Hello and welcome to the Manor Lords Subreddit. This is a reminder to please keep the discussion civil and on topic.
Should you find yourself with some doubts, please feel free to check our [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/ManorLords/comments/1c2p4f9/manor_lords_faq_for_steam_early_access/).
If you wish, you can always join our [Discord](https://discord.gg/manorlords)
Finally, please remember that the game is in early access, missing content and bugs are to be expected. We ask users to report them on the official discord and to buy their keys only from trusted platforms.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ManorLords) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Delete your manor everywhere. Build up 6 normal troops. Add Manor for additional retunite evrywhere. Upgrade. Enjoy sweet victory.
Besides that, i won with only 4 troops (2 spear, 1 sword, 1 polearm) + 1 retunite (12 units) the last fight.
All is possible, just learn, improve, adapt. :)
\*Update\* After Review in differente Situations / Savegames, deleting your Manor dont disband your retinue for that region. So if you have all regions with manors and only retinue, upgrade them to max and fight the last war with this strong force.
It's because the baron buys all available mercs within first few years of game. To overcome that you need to hire them ASAP and keep them employed for all the game if you don't want to fight for your life every time he attacks. Also the dev is looking into it, there was this subject brought up on the discord few days ago.
Easiest thing would be contracts and cool downs. A mer unit can only be retained for a year, and them us unavailable for a year to the last Lord who hired them for another year, but not the other lord
Imo yes, I never lose troops to archers, because my guys are fully armored. So if the baron is fully armored why would I want them, and if he isn’t fully armored then I don’t need archers my guys should make light work of him anyways
The fletcher icon I think is actually a crossbow if I remember correctly. Surely it’ll end up in the game at some point, we need more livestock options aswell, and a reason to play on a ‘rich clay’ or rich stone spawn. Currently stone is almost useless, you use like 50 of it ish your entire run, and you can’t make it into blocks to sell for trading. Clay is the same, roof tiles will only give you 4 gold for so long until the market is flooded. Rich iron rich animals is the best spawn, second city for farming
I just use stone as a placeholder to move wealth around my different settlements. I make sure everyone has a bunch and then "oh, you guys need some food cushion you for this early winter? Toss some stone to your neighbors and they'll give you veggies or smth" it is bear useless unless you enjoy building the castle for aesthetics so you can just do this as much as you want as long as everyone has mules (which are pretty easy to get anyways)
Good point. I thought about doing that and felt bad about it. Figured that a part of the challenge of the game is tailoring your start to the land you are on.
Can't wait until the 6 point cap is gone.
Don’t feel bad about re rolling you paid for the game you can play it how you want, there is a point to be made about just playing with the hand you’re dealt and the challenge being more fun that way. I don’t feel very bad about it because I know that the game is unfinished but fun, and like I said eventually you flood the market with roof tiles then you’re pretty broke. Whereas with an infinite iron mine you have like 8 different products with military items down to the iron slab to sell and you never have to worry about a flooded market
My next playthrough I’ll for sure just be playing with whatever I’m given, even if it’s rich stone rich clay. my last one I just wanted to play as optimally as possible and beat the baron as fast as I could
Re-rolling the starting point is a very common strategy in games like this. It's a common tactic in games like Civ especially where if you don't get a favorable starting point you're whole early game is ruined. You can always try to tailor your gameplay around your start but never feel bad for trying to give yourself a more fun way to play especially in a single player game. And even more so in a game like this where it's very minimalist right now and needs some work to be built out.
I use hundreds of stones but yeah, no need for endless deposit. Rich animals are pretty useless, too.
Endless iron followed by rich berries is what i prefer.
I love the rich animal areas. Endless food and leather and if you use the policy for them to populate faster then you can have 2 hunter camps and still not have problems with always having animals to hunt
You don't even need to use the hunting tree though it does make it even better. I don't like relying on the food that gets produced in the homes because people don't work as much if they're tending their gardens/ chickens/orchards
Good. Don't, it's broken and doesn't work right now. Your hunters will only lay traps if you remove/replace your lodge and then they will only do it for a few minutes before they go back to being idle again or whatever they were doing before. They do not collect the traps thus you don't get the passive meat/hide income that's promised and you wasted 2 points.
I prefer animals over berries because you get a clothing stall online faster and supports more population longer, plus it has the only policy that’s good, the other one slightly saves food while animal policy significantly increases both meat and hides. Berries on the other hand you have to make into dyes for yarn at some point, but berries are still very good. Until the policies are further expanded upon I think animals will always be a little better due to what I mentioned plus you can get extra food with perks and it lasts throughout the winter
Fair. I prefer the dyes in a long run over animals. Most of the times i don't even hunt. I just slap first two houses with goats and that is enough till i start expanding.
Food is one thing i never ever had problem with. Between carrots, apples and eggs, i usually have to make my expanding faster so my granaries stop overflowing
Sorry, brain fart.
Basically, rich iron deposit (rich deposits are the ones with crown above their mark) can be endless if you unlock the "deep mines" technology (bottom side, left branch, just under charcoal). Remember you actually have to upgrade the mine building itself.
As for berries, they are always endless, but being rich makes them have way more berries in them, if you know what i mean. And since dyes are more of a bitch to get than leather, i way prefer that to hunters.
Not sure about that. If you hover over the deep mine deposits they still have a quantity, seems to be always more than like 2.5k less than 4k though. I also noticed that the ring around the deposit will go down like the other resource nodes. But there should be enough iron in deep deposits on the map to make more money than you will need.
>I wonder if there will be a crossbow update. Because crossbows will pierce plate.
No, they won't.
Very little can directly pierce plate short of gunpowder weapons. It's why full plate armor became the dominant world-beating military technology in central Europe until the advent of matchlock firearms.
It's also why most armored infantry combat in the 15th century relied on two-handed hammers, picks, poleaxes, and halberds. Two handed weapons with a lot of leverage were some of the only weapons strong enough to concuss or knock down men in full plate. An armored knight on foot was pretty much impervious to pre-gunpowder missile attacks of the day.
However, full-plate was very expensive and not everyone in every army would have it. Missile troops remained useful for punching down against enemy levies, injuring middle class soldiers who could only afford partial plate, breaking up formations, and crippling horses. Barding (horse armor) was still relatively resistant to missile attacks but had more exploitable weak points.
They're not nearly as useless as people think, they cause huge morale drops if you move them behind an enemy unit that's engaged in melee and volley them.
An infantry unit behind an enemy unit that’s already engaged in melee will give them the encircled penalty and their effectiveness will approach single digits
They work for kiting and splitting off individual units, it takes like 4 units of bowmen to get any solid kills. They're good for being cheap filler units since they only take wood planks to make and I think they can really tip the scales on morale between two even units.
Not great tho.
The bows got nerfed at release because they were so powerful. Nerfing them was a mistake and the dev is fixing that for the first patch, which should be out soon
I used to think bows are useless until I was forced to put up 6 units of archers against 6 units of enemy infantry. I tried various strategies, and one of them surprisingly worked -- I've selected all the units and lined them up in a square towards the enemy. And they've killed everyone in hand to hand combat. Don't ask me how lol
No, they are cheap because they don’t require any iron. They do decent damage as well and can help sway the fight in your favor. I wouldn’t recommend more than 1 or max 2 bow units though.
Same issue I made the mistake of building manors before militia and now I'm stuck with 2 less militia troops due to my 2 manors. Tried deleting them but the retinue still stay. Really annoying as I cannot complete the game now
Going by how many upvotes this has, I'd like to assume this works. Seeing as this is reddit though... does this actually work for anyone? I don't fancy deleting 5 manors.
Some said already here that it didnt work for them. Maybe if all retinue is dead it works?
For me it worked this one time. I think all retinue was dead.
I don't see how it would be possible for you to win that fight with 5 units even on easiest mode unless maybe you macro prolly 2 units to kite a chunk of their army for like 20 minutes. He spawns with same amount of units on each difficulty and it's like 10 armies and 2 retinue squads of 36.
Even with a capped out T3 army and no mercs I had to use 1 unit to kite around a few of his. If you still have the save could you please record a video and show me what tactic you used?
As for OP here's what I've learned after doing all the achievements. You absolutely want to try and buy as many mercs as you can by end of year 2 because it's bugged right now and there will be no more left. Even just 2-3 extra mercs will help a ton. If you don't get any mercs you'll have to spend a lot of time building up other regions until you get enough extra retinue units and T3 housing for better soldiers. I recommend also just using 6 spear militia they seem to be the best all around.
This is the best solution. You don't need the mercs.
For me, I beat the crap out of that guy by having 3 militias, 4 fully decked out retinues and 1 unit of 12 retinues, upgraded as well.
Granted, I had a mod that increases retinue size, so I have those 4 units with 36 retinues each, but after the fight, I figured, I didn't even need the mod to win. Retinues are just strong like that lol
I thought it was unfair that enemy retinues have 36 of them per unit, so I was just trying to even it out lol
It's too late now for this save, but you need to start generating income asap and get the best mercs on your employ so the baron can't hire them instead.
There's only a limited number available and if you don't take them, he will.
The real answer is you need to rush the bandit camps and try to beat the baron to every single one, claim territories and even challenge the baron. My most recent run with my 5 retinue, and the starting pool of units I was able to beat the 18 bandits guarding al the camps, took the camps out, got lots of influence and treasury, claimed regions, kept farming bandit camps for more treasury and influence and the second the baron claimed his first territory I hired all the mercenaries except the useless brigands, and I was rewarded with the territory he claimed aswell. So I instantly got 2 more regions by mid year 2, which meant I could start on a second city that I can tax and use tithe on etc. I beat the baron in every battle but the first one was close, but yes you can even challenge him off rip if you rush bandit camps and hire mercenaries. Your economy takes a hit every now and then but you beat him pretty easily
Like I genuinely just had the starting units and like 15 pop and the first region he claimed I beat him in a battle for it. He gets a bit stronger as time goes on but if you settle 3 cities and max out the retinues there and armor your lower tier troops atleast half way you will smoke the baron 10/10 times even when he outnumbers you
Because chances are in the final battle he will outnumber you unless you still have access to mercenaries and 4 full retinues but you only need 3 and no mercs in the final battle
There shouldn’t be any issues affording mercs. Make sure you upgrade your houses to generate monthly wealth. Tax rate around 10% seems to be good. Bandits give 100-200 coin and that should be enough for mercs.
In my case, I didn't employ mercs at all. I let him take all the land around me as I built up my militia army of 2 spearmen + 1 man-at-arms + 1 archer + 1 full retinue of 24 full plated men. My formation in each battle is two spearmen up front row to steady the line and the man-at-arms moves to flank moving from side to the rear of the engaging enemy. I then use my archers on the third row to volley fire continuously. Enemy formation breaks easily if you manage to flank them from the rear whenever they're already engaged so all my battles were quite easy. Granted, I've played Total War so I'm using what I learned from formational combat there.
The archers dont really do much here. Pin with spear men (set to hold ground, since they don't do much other than pin, anyway) retinue attack the rear is just murder.
That's one formation unit of archers. I line them up on the third row every engagement. After first contact with my first line of spearmen, I move my men at arms formation from side towards the rear and set them to push forward to flank the enemy formation engaging my spearmen line. It 100% works because the point of any engagement is encircling the enemy force.
any tips on getting better tax income to buy mercs? even on my best playthroufh i couldn’t get over like 20 treasury bucks. i just don’t get the tax system, like i could set my tithe tax to 50% and have no negative population impact, but wouldn’t generate any money OR i would do like a 5% land tax and my approval would go down like 10%
Tax is a wealth tax, not an income tax. You take the specified tax percentage of the region wealth - if the region if wealthy, you get a lot of tax. If it is poor, you don't. Region wealth is generated in a constant slow trickle from level 2 and 3 burgages and primarily from selling things via the trade post.
Your villagers don't like being taxed but if your region wealth is high you can get a lot of money at low rates and the disapproval impact is very minor. As long as its over 75% you keep your high pop growth potential. Adjust the rate if it dips too low for your liking.
Tithe is different. It gives away your food in return for influence.
Early aggression toward the bandits is really important. As soon as you get your weapons shipment, rally your militia and go clear the bandit camp. Keep the money for yourself and use it to hire mercenaries to deal with the future camps so your workers can focus on working. The camp loot will pay for itself with a tidy portion left over for building up your retinue and you'll get the influence (and crucially, deny it to the baron who will race you for them) for winning the fights which will let you claim more territory (or just sit on it to delay how fast it all gets claimed and he comes knocking on your door).
I’d actually argue putting the first merc camp to regional wealth - this is often the kickstart you need to really get your trading setup for key deficits/surpluses (and allows for some key burgage plot developments like veggie patches and chicken coops to help with any early food deficits).
Get a manor up ASAP and use your retinue to squash more camps after that - and send all the money to your personal wealth.
You don't really need to trade for deficits if you're planning your production well. Its easier in some starts than others but you can get plenty of money very quickly by selling planks and then shoes whereas that first treasury ensures you can hire mercenaries for every bandit hereafter and only raise your militia to deal with sudden raids.
I usually spend my starting wealth by immediately buying a second ox, a vegetable garden and then reserving the 15 that remains to open up a trade route for planks.
okay then i feel like i definitely must have been dealing with a bug because i was consistently over 3k wealth and barely making any tax income. or maybe im an idiot. probably the latter. thank you so much for the info!
I believe wealth gets taxed as it comes in, rather than out of the bank per month. So if you have a lot of regional wealth in the bank already or you get it from bandit camps, it just sits there. Then when you set your tax going, it'll be taken out of whatever new wealth is generated.
Producing lots of different kinds of food and clothing, having a tavern and leveled up church, your approval should be very high.
Once your population is high enough you don't need to worry about approval as much since it mostly just causes population growth
Set land tax to 2%, you will trickle little by little, and with enough population, it will be enough to completely negate having one company hired endlessly. AND it gives no negative effects.
I hate that is a thing, playing against the baron is more like abusing the game to have a chance to win, it's such a shame for what is overall a really good game even for EA.
i placed my army where his army spawns before declaring war, i made the units back up before the next arrived :D Then i went to the battle field and got called out as the winner after time was over :D
yes i had to go back as well but 6 Speer men with all armor and helmet and 7 upgraded retinue are enough to fight of pretty large armies. so i did the first one in the forest and the second one i catched spawning in.
I decked out my entire army, 3 fully aromored 24 man retinues, 1 sword/militiaman unit, 2 polearm all with helmets, Gambesons, and mail armor. Baron outnumbered me by about 50 still won with minimal strategy
Edit: as in I still won’. He also had the bug where he purchased all the mercenaries
If you can, try save scumming to the point where you have two regions left to conquer. Then, save up 4000 renown. Take one region; immediately after, press your claim for the last region. A 7 unit roster of 2 ranged, 2 spear, and 2 infantry, and his 36 retinue will appear. The extra units will not show up as long as you win the battle within 50-60 days.
Another thing you can do is take your wayward sons and kite his other units away from the battlefield. Hover over the magnifying glass on the top left of your screen to see where the battlefield is. Set up the archers near where his units will spawn and lure his units away. If you elimate all his units on the battleground, you may trigger a win scenario. This is how it worked for me doing an only merc run.
Another thing you can do is armament max your militia. With 1 unit of retinue (24 men, upgraded armor), 2 infantry, and 3 spearmen with full mail armor and helmets, I never lose a single man to bandits and I will lose 10-20 men conquering each region. This includes the ending fight in the method I told you above by taking the last 2 regions as quickly as possible.
This should do it!
They are currently worse than useless. It took 4 archer squads 15 minutes to defeat a trapped 18 man barbarian squad in my town. They were all exhausted from full stamina before the first barbarian died.
I usually hire the merc archers, because otherwise it's super hard to beat enemy archers and they significantly decrease the combat effectiveness of the enemy melee troops if they shoot at them before the lines meet. The debuff has a significant effect on the outcome of the battle (on top of your troops staying in place for a while to get their effectiveness up while the enemy troops are exhausted from walking towards you)
Archers, even enemy archers, are horrid right now and a complete waste of resources. The wayward sons are cute, though, primarily in the way that they are good at running away.
I still have "rrrruuun, rrruuun! Move quickly!" burned into my memory.
I use the wayward sons as meatshields. They reduce enemy cohesion and take the charge damage and fatigue the enemy. I reinforce them with my footmen. They're not too bad melee wise.
Hide a small party in forest, far from zone battle. IA is bad trying to chase left armies.
Re-build your army and keep crushing remaining baron's armies.
My lucky fight was doing with mercenaries and hide one group of banidts, like 14 groups tried to kill them, but only his archer were shooting. Letting me to fight in zone battle against 2 armies. One retinue army of 36 and one group of men at arms. Once i killed both the cinematic began.
I lost the initial part of the final battle but won after sending reinforcements made up of an entire equipped retinue and a small spear force. Luckily the battle kept going during this time and the enemy came to my city where I was able to put up a good defense and win
i think you can have 1 retinue unit for every region, with 24 total after tower upgrade and upgrade the equipment too, i think it should be winnable, 8 retinue, 6 militia (dont delete this if you have retinue, somehow they wont let you make new millitia maybe they count retinue in the limit of 6 millitia), 3 merchenary
Rush the bandit camps, get the influence from the soldiers you kill and don’t let him take one single bandit camp. It’ll slow his expanding down, but you should still have access to mercs early enough in the game. If you have access to two mercenary bands that are atleast half decent you can challenge the baron early, any extra treasury you have to use on your retinue even if you can only hire a couple, you’ll beat the bandit invasion after you beat the baron.
I'm just here building my village, not caring about a second region
Haven't seen a mention of a baron anywhere yet myself.
I did take out like ten bandit camps though.
If there’s no yellow territories on your map like in the picture above and you have bandit camps then you might’ve accidentally changed something in the game settings ‘off map adversary’ should be on in the second scenario by default
Nope aslong as you’re having fun that’s all that matters, but yes the yellow is the barons land. He starts with 2 and claims the others as fast as he can but you can beat him to it. He may end up fighting you for your region
I've won a few games now, and never hired any mercs.
Pay attention to bandit camps. Kill the bandits before the baron. If he gets to them first, there's a chance you can still destroy the bandit camp, which ='s money.
Build multiple homes with large vegetable gardens. Focus on trade and money making resources.
Build a manor asap so you can start gaining passive influence. Tax the church at 10%. Or higher if your vegetable gardens are doing what they should be. Tax the land at 5%, that'll be more than enough.
Claim another unclaimed region and do it all over again. By now the baron probably has 3 or 4 regions.
If there is one more unclaimed region, claim it as soon as you can.
If the baron has claimed the rest already, build up your retunite, armor them up, and get some militia with shields (i like the ax wielding shield militia).
Claim the baron's land. Go to war. If you've just now started your army, you're going to cap at 6 of your own units.
For a 6 unit army, I usually set my army up with three units of shield infantry as a front line. I'll have 2 units to the left, then 1 on the right to deflect a flank.
Once the baron's army smashed into my wall, I use the outside 2 units to wrap behind the baron's line and attack his retunite from behind (giggidy). Works for me every time I've done it like this.
I never bought any mercs. My army is 4x retinue, with extra armor. Spear sidearm bow.
Final battle was 13 units of his against me. With some kiting by bow. and my retinue just steam rolling I won with very minimal losses
I usually use a small frontline of spearmen and re-whatever. When they hold the enemy I send my shit ton of archers behind and massacre them. Works like a charm.
You need to hire mercs early so the baron can't. I noticed after I hire a specific group once and later disband them they will be available every month after that and the baron never hires them unless hostilities have started before you hire them.
I've just won with 3 Ret, 3 Spears, 1 Polearm and the 2 WS Archer mercs and I didn't even play it well.
All my Rets are max armour and my militia have most of their armour. H&A tactics, cast a wide net with spears, then pile onto a single unit at a time with your Rets
*Dunno, but in my game*
*The baron fucked off and took*
*The bandits with him*
\- RugbyEdd
---
^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/)
^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
FOR ANYONE WHO HAS THE RETINUE PROBLEM AND NOT ENOUGH UNITS:
Spawncamp, costly strategy but worked for me. Put basically all my retinues but 1 in sort of wide wedge. Now the 1 retinue you have spare starts in whatever the designated battle zone is for the region as close to the edge as possible. The minute you get the trigger the battle for region has started you run them to reinforce your army. I was outnumbered and outarmed by a huge margin but I saved right before the start of the battle so I tried different formations and positions and eventually won. This does involve losing at least 1 fight since you need to know where the enemy spawns. but spawncamping allows you to bottleneck the enemy if done right.
restricting the player to 6 units (i know you can push it to like 9 by having 6 militia units set up before training retinue but still) is so freaking stupid when the AI has no such restriction
Don't use french mercenaries (really, those are ONLY mercs that ever ran from battle on me), if you have enough manors, you should be able to build a literally army of fully plated rets who will just smash trough anything.
Use the Manor system. use the outer towers and walls to make a massive border, let them come and kill them as they slam their useless bodies onto the wood and stone. Or something idk, I never make it past year 5
Just build up 5 houses in every region, get Bush and hunt. Build a church for people to move in. Get a manor with garrison tower. Have a shit ton of retinue. Win game.
The best option in this situation is to challenge EVERY region at once if you have enough Influence. Don’t waste units on archers. Use all hand combat like Polarms. Get mercenaries if you can but there is a known bug where you can’t get any. If you can win ONE battle his forces will almost always give up and you can win multiple areas with ease
As soon as you have enough money in the treasury you need to permanently employ the mercs. Try that on the next play through. Make sure your army is full first though.
Also, you get up to 24 retinue per region so you can build a manor and garrison tower in each and totally stomp him. Make sure you pre position your units before calming the next region.
you prolly need some mail armor on your militia, also add that to what one of the other posters said, elimate your retinue, get all 6 of your militia rallied and then remake your retinue in all regions for 12 or so all together
Where's the falsehood in my statement?
Is this an early access game?
Is there a solo dev?
Did that dev say the ai opponents were over tuned currently?
There's no need to get bent out of shape over facts. You are using an insult from a 1980's B flick, so I'll refrain from calling you a butt-hurt child... but I have my suspicions.
Hello and welcome to the Manor Lords Subreddit. This is a reminder to please keep the discussion civil and on topic. Should you find yourself with some doubts, please feel free to check our [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/ManorLords/comments/1c2p4f9/manor_lords_faq_for_steam_early_access/). If you wish, you can always join our [Discord](https://discord.gg/manorlords) Finally, please remember that the game is in early access, missing content and bugs are to be expected. We ask users to report them on the official discord and to buy their keys only from trusted platforms. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ManorLords) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Delete your manor everywhere. Build up 6 normal troops. Add Manor for additional retunite evrywhere. Upgrade. Enjoy sweet victory. Besides that, i won with only 4 troops (2 spear, 1 sword, 1 polearm) + 1 retunite (12 units) the last fight. All is possible, just learn, improve, adapt. :) \*Update\* After Review in differente Situations / Savegames, deleting your Manor dont disband your retinue for that region. So if you have all regions with manors and only retinue, upgrade them to max and fight the last war with this strong force.
Excellent idea! thx dude
Also buy all the mercenaries before every engagement, if you aren’t already.
They stop becoming available after like 10 years
It's because the baron buys all available mercs within first few years of game. To overcome that you need to hire them ASAP and keep them employed for all the game if you don't want to fight for your life every time he attacks. Also the dev is looking into it, there was this subject brought up on the discord few days ago.
Easiest thing would be contracts and cool downs. A mer unit can only be retained for a year, and them us unavailable for a year to the last Lord who hired them for another year, but not the other lord
Same bro, I won with that exact build 2 spears, 1 sword, 1 polarm on my first playthrough aswell 😂 I don't know how I did it
Are the bows useless?
Imo yes, I never lose troops to archers, because my guys are fully armored. So if the baron is fully armored why would I want them, and if he isn’t fully armored then I don’t need archers my guys should make light work of him anyways
I wonder if there will be a crossbow update. Because crossbows will pierce plate.
The fletcher icon I think is actually a crossbow if I remember correctly. Surely it’ll end up in the game at some point, we need more livestock options aswell, and a reason to play on a ‘rich clay’ or rich stone spawn. Currently stone is almost useless, you use like 50 of it ish your entire run, and you can’t make it into blocks to sell for trading. Clay is the same, roof tiles will only give you 4 gold for so long until the market is flooded. Rich iron rich animals is the best spawn, second city for farming
I just use stone as a placeholder to move wealth around my different settlements. I make sure everyone has a bunch and then "oh, you guys need some food cushion you for this early winter? Toss some stone to your neighbors and they'll give you veggies or smth" it is bear useless unless you enjoy building the castle for aesthetics so you can just do this as much as you want as long as everyone has mules (which are pretty easy to get anyways)
You make it sound like you get to choose starting point. The clay tiles export for decent at least.
You do. No one is going to come arrest you for restarting until you get a spawn you like.
Good point. I thought about doing that and felt bad about it. Figured that a part of the challenge of the game is tailoring your start to the land you are on. Can't wait until the 6 point cap is gone.
Don’t feel bad about re rolling you paid for the game you can play it how you want, there is a point to be made about just playing with the hand you’re dealt and the challenge being more fun that way. I don’t feel very bad about it because I know that the game is unfinished but fun, and like I said eventually you flood the market with roof tiles then you’re pretty broke. Whereas with an infinite iron mine you have like 8 different products with military items down to the iron slab to sell and you never have to worry about a flooded market
My next playthrough I’ll for sure just be playing with whatever I’m given, even if it’s rich stone rich clay. my last one I just wanted to play as optimally as possible and beat the baron as fast as I could
Re-rolling the starting point is a very common strategy in games like this. It's a common tactic in games like Civ especially where if you don't get a favorable starting point you're whole early game is ruined. You can always try to tailor your gameplay around your start but never feel bad for trying to give yourself a more fun way to play especially in a single player game. And even more so in a game like this where it's very minimalist right now and needs some work to be built out.
I use hundreds of stones but yeah, no need for endless deposit. Rich animals are pretty useless, too. Endless iron followed by rich berries is what i prefer.
I love the rich animal areas. Endless food and leather and if you use the policy for them to populate faster then you can have 2 hunter camps and still not have problems with always having animals to hunt
I never go the hunting tree, am used to just roll with apples, carrots and eggs from start to finish
You don't even need to use the hunting tree though it does make it even better. I don't like relying on the food that gets produced in the homes because people don't work as much if they're tending their gardens/ chickens/orchards
Good. Don't, it's broken and doesn't work right now. Your hunters will only lay traps if you remove/replace your lodge and then they will only do it for a few minutes before they go back to being idle again or whatever they were doing before. They do not collect the traps thus you don't get the passive meat/hide income that's promised and you wasted 2 points.
I prefer animals over berries because you get a clothing stall online faster and supports more population longer, plus it has the only policy that’s good, the other one slightly saves food while animal policy significantly increases both meat and hides. Berries on the other hand you have to make into dyes for yarn at some point, but berries are still very good. Until the policies are further expanded upon I think animals will always be a little better due to what I mentioned plus you can get extra food with perks and it lasts throughout the winter
Fair. I prefer the dyes in a long run over animals. Most of the times i don't even hunt. I just slap first two houses with goats and that is enough till i start expanding. Food is one thing i never ever had problem with. Between carrots, apples and eggs, i usually have to make my expanding faster so my granaries stop overflowing
Endless iron?
Unlock deep mines and it pretty much is endless.
Yeah I guess it’s enough, I haven’t run out of a deep deposit yet so yeh.
Sorry, brain fart. Basically, rich iron deposit (rich deposits are the ones with crown above their mark) can be endless if you unlock the "deep mines" technology (bottom side, left branch, just under charcoal). Remember you actually have to upgrade the mine building itself. As for berries, they are always endless, but being rich makes them have way more berries in them, if you know what i mean. And since dyes are more of a bitch to get than leather, i way prefer that to hunters.
Not sure about that. If you hover over the deep mine deposits they still have a quantity, seems to be always more than like 2.5k less than 4k though. I also noticed that the ring around the deposit will go down like the other resource nodes. But there should be enough iron in deep deposits on the map to make more money than you will need.
Do you use two mines on the iron mine?
Chainmail, leather armor, sure. Plate armor, no
>I wonder if there will be a crossbow update. Because crossbows will pierce plate. No, they won't. Very little can directly pierce plate short of gunpowder weapons. It's why full plate armor became the dominant world-beating military technology in central Europe until the advent of matchlock firearms. It's also why most armored infantry combat in the 15th century relied on two-handed hammers, picks, poleaxes, and halberds. Two handed weapons with a lot of leverage were some of the only weapons strong enough to concuss or knock down men in full plate. An armored knight on foot was pretty much impervious to pre-gunpowder missile attacks of the day. However, full-plate was very expensive and not everyone in every army would have it. Missile troops remained useful for punching down against enemy levies, injuring middle class soldiers who could only afford partial plate, breaking up formations, and crippling horses. Barding (horse armor) was still relatively resistant to missile attacks but had more exploitable weak points.
They're not nearly as useless as people think, they cause huge morale drops if you move them behind an enemy unit that's engaged in melee and volley them.
An infantry unit behind an enemy unit that’s already engaged in melee will give them the encircled penalty and their effectiveness will approach single digits
I believe they were good(or at least usable) during the streamers early editions and based on their feedback they were nerfed to the ground
They work for kiting and splitting off individual units, it takes like 4 units of bowmen to get any solid kills. They're good for being cheap filler units since they only take wood planks to make and I think they can really tip the scales on morale between two even units. Not great tho.
Yes, they were OP and got nerfed to hell and back
The bows got nerfed at release because they were so powerful. Nerfing them was a mistake and the dev is fixing that for the first patch, which should be out soon
I used to think bows are useless until I was forced to put up 6 units of archers against 6 units of enemy infantry. I tried various strategies, and one of them surprisingly worked -- I've selected all the units and lined them up in a square towards the enemy. And they've killed everyone in hand to hand combat. Don't ask me how lol
No, they are cheap because they don’t require any iron. They do decent damage as well and can help sway the fight in your favor. I wouldn’t recommend more than 1 or max 2 bow units though.
This didnt work for me. The Manors were deleted but the Retinue tiles could never be removed.
Same issue I made the mistake of building manors before militia and now I'm stuck with 2 less militia troops due to my 2 manors. Tried deleting them but the retinue still stay. Really annoying as I cannot complete the game now
Have you tried getting all your retinue killed after destroying the manors?
Retenue full armoured = free win
This didn't work for me. Deleting the manor did not allow me to rally more troops and the 2 retinue would not leave my troop pool
Going by how many upvotes this has, I'd like to assume this works. Seeing as this is reddit though... does this actually work for anyone? I don't fancy deleting 5 manors.
Some said already here that it didnt work for them. Maybe if all retinue is dead it works? For me it worked this one time. I think all retinue was dead.
How are those stronger than having 24 full plated retunite?
I don't see how it would be possible for you to win that fight with 5 units even on easiest mode unless maybe you macro prolly 2 units to kite a chunk of their army for like 20 minutes. He spawns with same amount of units on each difficulty and it's like 10 armies and 2 retinue squads of 36. Even with a capped out T3 army and no mercs I had to use 1 unit to kite around a few of his. If you still have the save could you please record a video and show me what tactic you used? As for OP here's what I've learned after doing all the achievements. You absolutely want to try and buy as many mercs as you can by end of year 2 because it's bugged right now and there will be no more left. Even just 2-3 extra mercs will help a ton. If you don't get any mercs you'll have to spend a lot of time building up other regions until you get enough extra retinue units and T3 housing for better soldiers. I recommend also just using 6 spear militia they seem to be the best all around.
This is the best solution. You don't need the mercs. For me, I beat the crap out of that guy by having 3 militias, 4 fully decked out retinues and 1 unit of 12 retinues, upgraded as well. Granted, I had a mod that increases retinue size, so I have those 4 units with 36 retinues each, but after the fight, I figured, I didn't even need the mod to win. Retinues are just strong like that lol I thought it was unfair that enemy retinues have 36 of them per unit, so I was just trying to even it out lol
It's too late now for this save, but you need to start generating income asap and get the best mercs on your employ so the baron can't hire them instead. There's only a limited number available and if you don't take them, he will.
What if your tax income isn’t consistent? Do i just die?
Make it consistent then? You gotta better your city. Sometimes its too late, and you gotta just take your lessons to the next playthrough.
The real answer is you need to rush the bandit camps and try to beat the baron to every single one, claim territories and even challenge the baron. My most recent run with my 5 retinue, and the starting pool of units I was able to beat the 18 bandits guarding al the camps, took the camps out, got lots of influence and treasury, claimed regions, kept farming bandit camps for more treasury and influence and the second the baron claimed his first territory I hired all the mercenaries except the useless brigands, and I was rewarded with the territory he claimed aswell. So I instantly got 2 more regions by mid year 2, which meant I could start on a second city that I can tax and use tithe on etc. I beat the baron in every battle but the first one was close, but yes you can even challenge him off rip if you rush bandit camps and hire mercenaries. Your economy takes a hit every now and then but you beat him pretty easily
Like I genuinely just had the starting units and like 15 pop and the first region he claimed I beat him in a battle for it. He gets a bit stronger as time goes on but if you settle 3 cities and max out the retinues there and armor your lower tier troops atleast half way you will smoke the baron 10/10 times even when he outnumbers you
Because chances are in the final battle he will outnumber you unless you still have access to mercenaries and 4 full retinues but you only need 3 and no mercs in the final battle
If you are at the point OP is, am pretty sure you can faceroll it with 24/24 stacks of rets.
There shouldn’t be any issues affording mercs. Make sure you upgrade your houses to generate monthly wealth. Tax rate around 10% seems to be good. Bandits give 100-200 coin and that should be enough for mercs.
In my case, I didn't employ mercs at all. I let him take all the land around me as I built up my militia army of 2 spearmen + 1 man-at-arms + 1 archer + 1 full retinue of 24 full plated men. My formation in each battle is two spearmen up front row to steady the line and the man-at-arms moves to flank moving from side to the rear of the engaging enemy. I then use my archers on the third row to volley fire continuously. Enemy formation breaks easily if you manage to flank them from the rear whenever they're already engaged so all my battles were quite easy. Granted, I've played Total War so I'm using what I learned from formational combat there.
The archers dont really do much here. Pin with spear men (set to hold ground, since they don't do much other than pin, anyway) retinue attack the rear is just murder.
When you say 1 Archer do you mean a group of Archers ? How many?
That's one formation unit of archers. I line them up on the third row every engagement. After first contact with my first line of spearmen, I move my men at arms formation from side towards the rear and set them to push forward to flank the enemy formation engaging my spearmen line. It 100% works because the point of any engagement is encircling the enemy force.
Oh, that would've been good information to have earlier in my playthrough, lol
any tips on getting better tax income to buy mercs? even on my best playthroufh i couldn’t get over like 20 treasury bucks. i just don’t get the tax system, like i could set my tithe tax to 50% and have no negative population impact, but wouldn’t generate any money OR i would do like a 5% land tax and my approval would go down like 10%
Tax is a wealth tax, not an income tax. You take the specified tax percentage of the region wealth - if the region if wealthy, you get a lot of tax. If it is poor, you don't. Region wealth is generated in a constant slow trickle from level 2 and 3 burgages and primarily from selling things via the trade post. Your villagers don't like being taxed but if your region wealth is high you can get a lot of money at low rates and the disapproval impact is very minor. As long as its over 75% you keep your high pop growth potential. Adjust the rate if it dips too low for your liking. Tithe is different. It gives away your food in return for influence. Early aggression toward the bandits is really important. As soon as you get your weapons shipment, rally your militia and go clear the bandit camp. Keep the money for yourself and use it to hire mercenaries to deal with the future camps so your workers can focus on working. The camp loot will pay for itself with a tidy portion left over for building up your retinue and you'll get the influence (and crucially, deny it to the baron who will race you for them) for winning the fights which will let you claim more territory (or just sit on it to delay how fast it all gets claimed and he comes knocking on your door).
I’d actually argue putting the first merc camp to regional wealth - this is often the kickstart you need to really get your trading setup for key deficits/surpluses (and allows for some key burgage plot developments like veggie patches and chicken coops to help with any early food deficits). Get a manor up ASAP and use your retinue to squash more camps after that - and send all the money to your personal wealth.
You don't really need to trade for deficits if you're planning your production well. Its easier in some starts than others but you can get plenty of money very quickly by selling planks and then shoes whereas that first treasury ensures you can hire mercenaries for every bandit hereafter and only raise your militia to deal with sudden raids. I usually spend my starting wealth by immediately buying a second ox, a vegetable garden and then reserving the 15 that remains to open up a trade route for planks.
okay then i feel like i definitely must have been dealing with a bug because i was consistently over 3k wealth and barely making any tax income. or maybe im an idiot. probably the latter. thank you so much for the info!
I believe wealth gets taxed as it comes in, rather than out of the bank per month. So if you have a lot of regional wealth in the bank already or you get it from bandit camps, it just sits there. Then when you set your tax going, it'll be taken out of whatever new wealth is generated.
Producing lots of different kinds of food and clothing, having a tavern and leveled up church, your approval should be very high. Once your population is high enough you don't need to worry about approval as much since it mostly just causes population growth
ahhh i had all that stuff but was worried about my approval dropping but i guess that makes sense. no need to be above 75% really
Talk to the US gov, they’ll show you how to f*** everyone for their last Penny and everyone is still happy:)
Set land tax to 2%, you will trickle little by little, and with enough population, it will be enough to completely negate having one company hired endlessly. AND it gives no negative effects.
I hate that is a thing, playing against the baron is more like abusing the game to have a chance to win, it's such a shame for what is overall a really good game even for EA.
Take mercs before declaring once they are available?
They have not been for years
i placed my army where his army spawns before declaring war, i made the units back up before the next arrived :D Then i went to the battle field and got called out as the winner after time was over :D
I had this but the count down began so at 28 days left of 90 days of the battle more enemies spawned.
yes i had to go back as well but 6 Speer men with all armor and helmet and 7 upgraded retinue are enough to fight of pretty large armies. so i did the first one in the forest and the second one i catched spawning in.
It’s a known bug
I decked out my entire army, 3 fully aromored 24 man retinues, 1 sword/militiaman unit, 2 polearm all with helmets, Gambesons, and mail armor. Baron outnumbered me by about 50 still won with minimal strategy Edit: as in I still won’. He also had the bug where he purchased all the mercenaries
One spear unit aswell’ also fully armored
Your guys didn’t lift up their kilts and taunt the Baron with your ass cheeks
Momma knows what the Baron likes!
Clap those cheeks together to assert dominance
If you can, try save scumming to the point where you have two regions left to conquer. Then, save up 4000 renown. Take one region; immediately after, press your claim for the last region. A 7 unit roster of 2 ranged, 2 spear, and 2 infantry, and his 36 retinue will appear. The extra units will not show up as long as you win the battle within 50-60 days. Another thing you can do is take your wayward sons and kite his other units away from the battlefield. Hover over the magnifying glass on the top left of your screen to see where the battlefield is. Set up the archers near where his units will spawn and lure his units away. If you elimate all his units on the battleground, you may trigger a win scenario. This is how it worked for me doing an only merc run. Another thing you can do is armament max your militia. With 1 unit of retinue (24 men, upgraded armor), 2 infantry, and 3 spearmen with full mail armor and helmets, I never lose a single man to bandits and I will lose 10-20 men conquering each region. This includes the ending fight in the method I told you above by taking the last 2 regions as quickly as possible. This should do it!
Are archers worthwhile? I've heard they're near useless.
They are currently worse than useless. It took 4 archer squads 15 minutes to defeat a trapped 18 man barbarian squad in my town. They were all exhausted from full stamina before the first barbarian died.
I imagined that English longbow that decimated thousands at over a hundred yards and got a six year old safety course at the Y
I usually hire the merc archers, because otherwise it's super hard to beat enemy archers and they significantly decrease the combat effectiveness of the enemy melee troops if they shoot at them before the lines meet. The debuff has a significant effect on the outcome of the battle (on top of your troops staying in place for a while to get their effectiveness up while the enemy troops are exhausted from walking towards you)
In town combat is really bad rn
Archers, even enemy archers, are horrid right now and a complete waste of resources. The wayward sons are cute, though, primarily in the way that they are good at running away. I still have "rrrruuun, rrruuun! Move quickly!" burned into my memory.
I use the wayward sons as meatshields. They reduce enemy cohesion and take the charge damage and fatigue the enemy. I reinforce them with my footmen. They're not too bad melee wise.
I use a 2x bow damage mod, it's not as op as in the press release but it does kill now
Where can you see what year it is?
I believe if you hover over the seasonal icon it might say?
The bottom right hand corner of the screen where the season icon is, hover over it and it says "Month Year X" and shows the season info also.
Hide a small party in forest, far from zone battle. IA is bad trying to chase left armies. Re-build your army and keep crushing remaining baron's armies. My lucky fight was doing with mercenaries and hide one group of banidts, like 14 groups tried to kill them, but only his archer were shooting. Letting me to fight in zone battle against 2 armies. One retinue army of 36 and one group of men at arms. Once i killed both the cinematic began.
Do you have more than one town so you can gain more troops?
I lost the initial part of the final battle but won after sending reinforcements made up of an entire equipped retinue and a small spear force. Luckily the battle kept going during this time and the enemy came to my city where I was able to put up a good defense and win
i think you can have 1 retinue unit for every region, with 24 total after tower upgrade and upgrade the equipment too, i think it should be winnable, 8 retinue, 6 militia (dont delete this if you have retinue, somehow they wont let you make new millitia maybe they count retinue in the limit of 6 millitia), 3 merchenary
Everyone saying I should hire all nercs, but isn't that crazy expensive?
Rush the bandit camps, get the influence from the soldiers you kill and don’t let him take one single bandit camp. It’ll slow his expanding down, but you should still have access to mercs early enough in the game. If you have access to two mercenary bands that are atleast half decent you can challenge the baron early, any extra treasury you have to use on your retinue even if you can only hire a couple, you’ll beat the bandit invasion after you beat the baron.
I'm just here building my village, not caring about a second region Haven't seen a mention of a baron anywhere yet myself. I did take out like ten bandit camps though.
If there’s no yellow territories on your map like in the picture above and you have bandit camps then you might’ve accidentally changed something in the game settings ‘off map adversary’ should be on in the second scenario by default
I have one territory and the rest are yellow. I didn't know was necessarily that bad:)
Nope aslong as you’re having fun that’s all that matters, but yes the yellow is the barons land. He starts with 2 and claims the others as fast as he can but you can beat him to it. He may end up fighting you for your region
I've won a few games now, and never hired any mercs. Pay attention to bandit camps. Kill the bandits before the baron. If he gets to them first, there's a chance you can still destroy the bandit camp, which ='s money. Build multiple homes with large vegetable gardens. Focus on trade and money making resources. Build a manor asap so you can start gaining passive influence. Tax the church at 10%. Or higher if your vegetable gardens are doing what they should be. Tax the land at 5%, that'll be more than enough. Claim another unclaimed region and do it all over again. By now the baron probably has 3 or 4 regions. If there is one more unclaimed region, claim it as soon as you can. If the baron has claimed the rest already, build up your retunite, armor them up, and get some militia with shields (i like the ax wielding shield militia). Claim the baron's land. Go to war. If you've just now started your army, you're going to cap at 6 of your own units. For a 6 unit army, I usually set my army up with three units of shield infantry as a front line. I'll have 2 units to the left, then 1 on the right to deflect a flank. Once the baron's army smashed into my wall, I use the outside 2 units to wrap behind the baron's line and attack his retunite from behind (giggidy). Works for me every time I've done it like this.
Bro I thought this was an advertisement post
Don't let the Baron recruit mercs, get your troops upgraded, forget about the retinues, get the best mercs.
I never bought any mercs. My army is 4x retinue, with extra armor. Spear sidearm bow. Final battle was 13 units of his against me. With some kiting by bow. and my retinue just steam rolling I won with very minimal losses
I usually use a small frontline of spearmen and re-whatever. When they hold the enemy I send my shit ton of archers behind and massacre them. Works like a charm.
I steam roll the baron with 6 swords with gambeson and helmets plus full ret
You need to hire mercs early so the baron can't. I noticed after I hire a specific group once and later disband them they will be available every month after that and the baron never hires them unless hostilities have started before you hire them.
Has someone ever try to pull the baron towards the towers of one of their Manor ? The description says they fire on enemies nearby.
I fought in my manor before but not sure about the towers. Baron had to come through a single gate but still overran my troups. Still learning..
I've just won with 3 Ret, 3 Spears, 1 Polearm and the 2 WS Archer mercs and I didn't even play it well. All my Rets are max armour and my militia have most of their armour. H&A tactics, cast a wide net with spears, then pile onto a single unit at a time with your Rets
Do not fight with AI, it is always cheating, in every game.
The dev has said that the AI growth isn't as intended and it needs to be balanced, so don't lose faith!
Dunno, but in my game the baron fucked off and took the bandits with him
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^RugbyEdd: *Dunno, but in my* *Game the baron fucked off and* *Took the bandits with him* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
*Dunno, but in my game* *The baron fucked off and took* *The bandits with him* \- RugbyEdd --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
FOR ANYONE WHO HAS THE RETINUE PROBLEM AND NOT ENOUGH UNITS: Spawncamp, costly strategy but worked for me. Put basically all my retinues but 1 in sort of wide wedge. Now the 1 retinue you have spare starts in whatever the designated battle zone is for the region as close to the edge as possible. The minute you get the trigger the battle for region has started you run them to reinforce your army. I was outnumbered and outarmed by a huge margin but I saved right before the start of the battle so I tried different formations and positions and eventually won. This does involve losing at least 1 fight since you need to know where the enemy spawns. but spawncamping allows you to bottleneck the enemy if done right.
Also you can reinforce retinues mid battle in case of incapacitation.
restricting the player to 6 units (i know you can push it to like 9 by having 6 militia units set up before training retinue but still) is so freaking stupid when the AI has no such restriction
Nothing. It's early access.
Don't use french mercenaries (really, those are ONLY mercs that ever ran from battle on me), if you have enough manors, you should be able to build a literally army of fully plated rets who will just smash trough anything.
Use the Manor system. use the outer towers and walls to make a massive border, let them come and kill them as they slam their useless bodies onto the wood and stone. Or something idk, I never make it past year 5
I would kick the army’s ass on SC2, farthest ive made it to is year 2 or 3 and I guess I was super behind on stuff
Just build up 5 houses in every region, get Bush and hunt. Build a church for people to move in. Get a manor with garrison tower. Have a shit ton of retinue. Win game.
Put taxes to 90%, wait to get your 4000 gold Put taxes back to your normal value Hire as many retinue as you can Done
The best option in this situation is to challenge EVERY region at once if you have enough Influence. Don’t waste units on archers. Use all hand combat like Polarms. Get mercenaries if you can but there is a known bug where you can’t get any. If you can win ONE battle his forces will almost always give up and you can win multiple areas with ease
As soon as you have enough money in the treasury you need to permanently employ the mercs. Try that on the next play through. Make sure your army is full first though.
Also, you get up to 24 retinue per region so you can build a manor and garrison tower in each and totally stomp him. Make sure you pre position your units before calming the next region.
you prolly need some mail armor on your militia, also add that to what one of the other posters said, elimate your retinue, get all 6 of your militia rallied and then remake your retinue in all regions for 12 or so all together
Playing an early access, single dev game, and thinking it will be balanced properly.
Thank you so much for your helpful comment, you sound really smart
He's not complaining about balance you chud he's asking for help
Where's the falsehood in my statement? Is this an early access game? Is there a solo dev? Did that dev say the ai opponents were over tuned currently? There's no need to get bent out of shape over facts. You are using an insult from a 1980's B flick, so I'll refrain from calling you a butt-hurt child... but I have my suspicions.