Prophecy of Pendor - Mid Game Guide

I wasn't initially sold on Pendor. It was beautiful, the lore was fascinating and it was wonderfully hard to get anything done. But difficulty without true depth in the game play is just grind, after all.

Then one day Ravenstern, who I'd just joined as a vassal, went to war with the Sarleon kingdom, and I found myself jumping into the biggest battle I'd yet seen in M&B - over a thousand troops on each side. We were doing well - my keirguard shieldwall was holding, my Rangers were chewing up the enemy footsoldiers, knights and archers alike.

And then a bunch of Knights of the Lion came through in a reinforcement wave and annihilated us in about two minutes. We ultimately recovered with our own reinforcements, but believe me I googled those ugly bastards. Who the hell were the Knights of the Lion? They weren't Sarleon Knights, I knew those - tough but they bled like anyone. These Lions were something else, something new. They hit like a ton of bricks and seemed almost immortal.

That's when I found out that each faction has its own Knighthood Orders, whereby their Knights, already badass and elite, can be further promoted into even more badass and elite units.

I was hooked. And if you're reading this, most likely, so are you. Welcome to the PoP middle game.

The Middle Game

It's arbitrary but I define the middle game as the time when you operate as a vassal for another Kingdom, but before you decide to form your own kingdom or help one of the five kingdoms take over the whole map. If you aren't up to being a vassal of a Kingdom yet, or struggling with it, I recommend checking out the early game guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/mountandblade/comments/et4i5k/prophecy_of_pendor_early_game_guide/

A quick note about rules and difficulty: I play on full damage, with Horse Archer Advanced AI off, and these guides are written to help you play through with that ruleset. If you turn on the advanced horse archer AI, the game becomes Prophecy of D'Shar Ghazi Stalkers instead of Prophecy of Pendor, and if you play on anything other than full damage, everything will be slightly easier for you.

You should play whatever ruleset and difficulty level you enjoy.

Give Peace a Chance

The middle game, for me, is mostly about factional warfare. But sometimes your kingdom is at peace with everybody, and during those times there's plenty to do.

1. Do some quests. You should ask Vorador the Scribe about stuff. He can help you find future companions, and he knows some things which can be really useful later on. How useful? Like finding a piece of rare armour that's rusty and getting it repaired kinda useful.
2. Get a full set of companions and an enterprise in every city. If you haven't done this already, now's the time.
3. Gear up yourself, your companions and gain levels. Leave your army at home once you have a castle, or before that there is a hideout you can gain where you can leave up to 100 troops. I tend to run around with ten companions and ten knights during peace time, a good mix that lets me take on a lot of groups and avoid everyone else. Even long past the point where the bandit groups are trivial, you can get GREAT gear by killing the forest bandits and highwaymen that have Blackheart Knights. Kill the knights first if you can, this impacts loot, and the knights have the best stuff - Pendor Plate, Ebony and hawkstorm bows. Kill these guys until you get bored of it or your companions all have plate. The other groups that are awesome for gearing up are Three Seers Patrols. These can drop darkwood bows and Doom Maces.
4. Improve your fiefs, and trade fiefs strategically. I like to have just one village at this stage of the game (they get mercilessly looted when the war starts) but I'll keep trading that village so I can max out the villages attached to my castles. Castles with a maxxed out villages (300 minerals and everything built) routinely make between 6k and 8k in taxes per week. Highest I ever had was just over 8k.
5. Get a City Visit Routine. Get into the habit of checking all the vendors quickly, visiting the tavern last, asking travelers, red brotherhood people and the tavernkeep for rumours, and then quicksaving in the tavern. This routine takes 30 seconds once you get it down and it's a godsend. The vendor checks can be super fast - just a glance at the top items. Very rarely you will see some basic Noldor horses for sale, you will very rarely see Ebony Gauntlet plate for sale (looks awesome, is awesome), and occasionally you will see Ebony weapons (black swords) which are the best you can get for a long time. Red Brotherhood people sometimes have very special units to hire, including very rarely Noldor but far more commonly they have groups of 17 or so Mettenheim or Barclay guys - hire them and stash them in your castle for wartime! Asking for rumours sometimes spawns Qualis Gem invading armies. So if you get into this routine, you benefit bigtime in the long run. Saving in a Tavern (or any other scene) is safe from save game corruption, and saving regularly is a good habit.
6. Befriend the Noldor. Don't do it when it gets boring (goes for everything, there's no need to grind anything in Pendor, there's ALWAYS something else you could be doing which is actually fun) but if you're enjoying the process, helping the Noldor beat up Jatu is fun and profitable. Basically take a small, fast force, go and find a Noldor patrol (in the woods SE of Laria) that has no prisoners yet. It'll be fast moving and will chase you, but hopefully you're faster since you put points into pathfinding. Lead the patrol onto the Jatu steppe (NE of you). Jatu patrols will also chase you, but you can evade them too. Evade both groups so they see each other, and eventually you will have a jatu vs. Noldor fight to join. Help the noldor, improve relations with them. Eventually there's a guy in the tavern at Laria who has more to say about the Noldor, once your relations with them are good enough. There's also a few books you can read to improve relations
7. Build out your character. You should do whatever's fun for you with your character build, but arguably in Pendor the optimal long term build is to max out int yourself, getting all the int skills to effectively 14 (pathfinding and surgery 14 give you campaign map superpowers), and letting you upgrade your STR/AGI/CHR as much as you like with Qualis gems. This build means in the late game you have everything and are basically a demi god - but it means you need to spend a LOT of Qualis gems on yourself.
8. Get some Qualis gems. There's a chest in Rane that has one, another can be looted from a Red Brotherhood Hideout, and even in the early mid game you can probably handle Alaric Von Freequalisgem. You might be able to jump in a battle against Wolfbode with some lords and come out on top, but most of the other Qualis Gem invading armies will splat you, unless you find them depleted after some tough battles - which happens, keep an eye out! There are many schools of thought on what to do with Qualis gems. I tend to spend one on my party (only way to give Lethaldiran some trainer points early on), and most of the rest on myself. Other than that...
9. Start your Custom Knighthood Order. Totally optional, but if you have money and a spare Qualis Gem, starting your Order early means you can get the unbelievably slow process of training them up and installing all their equipment started. The sooner you start, the sooner you have ludicrously OP CKO troops.
10. Join a Knighthood Order. In your first playthrough I 100% recommend joining your favourite order and working your way through the quests. Once you're grandmaster you can get an order HQ where you can get gear upgraded slowly to Masterwork level, something you will absolutely want, even need in the late game. I might post separately about the various KOs, but this post is already enormous. Meanwhile, I recommend doing some reading about them on the wiki: https://pop3.fandom.com/wiki/Knighthood_Orders
11. Hire the noble companions (see the wiki, https://pop3.fandom.com/wiki/Companions) that you don't plan on keeping in your party. These can one day be lords for you, once you start your own kingdom, so getting them some good gear and experience now is a good idea. Put points in their pathfinding, training, and leadership. Some say surgery etc help, but I have not seen evidence of this. These companions will clash with your permanent party ones and leave. That's okay, you can re-hire them again later. Resolve disputes against them or you will lose your intended party members the same way, which is slightly more annoying.
12. Found a chapter of the Order of the Griffin, if you took the 'letter that changed your life' starting option, and upgrade the hell out of them. It's absolutely worth spending half a million gold upgrading your Griffins to 500 or so Proficiencies if you took this option, because in the late game you will spamming chapters of this order and handing them over to your Lords left and right, and even now having a few of them at that level is a godsend.

Factional Warfare and Troops

The Mid Game, for me, is all about learning to navigate factional warfare, how to win battles, how to use the best troops to their fullest, and building up your own assets. Wealth, equipment, experience, honour, reputation with lords, etc.

So what I'm going to do here is write a short guide for each faction's troops. There's a lot more detail on the Wiki (https://pop3.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Major_Factions) but here's a quick overview. I'm going to list the factions in roughly the order of easiest to win with through to hardest, and then I'll get into foreigners, mercs, adventurers etc.

Baccus Empire

It's a really close race between the Empire and Ravenstern being easier for a new player to win battles with. I think the Empire just barely comes out ahead because its crossbow-based ranged units perform better at lower levels than the precursors to Ravenstern Rangers. However once you've got the training chops to elite all of your units, Ravenstern ultimately fields the slightly stronger army.

Troops to use: Train up a large number of Legionnaires and Crossbowmen. The Empire Knights are quite good, but if you lead with them, they will die a lot.

How to win: Put your infantry in a tightly packed shieldwall (select infantry, press K) and position them on the map in front of your crossbowmen, preferably partway down a hill, with your crossbowmen just at the lip of the hill above them, with a clear field of view. Let the enemy come to you. Lure them if you have to. Your shieldwall will be quite strong, and the crossbows will maul the enemy to death. Use your knights to flank, preferably leading them into the enemy ranged units first.

Troops to avoid: The Empire's commoner cavalry are a mess, to be avoided. Pikemen are okay, as spearmen go, but spearmen are, IMO, broken in M&B, and generally to be avoided. The reality is that a tight shieldwall stops cavalry charges more effectively than spears, which is backwards from the real world, but this is a guide on how to win in the game. Lastly, the Gladiators are good shock troops, but damage-dealing infantry have limited utility in general, and they're far from a great unit in that category. Also super expensive.

Ravenstern

The Scottish-ish dudes in the north, Ravenstern have fairly weak cavalry, alright infantry and the best commoner ranged unit in the game - Ravenstern Rangers. They're a great choice for a new player.

Troops to use, and how to win: Keirguards in a shieldwall in front of Ravenstern Rangers, as with the Empire. This combination alone can beat almost anything you encounter. Keirguards are surprisingly effective, with great equipment, and Rangers absolutely slay everything but aren't great in hand to hand combat.

Troops to avoid: Whenever I play as Ravenstern, I rarely hire any of their Knights. I also don't bother with their mounted rangers or Highlanders.

Alternatives: From rescued prisoners I usually get a bunch of Heretics and train them up to Magnus level, at which point they can go toe-to-toe with any knights in the game. Rogue Blackheart Squires are a good bet also - they train up into Knights who are more effective and versatile than Ravenstern Knights.

D'Shar

D'Shar can be extremely effective if you know how to use them, and if you've got high enough level trainers. You want a couple of companion trainers above level 26, and later above level 31, otherwise you're going to have a complete nightmare. The reason for this is that the precursor troops for their top tier infantry and foot archers are level 26, and their best commoner cavalry units have precursors at level 31.

For the same reason, having a high surgery skill in your party, preferably with your own character so you can get it to 14, effectively, is more important with D'Shar than it is with Ravenstern or the Empire. Your high level troops are more precious, harder to get.

Troops to use: You can operate a perfectly good archers-behind-shieldwall combo with Ghazi Marksmen behind Dervishes, and in fact you'd be hard pressed to see much difference in effectiveness between that and the same formations fielded by the Empire or Ravenstern.

Furthermore, the D'Shar have lots of excellent cavalry. Their 'knights' are on par with most other faction knights, but they're also very effective horse archers - a combination that only the Noldor can beat. Their commoner cavalry lines end with Reavers, who are very good for commoner cavalry (arguably the best in the game), and my beloved D'Shar Ghazi Stalkers - the only horse archers I bother with other than knighthood orders and Noldor. I love me some Stalkers and no matter whose faction I back, and I almost always hire them from rescued prisoner stacks.

Troops to avoid: None. D'Shar troops are all effective in their respective roles.

How to win: Probably the most versatile of the factions, believe it or not. You can literally field an all-cavalry army with D'Shar, or restrict yourself to Archers and Shieldwall infantry, and kick butt either way. This is the only faction you can reasonably go all horse archers and kite your troops around until the enemy give up on life. D'Shar are a hell of a lot of fun, and I'm surprised people don't play them more.

Sarleon

These guys are the closest thing to Swadia in PoP, in that their Knights are significantly more effective than anybody else's in the game, and once you get a large number of Sarleon Knights, you can pretty much steam roll almost everybody else. However, the precursor unit, the Sarleon Squire, is level 31, and while effective as cavalry, are relatively vulnerable. Getting a large number of actual Sarleon Knights to survive their training is hard. Their commoner troops are also pretty bad at most everything.

Troops to use: Knights, Knights, and some more Knights. Sarleon Knights are on par with low end Knighthood Orders. Commoner cavalry are also very effective, arguably second best in the game

Troops to avoid: Basically their entire commoner line, except the cavalry. I kid you not. Sarleon infantry are stone motherless last out of all the kingdoms, in no small part because their commoner infantry line ends with the Halberdier instead of somebody with a shield. While Halberdiers are he best commoner spearmen in the game, that's like saying they're the best disease to catch. Sarleon Armoured Longbowmen are at best so-so, better only than the Fierdsvain ranged units. Arguably.

Don't get me wrong, Sarleon Armoured Longbowmen are not useless, they're just poor compared to the better factions' ranged units. Sarleon infantry also carry morningstars, which means they will take a toll on the enemy infantry and cavalry as they die screaming with sharp things in their heads.

How to win: When I've found myself on the Sarleon side, basically two things work.

1. Go all-cavalry. Mostly commoner cavalry, with a few Knights an Squires. Lead the cavalry yourself, and either work with other lords (who can supply the decoy force) or use a small decoy force of your own, get the enemy to engage your decoy force and then flank the enemy with your cavalry. Hit their ranged units first, or get behind them and cavalry charge from there just as they engage the decoy force.
2. Work with a bunch of alternate troops and thereby have a stronger archer/infantry formation. Although I still found myself going cavalry heavy when I did this.

Alternatives: There is nothing whatsoever stopping you from recruiting Ravenstern or Empire commoners for your ranged units. You'll get a mild, very minor morale penalty with those troops when you fight against their kingdoms. I also recommend (strongly) hiring every farmer and refugee you rescue and training them up along the Pendor footman line. This ends with Bladesmen, who are the second best commoner infantry in the game. You can also hire a bunch of Fierdsvain recruits and eventually train up Huscarls, but that's just cheating.

For ranged units, I strongly recommend getting at least a few Barclay troops (mercs in taverns, I'll get into them below), and even some Mettenheim.

Even when I go all-cavalry with Sarleon, I've found the usual cavalry alternatives - Adventurers Blackheart Knights, Heretics, Ghazi Stalkers when you can get them, and Barclay Lancers (I'll get to them in a minute) augment my small number of Sarleon Knights.

Fierdsvain

Hoo boy. These guys are last of the five kingdoms for a very good reason. While their Huscarls are the best shield infantry in the game, Fierdsvain suck everywhere else that counts. They have excellent two-hander infantry, which would be great if two-hander infantry had more use. They have great spearmen in the Huntress, but spearmen suck. Their noble cavalry hit hard but die too easily, and their ranged units are awful.

Troops to use: I strongly recommend the Fierdsvain Huscarl. They are hands down the best shield infantry in the game.

Troops to avoid: Every other unit in the Fierdsvain arsenal is pretty much second rate. I don't make much use of shock infantry (Two handers), so their Bersekers, while great in that role, don't do anything for me. Basically you need to flank to make the most of shock infantry, and I'd rather have cavalry for flanking work every time. Fierdsvain noble cavalry hit nice and hard, but die like flies compared to anyone else's knights. To be avoided. Their ranged units are singularly awful, capping out with a crossbowman who can't hit a barn door at ten paces.

Alternatives: Go heavy as hell on the Huscarls, and use literally anybody else's troops for cavalry and ranged. Ideally though, a bunch of Mettenheim and Barclay ranged, with some Barclay cavalry in support are a great mix. Huscarls are the one infantry troop that I don't mind leaving in an extended brawl, so the slower rate of fire of the foreign ranged units doesn't matter so much, meanwhile Barclay Arquebusiers and Mettenheim Arbalest wielding crossbowmen will absolutely maul anybody closing or stuck on your lethal shieldwall.

How to win: Have a lot of Huscarls and don't put your faith in any other Fierdsvain units. If you really want to field an all Fierdsvain army, good luck. That's without doubt PoP on hard mode.

Pendor

You can't get hold of Pendor noble units until you found your own kingdom, which believe me is reason enough to spend the rest of the day sobbing at the bottom of your shower. However, in the mid game you can absolutely field an all Pendor commoner force if you want to, and this can be super fun lorewise. Every farmer and refugee you rescue can be trained into the Pendor Commoner line.

Troops to use: Pendor infantry are excellent. Notably the bladesmen are almost Huscarl level, so they field the second strongest shieldwall in the game. Their commoner archers, the Pendor Armoured Bowmen are a bit of a mixed bag. They are good against a large group of lower level units, and they're okay in melee but not great. But they're not top-tier archers, roughly on par in ranged performance to the Sarleon ones, in my opinion. Good skills, second rate bows. Lastly the Pendor commoner cavalry are quite effective. They aren't knights, and will die a lot, but all commoner cavalry suffer that fate, and they're cheap.

How to win: I recommend an even mix of cavalry, archers and infantry, going a bit heavier on the infantry. Use your archers to bring the enemy right up to your infantry line, then flank with your cavalry, or bypass their infantry and cavalry and take out their ranged units with your horsemen.

Alternatives: Strongly recommend getting a bunch of Adventurers, Heretics, Blackhearts etc. If you're going purely Pendor commoners. You have no knights until the late game, and need to make up for it.

Adventurers

I would hesitate to field an all-adventurer army, purely because of the cost, but if you did and could somehow afford it, it would be the strongest possible before your Custom Knighthood Order caps out. Hero and Heroine Adventurers are the best non-noldor, non-CKO units in the game, by miles. They are better than any un-upgraded Knighthood Order troops.

Adventurers and Hero Adventurers suffer the Mercenary penalty (2x costs), while Maiden Nobles (female line, recruited from female peasants) and Rogue Knights do not, but are less effective.

Blackheart Knights and Squires are also technically adventurers, but can only be recruited from prisoner stacks. Still, I've ended up with 50+ Blackheart Knights in one game, so it's doable. Always hire these, if you can fit them. They're basically free Knights, good equipment, hit pretty hard and often carry good bows.

Mercenaries

If it's got Mettenheim in the name, hire it. I always have a couple of Greatswords in my army, even though I dislike shock troops in general. Greatswords, Hauptmanner and Forlorn Hopes are the very best of these. While they tend of sit way down my order of battle, many times in a desperate struggle they've arrived in one of the last reinforcement waves, just as we're really choking, and saved the day. Incidentally I call this the Mettenheimlich maneuver.

Mettenheim also have the best crossbowmen in the game, and I tend to have at least a handful of these to augment my ranged units.

Barclay troops are also solid gold. Their ranged units end with the Arquebusier, slow firing but hits harder than anything, punching through shields, armour, flesh, ideology, souls etc. Barclay's footmen train up into Imperial Lanciers, who can go toe-to-toe with most Knighthood Order troops, and are stronger than even Sarleon Knights. I can't help myself, and always end up with a bunch of these.

I recommend having both Frederick and Donavan in your party, solely because each week you can ask these guys for Mettenheim or Barclay troops, respectively. I do this right after the budget pops up every week, which is a good reminder.

Melitine troops are a bit of a mixed bag. In my opinion the dreaded Grim Banana is one of the best cavalry units in the game - they don't hit quite as hard as some, but they have wonderful armour and carry morningstars which crush through blocks. Grim Bananas are great, and I always try to have one or two, but the precursor unit is level 36, meaning it takes forever to get them. By the time you have level 37+ companions with high training, you probably have upgrade KO or CKO troops anyway. On the other hand, Melitine archers all train up into a middling horse archer unit, and their infantry are pretty mediocre.

The other mercs are a bit meh. Singalians cap out at mid level, never more than a disposable crowd. The militia line can be good for taking prisoners early on, but they don't get very good. Mercenary [whatever] troops are all capable, but all suffer the 2x cost penalty so in each case you're better off with somebody else's troops.

Others

The remaining commonly recruitable troops have a couple of standouts worth mentioning.

1. Heretics. I've already mentioned these - they're a gold mine. Hire every dang Heretic you can. They upgrade ultimately into Magnuses, which punch well above their weight, IMO the equal to any knights short of Sarleon or Order knights.
2. Seer Initiates and Seer Favourites. These are themselves not great, but they upgrade into Doomguides, who are excellent horse archers and prisoner-taking cavalry. Doomguides tend to die too soon to field a large force of them, but if you have a few they tend to pay for themselves and are definitely worth holding down a slot in your army.
3. Snake cult Followers, Armsmen and Cobra Warriors. Early on these guys can be a godsend. Cobra Warriors are only level 20, but train up from level 10 Armsmen, meaning you can get them really early. Cobras are basically crappy disposable almost-knights who do surprisingly well against anything less than knights or top tier infantry. During the mid game though, at some point I stop bothering with them because they just die and there are better options. One final mention, Armsmen can be decent garrison troops because they're cheap and their crossbows punch waaay above their weight.
4. Pilgrim line. If you want to take a lot of prisoners, this can work, but ultimately they're not very good and tend to die a lot.
5. Noldor [anything]. If you have a chance to hire Noldor, you do it. I wouldn't spend a Qualis Gem on them, but short of that, you take them wherever you can get them. Unfortunately options for this are limited, and I tend to have only a handful of them in my force at any time.

The End

To my mind the mid game ends when you're ready to start your own kingdom, or help someone else conquer the map. Definitely the subject of another guide.

Submitted January 30, 2020 at 03:11PM by LudicrousIdea https://ift.tt/2GEB90m