Suggestions to improve a very rocky new Kingdom beginning?

Hello all,

Skip ahead to the TLDR if you dont want to read my rambling :p

So I may have jumped the gun a little on branching off on my own. I spent about the first 125 days of my game slowly building up my army by killing raiders and collecting noble companions. Then moved onto Swadia to work as a mercenary. Once I got to around 60 troops, a fair mix of Swadian Knights and Sharpshooters, I went and attacked a Vaegir castle (I think it is called Hanun?). It is on a mountain between the Khergit and Vaegir boarder at the bottom of the map.

Once i took the castle, it took me a looooong time and a lot of fighting and begging to finally get peace with the Vaegirs. It was a lot of patrolling my small area, killing off the groups of 20-100 Vaegir lords that came too close, looting the 2 nearest villages to get some monies, then transferring most of my army to the garrison so i could book it to the nearest Khergit city to sell stuff then high tale it back. Just before I finally made peace with Vaegirs, I surrendered my only town to Alayen so I could set him to patrol and go off to do more recruiting. Now we are at peace, i trained up 35 mamlukes for Alayen and grew my army to 75 and I kinda feel stuck now with where to go. Going back to war with Vaegirs seems a bad idea since territory would mean i am very spread out. I am thinking I want to take the Khergit castle that is right beside mine, then assign another companion the castle and hopefully trade the village with the one Alayen currently has jsut so i can keep my fief's closer.

I am worried though that if i declare war on Khergit, I wont be able to get peace again for a long time and of course if the Vaegirs declare war in that time, i dont think i will be able to hold.

Obviously i am aware there are repercussions for my actions in starting a war and i cannot expect to just take a castle and get peace. But after we have been at war for a bit of time, are there tricks to getting peace? I think the only reason i managed to get peace with the Vaegirs is because i beat up their lords enough times it was starting to be taxing on them.

TLDR: Got in over my head and am struggling with ways to expand a new Kingdom. Looking for tips on building relations with other lords and having truce treaties approved. Also worth noting I am on console so no mod access!

Submitted May 28, 2018 at 10:25AM by n_e_r_d103 https://ift.tt/2IYx4Uc