Haha love this game. I play on Xbox.

And no, cheating is not required. You’ll find out eventually, so I’ll tell ya the biggest upset of the game: calvery. When you have a fully upgraded Calvery force of 100 or so, you’ll literally defeat almost any opposing force in the field.

Also, start in the Nord or Rhodok kingdoms. Their bandits are easy to kill. Get Swadia troops and upgrade them to Calvery...you’ll thank me later lol.

Adjust settings to allow for bigger battles. Xbox maxes out at 100, but PC goes way higher.

The multiplayer is alright, there’s not much context to it though. Nothing keeps track of all your kills and there’s no levels. Well there’s a scoreboard for each match but that’s it. Directional blocking and movement rule supreme. Don’t get dependant on using a shield.

Overall it’s a fun game. Although as far as the single player campaign is concerned, after you reach a certain point there’s not much reason to continue conquering the world. It’s just “rinse and repeat.” It doesn’t get harder as you progress. The beginning is fun tho, as your struggling to survive.

There’s strategies online you can find for taking castles and towns. I caved and looked some up.

The AI is just pathetic in this game. You can have lords under your rule, and they’ll run around with armies fighting for you. But they are, without a doubt, a useless bunch of morons. I got tired of relying on them to help take over a castle or town, so I looked up an insanely easy strategy.

Stack yourself with only archers. Your army size should be about 100 or so. Have your archers stand back and just shoot at the defenders. Once your archers are out of arrows, retreat. Then repeat lol.

Some castles and towns can take a long time if you need to build a siege tower. But you’ll get the job done this way. The big thing is that your archers kill their archers.

Cuz you can actually climb up the ladder or siege tower, stand at the edge, and just hack away with a 2 handed weapon lol. They won’t come at you if you haven’t crossed over the wall.

And omg, don’t get me started on defending a siege. Well actually you can lol. Defending is all about holding a bottleneck. You’ll understand when you experience it. Hold a bottleneck, and then hack away.

Try playing as a non-noble woman, and don't use a horse in combat. its so fun.

Posted By Barleyman at 6:46 PM - Wed Oct 17 2018

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thought Warband's leveling and character progression was bad and eventually just got frustrated enough to start using the cheats.

I played one character, non-noble male, through to lvl 32 or 35, no cheats. However, there's an exponential increase to the amount of experience you need to level up each time. At a certain point it basically just stops happening. My character was unbelievably strong though, and it was a very satisfying character to play.

However, the game has some serious holes in it's design, especially late game. Although it's not as bad as the original Mount and Blade, there's very little support for striking out on your own and forming your own nation. It's very difficult to build support, gather lords, and maintain your realm. I found I basically had to fight every war by myself. Which was alright while the realm was small and I could easily reach every part of it, I could crush any AI army in the game at this point including the combined armies of entire kingdoms. But, whether I was forging my own realm or supporting a claimant the path to world domination is just one long slogging blood drenched mud bath with no end in sight, no clear sense of progression or accomplishment, and without the tools or mechanics to really secure tangible progress. At a certain point I just couldn't do everything all by myself, I couldn't relieve every besieged holding and conduct every offensive siege on my own once the realm was beyond a certain size. Very frustrating to be sure, especially when my character was easily the single most powerful and dangerous character in the game.

i had a way different experience, i made most of my hero's lords and got an entire family of nords (like 6 of them) on my side when i set out on my own. They love it when you give anything to their family so it was easy. i ran 200 swad knights and could just charge down any thing on the battle field and sieges were way too easy. maxed level really quick by smashing armies that outnumbered me 10 to 1. I made a decent vid of me doing a siege defense with 300 (mostly swad knights) against 1800 Sarranids and winning easly with very few casualties.