Definitive Strategy

This is the strategy I typically use to get a kingdom going when I start a new game. It takes a while to get things really going, but it works every time without fail.

First, you'll need two things; Good troops, and good funding. You can knock this out by using a nice little strategy early on;

• Get a few recruits from the local villages and go after looters/bandits/raiders (listed in order of difficulty). When you don't have a ton of troops, or they're all wet behind the ears, fight looters (or bandits if you're ballsy). This is for your troops, not for you, so don't charge a bunch of sea raiders right off the back just because you know that you can take them on. Once your troops are more experienced, or you have enough troops that you're willing to spare, go up against bandits and raiders more frequently. You'll get better loot and more experience, but you're not ready to take on an army just yet. Do this in conjunction with...

• Participate in every available tournament. As you build up renown in your small battles with bandits, you'll also get a little bit of gold. You can multiply this in tournaments. Warren Buffet said that the best investment you can make is an investment in yourself; So invest in gambling your savings on those tournaments. This will be where you gain levels and money. Anytime you win a tournament, check the tavern to recruit a companion that fits in with this guide.

Within a month in-game, probably less, you'll be ready to take on a small army of horse-fuckers. But don't get too excited! Fighting against an actual military makes you the target of a lot of scrutiny. If by now some liege hasn't sought you out, go seek them out. It's best that the kingdom recently entered a war, so you can prove yourself by taking a castle and winning a few skirmishes here and there. So, phase two, early vassal;

• Report back to your king after every major fight and every siege. It will help build your relationship with him. And be sure to talk to the other vassals who fought alongside you, since it's good to have friends in the kingdom.

• Swallow your pride when you take your first castle or town and your liege doesn't give it to you. You lost a few good men, but you can use this time to build relationships and get a better feel for your style and tactics during this play through. Follow the marshal around during a campaign and be humble, since this is where all the cool kids hangout and it's important to make friends early on.

• When you're not at war, continue to make friends by seeing what sort of private interests you have with other vassals. It's usually YouTube drama, and it's a risky play, but you'll gain some really good friends if you do it right. And you'll need friends.

• Consider yourself lucky if you take a castle and your liege lets you keep it. That's very rare. But when it happens, you now have a better source of income. Which means better troops. You can now start preparing for phase 3 by balancing battlefield troops and siege troops.

If you're not actively sieging or preparing to siege, keep your siege troops in a castle. If you're going to do a siege, I recommend putting your battlefield troops in the castle. If you have multiple castles, choose one that's close to the action/potential action as a staging ground so you can easily switch out troops when you need to.

• Siege troops are Nord Huscarls and Sharpshooters (preferably Rhodok, but Swadian Sharpshooters are ok too). When sieging, form a shieldwall and have the sharpshooters pick off folks from the battlements. When they're running out of arrows (you'll get a feel for when this will be as you play more), order the charge to take place. Always position yourself at the front of the charge so you can break through the enemy lines and take care of pesky archers (if you haven't already taken them out already).

• Battlefield troops, at least for me, are always cavalry. During my normal playthroughs, it's just my companions and Swadian Knights. But if I'm doing a themed or roleplaying, I'll diversify it with Mamlukes or Sword Sisters. 20 Swadian Knights are more than enough, but if you have proper funding, the more the merrier! If we're between wars, or if I'm not acting aggressive during a war, I'll mix in siege recruits to train them (Especially after a big siege when I'm running low on troops). But if I'm ever going into a big battle, I try to keep it just to cavalry.

Ok. So now we're moving into Phase 3. You have a solid routine by now; You're making friends, it's been a few months since the start of the game, probably on your fourth or fifth war since joining the faction. Your liege likes you, and you're likely keeping most of the castles/towns that you take. But how are you taking them? And what do you do if you don't get to keep them?

• First off, you'll have enough social clout that your fellow vassals will want to join you on your campaigns, even if you aren't the marshal. You can also ask them to siege castles or towns that are ripe for the taking. With a bit of finesse, you can have a few different sieges going on at the same time, which may thin out your front line a bit but it will hit the enemy very hard, and will lower the amount of prospective future enemies.

• As you do this, the AI is playing its political game. Vassals come and go, and often times, they rally against your faction. It's aggressive, and it's taking a lot of land. You and your liege are all buddy-buddy, and people see you racking up more and more fiefs. But the fewer vassals in your faction, the better. They'll have more land, which means better armies, and your chances of keeping what you take go up.

• If you do it right, it'll be rare that your liege won't let you keep what you take. In that event, this is what you do; You denounce your liege, take your land, and lead a revolution. (I'm not sure if this works in vanilla, Diplomacy is the most vanilla version I play). But then, in the midst of your revolution, you go to a new liege that doesn't hate your guts. You offer to join them, and seeing your vast swathes of land, they gladly accept. Then, you screw your new liege over and go back to your original liege. This results in your relationship with your original liege being mended, and you get to keep the fief that you took. It's a double-edged sword, however... The liege that you used temporarily will hate you for your betrayal. Use this sparingly, since there are only so many factions for you to join, and it doesn't do wonders for your honor or relationships.

• Constantly recruit and fill up your castles. 300 troops for each castle, at least 500 for each town. This will help you when you try to make it on your own, since the AI sees those numbers and shirks away. But you'll have more than enough money at this point. It won't even be an issue for you. You'll have high-tier troops in places you've just completely forgotten about, and you won't even notice the tiniest little villages that your liege gives to you. They're worthless compared to every major town you own.

Phase four is coming up next. By now, if you've done everything correctly, a significant amount of in-game time should have passed. You should have wiped out at least 2, maybe even 3 factions by now. At this point on my first play-through using this strategy, I owned more than half the towns on the map. So you know what that means...

• It's time for a revolution. No, not the fake revolutions you did earlier to keep a town you wanted. A real revolution. It's time to stick it to the man! By now, basically everybody hates you. To remedy this, give any lord willing to join you a castle. Keep all the towns for yourself, but get rid of those castles. They should still have large amounts of troops in them, so if you can't immediately pedal them all away, they should still remain safe.

• Don't bother with alliances. There isn't a liege in all of Calradia willing to negotiate with you now. At least a quarter of the original vassals have been permanently exiled, and your few remaining friends are part of your kingdom. Don't play at peace when you're practically done; It'll only hurt you.

• Wrap it up by taking all the towns first. You'll have two, maybe 3 factions left to fight against. By taking the towns, you'll have divided up their lands into little borders. Go ahead and give the newly conquered towns away to your most loyal vassals, since you already have more than enough fiefs, and you need your most loyal men to watch over the dangerous borders.

• Now that you've carved up their lands, single out a faction to wipe out completely and take care of it in a cellular manner. Start with the castles closest to the nearest town that you own personally, for safety purposes (not that safety is an issue anymore, but let's pretend that it is). Rinse and repeat until you are king/queen over all of Calradia.

The most important part of this strategy is leaving, and taking all your fiefs with you. The timing is critical, you have to be quick with it. If you leave and suddenly the only remaining liege who would take you declares war on you, then you're screwed and you've entered Phase 4 early. You want to enter Phase 4 at your own pace, whenever it suits you. Phase 3 can last as long as you want it to, just as long as you initiate the revolution before your liege becomes the king/queen over all of Calradia.

Basically, you're in an abusive relationship. You're the asshole who leaves their lover whenever they draw a line you can't cross, so you leave and make them jealous; Then, when they're thoroughly defeated, you leave your new lover and return to them with renegotiated boundaries. But if you leave and the new lover won't take you, you're just the lonely asshole who has to go on the defensive. Take things at your own pace and be sure to enter Phase 4 when every castle has at least 300 troops, and every town has 500 troops.

Submitted May 26, 2019 at 12:32AM by Heavens_Sword1847 http://bit.ly/2EzvLLl