Had no idea till I opened steam up today.  Installing now, will report.

I never played the first.  It's pretty cool so far, haven't tried multiplayer yet.

Horseback with a lance and now is pretty fun.  Get a couch lance, get up to speed, and press "x".

A bit of an exploit is to start your engagement by getting ahead of your army and circle the enemy while flinging arrows at them.

Try to break them up into two groups, one group will carry on towards your army while the other half follows you.  This will allow your men to pick away at them and result in far fewer casualties on your end.

I'm enjoying it. A bit more...grindy than I had expected. Was thinking more like kingdom management but to get to that point took several hours of farming renown, which I still don't hsve enough apparently

If you want, once you get to the point where management starts to become a thing, save the game and do not delete or overwrite that save.

The early game is pretty much the same every time(aside from being able to change up your stats), and if you want to just start right at the middle it gives you a chance to jump right in to the "full" game right away.

Yeah I noticed that. Can break a group off and fight them yourself on horseback while your troops engage the remainder.  

I chased down an enemy party to try to fight them.  There were a couple large groups of forest or mountain bandits near the party when I caught them. The bandits entered the battle ok the side of the enemy party, then half my force fell off a bridge. Ended up getting steamrolled.

Still some bugs to work out, but it's surprisingly smooth for day 1 of early access.  Better than most games on actual release day.  :cough Bethesda :cough

Another thing that helps a lot, after you have a good number of archers, is to hold your troops back to start and make sure you separate your archers from the rest of your troops.

If they are packed in too tight a lot of them will be blocked.

Just hit the 2 key to control archers, then click on the ground where you want them, then hit F3 twice to set their formation to loose.

If your enemy is ranged heavy(a lot of archers), you're going to want to push the engagement quick but if not and you have a good number of archers yourself you can thin them out a LOT with arrows before putting anyone at risk.

At first I was hitting "all charge".  I was so focused on slaughtering the enemy myself that I didn't realize it was sending archers and mounted skirmishers into melee.

Once I figured out the controls I started using "advance" and simply sending in the archers first with infantry running a little ways behind. Timing a cav attack for shortly before the melee engages.  I go in before the rest of the cav as a lone shock cav.  Works well for minimal losses against bandits and caravans while letting me focus on combat rather than ordering troops around.  Haven't fought against opposing parties very much.

If it's a sizeable group of bandits I will wait until they are almost on top of my army before sending them in, giving my archers a chance to cut their numbers down as much as possible.  The downside is you aren't giving your other troops much experience.

Right now I have an army of roughly 50 and anything less than 25 (standard) bandits my archers will completely destroy before they reach my army.  They definitely seem to have beefed up archers in this game vs the old.

Oof, so managed to start my own kingdom finally, independent like. 2 whole cities and a couple castles.

The 2 superpowers on the map decide that they don't like that and put an end to my nation building

Might be the AI...could be that I hadn't figured how how to create groups to create armies big enough to deal with them. The empire had been wiped out to 3 cities by this time tho so...

There have been quite a few gripes that building your own independent kingdom is way too hard.  It will probably get adjusted over time as it's still early access.

Same story as yours is being repeated over and over on the reviews and message boards.  Impossible to get started without getting instantly curb stomped by larger, fully established kingdoms.

Of course there are a lot of mechanics that you really need to understand that will help out but even the guys that know M&B in and out are voicing the same opinion.

Played for a couple hours last night. It crashed my pc and I lost all progress.

Also, when I load into my save it says it is not the newest patch basically, do I still want to load in. So do the new patches not affect previous saves, or what? That doesn't make sense.

Easily sucked into it. I have never played the first mount and blade.
Put in some time, joined with the Sturgia and precided to get wrecked by Mongols and their bow cav. Doesn't help that I have no cav myself. Shield walls don't really work against that.

It won't let me use my old saves.  Says something about it not working right, do I want to continue. I say yes, then it says something about load without modules or something, I click yes, it does nothing.

Guess it's a new game for me.  Sucks, I was level 8 and had 33k gold and a ton of renown

Well, that's why it's early access. I'm not complaining. It is still a blast but there's still a bit of tweaking ahead.

I got up to lvl 12 or so, over a million gold, and had 4 cities and several castles but taking a break now while they tweak it. At this point I'm just running back and forth fighting battles in which I'm badly outnumbered as my companion groups are useless and that's gotten old already.

Another year to fix the AI, companions, leveling scale, skills, and add some more needed features and the game is going to be great.

The save issue, btw, isn't a fixable bug.

Just start over, enable cheats, get your shit back.

Damn that sucks. I can still play mine. I'm wondering if we should just be playing around with builds and start a REAL game at actual release.

I played a lot last night with no issues.

Well I'm stuck...  I've got my group maxed at 115 men, most very high level, and two other groups with 140 men total(between the two).

I still can't capture a castle or town...until you control a castle or town you aren't considered a kingdom so you can't order your other groups to join up to create an army.  Every time I siege a town or castle it takes so long to create my camp and equipment(because my engineering is so low) that I get overrun by enemy armies before I get a chance to assault.

Only way to get your engineering up is to siege towns and castles...

This system is fucked.

edit:  Yep, enemy(that is down to two towns and two castles) sieged a town with 450 men.  I joined in the defense and we slaughtered them all.  Figured that was my chance so I seiged a lightly defended castle of his.

Didn't even finish building camp when the enemy had another army of 500+ roll me.

I've taken several castles by myself with 70 men.  All of my troops are high level though.  I routinely take out parties of 120~140 troops losing only a handful of guys.  

I don't typically wait on siege equipment if it's a lightly defended, small castle.  If it's small, and only has 100~200 men defending it, just climb the walls.  Take out most of the guys defending the ladders and let your men mop up the rest.

Towns are a bit different.  You need troops and something to knock that door down.  You can climb the walls, but typically they have a lot more than 200 men defending lol.

Well that solves that problem...  I wasn't aware you could assault with ladders, I thought you needed the siege equipment.

Most of the time if I'm taking on an army of 100 or less I'll lose less than 5 guys.  Granted I've worn that particular nation down quite a bit so they are rolling with very low level troops.

Just let my archers shred them until they start to break, then charge.

You can assault anything with ladders.  YOU personally can't put them up.  Your men do.  Then they'll try to knock them back down but just climb up and murder everyone up top and let your men flow inside lol.

I just don't find it viable in towns.  Way too much stuff to get through, too many men defending.  Is it possible?  Sure, but you're probably going to lose a lot of men in the process going over ladders one at a time.

Castles are easy peasy.  I roll in, they roll out.  

Well I can take a castle now but there's literally no possible way for me to build up a big enough army to hold it.  I have two AI groups of 60-100 men each randomly roaming around the map that I cannot control what so ever and my own army is 141 strong.

I can take a caste easy enough but within a day or two the enemy has an 800+ strong army assaulting it.  I don't know if I waited to late into the game to start taking castles but I have been taking out around 100-150 of their men per day in smaller battles for weeks now and no matter how many i kill they still manage to amass a massive army any time I try to hold a castle.

How do you have extra groups roaming? What does that get you vs. caravans?

I’ve played all weekend and a lot last week. It’s nearly impossible to get ahead. Was with southern empire taking cities and castles left and right but all I could get was one castle for me. Blowing influence forming the armies. Plus the kingdom managed to be at war with every other kingdom at 5he same time so ppl are rolling up on you constantly.

Also the castle really doesn’t give you much

This is how I do things:

As a Lord with Fiefs you are entitled to (maybe even without fiefs) create an Army. You can then select from whoever is available on the map to help you, and it will take time depending on how far away they are.

I have 2 parties roaming killing bandits. Both have 75 units.  My Personal unit is 105.  I create the army, I ensure both of my parties are included, and even anyone else who's nearby.  Easily getting 300+ men damn near instantly.  You can call on anyone nearby, even if they only have 50 men, numbers are numbers.

I took a city, it was given to someone else, so I petitioned with my favor and took it for myself. I have yet to have to fight over it, as as soon as I took my second town the leader decided they didn't want to fight us anymore and made a cease fire.  I didn't get my second town, and even petitioning it is a no go because fuck boy leader took it for himself, even though I took it alone and his ass was on the other side of the map.  

Castles provide nothing but a staging area.  Place to keep units so you can amass quickly.

Towns give a lot of support.  I have 1500+ income each round simply from my shit town, its prosperity suck, only at 3k, but it's growing.

Just remember, you can make armies and call upon them to help you.  While you can't control your AI parties specifically, you can force them into your army and have them attack or defend something with your own party.


One tip I can give any Mount and Blade player: If you're at war with someone, burn them to the ground.  Don't let any prisoner go, execute the leaders, take the rest to a nearby friendly town and donate the prisoners for influence. By killing the leaders, you can eventually wipe a clan out, which will ultimately bring that factions power down.
Continue to rape them one town at a time, you'll take heavy casualties, but as long as you win, they take more.  Then go from town to town and village to village to recruit and put as many troops in said towns to defend, then continue your rape and pillage.  Focus on one faction, even if you're at war with multiple.  Pick one and go scorched earth on them, until they say enough and offer peace like little bitches.

I am empire faction, but side with Sturgia.  So I am in the blue north.  Image shows what I took and own, yellow, and what I took and got stolen from my by fuck boy leader in green.  Red outline is the entire area that I personally took inch by inch from Vlandia.  White is the last bit of land they own.  Green is where Battania decided to ass rape them at the end before they decided to give peace.  Basically Vlandia is fucked, they can't do anything now.

Now, fuck boy leader ( I shall call him Obama from now on ) decided to make war with Khuziat Khanate.  A country I had VERY good relationships with.  Now they all want me dead, and I've been on the far left killing Vlandian's this entire time.  

It should be noted, before this is over, I'll own Sturgia, without me the Khanate will take over.  I've already had to re-take Tyal and the surrounding castles twice.  The Khanate are strong fuckers.

(was true in part one, not sure about 2) This, if oyu get a couple followers and train them in horse and bow. then command followers to stick with you, you can get serious casualties doing this. just gotta stay back enough that they dont engage in HtH

I always take my Calvary troops and hide.  Let them go past, get close to my archers, then bum rush them with Calvary.  Archers kill a ton, Calvary kill a ton, infantry cleans up the rest.  By time my infantry troops get there, the other side is running away.  

But I do have almost 30 Calvary units...that might by way.

Individual battles are a wholesale slaughter for my enemies but I need to learn the mechanics better beyond that.  Still not sure how to form enemies, how fiefdoms work, etc.

In battle I just put my archers(of which I have 50+) in front of my foot soldiers and my cavalry to the side.  Let the archers slaughter them while they move in and then just before they reach my archers I send my cavalry and footmen in.  Cav hits and breaks them up first and then the footmen overwhelm them.

I rarely lose more than 5 men in a given battle but my troops far outrank most of what I run into.

Beware executing people. They patched it. Now not only do people that faction hate you people in other factions hate you if they were friends with them

Is there any way to see who is friendly/hostile towards who and what factions are actively at war?

If you hit N, you can look for each person, it will show their family, friends, and enemies.

I just started my own Kingdom finally.  My Vassals are pissing me off.  Begging for Fiefs that I took for myself, then when I give it to them, not defending it.  Literally took a town, went to set it up for defense, and dudes like so hey, you should give it to me instead!  I'm like....sigh, I guess.    I leave him to it, go to take the town right next door.  While I'm mid siege, it gets taken from him.

What a pleb.

I mean, I'm having no issues defending, but my dudes that I got to join me are just stupid lol.  My companions are awesome, the random dudes I was like, so hey, your lord sucks, come join me instead, they absolutely suck.  Then again, what should I expect from a turncoat?  

Fian Champions are absolute units.

Fuck it, I'm just executing everyone.

That's what I started doing with Khuzaits.

At a certain point you just get tired of seeing the same motherfucker raiding your area or attacking you during sieges...

That and the shit eating grin they have.

Yeah. Fian Champions + Khan Guard = Decimate them before they even get close enough to attack your foot troops.

Easy wins are best wins.

Hopped back in to see how a month of patching went.

First battle: my 120 very veteran army vs about 150 Aseri, mostly peasants. They did have about 20 horse archer to my 8, and a few heavy cav to my 10.

Easy peasy right? Got on hill with archers up top and infantry in front. Had beaten armies 2-3x my size before and it seems you'll always outnumbered anyhow.

Got fucking curbstomped...I read they boosted the numbers advantage for balance but damn they might have overdone it. Did a siege against about 45 defenders with my 120. Only used a battering ram and ladders. Lost 32, 22 wounded taking a tier 3 wall.

Ah well, off to see if they rebalance it again in a month or so

As for now, the game still needs lots of work.  Balance issues are mostly ok, but starting your own empire is not up to par yet, all the options in talking to your "special" guys are not there yet.

It fun for now though, but hard to get into game hardcore yet.  

The big battles require strategy.  The battles vs guys with more numbers and really loaded with archers are pretty tough.  Also the armies with lot so heavy cavalry are hard, as they just roll over your guys.  

I've found that putting my infantry in a circle makes them much more resistant to cavalry charges.  Also I will set them behind a hill so that they can be hit by archers right off.  Put your archers forward to skirmish, then pull them back into a circle in the middle of your heavy infantry.  So far works pretty well unless it is like 700 vs 150.