Sweet Realistic Medieval Combat (Mount and Blade)

[Kekvit Irae]

I noticed that siege battles are much harder on the attackers than in the previous versions I've played.
I like how you can now deflect a couched lance using a shield, but that will almost certainly destroy it. I've had this happen several times when trying to lance foot troops and cavalry. The sound of the shield breaking is very satisfying.
The music is great, but for the most part I keep it turned off. Battlefield awareness, and all that.
The only thing I really don't like about the new version, other than siege battles being hard as hell for the attackers, is now I can view the stats of each troop. While this was in a previous version, I never really played that version before. Seeing the unit stats is a great thing, until I saw what Sword Sisters get (or, rather, what they DON'T get). It just makes the game all the more disappointing for me having to go through the entire process of capturing/hiring peasant women and training them up to Sword Sisters, only to find out that they are one of the weakest melee cavalry in the game. NO Power Strike? The hell? I'd rather just stick with Swadian Knights, kthxbai.

[professorspatula]

You could deflect couched attacks in previous versions, but it just seems to happen more often now.

Tournaments are much improved - and fun! I got a shock when I fought one in Khergit territory and there were about 30 horsemen riding around in circles shooting arrows and javelins all over the shop. Somehow I managed to win that tournament, even though my character was rubbish with archery. The other tournaments are good too, although it's still disappointing the final round is often mis-matched. I feel a bit bad when I'm mounted with a lance and my foe just has a sword. Hardly fair.

[naut]

Only bug I've found, more hilarious than anything else: Floating Corpses!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Both times they'd fallen off the horse and well, stayed in the air.

[Veho Nex]

Oooo. Have you killed them and watched them fall off the walls

Now that is cool. Next time i do a siege ill be sure to take a picture of it

[Kekvit Irae]

After long hours of grinding, I FINALLY succeeded in wiping out the loyalists during the Swadian rebellion. Now I can turn my attention outwards.

[Veho Nex]

I know how you feel.
So far my favorite choice of troops is Nord trained archers for the defense of my castles and a mixture of swadian man at arms and knights for the open field stuff.

And during an assualt I normally just camp for the 30 days makes sieges so much easier

[Kekvit Irae]

Camping is too boring, and I've got enough Surgery to offset most of the losses I take in an assault. However, taking out the Nords and Vaegirs will be interesting... when I conquered the loyalists, I was a field marshal with several armies trailing behind me. Now that I'm no longer a marshal, I'm on my own.

[Veho Nex]

Ohh? how do you become field marshal? I've never been able to get more than about 150 men with me at a time making it really hard to take out the 300 man cities

[seireikhaan]

Helping out a usurper pretty much makes you the temporary ruler. You are the Marshal, and, for all intensive purposes, you pick who gets what fiefs and castles. However, when you succeed in the usurpation, you may get demoted from marshal, as your situation normalizes.

[rajpoot]

There are elections after that, where you can contest, and regain the post, but I've always found it mroe or less useless, I move at a speed of 6. something, and the other armies at 3-4, atmost 5........they get left far behind, so I'm usually alone in battles.
Also I just realized something, a knight's steed has better armour than the knight funny.

[pevergreen]

Downloaded, installed...but something about 3d rendering and it crashes when i try to start a new game. .960 worked fine >_>

[naut]

Anyone seen this? Why the hell is there a corpse in the hall?

[rajpoot]

@Rythmic;
That skeleton has been there ever since I started on the game........somewhere near the end of version 8.
It was speculated that it was there for some quest, or some story or something, but it was never found out.
I also remember seeing a village with skulls on spikes outside it.

[seireikhaan]

Heh. Rythmic, that was actually one of the first things I found in the game when I first got it at .903. I was quite disturbed as well that there was a skeleton at the table, I left the castle rather in a hurry.

As far to my knowledge, it doesn't actually do anything, much like the heads on pikes outside a few villages.


EDIT: What castle is that in? I forgot, and have only seen it once since that time, and forgot after that too.

[Reverend Joe]

I also remember seeing a village with skulls on spikes outside it.

Note to self: DO NOT loot any village with impaled heads outside of it.

[rajpoot]

This page should help.
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Mount%26Blade/Secrets
The castle in question is Bulugha, and the village is Glunmar.

[Kekvit Irae]

I finally gave up on Swadia due to stupidity in their ranks, so now I'm a free spirit once again. I am currently conquering the Nordic homeland (oddly enough, this makes me part of the Nord Rebels faction) with great success thanks to my 20+ Swadian Knights.
A favorite tactic of mine is to take all my archers on high ground, tell them to hold this position, and move my cavalry and infantry just below them in a sparse grouping. When the archers are done chewing up the advancing infantry, I let loose the kittens of war. Not a very original tactic, but one that serves me well against infantry factions, especially Nords since they have very small shields.

[Abokasee]

I beg to differ on the small shields, Huscarl shields are HUGE, of course, there not Arrow deflecting board shields, but there still pretty dam big, I've been having fun with my mass Vaegir marksman in 1.003 (I've got about 32 of them, I have 2 Characters, and 18 Swadian Sargeants)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There is samurai body armour, and a short sword in 1.003

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Its in Richaveg

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

By a small group of hay piles in a chest.

[Togakure]

I beg to differ on the small shields, Huscarl shields are HUGE, of course, there not Arrow deflecting board shields, but there still pretty dam big, I've been having fun with my mass Vaegir marksman in 1.003 (I've got about 32 of them, I have 2 Characters, and 18 Swadian Sargeants)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There is samurai body armour, and a short sword in 1.003

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Its in Richaveg

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

By a small group of hay piles in a chest.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There is a daikatana and kabuto hidden in a chest in Tihr as well. There used to be a third chest, containing a katana and waraji/sune-ate (effectively, boots) in Jelkala, but they changed that town in .960 and excluded the hidden chest. I've read you can easily mod it back in. These have all been available since I picked up M&B years ago.

[rajpoot]

While playing M&B this morning, I just went to Glunmar to look at those skulls again, and I found something even more weird there;
if you turn around right where you start in the village, there is this mysterious and sinister looking gateway into the hill behind you. It is blocked ofcourse.


While the walls of the gateway look solid enough, on going within the overhang, and looking outside, from the inside........

Yeah, it's transparent..........
Now this is the first time I saw all this and it's very intriguing
One thing that i'm sure about is that Glunmar, at one time during development was supposed to have some dark story quest kind of thing........that gateway looks particularly creepy.
Looking around some more to see if I can find anything else in the village.
Another thing, is it just me, or can no one find any peasant women in Glunmar? Only men?

[Mailman653]

In the earlier versions, wasin't there some kind of undead model or skin included with the game? maybe its just a relic of the old stuff, although at the same time, I think they would of removed all the old unused stuff by now.

[Veho Nex]

133 short of killing one thousand men : D

But my last battle of the night ended with the death of most of my knights. I entered the battle with 40 swadian knights, and lost 36 of them I hate the kerghits

[Togakure]

Yes, we are a nasty lot indeed .

[seireikhaan]

Not so much in sieges unfortunately.

[00jebus]

Downloaded, installed...but something about 3d rendering and it crashes when i try to start a new game. .960 worked fine >_>

I got a simmilar problem, weirdly, playing in a window instead of fullscreen works.

[Veho Nex]

Not so much in sieges unfortunately.

You'd be surprised in sieges it seems that they are more effective when killing my men attacking the walls than in open field

100~ kerghits held off 300 nords in the end we won but the kerghits killed over 200 guys before they were fully surrounded

[Kekvit Irae]

Khergits are great siege defenders because every single one of them is armed to the teeth with missile weapons. Unfortunately, the problem lies with the fact that once the attackers get up on the walls, the Khergits are going to die. A lot. Quickly.
I personally prefer Nords for both defense and offense. The Huscarls have a single point advantage in Power Strike and Ironskin than the Swadian Knights, and even the warriors get missile weapons (though not as good as Khergits).

There is one point where the Khergits excel above ALL other armies: Pure annoyance. When my heavy cavalry army fights a Khergit army, it quickly becomes turning warfare. Anyone who has played fighter sims (I'm looking at you, TIE Fighter) knows how lengthy a turning fight can get. Eventually, it all comes down to who runs into a tree or invisible barrier first. And since AI cavalry no longer use couched lances (), the initial charge gives me a LOT less kills, drawing the battle out to an hour or more, depending on numbers.

EDIT: The game itself is a flawed masterpiece. If you want to experience some game breaking bugs, join a rebellion and win. You'll get a NULL STRING conversation from the contender, and the rebellion quest will NEVER go away from your journal. Ever. Furthermore, if you win a rebellion, and then decide to leave the faction and conquer some fiefs of your own, and then go back to the contender and rejoin, the rebellion will start all over again (wat?). But here's the thing: You and all those fiefs you captured for yourself go to the rebel faction, while the faction you wanted to join stay the way they were. I had only 20 Knights with me when I swore loyalty to Lady Isolla, who then became my enemy. Staring down 200 troops (plus various armies she had in tow) with only 20 troops of my own because the programmers were shooting heroin when they were programming the scripts is NOT fun.

[seireikhaan]

Weird.

Kek, I did exactly what you stated; I won a rebellion. I overthrew the Vaigirs, and...

It worked. Nice little, short exchange between me and what's his name the "illegitimate", all the stuff turned green, everything seemed in order. And the quest went away as well. Hmmm...

I've also witnessed the AI couching, having been on the receiving end of multiple of them...

Not sure what all this is about.

[professorspatula]

Those Khergits in .960 were a nightmare. Their lancers and horsemen would just ride into your men and kill them instantly (you too if you were unlucky) and their mounted archers would take a lot of patience to kill. I'd end up having to spend some points in horse archery just so I could trade arrows with them as I chased after them. The best way to kill them seemed to be to have your army stand their ground near the edge of the map. The Khergits would end up hitting the invisible barrier and become easy targets. Be a shame if they don't still use their couch lance attacks in v1.003 though. That's what made them a real nightmare. For now I've pretty much avoided fighting them.

Actually I'm struggling to really get into the game this time around. I think I've fought so many battles in earlier versions, it just doesn't have the same thrill now. I've spent about 8 hours playing the new version but much of that was spent taking part in tournaments - by far the quickest, easiest and most fun way to make money. I couldn't find any quests of note, just courier ones. There's not really that much to keep you interested if you don't just want to fight endless numbers of battles. I look forward to playing some mods when they come out for the new version though. Some of the graphic enhancement mods look great, but my PC is already struggling with the game these days, so I'm a bit wary about using them.

Anyway I still love Mount & Blade, but a little disappointed it was released a little short of its full potential. It's rough around the edges and I can understand why some magazines don't like it or whatever, but still its given me countless hours of fun and made my mouse hand ache more times than I care to remember.

[Kekvit Irae]

I decided to see if it was an isolated incident, so I joined the Khergit rebellion, overthrew the Khergit loyalists and... same thing. NULL SCRIPT and a quest that will never go away.

On the issue of couched lances on the AI, I have NEVER seen any of my troops or the enemy troops use a couched lance, whereas 0.951 always preferred to do the couched lance on the initial charge. Instead, they will ALWAYS hide behind their shields when charging.
Balance isn't even an issue if that was why it was changed. Just change a script or two so that infantry stop and raise their shields when cavalry are speeding toward them, and problem solved. M&B is supposed to be realistic, not stupid. There are ALWAYS going to be ways of properly taking down heavy cavalry: Horse archery, lance to lance, and foot spears come to mind. In 0.951, I couldn't tell you how many times I got dismounted because some other horseman caught me from the side, but in 1.003 I only have to fight on foot if I get too close to an infantry flustercuck.
I was seriously deciding on writing a comprehensive "How To" guide on Heavy Cavalry, just for you guys, but it just seems the game is getting less and less enjoyable to me the higher the version number I go.