fuck up my formations by running around and through my men constantly
It's worth to mention that Aserai might not be best at high tier, but their recruits have been in my opinion the easiest to keep alive as I saw most of them go with polearms like scythes etc so they sweep through looters easier. Tried every faction and I'd say it's more common for aserai to wield those.
I love the aserai just because u can run threw there land and get shitload of them. You follow that coast and u can easily get 300. Also there basic recruit is the tribesman in most areas so it's quick tier 2
Khuzait seems to fit the hammer and anvil tactic, IF you decide to have any ground troops with them. I've had great success with just cavalry as the entire force, the horse archers run circles around, and the hard hitting lancers clean up what's left. Of course this could change in the future as more of the game is released, but for now, it's too much fun
So far in my games the Vlandians and Khuzait crush their neighbors (the five-city Battanians and the Northern Empire are usually the first to disappear, while the Sturgians and Western Imperials are not far behind), while the Aserai get eaten up by the Southern Empire in the East and the Vlandians (or once, interestingly, the Battanians) in the West without much fight.
I do it like in Warband. Pump out as much Vlandian Cavalry as possible and nothing stops you at the battlefield. Had zero casualties with the enemy thrice my numbers
Good video, thanks man 👍 and you are so right with sturgia... I tried to lay siege to a castle with valandian infantry 😅 it was hell, i lost almost my entire army to their veteran units 😂
Right now there's what I consider a bug or oversight in the AI targeting behavior. I encourage people to experiment a bit to confirm for yourself but I've noticed that all the horse archers that die, die after they lose their horse. The best way to deal with HA is to use superior accuracy from ground archers to shoot them down. Unfortunately right now it seems that archers prefer hitting the horse over the rider, meaning that your HA units are effectively another 2-3 units worth of hit points to get through before the HA itself dies. The Batanian and Khuzait noble's end tier noble unit are 280 Skill Archery units. Even after the HA accuracy penalty of the Khuzait noble is taken into account, they also have a fairy well armored horse that needs to die before they are targeted properly by AI. Against AI, it is harder to fight against the Batanian armies than Khuzait though. Since their unit composition complements their noble units and it powerful on its own. The player can dominate the battle map by only getting horse archers, as they become more effective the more there are, but the AI doesn't really mass them this much. Edit: oh and for some reason the Vlandian Crossbowman absolutely destroy any and all infantry of the same unit rank and bellow in melee, quite funny. xP
Why is the word Cavalry so hard for youtubers to say? You can say infantry but have to abbreviate horsemen to "Cav"? What do you do with all the time you save by ignoring the last 2 syllables?
right when I think im starting to understand this game, I find out I have no idea what I'm doing. So how do I get the other troops from certain kingdoms that aren't part of the normal tree? I love warband, and I started off disliking this game because of the added complexity/added features that I have to learn, but the more I play it, it grows on me slowly.
Vlandia is easily the best, it's not even close. They get early af cav you can litterally hire new troops and have cav army in the hundreds in under an hour. Their infantry is fine, just meatshield for hammer and anvil. Sieges just auto resolve with tier 5 cav kekistani. Every other faction pales in comparison, takes way to long to get a good army.
There is only one specialist line for the factions or empire in respect. Jawwal Beni Zial and all those "specialist units come from mercenaries and are not recruitable unless you imprison them and then turn them or something like that. Horsearchers are the strongest units in the field. That makes them exceptional. The elite Khuzait Khan Guards dont have a spear, thats a glaive that is one of the most damaging 2 hand weapons in the game, far better than any 1 h sword other cav uses, they kill everything in horse to horse melee when not charging. If your army just consists of horse archers, press F6 and watch the enemy die. All you have to do is sit back and wait.
Hey man. Great video. If I wanted a almost ONLY bow infantry to "blot out the sun" with arrows, what faction would I choose, and what skills should I focus in?
Another "easy" way is once you build up a bit of an army, start going after the tougher bandit groups like Forest and Mountain Bandits. Once those units are promoted they crossover to those same sought after units like Khuzait Khans Guard, Battanian Fianns, Vlandian Knights, etc.
@@brianhum8765 Everyone keeps suggesting this but in order to upgrade them into those lines you need Disciplinarian from the Leadership line. And it is, I believe, 125 skill! That is going to take a long time to grind unless you start off as some leadership focused character from the start.
I think I'll wait til further clearances whether Battanian specialist archers are just wrongly equipped, wrongly distributed skill wise, or just wrong info on those numbers.
Bannerlord introduces morale in battle, the strongest unit I think is empire, bare in mind unit fight together thus you do not need fool who charge in alone. The most versatile is khuzait, my opinion is their horse archer is to harass and lure cavalry and spearman finish them off, while their lancer flank the archer.
I use sturgian foot infantry for their shields with a few battanian spear units.?archers are imperial, vlandian and khergit. Then I have a flank of horse archers and I charge from behind the enemy with a heavy cavalry mix. Always destroys larger forces
The Aserai are kind of broken in game right now in a very bad way. I started a campaign with them, and there is not a single city that has their tier 1 recruit available. It is only possible to recruit their tier 2 Aserai Tribesman.
Thats because for some unknown reason the whole 2nd troop tree of them is "disabled". I had to manually go through the XML files and enable them by just changing one word. Not sure why they lock existing content like this and make the game that expensive but there you go.
The problem I have is that all of the calv units need horses, and the advanced ones ask for war horses to upgrade. Asking 1K to upgrade a unit like that is just insane. I can understand bumping up the costs a little bit for balance of whatever, but having to go around and fund warhorses to purchase is a royal pain, especially when I am not convinced the AI has to do anything of the sort.
well even further is that the lock command in the inventory doesn't LOCK the war horses that i don't want them to use. the system will default to using the BEST horse for an upgrade -_- so annoying
Ok, big fan of Warband, and I just bought M&B 2 last night. The F1, F3 charge is working for my 20 man squad, but what is a good strategy vid for controlling larger scale armies? (Open field)
Imperial menvallitons have no two handed weapon instead they have a 2 handed pike and a one handed weapon. Also you didn’t show the battanian noble line which is a really powerful longbowman. Aside from that you taught me some good info about khuzait and aserai
With a khuzait army its really hard to siege castles but in the battlefield I think no one bests their cavalry. You can really win battles even if you are outnumbered as long as you are in open terrain and harras with you cav archers and finish of with shock cavs when you weaken your enemy enough.
If you want an "easy" way to take castle as khzait then seige with a weaker appearing army. If the defenders think they can take you they will sally out onto the battlefield where your army has the advantage of having their horses. After they're all dead just send your army in to cap it once you get back to the seige as there will not be a garrison left.
I just cant get this game to run smooth for me at all. Anyone else having this problem. It auto sets on very high n my gpu usage isnt even half. Even if i set it to low its runs so badly?
@Pluck my Feathers it lags and stutters just on the map mate and if im fighting 10 looters. I might reset my pc or something. I thought my cpu would be fine for this game.
@@justsayin2085 yeah do you know what , i plugged my pc into my actual hd tv screen and all my games run flawless n better graphics than ever. If i use my gaming screen its crap. Doesnt make sense to me.
OMG, I JUST REALIZED THAT YOU CAN USE THE SHIELD ON YOUR BACK WHILE ROLLING DEEP WITH THE CAV TO KEEP ARROWS FROM HITTING YOU IN THE BACK. GOING TO GO CRY NOW
Loving the Khuzait, full force of mounted archers needs no shield wall, run circles around your enemies and fletch them. Just try not to engage in the woods.
@@UltimaSigmarAlonso they seem to only throw them is they are in a defensive stance aswell as ti seems if you select charge command it turns off fire at will.
@@italianspartacus oh ok thanks , btw my favorite movies are troy and gladiator and i also loved kingdome come deliverance game , so i think i got the mindset of a king to rule the world
Rumor has it that unit stats are borked. Crossbowmen using their bow stats instead of crossbow stats, there's apparently even a unit with no stats! There's a mod on the nexus that addresses these things.
![Yailin La Mas Viral, @kreizyk.official - Dale 2 (Remix) [Video Oficial]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JaYHBzgqz94/mqdefault.jpg)
Hey, Great info here and great pointing out the temporarily messed up stats. Though I want to add that it seems like you didn't fully grasp the two main infantry lines concept for the factions. You mentioned that you noticed that there were noble lines but said they are difficult to access. However, they are far more accessible than the sub faction lines that you were calling "specialist lines." Once you join a faction and become well renown in it accessing the noble lines becomes quite easy, while the sub faction lines are very difficult to access at all times. The noble lines should be considered the most "elite" and they are kind of a reward for gaining renown and loyalty within a faction. Also you completely missed the noble line of Battania which has the Fian, probably the single unit Battania is most known for and easily the strongest archer unit in the game, and the reason Battania is know as the "hail of arrows" faction and not the glass cannon faction that you referred to it as.
I definitely glossed over that Fian line for sure. I pinned the comment of another gentleman who pointed that out. But you bring up a GREAT point about the accessibility of those noble lines. What I might do is take everyone's collective feedback and make a NEW sticky in a few hours. I'm sorry for the misinformation here. I do NOT want to spread the wrong info, so that's on me to do the due diligence a bit better. I think it's because I've had trouble accessing the noble lines, which makes me rule them out as a bit less unique. I guess the follow up argument could be made that if I wanted to make a hodge-podge force of a lot of different nations, getting access to ALL of their noble lines would be difficult.
Any tips on getting to the noble line quickly?
@@italianspartacus The game is still fairly new so still lots of unknowns across the board, I may be spreading misinformation myself by saying the sub factions are inaccessible, I may have just not found a reliable way to recruit them without taking them prisoner and converting them yet, and there may be ways we don't know about. As far as the noble lines. if you gain access to the 4th or 5th recruitment "slots" the nobles are very often in those at major towns and periodically they are in those slots at the villages as well. You can certainly not find enough to make your entire army out of them but should be able access enough to have a strong complementary unit of elites. There may also be other ways of recruiting them that I haven't discovered yet such as a common way to get them in m+b Warband mods was to recruit them from castle training yards, though I haven't experimented enough with the castles to see if that is an option.
Yes I do believe you are right accessing noble lines without dedicating yourself to a faction is far more difficult so the noble lines could be thought of as the specialist infantry that are your reward for fully investing in that faction and if you have a hodge-podge army then you don't get reliable access to the nobles of any faction. They aren't always the most notable infantry or what the faction is known for though. If you want access to the best archers reliably then investing in Battania is an obvious choice. Also if you want the best heavy cav then investing in Valandia is the obvious choice for the banner knights. however there are some odd ones like Sturgia where they are probably best known for their heavy infantry but their noble line is a cav unit so it seems like maybe there is not much incentive to invest in joining Sturgia since you can just go town to town and recruit their most useful units. Perhaps in that case its a matter of if you invest in Sturgia you will lack cav like you said and the nobles are intended to complement the already very strong fighting force of their heavy infantry.
Sorry for the info dump but last thing to note when looking at troops that can help is you might note the level and the "tier" rank of an infantry can often best be use to gauge its strength. all of the standard recruit lines cap out at "tier" 4 and level 26 usually. While only the noble lines can progress past tier 4 and rank up all the way to tier 6 and level 31. So they are objectively the strongest units in the game. There may be some exceptions to this though I haven't seen all the lines or studied them overly closely, but that seems to be the rule of thumb.
@@italianspartacus Out of curiosity I looked into the highborn frequency more. It looks like notables with the "powerful" or above power rating when you mouse over their portrait are the ones that can spawn nobles. so your fastest way to reliably get nobles it to get in the good graces of as many of the powerful rated notables as possible.
@@italianspartacus could this be done with the bandits. No playthrough has done much to show off the bandits and minor factions.
@@italianspartacus getting nobles is not hard if you know how, you don't need to be part of the faction to do it.
The only person you will get them from will be powerful landowners. Every village has a landowner and a headsman, and from the villages where the landowner has more than 200 influence he is powerful and you can recruit the noble line from him
The intro was wrong already. "Six major factions" - wrong. It has one major faction. Me. The rest is minor factions to be conquered.
This game for me is 1st time and I didnt knew anything about that. So I was just defeatiing everything to whom I met or chase or saw. Later I saw that the blue faction conquered them all before I even started the mission xD
I had 1million gold and 100k weight of item. with 550 units. Soon I declared war with blue faction AUTOMATICALLY ( I dont know why) and their 2000 units came to my castles and defeated me xD
@@aslof1069 sounds enjoyable, completely deserved for trying to absolutely cheat the shit out of your first playthrough of the game :^)
Iskandar, is that you?!
@@Benebazsi I didnt cheat mean, I just got addicted and played it for 60+ hours
Arzagos aproves
You missed the Battanian highborn youth line of archers which is the strongest part of their roster imo. The elite Battanian Fians do so much work in battles.
They definitely are the strongest part of the Battanians
Pinned your comment for the world to see! Thanks man, that was totally on accident! My bad
They can also be recruited from one of the bandit archers if i remember
Don't get mad.. I unpinned your comment and pinned someone who laid out how to get them. I wish I could pin more than one. I'm going to make a NEW Pin of all the feedback in a few hours so that I don't miss anything. I'm so sorry for glossing over that note dude
Don't get mad.. I unpinned your comment and pinned someone who laid out how to get them. I wish I could pin more than one. I'm going to make a NEW Pin of all the feedback in a few hours so that I don't miss anything. I'm so sorry for glossing over that note dude
"Aserai is the most challenging faction in terms of troops so you will need to get your tactics down if you want to be successful with them"
Me: walking with my mameluke army pressing F1 F3 \0/
Me in all Faction army
That's what I do with my Elite Cataphract doom stack F1, F3, profit. They do have a devastating charge but the hand to hand is drawn out a bit, but they get the job done
yeah doing that right now with my arab campaign
full mameluke cav... got 206 riders
and they just stomp over any army :D
I do the same with my Khans Guard armies
me in any army in the game because its what too easy
"Javelins are harder to aim."
Dude, have you played this game? The AI doesn't miss.
Here are my 2 cents on the matter of best troop/strategy:
Vlandians: Crossbows and knights. Good at siege warfare due to solid inf and crossbows that are decent at melee. I think their cav should be used as a finishing or denial tool. Finish off their morale with a charge after crossbows have done their job or deny specific threats such as horse archers, archers, enemy cav or "glass canon" troops.
Battanians: Fian archers and skirmishers. Play "Cant touch this" by MC Hammer. Let the fians empty their quivers while skirm and inf run around like crazy to distract and throw javelins. Fians also have insane athletic skill in case they need to reposition. Battanian battle often demands maneuvering a lot of times to make sure that your troops are not overwhelmed in melee. Pray that you dont get charged by lancers or circled by horse archers.
Empire: Sword and board is your unbreakable core. Form a shieldwall and everything else will be dedicated to make the shieldwall work wonders. Send cataphracts and horse archers to bully whatever is threatening to ruin your shieldwall. Great at siege due to sword and board inf + decent range options. If your horse archers and cav are free, break the shieldwall and charge along with all cav when the enemy has engaged the wall for a little time. The enemy will die like flies while running away.
Sturgians: SHIELDWALL! Did you know that sturgian babies are able to hold a shield the day they were born? This is why you always use a shieldwall with the sturgians. Order the wall at the bottom of a mountain or hill, place archers on hill = win against armies over twice your size. In siege these guys will do great. If you want them to do really great, then mix in some berserkers in with your infantry. remember that the berserkers and ulfhednar are weak to archers, to keep them safe behind the other guys shields. In field battle, the strategy is to let the enemy approach your shieldwall while being peppered by arrows. For a quick finish, charge in with some berserkers from a flank. The only problem at the end of a battle is to catch the runners, so a few fast cav are handy.
Khuzaits: Horse freaking archers. Get a ton of them, press F1 followed by F3 and you win EVERY field battle. Worst case scenario you have to manually pick routes for them to ride so that they dont get stuck or do something else stupid. The "follow me" command followed by you riding circles around you enemy until they are dead is also one of the easiest ways to do this. Sucky at siege combat, but what did you expect? At least they function as okey archers and the heavily armored ones can at least put up a fight in melee. Import some sturgian/empire troops for storming castles or have massive numbers.
Aserai: Mameluke supremacy. With enough mamelukes you can just put them on charge and win. The light cav troop that turns into mamelukes should be used to engage enemy cav in a way that it lets the mamelukes finish them with arrows. Even in siege the mamelukes are effective due to heavy armor and a shield. An army consisting of only mamelukes and Palace guards could actually be an effective army.
Absolutely excellent breakdown man
By far the khuzaits are the worst to fight against in open field their horse archers will do circles around you and whittle your army into nothingness
Only a fool would meet the Khuzaits on a open field.
Kingtot the night king did and crush them.
10/10 historic pain in the ass
@@Kingtot ON AN OPEN FIELD NED!
Lol just shoot them with crossbows
“Yes... we shall conquer them with boars!” “Brilliant mi’lord they’d never expect it!”
insert random "putin riding a boar" meme
Vasile Mihai lol
Vasile Mihai :P
The lack of actual info on units in the encyclopedia really triggers me...
Can't be that hard to just list their equipment - That'S literally all I wish to know >.
that HAS to be added later, there's no way they're gonna leave that big of a gap in there. The entire encyclopedia, while already super useful, needs massive improvements.
I'm a complete sucker for games having just an absurd about of info on every aspect of the game built in, even if none of it is relevant to actually playing the game, so it hurts to have such incomplete reference material in the game right now.
consult the Warband wiki.... the units are largely the same.
they're all generic units: footman, archer, crossbowman, knight, heavy knight, spearman, pikeman, mounted archer, etc.
one civilization might have an extra tier in one branch for a specific specialization, like the mongol or arab tribes having superior horse archers that no european civ has.
but the other units are largely equal to one another.
I kinda like it, it's a nice change to actually have to look at what they are wearing.
18:25 thats because those arent specialist lines.
Those are minor faction units. They're basically just there to add visual diversity, so you know you're fighting a minor faction, instead of just copies of your own faction troops.
For me the easiest way to get at least some capable cav units is wiping out deserst bandit hideouts (there's LOTS in the deserts near the southern end to the map, at least 6 spots I found already) or fighting desert bandits and taking the "harami" prisoners. When you can recruit them you have a solid early on mail protected cav that costs only 7 gold per day
So Imperial core with auxilliaries from other factions depending on what you need? Or am I an idiot?
Also, where have I heard that one before?
*roman chanting in the woods*
Yeah I use this in my gameplay. I have imperial infantry and archers with khuzait horse archers and shock cav mixed with imperial shock cav.
I also tried some vlandian knights but most armies have quite a lot of polearm infantry and that makes it really hard for the knights, so I prefer horse archers to harrass with some shock cav to finish of the enemy while my legioners and archers hold the line as much as possible.
You don't need other factions. Get a core of cataphracts and bucellarii. Send your bucellarii off at the start to harrass the enemy. Get your xbow's out double spaced with legionaries behind them in a shield wall. Command your cataphracts yourself and ride off to a flank. I never lose.
Kawaii Milliye high five here! We’re using the same tactic!!!
@Zwenk Wiel Vlandian knights are damn useless in mountain/hills and forest. You can't reliable couch and manuver in those.
This is an interesting video, I like the structure of it and I think you did a good job of staying focused on the important elements so well done. Regarding the Khuzait I disagree with your assessment regarding their difficulty to play; they require less micromanagement than a few other factions because of their cavalry focus. A mistake players appear to make a lot is using the charge command in combat which drives all selected units into melee regardless of their unit type; a much better command is advance which causes selected units to engage but does not command them to melee meaning your archers (mounted or otherwise) will move into firing range and automatically attempt to kite opposing forces.
Considering the above, the Khuzait become insanely powerful, even playing on realistic because your mounted archers will run circles around enemy cavalry, peppering them with arrows and of course anything not mounted stands a snowballs chance in hell. In my Khuzait campaign I give the advance order to my mounted archers then focus my micro on my infantry and even when outnumbered two to one I can decimate opponents of any faction with losses that fall well and truly into the margin of acceptable or minimal.
I am not a master tactician, it's select all > F6.
I also disagree with the extent to which you focus on armour; whilst I do agree that armour is very important I do not believe it plays as much of a role in Bannerlord as it did in Warband and that is due to the capabilities of tactical play in Bannerlord. Yes Warband supported tactical play but it didn't have the depth it has in Bannerlord and much more important than armour overall in Bannerlord is morale. There are some nasty perks in the game such as cavalry causing ten percent more morale loss to enemy units or each kill with a crossbow lowering enemy morale by one etc. I have done some play testing with a few such mechanics and routing enemy forces is utterly devastating to the balance of power, severely diminishing the opponents odds of victory. I reckon that the impact of good tactics vastly outweighs the armour element in combat to such an extent that in most cases I hardly think armour is much of determining factor.
In smaller scale fights, armour is everything. If you're looking at up to say fifty against fifty type battles then armour is very important but in larger scale battles, one hundred per side or more I believe armour becomes a non issue for the reasons stated above. Smaller scale skirmishes you can even resolve on your own with a mount and a polearm.
I think the easiest faction to play, if you're limiting yourself to just one factions units and not planning on mixing troops from other factions in, is Vlandia followed closely by the Empire. By mid tier the Vlandian forces have some very solid staying power, they require no major micromanagement, their crossbows are devastating against armour and they have four above average in general type units which are their sergeants, their pike-men, their sharpshooters and their cavalry.
If you take Vlandia as your origin then an additional twenty percent experience to your forces after battles is nothing to turn your nose up at either; that's actually a substantial boon. Every five battles your troops effectively get the experience of a sixth battle... For free.
Thank you, this was very helpful. I love how Bannerlord has multiple troop trees for every faction.
Just makes me wonder how amazing the modding potential is going to be now.
I'm so excited for future mods! :) thank you for watching
I'm loving the Khuzait, they work quite well with hammer and anvil style fighting. I've been experimenting with mercenary crossbowmen instead of the Khuzait bowmen and it does seem to help. The real problem I've found is maneuvering your shock cav properly so it engages the enemy infantry or archers rather than chasing enemy cav around the map.
most enemies i have encountered only have max like 20 cav units so at the beginning of a battle i rush them myself and then a little later do my cav and horse archers come in to kill the rest of the 10 enemy cav. once that is done they decimate all the poor poor infantry with polearms and arrows
Battle Commands Guide: ruclips.net/video/eS7QI9CuHJ8/видео.html
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The way to fight khuzaits is to engage them wile they are raiding so you get a settlement map to fight on. The worst thing to happen to cav is to get stuck on terrain which happens a lot in settlements from all the buildings and small walls while being picked off by archers and crossbows.
From my experience with the game having more units is much more important than the quality of them. The new ai knows how to surround the enemy. Tier 2 and 3 units can give the highest tier a run for their money. I just wish it was easier to increase the limit of your army. I wish level progression went a bit faster, it's soooo slow right now
I don't know, first game, 46h played and I already have a 500 army
@@andredulac4456 is that your own party size or are you counting other lords that have joined you?
@@andrewgodly5739 when I create an army :p alone I am at 231 men
@@andredulac4456 I made it to 287 for my party size with a tier 4 clan and an independent kingdom. I only just recently discovered you can convince other clans to join your kingdom so soon I'll have a big army
I'm just glad we can have more than 100 men.
The imperial Menavliaton infantry does have polearms, a menaulion is just a big pike
I was looking for this menu the other night
Great videos! You can actually speak english well. You don't try to sound like a ring announcer (can just see the wink and finger point); f, that's annoying. The info you cover and explain is exactly what's needed and done really well. Favourite RUclipsr right now. Thank you.
As a veteran m&b player, the khuzaits are prob the strongest faction right now in terms of troops.
OH man, 100% - especially if you go full cav, I hadn't really fully experienced how strong they are when i made this unfortunately
The Aserai noble line is incredible. The fact that they carry javelins and lances makes them amazingly powerful offensively, but they do tend to die kind of easily.
With his name all I can picture is someone in an Italian accent saying
“It’s-a me Spartacus!”
And a churlish wink as I disappear into your sewage system
Vlandian Heavy Calvary + Khuzait Horse Archers + a few Empire Swordsmen = fear the Horde.
Those Boar units you were referring to, as well as the poachers and other units like that, aren’t really anything to do with the major factions - they’re exclusively for the mercenary factions and you can only get them if you take them prisoner and recruit them that way
About the Khuzait infantry and archer lines... I believe the best use of them would be to have them hold a position while the shock cav and archer cav take care of the actual killing. With that said... I usually only go for cav until my army is quite large anyway lol... Feels pretty mighty to have that horde of cavs in battle!
you forgot to mention that to upgrade any cav unit you need to buy them a horse or a war horse which is even more expensive and further limits your ability to make large heavy cav forces.
Early game sure, but if you beat other armies you capture their horses. I think I got up to a 140 pure mongol cav army going right now
When you clear out Mountenbandits Hideouts you swim in Horses.
Villagers can also sell them to you for cheap. Look for the ones that are being attacked.
In this current patch: Calvary is your bread butter, the more elite the better. High map speed, couch lance damage is a virtual instant morale break for most factions, and horse archers are almost invincible. It doesn’t matter how much godtier your infantry are if your enemy gets to dump arrows at them for free and reengage by running off the field.
Also the Bucellarii are good foot archers too thanks to the speed of their bows and double 30 pack they carry. The palatine guard are really only there because the Bucellarii are so dang expensive because you have to feed them a War Horse on top of the upgrade cost.
I'd say one aspect that might warrant highlighting is how you actually have prerequisites for unit upgrades in Bannerlord (at least for now).
You might be thinking to go after some nice heavy cavalry - only to discover that you need a warhorse for every single one you want to upgrade.
Yes, you need to GIVE THEM a warhorse (and specifically a warhorse - or whatever other horse they specifically desire) to upgrade to certain units.
If you do not have that particular type of horse available you can forget about upgrading that unit.
This really changes things up as access to some of these things might not be as easy. Plus not only do you need to get access to the right core units (meaning roaming specific areas) - but you also need access to additional things which can really complicate certain troop lines.
Yeah, this is an interesting extra hidden cost to upgrading units. For example, the khuzait have really nice cavalry, but after tier three all their units need warhorses, making a full khuzait army very expensive to raise compared to almost any other force in the game. Tons of AI lords get stuck with a ton of tier 3 cavalry be cause of this
thank you for making these guides man!
Sturgia have 2 sub culture troop, the Nord and the Vikken Culture
Vikken is heavy bowmen, and Nord Heavy infantry (Brotva Skolder)
are they divided geographically?
@@italianspartacus Nope, this troop from a Lord Clan indie, in encyclopia, you have Nord Troop and Vikken in sturgia tree, I've forget name of Vikken, but the Nord is the Brotva Skolder, sure
The Skolder (Nord) Banner, is Viking Raven style
Maybe the future Nord From Warband
And for the "son of Warrior" Sturgian, the village with great production of this warrior is "Zhemyan", near "Ustokol Castle" in west of "Revyl"
Is not Vikken, is Vakken (sorry), this troop from Forest People, Lead by "Zhem" is a Sturgian leader from Minor Faction
The Brotva Skolder is lead by "Yun" a Sturgian chief, from a Minor Faction
And Asarai have unique Troop from indie Clan
The Darshi Clan, with the Guillman, is heavy Cavalry
horse archers are lacking from those factions because the cultures they are based on (Western european) didnt use horse archers.
It depends on how you see it. The Empire, if it's modelled after the Justinian code which is the Byzantine Empire and not the good ol' Roman.. Wait.
Both Roman Empire actually used horse archers. Early Roman Empire ones din't but when it got close to the 12th - 14th century, they actually did employ some horse archers into their fold like those from the eastern steppe like the Cossacks from Transylvania. When the Western Empire collapsed and it switched to the Byzantine Empire, horse archers were used even more because they need those units to combat the Mamlukes of the Sassannid Empire during Justinian's reign all the way to the Ottoman's rise in dominance.
@@MrLolx2u Empire has Bucelarii for horse archers
@@MrLolx2u yes i agree - but byzantine area is eastern European my focus was on western European based cultural factions
Yeah, Khuzait culture is based on Mongol-Turk and Asia cultures which used too many horse archers. But in other cultures, horse archers weren't popular.
@@romainvicta3076 But you have to remember that the Empire we seen now is mirrored after the Byzantine so.. Yea. That's why the Empire has horse archers too. Not extremely great ones but still, available.
I know this had just come out when you made this video but I have been playing since release(early access), so couple things from my experience, not sure whether the same has happened for other people but this is what has happened to me.
1. Vlandia is by far the strongest or at least they are the easiest to use their only real weakness is lack of archers which have a faster rate of fire than cross bows makes them week to their only other missing unit type horse archers. But while the AI does attempt to skirmish you with their horse archers they don't seem to do it very and stop to fire all the time allowing you crossbows to be plenty good enough, though as a player against vlandia you can really hurt their cavalry and get them to waste ammo by using skirmish tactics.
2. while its not useless pretty much all un-shielded infantry besides maybe the empire late heavily armored stuff is at a huge risk from projectiles. Missile weapons of all kinds seem way more effective than in warband and the AI definitely uses them better though they tend to leave them unguarded as big battles drag on.
3. while no matter what the numbers say, the noble lines final unit are all very similar besides battania(which in my opinion is the best one). The are all heavy shock cavalry with a slight twist. Banner knights are probably the strongest all round, Elite Imperial Cataphracts have a longer lance and the best armor and damage resistant horse, Vanguard Faris and Druzhinik Champions both have throwing weapons with Druzhinik being better after the charge in melee and the Faris being the fastest heavy cavalry by a lot, and finally the Khan's guard has a bow and is very mobile.
4. Finally and you kind of did point this out part of this but to me the weakest faction is Sturgia, they seem to just have the most weaknesses. first the noble troops line or royal as you call it are not that hard to get, but beside battania they all either start out mounted or are at tier 2 this makes it very hard for stugia to get heavy cav. second while infantry focused they tend to have no armor until later tiers and some have no armor or shields making them extremely vulnerable to archers or any missile weapon. finally the normal troop line cavalry seem to be equipped to be a mounted skirmisher like the horse archers but it function like a melee cavalry. Now if you manually control them and use them like a jav cav from a total war game they can actually be quite effective but in big battles this hard to do and the AI will just have them throw some javelins then charge.
I run 20 Vlandian Knights, 10 Cataphracts, 15 Battanian Fians, 15 Vladian Hardened Crossbowmen, 15 Imperial Vet. Archers, 15 Vladian Swordsman, 35 Imperial Vet. Infantry and 20 Khan's Guard then 35 of an assortment of tier 3 imperial archers and infantry to fill in the tier 5 casualties. Works like a charm
the bugs are rather horrendous at the moment
Luckily the modding community already fixed a lot of it. There are already files that fix the wrong stats and enable disabled armors and even whole troop trees that are supposed to be available.
Typical shitty practice. They have definitely released it in such a sorry state and left it to the community to finish what should have been done years ago.
@@stoyanb.1668 Dude, the community has been begging for early access. The bugs will be fixed
@@stoyanb.1668 Do you know what Early Access means? It also released like a few days ago.
Most bugs happen with city quests so its avoidable :p there are daily patches and thats kind of a surprise in times like these ^^
Another amazing video with clear and concise guidance four the game. Subbed!
welcome to the family :)
If you mix cultures in your army do you suffer morale penalty like in the original?
No
I think it happens if the troops are fighting troops of their own culture
I think they eventually put back this on the game, I'm mean still early access
I have waited so fucking long for this game. And iam not disappointed
From what I remember of Total War games: Use any combination of expensive units you like, from heavy cavalry to heavy infantry to shield crossbows, but *only Horse Archers can deal with Horse Archers.*
_Really_ good foot archers are the exception to that rule but then it becomes a game of 'reposition the archers' and if they're swifter than you, their foot archers join and it's bye-bye.
You can counter with heavy cav. Still, you will take some damage but i have always traded pretty well commanding heavy cav and using them to counter the skirmishing of horse archers. Durable shield is a MUST.
The imperial infantryman is to bannerlord as the swadian militia were to warband. Low cost troops that were very armored compared to their contemporaries.
Edit: the khuzaits have lighter armor compared to everyone else.
Ive been playing Empire a lot lately, and i can safely say, i loathe to fight the Khuzaits, and the Aserai clans. And whenever i do fight them, it can essentially be summed up as "Gods help me... they have Cavalry"
Because those cav are so damn maneuverable, they always fuck up my formations by running around and through my men constantly
It's worth to mention that Aserai might not be best at high tier, but their recruits have been in my opinion the easiest to keep alive as I saw most of them go with polearms like scythes etc so they sweep through looters easier. Tried every faction and I'd say it's more common for aserai to wield those.
I love the aserai just because u can run threw there land and get shitload of them. You follow that coast and u can easily get 300. Also there basic recruit is the tribesman in most areas so it's quick tier 2
Khuzait seems to fit the hammer and anvil tactic, IF you decide to have any ground troops with them. I've had great success with just cavalry as the entire force, the horse archers run circles around, and the hard hitting lancers clean up what's left. Of course this could change in the future as more of the game is released, but for now, it's too much fun
Thanks for the quick guide. Though you didnt mention the Hastati line from the empire
So far in my games the Vlandians and Khuzait crush their neighbors (the five-city Battanians and the Northern Empire are usually the first to disappear, while the Sturgians and Western Imperials are not far behind), while the Aserai get eaten up by the Southern Empire in the East and the Vlandians (or once, interestingly, the Battanians) in the West without much fight.
16:40 Aserai Recruit looks like Frank Woods from Black Ops, change my mind xD
Would it be possible to do a video on the non faction related units and the different bandit types
I do it like in Warband. Pump out as much Vlandian Cavalry as possible and nothing stops you at the battlefield.
Had zero casualties with the enemy thrice my numbers
But in Warband, the Swadian knights were not very good at taking castles or defending them.
Good video, thanks man 👍 and you are so right with sturgia... I tried to lay siege to a castle with valandian infantry 😅 it was hell, i lost almost my entire army to their veteran units 😂
a little remark 11:15 he's not Druzzznik it's Dru-zheeen-nik it's somewhat can be translated like a Companion or a Friend.
Just like to point out.. horse archers are pretty much win mode, if you manual command battles
Right now there's what I consider a bug or oversight in the AI targeting behavior. I encourage people to experiment a bit to confirm for yourself but I've noticed that all the horse archers that die, die after they lose their horse. The best way to deal with HA is to use superior accuracy from ground archers to shoot them down. Unfortunately right now it seems that archers prefer hitting the horse over the rider, meaning that your HA units are effectively another 2-3 units worth of hit points to get through before the HA itself dies.
The Batanian and Khuzait noble's end tier noble unit are 280 Skill Archery units. Even after the HA accuracy penalty of the Khuzait noble is taken into account, they also have a fairy well armored horse that needs to die before they are targeted properly by AI.
Against AI, it is harder to fight against the Batanian armies than Khuzait though. Since their unit composition complements their noble units and it powerful on its own. The player can dominate the battle map by only getting horse archers, as they become more effective the more there are, but the AI doesn't really mass them this much.
Edit: oh and for some reason the Vlandian Crossbowman absolutely destroy any and all infantry of the same unit rank and bellow in melee, quite funny. xP
Thanks for the video dude, you have done a very good job 👏🏼
imperial menavliaton do not have 2 handed weapon btw,only pike and 1 handed without a shield lol
How about Bandits? I tend to recruit Forest Bandits to fill my Bow needs with Battanian.
Empire sure made a nasty mistake in inviting those Vlandian to their shores
Why is the word Cavalry so hard for youtubers to say? You can say infantry but have to abbreviate horsemen to "Cav"? What do you do with all the time you save by ignoring the last 2 syllables?
right when I think im starting to understand this game, I find out I have no idea what I'm doing. So how do I get the other troops from certain kingdoms that aren't part of the normal tree? I love warband, and I started off disliking this game because of the added complexity/added features that I have to learn, but the more I play it, it grows on me slowly.
Check out the pinned comment. The gentleman expertly explained it! Theres still so much we're all learning brother!
3:32 Sergeants have shields.
Tactics for vlandia and khuzaits? Press 3 and then F3. They can literally mow down anything that moves.
Vlandia is easily the best, it's not even close.
They get early af cav you can litterally hire new troops and have cav army in the hundreds in under an hour.
Their infantry is fine, just meatshield for hammer and anvil. Sieges just auto resolve with tier 5 cav kekistani.
Every other faction pales in comparison, takes way to long to get a good army.
Aren't Imperial Menavliatons the Empire's Polearm/anti cavalry unit too?
There is only one specialist line for the factions or empire in respect. Jawwal Beni Zial and all those "specialist units come from mercenaries and are not recruitable unless you imprison them and then turn them or something like that. Horsearchers are the strongest units in the field. That makes them exceptional. The elite Khuzait Khan Guards dont have a spear, thats a glaive that is one of the most damaging 2 hand weapons in the game, far better than any 1 h sword other cav uses, they kill everything in horse to horse melee when not charging. If your army just consists of horse archers, press F6 and watch the enemy die. All you have to do is sit back and wait.
Hey man. Great video. If I wanted a almost ONLY bow infantry to "blot out the sun" with arrows, what faction would I choose, and what skills should I focus in?
Battanian, Aserai both have decent options. Go heaviest infantry possible, focus on Athletics, Tactics, Bow
Great vid but you forgot the forgotten legion units for Empire!
you can't fully recruit them yet :(
How do i get the specialists ?
I have seen them in game but don't get them in recruitment pools
Another "easy" way is once you build up a bit of an army, start going after the tougher bandit groups like Forest and Mountain Bandits. Once those units are promoted they crossover to those same sought after units like Khuzait Khans Guard, Battanian Fianns, Vlandian Knights, etc.
@@brianhum8765 Everyone keeps suggesting this but in order to upgrade them into those lines you need Disciplinarian from the Leadership line. And it is, I believe, 125 skill! That is going to take a long time to grind unless you start off as some leadership focused character from the start.
Running a khuzait cav army with an empire infantry line is acc so strong i haven’t really lost with it yet
Thanks for info, I love fast cavalry heavy armies to keep up with me and my npcs
One disadvantage for Vlandia is also: first 2 infantry tiers don't have shields. That's quite annoying :D
I think I'll wait til further clearances whether Battanian specialist archers are just wrongly equipped, wrongly distributed skill wise, or just wrong info on those numbers.
Bannerlord introduces morale in battle, the strongest unit I think is empire, bare in mind unit fight together thus you do not need fool who charge in alone. The most versatile is khuzait, my opinion is their horse archer is to harass and lure cavalry and spearman finish them off, while their lancer flank the archer.
I use sturgian foot infantry for their shields with a few battanian spear units.?archers are imperial, vlandian and khergit. Then I have a flank of horse archers and I charge from behind the enemy with a heavy cavalry mix. Always destroys larger forces
The Aserai are kind of broken in game right now in a very bad way. I started a campaign with them, and there is not a single city that has their tier 1 recruit available. It is only possible to recruit their tier 2 Aserai Tribesman.
Thats because for some unknown reason the whole 2nd troop tree of them is "disabled". I had to manually go through the XML files and enable them by just changing one word.
Not sure why they lock existing content like this and make the game that expensive but there you go.
@@MsToshi1990 Ah I see. I went ahead and put a discussion about it on the steam site to hopefully make them aware of this bug, so they can fix it.
Yeah same problem bro, I can't make mamluke cavalries.
I think they fixed that in todays patch.
brajuhani yeah they did I was very happy to see it fixed so quickly
How do you get specialist units like huskarls? I only know the "noble" units like young/squire/warrior son
Their from the minor factions within each faction, you're basically never going to have them.
how do you recruit a special unit from a faction ? They do not show up in normal Recruit Troops. Ex, Batania Archers.
I think the overall conclusion is to diversify your forces, unless you are role playing then I guess unlucky.
Khuzait khans guard are so OP
I had about 12 of them and they got 70 kills between them
The problem I have is that all of the calv units need horses, and the advanced ones ask for war horses to upgrade. Asking 1K to upgrade a unit like that is just insane. I can understand bumping up the costs a little bit for balance of whatever, but having to go around and fund warhorses to purchase is a royal pain, especially when I am not convinced the AI has to do anything of the sort.
well even further is that the lock command in the inventory doesn't LOCK the war horses that i don't want them to use. the system will default to using the BEST horse for an upgrade -_- so annoying
@@italianspartacus Oh man, I lost so many tournament horses before I even noticed they were slowly being sucked away. feels bad.
Ok, big fan of Warband, and I just bought M&B 2 last night. The F1, F3 charge is working for my 20 man squad, but what is a good strategy vid for controlling larger scale armies? (Open field)
Advance is F4 I believe. It's better than charge because the archers won't go melee.
Im playing khuzait and they are super strong in open battle however sieges are kinda hard but not as bad as One would Think :)
Imperial menvallitons have no two handed weapon instead they have a 2 handed pike and a one handed weapon. Also you didn’t show the battanian noble line which is a really powerful longbowman. Aside from that you taught me some good info about khuzait and aserai
Great video and most of all, great job with taking the feedback in the comments! Subscribed for more content, liking what you’ve got so far :)
Aserai have amazing archers BTW they're OP. You can sit them on a hill and the enemy will die before reaching you
It would be nice if the type and tier of equipment was also listed in the encyclopedia.
How do you go about recruiting the "Noble" lines?
With a khuzait army its really hard to siege castles but in the battlefield I think no one bests their cavalry. You can really win battles even if you are outnumbered as long as you are in open terrain and harras with you cav archers and finish of with shock cavs when you weaken your enemy enough.
If you want an "easy" way to take castle as khzait then seige with a weaker appearing army. If the defenders think they can take you they will sally out onto the battlefield where your army has the advantage of having their horses. After they're all dead just send your army in to cap it once you get back to the seige as there will not be a garrison left.
@@punchtownhero3553 They don't really do this much any more.
i really enjoyed this guide thank you
Very Informative video, keep up the good work
p.s
Can you do a video on the mercenaries, sea raiders, looters and etc...... units
Any particular information you'd like to know?
@@italianspartacus their upgrades and how you acquire them, sorry if that sound like a lot
The strongest faction, the sad crashes, i still love this game and have hope.. Hope is the best.
Me in a Siege: F1 F3
Bannerlord: Ohhhh no
I just cant get this game to run smooth for me at all. Anyone else having this problem. It auto sets on very high n my gpu usage isnt even half. Even if i set it to low its runs so badly?
ruclips.net/video/RxmdFYC4U78/видео.html Watch this it fixed everything for me...
@Pluck my Feathers it lags and stutters just on the map mate and if im fighting 10 looters. I might reset my pc or something. I thought my cpu would be fine for this game.
John Gotti 8gb ram?
@@justsayin2085 yeah do you know what , i plugged my pc into my actual hd tv screen and all my games run flawless n better graphics than ever. If i use my gaming screen its crap. Doesnt make sense to me.
John Gotti thats weird, same i have a 8gb ram but it run somewhat smooth. I just close everything and let bannerlord run,
Is it just me or did the armor in warband look way better and more realistic?
OMG, I JUST REALIZED THAT YOU CAN USE THE SHIELD ON YOUR BACK WHILE ROLLING DEEP WITH THE CAV TO KEEP ARROWS FROM HITTING YOU IN THE BACK. GOING TO GO CRY NOW
Ye it was always the case in mount and blade
Loving the Khuzait, full force of mounted archers needs no shield wall, run circles around your enemies and fletch them. Just try not to engage in the woods.
The Menavlion is a polearm. The legionary has a pilum on his back I haven't seen if they can throw it but thats definitively the in game pilum head.
maniac1031 they throw it
@@UltimaSigmarAlonso they seem to only throw them is they are in a defensive stance aswell as ti seems if you select charge command it turns off fire at will.
Ugnutz yes man
U can only choose one faction in ur army ? Im new to mount and blade
Nope! :) you can swap in whatever you want I just wanted to go over all of the cultures and what makes their units unique
@@italianspartacus oh ok thanks , btw my favorite movies are troy and gladiator and i also loved kingdome come deliverance game , so i think i got the mindset of a king to rule the world
Did you mention the Battanian highborn archer tree that is ridiculously overpowered?
i didn't! :( unfortnately, but i think i pinned a comment that did
Rumor has it that unit stats are borked. Crossbowmen using their bow stats instead of crossbow stats, there's apparently even a unit with no stats! There's a mod on the nexus that addresses these things.
Butter me up, Harlaus!