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So I got the go-ahead to write a guide for the Mods to post and pin on top of the sub and while my 3000+ hours of Bannerlord and wide experience with speedrunning this quest covers a lot, I am sure that I might have missed some neat tips and tricks. Please also tell if there if something that needs closer clarification with more text or an image. The Bannerlord's Guide to Unite the Empire Written by Octavian_Exumbra So you want to unite the Calradian Empire? Well, my child, this is no simple matter. Many great rulers have attempted to Unite the quarrelling descendants of Calradios the Great under one cause and most have failed, so steel yourself great warrior for today you... I'm just messing with you. It's actually a fairly simple process, so let's just dive right into it. New Campaign: Starting off, we're picking Empire culture. When it comes to skills, you have more liberty, but if we want to do this as effectively as possible then we're mainly focusing on party related skills and a little bit on two skills that make you physically more efficient as a commander on the battlefield, Riding and Athletics. So ignore the top two bars, Vigour and Control, you don't need those. Focus mainly on the party skills Steward, Leadership, Scouting, Medicine and Engineering. Place a little bit in Endurance, but only enough to let you use a good horse and to not be useless should you end up down on the ground. Keep an eye on the Engineering perk, Improved Tools lvl 225. It will help you a lot later down the line. You can of course choose whichever culture and level up any skills you wish. This is just one build amongst many. After the tutorial, head straight to Poros and spend your starting 1k cash on Hogs, Sheep, Cows, whichever ones the shop has in stock. Exit the shop and enter your inventory, slaughter them and sell the Meat and Hides back, you will more than double your money, keep doing it until the shop is empty or the prices drop too low to be worth your time. [Picture showing slaughter button in inventory] It's time to increase your Renown. Go from town to town, take part in every Tournament you see, recruit some troops and attack any Looter/Bandit party you meet on the way for some extra renown, loot and gear. Keep your troops at a low tier to keep their wages from draining your cash. Some times you can get higher tier loot like expensive horses and helmets, evaluate for yourself if you want to keep these as a power-up or sell them for a nice cash boost. Make sure to look in the taverns so you don't miss any strong companions that can serve as Captains, Governors and Party Leaders, aswell as to fill party roles if you chose a different build than the one mentioned at the beginning of this guide. Solving issues(blue exclamation mark) also gives you renown, but most of them aren't really worth your time, Art of the Trade and Villager Needs Tools however can be completed in the matter of seconds, so look out for these. Take a look at the perks for Charm, some of them will help you gain more renown. [Picture of the first Charm perk] Keep it up until you've gained 50 renown, fill out all the quest requirements and head to any town. Radagos will appear and tell you he knows where your siblings are being held and a marked hideout will appear on the map close by, go to it and defeat all the bandits. Radagos will execute his former partner in crime and you will get the option to execute him or let him go. Your choice has no effect on the game and Radagos disappears regardless, so don't give this much more thought other than what you think your character's choice would have been. Congratulations, you are now clan tier 1 and can serve as a Mercenary. Ps. don't forget to summon your brother. [Picture showing how to summon your brother] And the ball starts rolling: Now it's time to start building up your strength, wealth and reputation for real. You will do this first by serving as a mercenary, free to fight anyone you want and get paid to do so, but for your first contract you might have to be a little picky. You've reached T1 as effectively as possible, which also means that a lot of the wars that started at the beginning of the game might still be going on. So don't make the mistake of contracting with the first faction you feel like, because peace might be right around the corner for them, which means you're gonna have to go look for a new employer. So before choosing a faction to contract with, go into the encyclopedia, look at the faction pages and see who everyone's currently at war with and see if anyone has started a new one. Pick the winning side and start out by chasing down small parties and/or by joining an army, if it looks like you're about to get into a fight that you can't win, leave. The starting wars are as follows: Vlandia-Sturgia, Battania-WE, NE-Khuzaits, SE-Aserai. (For future edit. Nords. I'm guessing they are at peace when the game starts.) [Picture of encyclopedia page, showing where to see who they are at war with] Start recruiting troops, fight as much as you can, outfit yourself with the best gear you find and keep building up your party size. If you want to make all of this extremely easy, just recruit Battanian Highborn Youths/Warriors and you'll easily be able to take on anyone your own size and once you reach ~300 party size, you'll be almost completely unstoppable. However, if you want as much enjoyment from this game as you can, I advice you go for a more homogenus battle style. This quest is going to get repetitive, so you might aswell make it as interesting as possible. As you travel the map, you will spot npcs marked with golden exclamation marks ! talk to them and ask about The Battle of Pendraic. There's usually no need to go out of your way to do this, you'll come across them often enough, so just ask anyone you happen to come by and keep fighting. When you've talked to everyone, don't move on to the next part of the quest, you're not ready yet. Once you start rolling in money, you can assign your brother and companions to lead parties for you and once you decide to join a faction or create your own, you can summon these to your army for free, keeping their cohesion is also free of charge. (Possible future edit. I have a feeling they'll nerf this one day.) [Picture showing clan members in the army menu costing zero influence] After you reach T2 you have two choices; staying as a mercenary or joining a faction(you can do this whenever you want). Staying as a mercenary will give you more freedom and when the faction you're contracted with hits peacetime, you can simply end your contract and find someone else to fight for to keep the ball rolling, but if you join a faction, you can assemble armies which lets you train skills like Leadership and Engineering more effectively and lets you get an early head start for the next phase. Misleadingly titled Unite the Empire: You've finally reached ~300 party size, you're swimming in money from all the loot and prisoners you've captured, your captains are capable and the parties in your clan have grown strong, maybe you even have somewhere to call home and friends to help you in your coming fight. Depending on your current clan Tier, you should be able to field an army of 500-1000 free of charge, now add the clans you've grown friendly with and you should easily be able to field a powerful army for very little influence. But before starting your conquest, we need to set down one important ground rule: The point of this whole thing is to get the reward, which is the other Imperial clans. If a clan leaves the empire, you're not getting them, and if one of the factions are destroyed? Well, that's 1/3 to 1/2 your reward gone. So when you go around capturing Imperial fiefs, make sure each faction still has a good pocket of land so they don't get destroyed. But before all that, it's time to assemble the Dragon Banner. Go to Marunath and talk to Arzagos, tell him you support him(even if you don't) and he will reveal the location of one of the banner pieces. A hideout will spawn nearby, clear it out and you will receive a piece. Go to Epicrotea, talk to Istiana and repeat. Once you have all 3 pieces, you get to watch a cutscene showing it being assembled. Congratulations, you now have a very nice looking but ultimately disappointing piece of cloth on a stick. If you created your own or happen to become the leader of an Imperial faction, talk to Istiana and you will get the option to declare it for yourself. If you're a vassal in an already existing faction, talk to its leader to declare it for them. The next part of the quest now begins and your quest tab will say x/13 Imperial towns captured. As you besiege a fief, there are a few ways to go about it, but here are two methods that will yield good results: Build 4 Mangonels or Trebuchets, use Fire Mangonels once you unlock those, but as soon as one is complete, remove it. Repeat until the last one is about 70-90% complete and deploy all of them. Your siege weapons will overwhelm theirs and the wall will quickly be cleared of any defending seige weapons. However, you can also attack as soon as the siege camp is built to take away the enemy armies' opportunity to react. This is where the Engineering perk Improved Tools mentioned earlier becomes very useful, however, at lvl225 it takes some time and investment to get there. [Picture showing siege weapons being built and the mouse hovering over the Cancel button] As you spawn into the battle map, spread your Ranged troops out in Loose Formation, have 3 Infantry formations, one small consisting of 20-30 troops and two large equal size ones. As you attack, move in close. Have your Ranged troops stand openly right in front of the wall, this is where your offence becomes your defence. If the enemy has siege weapons, they will do minimum damage because everyone is spread out. Look for something your infantry can hide behind like a building, large rock outcroppings or just around the corner of the wall where they can't reach. Alternatively you can simply set them in Shield Wall formation and place them right up against the wall facing outwards. With the small infantry formation, you either set them on your ram or just straight at the gate itself. Some units can even chop down the gate before the ram arrives. You can easily move troops from your main formations if the small one gets weak. [Picture showing how to move troops] During this part of the quest, a second quest tab with a counter and a serier of side quests will appear. Once this counter reaches 0, the game will force the next part of the quest to begin. The side quests can be done to delay this from happening, however, at the rate you're most likely going at now, you can freely ignore these and focus on your task at hand. Once you've captured 13 Imperial towns, the next part begins. The Barbarian Conspiracy: At this point you're probably thinking to yourself 'I'm finally close to being finished, right? This part of the quest was named Unite the Empire after all'... NOPE! Prepare for three of the strongest non-Imperial factions on the map to declare war on you... And no, this time there's no voting for peace. But don't fret, cause while this part can feel overwhelming and gets quite repetitive with sieges, it's actually fairly simple. Each faction gets a quest tab with a counter going from -100 to 100, starting at 0. Taking a Town gives you 10 points, Castles 5, with Armies it depends on their size and strength. Pick a faction, the closest one to your own lands is usually smart and start conquering. This is where rushing sieges becomes most useful, since it gives the enemy very little time to react and gain any points. You lay siege to a town and by the time they've managed to assemble an army and march over, you've already taken 2-3 towns and are moving on to the next one. And while they get distracted by other sieges, raids and just random parties walking by, you are focused on one thing and one thing only, conquest! (Eye of the Tiger starts playing) DO NOT TRY TO MANAGE MULTIPLE FRONTS. You can do this in normal wars, but not here. If you run around from front to front trying to finish multiple factions at the same time and defend your friends' lands, most of your progress will be undone and you'll have to do ten times as much work than if you had just stayed your ground and finished the job properly. So stay on the faction you started with and don't stop until you're done, ignore other sieges because in the time it takes them to take 1 fief, you can take 4, 5, 6 and any land lost now can simply be taken back later. There isn't really much more to this part that i haven't already told you about, it's just a lot of sieges over and over again. So don't let the steam run out of you, keep going, you can relax once it's done. When a counter reaches 100, a peace message will appear in the middle of the screen. Press Accept and move on to the next faction, either the closest one or the one with the lowest score in the quest tab. When the last faction finally sues for peace, you're finally done! Enjoy the victory cutscene! The other Imperial factions will immediately disband and the clans are now vassals in your faction, even the former Emperors. Congratulations! submitted by /u/Octavian_Exumbra [link] [comments]